none a fairy tale in two acts, taken from shakespeare. as it is performed at the theatre-royal in drury-lane, london printed for j. and r. tonson. mdcclxiii. dramatis personae. men. quince, a carpenter, mr. love. bottom, the weaver, mr. baddely. snug, the joiner, mr. clough. flute, the bellows-mender, mr. castle. snout, the tinker, mr. ackman. starveling, the taylor, mr. parsons. fairies. oberon, king of the fairies, miss rogers. titania, queen of the fairies, miss ford. puck, master cape. first fairy, miss wright. second fairy, master raworth. other fairies attending the king and queen. scene, athens, and a wood not far from it. a fairy tale. act i. scene i. scene a room in quince's house. enter quince, snug, bottom, flute, snowt, and starveling. quince. is all our company here? bot. you were best to call them generally, man by man, according to the scrip. quin. here is the scrowl of every man's name, which is thought fit through all athens to play in our interlude before the duke and dutchess, on his wedding day at night. bot. first, good peter quince, say what the play treats on; then read the names of the actors; and so grow on to a point. quin. marry, our play is the most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of pyramus and thisby. bot. a very good piece of work, i assure you, and a merry. now, good peter quince, call forth your actors by the scrowl. masters, spread yourselves. quin. answer as i call you. nick bottom the weaver! bot. ready: name what part i am for, and proceed. quin. you, nick bottom, are set down for pyramus. bot. what is pyramus, a lover, or a tyrant? quin. a lover that kills himself most gallantly for love. bot. that will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if i do it let the audience look to their eyes; i will move storms; i will condole in some measure. to the rest; yet, my chief humour is for a tyrant; i could play ercles rarely, or a part to tear a cat in. "to make all split the raging rocks and shivering shocks shall break the locks of prison-gates, and phibbus carr shall shine from far, and make and mar the foolish fates!" this was lofty. now name the rest of the players. this is ercles vein, a tyrant's vein; a lover is more condoling. quin. francis flute, the bellows-mender. flu. here, peter quince. quin. flute, you must take thisby on you. flu. what is thisby, a wand'ring knight? quin. it is the lady that pyramus must love. flu. nay, faith, let not me play a woman, i have a beard coming. quin. that's all one, you shall play it in a mask, and you may speak small as you will. bot. an i may hide my face, let me play thisby too; i'll speak in a monstrous little voice; thisne, thisne, ah pyramus my lover dear, thy thisby dear, and lady dear. quin. no, no, you must play pyramus; and flute, you thisby. bot. well, proceed. quin. robin starveling, the taylor. star. here, peter quince. quin. robin starveling, you must play thisby's mother: tom snowt, the tinker. snowt. here, peter quince. quin. you, pyramus's father; myself, thisby's father; snug the joiner, you the lion's part; i hope there is a play fitted. snug. have you the lion's part written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for i am slow of study. quin. you may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. bot. let me play the lion too, i will roar, that i will do any man's heart good to hear me. i will roar, that i will make the duke say, let him roar again, let him roar again! quin. if you should do it too terribly, you would fright the dutchess and the ladies, that they would shriek, and that were enough to hang us all. all. that would hang us every mother's son. bot. i grant you, friends, if you should fright the ladies out of their wits, they would have no more discretion but to hang us; but i will aggravate my voice so, that i will roar you as gently as any sucking dove; i will roar you an 'twere any nightingale. quin. you can play no part but pyramus, for pyramus is a sweet fac'd man, a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day; a most lovely gentleman-like man: therefore you must needs play pyramus. bot. well, i will undertake it. what beard were i best to play it in? quin. why what you will. bot. i will discharge it in either your straw-colour'd beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your french-crown-colour'd beard, your perfect yellow. quin. some of your french-crowns have no hair at all, and then you will play bare-fac'd. but, masters here are your parts, and i am to intreat you, request you, and desire you to con them by to-morrow night; and meet me in the palace-wood, a mile without the town, by moonlight, there we will rehearse; for if we meet in the city, we shall be dog'd with company, and our devices known. in the mean time i will draw a bill of properties, such as our play wants. i pray you fail me not. bot. we will meet, and there we may rehearse more obscenely and courageously. take pains, be perfect, adieu. quin. at the duke's oak we meet. bot. but hold ye, hold ye, neighbours; are your voices in order, and your tunes ready? for if we miss our musical pitch, we shall be all 'sham'd and abandon'd. quin. ay, ay! nothing goes down so well as a little of your sol, fa, and long quaver; therefore let us be in our airs--and for better assurance i have got the pitch pipe. bot. stand round, stand round! we'll rehearse our eplog--clear up your pipes, and every man in his turn take up his stanza-verse--are you all ready? all. ay, ay!--sound the pitch-pipe, peter quince. [quince blows. bot. now make your reverency and begin. song--for epilogue; by quince, bottom, snug, flute, starveling, snout. quin. most noble duke, to us be kind; be you and all your courtiers blind, that you may not our errors find, but smile upon our sport. for we are simple actors all, some fat, some lean, some short, some tall; our pride is great, our merit small; will that, pray, do at court? ii. starv. o would the duke and dutchess smile, the court would do the same awhile, but call us after, low and vile, and that way make their sport: nay, would you still more pastime make, and at poor we your purses shake, whate'er you give, we'll gladly take, for that will do at court. bot. well said, my boys, my hearts! sing but like nightingales thus when you come to your misrepresentation, and we are made for ever, you rogues! so! steal a way now to your homes without inspection; meet me at the duke's oak--by moon light--mum's the word. all. mum! [exeunt all stealing out. scene, a wood. enter a fairy at one door, and puck, or robin-good-fellow, at another. puck. how now, spirit! whither wander you? st fai. over hill, over dale, through bush, through brier, over park, over pale, through flood, through fire, i do wander every where, swifter than the moon's sphere; and i serve the fairy queen, to dew her orbs upon the green: i must go seek some dew-drops here, and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. air. kingcup, daffodil and rose, shall the fairy wreath compose; beauty, sweetness, and delight, crown our revels of the night: lightly trip it o'er the green where the fairy ring is seen; so no step of earthly tread, shall of end our lady's head. virtue sometimes droops her wing, beauties bee, may lose her sting; fairy land can both combine, roses with the eglantine: lightly be your measures seen, deftly footed o'er the green; nor a spectre's baleful head peep at our nocturnal tread. farewel thou lob of spirits, i'll be gone; our queen and all her elves come here anon. puck. the king doth keep his revels here to-night, take heed the queen come not within his sight; for they do square, that all their elves for fear creep into acorn-cups, and hide them there. st fai. but why is oberon so fell and wrath? puck. because that she, as her attendant hath a lovely boy stol'n from an indian king; and she perforce with-holds the changling, tho' jealous oberon wou'd have the child knight of his train, to trace the forests wild. st fai. or i mistake your shape and making quite, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite call'd robin-good-fellow. puck. thou speak'st aright; i am that merry wand'rer of the night: i jest to oberon, and make him smile, oft lurk in gossip's bowl, and her beguile in very likeness of a roasted crab; and when she drinks, against her lips i bob, and on her wither'd dewlap pour the ale; the wisest aunt telling the saddest tale, sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me; then slip i from her bum, down topples she, and rails or cries, and falls into a cough, and then the whole choir hold their hips and loffe. air. st fai. yes, yes, i know you, you are he that frighten all the villagree; skim milk, and labour in the quern, and bootless make the huswife churn; or make the drink to bear no barm, laughing at their loss and harm, but call you robin, and sweet puck, you do their work, and bring good luck. yes, you are that unlucky sprite! like will-a-whisp, a wandring light, through ditch, thro' bog, who lead astray benighted swains, who lose their way; you pinch the slattern black and blue, you silver drop in huswife's shoe; for call you robin and sweet puck, you do their work, and bring good luck. puck. but make room, fairy, here comes oberon. st fai. and here my mistress: would that he were gone! enter oberon king of fairies at one door, with his train, and the queen at another with hers. ob. ill met by moon-light, proud titania! queen. what, jealous oberon? fairy, skip hence, i have forsworn his bed and company. ob. tarry, rash wanton! am not i thy lord? queen. then i must be thy lady: why art thou here? come from the farthest steep of india? but that, forsooth, the bouncing amazon, your buskin'd mistress, and your warrior love, to theseus must be wedded; and you come to give their bed joy and prosperity. ob. how canst thou thus, for shame, titania, glance at my credit with hippolita, knowing i know thy love to theseus? didst thou not lead him through the glimmering night from perigune, whom he ravished, and make him, with fair egle, break his faith with ariadne and antiopa? queen. these are the forgeries of jealousy: and never since that middle summer's spring met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead, to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, but with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport. the spring, the summer, the chiding autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries; and the amazed world by their increase now knows not which is which; and this same progeny of evil comes from our debate, from our dissention, we are their parents and original. ob. do you amend it then, it lies in you. why should titania cross her oberon? i do but beg a little changling boy to be my henchman. queen. set your heart at rest, the fairy-land buys not the child of me. his mother was a votress of my order, and in the spiced indian air by night full often she hath gossipt by my side; and sat with me on neptune's yellow sands. marking th' embarked traders of the flood, when we have laught to see the sails conceive, and grow big-bellied with the wanton wind; which she, with pretty and with swimming gait, would imitate, and sail upon the land, to fetch me trifles, and return again as from a voyage rich with merchandize; but she being mortal of that boy did die, and for her sake i do rear up her boy, and for her sake i will not part with him. ob. how long within this wood intend you stay? queen. perchance till after theseus' wedding-day. if you will patiently dance in our round, and see our moon-light revels, go with us; if not, shun me, and i will spare your haunts. ob. give me that boy, and i'll go with thee. queen. not for thy fairy kingdom. air. duet. queen. away, away, i will not stay, but fly from rage and thee. king. begone, begone, you'll feel anon what 'tis to injure me. queen. away, false man! do all you can, i scorn your jealous rage! king. we will not part; take you my heart! give me your favourite page. queen. i'll keep my page! king. and i my rage! nor shall you injure me. queen. away, away! i will not stay, but fly from rage and thee. both. away, away, &c. [exe. queen, &c. ob. well, go thy way; thou shalt not from this grove, till i torment thee for this injury-- my gentle puck, come hither: there is a flow'r, the herb i shew'd thee once, the juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, will make a man or woman madly doat upon the next live creature that it sees. fetch me that herb, and be thou here again ere the leviathan can swim a league. puck. i'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. [exit. ob. having once this juice, i'll watch titania when she is asleep, and drop the liquor of it in her eye; the next thing which she waking looks upon, (be it on bear, lion, wolf, bull, ape or monkey), she shall pursue it with the soul of love; and ere i take this charm off from her sight, (as i can take it with another herb), i'll make her render up her page to me. [exit. scene another part of the wood. enter queen of the fairies, and her train. queen. come, now a roundel, and a fairy song. air. d fai. come, follow, follow me, ye fairy elves that be; o'er tops of dewy grass, so nimbly do we pass, the young and tender stalk ne'er bends where we do walk. scene the wood. queen. now, for the third part of a minute hence, some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds, some war with rear-mice for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats: and some keep back the clamorous owl, that nightly hoots, and wonders, at our queint spirits. sing me now asleep, then to your offices, and let me rest. [goes to the bower and lies down. air. st. fai. you spotted snakes with double tongue, thorny hedge-hogs, be not seen, newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, come not near our fairy queen. philomel with melody, sing in your sweet lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: never harm, nor spell, nor charm, come our lovely lady nigh, so good night with lullaby. ii. weaving spiders come not here; hence, you long-leg'd spinners, hence: beetles black approach not near, worm nor snail do no offence. philomel with melody, &c. hence away! now all is well; one aloof stand centinel. [exeunt fairies. enter oberon and first fairy. [oberon squeeses the juice of the flower on the queen's eyes. ob. what thou seest when thou dost wake, do it for thy true love take; love and languish for his sake; be it ounce, or cat, or bear, pard, or boar with bristled hair, in thy eye what shall appear, when thou wak'st, it is thy dear; wake when some vile thing is near. [exit ob. air. st fai. such the force of magic pow'r, of the juice of this small flower, it shall jaundice so her sight, foul shall be fair, and black seem white; then shall dreams, and all their train, fill with fantasies her brain; then, no more her darling joy, she'll resign her changeling boy. [exeunt. end of the first act. act ii. scene continues. enter quince, snug, bottom, flute, snout and starveling. the queen of fairies lying asleep. bot. are we all met? quin. pat, pat! and here's a marvellous convenient place for our rehearsal. this green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn brake our tyring house, and we will do it in action, as we will do it before the duke. bot. peter quince. quin. what say'st thou, bully bottom? bot. there are things in this comedy of pyramus and thisby, that will never please. first, pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself, which the ladies cannot abide. how answer you that? snout. by'rlaken, a parlous fear! starv. i believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done. bot. not a whit; i have a device to make all well; write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords, and that pyramus is not kill'd indeed; and for more better assurance tell them, that i pyramus am not pyramus, but bottom the weaver: this will put them out of fear. quin. well, we will have such a prologue, and it shall be written in eight and six. bot. no, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight. snout. will not the ladies be afraid of the lion? starv. i fear it, i promise you. bot. masters, you ought to consider with yourselves; to bring in, heaven shield us! a lion among ladies, is a most dreadful thing; for there is not a more fearful wildfowl than your lion, living; and we ought to look to it. snout. therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion. bot. nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion's neck; and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect: ladies, or fair ladies, i would wish you, or i would request you, or i would intreat you, not to fear, not to tremble; my life for yours; if you think i come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life; no, i am no such thing; i am a man as other men are; and there indeed let him name his name, and tell them plainly, he is snug the joiner. quin. well, it shall be so; but there is two hard things, that is, to bring the moon-light into a chamber; for you know pyramus and thisby met by moon-light. snug. doth the moon shine that night we play our play? bot. a kalendar, a kalendar! look into the almanack; find out moon-shine, find out moon-shine. quin. yes, it doth shine that night. bot. why then may you leave a casement of the great chamber window, where we play, open, and the moon may shine in at the casement. quin. ay, or else one must come in with a bush of throns and a lanthern; and say he comes to disfigure or to present the person of moon-shine. then there is another thing; we must have a wall in the great chamber, for pyramus and thisby (says the story) did talk through the chink of a wall. snug. you can never bring in a wall. what say you, bottom? bot. some man or other must present wall; and let him have some plaster, or some loome, or some rough-cast, about him, to signify wall: or let him hold his fingers thus, and through the cranny shall pyramus and thisby whisper. quin. if that may be, then all is well. come, sit down every mother's son, and rehearse your parts. pyramus, you begin; and when you have spoken your speech, enter into that brake, and so every one according to his cue. enter puck. puck. what hempen homespuns have we swaggering here, so near the cradle of the fairy queen? what, a play tow'rd; i'll be an auditor; an actor too, perhaps, if i see cause. quin. speak, pyramus. thisby, stand forth. pyr. thisby, the flower of odious savours sweet. quin. odours, odours. pyr. odours savours sweet; so doth thy breath, my dearest thisby dear: but hark, a voice! stay thou but here a while, and by-and-by i will to thee appear, puck. a stranger pyramus than e'er play'd here! [aside. now for a storm to drive these patches hence. [he waves his wand.] thunder and lightning. quin. o monstrous! o strange! we are haunted: pray masters, fly masters, help! [exeunt clowns. puck. i'll follow you, i'll lead you about a round, thro' bog, thro' bush, thro' brake, thro' briar; sometimes a horse i'll be, sometimes a hound, a hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire, and neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn. [exit. enter bottom. bot. why do they let a little thunder frighten them away? but i will not stir from this place, do what they can: i will walk up and down here, and i will sing, that they shall hear i am not afraid. [sings. air. the ousel-cock, so black of hue, with orange-tawny bill, the throstle, with his note so true, the wren with little quill. queen. what angel wakes me from my flow'ry bed? bot. (sings.) the finch, the sparrow, and the lark, the plain-song cuckow grey, whose note full many a man doth mark, and dares not answer nay. queen. i pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again, mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note; so is mine eye enthralled to thy shape, on the first view to say, to swear, i love thee. bot. methinks, mistress, you should have little reason for that; and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days. the more the pity, that some honest neighbours will not make them friends. nay i can gleek upon occasion. queen. thou art as wise as thou art beautiful. bot. not so neither: but if i had wit enough to get out of this wood, i have enough to serve mine own turn. queen. out of this wood do not desire to go; thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no, i am a spirit of no common rate; the summer still doth tend upon my state, and i do love thee; therefore go with me, i'll give thee fairies to attend on thee; and they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, and sing, while thou on pressed flow'rs doth sleep; and i will purge thy mortal grossness so, that thou shalt like an airy spirit go. peaseblossom, cob, moth, mustardseed! enter peaseblossom, cobweb, moth, mustardseed, four fairies. pease. ready. cob. and i. moth. and i. must. and i. where shall we go? queen. be kind and courteous to this gentleman; hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes; feed him with apricots and dewberries; with purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; the honey-bags steal from the humble bees, and for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, and light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes, to have my love to-bed, and to arise: nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. pease. hail, mortal, hail! cob. hail! moth. hail! queen. come, wait upon him, lead him to my bow'r. the moon, methinks, looks with a watry eye, and when she weeps, weep ev'ry little flower, lamenting some enforced chastity. tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently. [exeunt. scene another part of the wood. enter oberon. ob. i wonder if titania be awak'd: then what it was that next came in her eye, which she must doat on in extremity? enter puck. here comes my messenger! how now, mad sprite! what night-rule now about this haunted grove? puck. my mistress with a mortal is in love. ob. this falls out well and fortunate in truth; now to my queen, and beg her indian youth: and then i will her charmed eye release from mortals view, and all things shall be peace. away, away, make no delay, we may effect this business yet ere day. [exit puck. air. up and down, up and down, we will trip it up and down. we will go through field and town, we will trip it up and down. [exit oberon. scene the wood and bower. enter queen of fairies, bottom; fairies attending and the king behind them. queen. come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed. say wilt thou hear some music sweet dove. bot. i have a reasonable good ear in music. duet. by st and d fairy. welcome, welcome to this place, favorite of the fairy queen; zephyrs, play around his face, wash, ye dews, his graceful mien. pluck the wings from butterflies, to fan the moon-beams from his eyes; round him in eternal spring grashoppers and crickets sing. by the spangled starlight sheen, nature's joy he walks the green; sweet voice, fine shape, and graceful mien, speak him thine, o fairy queen! queen. or say, sweet love, what thou desir'st to eat. i have a ventrous fairy that shall seek the squirrels hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. bot. i pray you, let none of your people stir me; i have an exposition of sleep come upon me. queen. sleep thou, and i will wind thee in my arms; fairies begone, and be always away. so doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle gently entwist. o how i love thee! how i doat on thee! [they sleep. enter puck, at one door, oberon and st fairy at another. ob. welcome, good robin! see'st thou this sweet sight? her dotage now i do begin to pity: for meeting her of late behind the wood, i then did ask of her her changeling child, which strait she gave me; wherefore i'll undo this hateful imperfection of her eyes: [he strokes her eyes with the flower. now, fairy, sing the charm. air. st fai. flower, of this purple dye, hit with cupid's archery, sink in apple of her eye! when her lord she doth espy, let him shine as gloriously as the phoebus of the sky. when thou wak'st, if he be by, beg of him for remedy. [exit fairy. now, my titania, wake you, my sweet queen. queen. my oberon! what visions have i seen! methought i was enamour'd of a mortal. ob. there lies your love. queen. how came these things to pass? o how mine eyes do loath this visage now! ob. silence awhile. robin, remove the man, and you mean while, titania, music call, and strike more dead than common deep his senses. queen. musick, ho, musick! such as charmeth sleep. air. d fai. orpheus, with his lute, made trees, and the mountain tops that freeze, bow themselves when he did sing, to his musick, plants and flowers ever spring, as sun and showers there had made a lasting spring. [during this song the body is removed. ob. come, my queen, take hand with me, now thou and i are new in amity. air. d fai. sigh no more, lady, sigh no more be not inconstant ever, one foot on sea, and one on shore, you can be happy never. [lark sings. puck. fairy king, attend and mark, i do hear the morning lark. ob. then, my queen, in silence sad, trip we after the night's shade, we the globe can compass soon, swifter than the wand'ring moon. queen. come, my lord, and in our flight, tell me, how it came this night, that i sleeping here was found, with yon mortal on the ground. a dance of fairies. finis. proofreading team. the athenian society aristophanes the eleven comedies now for the first time literally and completely translated from the greek tongue into english with translator's foreword an introduction to each comedy and elucidatory notes the second of two volumes * * * * * contents of the second volume the wasps introduction text and notes the birds introduction text and notes the frogs introduction text and notes the thesmophoriazusae introduction text and notes the ecclesiazusae introduction text and notes plutus introduction text and notes index the wasps introduction "this comedy, which was produced by its author the year after the performance of 'the clouds,' may be taken as in some sort a companion picture to that piece. here the satire is directed against the passion of the athenians for the excitement of the law-courts, as in the former its object was the new philosophy. and as the younger generation--the modern school of thought--were there the subjects of the caricature, so here the older citizens, who took their seats in court as jurymen day by day, to the neglect of their private affairs and the encouragement of a litigious disposition, appear in their turn in the mirror which the satirist holds up." there are only two characters of any importance to the action--philocleon ('friend of cleon') and his son bdelycleon ('enemy of cleon'). the plot is soon told. philocleon is a bigoted devotee of the malady of litigiousness so typical of his countrymen and an enthusiastic attendant at the courts in his capacity of 'dicast' or juryman. bdelycleon endeavours to persuade his father by every means in his power to change this unsatisfactory manner of life for something nobler and more profitable; but all in vain. as a last resource he keeps his father a prisoner indoors, so that he cannot attend the tribunals. the old man tries to escape, and these attempts are conceived in the wildest vein of extravaganza. he endeavours to get out by the chimney, pretending he is "only the smoke"; and all hands rush to clap a cover on the chimney-top, and a big stone on that. he slips through a hole in the tiles, and sits on the roof, pretending to be "only a sparrow"; and they have to set a net to catch him. then the chorus of wasps, representing philocleon''s fellow 'dicasts,' appear on the scene to rescue him. a battle royale takes place on the stage; the wasps, with their formidable stings, trying to storm the house, while the son and his retainers defend their position with desperate courage. finally the assailants are repulsed, and father and son agree upon a compromise. bdelycleon promises, on condition that his father gives up attending the public trails, to set up a mock tribunal for him in his own house. presently the theft of a sicilian cheese by the house-dog labes gives the old fellow an opportunity of exercising his judicial functions. labes is duly arraigned and witnesses examines. but alas! philocleon inadvertently casts his vote for the defendant's _acquittal_, the first time in his life "such a thing has ever occurred," and the old man nearly dies of vexation. at this point follows the 'parabasis,' or author's personal address to the audience, after which the concluding portion of the play has little connection with the main theme. this is a fault, according to modern ideas, common to many of these comedies, but it is especially marked in this particular instance. the final part might almost be a separate play, under the title perhaps of 'the dicast turned gentleman,' and relates various ridiculous mistakes and laughable blunders committed by philocleon, who, having given up his attendance on the law-courts, has set up for playing a part in polite society. the drama, as was very often the case, takes its title from the chorus--a band of old men dressed up as wasps, who acrimonious, stinging, exasperated temper is meant to typify the character fostered among athenian citizens by excessive addiction to forensic business. racine, in the only comedy he attempted, 'les plaideurs,' borrows the incident of the mock trial of the house-dog, amplifying and adding further diverting features. perhaps 'the wasps' is the least amusing of all our author's pieces which have come down to us--at any rate to a modern reader. the theme of its satire, the litigious spirit of the athenians, is after all purely local and temporary, while the fun often strikes us as thin and forced. schlegel writes in his 'dramatic literature': "the subject is too limited, the folly it ridicules appears a disease of too singular a description, without a sufficient universality of application, and the action is too much drawn out." * * * * * the wasps dramatis personae philocleon, a dicast. bdelycleon, his son. sosias, house-servant of philocleon. xanthias, house-servant of philocleon. boys. a dog. a baker's wife. accuser. chorus of elders, costumed as wasps. scene: philocleon's house at athens. * * * * * the wasps sosias. why, xanthias! what are you doing, wretched man? xanthias. i am teaching myself how to rest; i have been awake and on watch the whole night. sosias. so you want to earn trouble for your ribs,[ ] eh? don't you know what sort of an animal we are guarding here? xanthias. aye indeed! but i want to put my cares to sleep for a while. sosias. beware what you do. i too feel soft sleep spreading over my eyes. resist it, for you must be as mad as a corybant if you fall asleep.[ ] xanthias. no! 'tis bacchus who lulls me off. sosias. then you serve the same god as myself. just now a heavy slumber settled on my eyelids like a hostile mede; a nodded and, faith! i had a wondrous dream. xanthias. indeed! and so had i. a dream such as i never had before. but first tell me yours. sosias. methinks i saw an eagle, a gigantic bird, descend upon the market-place; it seized a brazen buckler with its talons and bore it away into the highest heavens; then i saw 'twas cleonymus had thrown it away. xanthias. this cleonymus is a riddle worth propounding among guests. how can one and the same animal have cast away his buckler both on land, in the sky and at sea?[ ] sosias. alas! what ill does such a dream portend for me? xanthias. rest undisturbed! an it please the gods, no evil will befall you. sosias. nevertheless, 'tis a fatal omen when a man throws away his weapons. but what was your dream? let me hear. xanthias. oh! it is a dream of high import. it has reference to the hull of the state; to nothing less. sosias. tell it me quickly; show me its very keel. xanthias. in my first slumber i thought i saw sheep, wearing cloaks and carrying staves,[ ] met in assembly on the pnyx; a rapacious whale was haranguing them and screaming like a pig that is being grilled. sosias. faugh! faugh! xanthias. what's the matter? sosias. enough, enough, spare me. your dream stinks vilely of old leather.[ ] xanthias. then this scoundrelly whale seized a balance and set to weighing ox-fat.[ ] sosias. alas! 'tis our poor athenian people, whom this accursed beast wished to cut up and despoil of their fat. xanthias. seated on the ground close to it, i saw theorus,[ ] who had the head of a crow. the alcibiades said to me in his lisping way, "do you thee? theoruth hath a crow'th head."[ ] sosias. ah! 'twas very well lisped indeed! xanthias. this is might strange; theorus turning into a crow! sosias. no, it is glorious. xanthias. why? sosias. why? he was a man and now he has suddenly become a crow; does it not foretoken that he will take his flight from here and go to the crows?[ ] xanthias. interpreting dreams so aptly certainly deserves two obols.[ ] sosias. come, i must explain the matter to the spectators. but first a few words of preamble: expect nothing very high-flown from us, nor any jests stolen from megara;[ ] we have no slaves, who throw baskets of nuts[ ] to the spectators, nor any heracles to be robbed of his dinner,[ ] nor is euripides loaded with contumely; and despite the happy chance that gave cleon his fame[ ] we shall not go out of our way to belabour him again. our little subject is not wanting in sense; it is well within your capacity and at the same time cleverer than many vulgar comedies.--we have a master of great renown, who is now sleeping up there on the other story. he has bidden us keep guard over his father, whom he has locked in, so that he may not go out. this father has a curious complaint; not one of you could hit upon or guess it, if i did not tell you.--well then, try! i hear amynias, the son of pronapus, over there, saying, "he is addicted to gambling." xanthias. he's wrong! he is imputing his own malady to others. sosias. no, yet love is indeed the principal part of his disease. ah! here is sosias telling dercylus, "he loves drinking." xanthias. not at all! the love of wine is the complaint of good men. sosias. "well then," says nicostratus of the scambonian deme, "he either loves sacrifices or else strangers." xanthias. ah! great gods! no, he is not fond of strangers, nicostratus, for he who says "philoxenus" means a dirty fellow.[ ] sosias. 'tis mere waste of time, you will not find it out. if you want to know it, keep silence! i will tell you our master's complaint: of all men, it is he who is fondest of the heliaea.[ ] thus, to be judging is his hobby, and he groans if he is not sitting on the first seat. he does not close an eye at night, and if he dozes off for an instant his mind flies instantly to the clepsydra.[ ] he is so accustomed to hold the balloting pebble, that he awakes with his three fingers pinched together[ ] as if he were offering incense to the new moon. if he sees scribbled on some doorway, "how charming is demos,[ ] the son of pyrilampes!" he will write beneath it, "how charming is cemos!"[ ] his cock crowed one evening; said he, "he has had money from the accused to awaken me too late."[ ] as soon as he rises from supper he bawls for his shoes and away he rushes down there before dawn to sleep beforehand, glued fast to the column like an oyster.[ ] he is a merciless judge, never failing to draw the convicting line[ ] and return home with his nails full of wax like a bumble-bee. fearing he might run short of pebbles[ ] he keeps enough at home to cover a sea-beach, so that he may have the means of recording his sentence. such is his madness, and all advice is useless; he only judges the more each day. so we keep him under lock and key, to prevent his going out; for his son is broken-hearted over this mania. at first he tried him with gentleness, wanted to persuade him to wear the cloak no longer,[ ] to go out no more; unable to convince him, he had him bathed and purified according to the ritual[ ] without any greater success, and then handed him over the the corybantes;[ ] but the old man escaped them, and carrying off the kettle-drum,[ ] rushed right into the midst of the heliasts. as cybelé could do nothing with her rites, his son took him again to aegina and forcibly made him lie one night in the temple of asclepius, the god of healing, but before daylight there he was to be seen at the gate of the tribunal. since then we let him go out no more, but he escaped us by the drains or by the skylights, so we stuffed up every opening with old rags and made all secure; then he drove short sticks into the wall and sprang from rung to rung like a magpie. now we have stretched nets all round the court and we keep watch and ward. the old man's name is philocleon,[ ] 'tis the best name he could have, and the son is called bdelycleon,[ ] for he is a man very fit to cure an insolent fellow of his boasting. bdelycleon. xanthias! sosias! are you asleep? xanthias. oh! oh! sosias. what is the matter? xanthias. why, bdelycleon is rising. bdelycleon. will neither of you come here? my father has got into the stove-chamber and is ferreting about like a rat in his hole. take care he does not escape through the bath drain. you there, put all your weight against the door. sosias. aye, aye, master. bdelycleon. by zeus! what is that noise in the chimney? hullo! who are you? philocleon. i am the smoke going up. bdelycleon. smoke? smoke of what wood? philocleon. of fig-wood.[ ] bdelycleon. ah! 'this the most acrid of all. but you shall not get out. where is the chimney cover?[ ] come down again. now, up with another cross-bar. now look out some fresh dodge. but am i not the most unfortunate of men? henceforward, i shall only be called the son of the smoky old man. slave, hold the door stoutly, throw your weight upon it, come, put heart into the work. i will come and help you. watch both lock and bolt. take care he does not gnaw through the peg. philocleon. what are you dong, you wretches? let me go out; it is imperative that i go and judge, or dracontides will be acquitted. bdelycleon. what a dreadful calamity for you! philocleon. once at delphi, the god, whom i was consulting, foretold, that if an accused man escaped me, i should die of consumption. bdelycleon. apollo, the saviour, what a prophecy! philocleon. ah! i beseech you, if you do not want my death, let me go. bdelycleon. no, philocleon, no never, by posidon! philocleon. well then, i shall gnaw through the net[ ] with my teeth. bdelycleon. but you have no teeth. philocleon. oh! you rascal, how can i kill you? how? give me a sword, quick, or a conviction tablet. bdelycleon. our friend is planning some great crime. philocleon. no, by zeus! but i want to go and sell my ass and its panniers, for 'this the first of the month.[ ] bdelycleon. could i not sell it just as well? philocleon. not as well as i could. bdelycleon. no, but better. come, bring it here, bring it here by all means--if you can. xanthias. what a clever excuse he has found now! what cunning to get you to let him go out! bdelycleon. yes, but i have not swallowed the hook; i scented the trick. i will go in and fetch the ass, so that the old man may not point his weapons that way again....[ ] stupid old ass, are you weeping because you are going to be sold? come, go a bit quicker. why, what are you moaning and groaning for? you might be carrying another odysseus.[ ] xanthias. why, certainly, so he is! someone has crept beneath his belly. bdelycleon. who, who? let us see. xanthias. 'tis he. bdelycleon. what does this mean? who are you? come, speak! philocleon. i am nobody. bdelycleon. nobody? of what country? philocleon. of ithaca, son of apodrasippides.[ ] bdelycleon. ha! mister nobody, you will not laugh presently. pull him out quick! ah! the wretch, where has be crept to? does he not resemble a she-ass to the life? philocleon. if you do not leave me in peace, i shall commence proceedings. bdelycleon. and what will the suit be about? philocleon. the shade of an ass.[ ] bdelycleon. you are a poor man of very little wit, but thoroughly brazen. philocleon. a poor man! ah! by zeus! you know not now what i am worth; but you will know when you disembowel the old heliast's money bag.[ ] bdelycleon. come, get back indoors, both you and your ass. philocleon. oh! my brethren of the tribunal! oh! cleon! to the rescue! bdelycleon. go and bawl in there under lock and key. and you there, pile plenty of stones against the door, thrust the bolt home into the staple, and to keep this beam in its place roll that great mortar against it. quick's the word. sosias. oh! my god! whence did this brick fall on me? xanthias. perhaps a rat loosened it. sosias. a rat? 'tis surely our gutter-judge,[ ] who has crept beneath the tiles of the roof. xanthias. ah! woe to us! there he is, he has turned into a sparrow; he will be flying off. where is the net? where? pschit! pschit! get back! bdelycleon. ah! by zeus! i would rather have to guard scioné[ ] than such a father. sosias. and how that we have driven him in thoroughly and he can no longer escape without our knowledge, can we not have a few winks of sleep, no matter how few? bdelycleon. why, wretch! the other jurymen will be here almost directly to summon my father! sosias. why, 'tis scarcely dawn yet! bdelycleon. ah, they must have risen late to-day. generally it is the middle of the night when they come to fetch him. they arrive here, carrying lanterns in their hands and singing the charming old verses of phrynichus' "sidonian women";[ ] 'tis their way of calling him. sosias. well, if need be, we will chase them off with stones. bdelycleon. what! you dare to speak so? why, this class of old men, if irritated, becomes as terrible as a swarm of wasps. they carry below their loins the sharpest of stings, with which to sting their foe; they shout and leap and their stings burn like so many sparks. sosias. have no fear! if i can find stones to throw into this nest of jurymen-wasps, i shall soon have them cleared off. chorus. march on, advance boldly and bravely! comias, your feet are dragging; once you were as tough as a dog-skin strap and now even charinades walks better than you. ha! strymodorus of conthylé, you best of mates, where is euergides and where is chales of phyla? ha, ha, bravo! there you are, the last of the lads with whom we mounted guard together at byzantium.[ ] do you remember how, one night, prowling round, we noiselessly stole the kneading-trough of a baker's-wife; we split it in two and cooked our green-stuff with it.--but let us hasten, for the case of the laches[ ] comes on to-day, and they all say he has embezzled a pot of money. hence cleon, our protector, advised us yesterday to come early and with a three days' stock of fiery rage so as to chastise him for his crimes. let us hurry, comrades, before it is light; come, let us search every nook with our lanterns to see whether those who wish us ill have not set us some trap. boy. ah! here is mud! father, take care! chorus. pick up a blade of straw and trim the lamp of your lantern. boy. no, i can trim it quite well with my finger. chorus. why do you pull out the wick, you little dolt? oil is scarce, and 'tis not you who suffer when it has to be paid for. (_strikes him._) boy. if you teach us again with your fists, we shall put out the lamps and go home; then you will have no light and will squatter about in the mud like ducks in the dark. chorus. i know how to punish other offenders bigger than you. but i think i am treading in some mud. oh! 'tis certain it will rain in torrents for four days at least; look, what thieves are in our lamps; that is always a sign of heavy rain; but the rain and the north wind will be good for the crops that are still standing.... why, what can have happened to our mate, who lives here? why does he not come to join our party? there used to be no need to haul him in our wake, for he would march at our head singing the verses of phrynichus; he was a lover of singing. should we not, friends, make a halt here and sign to call him out? the charm of my voice will fetch him out, if he hears it. why does the old man not show himself before the door? why does he not answer? has he lost his shoes? has he stubbed his toe in the dark and thus got a swollen ankle? perhaps he has a tumour in his groin. he was the hardest of us all; he alone _never_ allowed himself to be moved. if anyone tried to move him, he would lower his head, saying, "you might just as well try to boil a stone." but i bethink me, an accused ma escaped us yesterday through his false pretence that he loved athens and had been the first to unfold the samian plot.[ ] perhaps his acquittal has so distressed philocleon that he is abed with fever--he is quite capable of such a thing.--friend, arise, do not thus vex your heart, but forget your wrath. today we have to judge a man made wealthy by treason, one of those who set thrace free;[ ] we have to prepare him a funeral urn ... so march on, my boy, get a-going. boy. father, would you give me something if i asked for it? chorus. assuredly, my child, but tell me what nice thing do you want me to buy you? a set of knuckle-bones, i suppose. boy. no, dad, i prefer figs; they are better. chorus. no, by zeus! even if you were to hang yourself with vexation. boy. well then, i will lead you no father. chorus. with my small pay, i am obliged to buy bread, wood, stew; and now you ask me for figs! boy. but, father, if the archon[ ] should not form a court to-day, how are we to buy our dinner? have you some good hope to offer us or merely "hellé's sacred waves"?[ ] chorus. alas! alas! i have not a notion how we shall dine. boy. oh! my poor mother! why did you let me see this day? chorus. oh! my little wallet! you seem like to be a mere useless ornament! boy. 'tis our destiny to groan. philocleon.[ ] my friends, i have long been pining away while listening to you from my window, but i absolutely know not what do do. i am detained here, because i have long wanted to go with you to the law court and do all the harm i can. oh! zeus! cause the peals of they thunder to roll, change me quickly into smoke or make me into a proxenides, a perfect braggart, like the son of sellus. oh, king of heaven! hesitate not to grant me this favour, pity my misfortune or else may thy dazzling lightning instantly reduce me to ashes; then carry me hence, and may thy breath hurl me into some burning pickle[ ] or turn me into one of the stones on which the votes are counted. chorus. who is it detains you and shuts you in? speak, for you are talking to friends. philocleon. 'tis my son. but no bawling, he is there in front asleep; lower your voice. chorus. but, poor fellow, what is his aim? what is his object? philocleon. my friends, he will not have me judge nor do anyone any ill, but he wants me to stay at home and enjoy myself, and i will not. chorus. this wretch, this demolochocleon[ ] dares to say such odious things, just because you tell the truth about our navy! philocleon. he would not have dared, had he not been a conspirator. chorus. meanwhile, you must devise some new dodge, so that you can come down here without his knowledge. philocleon. but what? try to find some way. for myself, i am ready for anything, so much do i burn to run along the tiers of the tribunal with my voting-pebble in my hand. chorus. there is surely some hole through which you could manage to squeeze from within, and escape dressed in rags, like the crafty odysseus.[ ] philocleon. everything is sealed fast; not so much as a gnat could get through. think of some other plan; there is no possible hold of escape. chorus. do you recall how, when you were with the army at the taking of naxos,[ ] you descended so readily from the top of the wall by means of the spits you have stolen? philocleon. i remember that well enough, but what connection is there with present circumstances? i was young, clever at thieving, i had all my strength, none watched over me, and i could run off without fear. but to-day men-at-arms are placed at every outlet to watch me, and two of them are lying in wait for me at this very door armed with spits, just as folk lie in wait for a cat that has stolen a piece of meat. chorus. come, discover some way as quick as possible. here is the dawn come, my dear little friend. philocleon. the best way is to gnaw through the net. oh! goddess, who watches over the nets,[ ] forgive me for making a hole in this one. chorus. 'tis acting like a man eager for his safety. get your jaws to work! philocleon. there! 'tis gnawed through! but no shouting! let bdelycleon notice nothing! chorus. have no fear, have no fear! if he breathes a syllable, 'twill be to bruise his own knuckles; he will have to fight to defend his own head. we shall teach him not to insult the mysteries of the goddesses.[ ] but fasten a rope to the window, tie it around your body and let yourself down to the ground, with your heart bursting with the fury of diopithes.[ ] philocleon. but if these notice it and want to fish me up and drag me back into the house, what will you do? tell me that. chorus. we shall call up the full strength of out courage to your aid. that is what we will do. philocleon. i trust myself to you and risk the danger. if misfortune overtakes me, take away my body, bathe it with your tears and bury it beneath the bar of the tribunal. chorus. nothing will happen to you, rest assured. come friend, have courage and let yourself slide down while you invoke your country's gods. philocleon. oh! mighty lycus![ ] noble hero and my neighbour, thou, like myself, takest pleasure in the tears and the groans of the accused. if thou art come to live near the tribunal, 'tis with the express design of hearing them incessantly; thou alone of all the heroes hast wished to remain among those who weep. have pity on me and save him, who lives close to thee; i swear i will never make water, never, nor relieve my belly with a fart against the railing of thy statue. bdelycleon. ho there! ho! get up! sosias. what's the matter? bdelycleon. methought i heard talking close to me. sosias. is the old man at it again, escaping through some loophole? bdelycleon. no, by zeus! no, but he is letting himself down by a rope. sosias. ha, rascal! what are you doing there? you shall not descend. bdelycleon. mount quick to the other window, strike him with the boughs that hang over the entrance; perchance he will turn back when he feels himself being thrashed. philocleon. to the rescue! all you, who are going to have lawsuits this year--smicythion, tisiades, chremon and pheredipnus. 'tis now or never, before they force me to return, that you must help. chorus. why do we delay to let loose that fury, that is so terrible, when our nests are attacked? i feel my angry sting is stiffening, that sharp sting, with which we punish our enemies. come, children, cast your cloaks to the winds, run, shout, tell cleon what is happening, that he may march against this foe to our city, who deserves death, since he proposes to prevent the trial of lawsuits. bdelycleon. friends, listen to the truth, instead of bawling. chorus. by zeus! we will shout to heaven and never forsake our friend. why, this is intolerable, 'tis manifest tyranny. oh! citizens, oh! theorus,[ ] the enemy of the gods! and all you flatterers, who rule us! come to our aid. xanthias. by heracles! they have stings. do you see them, master? bdelycleon. 'twas with these weapons that they killed philippus the son of gorgias[ ] when he was put on trial. chorus. and you too shall die. turn yourselves this way, all, with your stings out for attack and throw yourselves upon him in good and serried order, and swelled up with wrath and rage. let him learn to know the sort of foes he has dared to irritate. xanthias. the fight will be fast and furious, by great zeus! i tremble at the sight of their stings. chorus. let this man go, unless you want to envy the tortoise his hard shell. philocleon. come, my dear companions, wasps with relentless hearts, fly against him, animated with your fury. sting him in the back, in his eyes and on his fingers. bdelycleon. midas, phryx, masyntias, here! come and help. seize this man and hand him over to no one, otherwise you shall starve to death in chains. fear nothing, i have often heard the crackling of fig-leaves in the fire.[ ] chorus. if you won't let him go, i shall bury this sting in your body. philocleon. oh, cecrops, mighty hero with the tail of a dragon! seest thou how these barbarians ill-use me--me, who have many a time made them weep a full bushel of tears? chorus. is not old age filled with cruel ills? what violence these two slaves offer to their old master! they have forgotten all bygones, the fur-coats and the jackets and the caps he bought for them; in winter he watched that their feet should not get frozen. and only see them now; there is no gentleness in their look nor any recollection of the slippers of other days. philocleon. will you let me go, you accursed animal? don't you remember the day when i surprised you stealing the grapes; i tied you to an olive-tree and i cut open your bottom with such vigorous lashes that folks thought you had been pedicated. get away, you are ungrateful. but let go of me, and you too, before my son comes up. chorus. you shall repay us for all this and 'twill not be long first. tremble at our ferocious glance; you shall taste our just anger. bdelycleon. strike! strike, xanthias! drive these wasps away from the house. xanthias. that's just what i am doing; but do you smoke them out thoroughly too. sosias. you will not go? the plague seize you! will you not clear off? xanthias, strike them with your stick! xanthias. and you, to smoke them out better, throw aeschinus, the son of selartius, on the fire. ah! we were bound to drive you off in the end. bdelycleon. eh! by zeus! you would not have put them to flight so easily if they had fed on the verses of philocles. chorus. it is clear to all the poor that tyranny has attacked us sorely. proud emulator of amynias, you, who only take pleasure in doing ill, see how you are preventing us from obeying the laws of the city; you do not even seek a pretext or any plausible excuse, but claim to rule alone. bdelycleon. hold! a truce to all blows and brawling! had we not better confer together and come to some understanding? chorus. confer with you, the people's foe! with you, a royalist, the accomplice of brasidas![ ] with you, who wear woollen fringes on your cloak and let your beard grow! bdelycleon. ah! it were better to separate altogether from my father than to steer my boat daily through such stormy seas! chorus. oh! you have but reached the parsley and the rue, to use the common saying.[ ] what you are suffering is nothing! but welcome the hour when the advocate shall adduce all these same arguments against you and shall summon your accomplices to give witness. bdelycleon. in the name of the gods! withdraw or we shall fight you the whole day long. chorus. no, not as long as i retain an atom of breath. ha! your desire is to tyrannize over us! bdelycleon. everything is now tyranny with us, no matter what is concerned, whether it be large or small. tyranny! i have not heard the word mentioned once in fifty years, and now it is more common than salt-fish, the word is even current on the market. if you are buying gurnards and don't want anchovies, the huckster next door, who is selling the latter, at once exclaims, "that is a man, whose kitchen savours of tyranny!" if you ask for onions to season your fish, the green-stuff woman winks one eye and asks, "ha! you ask for onions! are you seeking to tyrannize, or do you think that athens must pay you your seasonings as a tribute?" xanthias. yesterday i went to see a gay girl about noon and suggested she should mount and ride me; she flew into a rage, pretending i wanted to restore the tyranny of hippias.[ ] bdelycleon. that's the talk that pleases the people! as for myself, i want my father to lead a joyous life like morychus[ ] instead of going away before dawn to basely calumniate and condemn; and for this i am accused of conspiracy and tyrannical practice! philocleon. and quite right too, by zeus! the most exquisite dishes do not make up to me for the life of which you deprive me. i scorn your red mullet and your eels, and would far rather eat a nice little law suitlet cooked in the pot. bdelycleon. 'tis because you have got used to seeking your pleasure in it; but if you will agree to keep silence and hear me, i think i could persuade you that you deceive yourself altogether. philocleon. _i_ deceive myself, when i am judging? bdelycleon. you do not see that you are the laughing-stock of these men, whom you are ready to worship. you are their slave and do not know it. philocleon. _i_ a slave, i, who lord it over all! bdelycleon. not at all, you think you are ruling when you are only obeying. tell me, father, what do you get out of the tribute paid by so many greek towns? philocleon. much, and i appoint my colleagues jurymen. bdelycleon. and i also. release him, all of you, and bring me a sword. if my arguments do not prevail i will fall upon this blade. as for you, tell me whether you accept the verdict of the court. philocleon. may i never drink my heliast's pay in honour of the good genius, if i do not. chorus. tis now we have to draw upon our arsenal for some fresh weapon; above all do not side with this youth in his opinions. you see how serious the question has become; 'twill be all over with us, which the gods forfend, if he should prevail. bdelycleon. let someone bring me my tablets with all speed! chorus. your tablets? ha, ha! what an importance you would fain assume! bdelycleon. i merely wish to note down my father's points. philocleon. but what will you say of it, if he should triumph in the debate? chorus. that old men are no longer good for anything; we shall be perpetually laughed at in the streets, shall be called thallophores,[ ] mere brief-bags. you are to be the champion of all our rights and sovereignty. come, take courage! bring into action all the resources of your wit. philocleon. at the outset i will prove to you that there exists no king whose might is greater than ours. is there a pleasure, a blessing comparable with that of a juryman? is there a being who lives more in the midst of delights, who is more feared, aged though he be? from the moment i leave my bed, men of power, the most illustrious in the city, await me at the bar of the tribunal; the moment i am seen from the greatest distance, they come forward to offer me a gentle hand,--that has pilfered the public funds; they entreat me, bowing right low and with a piteous voice, "oh! father," they say, "pity me, i adjure you by the profit _you_ were able to make in the public service or in the army, when dealing with the victuals." why, the man who thus speaks would not know of my existence, had i not let him off on some former occasion. bdelycleon. let us note this first point, the supplicants. philocleon. these entreaties have appeased my wrath, and i enter--firmly resolved to do nothing that i have promised. nevertheless i listen to the accused. oh! what tricks to secure acquittal! ah! there is no form of flattery that is not addressed to the heliast! some groan over their poverty and they exaggerate the truth in order to make their troubles equal to my own. others tell us anecdotes or some comic story from aesop. others, again, cut jokes; they fancy i shall be appeased if i laugh. if we are not even then won over, why, then they drag forward their young children by the hand, both boys and girls, who prostrate themselves and whine with one accord, and then the father, trembling as if before a god, beseeches me not to condemn him out of pity for them, "if you love the voice of the lamb, have pity on my son's"; and because i am fond of little sows,[ ] i must yield to his daughter's prayers. then we relax the heat of our wrath a little for him. is not this great power indeed, which allows even wealth to be disdained? bdelycleon. a second point to note, the disdain of wealth. and now recall to me what are the advantages you enjoy, you, who pretend to rule over greece? philocleon. being entrusted with the inspection of the young men, we have a right to examine their organs. is aeagrus[ ] accused, he is not acquitted before he has recited a passage from 'niobe'[ ] and he chooses the finest. if a flute-player gains his case, he adjusts his mouth-strap[ ] in return and plays us the final air while we are leaving. a father on his death-bed names some husband for his daughter, who is his sole heir; but we care little for his will or for the shell so solemnly placed over the seal;[ ] we give the young maiden to him who has best known how to secure our favour. name me another duty that is so important and so irresponsible. bdelycleon. aye, 'tis a fine privilege, and the only one on which i can congratulate you; but surely to violate the will is to act badly towards the heiress. philocleon. and if the senate and the people have trouble in deciding some important case, it is decreed to send the culprits before the heliasts; then euathlus[ ] and the illustrious colaconymus,[ ] who cast away his shield, swear not to betray us and to fight for the people. did ever an orator carry the day with his opinion if he had not first declared that the jury should be dismissed for the day as soon as they had given their first verdict? we are the only ones whom cleon, the great bawler, does not badger. on the contrary, he protects and caresses us; he keeps off the flies, which is what you have never done for your father. theorus, who is a man not less illustrious than euphemius,[ ] takes the sponge out of the pot and blacks our shoes. see then what good things you deprive and despoil me of. pray, is this obeying or being a slave, as you pretended to be able to prove? bdelycleon. talk away to your heart's content; you must come to a stop at last and then you shall see that this grand power only resembles one of those things that, wash 'em as you will, remain as foul as ever. philocleon. but i am forgetting the most pleasing thing of all. when i return home with my pay, everyone runs to greet me because of my money. first my daughter bathes me, anoints my feet, stoops to kiss me and, while she is calling me "her dearest father," fishes out my triobolus with her tongue;[ ] then my little wife comes to wheedle me and brings a nice light cake; she sits beside me and entreats me in a thousand ways, "do take this now; do have some more." all this delights me hugely, and i have no need to turn towards you or the steward to know when it shall please him to serve my dinner, all the while cursing and grumbling. but if he does not quickly knead my cake, i have this,[ ] which is my defence, my shield against all ills. if you do not pour me out drink, i have brought this long-eared jar[ ] full of wine. how it brays, when i bend back and bury its neck in my mouth! what terrible and noisy gurglings, and how i laugh at your wine-skins. as to power, am i not equal to the king of the gods? if our assembly is noisy, all say as they pass, "great gods! the tribunal is rolling out its thunder!" if i let loose the lightning, the richest, aye, the noblest are half dead with fright and shit themselves with terror. you yourself are afraid of me, yea, by demeter! you are afraid. bdelycleon. may i die if you frighten me. chorus. never have i heard speech so elegant or so sensible. philocleon. ah! he thought he had only to turn me round his finger; he should, however, have known the vigour of my eloquence. chorus. he has said everything without omission. i felt myself grow taller while i listened to him. methought myself meting out justice in the islands of the blest, so much was i taken with the charm of his words. bdelycleon. how overjoyed they are! what extravagant delight! ah! ah! you are going to get a thrashing to-day. chorus. come, plot everything you can to beat him; 'tis not easy to soften me if you do not talk on my side, and if you have nothing but nonsense to spout, 'tis time to buy a good millstone, freshly cut withal, to crush my anger. bdelycleon. the cure of a disease, so inveterate and so widespread in athens, is a difficult task and of too great importance for the scope of comedy. nevertheless, my old father.... philocleon. cease to call me by that name, for, if you do not prove me a slave and that quickly too, you must die by my hand, even if i must be deprived of my share in the sacred feasts. bdelycleon. listen to me, dear little father, unruffle that frowning brow and reckon, you can do so without trouble, not with pebbles, but on your fingers, what is the sum-total of the tribute paid by the allied towns; besides this we have the direct imposts, a mass of percentage dues, the fees of the courts of justice, the produce from the mines, the markets, the harbours, the public lands and the confiscations. all these together amount to close on two thousand talents. take from this sum the annual pay of the dicasts; they number six thousand, and there have never been more in this town; so therefore it is one hundred and fifty talents that come to you. philocleon. what! our pay is not even a tithe of the state revenue? bdelycleon. why no, certainly not. philocleon. and where does the rest go then? bdelycleon. to those who say: "i shall never betray the interests of the masses; i shall always fight for the people." and 'tis you, father, who let yourself be caught with their fine talk, who give them all power over yourself. they are the men who extort fifty talents at a time by threat and intimidation from the allies. "pay tribute to me," they say, "or i shall loose the lightning on your town and destroy it." and you, you are content to gnaw the crumbs of your own might. what do the allies do? they see that the athenian mob lives on the tribunal in niggard and miserable fashion, and they count you for nothing, for not more than the vote of connus;[ ] 'tis on those wretches that they lavish everything, dishes of salt fish, wine, tapestries, cheese, honey, sesame-fruit, cushions, flagons, rich clothing, chaplets, necklets, drinking-cups, all that yields pleasure and health. and you, their master, to you as a reward for all your toil both on land and sea, nothing is given, not even a clove of garlic to eat with your little fish. philocleon. no, undoubtedly not; i have had to send and buy some from eucharides. but you told me i was a slave. prove it then, for i am dying with impatience. bdelycleon. is it not the worst of all slaveries to see all these wretches and their flatterers, whom they gorge with gold, at the head of affairs? as for you, you are content with the three obols they give you and which you have so painfully earned in the galleys, in battles and sieges. but what i stomach least is that you go to sit on the tribunal by order. some lewd stripling, the son of chereas, to wit, enters your house balancing his body, rotten with debauchery, on his straddling legs and charges you to come and judge at daybreak, and precisely to the minute. "he who only presents himself after the opening of the court," says he, "will not get the triobolus." but he himself, though he arrives late, will nevertheless get his drachma as a public advocate. if an accused man makes him some present, he shares it with a colleague and the pair agree to arrange the matter like two sawyers, one of whom pulls and the other pushes. as for you, you have only eyes for the public pay-clerk, and you see nothing. philocleon. can it be i am treated thus? oh! what is it you are saying? you stir me to the bottom of my heart! i am all ears! i cannot syllable what i feel. bdelycleon. consider then; you might be rich, both you and all the others; i know not why you let yourself be fooled by these folk who call themselves the people's friends. a myriad of towns obey you, from the euxine to sardis. what do you gain thereby? nothing but this miserable pay, and even that is like the oil with which the flock of wool is impregnated and is doled to you drop by drop, just enough to keep you from dying of hunger. they want you to be poor, and i will tell you why. 'tis so that you may know only those who nourish you, and so that, if it pleases them to loose you against one of their foes, you shall leap upon him with fury. if they wished to assure the well-being of the people, nothing would be easier for them. we have now a thousand towns that pay us tribute; let them command each of these to feed twenty athenians; then twenty thousand of our citizens would be eating nothing but hare, would drink nothing but the purest of milk, and always crowned with garlands, would be enjoying the delights to which the great name of their country and the trophies of marathon give them the right; whereas to-day you are like the hired labourers who gather the olives; you follow him who pays you. philocleon. alas! my hand is benumbed; i can no longer draw my sword.[ ] what has become of my strength? bdelycleon. when they are afraid, they promise to divide euboea[ ] among you and to give each fifty bushels of wheat, but what have they given you? nothing excepting, quite recently, five bushels of barley, and even these you have only obtained with great difficulty, on proving you were not aliens, and then choenix by choenix.[ ] that is why i always kept you shut in; i wanted you to be fed by me and no longer at the beck of these blustering braggarts. even now i am ready to let you have all you want, provided you no longer let yourself be suckled by the pay-clerk. chorus. he was right who said, "decide nothing till you have heard both sides," for it seems to me, that 'tis you who now gain the complete victory. my wrath is appeased, i throw away my sticks. come, comrade, our contemporary, let yourself be gained over by his words; come, do not be too obstinate or too perverse. why have i no relation, no ally to speak to me like this? do not doubt it, 'tis a god who is now protecting you and loading you with his benefits. accept them. bdelycleon. i will feed him, i will give him everything that is suitable for an old man, oatmeal gruel, a cloak, soft furs and a maid to rub his loins and play with his tool. but he is silent and utters not a word; 'tis a bad sign. chorus. he has thought the thing over and has recognized his folly; he reproaches himself for not having followed your advice always. but there he is, converted by your words, and has no doubt become wiser to alter his ways in future and to believe in none but you. philocleon. alas! alas! bdelycleon. now why this lamentation? philocleon. a truce to your promises! what i love is down there, 'tis down there i want to be, there, where the herald cries, "who has not yet voted? let him rise!" i want to be the last to leave the urn of all. oh, my soul, my soul! where art thou? come! oh! dark shadows, make way for me![ ] by heracles, may i reach the court in time to convict cleon of theft. bdelycleon. come, father, in the name of the gods, believe me! philocleon. believe you! ask me anything, anything, except one. bdelycleon. what is it? let us hear. philocleon. not to judge any more! before i consent, i shall have appeared before pluto. bdelycleon. very well then, since you find so much pleasure in it, go down there no more, but stay here and deal out justice to your slaves. philocleon. but what is there to judge? are you mad? bdelycleon. everything as in a tribunal. if a servant opens a door secretly, you inflict upon him a simple fine; 'tis what you have repeatedly done down there. everything can be arranged to suit you. if it is warm in the morning, you can judge in the sunlight; if it is snowing, then seated at your fire; if it rains, you go indoors; and if you only rise at noon, there will be no thesmothetes[ ] to exclude you from the precincts. philocleon. the notion pleases me. bdelycleon. moreover, if a pleader is long-winded, you will not be fasting and chafing and seeking vengeance on the accused. philocleon. but could i judge as well with my mouth full? bdelycleon. much better. is it not said, that the dicasts, when deceived by lying witnesses, have need to ruminate well in order to arrive at the truth? philocleon. well said, but you have not told me yet who will pay salary. bdelycleon. i will. philocleon. so much the better; in this way i shall be paid by myself. because that cursed jester, lysistratus,[ ] played me an infamous trick the other day. he received a drachma for the two of us[ ] and went on the fish-market to get it changed and then brought me back three mullet scales. i took them for obols and crammed them into my mouth;[ ] but the smell choked me and i quickly spat them out. so i dragged him before the court. bdelycleon. and what did he say to that? philocleon. well, he pretended i had the stomach of a cock. "you have soon digested the money," he said with a laugh. bdelycleon. you see, that is yet another advantage. philocleon. and no small one either. come, do as you will. bdelycleon. wait! i will bring everything here. philocleon. you see, the oracles are coming true; i have heard it foretold, that one day the athenians would dispense justice in their own houses, that each citizen would have himself a little tribunal constructed in his porch similar to the altars of hecaté,[ ] and that there would be such before every door. bdelycleon. hold! what do you say? i have brought you everything needful and much more into the bargain. see, here is an _article,_ should you want to piss; it shall be hung beside you on a nail. philocleon. good idea! right useful at my age. you have found the true preventive of bladder troubles. bdelycleon. here is fire, and near to it are lentils, should you want to take a snack. philocleon. 'tis admirably arranged. for thus, even when feverish, i shall nevertheless receive my pay; and besides, i could eat my lentils without quitting my seat. but why this cock? bdelycleon. so that, should you doze during some pleading, he may awaken you by crowing up there. philocleon. i want only for one thing more; all the rest is as good as can be. bdelycleon. what is that? philocleon. if only they could bring me an image of the hero lycus.[ ] bdelycleon. here it is! why, you might think it was the god himself! philocleon. oh! hero, my master! how repulsive you are to look at! 'tis an exact portrait of cleonymus! sosias. that is why, hero though he be, he has no weapon. bdelycleon. the sooner you take your seat, the sooner i shall call a case. philocleon. call it, for i have been seated ever so long. bdelycleon. let us see. what case shall we bring up first? is there a slave who has done something wrong? ah! you thracian there, who burnt the stew-pot t'other day. philocleon. hold, hold! here is a fine state of things! you had almost made me judge without a bar,[ ] and that is the thing of all others most sacred among us. bdelycleon. by zeus! i had forgotten it, but i will run indoors and bring you one immediately. what is this after all, though, but mere force of habit! xanthias. plague take the brute! can anyone keep such a dog? bdelycleon. hullo! what's the matter? xanthias. why, 'tis labes,[ ] who has just rushed into the kitchen and has seized a whole sicilian cheese and gobbled it up. bdelycleon. good! this will be the first offence i shall make my father try. (_to xanthias._) come along and lay your accusation. xanthias. no, not i; the other dog vows he will be accuser, if the matter is set down for trial. bdelycleon. well then, bring them both along. xanthias. i am coming. philocleon. what is this? bdelycleon. 'tis the pig-trough[ ] of the swine dedicated to hestia. philocleon. but it's sacrilege to bring it here. bdelycleon. no, no, by addressing hestia first,[ ] i might, thanks to her, crush an adversary. philocleon. put an end to delay by calling up the case. my verdict is already settled. bdelycleon. wait! i must yet bring out the tablets[ ] and the scrolls.[ ] philocleon. oh! i am boiling, i am dying with impatience at your delays. i could have traced the sentence in the dust. bdelycleon. there you are. philocleon. then call the case. bdelycleon. i am here. philocleon. firstly, who is this? bdelycleon. ah! my god! why, this is unbearable! i have forgotten the urns. philocleon. well now! where are you off to? bdelycleon. to look for the urns. philocleon. unnecessary, i shall use these vases.[ ] bdelycleon. very well, then we have all we need, except the clepsydra. philocleon. well then! and this? what is it if not a clepsydra?[ ] bdelycleon. true again! 'tis calling things by their right name! let fire be brought quickly from the house with myrtle boughs and incense, and let us invoke the gods before opening the sitting. chorus. offer them libations and your vows and we will thank them that a noble agreement has put an end to your bickerings and strife. bdelycleon. and first let there be a sacred silence. chorus. oh! god of delphi! oh! phoebus apollo! convert into the greatest blessing for us all what is now happening before this house, and cure us of our error, oh, paean,[ ] our helper! bdelycleon. oh! powerful god, apollo aguieus,[ ] who watchest at the door of my entrance hall, accept this fresh sacrifice; i offer it that you may deign to soften my father's excessive severity; he is as hard as iron, his heart is like sour wine; do thou pour into it a little honey. let him become gentle like other men, let him take more interest in the accused than in the accusers, may he allow himself to be softened by entreaties; calm his acrid humour and deprive his irritable mind of all sting. chorus. we unite our vows and chants to those of this new magistrate.[ ] his words have won our favour and we are convinced that he loves the people more than any of the young men of the present day. bdelycleon. if there be any judge near at hand, let him enter; once the proceedings have opened, we shall admit him no more.[ ] philocleon. who is the defendant? ha! what a sentence he will get! xanthias (_prosecuting council_). listen to the indictment. a dog of cydathenea doth hereby charge labes of aexonia with having devoured a sicilian cheese by himself without accomplices. penalty demanded, a collar of fig-tree wood.[ ] philocleon. nay, a dog's death, if convicted. bdelycleon. this is labes, the defendant. philocleon. oh! what a wretched brute! how entirely he looks the rogue! he thinks to deceive me by keeping his jaws closed. where is the plaintiff, the dog of cydathenea? dog. bow wow! bow wow! bdelycleon. here he is. philocleon. why, 'tis a second labes, a great barker and a licker of dishes. sosias (_herald_). silence! keep your seats! (_to xanthias._) and you, up on your feet and accuse him. philocleon. go on, and i will help myself and eat these lentils. xanthias. men of the jury, listen to this indictment i have drawn up. he has committed the blackest of crimes, both against me and the seamen.[ ] he sought refuge in a dark corner to glutton on a big sicilian cheese, with which he sated his hunger. philocleon. why, the crime is clear; the foul brute this very moment belched forth a horrible odour of cheese right under my nose. xanthias. and he refused to share with me. and yet can anyone style himself your benefactor, when he does not cast a morsel to your poor dog? philocleon. then he has not shared? xanthias. not with me, his comrade. philocleon. then his madness is as hot as my lentils. bdelycleon. in the name of the gods, father! no hurried verdict without hearing the other side! philocleon. but the evidence is plain; the fact speaks for itself. xanthias. then beware of acquitting the most selfish of canine gluttons, who has devoured the whole cheese, rind and all, prowling round the platter. philocleon. there is not even enough left for me to fill up the chinks in my pitcher. xanthias. besides, you _must_ punish him, because the same house cannot keep two thieves. let me not have barked in vain, else i shall never bark again. philocleon. oh! the black deeds he has just denounced! what a shameless thief! say, cock, is not that your opinion too? ha, ha! he thinks as i do. here, thesmothetes![ ] where are you? hand me the vessel. sosias (_thesmothetes_). take it yourself. i go to call the witnesses; these are a plate, a pestle, a cheese knife, a brazier, a stew-pot and other half-burnt utensils. (_to philocleon._) but you have not finished? you are piddling away still! have done and be seated. philocleon. ha, ha! i reckon i know somebody who will shit himself with fright today. bdelycleon. will you never cease showing yourself hard and intractable, and especially to the accused? you tear them to pieces tooth and nail. philocleon. come forward and defend yourself. what means this silence? answer. sosias. no doubt he has nothing to say. bdelycleon. not so, but i think he has got what happened once to thucydides, when accused;[ ] his jaws suddenly set fast. get away! i will undertake your defence.--gentlemen of the jury, 'tis a difficult thing to speak for a dog who has been calumniated, but nevertheless i will try. 'tis a good dog, and he chivies the wolves finely. philocleon. he! that thief and conspirator! bdelycleon. but 'tis the best of all our dogs; he is capable of guarding a whole flock. philocleon. and what good is that, if he eats the cheese? bdelycleon. what? he fights for you, he guards your door; 'tis an excellent dog in every respect. forgive him his larceny; he is wretchedly ignorant, he cannot play the lyre. philocleon. i wish he did not know how to write either; then the rascal would not have drawn up his pleadings. bdelycleon. witnesses, i pray you, listen. come forward, grafting-knife, and speak up; answer me clearly. you were paymaster at the time. did you grate out to the soldiers what was given you?--he says he did so. philocleon. but, by zeus! he lies. bdelycleon. oh! have patience. take pity on the unfortunate. labes feeds only on fish-bones and fishes' heads and has not an instant of peace. the other is good only to guard the house; he never moves from here, but demands his share of all that is brought in and bites those who refuse. philocleon. oh! heaven! have i fallen ill? i feel my anger cooling! woe to me! i am softening! bdelycleon. have pity, father, pity, i adjure you; you would not have him dead. where are his puppies? come, poor little beasties, yap, up on your haunches, beg and whine! philocleon. descend, descend, descend, descend![ ] bdelycleon. i will descend, although that word, "descend," has too often raised false hope. none the less, i will descend. philocleon. plague seize it! have i then done wrong to eat! what! i to be crying! ah! i certainly should not be weeping, if i were not blown out with lentils. bdelycleon. then he is acquitted? philocleon. i did not say so. bdelycleon. ah! my dear father, be good! be humane! take this voting pebble and rush with your eyes closed to that second urn[ ] and, father, acquit him. philocleon. no, i know no more how to acquit than to play the lyre. bdelycleon. come quickly, i will show you the way. philocleon. is this the first urn? bdelycleon. yes. philocleon. then i have voted. bdelycleon (_aside_). i have fooled him and he has acquitted in spite of himself. philocleon. come, i will turn out the urns. what is the result? bdelycleon. we shall see.--labes, you stand acquitted.--eh! father, what's the matter, what is it? philocleon. ah me! ah me! water! water! bdelycleon. pull yourself together, sir! philocleon. tell me! is he really acquitted? bdelycleon. yes, certainly. philocleon. then it's all over with me! bdelycleon. courage, dear father, don't let this afflict you so terribly. philocleon. and so i have charged my conscience with the acquittal of an accused being! what will become of me? sacred gods! forgive me. i did it despite myself; it is not in my character. bdelycleon. do not vex yourself, father; i will feed you well, will take you everywhere to eat and drink with me; you shall go to every feast; henceforth your life shall be nothing but pleasure, and hyperbolus shall no longer have you for a tool. but come, let us go in. philocleon. so be it; if you will, let us go in. chorus (_parabasis_). go where it pleases you and may your happiness be great. you meanwhile, oh! countless myriads, listen to the sound counsels i am going to give you and take care they are not lost upon you. 'twould be the fate of vulgar spectators, not that of such an audience. hence, people, lend me your ear, if you love frank speaking. the poet has a reproach to make against his audience; he says you have ill-treated him in return for the many services he has rendered you. at first he kept himself in the background and lent help secretly to other poets,[ ] and like the prophetic genius, who hid himself in the belly of eurycles,[ ] slipped within the spirit of another and whispered to him many a comic hit. later he ran the risks of the theatre on his own account, with his face uncovered, and dared to guide his muse unaided. though overladen with success and honours more than any of your poets, indeed despite all his glory, he does not yet believe he has attained his goal; his heart is not swollen with pride and he does not seek to seduce the young folk in the wrestling school.[ ] if any lover runs up to him to complain because he is furious at seeing the object of his passion derided on the stage, he takes no heed of such reproaches, for he is only inspired with honest motives and his muse is no go-between. from the very outset of his dramatic career he has disdained to assail those who were men, but with a courage worthy of heracles himself he attacked the most formidable monsters, and at the beginning went straight for that beast[ ] with the sharp teeth, with the terrible eyes that flashed lambent fire like those of cynna,[ ] surrounded by a hundred lewd flatterers who spittle-licked him to his heart's content; it had a voice like a roaring torrent, the stench of a seal, a foul lamia's testicles,[ ] and the rump of a camel. our poet did not tremble at the sight of this horrible monster, nor did he dream of gaining him over; and again this very day he is fighting for your good. last year besides, he attacked those pale, shivering and feverish beings[ ] who strangled your fathers in the dark, throttled your grandfathers,[ ] and who, lying in the beds of the most inoffensive, piled up against them lawsuits, summonses and witnesses to such an extent, that many of them flew in terror to the polemarch for refuge.[ ] such is the champion you have found to purify your country of all its evil, and last year you betrayed him,[ ] when he sowed the most novel ideas, which, however, did not strike root, because you did not understand their value; notwithstanding this, he swears by bacchus, the while offering him libations, that none ever heard better comic verses. 'tis a disgrace to you not to have caught their drift at once; as for the poet, he is none the less appreciated by the enlightened judges. he shivered his oars in rushing boldly forward to board his foe.[ ] but in future, my dear fellow-citizens, love and honour more those of your poets who seek to imagine and express some new thought. make their ideas your own, keep them in your caskets like sweet-scented fruit.[ ] if you do, your clothing will emit an odour of wisdom the whole year through. formerly we were untiring, especially in _other_ exercises,[ ] but 'tis over now; our brow is crowned with hair whiter than the swan. we must, however, rekindle a youthful ardour in these remnants of what was, and for myself, i prefer my old age to the curly hair and the finery of all these lewd striplings. should any among you spectators look upon me with wonder, because of this wasp waist, or not know the meaning of this sting, i will soon dispel his ignorance. we, who wear this appendage, are the true attic men, who alone are noble and native to the soil, the bravest of all people. 'tis we who, weapon in hand, have done so much for the country, when the barbarian shed torrents of fire and smoke over our city in his relentless desire to seize our nests by force. at once we ran up, armed with lance and buckler, and, drunk with the bitter wine of anger, we gave them battle, man standing to man and rage distorting our lips.[ ] a hail of arrows hid the sky. however, by the help of the gods, we drove off the foe towards evening. before the battle an owl had flown over our army.[ ] then we pursued them with our lance point in their loins as one hunts the tunny-fish; they fled and we stung them in the jaw and in the eyes, so that even now the barbarians tell each other that there is nothing in the world more to be feared than the attic wasp. oh! at that time i was terrible, i feared nothing; forth on my galleys i went in search of my foe and subjected him.[ ] then we never thought of rounding fine phrases, we never dreamt of calumny; 'twas who should prove the strongest rower. and thus we took many a town from the medes,[ ] and 'tis to us that athens owes the tributes that our young men thieve to-day. look well at us, and you will see that we have all the character and habits of the wasp. firstly, if roused, no beings are more irascible, more relentless than we are. in all other things, too, we act like wasps. we collect in swarms, in a kind of nests,[ ] and some go a-judging with the archon,[ ] some with the eleven,[ ] others at the odeon;[ ] there are yet others, who hardly move at all, like the grubs in the cells, but remain glued to the walls[ ] and bent double to the ground. we also pay full attention to the discovery of all sorts of means of existing and sting the first who comes, so as to live at his expense. finally, we have among us drones,[ ] who have no sting and who, without giving themselves the least trouble, seize on our revenues as they flow past them and devour them. 'tis this that grieves us most of all, to see men who have never served or held either lance or oar in defence of their country, enriching themselves at our expense without ever raising a blister on their hands. in short, i give it as my deliberate opinion that in future every citizen not possessed of a sting shall not receive the triobolus. philocleon. as long as i live, i will never give up this cloak; 'tis the one i wore in that battle[ ] when boreas delivered us from such fierce attacks, bdelycleon. you do not know what is good for you. philocleon. ah! i know not how to use fine clothing! t'other day, when cramming myself with fried fish, i dropped so many grease spots that i had to pay three obols to the cleaner. bdelycleon. at least have a try, since you have once for all handed the care for your well-being over to me. philocleon. very well then! what must i do? bdelycleon. take off your cloak, and put on this tunic in its stead. philocleon. 'twas well worth while to beget and bring up children, so that this one should now wish to choke me. bdelycleon. come, take this tunic and put it on without so much talk. philocleon. great gods! what sort of a cursed garment is this? bdelycleon. some call it a pelisse, others a persian cloak.[ ] philocleon. ah! i thought it was a wraprascal like those made at thymaetia.[ ] bdelycleon. pray, how should you know such garments? 'tis only at sardis you could have seen them, and you have never been there. philocleon. i' faith, no! but it seems to me exactly like the mantle morychus[ ] sports. bdelycleon. not at all; i tell you they are woven at ecbatana. philocleon. what! are there woollen ox-guts[ ] then at ecbatana? bdelycleon. whatever are you talking about? these are woven by the barbarians at great cost. i am certain this pelisse has consumed more than a talent of wool.[ ] philocleon. it should be called wool-waster then instead of pelisse. bdelycleon. come, father, just hold still for a moment and put it on. philocleon. oh! horrors! what a waft of heat the hussy wafts up my nose! bdelycleon. will you have done with this fooling? philocleon. no, by zeus! if need be, i prefer you should put me in the oven. bdelycleon. come! i will put it round you. there! philocleon. at all events, bring out a crook. bdelycleon. why, whatever for? philocleon. to drag me out of it before i am quite melted. bdelycleon. now take off those wretched clogs and put on these nice laconian slippers. philocleon. i put on odious slippers made by our foes! never! bdelycleon. come! put your foot in and push hard. quick! philocleon. 'tis ill done of you. you want me to put my foot on laconian ground. bdelycleon. now the other. philocleon. ah! no, not that one; one of its toes holds the laconians in horror. bdelycleon. positively you must. philocleon. alas! alas! then i shall have no chilblains in my old age.[ ] bdelycleon. now, hurry up and get them on; and now imitate the easy effeminate gait of the rich. see, like this. philocleon. there!... look at my get-up and tell me which rich man i most resemble in my walk. bdelycleon. why, you look like a garlic plaster on a boil. philocleon. ah! i am longing to swagger and sway my rump about. bdelycleon. now, will you know how to talk gravely with well-informed men of good class? philocleon. undoubtedly. bdelycleon. what will you say to them? philocleon. oh, lots of things. first of all i shall say, that lamia,[ ] seeing herself caught, let fly a fart; then, that cardopion and her mother.... bdelycleon. come, no fabulous tales, pray! talk of realities, of domestic facts, as is usually done. philocleon. ah! i know something that is indeed most domestic. once upon a time there was a rat and a cat.... bdelycleon. "oh, you ignorant fool," as theagenes said[ ] to the scavenger in a rage. are you going to talk of cats and rats among high-class people? philocleon. then what should i talk about? bdelycleon. tell some dignified story. relate how you were sent on a solemn mission with androcles and clisthenes. philocleon. on a mission! never in my life, except once to paros,[ ] a job which brought me in two obols a day. bdelycleon. at least say, that you have just seen ephudion making good play in the pancratium[ ] with ascondas and, that despite his age and his white hair, he is still robust in loin and arm and flank and that his chest is a very breastplate. philocleon. stop! stop! what nonsense! who ever contested at the pancratium with a breast-plate on? bdelycleon. that is how well-behaved folk like to talk. but another thing. when at wine, it would be fitting to relate some good story of your youthful days. what is your most brilliant feat? philocleon. my best feat? ah! 'twas when i stole ergasion's vine-props. bdelycleon. you and your vine-props! you'll be the death of me! tell of one of your boar-hunts or of when you coursed the hare. talk about some torch-race you were in; tell of some deed of daring. philocleon. ah! my most daring deed was when, quite a young man still, i prosecuted phayllus, the runner, for defamation, and he was condemned by a majority of two votes. bdelycleon. enough of that! now recline there, and practise the bearing that is fitting at table in society. philocleon. how must i recline? tell me quick! bdelycleon. in an elegant style. philocleon. like this? bdelycleon. not at all. philocleon. how then? bdelycleon. spread your knees on the tapestries and give your body the most easy curves, like those taught in the gymnasium. then praise some bronze vase, survey the ceiling, admire the awning stretched over the court. water is poured over our hands; the tables are spread; we sup and, after ablution, we now offer libations to the gods. philocleon. but, by zeus! this supper is but a dream, it appears! bdelycleon. the flute-player has finished the prelude. the guests are theorus, aeschines, phanus, cleon, acestor;[ ] and beside this last, i don't know who else. you are with them. shall you know exactly how to take up the songs that are started? philocleon. better than any born mountaineer of attica. bdelycleon. that we shall see. suppose me to be cleon. i am the first to begin the song of harmodius, and you take it up: "there never was yet seen in athens ... philocleon. ... such a rogue or such a thief."[ ] bdelycleon. why, you wretched man, 'twill be the end of you if you sing that. he will vow your ruin, your destruction, to chase you out of the country. philocleon. well! then i shall answer his threats with another song: "with your madness for supreme power, you will end by overthrowing the city, which even now totters towards ruin." bdelycleon. and when theorus, prone at cleon's feet, takes his hand and sings, "like admetus, love those who are brave,"[ ] what reply will you make him? philocleon. i shall sing, "i know not how to play the fox, nor call myself the friend of both parties." bdelycleon. then comes the turn of aeschines, the son of sellus, and a well-trained and clever musician, who will sing, "good things and riches for clitagoras and me and eke for the thessalians!" philocleon. "the two of us have squandered a deal between us." bdelycleon. at this game you seem at home. but come, we will go and dine with philoctemon.--slave! slave! place our dinner in a basket, and let us go for a good long drinking bout. philocleon. by no means, it is too dangerous; for after drinking, one breaks in doors, one comes to blows, one batters everything. anon, when the wine is slept off, one is forced to pay. bdelycleon. not if you are with decent people. either they undertake to appease the offended person or, better still, you say something witty, you tell some comic story, perhaps one of those you have yourself heard at table, either in aesop's style or in that of sybaris; all laugh and the trouble is ended. philocleon. faith! 'tis worth while learning many stories then, if you are thus not punished for the ill you do. but come, no more delay! chorus. more than once have i given proof of cunning and never of stupidity, but how much more clever is amynias, the son of sellus and of the race of forelock-wearers; him we saw one day coming to dine with leogaras,[ ] bringing as his share one apple and a pomegranate, and bear in mind he was as hungry as antiphon.[ ] he went on an embassy to pharsalus,[ ] and there he lived solely among the thessalian mercenaries;[ ] indeed, is he not the vilest of mercenaries himself? oh! blessed, oh! fortunate automenes, how enviable is your fortune! you have three sons, the most industrious in the world; one is the friend of all, a very able man, the first among the lyre-players, the favourite of the graces. the second is an actor, and his talent is beyond all praise. as for ariphrades, he is by far the most gifted; his father would swear to me, that without any master whatever and solely through the spontaneous effort of his happy nature, he taught himself the use of his tongue in the lewd places[ ] where he spends the whole of his time. some have said that i and cleon were reconciled. this is the truth of the matter: cleon was harassing me, persecuting and belabouring me in every way; and, when i was being fleeced, the public laughed at seeing me uttering such loud cries; not that they cared about me, but simply curious to know whether, when trodden down by my enemy, i would not hurl at him some taunt. noticing this, i have played the wheedler a bit; but now, look! the prop is deceiving the vine![ ] xanthias. oh! tortoises! happy to have so hard a skin, thrice happy to carry this roof that protects your backs! oh! creatures full of sense! what a happy thought to cover your bodies with this shell, which shields it from blows! as for me, i can no longer move; the stick has so belaboured my body. chorus. eh, what's the matter, child? for, old as he may be, one has the right to call anyone a child who has let himself be beaten. xanthias. alas! my master is really the worst of all plagues. he was the most drunk of all the guests, and yet among them were hippyllus, antiphon, lycon, lysistratus, theophrastus and phrynichus. but he was a hundred times more insolent than any. as soon as he had stuffed himself with a host of good dishes, he began to leap and spring, to laugh and to let wind like a little ass well blown out with barley. then he set to a-beating me with all his heart, shouting, "slave! slave!" lysistratus, as soon as he saw him, let fly this comparison at him. "old fellow," said he, "you resemble one of the scum assuming the airs of a rich man or a stupid ass that has broken loose from its stable." "as for you," bawled the other at the top of his voice, "you are like a grasshopper,[ ] whose cloak is worn to the thread, or like sthenelus[ ] after his clothes had been sold." all applauded excepting theophrastus, who made a grimace as behoved a well-bred man like him. the old man called to him, "hi! tell me then what you have to be proud of? not so much mouthing, you, who so well know how to play the buffoon and to lick-spittle the rich!" 'twas thus he insulted each in turn with the grossest of jests, and he reeled off a thousand of the most absurd and ridiculous speeches. at last, when he was thoroughly drunk, he started towards here, striking everyone he met. hold, here he comes reeling along. i will be off for fear of his blows. philocleon.[ ] halt! and let everyone begone, or i shall do an evil turn to some of those who insist on following me. clear off, rascals, or i shall roast you with this torch! bdelycleon. we shall all make you smart to-morrow for your youthful pranks. we shall come in a body to summon you to justice. philocleon. ho! ho! summon me! what old women's babble! know that i can no longer bear to hear even the name of suits. ha! ha! ha! this is what pleases _me_, "down with the urns!" won't you begone? down with the dicasts! away with them, away with them! (_to the flute-girl._) mount up there, my little gilded cock-chafer; seize hold of this rope's end in your hand.[ ] hold it tight, but have a care; the rope's a bit old and worn, but it loves a nice rubbing still. do you see how opportunely i got you away from the solicitations of those fellows, who wanted to make you work their tools in your mouth? you therefore owe me this return to gratify mine by masturbating it. but will you pay the debt? oh! i know well you will not even try; you will play with me, you will laugh heartily at my poor old weapon as you have done at many another man's. and yet, if you would not be a naughty girl, i would redeem you, when my son is dead, and you should be my concubine, my little cuntling. at present i am not my own master; i am very young and am watched very closely. my dear son never lets me out of his sight; 'tis an unbearable creature, who would quarter a thread and skin a flint; he is afraid i should get lost, for i am his only father. but here he comes running towards us. but be quick, don't stir, hold these torches. i am going to play him a young man's trick, the same as he played me before i was initiated into the mysteries. bdelycleon. oh! oh! you debauched old dotard! you desire and, meseems, you love pretty baggages; but, by apollo, it shall not be with impunity! philocleon. ah! you would be very glad to eat a lawsuit in vinegar, you would. bdelycleon. 'tis a rascally trick to steal the flute-girl away from the other guests. philocleon. what flute-girl? are you distraught, as if you had just returned from pluto? bdelycleon. by zeus! but here is the dardanian wench in person.[ ] philocleon. nonsense. this is a torch that i have lit in the public square in honour of the gods. bdelycleon. is this a torch? philocleon. a torch? certainly. do you not see it is of several different colours? bdelycleon. and what is that black part in the middle?[ ] philocleon. 'tis the pitch running out while it burns. bdelycleon. and there, on the other side, surely that is a girl's bottom? philocleon. no. 'tis a small bit of the torch, that projects. bdelycleon. what do you mean? what bit? hi! you woman! come here! philocleon. ah! ah! what do you want to do? bdelycleon. to take her from you and lead her away. you are too much worn out and can do nothing. philocleon. hear me! one day, at olympia, i saw euphudion boxing bravely against ascondas;[ ] he was already aged, and yet with a blow from his fist he knocked down his young opponent. so beware lest i blacken _your_ eyes. bdelycleon. by zeus! you have olympia at your finger-ends! a baker's wife (_to bdelycleon_). come to my help, i beg you, in the name of the gods! this cursed man, when striking out right and left with his torch, knocked over ten loaves worth an obolus apiece, and then, to cap the deal, four others. bdelycleon. do you see what lawsuits you are drawing upon yourself with your drunkenness? you will have to plead. philocleon. oh, no, no! a little pretty talk and pleasant tales will soon settle the matter and reconcile her with me. baker's wife. not so, by the goddesses twain! it shall not be said that you have with impunity spoilt the wares of myrtia,[ ] the daughter of ancylion and sostraté. philocleon. listen, woman, i wish to tell you a lovely anecdote. baker's wife. oh! friend, no anecdotes for me, thank you. philocleon. one night aesop was going out to supper. a drunken bitch had the impudence to bark near him. aesop said to her, "oh, bitch, bitch! you would do well to sell your wicked tongue and buy some wheat." baker's wife. you make a mock of me! very well! be you who you like, i shall summons you before the market inspectors[ ] for damage done to my business. chaerephon[ ] here shall be my witness. philocleon. but just listen, here's another will perhaps please you better. lasus and simonides[ ] were contesting against each other for the singing prize. lasus said, "damn me if i care." baker's wife. ah! really, did he now! philocleon. as for you, chaerephon, _can_ you be witness to this woman, who looks as pale and tragic as ino when she throws herself from her rock[ ] ... at the feet of euripides? bdelycleon. here, methinks, comes another to summons you; _he_ has his witness too. ah! unhappy indeed we are! accuser. i summons you, old man, for outrage. bdelycleon. for outrage? oh! in the name of the gods, do not summons him! i will be answerable for him; name the penalty and i will be more grateful still. philocleon. i ask for nothing better than to be reconciled with him; for i admit i struck him and threw stones at him. so, first come here. will you leave it in my hands to name the indemnity i must pay, if i promise you my friendship as well, or will you fix it yourself? accuser. fix it; i like neither lawsuits nor disputes. philocleon. a man of sybaris[ ] fell from his chariot and wounded his head most severely; he was a very poor driver. one of his friends came up to him and said, "every man to his trade." well then, go you to pittalus[ ] to get mended. bdelycleon. you are incorrigible. accuser (_to his witness_). at all events, make a note of his reply. philocleon. listen, instead of going off so abruptly. a woman at sybaris broke a box. accuser (_to his witness_). i again ask you to witness this. philocleon. the box therefore had the fact attested, but the woman said, "never worry about witnessing the matter, but hurry off to buy a cord to tie it together with; 'twill be the more sensible course." accuser. oh! go on with your ribaldry until the archon calls the case. bdelycleon (_to philocleon_). no, by demeter! you stay here no longer! i take you and carry you off. philocleon. and what for? bdelycleon. what for? i shall carry you to the house; else there would not be enough witnesses for the accusers. philocleon. one day at delphi, aesop ... bdelycleon. i don't care a fig for that. philocleon. ... was accused of having stolen a sacred vase. but he replied, that the horn beetle ... (_philocleon goes on with his fable while bdelycleon is carrying him off the scene by main force._) bdelycleon. oh, dear, dear! you drive me crazy with your horn-beetle. chorus. i envy you your happiness, old man. what a contrast to his former frugal habits and his very hard life! taught now in quite another school, he will know nothing but the pleasures of ease. perhaps he will jib at it, for indeed 'tis difficult to renounce what has become one's second nature. however, many have done it, and adopting the ideas of others, have changed their use and wont. as for philocleon's son, i, like all wise and judicious men, cannot sufficiently praise his filial tenderness and his tact. never have i met a more amiable nature, and i have conceived the greatest fondness for him. how he triumphed on every point in his discussion with his father, when he wanted to bring him back to more worthy and honourable tastes! xanthias. by bacchus! 'tis some evil genius has brought this unbearable disorder into our house. the old man, full up with wine and excited by the sound of the flute, is so delighted, so enraptured, that he spends the night executing the old dances that thespis first produced on the stage,[ ] and just now he offered to prove to the modern tragedians, by disputing with them for the dancing prize, that they are nothing but a lot of old dotards. philocleon. "who loiters at the door of the vestibule?"[ ] xanthias. here comes our pest, our plague! philocleon. let down the barriers.[ ] the dance is now to begin. xanthias. or rather the madness. philocleon. impetuous movement already twists and racks my sides. how my nostrils wheeze! how my back cracks! xanthias. go and fill yourself with hellebore.[ ] philocleon. phrynichus is as bold as a cock and terrifies his rivals. xanthias. oh! oh! have a care he does not kick you. philocleon. his leg kicks out sky-high, and his arse gapes open.[ ] xanthias. do have a care. philocleon. look how easily my leg-joints move. bdelycleon. great gods! what does all this mean? is it actual, downright madness? philocleon. and now i summon and challenge my rivals. if there be a tragic poet who pretends to be a skilful dancer, let him come and contest the matter with me. is there one? is there _not_ one? bdelycleon. here comes one, and one only. philocleon. who is the wretch? bdelycleon. 'tis the younger son of carcinus.[ ] philocleon. i will crush him to nothing; in point of keeping time, i will knock him out, for he knows nothing of rhythm. bdelycleon. ah! ah! here comes his brother too, another tragedian, and another son of carcinus. philocleon. him i will devour for my dinner. bdelycleon. oh! ye gods! i see nothing but crabs.[ ] here is yet another son of carcinus. philocleon. what is't comes here? a shrimp or a spider?[ ] bdelycleon. 'tis a crab,[ ]--a crabkin, the smallest of its kind; he writes tragedies. philocleon. oh! carcinus, how proud you should be of your brood! what a crowd of kinglets have come swooping down here! bdelycleon. come, come, my poor father, you will have to measure yourself against them. philocleon. have pickle prepared for seasoning them, if i am bound to prove the victor. chorus. let us stand out of the way a little, so that they may twirl at their ease. come, illustrious children of this inhabitant of the briny, brothers of the shrimps, skip on the sand and the shore of the barren sea; show us the lightning whirls and twirls of your nimble limbs. glorious offspring of phrynichus,[ ] let fly your kicks, so that the spectators may be overjoyed at seeing your legs so high in air. twist, twirl, tap your bellies, kick your legs to the sky. here comes your famous father, the ruler of the sea,[ ] delighted to see his three lecherous kinglets.[ ] go on with your dancing, if it pleases you, but as for us, we shall not join you. lead us promptly off the stage, for never a comedy yet was seen where the chorus finished off with a dance. * * * * * finis of "the wasps" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] meaning, bdelycleon will thrash you if you do not keep a good watch on his father. [ ] the corybantes, priests of cybelé, comported themselves like madmen in the celebration of their mysteries and made the air resound with the the noise of their drums. [ ] cleonymus had shown himself equally cowardly on all occasions; he is frequently referred to by aristophanes, both in this and other comedies. [ ] the cloak and the staff were the insignia of the dicasts; the poet describes them as sheep, because they were cleon's servile tools. [ ] an allusion to cleon, who was a tanner. [ ] in greek, [greek: d_emos] ([greek: d_emós], _fat_; [greek: d_êmos], _people_) means both _fat_ and _people_. [ ] a tool of cleon's; he had been sent on an embassy to persia (_vide_ 'the acharnians'). the crow is a thief and rapacious, just as theorus was. [ ] in his life of alcibiades, plutarch mentions this defect in his speech; or it may have been a 'fine gentleman' affectation. [ ] among the greeks, _going to the crows_ was equivalent to our _going to the devil_. [ ] no doubt the fee generally given to the street diviners who were wont to interpret dreams. [ ] coarse buffoonery was welcomed at megara, where, by the by, it is said that comedy had its birth. [ ] to gain the favour of the audience, the comic poets often caused fruit and cakes to be thrown to them. [ ] the gluttony of heracles was a constant subject of jest with the comic poets. [ ] the incident of pylos (see 'the knights'). [ ] the greek word for _friend of strangers_ is [greek: philoxenos], which happened also to be the name of one of the vilest debauchees in athens. [ ] the tribunal of the heliasts came next in dignity only to the areopagus. the dicasts, or jurymen, generally numbered ; at times it would call in the assistance of one or two other tribunals, and the number of judges would then rise to or even . [ ] a water-clock, used in the courts for limiting the time of the pleaders. [ ] the pebble was held between the thumb and two fingers, in the same way as one would hold a pinch of incense. [ ] a young athenian of great beauty, also mentioned by plato in his 'gorgias.' lovers were font of writing the name of the object of their adoration on the walls (see 'the acharnians'). [ ] [greek: k_emos], the greek term for the funnel-shaped top of the voting urn, into which the judges dropped their voting pebbles. [ ] racine has introduced this incident with some modification into his 'plaideurs.' [ ] although called _heliasts_ ([greek: h_elios], the sun), the judges sat under cover. one of the columns that supported the roof is here referred to. [ ] the juryman gave his vote for condemnation by tracing a line horizontally across a waxed tablet. this was one method in use; another was by means of pebbles placed in one or other of two voting urns. [ ] used for the purpose of voting. there were two urns, one for each of the two opinions, and each heliast placed a pebble in one of them. [ ] the heliast's badge of office. [ ] to prepare him for initiation into the mysteries of the corybantes. [ ] who pretended to cure madness; they were priests of cybelé. [ ] the sacred instrument of the corybantes. [ ] _friend of cleon,_ who had raised the daily salary of the heliasts to three obols. [ ] _enemy of cleon._ [ ] the smoke of fig-wood is very acrid, like the character of the heliasts. [ ] used for closing the chimney, when needed. [ ] which had been stretched all round the courtyard to prevent his escape. [ ] market-day. [ ] he enters the courtyard, returning with the ass, under whose belly philocleon is clinging. [ ] in the odyssey (bk. ix) homer makes his hero, 'the wily' odysseus, escape from the cyclops' cave by clinging on under a ram's belly, which slips past its blinded master without noticing the trick played on him. odysseus, when asked his name by the cyclops, replies, _outis_, nobody. [ ] a name formed out of two greek words, meaning, _running away on a horse_. [ ] the story goes that a traveller who had hired an ass, having placed himself in its shadow to escape the heat of the sun, was sued by the driver, who had pretended that he had let the ass, not but its shadow; hence the greek proverb, _to quarrel about the shade of an ass_, i.e. about nothing at all. [ ] when you inherit from me. [ ] there is a similar incident in the 'plaideurs.' [ ] a macedonian town in the peninsula of pallené; it had shaken off the athenian yoke and was not retaken for two years. [ ] a disciple of thespis, who even in his infancy devoted himself to the dramatic art. he was the first to introduce female characters on the stage. he flourished about b.c., having won his first prize for tragedy in b.c., twelve years before aeschylus. [ ] originally subjected to sparta by pausanias in b.c., it was retaken by cimon in , or forty-eight years previous to the production of 'the wasps.' the old heliasts refer to this latter event. [ ] an athenian general, who had been defeated when sent to sicily with a fleet to the succour of leontini; no doubt cleon had charged him with treachery. [ ] the samians were in league with the persians, but a certain carystion betrayed the plot, and thanks to this the athenians were able to retake samos before the island had obtained help from asia. [ ] the towns of thrace, up to that time the faithful allies of athens, were beginning to throw off her yoke. [ ] who fulfilled the office of president. [ ] meaning, "will it only remain for us to throw ourselves into the water?" hellé, taken by a ram across the narrow strait, called the hellespont after her name, fell into the waves and was drowned. [ ] he is a prisoner inside, and speaks through the closed doors. [ ] this boiling, acid pickle reminds him of the fiery, acrid temper of the heliasts. [ ] a name invented for the occasion; it really means, _cleon who holds the people in his snares_. [ ] when he entered troy as a spy. [ ] the island of naxos was taken by cimon, in consequence of sedition in the town of naxos, about fifty years before the production of 'the wasps.' [ ] one of the titles under which artemis, the goddess of the chase, was worshipped. [ ] demeter and persephone. this was an accusation frequently brought against people in athens. [ ] an orator of great violence of speech and gesture. [ ] for philocleon, the titulary god was lycus, the son of pandion, the king of athens, because a statue stood erected to him close to the spot where the tribunals sat, and because he recognized no other fatherland but the tribunals. [ ] a debauchee and an embezzler of public funds, already mentioned a little above. [ ] aristophanes speaks of him in 'the birds' as a traitor and as an alien who usurped the rights of the city. [ ] a greek proverb signifying "much ado about nothing." [ ] a spartan general, who perished in the same battle as cleon, before amphipolis, in b.c. [ ] meaning, the mere beginnings of any matter. [ ] this 'figure of love'--woman atop of the man--is known in greek as [greek: hippos] (latin _equus_, 'the horse'); note the play upon words with the name hippias. [ ] a tragic poet, who was a great lover of good cheer, it appears. [ ] old men, who carried olive branches in the processions of the panathenaea. those whose great age or infirmity forbade their being used for any other purpose were thus employed. [ ] an obscene pun. [greek: choiros] means both _a sow_ and the female organ. [ ] a celebrated actor. [ ] there were two tragedies named 'niobé,' one by aeschylus and the other by sophocles, both now lost. [ ] a double strap, which flute-players applied to their lips and was said to give softness to the tones. [ ] the shell was fixed over the seal to protect it. [ ] a calumniator and a traitor (see 'the acharnians'). [ ] cleonymus, whose name the poet modifies, so as to introduce the idea of a flatterer ([greek: kolax]). [ ] another flatterer, a creature of cleon's. [ ] athenian poor, having no purse, would put small coins into mouth for safety. we know that the triobolus was the daily of the judges. its value was about - / d. [ ] a jar of wine, which he had bought with his pay. [ ] a jar with two long ears or handles, in this way resembling an ass. [ ] a well-known flute-player. [ ] we have already seen that when accepting his son's challenge he swore to fall upon his sword if defeated in the debate. [ ] pericles had first introduced the custom of sending poor citizens, among whom the land was divided, into the conquered countries. the island of aegina had been mainly divided in this way among athenian colonists. [ ] the choenix was a measure corresponding to our quart. [ ] a verse borrowed from euripides' 'bellerophon.' [ ] i.e. a legislator. the name given in athens to the last six of the nine archons, because it was their special duty to see the laws respected. [ ] mentioned both in 'the acharnians' and 'the knights.' [ ] the drachma was worth six obols, or twice the pay of a heliast. [ ] we have already seen that the athenians sometimes kept their small money in their mouth. [ ] which were placed in the courts; dogs were sacrificed on them. [ ] as already stated, the statue of lycus stood close to the place where the tribunals sat. [ ] the barrier in the heliaea, which separated the heliasts from the public. [ ] the whole of this comic trial of the dog labes is an allusion to the general laches, already mentioned, who had failed in sicily. he was accused of taking bribes of money from the sicilians. [ ] to serve for a bar. [ ] this was a customary formula, [greek: aph' estias archou], "begin from hestia," first adore vesta, the god of the family hearth. in similar fashion, the romans said, _ab jove principium_. [ ] for conviction and acquittal. [ ] on which the sentence was entered. [ ] no doubt the stew-pot and the wine-jar. [ ] the _article_ bdelycleon had brought.--the clepsydra was a kind of water-clock; the other vessel is compared to it, because of the liquid in it. [ ] a title of apollo, worshipped as the god of healing. [ ] a title of apollo, because of the sacrifices, which the athenians offered him in the streets, from [greek: aguia], a street. [ ] bdelycleon. [ ] the formula used by the president before declaring the sitting of the court opened. [ ] that is, by way of fine. [ ] a reference to the peculations laches was supposed to have practised in keeping back part of the pay of the athenian sailors engaged in the sicilian expedition. [ ] the [greek: thesmothetai] at athens were the six junior archons, who judged cases assigned to no special court, presided at the allotment of magistrates, etc. [ ] thucydides, son of milesias, when accused by pericles, could not say a word in his own defence. one would have said his tongue was paralysed. he was banished.--he must not be confounded with thucydides the historian, whose exile took place after the production of 'the wasps.' [ ] when the judges were touched by the pleading of the orator and were decided on acquittal, they said to the defending advocate, "_cease speaking, descend from the rostrum._" [ ] there were two urns, one called that of conviction, the other of acquittal. [ ] meaning, that he had at first produced pieces under the name of other poets, such as callistrates and phidonides. [ ] eurycles, an athenian diviner, surnamed the engastromythes ([greek: muthos], speech, [greek: en gastri], in the belly), because he was believed to be inspired by a genius within him.--the same name was also given to the priestesses of apollo, who spoke their oracles without moving their lips. [ ] some poets misused their renown as a means of seduction among young men. [ ] cleon, whom he attacked in 'the knights,' the first comedy that aristophanes had produced in his own name. [ ] cynna, like salabaccha, was a shameless courtesan of the day. [ ] the lamiae were mysterious monsters, to whom the ancients ascribed the most varied forms. they were depicted most frequently with the face and bosom of a woman and the body of a serpent. here aristophanes endows them with organs of virility. it was said that the blood of young men had a special attraction for them. these lines, abusive of cleon, occur again in the 'peace,' ii. - . [ ] socrates and the sophists, with whom the poet confounds him in his attacks. [ ] he likens them to vampires. [ ] the third archon, whose duty was the protection of strangers. all cases involving the rights of citizenship were tried before him. these were a frequent cause of lawsuit at athens. [ ] 'the clouds' had not been well received. [ ] aristophanes lets it be understood that the refusal to crown him arose from the fact that he had been too bold in his attack. [ ] to perfume their caskets, etc., the ancients placed scented fruit, especially oranges, in them. [ ] the pastimes of love. [ ] at marathon, where the athenians defeated the persian invaders, b.c. the battle-field is a plain on the north-east coast of attica, about twenty-seven miles from athens. [ ] a favourable omen, of course. the owl was the bird of athené. [ ] an allusion to cimon's naval victories. [ ] the cyclades islands and many towns on the coast of asia minor. [ ] the tribunals. [ ] the six last archons presided over the civil courts and were styled thesmothetae (see above). [ ] magistrates, who had charge of criminal cases. [ ] built by pericles. musical contests were held there. here also took place distributions of flour, and the presence of the magistrates was no doubt necessary to decide on the spot any disputes that might arise regarding this. [ ] this, says the scholiast, refers to magistrates appointed for the upkeep of the walls. they were selected by ballot from amongst the general body of heliasts. [ ] the demagogues and their flatterers. [ ] the battle of artemisium on the euboean coast; a terrible storm arose and almost destroyed the barbarian fleet, while sparing that of the athenians. [ ] a mantle trimmed with fur. [ ] a rural deme of attica. rough coats were made there, formed of skins sewn together. [ ] an effeminate poet. [ ] he compares the thick, shaggy stuff of the pelisse to the intestines of a bullock, which have a sort of crimped and curled look. [ ] an attic talent was equal to about fifty-seven pounds avoirdupois. [ ] he grumbles over his own good fortune, as old men will. [ ] lamia, the daughter of belus and libya, was loved by zeus. heré deprived her of her beauty and instilled her with a passion for blood; she is said to have plucked babes from their mothers' breast to devour them. weary of her crimes, the gods turned her into a beast of prey. [ ] theagenes, of the acharnian deme, was afflicted with a weakness which caused him to be constantly letting off loud, stinking farts, even in public--the cause of many gibes on the part of the comic poets and his contemporaries. [ ] he had been sent on a mission as an armed ambassador, i.e. as a common soldier, whose pay was two obols. [ ] the [greek: pankration] was a combined exercise, including both wrestling and boxing. [ ] all these names have been already mentioned. [ ] each time philocleon takes up the song with words that are a satire on the guest who begins the strain. [ ] king admetus (euripides' 'alcestis') had suffered his devoted wife alcestis to die to save his life when ill to death. heracles, however, to repay former benefits received, descended into hades and rescued alcestis from pluto's clutches. [ ] a famous epicure, the lucullus of athens (see 'the acharnians'). [ ] a parasite renowned for his gluttony. [ ] a town in thessaly. [ ] because of his poverty. [ ] four lines in 'the knights' describe the infamous habits of ariphrades in detail. [ ] that is, it ceases to support it; aristophanes does the same to cleon. [ ] referring to lysistratus' leanness. [ ] a tragic actor, whose wardrobe had been sold up, so the story went, by his creditors. [ ] he enters, followed closely by the persons he has ill-used, and leading a flute-girl by the hand. [ ] meaning his penis. [ ] dardanus, a district of asia minor, north of the troad, supplied many flute-girls to the cities of greece. [ ] pointing to the flute-girl's _motte_. [ ] he tells his son the very story the latter had taught him. [ ] the name of the baker's wife. [ ] or agoranomi, who numbered ten at athens. [ ] the disciple of socrates. [ ] lasus, a musician and dithyrambic poet, born about b.c. in argolis, was the rival of simonides and thought himself his superior. [ ] ino, the daughter of cadmus and harmonia. being pursued by her husband, athamas, whom the fury tisiphoné had driven mad, she threw herself into the sea with melicerta, whereupon they were both changed into sea-goddesses.--this is the subject of one of euripides' tragedies. [ ] a famous town in magna graecia, south coast of italy. [ ] a celebrated physician.--philocleon means, "instead of starting an action, go and have yourself cared for; that is better worth your while." [ ] the dances that thespis, the originator of tragedy, interspersed with the speaking parts of his plays. [ ] a verse borrowed from an unknown tragedy. [ ] as was done in the stadia when the races were to be started. [ ] the ancients considered it a specific against madness. [ ] phrynichus, like all the ancient tragic writers, mingled many dances with his pieces. [ ] tragic poet. his three sons had also written tragedies and were dancers into the bargain. [ ] carcinus, by a mere transposition of the accent ([greek: karkívos]), means _crab_ in greek; hence the pun. [ ] carcinus' sons were small and thin. [ ] the third son of carcinus. [ ] meaning, the three sons of carcinus, the dancers, because, as mentioned before, phrynichus often introduced a chorus of dancers into his tragedies. [ ] carcinus himself. [ ] the greek word is [greek: triorchoi]--possessed of three testicles, of three-testicle power, inordinately lecherous; with the change of a letter ([greek: triarchoi]) it means 'three rulers,' 'three kinglets.' the birds introduction the birds' differs markedly from all the other comedies of aristophanes which have come down to us in subject and general conception. it is just an extravaganza pure and simple--a graceful, whimsical theme chosen expressly for the sake of the opportunities it afforded of bright, amusing dialogue, pleasing lyrical interludes, and charming displays of brilliant stage effects and pretty dresses. unlike other plays of the same author, there is here apparently no serious political _motif_ underlying the surface burlesque and buffoonery. some critics, it is true, profess to find in it a reference to the unfortunate sicilian expedition, then in progress, and a prophecy of its failure and the political downfall of alcibiades. but as a matter of fact, the whole thing seems rather an attempt on the dramatist's part to relieve the overwrought minds of his fellow-citizens, anxious and discouraged at the unsatisfactory reports from before syracuse, by a work conceived in a lighter vein than usual and mainly unconnected with contemporary realities. the play was produced in the year b.c., just when success or failure in sicily hung in the balance, though already the outlook was gloomy, and many circumstances pointed to impending disaster. moreover, the public conscience was still shocked and perturbed over the mysterious affair of the mutilation of the hermae, which had occurred immediately before the sailing of the fleet, and strongly suspicious of alcibiades' participation in the outrage. in spite of the inherent charm of the subject, the splendid outbursts of lyrical poetry in some of the choruses and the beauty of the scenery and costumes, 'the birds' failed to win the first prize. this was acclaimed to a play of aristophanes' rival, amipsias, the title of which, 'the comastae,' _or_ 'revellers,' "seems to imply that the chief interest was derived from direct allusions to the outrage above mentioned and to the individuals suspected to have been engaged in it." for this reason, which militated against its immediate success, viz. the absence of direct allusion to contemporary politics--there are, of course, incidental references here and there to topics and personages of the day--the play appeals perhaps more than any other of our author's productions to the modern reader. sparkling wit, whimsical fancy, poetic charm, are of all ages, and can be appreciated as readily by ourselves as by an athenian audience of two thousand years ago, though, of course, much is inevitably lost "without the important adjuncts of music, scenery, dresses and what we may call 'spectacle' generally, which we know in this instance to have been on the most magnificent scale." "the plot is this. euelpides and pisthetaerus, two old athenians, disgusted with the litigiousness, wrangling and sycophancy of their countrymen, resolve upon quitting attica. having heard of the fame of epops (the hoopoe), sometime called tereus, and now king of the birds, they determine, under the direction of a raven and a jackdaw, to seek from him and his subject birds a city free from all care and strife." arrived at the palace of epops, they knock, and trochilus (the wren), in a state of great flutter, as he mistakes them for fowlers, opens the door and informs them that his majesty is asleep. when he awakes, the strangers appear before him, and after listening to a long and eloquent harangue on the superior attractions of a residence among the birds, they propose a notable scheme of their own to further enhance its advantages and definitely secure the sovereignty of the universe now exercised by the gods of olympus. the birds are summoned to meet in general council. they come flying up from all quarters of the heavens, and after a brief misunderstanding, during which they come near tearing the two human envoys to pieces, they listen to the exposition of the latters' plan. this is nothing less than the building of a new city, to be called nephelococcygia, or 'cloud-cuckoo-town,' between earth and heaven, to be garrisoned and guarded by the birds in such a way as to intercept all communication of the gods with their worshippers on earth. all steam of sacrifice will be prevented from rising to olympus, and the immortals will very soon be starved into an acceptance of any terms proposed. the new utopia is duly constructed, and the daring plan to secure the sovereignty is in a fair way to succeed. meantime various quacks and charlatans, each with a special scheme for improving things, arrive from earth, and are one after the other exposed and dismissed. presently arrives prometheus, who informs epops of the desperate straits to which the gods are by this time reduced, and advises him to push his claims and demand the hand of basileia (dominion), the handmaid of zeus. next an embassy from the olympians appears on the scene, consisting of heracles, posidon and a god from the savage regions of the triballians. after some disputation, it is agreed that all reasonable demands of the birds are to be granted, while pisthetaerus is to have basileia as his bride. the comedy winds up with the epithalamium in honour of the nuptials. * * * * * the birds dramatis personae euelpides. pisthetaerus. epops (the hoopoe). trochilus, servant to epops. phoenicopterus. heralds. a priest. a poet. a prophet. meton, a geometrician. a commissioner. a dealer in decrees. iris. a parricide. cinesias, a dithyrambic bard. an informer. prometheus. posidon. triballus. heracles. servant of pisthetaerus. messengers. chorus of birds. scene: a wild, desolate tract of open country; broken rocks and brushwood occupy the centre of the stage. * * * * * the birds euelpides (_to his jay_).[ ] do you think i should walk straight for yon tree? pisthetaerus (_to his crow_). cursed beast, what are you croaking to me?... to retrace my steps? euelpides. why, you wretch, we are wandering at random, we are exerting ourselves only to return to the same spot; 'tis labour lost. pisthetaerus. to think that i should trust to this crow, which has made me cover more than a thousand furlongs! euelpides. and i to this jay, who has torn every nail from my fingers! pisthetaerus. if only i knew where we were. . . . euelpides. could you find your country again from here? pisthetaerus. no, i feel quite sure i could not, any more than could execestides[ ] find his. euelpides. oh dear! oh dear! pisthetaerus. aye, aye, my friend, 'tis indeed the road of "oh dears" we are following. euelpides. that philocrates, the bird-seller, played us a scurvy trick, when he pretended these two guides could help us to find tereus,[ ] the epops, who is a bird, without being born of one. he has indeed sold us this jay, a true son of tharelides,[ ] for an obolus, and this crow for three, but what can they do? why, nothing whatever but bite and scratch!--what's the matter with you then, that you keep opening your beak? do you want us to fling ourselves headlong down these rocks? there is no road that way. pisthetaerus. not even the vestige of a track in any direction. euelpides. and what does the crow say about the road to follow? pisthetaerus. by zeus, it no longer croaks the same thing it did. euelpides. and which way does it tell us to go now? pisthetaerus. it says that, by dint of gnawing, it will devour my fingers. euelpides. what misfortune is ours! we strain every nerve to get to the birds,[ ] do everything we can to that end, and we cannot find our way! yes, spectators, our madness is quite different to that of sacas. he is not a citizen, and would fain be one at any cost; we, on the contrary, born of an honourable tribe and family and living in the midst of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever we could go. 'tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law courts.[ ] that is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and some myrtle boughs[ ] and have come to seek a quiet country in which to settle. we are going to tereus, the epops, to learn from him, whether, in his aerial flights, he has noticed some town of this kind. pisthetaerus. here! look! euelpides. what's the matter? pisthetaerus. why, the crow has been pointing me to something up there for some time now. euelpides. and the jay is also opening its beak and craning its neck to show me i know not what. clearly, there are some birds about here. we shall soon know, if we kick up a noise to start them. pisthetaerus. do you know what to do? knock your leg against this rock. euelpides. and you your head to double the noise. pisthetaerus. well then use a stone instead; take one and hammer with it. euelpides. good idea! ho there, within! slave! slave! pisthetaerus. what's that, friend! you say, "slave," to summon epops! 'twould be much better to shout, "epops, epops!" euelpides. well then, epops! must i knock again? epops! trochilus. who's there? who calls my master? euelpides. apollo the deliverer! what an enormous beak![ ] trochilus. good god! they are bird-catchers. euelpides. the mere sight of him petrifies me with terror. what a horrible monster! trochilus. woe to you! euelpides. but we are not men. trochilus. what are you, then? euelpides. i am the fearling, an african bird. trochilus. you talk nonsense. euelpides. well, then, just ask it of my feet.[ ] trochilus. and this other one, what bird is it? pisthetaerus. i? i am a cackling,[ ] from the land of the pheasants. euelpides. but you yourself, in the name of the gods! what animal are you? trochilus. why, i am a slave-bird. euelpides. why, have you been conquered by a cock? trochilus. no, but when my master was turned into a peewit, he begged me to become a bird too, to follow and to serve him. euelpides. does a bird need a servant, then? trochilus. 'tis no doubt because he was a man. at times he wants to eat a dish of loach from phalerum; i seize my dish and fly to fetch him some. again he wants some pea-soup; i seize a ladle and a pot and run to get it. euelpides. this is, then, truly a running-bird.[ ] come, trochilus, do us the kindness to call your master. trochilus. why, he has just fallen asleep after a feed of myrtle-berries and a few grubs. euelpides. never mind; wake him up. trochilus. i am certain he will be angry. however, i will wake him to please you. pisthetaerus. you cursed brute! why, i am almost dead with terror! euelpides. oh! my god! 'twas sheer fear that made me lose my jay. pisthetaerus. ah! you great coward! were you so frightened that you let go your jay? euelpides. and did you not lose your crow, when you fell sprawling on the ground? pray tell me that. pisthetaerus. no, no. euelpides. where is it, then? pisthetaerus. it has flown away. euelpides. then you did not let it go! oh! you brave fellow! epops. open the forest,[ ] that i may go out! euelpides. by heracles! what a creature! what plumage! what means this triple crest? epops. who wants me? euelpides. the twelve great gods have used you ill, meseems. epops. are you chaffing me about my feathers? i have been a man, strangers. euelpides. 'tis not you we are jeering at. epops. at what, then? euelpides. why, 'tis your beak that looks so odd to us. epops. this is how sophocles outrages me in his tragedies. know, i once was tereus.[ ] euelpides. you were tereus, and what are you now? a bird or a peacock?[ ] epops. i am a bird. euelpides. then where are your feathers? for i don't see them. epops. they have fallen off. euelpides. through illness. epops. no. all birds moult their feathers, you know, every winter, and others grow in their place. but tell me, who are you? euelpides. we? we are mortals. epops. from what country? euelpides. from the land of the beautiful galleys.[ ] epops. are you dicasts?[ ] euelpides. no, if anything, we are anti-dicasts. epops. is that kind of seed sown among you?[ ] euelpides. you have to look hard to find even a little in our fields. epops. what brings you here? euelpides. we wish to pay you a visit. epops. what for? euelpides. because you formerly were a man, like we are, formerly you had debts, as we have, formerly you did not want to pay them, like ourselves; furthermore, being turned into a bird, you have when flying seen all lands and seas. thus you have all human knowledge as well as that of birds. and hence we have come to you to beg you to direct us to some cosy town, in which one can repose as if on thick coverlets. epops. and are you looking for a greater city than athens? euelpides. no, not a greater, but one more pleasant to dwell in. epops. then you are looking for an aristocratic country. euelpides. i? not at all! i hold the son of scellias in horror.[ ] epops. but, after all, what sort of city would please you best? euelpides. a place where the following would be the most important business transacted.--some friend would come knocking at the door quite early in the morning saying, "by olympian zeus, be at my house early, as soon as you have bathed, and bring your children too. i am giving a nuptial feast, so don't fail, or else don't cross my threshold when i am in distress." epops. ah! that's what may be called being fond of hardships. and what say you? pisthetaerus. my tastes are similar. epops. and they are? pisthetaerus. i want a town where the father of a handsome lad will stop in the street and say to me reproachfully as if i had failed him, "ah! is this well done, stilbonides! you met my son coming from the bath after the gymnasium and you neither spoke to him, nor embraced him, nor took him with you, nor ever once twitched his testicles. would anyone call you an old friend of mine?" epops. ah! wag, i see you are fond of suffering. but there is a city of delights, such as you want. 'tis on the red sea. euelpides. oh, no. not a sea-port, where some fine morning the salaminian[ ] galley can appear, bringing a writ-server along. have you no greek town you can propose to us? epops. why not choose lepreum in elis for your settlement? euelpides. by zeus! i could not look at lepreum without disgust, because of melanthius.[ ] epops. then, again, there is the opuntian, where you could live. euelpides. i would not be opuntian[ ] for a talent. but come, what is it like to live with the birds? you should know pretty well. epops. why, 'tis not a disagreeable life. in the first place, one has no purse. euelpides. that does away with much roguery. epops. for food the gardens yield us white sesame, myrtle-berries, poppies and mint. euelpides. why, 'tis the life of the newly-wed indeed.[ ] pisthetaerus. ha! i am beginning to see a great plan, which will transfer the supreme power to the birds, if you will but take my advice. epops. take your advice? in what way? pisthetaerus. in what way? well, firstly, do not fly in all directions with open beak; it is not dignified. among us, when we see a thoughtless man, we ask, "what sort of bird is this?" and teleas answers, "'tis a man who has no brain, a bird that has lost his head, a creature you cannot catch, for it never remains in any one place." epops. by zeus himself! your jest hits the mark. what then is to be done? pisthetaerus. found a city. epops. we birds? but what sort of city should we build? pisthetaerus. oh, really, really! 'tis spoken like a fool! look down. epops. i am looking. pisthetaerus. now look upwards. epops. i am looking. pisthetaerus. turn your head round. epops. ah! 'twill be pleasant for me, if i end in twisting my neck! pisthetaerus. what have you seen? epops. the clouds and the sky. pisthetaerus. very well! is not this the pole of the birds then? epops. how their pole? pisthetaerus. or, if you like it, the land. and since it turns and passes through the whole universe, it is called, 'pole.'[ ] if you build and fortify it, you will turn your pole into a fortified city.[ ] in this way you will reign over mankind as you do over the grasshoppers and cause the gods to die of rabid hunger. epops. how so? pisthetaerus. the air is 'twixt earth and heaven. when we want to go to delphi, we ask the boeotians[ ] for leave of passage; in the same way, when men sacrifice to the gods, unless the latter pay you tribute, you exercise the right of every nation towards strangers and don't allow the smoke of the sacrifices to pass through your city and territory. epops. by earth! by snares! by network![ ] i never heard of anything more cleverly conceived; and, if the other birds approve, i am going to build the city along with you. pisthetaerus. who will explain the matter to them? epops. you must yourself. before i came they were quite ignorant, but since i have lived with them i have taught them to speak. pisthetaerus. but how can they be gathered together? epops. easily. i will hasten down to the coppice to waken my dear procné;[ ] as soon as they hear our voices, they will come to us hot wing. pisthetaerus. my dear bird, lose no time, i beg. fly at once into the coppice and awaken procné. epops. chase off drowsy sleep, dear companion. let the sacred hymn gush from thy divine throat in melodious strains; roll forth in soft cadence your refreshing melodies to bewail the fate of itys,[ ] which has been the cause of so many tears to us both. your pure notes rise through the thick leaves of the yew-tree right up to the throne of zeus, where phoebus listens to you, phoebus with his golden hair. and his ivory lyre responds to your plaintive accents; he gathers the choir of the gods and from their immortal lips rushes a sacred chant of blessed voices. (_the flute is played behind the scene._) pisthetaerus. oh! by zeus! what a throat that little bird possesses. he has filled the whole coppice with honey-sweet melody! euelpides. hush! pisthetaerus. what's the matter? euelpides. will you keep silence? pisthetaerus. what for? euelpides. epops is going to sing again. epops (_in the coppice_). epopoi, poi, popoi, epopoi, popoi, here, here, quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the air; all you, who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race who sing so sweetly. and you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap up the sharp-stinging gnats in the marshy vales, and you who dwell in the fine plain of marathon, all damp with dew, and you, the francolin with speckled wings; you too, the halcyons, who flit over the swelling waves of the sea, come hither to hear the tidings; let all the tribes of long-necked birds assemble here; know that a clever old man has come to us, bringing an entirely new idea and proposing great reforms. let all come to the debate here, here, here, here. torotorotorotorotix, kikkobau, kikkobau, torotorotorotorolililix. pisthetaerus. can you see any bird? euelpides. by phoebus, no! and yet i am straining my eyesight to scan the sky. pisthetaerus. 'twas really not worth epops' while to go and bury himself in the thicket like a plover when a-hatching. phoenicopterus. torotina, torotina. pisthetaerus. hold, friend, here is another bird. euelpides. i' faith, yes! 'tis a bird, but of what kind? isn't it a peacock? pisthetaerus. epops will tell us. what is this bird? epops. 'tis not one of those you are used to seeing; 'tis a bird from the marshes. pisthetaerus. oh! oh! but he is very handsome with his wings as crimson as flame. epops. undoubtedly; indeed he is called flamingo.[ ] euelpides. hi! i say! you! pisthetaerus. what are you shouting for? euelpides. why, here's another bird. pisthetaerus. aye, indeed; 'tis a foreign bird too. what is this bird from beyond the mountains with a look as solemn as it is stupid? epops. he is called the mede.[ ] pisthetaerus. the mede! but, by heracles! how, if a mede, has he flown here without a camel? euelpides. here's another bird with a crest. pisthetaerus. ah! that's curious. i say, epops, you are not the only one of your kind then? epops. this bird is the son of philocles, who is the son of epops;[ ] so that, you see, i am his grandfather; just as one might say, hipponicus,[ ] the son of callias, who is the son of hipponicus. pisthetaerus. then this bird is callias! why, what a lot of his feathers he has lost![ ] epops. that's because he is honest; so the informers set upon him and the women too pluck out his feathers. pisthetaerus. by posidon, do you see that many-coloured bird? what is his name? epops. this one? 'tis the glutton. pisthetaerus. is there another glutton besides cleonymus? but why, if he is cleonymus, has he not thrown away his crest?[ ] but what is the meaning of all these crests? have these birds come to contend for the double stadium prize?[ ] epops. they are like the carians, who cling to the crests of their mountains for greater safety.[ ] pisthetaerus. oh, posidon! do you see what swarms of birds are gathering here? euelpides. by phoebus! what a cloud! the entrance to the stage is no longer visible, so closely do they fly together. pisthetaerus. here is the partridge. euelpides. faith! there is the francolin. pisthetaerus. there is the poachard. euelpides. here is the kingfisher. and over yonder? epops. 'tis the barber. euelpides. what? a bird a barber? pisthetaerus. why, sporgilus is one.[ ] here comes the owl. euelpides. and who is it brings an owl to athens?[ ] pisthetaerus. here is the magpie, the turtle-dove, the swallow, the horned owl, the buzzard, the pigeon, the falcon, the ring-dove, the cuckoo, the red-foot, the red-cap, the purple-cap, the kestrel, the diver, the ousel, the osprey, the wood-pecker. euelpides. oh! oh! what a lot of birds! what a quantity of blackbirds! how they scold, how they come rushing up! what a noise! what a noise! can they be bearing us ill-will? oh! there! there! they are opening their beaks and staring at us. pisthetaerus. why, so they are. chorus. popopopopopopopoi. where is he who called me? where am i to find him? epops. i have been waiting for you this long while; i never fail in my word to my friends. chorus. titititititititi. what good thing have you to tell me? epops. something that concerns our common safety, and that is just as pleasant as it is to the purpose. two men, who are subtle reasoners, have come here to seek me. chorus. where? what? what are you saying? epops. i say, two old men have come from the abode of men to propose a vast and splendid scheme to us. chorus. oh! 'tis a horrible, unheard-of crime! what are you saying? epops. nay! never let my words scare you. chorus. what have you done then? epops. i have welcomed two men, who wish to live with us. chorus. and you have dared to do that! epops. aye, and am delighted at having done so. chorus. where are they? epops. in your midst, as i am. chorus. ah! ah! we are betrayed; 'tis sacrilege! our friend, he who picked up corn-seeds in the same plains as ourselves, has violated our ancient laws; he has broken the oaths that bind all birds; he has laid a snare for me, he has handed us over to the attacks of that impious race which, throughout all time, has never ceased to war against us. as for this traitorous bird, we will decide his case later, but the two old men shall be punished forthwith; we are going to tear them to pieces. pisthetaerus. 'tis all over with us. euelpides. you are the sole cause of all our trouble. why did you bring me from down yonder? pisthetaerus. to have you with me. euelpides. say rather to have me melt into tears. pisthetaerus. go to! you are talking nonsense. euelpides. how so? pisthetaerus. how will you be able to cry when once your eyes are pecked out? chorus. io! io! forward to the attack, throw yourselves upon the foe, spill his blood; take to your wings and surround them on all sides. woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. come, peck, tear to ribbons. where is the chief of the cohort? let him engage the right wing. euelpides. this is the fatal moment. where shall i fly to, unfortunate wretch that i am? pisthetaerus. stay! stop here! euelpides. that they may tear me to pieces? pisthetaerus. and how do you think to escape them? euelpides. i don't know at all. pisthetaerus. come, i will tell you. we must stop and fight them. let us arm ourselves with these stew-pots. euelpides. why with the stew-pots? pisthetaerus. the owl will not attack us.[ ] euelpides. but do you see all those hooked claws? pisthetaerus. seize the spit and pierce the foe on your side. euelpides. and how about my eyes? pisthetaerus. protect them with this dish or this vinegar-pot. euelpides. oh! what cleverness! what inventive genius! you are a great general, even greater than nicias,[ ] where stratagem is concerned. chorus. forward, forward, charge with your beaks! come, no delay. tear, pluck, strike, flay them, and first of all smash the stew-pot. epops. oh, most cruel of all animals, why tear these two men to pieces, why kill them? what have they done to you? they belong to the same tribe, to the same family as my wife.[ ] chorus. are wolves to be spared? are they not our most mortal foes? so let us punish them. epops. if they are your foes by nature, they are your friends in heart, and they come here to give you useful advice. chorus. advice or a useful word from their lips, from them, the enemies of my forbears! epops. the wise can often profit by the lessons of a foe, for caution is the mother of safety. 'tis just such a thing as one will not learn from a friend and which an enemy compels you to know. to begin with, 'tis the foe and not the friend that taught cities to build high walls, to equip long vessels of war; and 'tis this knowledge that protects our children, our slaves and our wealth. chorus. well then, i agree, let us first hear them, for 'tis best; one can even learn something in an enemy's school. pisthetaerus. their wrath seems to cool. draw back a little. epops. 'tis only justice, and you will thank me later. chorus. never have we opposed your advice up to now. pisthetaerus. they are in a more peaceful mood; put down your stew-pot and your two dishes; spit in hand, doing duty for a spear, let us mount guard inside the camp close to the pot and watch in our arsenal closely; for we must not fly. euelpides. you are right. but where shall we be buried, if we die? pisthetaerus. in the ceramicus;[ ] for, to get a public funeral, we shall tell the strategi that we fell at orneae,[ ] fighting the country's foes. chorus. return to your ranks and lay down your courage beside your wrath as the hoplites do. then let us ask these men who they are, whence they come, and with what intent. here, epops, answer me. epops. are you calling me? what do you want of me? chorus. who are they? from what country? epops. strangers, who have come from greece, the land of the wise. chorus. and what fate has led them hither to the land of the birds? epops. their love for you and their wish to share your kind of life; to dwell and remain with you always. chorus. indeed, and what are their plans? epops. they are wonderful, incredible, unheard of. chorus. why, do they think to see some advantage that determines them to settle here? are they hoping with our help to triumph over their foes or to be useful to their friends? epops. they speak of benefits so great it is impossible either to describe or conceive them; all shall be yours, all that we see here, there, above and below us; this they vouch for. chorus. are they mad? epops. they are the sanest people in the world. chorus. clever men? epops. the slyest of foxes, cleverness its very self, men of the world, cunning, the cream of knowing folk. chorus. tell them to speak and speak quickly; why, as i listen to you, i am beside myself with delight. epops. here, you there, take all these weapons and hang them up inside close to the fire, near the figure of the god who presides there and under his protection;[ ] as for you, address the birds, tell them why i have gathered them together. pisthetaerus. not i, by apollo, unless they agree with me as the little ape of an armourer agreed with his wife, not to bite me, nor pull me by the testicles, nor shove things up my.... chorus. you mean the.... (_puts finger to bottom._) oh! be quite at ease. pisthetaerus. no, i mean my eyes. chorus. agreed. pisthetaerus. swear it. chorus. i swear it and, if i keep my promise, let judges and spectators give me the victory unanimously. pisthetaerus. it is a bargain. chorus. and if i break my word, may i succeed by one vote only. herald. hearken, ye people! hoplites, pick up your weapons and return to your firesides; do not fail to read the decrees of dismissal we have posted. chorus. man is a truly cunning creature, but nevertheless explain. perhaps you are going to show me some good way to extend my power, some way that i have not had the wit to find out and which you have discovered. speak! 'tis to your own interest as well as to mine, for if you secure me some advantage, i will surely share it with you. but what object can have induced you to come among us? speak boldly, for i shall not break the truce,--until you have told us all. pisthetaerus. i am bursting with desire to speak; i have already mixed the dough of my address and nothing prevents me from kneading it.... slave! bring the chaplet and water, which you must pour over my hands. be quick![ ] euelpides. is it a question of feasting? what does it all mean? pisthetaerus. by zeus, no! but i am hunting for fine, tasty words to break down the hardness of their hearts.--i grieve so much for you, who at one time were kings.... chorus. we kings! over whom? pisthetaerus. ... of all that exists, firstly of me and of this man, even of zeus himself. your race is older than saturn, the titans and the earth. chorus. what, older than the earth! pisthetaerus. by phoebus, yes. chorus. by zeus, but i never knew that before! pisthetaerus. 'tis because you are ignorant and heedless, and have never read your aesop. 'tis he who tells us that the lark was born before all other creatures, indeed before the earth; his father died of sickness, but the earth did not exist then; he remained unburied for five days, when the bird in its dilemma decided, for want of a better place, to entomb its father in its own head. euelpides. so that the lark's father is buried at cephalae.[ ] epops. hence, if we existed before the earth, before the gods, the kingship belongs to us by right of priority. euelpides. undoubtedly, but sharpen your beak well; zeus won't be in a hurry to hand over his sceptre to the woodpecker. pisthetaerus. it was not the gods, but the birds, who were formerly the masters and kings over men; of this i have a thousand proofs. first of all, i will point you to the cock, who governed the persians before all other monarchs, before darius and megabyzus.[ ] 'tis in memory of his reign that he is called the persian bird. euelpides. for this reason also, even to-day, he alone of all the birds wears his tiara straight on his head, like the great king.[ ] pisthetaerus. he was so strong, so great, so feared, that even now, on account of his ancient power, everyone jumps out of bed as soon as ever he crows at daybreak. blacksmiths, potters, tanners, shoemakers, bathmen, corn-dealers, lyre-makers and armourers, all put on their shoes and go to work before it is daylight. euelpides. i can tell you something anent that. 'twas the cock's fault that i lost a splendid tunic of phrygian wool. i was at a feast in town, given to celebrate the birth of a child; i had drunk pretty freely and had just fallen asleep, when a cock, i suppose in a greater hurry than the rest, began to crow. i thought it was dawn and set out for alimos.[ ] i had hardly got beyond the walls, when a footpad struck me in the back with his bludgeon; down i went and wanted to shout, but he had already made off with my mantle. pisthetaerus. formerly also the kite was ruler and king over the greeks. epops. the greeks? pisthetaerus. and when he was king, 'twas he who first taught them to fall on their knees before the kites.[ ] euelpides. by zeus! 'tis what i did myself one day on seeing a kite; but at the moment i was on my knees, and leaning backwards[ ] with mouth agape, i bolted an obolus and was forced to carry my bag home empty.[ ] pisthetaerus. the cuckoo was king of egypt and of the whole of phoenicia. when he called out "cuckoo," all the phoenicians hurried to the fields to reap their wheat and their barley.[ ] euelpides. hence no doubt the proverb, "cuckoo! cuckoo! go to the fields, ye circumcised."[ ] pisthetaerus. so powerful were the birds, that the kings of grecian cities, agamemnon, menelaus, for instance, carried a bird on the tip of their sceptres, who had his share of all presents.[ ] euelpides. that i didn't know and was much astonished when i saw priam come upon the stage in the tragedies with a bird, which kept watching lysicrates[ ] to see if he got any present. pisthetaerus. but the strongest proof of all is, that zeus, who now reigns, is represented as standing with an eagle on his head as a symbol of his royalty;[ ] his daughter has an owl, and phoebus, as his servant, has a hawk. euelpides. by demeter, 'tis well spoken. but what are all these birds doing in heaven? pisthetaerus. when anyone sacrifices and, according to the rite, offers the entrails to the gods, these birds take their share before zeus. formerly the men always swore by birds and never by the gods; even now lampon[ ] swears by the goose, when he wants to lie.... thus 'tis clear that you were great and sacred, but now you are looked upon as slaves, as fools, as helots; stones are thrown at you as at raving madmen, even in holy places. a crowd of bird-catchers sets snares, traps, limed-twigs and nets of all sorts for you; you are caught, you are sold in heaps and the buyers finger you over to be certain you are fat. again, if they would but serve you up simply roasted; but they rasp cheese into a mixture of oil, vinegar and laserwort, to which another sweet and greasy sauce is added, and the whole is poured scalding hot over your back, for all the world as if you were diseased meat. chorus. man, your words have made my heart bleed; i have groaned over the treachery of our fathers, who knew not how to transmit to us the high rank they held from their forefathers. but 'tis a benevolent genius, a happy fate, that sends you to us; you shall be our deliverer and i place the destiny of my little ones and my own in your hands with every confidence. but hasten to tell me what must be done; we should not be worthy to live, if we did not seek to regain our royalty by every possible means, pisthetaerus. first i advise that the birds gather together in one city and that they build a wall of great bricks, like that at babylon, round the plains of the air and the whole region of space that divides earth from heaven. epops. oh, cebriones! oh, porphyrion![ ] what a terribly strong place! pisthetaerus. this, this being well done and completed, you demand back the empire from zeus; if he will not agree, if he refuses and does not at once confess himself beaten, you declare a sacred war against him and forbid the gods henceforward to pass through your country with standing organ, as hitherto, for the purpose of fondling their alcmenas, their alopés, or their semelés;[ ] if they try to pass through, you infibulate them with rings so that they can fuck no longer. you send another messenger to mankind, who will proclaim to them that the birds are kings, that for the future they must first of all sacrifice to them, and only afterwards to the gods; that it is fitting to appoint to each deity the bird that has most in common with it. for instance, are they sacrificing to aphrodité, let them at the same time offer barley to the coot;[ ] are they immolating a sheep to posidon, let them consecrate wheat in honour of the duck;[ ] is a steer being offered to heracles, let honey-cakes be dedicated to the gull;[ ] is a goat being slain for king zeus, there is a king-bird, the wren,[ ] to whom the sacrifice of a male gnat is due before zeus himself even. euelpides. this notion of an immolated gnat delights me! and now let the great zeus thunder! epops. but how will mankind recognize us as gods and not as jays? us, who have wings and fly? pisthetaerus. you talk rubbish! hermes is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. first of all, victory flies with golden wings, eros is undoubtedly winged too, and iris is compared by homer to a timorous dove.[ ] if men in their blindness do not recognize you as gods and continue to worship the dwellers in olympus, then a cloud of sparrows greedy for corn must descend upon their fields and eat up all their seeds; we shall see then if demeter will mete them out any wheat. euelpides. by zeus, she'll take good care she does not, and you will see her inventing a thousand excuses. pisthetaerus. the crows too will prove your divinity to them by pecking out the eyes of their flocks and of their draught-oxen; and then let apollo cure them, since he is a physician and is paid for the purpose.[ ] euelpides. oh! don't do that! wait first until i have sold my two young bullocks. pisthetaerus. if on the other hand they recognize that you are god, the principle of life, that you are earth, saturn, posidon, they shall be loaded with benefits. epops name me one of these then. pisthetaerus. firstly, the locusts shall not eat up their vine-blossoms; a legion of owls and kestrels will devour them. moreover, the gnats and the gall-bugs shall no longer ravage the figs; a flock of thrushes shall swallow the whole host down to the very last. epops. and how shall we give wealth to mankind? this is their strongest passion. pisthetaerus. when they consult the omens, you will point them to the richest mines, you will reveal the paying ventures to the diviner, and not another shipwreck will happen or sailor perish. epops. no more shall perish? how is that? pisthetaerus. when the auguries are examined before starting on a voyage, some bird will not fail to say, "don't start! there will be a storm," or else, "go! you will make a most profitable venture." euelpides. i shall buy a trading-vessel and go to sea. i will not stay with you. pisthetaerus. you will discover treasures to them, which were buried in former times, for you know them. do not all men say, "none know where my treasure lies, unless perchance it be some bird."[ ] euelpides. i shall sell my boat and buy a spade to unearth the vessels. epops. and how are we to give them health, which belongs to the gods? pisthetaerus. if they are happy, is not that the chief thing towards health? the miserable man is never well. epops. old age also dwells in olympus. how will they get at it? must they die in early youth? pisthetaerus. why, the birds, by zeus, will add three hundred years to their life. epops. from whom will they take them? pisthetaerus. from whom? why, from themselves. don't you know the cawing crow lives five times as long as a man? euelpides. ah! ah! these are far better kings for us than zeus! pisthetaerus. far better, are they not? and firstly, we shall not have to build them temples of hewn stone, closed with gates of gold; they will dwell amongst the bushes and in the thickets of green oak; the most venerated of birds will have no other temple than the foliage of the olive tree; we shall not go to delphi or to ammon to sacrifice;[ ] but standing erect in the midst of arbutus and wild olives and holding forth our hands filled with wheat and barley, we shall pray them to admit us to a share of the blessings they enjoy and shall at once obtain them for a few grains of wheat. chorus. old man, whom i detested, you are now to me the dearest of all; never shall i, if i can help it, fail to follow your advice. inspirited by your words, i threaten my rivals the gods, and i swear that if you march in alliance with me against the gods and are faithful to our just, loyal and sacred bond, we shall soon have shattered their sceptre. 'tis our part to undertake the toil, 'tis yours to advise. epops. by zeus! 'tis no longer the time to delay and loiter like nicias;[ ] let us act as promptly as possible.... in the first place, come, enter my nest built of brushwood and blades of straw, and tell me your names. pisthetaerus. that is soon done; my name is pisthetaerus. epops. and his? pisthetaerus. euelpides, of the deme of thria. epops. good! and good luck to you. pisthetaerus. we accept the omen. epops. come in here. pisthetaerus. very well, 'tis you who lead us and must introduce us. epops. come then. pisthetaerus. oh! my god! do come back here. hi! tell us how we are to follow you. you can fly, but we cannot. epops. well, well. pisthetaerus. remember aesop's fables. it is told there, that the fox fared very ill, because he had made an alliance with the eagle. epops. be at ease. you shall eat a certain root and wings will grow on your shoulders. pisthetaerus. then let us enter. xanthias and manes,[ ] pick up our baggage. chorus. hi! epops! do you hear me? epops. what's the matter? chorus. take them off to dine well and call your mate, the melodious procné, whose songs are worthy of the muses; she will delight our leisure moments. pisthetaerus. oh! i conjure you, accede to their wish; for this delightful bird will leave her rushes at the sound of your voice; for the sake of the gods, let her come here, so that we may contemplate the nightingale.[ ] epops. let it be as you desire. come forth, procné, show yourself to these strangers. pisthetaerus. oh! great zeus! what a beautiful little bird! what a dainty form! what brilliant plumage![ ] euelpides. do you know how dearly i should like to split her legs for her? pisthetaerus. she is dazzling all over with gold, like a young girl.[ ] euelpides. oh! how i should like to kiss her! pisthetaerus. why, wretched man, she has two little sharp points on her beak. euelpides. i would treat her like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; i would take off her mask and then kiss her pretty face. epops. let us go in. pisthetaerus. lead the way, and may success attend us. chorus. lovable golden bird, whom i cherish above all others, you, whom i associate with all my songs, nightingale, you have come, you have come, to show yourself to me and to charm me with your notes. come, you, who play spring melodies upon the harmonious flute,[ ] lead off our anapaests.[ ] weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream, hearken to us, who are immortal beings, ethereal, ever young and occupied with eternal thoughts, for we shall teach you about all celestial matters; you shall know thoroughly what is the nature of the birds, what the origin of the gods, of the rivers, of erebus, and chaos; thanks to us, prodicus[ ] will envy you your knowledge. at the beginning there was only chaos, night, dark erebus, and deep tartarus. earth, the air and heaven had no existence. firstly, black-winged night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. he mated in deep tartarus with dark chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light. that of the immortals did not exist until eros had brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage heaven, ocean, earth and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being. thus our origin is very much older than that of the dwellers in olympus. we are the offspring of eros; there are a thousand proofs to show it. we have wings and we lend assistance to lovers. how many handsome youths, who had sworn to remain insensible, have not been vanquished by our power and have yielded themselves to their lovers when almost at the end of their youth, being led away by the gift of a quail, a waterfowl, a goose, or a cock.[ ] and what important services do not the birds render to mortals! first of all, they mark the seasons for them, springtime, winter, and autumn. does the screaming crane migrate to libya,--it warns the husbandman to sow, the pilot to take his ease beside his tiller hung up in his dwelling,[ ] and orestes[ ] to weave a tunic, so that the rigorous cold may not drive him any more to strip other folk. when the kite reappears, he tells of the return of spring and of the period when the fleece of the sheep must be clipped. is the swallow in sight? all hasten to sell their warm tunic and to buy some light clothing. we are your ammon, delphi, dodona, your phoebus apollo.[ ] before undertaking anything, whether a business transaction, a marriage, or the purchase of food, you consult the birds by reading the omens, and you give this name of omen[ ] to all signs that tell of the future. with you a word is an omen, you call a sneeze an omen, a meeting an omen, an unknown sound an omen, a slave or an ass an omen.[ ] is it not clear that we are a prophetic apollo to you? if you recognize us as gods, we shall be your divining muses, through us you will know the winds and the seasons, summer, winter, and the temperate months. we shall not withdraw ourselves to the highest clouds like zeus, but shall be among you and shall give to you and to your children and the children of your children, health and wealth, long life, peace, youth, laughter, songs and feasts; in short, you will all be so well off, that you will be weary and satiated with enjoyment. oh, rustic muse of such varied note, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, i sing with you in the groves and on the mountain tops, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx.[ ] i pour forth sacred strains from my golden throat in honour of the god pan,[ ] tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, from the top of the thickly leaved ash, and my voice mingles with the mighty choirs who extol cybelé on the mountain tops,[ ] tototototototototinx. 'tis to our concerts that phrynicus comes to pillage like a bee the ambrosia of his songs, the sweetness of which so charms the ear, tio, tio, tio, tio, tinx. if there be one of you spectators who wishes to spend the rest of his life quietly among the birds, let him come to us. all that is disgraceful and forbidden by law on earth is on the contrary honourable among us, the birds. for instance, among you 'tis a crime to beat your father, but with us 'tis an estimable deed; it's considered fine to run straight at your father and hit him, saying, "come, lift your spur if you want to fight."[ ] the runaway slave, whom you brand, is only a spotted francolin with us.[ ] are you phrygian like spintharus?[ ] among us you would be the phrygian bird, the goldfinch, of the race of philemon.[ ] are you a slave and a carian like execestides? among us you can create yourself forefathers;[ ] you can always find relations. does the son of pisias want to betray the gates of the city to the foe? let him become a partridge, the fitting offspring of his father; among us there is no shame in escaping as cleverly as a partridge. so the swans on the banks of the hebrus, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, mingle their voices to serenade apollo, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, flapping their wings the while, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx; their notes reach beyond the clouds of heaven; all the dwellers in the forests stand still with astonishment and delight; a calm rests upon the waters, and the graces and the choirs in olympus catch up the strain, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx. there is nothing more useful nor more pleasant than to have wings. to begin with, just let us suppose a spectator to be dying with hunger and to be weary of the choruses of the tragic poets; if he were winged, he would fly off, go home to dine and come back with his stomach filled. some patroclides in urgent need would not have to soil his cloak, but could fly off, satisfy his requirements, and, having recovered his breath, return. if one of you, it matters not who, had adulterous relations and saw the husband of his mistress in the seats of the senators, he might stretch his wings, fly thither, and, having appeased his craving, resume his place. is it not the most priceless gift of all, to be winged? look at diitrephes![ ] his wings were only wicker-work ones, and yet he got himself chosen phylarch and then hipparch; from being nobody, he has risen to be famous; 'tis now the finest gilded cock of his tribe.[ ] pisthetaerus. halloa! what's this? by zeus! i never saw anything so funny in all my life.[ ] euelpides. what makes you laugh? pisthetaerus. 'tis your bits of wings. d'you know what you look like? like a goose painted by some dauber-fellow. euelpides. and you look like a close-shaven blackbird. pisthetaerus. 'tis ourselves asked for this transformation, and, as aeschylus has it, "these are no borrowed feathers, but truly our own."[ ] epops. come now, what must be done? pisthetaerus. first give our city a great and famous name, then sacrifice to the gods. euelpides. i think so too. epops. let's see. what shall our city be called? pisthetaerus. will you have a high-sounding laconian name? shall we call it sparta? euelpides. what! call my town sparta? why, i would not use esparto for my bed,[ ] even though i had nothing but bands of rushes. pisthetaerus. well then, what name can you suggest? euelpides. some name borrowed from the clouds, from these lofty regions in which we dwell--in short, some well-known name. pisthetaerus. do you like nephelococcygia?[ ] epops. oh! capital! truly 'tis a brilliant thought! euelpides. is it in nephelococcygia that all the wealth of theogenes[ ] and most of aeschines'[ ] is? pisthetaerus. no, 'tis rather the plain of phlegra,[ ] where the gods withered the pride of the sons of the earth with their shafts. euelpides. oh! what a splendid city! but what god shall be its patron? for whom shall we weave the peplus?[ ] pisthetaerus. why not choose athené polias?[ ] euelpides. oh! what a well-ordered town 'twould be to have a female deity armed from head to foot, while clisthenes[ ] was spinning! pisthetaerus. who then shall guard the pelargicon?[ ] epops. one of ourselves, a bird of persian strain, who is everywhere proclaimed to be the bravest of all, a true chick of ares.[ ] euelpides. oh! noble chick! what a well-chosen god for a rocky home! pisthetaerus. come! into the air with you to help the workers, who are building the wall; carry up rubble, strip yourself to mix the mortar, take up the hod, tumble down the ladder, an you like, post sentinels, keep the fire smouldering beneath the ashes, go round the walls, bell in hand,[ ] and go to sleep up there yourself; then despatch two heralds, one to the gods above, the other to mankind on earth and come back here. euelpides. as for yourself, remain here, and may the plague take you for a troublesome fellow! pisthetaerus. go, friend, go where i send you, for without you my orders cannot be obeyed. for myself, i want to sacrifice to the new god, and i am going to summon the priest who must preside at the ceremony. slaves! slaves! bring forward the basket and the lustral water. chorus. i do as you do, and i wish as you wish, and i implore you to address powerful and solemn prayers to the gods, and in addition to immolate a sheep as a token of our gratitude. let us sing the pythian chant in honour of the god, and let chaeris accompany our voices. pisthetaerus (_to the flute-player_). enough! but, by heracles! what is this? great gods! i have seen many prodigious things, but i never saw a muzzled raven.[ ] epops. priest! 'tis high time! sacrifice to the new gods. priest. i begin, but where is he with the basket? pray to the vesta of the birds, to the kite, who presides over the hearth, and to all the god and goddess-birds who dwell in olympus. chorus. oh! hawk, the sacred guardian of sunium, oh, god of the storks! priest. pray to the swan of delos, to latona the mother of the quails, and to artemis, the goldfinch. pisthetaerus. 'tis no longer artemis colaenis, but artemis the goldfinch.[ ] priest. and to bacchus, the finch and cybelé, the ostrich and mother of the gods and mankind. chorus. oh! sovereign ostrich, cybelé, the mother of cleocritus,[ ] grant health and safety to the nephelococcygians as well as to the dwellers in chios.... pisthetaerus. the dwellers in chios! ah! i am delighted they should be thus mentioned on all occasions.[ ] chorus. ... to the heroes, the birds, to the sons of heroes, to the porphyrion, the pelican, the spoon-bill, the redbreast, the grouse, the peacock, the horned-owl, the teal, the bittern, the heron, the stormy petrel, the fig-pecker, the titmouse.... pisthetaerus. stop! stop! you drive me crazy with your endless list. why, wretch, to what sacred feast are you inviting the vultures and the sea-eagles? don't you see that a single kite could easily carry off the lot at once? begone, you and your fillets and all; i shall know how to complete the sacrifice by myself. priest. it is imperative that i sing another sacred chant for the rite of the lustral water, and that i invoke the immortals, or at least one of them, provided always that you have some suitable food to offer him; from what i see here, in the shape of gifts, there is naught whatever but horn and hair. pisthetaerus. let us address our sacrifices and our prayers to the winged gods. a poet. oh, muse! celebrate happy nephelococcygia in your hymns. pisthetaerus. what have we here? where do you come from, tell me? who are you? poet. i am he whose language is sweeter than honey, the zealous slave of the muses, as homer has it. pisthetaerus. you a slave! and yet you wear your hair long? poet. no, but the fact is all we poets are the assiduous slaves of the muses according to homer. pisthetaerus. in truth your little cloak is quite holy too through zeal! but, poet, what ill wind drove you here? poet. i have composed verses in honour of your nephelococcygia, a host of splendid dithyrambs and parthenians,[ ] worthy of simonides himself. pisthetaerus. and when did you compose them? how long since? poet. oh! 'tis long, aye, very long, that i have sung in honour of this city. pisthetaerus. but i am only celebrating its foundation with this sacrifice;[ ] i have only just named it, as is done with little babies. poet. "just as the chargers fly with the speed of the wind, so does the voice of the muses take its flight. oh! thou noble founder of the town of aetna,[ ] thou, whose name recalls the holy sacrifices,[ ] make us such gift as thy generous heart shall suggest." pisthetaerus. he will drive us silly if we do not get rid of him by some present. here! you, who have a fur as well as your tunic, take it off and give it to this clever poet. come, take this fur; you look to me to be shivering with cold. poet. my muse will gladly accept this gift; but engrave these verses of pindar's on your mind. pisthetaerus. oh! what a pest! 'tis impossible then to be rid of him. poet. "straton wanders among the scythian nomads, but has no linen garment. he is sad at only wearing an animal's pelt and no tunic." do you conceive my bent? pisthetaerus. i understand that you want me to offer you a tunic. hi! you (_to euelpides_), take off yours; we must help the poet.... come, you, take it and begone. poet. i am going, and these are the verses that i address to this city: "phoebus of the golden throne, celebrate this shivery, freezing city; i have travelled through fruitful and snow-covered plains. tralala! tralala!"[ ] pisthetaerus. what are you chanting us about frosts? thanks to the tunic, you no longer fear them. ah! by zeus! i could not have believed this cursed fellow could so soon have learnt the way to our city. come, priest, take the lustral water and circle the altar. priest. let all keep silence! a prophet. let not the goat be sacrificed.[ ] pisthetaerus. who are you? prophet. who am i? a prophet. pisthetaerus. get you gone. prophet. wretched man, insult not sacred things. for there is an oracle of bacis, which exactly applies to nephelococcygia. pisthetaerus. why did you not reveal it to me before i founded my city? prophet. the divine spirit was against it. pisthetaerus. well, 'tis best to know the terms of the oracle. prophet. "but when the wolves and the white crows shall dwell together between corinth and sicyon...."[ ] pisthetaerus. but how do the corinthians concern me? prophet. 'tis the regions of the air that bacis indicated in this manner. "they must first sacrifice a white-fleeced goat to pandora, and give the prophet, who first reveals my words, a good cloak and new sandals." pisthetaerus. are the sandals there? prophet. read. "and besides this a goblet of wine and a good share of the entrails of the victim." pisthetaerus. of the entrails--is it so written? prophet. read. "if you do as i command, divine youth, you shall be an eagle among the clouds; if not, you shall be neither turtle-dove, nor eagle, nor woodpecker." pisthetaerus. is all that there? prophet. read. pisthetaerus. this oracle in no sort of way resembles the one apollo dictated to me: "if an impostor comes without invitation to annoy you during the sacrifice and to demand a share of the victim, apply a stout stick to his ribs." prophet. you are drivelling. pisthetaerus. "and don't spare him, were he an eagle from out of the clouds, were it lampon himself[ ] or the great diopithes."[ ] prophet. is all that there? pisthetaerus. here, read it yourself, and go and hang yourself. prophet. oh! unfortunate wretch that i am. pisthetaerus. away with you, and take your prophecies elsewhere. meton.[ ] i have come to you. pisthetaerus. yet another pest. what have you come to do? what's your plan? what's the purpose of your journey? why these splendid buskins? meton. i want to survey the plains of the air for you and to parcel them into lots. pisthetaerus. in the name of the gods, who are you? meton. who am i? meton, known throughout greece and at colonus.[ ] pisthetaerus. what are these things? meton. tools for measuring the air. in truth, the spaces in the air have precisely the form of a furnace. with this bent ruler i draw a line from top to bottom; from one of its points i describe a circle with the compass. do you understand? pisthetaerus. not the very least. meton. with the straight ruler i set to work to inscribe a square within this circle; in its centre will be the marketplace, into which all the straight streets will lead, converging to this centre like a star, which, although only orbicular, sends forth its rays in a straight line from all sides. pisthetaerus. meton, you new thales....[ ] meton. what d'you want with me? pisthetaerus. i want to give you a proof of my friendship. use your legs. meton. why, what have i to fear? pisthetaerus. 'tis the same here as in sparta. strangers are driven away, and blows rain down as thick as hail. meton. is there sedition in your city? pisthetaerus. no, certainly not. meton. what's wrong then? pisthetaerus. we are agreed to sweep all quacks and impostors far from our borders. meton. then i'm off. pisthetaerus. i fear me 'tis too late. the thunder growls already. (_beats him._) meton. oh, woe! oh, woe! pisthetaerus. i warned you. now, be off, and do your surveying somewhere else. (_meton takes to his heels._) an inspector. where are the proxeni?[ ] pisthetaerus. who is this sardanapalus?[ ] inspector. i have been appointed by lot to come to nephelococcygia as inspector.[ ] pisthetaerus. an inspector! and who sends you here, you rascal? inspector. a decree of taleas.[ ] pisthetaerus. will you just pocket your salary, do nothing, and be off? inspector. i' faith! that i will; i am urgently needed to be at athens to attend the assembly; for i am charged with the interests of pharnaces.[ ] pisthetaerus. take it then, and be off. see, here is your salary. (_beats him._) inspector. what does this mean? pisthetaerus. 'tis the assembly where you have to defend pharnaces. inspector. you shall testify that they dare to strike me, the inspector. pisthetaerus. are you not going to clear out with your urns. 'tis not to be believed; they send us inspectors before we have so much as paid sacrifice to the gods. a dealer in decrees. "if the nephelococcygian does wrong to the athenian...." pisthetaerus. now whatever are these cursed parchments? dealer in decrees. i am a dealer in decrees, and i have come here to sell you the new laws. pisthetaerus. which? dealer in decrees. "the nephelococcygians shall adopt the same weights, measures and decrees as the olophyxians."[ ] pisthetaerus. and you shall soon be imitating the ototyxians. (_beats him._) dealer in decrees. hullo! what are you doing? pisthetaerus. now will you be off with your decrees? for i am going to let _you_ see some severe ones. inspector (_returning_). i summon pisthetaerus for outrage for the month of munychion.[ ] pisthetaerus. ha! my friend! are you still there? dealer in decrees. "should anyone drive away the magistrates and not receive them, according to the decree duly posted..." pisthetaerus. what! rascal! you are there too? inspector. woe to you! i'll have you condemned to a fine of ten thousand drachmae. pisthetaerus. and i'll smash your urns.[ ] inspector. do you recall that evening when you stooled against the column where the decrees are posted? pisthetaerus. here! here! let him be seized. (_the inspectors run off._) well! don't you want to stop any longer? priest. let us get indoors as quick as possible; we will sacrifice the goat inside.[ ] chorus. henceforth it is to me that mortals must address their sacrifices and their prayers. nothing escapes my sight nor my might. my glance embraces the universe, i preserve the fruit in the flower by destroying the thousand kinds of voracious insects the soil produces, which attack the trees and feed on the germ when it has scarcely formed in the calyx; i destroy those who ravage the balmy terrace gardens like a deadly plague; all these gnawing crawling creatures perish beneath the lash of my wing. i hear it proclaimed everywhere: "a talent for him who shall kill diagoras of melos,[ ] and a talent for him who destroys one of the dead tyrants."[ ] we likewise wish to make our proclamation: "a talent to him among you who shall kill philocrates, the strouthian;[ ] four, if he brings him to us alive. for this philocrates skewers the finches together and sells them at the rate of an obolus for seven. he tortures the thrushes by blowing them out, so that they may look bigger, sticks their own feathers into the nostrils of blackbirds, and collects pigeons, which he shuts up and forces them, fastened in a net, to decoy others." that is what we wish to proclaim. and if anyone is keeping birds shut up in his yard, let him hasten to let them loose; those who disobey shall be seized by the birds and we shall put them in chains, so that in their turn they may decoy other men. happy indeed is the race of winged birds who need no cloak in winter! neither do i fear the relentless rays of the fiery dog-days; when the divine grasshopper, intoxicated with the sunlight, when noon is burning the ground, is breaking out into shrill melody, my home is beneath the foliage in the flowery meadows. i winter in deep caverns, where i frolic with the mountain nymphs, while in spring i despoil the gardens of the graces and gather the white, virgin berry on the myrtle bushes. i want now to speak to the judges about the prize they are going to award; if they are favourable to us, we will load them with benefits far greater than those paris[ ] received. firstly, the owls of laurium,[ ] which every judge desires above all things, shall never be wanting to you; you shall see them homing with you, building their nests in your money-bags and laying coins. besides, you shall be housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables[ ] over your dwellings; if you hold some public post and want to do a little pilfering, we will give you the sharp claws of a hawk. are you dining in town, we will provide you with crops.[ ] but, if your award is against us, don't fail to have metal covers fashioned for yourselves, like those they place over statues;[ ] else, look out! for the day you wear a white tunic all the birds will soil it with their droppings. pisthetaerus. birds! the sacrifice is propitious. but i see no messenger coming from the wall to tell us what is happening. ah! here comes one running himself out of breath as though he were running the olympic stadium. messenger. where, where is he? where, where, where is he? where, where, where is he? where is pisthetaerus, our leader? pisthetaerus. here am i. messenger. the wall is finished. pisthetaerus. that's good news. messenger. 'tis a most beautiful, a most magnificent work of art. the wall is so broad, that proxenides, the braggartian, and theogenes could pass each other in their chariots, even if they were drawn by steeds as big as the trojan horse. pisthetaerus. 'tis wonderful! messenger. its length is one hundred stadia; i measured it myself. pisthetaerus. a decent length, by posidon! and who built such a wall? messenger. birds--birds only; they had neither egyptian brickmaker, nor stonemason, nor carpenter; the birds did it all themselves, i could hardly believe my eyes. thirty thousand cranes came from libya with a supply of stones,[ ] intended for the foundations. the water-rails chiselled them with their beaks. ten thousand storks were busy making bricks; plovers and other water fowl carried water into the air. pisthetaerus. and who carried the mortar? messenger. herons, in hods. pisthetaerus. but how could they put the mortar into hods? messenger. oh! 'twas a truly clever invention; the geese used their feet like spades; they buried them in the pile of mortar and then emptied them into the hods. pisthetaerus. ah! to what use cannot feet be put?[ ] messenger. you should have seen how eagerly the ducks carried bricks. to complete the tale, the swallows came flying to the work, their beaks full of mortar and their trowel on their back, just the way little children are carried. pisthetaerus. who would want paid servants after this? but, tell me, who did the woodwork? messenger. birds again, and clever carpenters too, the pelicans, for they squared up the gates with their beaks in such a fashion that one would have thought they were using axes; the noise was just like a dockyard. now the whole wall is tight everywhere, securely bolted and well guarded; it is patrolled, bell in hand; the sentinels stand everywhere and beacons burn on the towers. but i must run off to clean myself; the rest is your business. chorus. well! what do you say to it? are you not astonished at the wall being completed so quickly? pisthetaerus. by the gods, yes, and with good reason. 'tis really not to be believed. but here comes another messenger from the wall to bring us some further news! what a fighting look he has! second messenger. oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! pisthetaerus. what's the matter? second messenger. a horrible outrage has occurred; a god sent by zeus has passed through our gates and has penetrated the realms of the air without the knowledge of the jays, who are on guard in the daytime. pisthetaerus. tis an unworthy and criminal deed. what god was it? second messenger. we don't know that. all we know is, that he has got wings. pisthetaerus. why were not guards sent against him at once? second messenger. we have despatched thirty thousand hawks of the legion of mounted archers.[ ] all the hook-clawed birds are moving against him, the kestrel, the buzzard, the vulture, the great-horned owl; they cleave the air, so that it resounds with the flapping of their wings; they are looking everywhere for the god, who cannot be far away; indeed, if i mistake not, he is coming from yonder side. pisthetaerus. all arm themselves with slings and bows! this way, all our soldiers; shoot and strike! some one give me a sling! chorus. war, a terrible war is breaking out between us and the gods! come, let each one guard the air, the son of erebus,[ ] in which the clouds float. take care no immortal enters it without your knowledge. scan all sides with your glance. hark! methinks i can hear the rustle of the swift wings of a god from heaven. pisthetaerus. hi! you woman! where are you flying to? halt, don't stir! keep motionless! not a beat of your wing!--who are you and from what country? you must say whence you come.[ ] iris. i come from the abode of the olympian gods. pisthetaerus. what's your name, ship or cap?[ ] iris. i am swift iris. pisthetaerus. paralus or salaminia?[ ] iris. what do you mean? pisthetaerus. let a buzzard rush at her and seize her.[ ] iris. seize me! but what do all these insults betoken? pisthetaerus. woe to you! iris. 'tis incomprehensible. pisthetaerus. by which gate did you pass through the wall, wretched woman? iris. by which gate? why, great gods, i don't know. pisthetaerus. you hear how she holds us in derision. did you present yourself to the officers in command of the jays? you don't answer. have you a permit, bearing the seal of the storks? iris. am i awake? pisthetaerus. did you get one? iris. are you mad? pisthetaerus. no head-bird gave you a safe-conduct? iris. a safe-conduct to me, you poor fool! pisthetaerus. ah! and so you slipped into this city on the sly and into these realms of air-land that don't belong to you. iris. and what other road can the gods travel? pisthetaerus. by zeus! i know nothing about that, not i. but they won't pass this way. and you still dare to complain! iris would ever have more justly suffered death. iris. i am immortal. pisthetaerus. you would have died nevertheless.--oh! 'twould be truly intolerable! what! should the universe obey us and the gods alone continue their insolence and not understand that they must submit to the law of the strongest in their due turn? but tell me, where are you flying to? iris. i? the messenger of zeus to mankind, i am going to tell them to sacrifice sheep and oxen on the altars and to fill their streets with the rich smoke of burning fat. pisthetaerus. of which gods are you speaking? iris. of which? why, of ourselves, the gods of heaven. pisthetaerus. you, gods? iris. are there others then? pisthetaerus. men now adore the birds as gods, and 'tis to them, by zeus, that they must offer sacrifices, and not to zeus at all! iris. oh! fool! fool! rouse not the wrath of the gods, for 'tis terrible indeed. armed with the brand of zeus, justice would annihilate your race; the lightning would strike you as it did lycimnius and consume both your body and the porticos of your palace.[ ] pisthetaerus. here! that's enough tall talk. just you listen and keep quiet! do you take me for a lydian or a phrygian[ ] and think to frighten me with your big words? know, that if zeus worries me again, i shall go at the head of my eagles, who are armed with lightning, and reduce his dwelling and that of amphion to cinders.[ ] i shall send more than six hundred porphyrions clothed in leopards' skins[ ] up to heaven against him; and formerly a single porphyrion gave him enough to do. as for you, his messenger, if you annoy me, i shall begin by stretching your legs asunder and so conduct myself, iris though you be, that despite my age, you will be astonished. i will show you a fine long tool that will fuck you three times over. iris. may you perish, you wretch, you and your infamous words! pisthetaerus. won't you be off quickly? come, stretch your wings or look out for squalls! iris. if my father does not punish you for your insults.... pisthetaerus. ha!... but just you be off elsewhere to roast younger folk than us with your lightning. chorus. we forbid the gods, the sons of zeus, to pass through our city and the mortals to send them the smoke of their sacrifices by this road. pisthetaerus. 'tis odd that the messenger we sent to the mortals has never returned. herald. oh! blessed pisthetaerus, very wise, very illustrious, very gracious, thrice happy, very.... come, prompt me, somebody, do. pisthetaerus. get to your story! herald. all peoples are filled with admiration for your wisdom, and they award you this golden crown. pisthetaerus. i accept it. but tell me, why do the people admire me? herald. oh you, who have founded so illustrious a city in the air, you know not in what esteem men hold you and how many there are who burn with desire to dwell in it. before your city was built, all men had a mania for sparta; long hair and fasting were held in honour, men went dirty like socrates and carried staves. now all is changed. firstly, as soon as 'tis dawn, they all spring out of bed together to go and seek their food, the same as you do; then they fly off towards the notices and finally devour the decrees. the bird-madness is so clear, that many actually bear the names of birds. there is a halting victualler, who styles himself the partridge; menippus calls himself the swallow; opontius the one-eyed crow; philocles the lark; theogenes the fox-goose; lycurgus the ibis; chaerephon the bat; syracosius the magpie; midias the quail;[ ] indeed he looks like a quail that has been hit heavily over the head. out of love for the birds they repeat all the songs which concern the swallow, the teal, the goose or the pigeon; in each verse you see wings, or at all events a few feathers. this is what is happening down there. finally, there are more than ten thousand folk who are coming here from earth to ask you for feathers and hooked claws; so, mind you supply yourself with wings for the immigrants. pisthetaerus. ah! by zeus, 'tis not the time for idling. go as quick as possible and fill every hamper, every basket you can find with wings. manes[ ] will bring them to me outside the walls, where i will welcome those who present themselves. chorus. this town will soon be inhabited by a crowd of men. pisthetaerus. if fortune favours us. chorus. folk are more and more delighted with it. pisthetaerus. come, hurry up and bring them along. chorus. will not man find here everything that can please him--wisdom, love, the divine graces, the sweet face of gentle peace? pisthetaerus. oh! you lazy servant! won't you hurry yourself? chorus. let a basket of wings be brought speedily. come, beat him as i do, and put some life into him; he is as lazy as an ass. pisthetaerus. aye, manes is a great craven. chorus. begin by putting this heap of wings in order; divide them in three parts according to the birds from whom they came; the singing, the prophetic[ ] and the aquatic birds; then you must take care to distribute them to the men according to their character. pisthetaerus (_to manes_). oh! by the kestrels! i can keep my hands off you no longer; you are too slow and lazy altogether. a parricide.[ ] oh! might i but become an eagle, who soars in the skies! oh! might i fly above the azure waves of the barren sea![ ] pisthetaerus. ha! 'twould seem the news was true; i hear someone coming who talks of wings. parricide. nothing is more charming than to fly; i burn with desire to live under the same laws as the birds; i am bird-mad and fly towards you, for i want to live with you and to obey your laws. pisthetaerus. which laws? the birds have many laws. parricide. all of them; but the one that pleases me most is, that among the birds it is considered a fine thing to peck and strangle one's father. pisthetaerus. aye, by zeus! according to us, he who dares to strike his father, while still a chick, is a brave fellow. parricide. and therefore i want to dwell here, for i want to strangle my father and inherit his wealth. pisthetaerus. but we have also an ancient law written in the code of the storks, which runs thus, "when the stork father has reared his young and has taught them to fly, the young must in their turn support the father." parricide. 'tis hardly worth while coming all this distance to be compelled to keep my father! pisthetaerus. no, no, young friend, since you have come to us with such willingness, i am going to give you these black wings, as though you were an orphan bird; furthermore, some good advice, that i received myself in infancy. don't strike your father, but take these wings in one hand and these spurs in the other; imagine you have a cock's crest on your head and go and mount guard and fight; live on your pay and respect your father's life. you're a gallant fellow! very well, then! fly to thrace and fight.[ ] parricide. by bacchus! 'tis well spoken; i will follow your counsel. pisthetaerus. 'tis acting wisely, by zeus. cinesias.[ ] "on my light pinions i soar off to olympus; in its capricious flight my muse flutters along the thousand paths of poetry in turn ..." pisthetaerus. this is a fellow will need a whole shipload of wings. cinesias. ... it is seeking fresh outlet." pisthetaerus. welcome, cinesias, you lime-wood man![ ] why have you come here a-twisting your game leg in circles? cinesias. "i want to become a bird, a tuneful nightingale." pisthetaerus. enough of that sort of ditty. tell me what you want. cinesias. give me wings and i will fly into the topmost airs to gather fresh songs in the clouds, in the midst of the vapours and the fleecy snow. pisthetaerus. gather songs in the clouds? cinesias. 'tis on them the whole of our latter-day art depends. the most brilliant dithyrambs are those that flap their wings in void space and are clothed in mist and dense obscurity. to appreciate this, just listen. pisthetaerus. oh! no, no, no! cinesias. by hermes! but indeed you shall. "i shall travel through thine ethereal empire like a winged bird, who cleaveth space with his long neck...." pisthetaerus. stop! easy all, i say![ ] cinesias. ... as i soar over the seas, carried by the breath of the winds ... pisthetaerus. by zeus! but i'll cut your breath short. cinesias. ... now rushing along the tracks of notus, now nearing boreas across the infinite wastes of the ether." (_pisthetaerus beats him._) ah! old man, that's a pretty and clever idea truly! pisthetaerus. what! are you not delighted to be cleaving the air?[ ] cinesias. to treat a dithyrambic poet, for whom the tribes dispute with each other, in this style![ ] pisthetaerus. will you stay with us and form a chorus of winged birds as slender as leotrophides[ ] for the cecropid tribe? cinesias. you are making game of me, 'tis clear; but know that i shall never leave you in peace if i do not have wings wherewith to traverse the air. an informer. what are these birds with downy feathers, who look so pitiable to me? tell me, oh swallow with the long dappled wings.[ ] pisthetaerus. oh! but 'tis a perfect invasion that threatens us. here comes another of them, humming along. informer. swallow with the long dappled wings, once more i summon you. pisthetaerus. it's his cloak i believe he's addressing; 'faith, it stands in great need of the swallows' return.[ ] informer. where is he who gives out wings to all comers? pisthetaerus. 'tis i, but you must tell me for what purpose you want them. informer. ask no questions. i want wings, and wings i must have. pisthetaerus. do you want to fly straight to pellené?[ ] informer. i? why, i am an accuser of the islands,[ ] an informer ... pisthetaerus. a fine trade, truly! informer. ... a hatcher of lawsuits. hence i have great need of wings to prowl round the cities and drag them before justice. pisthetaerus. would you do this better if you had wings? informer. no, but i should no longer fear the pirates; i should return with the cranes, loaded with a supply of lawsuits by way of ballast. pisthetaerus. so it seems, despite all your youthful vigour, you make it your trade to denounce strangers? informer. well, and why not? i don't know how to dig. pisthetaerus. but, by zeus! there are honest ways of gaining a living at your age without all this infamous trickery. informer. my friend, i am asking you for wings, not for words. pisthetaerus. 'tis just my words that give you wings. informer. and how can you give a man wings with your words? pisthetaerus. 'tis thus that all first start. informer. all? pisthetaerus. have you not often heard the father say to young men in the barbers' shops, "it's astonishing how diitrephes' advice has made my son fly to horse-riding."--"mine," says another, "has flown towards tragic poetry on the wings of his imagination." informer. so that words give wings? pisthetaerus. undoubtedly; words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven. thus i hope that my wise words will give you wings to fly to some less degrading trade. informer. but i do not want to. pisthetaerus. what do you reckon on doing then? informer. i won't belie my breeding; from generation to generation we have lived by informing. quick, therefore, give me quickly some light, swift hawk or kestrel wings, so that i may summon the islanders, sustain the accusation here, and haste back there again on flying pinions. pisthetaerus. i see. in this way the stranger will be condemned even before he appears. informer. that's just it. pisthetaerus. and while he is on his way here by sea, you will be flying to the islands to despoil him of his property. informer. you've hit it, precisely; i must whirl hither and thither like a perfect humming-top. pisthetaerus. i catch the idea. wait, i' faith, i've got some fine corcyraean wings.[ ] how do you like them? informer. oh! woe is me! why, 'tis a whip! pisthetaerus. no, no; these are the wings, i tell you, that set the top a-spinning. informer. oh! oh! oh! pisthetaerus. take your flight, clear off, you miserable cur, or you will soon see what comes of quibbling and lying. come, let us gather up our wings and withdraw. chorus. in my ethereal nights i have seen many things new and strange and wondrous beyond belief. there is a tree called cleonymus belonging to an unknown species; it has no heart, is good for nothing and is as tall as it is cowardly. in springtime it shoots forth calumnies instead of buds and in autumn it strews the ground with bucklers in place of leaves.[ ] far away in the regions of darkness, where no ray of light ever enters, there is a country, where men sit at the table of the heroes and dwell with them always--save always in the evening. should any mortal meet the hero orestes at night, he would soon be stripped and covered with blows from head to foot.[ ] prometheus. ah! by the gods! if only zeus does not espy me! where is pisthetaerus? pisthetaerus. ha! what is this? a masked man! prometheus. can you see any god behind me? pisthetaerus. no, none. but who are you, pray? prometheus. what's the time, please? pisthetaerus. the time? why, it's past noon. who are you? prometheus. is it the fall of day? is it no later than that?[ ] pisthetaerus. oh! 'pon my word! but you grow tiresome! prometheus. what is zeus doing? is he dispersing the clouds or gathering them?[ ] pisthetaerus. take care, lest i lose all patience. prometheus. come, i will raise my mask. pisthetaerus. ah! my dear prometheus! prometheus. stop! stop! speak lower! pisthetaerus. why, what's the matter, prometheus? prometheus. h'sh, h'sh! don't call me by my name; you will be my ruin, if zeus should see me here. but, if you want me to tell you how things are going in heaven, take this umbrella and shield me, so that the gods don't see me. pisthetaerus. i can recognize prometheus in this cunning trick. come, quick then, and fear nothing; speak on. prometheus. then listen. pisthetaerus. i am listening, proceed! prometheus. it's all over with zeus. pisthetaerus. ah! and since when, pray? prometheus. since you founded this city in the air. there is not a man who now sacrifices to the gods; the smoke of the victims no longer reaches us. not the smallest offering comes! we fast as though it were the festival of demeter.[ ] the barbarian gods, who are dying of hunger, are bawling like illyrians[ ] and threaten to make an armed descent upon zeus, if he does not open markets where joints of the victims are sold. pisthetaerus. what! there are other gods besides you, barbarian gods who dwell above olympus? prometheus. if there were no barbarian gods, who would be the patron of execestides?[ ] pisthetaerus. and what is the name of these gods? prometheus. their name? why, the triballi.[ ] pisthetaerus. ah, indeed! 'tis from that no doubt that we derive the word 'tribulation.'[ ] prometheus. most likely. but one thing i can tell you for certain, namely, that zeus and the celestial triballi are going to send deputies here to sue for peace. now don't you treat, unless zeus restores the sceptre to the birds and gives you basileia[ ] in marriage. pisthetaerus. who is this basileia? prometheus. a very fine young damsel, who makes the lightning for zeus; all things come from her, wisdom, good laws, virtue, the fleet, calumnies, the public paymaster and the triobolus. pisthetaerus. ah! then she is a sort of general manageress to the god. prometheus. yes, precisely. if he gives you her for your wife, yours will be the almighty power. that is what i have come to tell you; for you know my constant and habitual goodwill towards men. pisthetaerus. oh, yes! 'tis thanks to you that we roast our meat.[ ] prometheus. i hate the gods, as you know. pisthetaerus. aye, by zeus, you have always detested them. prometheus. towards them i am a veritable timon;[ ] but i must return in all haste, so give me the umbrella; if zeus should see me from up there, he would think i was escorting one of the canephori.[ ] pisthetaerus. wait, take this stool as well. chorus. near by the land of the sciapodes[ ] there is a marsh, from the borders whereof the odious socrates evokes the souls of men. pisander[ ] came one day to see his soul, which he had left there when still alive. he offered a little victim, a camel,[ ] slit his throat and, following the example of ulysses, stepped one pace backwards.[ ] then that bat of a chaerephon[ ] came up from hell to drink the camel's blood. posidon.[ ] this is the city of nephelococcygia, cloud-cuckoo-town, whither we come as ambassadors. (_to triballus_.) hi! what are you up to? you are throwing your cloak over the left shoulder. come, fling it quick over the right! and why, pray, does it draggle this fashion? have you ulcers to hide like laespodias?[ ] oh! democracy![ ] whither, oh! whither are you leading us? is it possible that the gods have chosen such an envoy? triballus. leave me alone. posidon. ugh! the cursed savage! you are by far the most barbarous of all the gods.--tell me, heracles, what are we going to do? heracles. i have already told you that i want to strangle the fellow who has dared to block us in. posidon. but, my friend, we are envoys of peace. heracles. all the more reason why i wish to strangle him. pisthetaerus. hand me the cheese-grater; bring me the silphium for sauce; pass me the cheese and watch the coals.[ ] heracles. mortal! we who greet you are three gods. pisthetaerus. wait a bit till i have prepared my silphium pickle. heracles. what are these meats?[ ] pisthetaerus. these are birds that have been punished with death for attacking the people's friends. heracles. and you are seasoning them before answering us? pisthetaerus. ah! heracles! welcome, welcome! what's the matter?[ ] heracles. the gods have sent us here as ambassadors to treat for peace. a servant. there's no more oil in the flask. pisthetaerus. and yet the birds must be thoroughly basted with it.[ ] heracles. we have no interest to serve in fighting you; as for you, be friends and we promise that you shall always have rain-water in your pools and the warmest of warm weather. so far as these points go we are armed with plenary authority. pisthetaerus. we have never been the aggressors, and even now we are as well disposed for peace as yourselves, provided you agree to one equitable condition, namely, that zeus yield his sceptre to the birds. if only this is agreed to, i invite the ambassadors to dinner. heracles. that's good enough for me. i vote for peace. posidon. you wretch! you are nothing but a fool and a glutton. do you want to dethrone your own father? pisthetaerus. what an error! why, the gods will be much more powerful if the birds govern the earth. at present the mortals are hidden beneath the clouds, escape your observation, and commit perjury in your name; but if you had the birds for your allies, and a man, after having sworn by the crow and zeus, should fail to keep his oath, the crow would dive down upon him unawares and pluck out his eye. posidon. well thought of, by posidon![ ] heracles. my notion too. pisthetaerus. (_to the triballian_). and you, what's your opinion? triballus. nabaisatreu.[ ] pisthetaerus. d'you see? he also approves. but hear another thing in which we can serve you. if a man vows to offer a sacrifice to some god and then procrastinates, pretending that the gods can wait, and thus does not keep his word, we shall punish his stinginess. posidon. ah! ah! and how? pisthetaerus. while he is counting his money or is in the bath, a kite will relieve him, before he knows it, either in coin or in clothes, of the value of a couple of sheep, and carry it to the god. heracles. i vote for restoring them the sceptre. posidon. ask the triballian. heracles. hi! triballian, do you want a thrashing? triballus. saunaka baktarikrousa.[ ] heracles. he says, "right willingly." posidon. if that be the opinion of both of you, why, i consent too. heracles. very well! we accord the sceptre. pisthetaerus. ah! i was nearly forgetting another condition. i will leave heré to zeus, but only if the young basileia is given me in marriage. posidon. then you don't want peace. let us withdraw. pisthetaerus. it matters mighty little to me. cook, look to the gravy. heracles. what an odd fellow this posidon is! where are you off to? are we going to war about a woman? posidon. what else is there to do? heracles. what else? why, conclude peace. posidon. oh! the ninny! do you always want to be fooled? why, you are seeking your own downfall. if zeus were to die, after having yielded them the sovereignty, you would be ruined, for you are the heir of all the wealth he will leave behind. pisthetaerus. oh! by the gods! how he is cajoling you. step aside, that i may have a word with you. your uncle is getting the better of you, my poor friend.[ ] the law will not allow you an obolus of the paternal property, for you are a bastard and not a legitimate child. heracles. i a bastard! what's that you tell me? pisthetaerus. why, certainly; are you not born of a stranger woman?[ ] besides, is not athené recognized as zeus' sole heiress? and no daughter would be that, if she had a legitimate brother. heracles. but what if my father wished to give me his property on his death-bed, even though i be a bastard? pisthetaerus. the law forbids it, and this same posidon would be the first to lay claim to his wealth, in virtue of being his legitimate brother. listen; thus runs solon's law: "a bastard shall not inherit, if there are legitimate children; and if there are no legitimate children, the property shall pass to the nearest kin." heracles. and i get nothing whatever of the paternal property? pisthetaerus. absolutely nothing. but tell me, has your father had you entered on the registers of his phratria?[ ] heracles. no, and i have long been surprised at the omission. pisthetaerus. what ails you, that you should shake your fist at heaven? do you want to fight it? why, be on my side, i will make you a king and will feed you on bird's milk and honey. heracles. your further condition seems fair to me. i cede you the young damsel. posidon. but i, i vote against this opinion. pisthetaerus. then all depends on the triballian. (_to the triballian._) what do you say? triballus. big bird give daughter pretty and queen. heracles. you say that you give her? posidon. why no, he does not say anything of the sort, that he gives her; else i cannot understand any better than the swallows. pisthetaerus. exactly so. does he not say she must be given to the swallows? posidon. very well! you two arrange the matter; make peace, since you wish it so; i'll hold my tongue. heracles. we are of a mind to grant you all that you ask. but come up there with us to receive basileia and the celestial bounty. pisthetaerus. here are birds already cut up, and very suitable for a nuptial feast. heracles. you go and, if you like, i will stay here to roast them. pisthetaerus. you to roast them! you are too much the glutton; come along with us. heracles. ah! how well i would have treated myself! pisthetaerus. let some bring me a beautiful and magnificent tunic for the wedding. chorus.[ ] at phanae,[ ] near the clepsydra,[ ] there dwells a people who have neither faith nor law, the englottogastors,[ ] who reap, sow, pluck the vines and the figs[ ] with their tongues; they belong to a barbaric race, and among them the philippi and the gorgiases[ ] are to be found; 'tis these englottogastorian phillippi who introduced the custom all over attica of cutting out the tongue separately at sacrifices.[ ] a messenger. oh, you, whose unbounded happiness i cannot express in words, thrice happy race of airy birds, receive your king in your fortunate dwellings. more brilliant than the brightest star that illumes the earth, he is approaching his glittering golden palace; the sun itself does not shine with more dazzling glory. he is entering with his bride at his side[ ] whose beauty no human tongue can express; in his hand he brandishes the lightning, the winged shaft of zeus; perfumes of unspeakable sweetness pervade the ethereal realms. 'tis a glorious spectacle to see the clouds of incense wafting in light whirlwinds before the breath of the zephyr! but here he is himself. divine muse! let thy sacred lips begin with songs of happy omen. chorus. fall back! to the right! to the left! advance![ ] fly around this happy mortal, whom fortune loads with her blessings. oh! oh! what grace! what beauty! oh, marriage so auspicious for our city! all honour to this man! 'tis through him that the birds are called to such glorious destinies. let your nuptial hymns, your nuptial songs, greet him and his basileia! 'twas in the midst of such festivities that the fates formerly united olympian here to the king who governs the gods from the summit of his inaccessible throne. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! rosy eros with the golden wings held the reins and guided the chariot; 'twas he, who presided over the union of zeus and the fortunate heré. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! pisthetaerus. i am delighted with your songs, i applaud your verses. now celebrate the thunder that shakes the earth, the flaming lightning of zeus and the terrible flashing thunderbolt. chorus. oh, thou golden flash of the lightning! oh, ye divine shafts of flame, that zeus has hitherto shot forth! oh, ye rolling thunders, that bring down the rain! 'tis by the order of our king that ye shall now stagger the earth! oh, hymen! 'tis through thee that he commands the universe and that he makes basileia, whom he has robbed from zeus, take her seat at his side. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! pisthetaerus. let all the winged tribes of our fellow-citizens follow the bridal couple to the palace of zeus[ ] and to the nuptial couch! stretch forth your hands, my dear wife! take hold of me by my wings and let us dance; i am going to lift you up and carry you through the air. chorus. oh, joy! io paean! tralala! victory is thine, oh, thou greatest of the gods! * * * * * finis of "the birds" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] euelpides is holding a jay and pisthetaerus a crow; they are the guides who are to lead them to the kingdom of the birds. [ ] a stranger, who wanted to pass as an athenian, although coming originally from a far-away barbarian country. [ ] a king of thrace, a son of ares, who married procné, the daughter of pandion, king of athens, whom he had assisted against the megarians. he violated his sister-in-law, philomela, and then cut out her tongue; she nevertheless managed to convey to her sister how she had been treated. they both agreed to kill itys, whom procné had born to tereus, and dished up the limbs of his own son to the father; at the end of the meal philomela appeared and threw the child's head upon the table. tereus rushed with drawn sword upon the princesses, but all the actors in this terrible scene were metamorphised. tereus became an epops (hoopoe), procné a swallow, philomela a nightingale, and itys a goldfinch. according to anacreon and apollodorus it was procné who became the nightingale and philomela the swallow, and this is the version of the tradition followed by aristophanes. [ ] an athenian who had some resemblance to a jay--so says the scholiast, at any rate. [ ] literally, _to go to the crows_, a proverbial expression equivalent to our _going to the devil_. [ ] they leave athens because of their hatred of lawsuits and informers; this is the especial failing of the athenians satirized in 'the wasps.' [ ] myrtle boughs were used in sacrifices, and the founding of every colony was started by a sacrifice. [ ] the actors wore masks made to resemble the birds they were supposed to represent. [ ] fear had had disastrous effects upon euelpides' internal economy, this his feet evidenced. [ ] the same mishap had occurred to pisthetaerus. [ ] the greek word for a wren, [greek: trochilos], is derived from the same root as [greek: trechein], to run. [ ] no doubt there was some scenery to represent a forest. besides, there is a pun intended. the words answering for _forest_ and _door_ ([greek: hul_e and thura]) in greek only differ slightly in sound. [ ] sophocles had written a tragedy about tereus, in which, no doubt, the king finally appears as a hoopoe. [ ] a [greek: para prosdokian]; one would expect the question to be "bird or man."--are you a peacock? the hoopoe resembles the peacock inasmuch as both have crests. [ ] athens. [ ] the athenians were madly addicted to lawsuits. (_vide_ 'the wasps.') [ ] as much as to say, _then you have such things as anti-dicasts?_ and euelpides practically replies, _very few_. [ ] his name was aristocrates; he was a general and commanded a fleet sent in aid of corcyra. [ ] the state galley, which carried the officials of the athenian republic to their several departments and brought back those whose time had expired; it was this galley that was sent to sicily to fetch back alcibiades, who was accused of sacrilege. [ ] a tragic poet, who was a leper; there is a play, of course, on the lepreum. [ ] an allusion to opuntius, who was one-eyed. [ ] the newly-married ate a sesame cake, decorated with garlands of myrtle, poppies, and mint. [ ] from [greek: polein], to turn. [ ] the greek words for _pole_ and _city_ ([greek: polos] and [greek: polis]) only differ by a single letter. [ ] boeotia separated attica from phocis. [ ] he swears by the powers that are to him dreadful. [ ] as already stated, according to the legend, accepted by aristophanes, it was procné who was turned into the nightingale. [ ] the son of tereus and procné. [ ] an african bird, that comes to the southern countries of europe, to greece, italy, and spain; it is even seen in provence. [ ] aristophanes amusingly mixes up real birds with people and individuals, whom he represents in the form of birds; he is personifying the medians here. [ ] philocles, a tragic poet, had written a tragedy on tereus, which was simply a plagiarism of the play of the same name by sophocles. philocles is the son of epops, because he got his inspiration from sophocles' tereus, and at the same time is father to epops, since he himself produced another tereus. [ ] this hipponicus is probably the orator whose ears alcibiades boxed to gain a bet; he was a descendant of callias, who was famous for his hatred of pisistratus. [ ] this callias, who must not be confounded with the foe of pisistratus, had ruined himself. [ ] cleonymus had cast away his shield; he was as great a glutton as he was a coward. [ ] a race in which the track had to be circled twice. [ ] a people of asia minor; when pursued by the ionians they took refuge in the mountains. [ ] an athenian barber. [ ] the owl was dedicated to athené, and being respected at athens, it had greatly multiplied. hence the proverb, _taking owls to athens_, similar to our english _taking coals to newcastle_. [ ] an allusion to the feast of pots; it was kept at athens on the third day of the anthesteria, when all sorts of vegetables were stewed together and offered for the dead to bacchus and athené. this feast was peculiar to athens.--hence pisthetaerus thinks that the owl will recognize they are athenians by seeing the stew-pots, and as he is an athenian bird, he will not attack them. [ ] nicias, the famous athenian general.--the siege of melos in b.c., or two years previous to the production of 'the birds,' had especially done him great credit. he was joint commander of the sicilian expedition. [ ] procné, the daughter of pandion, king of athens. [ ] a space beyond the walls of athens which contained the gardens of the academy and the graves of citizens who had died for their country. [ ] a town in western argolis, where the athenians had been recently defeated. the somewhat similar word in greek, [greek: ornithes], signifies _birds_. [ ] epops is addressing the two slaves, no doubt xanthias and manes, who are mentioned later on. [ ] it was customary, when speaking in public and also at feasts, to wear a chaplet; hence the question euelpides puts. the guests wore chaplets of flowers, herbs, and leaves, which had the property of being refreshing. [ ] a deme of attica. in greek the word ([greek: kephalai]) also means _heads_, and hence the pun. [ ] one of darius' best generals. after his expedition against the scythians, this prince gave him the command of the army which he left in europe. megabyzus took perinthos (afterwards called heraclea) and conquered thrace. [ ] all persians wore the tiara, but always on one side; the great king alone wore it straight on his head. [ ] noted as the birthplace of thucydides, a deme of attica of the tribe of leontis. demosthenes tells us it was thirty-five stadia from athens. [ ] the appearance of the kite in greece betokened the return of springtime; it was therefore worshipped as a symbol of that season. [ ] to look at the kite, who no doubt was flying high in the sky. [ ] as already shown, the athenians were addicted to carrying small coins in their mouths.--this obolus was for the purpose of buying flour to fill the bag he was carrying. [ ] in phoenicia and egypt the cuckoo makes its appearance about harvest-time. [ ] this was an egyptian proverb, meaning, _when the cuckoo sings we go harvesting_. both the phoenicians and the egyptians practised circumcision. [ ] the staff, called a sceptre, generally terminated in a piece of carved work, representing a flower, a fruit, and most often a bird. [ ] a general accused of treachery. the bird watches lysicrates, because, according to pisthetaerus, he had a right to a share of the presents. [ ] it is thus that phidias represents his olympian zeus. [ ] one of the diviners sent to sybaris (in magna graecia, s. italy) with the athenian colonists, who rebuilt the town under the new name of thurium. [ ] as if he were saying, "oh, gods!" like lampon, he swears by the birds, instead of swearing by the gods.--the names of these birds are those of two of the titans. [ ] alcmena, wife of amphitryon, king of thebes and mother of heracles.--semelé, the daughter of cadmus and hermioné and mother of bacchus; both seduced by zeus.--alopé, daughter of cercyon, a robber, who reigned at eleusis and was conquered by perseus. alopé was honoured with posidon's caresses; by him she had a son named hippothous, at first brought up by shepherds but who afterwards was restored to the throne of his grandfather by theseus. [ ] because the bald patch on the coot's head resembles the shaven and depilated 'motte.' [ ] because water is the duck's domain, as it is that of posidon. [ ] because the gull, like heracles, is voracious. [ ] the germans still call it _zaunkönig_ and the french _roitelet_, both names thus containing the idea of _king_. [ ] the scholiast draws our attention to the fact that homer says this of heré and not of iris (iliad, v. ); it is only another proof that the text of homer has reached us in a corrupted form, or it may be that aristophanes was liable, like other people, to occasional mistakes of quotation. [ ] in sacrifices. [ ] an athenian proverb. [ ] a celebrated temple to zeus in an oasis of libya. [ ] nicias was commander, along with demosthenes, and later on alcibiades, of the athenian forces before syracuse, in the ill-fated sicilian expedition, - b.c. he was much blamed for dilatoriness and indecision. [ ] servants of pisthetaerus and euelpides. [ ] it has already been mentioned that, according to the legend followed by aristophanes, procné had been changed into a nightingale and philomela into a swallow. [ ] the actor, representing procné, was dressed out as a courtesan, but wore the mask of a bird. [ ] young unmarried girls wore golden ornaments; the apparel of married women was much simpler. [ ] the actor, representing procné, was a flute-player. [ ] the parabasis. [ ] a sophist of the island of ceos, a disciple of protagoras, as celebrated for his knowledge as for his eloquence. the athenians condemned him to death as a corrupter of youth in b.c. [ ] lovers were wont to make each other presents of birds. the cock and the goose are mentioned, of course, in jest. [ ] i.e. that it gave notice of the approach of winter, during which season the ancients did not venture to sea. [ ] a notorious robber. [ ] meaning, "_we are your oracles._"--dodona was an oracle in epirus.--the temple of zeus there was surrounded by a dense forest, all the trees of which were endowed with the gift of prophecy; both the sacred oaks and the pigeons that lived in them answered the questions of those who came to consult the oracle in pure greek. [ ] the greek word for _omen_ is the same as that for _bird_--[greek: ornis]. [ ] a satire on the passion of the greeks for seeing an omen in everything. [ ] an imitation of the nightingale's song. [ ] god of the groves and wilds. [ ] the 'mother of the gods'; roaming the mountains, she held dances, always attended by pan and his accompanying rout of fauns and satyrs. [ ] an allusion to cock-fighting; the birds are armed with brazen spurs. [ ] an allusion to the spots on this bird, which resemble the scars left by a branding iron. [ ] he was of asiatic origin, but wished to pass for an athenian. [ ] or philamnon, king of thrace; the scholiast remarks that the phrygians and the thracians had a common origin. [ ] the greek word here, [greek: pappos], is also the name of a little bird. [ ] a basket-maker who had become rich.--the phylarchs were the headmen of the tribes, [greek: phulai]. they presided at the private assemblies and were charged with the management of the treasury.--the hipparchs, as the name implies, were the leaders of the cavalry; there were only two of these in the athenian army. [ ] he had now become a senator, member of the [greek: boul_e]. [ ] pisthetaerus and euelpides now both return with wings. [ ] meaning, 'tis we who wanted to have these wings.--the verse from aeschylus, quoted here, is taken from 'the myrmidons,' a tragedy of which only a few fragments remain. [ ] the greek word signified the city of sparta, and also a kind of broom used for weaving rough matting, which served for the beds of the very poor. [ ] a fanciful name constructed from [greek: nephel_e], a cloud, and [greek: kokkux], a cuckoo; thus a city of clouds and cuckoos.--_wolkenkukelheim_[*] is a clever approximation in german. cloud-cuckoo-town, perhaps, is the best english equivalent. [* transcriber's note: so in original. the correct german word is _wolkenkuckucksheim_.] [ ] he was a boaster nicknamed [greek: kapnos], _smoke_, because he promised a great deal and never kept his word. [ ] also mentioned in 'the wasps.' [ ] because the war of the titans against the gods was only a fiction of the poets. [ ] a sacred cloth, with which the statue of athené in the acropolis was draped. [ ] meaning, to be patron-goddess of the city. athené had a temple of this name. [ ] an athenian effeminate, frequently ridiculed by aristophanes. [ ] this was the name of the wall surrounding the acropolis. [ ] i.e. the fighting-cock. [ ] to waken the sentinels, who might else have fallen asleep.--there are several merry contradictions in the various parts of this list of injunctions. [ ] in allusion to the leather strap which flute-players wore to constrict the cheeks and add to the power of the breath. the performer here no doubt wore a raven's mask. [ ] hellanicus, the mitylenian historian, tells that this surname of artemis is derived from colaenus, king of athens before cecrops and a descendant of hermes. in obedience to an oracle he erected a temple to the goddess, invoking her as artemis colaenis (the artemis of colaenus). [ ] this cleocritus, says the scholiast, was long-necked and strutted like an ostrich. [ ] the chians were the most faithful allies of athens, and hence their name was always mentioned in prayers, decrees, etc. [ ] verses sung by maidens. [ ] this ceremony took place on the tenth day after birth, and may be styled the pagan baptism. [ ] hiero, tyrant of syracuse.--this passage is borrowed from pindar. [ ] [greek: hierón] in greek means sacrifice. [ ] a parody of poetic pathos, not to say bathos. [ ] which the priest was preparing to sacrifice. [ ] orneae, a city in argolis ([greek: ornis] in greek means a bird). it was because of this similarity in sound that the prophet alludes to orneae. [ ] noted athenian diviner, who, when the power was still shared between thucydides and pericles, predicted that it would soon be centred in the hands of the latter; his ground for this prophecy was the sight of a ram with a single horn. [ ] no doubt another athenian diviner, and possibly the same person whom aristophanes names in 'the knights' and 'the wasps' as being a thief. [ ] a celebrated geometrician and astronomer. [ ] a deme contiguous to athens. it is as though he said, "well known throughout all england and at croydon." [ ] thales was no less famous as a geometrician than he was as a sage. [ ] officers of athens, whose duty was to protect strangers who came on political or other business, and see to their interests generally. [ ] he addresses the inspector thus because of the royal and magnificent manners he assumes. [ ] magistrates appointed to inspect the tributary towns. [ ] a much-despised citizen, already mentioned. he ironically supposes him invested with the powers of an archon, which ordinarily were entrusted only to men of good repute. [ ] a persian satrap.--an allusion to certain orators, who, bribed with asiatic gold, had often defended the interests of the foe in the public assembly. [ ] a macedonian people in the peninsula of chalcidicé. this name is chosen because of its similarity to the greek word [greek: olophuresthai], _to groan_. it is from another verb, [greek: ototuzein], meaning the same thing, that pisthetaerus coins the name of ototyxians, i.e. groaners, because he is about to beat the dealer.--the mother-country had the right to impose any law it chose upon its colonies. [ ] corresponding to our month of april. [ ] which the inspector had brought with him for the purpose of inaugurating the assemblies of the people or some tribunal. [ ] so that the sacrifices might no longer be interrupted. [ ] a disciple of democrites; he passed over from superstition to atheism. the injustice and perversity of mankind led him to deny the existence of the gods, to lay bare the mysteries and to break the idols. the athenians had put a price on his head, so he left greece and perished soon afterwards in a storm at sea. [ ] by this jest aristophanes means to imply that tyranny is dead, and that no one aspires to despotic power, though this silly accusation was constantly being raised by the demagogues and always favourably received by the populace. [ ] a poulterer.--strouthian, used in joke to designate him, as if from the name of his 'deme,' is derived from [greek: strouthos], _a sparrow_. the birds' foe is thus grotesquely furnished with an ornithological surname. [ ] from aphrodité (venus), to whom he had awarded the apple, prize of beauty, in the contest of the "goddesses three." [ ] laurium was an athenian deme at the extremity of the attic peninsula containing valuable silver mines, the revenues of which were largely employed in the maintenance of the fleet and payment of the crews. the "owls of laurium," of course, mean pieces of money; the athenian coinage was stamped with a representation of an owl, the bird of athené. [ ] a pun impossible to keep in english, on the two meanings of the word [greek: aetos], which signifies both an eagle and the gable of a house or pediment of a temple. [ ] that is, birds' crops, into which they could stow away plenty of good things. [ ] the ancients appear to have placed metal discs over statues standing in the open air, to save them from injury from the weather, etc. [ ] so as not to be carried away by the wind when crossing the sea, cranes are popularly supposed to ballast themselves with stones, which they carry in their beaks. [ ] pisthetaerus modifies the greek proverbial saying, "to what use cannot hands be put?" [ ] a corps of athenian cavalry was so named. [ ] chaos, night, tartarus, and erebus alone existed in the beginning; eros was born from night and erebus, and he wedded chaos and begot earth, air, and heaven; so runs the fable. [ ] iris appears from the top of the stage and arrests her flight in mid-career. [ ] ship, because of her wings, which resemble oars; cap, because she no doubt wore the head-dress (as a messenger of the gods) with which hermes is generally depicted. [ ] the names of the two sacred galleys which carried athenian officials on state business. [ ] a buzzard is named in order to raise a laugh, the greek name [greek: triorchos] also meaning, etymologically, provided with three testicles, vigorous in love. [ ] iris' reply is a parody of the tragic style.--'lycimnius' is, according to the scholiast, the title of a tragedy by euripides, which is about a ship that is struck by lightning. [ ] i.e. for a poltroon, like the slaves, most of whom came to athens from these countries. [ ] a parody of a passage in the lost tragedy of 'niobe' of aeschylus. [ ] because this bird has a spotted plumage.--porphyrion is also the name of one of the titans who tried to storm heaven. [ ] all these surnames bore some relation to the character or the build of the individual to whom the poet applies them.--chaerephon, socrates' disciple, was of white and ashen hue.--opontius was one-eyed.--syracosius was a braggart.--midias had a passion for quail-fights, and, besides, resembled that bird physically. [ ] pisthetaerus' servant, already mentioned. [ ] from the inspection of which auguries were taken, e.g. the eagles, the vultures, the crows. [ ] or rather, a young man who contemplated parricide. [ ] a parody of verses in sophocles' 'oenomaus.' [ ] the athenians were then besieging amphipolis in the thracian chalcidicé. [ ] there was a real cinesias--a dithyrambic poet, born at thebes. [ ] the scholiast thinks that cinesias, who was tall and slight of build, wore a kind of corset of lime-wood to support his waist--surely rather a far-fetched interpretation! [ ] the greek word used here was the word of command employed to stop the rowers. [ ] cinesias makes a bound each time that pisthetaerus struck him. [ ] the tribes of athens, or rather the rich citizens belonging to them, were wont on feast-days to give representations of dithyrambic choruses as well as of tragedies and comedies. [ ] another dithyrambic poet, a man of extreme leanness. [ ] a parody of a hemistich from 'alcaeus.'--the informer is dissatisfied at only seeing birds of sombre plumage and poor appearance. he would have preferred to denounce the rich. [ ] the informer, says the scholiast, was clothed with a ragged cloak, the tatters of which hung down like wings, in fact, a cloak that could not protect him from the cold and must have made him long for the swallows' return, i.e. the spring. [ ] a town in achaia, where woollen cloaks were made. [ ] his trade was to accuse the rich citizens of the subject islands, and drag them before the athenian courts; he explains later the special advantages of this branch of the informer's business. [ ] that is, whips--corcyra being famous for these articles. [ ] cleonymus is a standing butt of aristophanes' wit, both as an informer and a notorious poltroon. [ ] in allusion to the cave of the bandit orestes; the poet terms him a hero only because of his heroic name orestes. [ ] prometheus wants night to come and so reduce the risk of being seen from olympus. [ ] the clouds would prevent zeus seeing what was happening below him. [ ] the third day of the festival of demeter was a fast. [ ] a semi-savage people, addicted to violence and brigandage. [ ] who, being reputed a stranger despite his pretension to the title of a citizen, could only have a strange god for his patron or tutelary deity. [ ] the triballi were a thracian people; it was a term commonly used in athens to describe coarse men, obscene debauchees and greedy parasites. [ ] there is a similar pun in the greek. [ ] i.e. the _supremacy_ of greece, the real object of the war. [ ] prometheus had stolen the fire from the gods to gratify mankind. [ ] a celebrated misanthrope, contemporary to aristophanes. hating the society of men, he had only a single friend, apimantus, to whom he was attached, because of their similarity of character; he also liked alcibiades, because he foresaw that this young man would be the ruin of his country. [ ] the canephori were young maidens, chosen from the first families of the city, who carried baskets wreathed with myrtle at the feast of athené, while at those of bacchus and demeter they appeared with gilded baskets.--the daughters of 'metics,' or resident aliens, walked behind them, carrying an umbrella and a stool. [ ] according to ctesias, the sciapodes were a people who dwelt on the borders of the atlantic. their feet were larger than the rest of their bodies, and to shield themselves from the sun's rays they held up one of their feet as an umbrella.--by giving the socratic philosophers the name of sciapodes here ([greek: _podes_], feet, and [greek: _skia_], shadow) aristophanes wishes to convey that they are walking in the dark and busying themselves with the greatest nonsense. [ ] this pisander was a notorious coward; for this reason the poet jestingly supposes that he had lost his soul, the seat of courage. [ ] a [greek: para prosdokian], considering the shape and height of the camel, which can certainly not be included in the list of _small_ victims, e.g. the sheep and the goat. [ ] in the evocation of the dead, book xi of the odyssey. [ ] chaerephon was given this same title by the herald earlier in this comedy.--aristophanes supposes him to have come from hell because he is lean and pallid. [ ] posidon appears on the stage accompanied by heracles and a triballian god. [ ] an athenian general.--neptune is trying to give triballus some notions of elegance and good behaviour. [ ] aristophanes supposes that democracy is in the ascendant in olympus as it is in athens. [ ] he is addressing his servant, manes. [ ] heracles softens at sight of the food.--heracles is the glutton of the comic poets. [ ] he pretends not to have seen them at first, being so much engaged with his cookery. [ ] he pretends to forget the presence of the ambassadors. [ ] posidon jestingly swears by himself. [ ] the barbarian god utters some gibberish which pisthetaerus interprets into consent. [ ] heracles, the god of strength, was far from being remarkable in the way of cleverness. [ ] this was athenian law. [ ] the poet attributes to the gods the same customs as those which governed athens, and according to which no child was looked upon as legitimate unless his father had entered him on the registers of his phratria. the phratria was a division of the tribe and consisted of thirty families. [ ] the chorus continues to tell what it has seen on its flights. [ ] the harbour of the island of chios; but this name is here used in the sense of being the land of informers ([greek: phainein], to denounce). [ ] i.e. near the orators' platform, or [greek: b_ema], in the public assembly, or [greek: ekkl_esia], because there stood the [greek: klepsudra], or water-clock, by which speeches were limited. [ ] a coined name, made up of [greek: gl_otta], the tongue, and [greek: gast_er], the stomach, and meaning those who fill their stomach with what they gain with their tongues, to wit, the orators. [ ] [greek: sukon] a fig, forms part of the word, [greek: sukophant_es], which in greek means an informer. [ ] both rhetoricians. [ ] because they consecrated it specially to the god of eloquence. [ ] basileia, whom he brings back from heaven. [ ] terms used in regulating a dance. [ ] where pisthetaerus is henceforth to reign. the frogs introduction like 'the birds' this play rather avoids politics than otherwise, its leading _motif_, over and above the pure fun and farce for their own sake of the burlesque descent into the infernal regions, being a literary one, an onslaught on euripides the tragedian and all his works and ways. it was produced in the year b.c., the year after 'the birds,' and only one year before the peloponnesian war ended disastrously for the athenian cause in the capture of the city by lysander. first brought out at the lenaean festival in january, it was played a second time at the dionysia in march of the same year--a far from common honour. the drama was not staged in the author's own name, we do not know for what reasons, but it won the first prize, phrynichus' 'muses' being second. the plot is as follows. the god dionysus, patron of the drama, is dissatisfied with the condition of the art of tragedy at athens, and resolves to descend to hades in order to bring back again to earth one of the old tragedians--euripides, he thinks, for choice. dressing himself up, lion's skin and club complete, as heracles, who has performed the same perilous journey before, and accompanied by his slave xanthias (a sort of classical sancho panza) with the baggage, he starts on the fearful expedition. coming to the shores of acheron, he is ferried over in charon's boat--xanthias has to walk round--the first chorus of marsh frogs (from which the play takes its title) greeting him with prolonged croakings. approaching pluto's palace in fear and trembling, he knocks timidly at the gate. being presently admitted, he finds a contest on the point of being held before the king of hades and the initiates of the eleusinian mysteries, who form the second chorus, between aeschylus, the present occupant of the throne of tragic excellence in hell, and the pushing, self-satisfied, upstart euripides, who is for ousting him from his pride of place. each poet quotes in turn from his dramas, and the indignant aeschylus makes fine fun of his rival's verses, and shows him up in the usual aristophanic style as a corrupter of morals, a contemptible casuist, and a professor of the dangerous new learning of the sophists, so justly held in suspicion by true-blue athenian conservatives. eventually a pair of scales is brought in, and verses alternately spouted by the two candidates are weighed against each other, the mighty lines of the father of tragedy making his flippant, finickin little rival's scale kick the beam every time. dionysus becomes a convert to the superior merits of the old school of tragedy, and contemptuously dismisses euripides, to take aeschylus back with him to the upper world instead, leaving sophocles meantime in occupation of the coveted throne of tragedy in the nether regions. needless to say, the various scenes of the journey to hades, the crossing of acheron, the frogs' choric songs, and the trial before pluto, afford opportunities for much excellent fooling in our author's very finest vein of drollery, and "seem to have supplied the original idea for those modern burlesques upon the olympian and tartarian deities which were at one time so popular." * * * * * the frogs dramatis personae dionysus. xanthias, his servant. heracles. a dead man. charon. aeacus. female attendant of persephonÉ. inkeepers' wives. euripides. aeschylus. pluto. chorus of frogs. chorus of initiates. scene: in front of the temple of heracles, and on the banks of acheron in the infernal regions. * * * * * the frogs xanthias. now am i to make one of those jokes that have the knack of always making the spectators laugh? dionysus. aye, certainly, any one you like, excepting "i am worn out." take care you don't say that, for it gets on my nerves. xanthias. do you want some other drollery? dionysus. yes, only not, "i am quite broken up." xanthias. then what witty thing shall i say? dionysus. come, take courage; only ... xanthias. only what? dionysus. ... don't start saying as you shift your package from shoulder to shoulder, "ah! that's a relief!" xanthias. may i not at least say, that unless i am relieved of this cursed load i shall let wind? dionysus. oh! for pity's sake, no! you don't want to make me spew. xanthias. what need then had i to take this luggage, if i must not copy the porters that phrynichus, lycis and amipsias[ ] never fail to put on the stage? dionysus. do nothing of the kind. whenever i chance to see one of these stage tricks, i always leave the theatre feeling a good year older. xanthias. oh! my poor back! you are broken and i am not allowed to make a single joke. dionysus. just mark the insolence of this sybarite! i, dionysus, the son of a ... wine-jar,[ ] i walk, i tire myself, and i set yonder rascal upon an ass, that he may not have the burden of carrying his load. xanthias. but am i not carrying it? dionysus. no, since you are on your beast. xanthias. nevertheless i am carrying this.... dionysus. what? xanthias. ... and it is very heavy. dionysus. but this burden you carry is borne by the ass. xanthias. what i have here, 'tis certainly i who bear it, and not the ass, no, by all the gods, most certainly not! dionysus. how can you claim to be carrying it, when you are carried? xanthias. that i can't say; but this shoulder is broken, anyhow. dionysus. well then, since you say that the ass is no good to you, pick her up in your turn and carry her. xanthias. what a pity i did not fight at sea;[ ] i would baste your ribs for that joke. dionysus. dismount, you clown! here is a door,[ ] at which i want to make my first stop. hi! slave! hi! hi! slave! heracles (_from inside the temple_). do you want to beat in the door? he knocks like a centaur.[ ] why, what's the matter? dionysus. xanthias! xanthias. well? dionysus. did you notice? xanthias. what? dionysus. how i frightened him? xanthias. bah! you're mad! heracles. ho, by demeter! i cannot help laughing; it's no use biting my lips, i must laugh. dionysus. come out, friend; i have need of you. heracles. oh! 'tis enough to make a fellow hold his sides to see this lion's-skin over a saffron robe![ ] what does this mean? buskins[ ] and a bludgeon! what connection have they? where are you off to in this rig? dionysus. when i went aboard clisthenes[ ].... heracles. did you fight? dionysus. we sank twelve or thirteen ships of the enemy. heracles. you? dionysus. aye, by apollo! heracles. you have dreamt it.[ ] dionysus. as i was reading the 'andromeda'[ ] on the ship, i suddenly felt my heart afire with a wish so violent.... heracles. a wish! of what nature? dionysus. oh, quite small, like molon.[ ] heracles. you wished for a woman? dionysus. no. heracles. a young boy, then? dionysus. nothing of the kind. heracles. a man? dionysus. faugh! heracles. might you then have had dealings with clisthenes? dionysus. have mercy, brother; no mockery! i am quite ill, so greatly does my desire torment me! heracles. and what desire is it, little brother? dionysus. i cannot disclose it, but i will convey it to you by hints. have you ever been suddenly seized with a desire for pea-soup? heracles. for pea-soup! oh! oh! yes, a thousand times in my life.[ ] dionysus. do you take me or shall i explain myself in some other way? heracles. oh! as far as the pea-soup is concerned, i understand marvellously well. dionysus. so great is the desire, which devours me, for euripides. heracles. but he is dead.[ ] dionysus. there is no human power can prevent my going to him. heracles. to the bottom of hades? dionysus. aye, and further than the bottom, an it need. heracles. and what do you want with him? dionysus. i want a master poet; "some are dead and gone, and others are good for nothing."[ ] heracles. is iophon[ ] dead then? dionysus. he is the only good one left me, and even of him i don't know quite what to think. heracles. then there's sophocles, who is greater than euripides; if you must absolutely bring someone back from hades, why not make him live again? dionysus. no, not until i have taken iophon by himself and tested him for what he is worth. besides, euripides is very artful and won't leave a stone unturned to get away with me, whereas sophocles is as easy-going with pluto as he was when on earth. heracles. and agathon? where is he?[ ] dionysus. he has left me; 'twas a good poet and his friends regret him. heracles. and whither has the poor fellow gone? dionysus. to the banquet of the blest. heracles. and xenocles?[ ] dionysus. may the plague seize him! heracles. and pythangelus?[ ] xanthias. they don't say ever a word of poor me, whose shoulder is quite shattered. heracles. is there not a crowd of other little lads, who produce tragedies by the thousand and are a thousand times more loquacious than euripides? dionysus. they are little sapless twigs, chatterboxes, who twitter like the swallows, destroyers of the art, whose aptitude is withered with a single piece and who sputter forth all their talent to the tragic muse at their first attempt. but look where you will, you will not find a creative poet who gives vent to a noble thought. heracles. how creative? dionysus. aye, creative, who dares to risk "the ethereal dwellings of zeus," or "the wing of time," or "a heart that is above swearing by the sacred emblems," and "a tongue that takes an oath, while yet the soul is unpledged."[ ] heracles. is that the kind of thing that pleases you? dionysus. i'm more than madly fond of it. heracles. but such things are simply idiotic, you feel it yourself. dionysus. "don't come trespassing on my mind; you have a brain of your own to keep thoughts in."[ ] heracles. but nothing could be more detestable. dionysus. where cookery is concerned, you can be my master.[ ] xanthias. they don't say a thing about me! dionysus. if i have decked myself out according to your pattern, 'tis that you may tell me, in case i should need them, all about the hosts who received you, when you journeyed to cerberus; tell me of them as well as of the harbours, the bakeries, the brothels, the drinking-shops, the fountains, the roads, the eating-houses and of the hostels where there are the fewest bugs. xanthias. they never speak of me.[ ] heracles. go down to hell? will you be ready to dare that, you madman? dionysus. enough of that; but tell me the shortest road, that is neither too hot nor too cold, to get down to pluto. heracles. let me see, what is the best road to show you? aye, which? ah! there's the road of the gibbet and the rope. go and hang yourself. dionysus. be silent! your road is choking me. heracles. there is another path, both very short and well-trodden; the one that goes through the mortar.[ ] dionysus. 'tis hemlock you mean to say. heracles. precisely so. dionysus. that road is both cold and icy. your legs get frozen at once.[ ] heracles. do you want me to tell you a very steep road, one that descends very quickly? dionysus. ah! with all my heart; i don't like long walks. heracles. go to the ceramicus.[ ] dionysus. and then? heracles. mount to the top of the highest tower ... dionysus. to do what? heracles. ... and there keep your eye on the torch, which is to be the signal. when the spectators demand it to be flung, fling yourself ... dionysus. where? heracles. ... down. dionysus. but i should break the two hemispheres of my brain. thanks for your road, but i don't want it. heracles. but which one then? dionysus. the one you once travelled yourself. heracles. ah! that's a long journey. first you will reach the edge of the vast, deep mere of acheron. dionysus. and how is that to be crossed? heracles. there is an ancient ferryman, charon by name, who will pass you over in his little boat for a diobolus. dionysus. oh! what might the diobolus has everywhere! but however has it got as far as that? heracles. 'twas theseus who introduced its vogue.[ ] after that you will see snakes and all sorts of fearful monsters ... dionysus. oh! don't try to frighten me and make me afraid, for i am quite decided. heracles. ... then a great slough with an eternal stench, a veritable cesspool, into which those are plunged who have wronged a guest, cheated a young boy out of the fee for his complaisance, beaten their mother, boxed their father's ears, taken a false oath or transcribed some tirade of morsimus.[ ] dionysus. for mercy's sake, add likewise--or learnt the pyrrhic dance of cinesias.[ ] heracles. further on 'twill be a gentle concert of flutes on every side, a brilliant light, just as there is here, myrtle groves, bands of happy men and women and noisy plaudits. dionysus. who are these happy folk? heracles. the initiate.[ ] xanthias. and i am the ass that carries the mysteries;[ ] but i've had enough of it. heracles. they will give you all the information you will need, for they live close to pluto's palace, indeed on the road that leads to it. farewell, brother, and an agreeable journey to you. (_he returns into his temple._) dionysus. and you, good health. slave! take up your load again. xanthias. before having laid it down? dionysus. and be quick about it too. xanthias. oh, no, i adjure you! rather hire one of the dead, who is going to hades. dionysus. and should i not find one.... xanthias. then you can take me. dionysus. you talk sense. ah! here they are just bringing a dead man along. hi! man, 'tis you i'm addressing, you, dead fellow there! will you carry a package to pluto for me? dead man. is't very heavy? dionysus. this. (_he shows him the baggage, which xanthias has laid on the ground._) dead man. you will pay me two drachmae. dionysus. oh! that's too dear. dead man. well then, bearers, move on. dionysus. stay, friend, so that i may bargain with you. dead man. give me two drachmae, or it's no deal. dionysus. hold! here are nine obols. dead man. i would sooner go back to earth again. xanthias. is that cursed rascal putting on airs? come, then, i'll go. dionysus. you're a good and noble fellow. let us make the best of our way to the boat. charon. ahoy, ahoy! put ashore. xanthias. what's that? dionysus. why, by zeus, 'tis the mere of which heracles spoke, and i see the boat. xanthias. ah! there's charon. dionysus. hail! charon. dead man. hail! charon. charon. who comes hither from the home of cares and misfortunes to rest on the banks of lethé? who comes to the ass's fleece, who is for the land of the cerberians, or the crows, or taenarus? dionysus. i am. charon. get aboard quick then. dionysus. where will you ferry me to? where are you going to land me? charon. in hell, if you wish. but step in, do. dionysus. come here, slave. charon. i carry no slave, unless he has fought at sea to save his skin. xanthias. but i could not, for my eyes were bad. charon. well then! be off and walk round the mere. xanthias. where shall i come to a halt? charon. at the stone of auaenus, near the drinking-shop. dionysus. do you understand? xanthias. perfectly. oh! unhappy wretch that i am, surely, surely i must have met something of evil omen as i came out of the house?[ ] charon. come, sit to your oar. if there be anyone else who wants to cross, let him hurry. hullo! what are you doing? dionysus. what am i doing? i am sitting on the oar[ ] as you told me. charon. will you please have the goodness to place yourself there, pot-belly? dionysus. there. charon. put out your hands, stretch your arms. dionysus. there. charon. no tomfoolery! row hard, and put some heart into the work! dionysus. row! and how can i? i, who have never set foot on a ship? charon. there's nothing easier; and once you're at work, you will hear some enchanting singers. dionysus. who are they? charon. frogs with the voices of swans; 'tis most delightful. dionysus. come, set the stroke. charon. yo ho! yo ho! frogs. brekekekex, coax, coax, brekekekekex, coax. slimy offspring of the marshland, let our harmonious voices mingle with the sounds of the flute, coax, coax! let us repeat the songs that we sing in honour of the nysaean dionysus[ ] on the day of the feast of pots,[ ] when the drunken throng reels towards our temple in the limnae.[ ] brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. i am beginning to feel my bottom getting very sore, my dear little coax, coax. frogs. brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. but doubtless you don't care. frogs. brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. may you perish with your coax, your endless coax! frogs. and why change it, you great fool? i am beloved by the muses with the melodious lyre, by the goat-footed pan, who draws soft tones out of his reed; i am the delight of apollo, the god of the lyre, because i make the rushes, which are used for the bridge of the lyre, grow in my marshes. brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. i have got blisters and my behind is all of a sweat; by dint of constant movement, it will soon be saying.... frogs. brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. come, race of croakers, be quiet. frogs. not we; we shall only cry the louder. on fine sunny days, it pleases us to hop through galingale and sedge and to sing while we swim; and when zeus is pouring down his rain, we join our lively voices to the rustle of the drops. brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. i forbid you to do it. frogs. oh! that would be too hard! dionysus. and is it not harder for me to wear myself out with rowing? frogs. brekekekex, coax, coax. dionysus. may you perish! i don't care. frogs. and from morning till night we will shriek with the whole width of our gullets, "brekekekex, coax, coax." dionysus. i will cry louder than you all. frogs. oh! don't do that! dionysus. oh, yes, i will. i shall cry the whole day, if necessary, until i no longer hear your coax. (_he begins to cry against the frogs, who finally stop._) ah! i knew i would soon put an end to your coax. charon. enough, enough, a last pull, ship oars, step ashore and pay your passage money. dionysus. look! here are my two obols.... xanthias! where is xanthias? hi! xanthias! xanthias (_from a distance_). hullo! dionysus. come here. xanthias. i greet you, master. dionysus. what is there that way? xanthias. darkness and mud! dionysus. did you see the parricides and the perjured he told us of? xanthias. did you? dionysus. ha! by posidon! i see some of them now.[ ] well, what are we going to do? xanthias. the best is to go on, for 'tis here that the horrible monsters are, heracles told us of. dionysus. ah! the wag! he spun yarns to frighten me, but i am a brave fellow and he is jealous of me. there exists no greater braggart than heracles. ah! i wish i might meet some monster, so as to distinguish myself by some deed of daring worthy of my daring journey. xanthias. ah! hark! i hear a noise. dionysus (_all of a tremble_). where then, where? xanthias. behind you. dionysus. place yourself behind me. xanthias. ah! 'tis in front now. dionysus. then pass to the front. xanthias. oh! what a monster i can see! dionysus. what's it like? xanthias. dreadful, terrible! it assumes every shape; now 'tis a bull, then a mule; again it is a most beautiful woman. dionysus. where is she that i may run toward her? xanthias. the monster is no longer a woman; 'tis now a dog. dionysus. then it is the empusa.[ ] xanthias. its whole face is ablaze. dionysus. and it has a brazen leg? xanthias. aye, i' faith! and the other is an ass's leg,[ ] rest well assured of that. dionysus. where shall i fly to? xanthias. and i? dionysus. priest,[ ] save me, that i may drink with you. xanthias. oh! mighty heracles! we are dead men. dionysus. silence! i adjure you. don't utter that name. xanthias. well then, we are dead men, dionysus! dionysus. that still less than the other. xanthias. keep straight on, master, here, here, this way. dionysus. well? xanthias. be at ease, all goes well and we can say with hegelochus, "after the storm, i see the return of the _cat_."[ ] the empusa has gone. dionysus. swear it to me. xanthias. by zeus! dionysus. swear it again. xanthias. by zeus! dionysus. once more. xanthias. by zeus! dionysus. oh! my god! how white i went at the sight of the empusa! but yonder fellow got red instead, so horribly afraid was he![ ] alas! to whom do i owe this terrible meeting? what god shall i accuse of having sought my death? might it be "the aether, the dwelling of zeus," or "the wing of time"?[ ] xanthias. hist! dionysus. what's the matter? xanthias. don't you hear? dionysus. what then? xanthias. the sound of flutes. dionysus. aye, certainly, and the wind wafts a smell of torches hither, which bespeaks the mysteries a league away. but make no noise; let us hide ourselves and listen. chorus.[ ] iacchus, oh! iacchus! iacchus, oh! iacchus! xanthias. master, these are the initiates, of whom heracles spoke and who are here at their sports; they are incessantly singing of iacchus, just like diagoras.[ ] dionysus. i believe you are right, but 'tis best to keep ourselves quiet till we get better information. chorus. iacchus, venerated god, hasten at our call. iacchus, oh! iacchus! come into this meadow, thy favourite resting-place; come to direct the sacred choirs of the initiate; may a thick crown of fruit-laden myrtle branches rest on thy head and may thy bold foot step this free and joyful dance, taught us by the graces--this pure, religious measure, that our sacred choirs rehearse. xanthias. oh! thou daughter of demeter, both mighty and revered, what a delicious odour of pork! dionysus. cannot you keep still then, fellow, once you get a whiff of a bit of tripe? chorus. brandish the flaming torches and so revive their brilliancy. iacchus, oh! iacchus! bright luminary of our nocturnal mysteries. the meadow sparkles with a thousand fires; the aged shake off the weight of cares and years; they have once more found limbs of steel, wherewith to take part in thy sacred measures; and do thou, blessed deity, lead the dances of youth upon this dewy carpet of flowers with a torch in thine hand. silence, make way for our choirs, you profane and impure souls, who have neither been present at the festivals of the noble muses, nor ever footed a dance in their honour, and who are not initiated into the mysterious language of the dithyrambs of the voracious cratinus;[ ] away from here he who applauds misplaced buffoonery. away from here the bad citizen, who for his private ends fans and nurses the flame of sedition, the chief who sells himself, when his country is weathering the storms, and surrenders either fortresses or ships; who, like thorycion,[ ] the wretched collector of tolls, sends prohibited goods from aegina to epidaurus, such as oar-leathers, sailcloth and pitch, and who secures a subsidy for a hostile fleet,[ ] or soils the statues of hecaté,[ ] while he is humming some dithyramb. away from here, the orator who nibbles at the salary of the poets, because he has been scouted in the ancient solemnities of dionysus; to all such i say, and i repeat, and i say it again for the third time, "make way for the choruses of the initiate." but you, raise you your voice anew; resume your nocturnal hymns as it is meet to do at this festival. let each one advance boldly into the retreats of our flowery meads, let him mingle in our dances, let him give vent to jesting, to wit and to satire. enough of junketing, lead forward! let our voices praise the divine protectress[ ] with ardent love, yea! praise her, who promises to assure the welfare of this country for ever, in spite of thorycion. let our hymns now be addressed to demeter, the queen of harvest, the goddess crowned with ears of corn; to her be dedicated the strains of our divine concerts. oh! demeter, who presidest over the pure mysteries, help us and protect thy choruses; far from all danger, may i continually yield myself to sports and dancing, mingle laughter with seriousness, as is fitting at thy festivals, and as the reward for my biting sarcasms may i wreathe my head with the triumphal fillets. and now let our songs summon hither the lovable goddess, who so often joins in our dances. oh, venerated dionysus, who hast created such soft melodies for this festival, come to accompany us to the goddess, show that you can traverse a long journey without wearying.[ ] dionysus, the king of the dance, guide my steps. 'tis thou who, to raise a laugh and for the sake of economy,[ ] hast torn our sandals and our garments; let us bound, let us dance at our pleasure, for we have nothing to spoil. dionysus, king of the dance, guide my steps. just now i saw through a corner of my eye a ravishing young girl, the companion of our sports; i saw the nipple of her bosom peeping through a rent in her tunic. dionysus, king of the dance, guide my steps. dionysus. aye, i like to mingle with these choruses; i would fain dance and sport with that young girl. xanthias. and i too. chorus. would you like us to mock together at archidemus? he is still awaiting his seven-year teeth to have himself entered as a citizen;[ ] but he is none the less a chief of the people among the athenians and the greatest rascal of 'em all. i am told that clisthenes is tearing the hair out of his rump and lacerating his cheeks on the tomb of sebinus, the anaphlystian;[ ] with his forehead against the ground, he is beating his bosom and groaning and calling him by name. as for callias,[ ] the illustrious son of hippobinus, the new heracles, he is fighting a terrible battle of love on his galleys; dressed up in a lion's skin, he fights a fierce naval battle--with the girls' cunts. dionysus. could you tell us where pluto dwells? we are strangers and have just arrived. chorus. go no farther, and know without further question that you are at his gates. dionysus. slave, pick up your baggage. xanthias. this wretched baggage, 'tis like corinth, the daughter of zeus, for it's always in his mouth.[ ] chorus. and now do ye, who take part in this religious festival, dance a gladsome round in the flowery grove in honour of the goddess.[ ] dionysus. as for myself, i will go with the young girls and the women into the enclosure, where the nocturnal ceremonies are held; 'tis i will bear the sacred torch. chorus. let us go into the meadows, that are sprinkled with roses, to form, according to our rites, the graceful choirs, over which the blessed fates preside. 'tis for us alone that the sun doth shine; his glorious rays illumine the initiate, who have led the pious life, that is equally dear to strangers and citizens. dionysus. come now! how should we knock at this door? how do the dwellers in these parts knock? xanthias. lose no time and attack the door with vigour, if you have the courage of heracles as well as his costume. dionysus. ho! there! slave! aeacus. who's there? dionysus. heracles, the bold. aeacus. ah! wretched, impudent, shameless, threefold rascal, the most rascally of rascals. ah! 'tis you who hunted out our dog cerberus, whose keeper i was! but i have got you to-day; and the black stones of styx, the rocks of acheron, from which the blood is dripping, and the roaming dogs of cocytus shall account to me for you; the hundred-headed hydra shall tear your sides to pieces; the tartessian muraena[ ] shall fasten itself on your lungs and the tithrasian[ ] gorgons shall tear your kidneys and your gory entrails to shreds; i will go and fetch them as quickly as possible. xanthias. eh! what are you doing there? dionysus (_stooping down_). i have just shit myself! invoke the god.[ ] xanthias. get up at once. how a stranger would laugh, if he saw you. dionysus. ah! i'm fainting. place a sponge on my heart. xanthias. here, take it. dionysus. place it yourself. xanthias. but where? good gods, where _is_ your heart? dionysus. it has sunk into my shoes with fear. (_takes his slave's hand holding the sponge, and applies it to his bottom._) xanthias. oh! you most cowardly of gods and men! dionysus. what! i cowardly? i, who have asked you for a sponge! 'tis what no one else would have done. xanthias. how so? dionysus. a poltroon would have fallen backwards, being overcome with the fumes; as for me, i got up and moreover i wiped myself clean. xanthias. ah! by posidon! a wonderful feat of intrepidity! dionysus. aye, certainly. and you did not tremble at the sound of his threatening words? xanthias. they never troubled me. dionysus. well then, since you are so brave and fearless, become what i am, take this bludgeon and this lion's hide, you, whose heart has no knowledge of fear; i, in return, will carry the baggage. xanthias. here, take it, take it quick! 'this my duty to obey you, and behold, heracles-xanthias! do i look like a coward of your kidney? dionysus. no. you are the exact image of the god of melité,[ ] dressed up as a rascal. come, i will take the baggage. female attendant of persephonÉ. ah! is it you then, beloved heracles? come in. as soon as ever the goddess, my mistress persephoné, knew of your arrival, she quickly had the bread into the oven and clapped two or three pots of bruised peas upon the fire; she has had a whole bullock roasted and both cakes and rolled backed. come in quick! xanthias. no, thank you. attendant. oh! by apollo! i shall not let you off. she has also had poultry boiled for you, sweetmeats makes, and has prepared you some delicious wine. come then, enter with me. xanthias. i am much obliged. attendant. are you mad? i will not let you go. there is likewise and enchanted flute-girl specially for you, and two or three dancing wenches. xanthias. what do you say? dancing wenches? attendant. in the prime of their life and all freshly depilated. come, enter, for the cook was going to take the fish off the fire and the table was being spread. xanthias. very well then! run in quickly and tell the dancing-girls i am coming. slave! pick up the baggage and follow me. dionysus. not so fast! oh! indeed! i disguise you as heracles for a joke and you take the thing seriously! none of your nonsense, xanthias! take back the baggage. xanthias. what? you are not thinking of taking back what you gave me yourself? dionysus. no, i don't think about it; i do it. off with that skin! xanthias. witness how i am treated, ye great dogs, and be my judges! dionysus. what gods? are you so stupid, such a fool? how can you, a slave and a mortal, be the son of alcmena? xanthias. come then! 'tis well! take them. but perhaps you will be needing me one day, an it please the gods. chorus. 'tis the act of a wise and sensible man, who has done much sailing, always to trim his sail towards the quarter whence the fair wind wafts, rather than stand stiff and motionless like a god terminus.[ ] to change your part to serve your own interest is to act like a clever man, a true theramenes.[ ] dionysus. faith! 'twould be funny indeed if xanthias, a slave, were indolently stretched out on purple cushions and fucking the dancing-girl; if he were then to ask me for a pot, while i, looking on, would be rubbing my tool, and this master rogue, on seeing it, were to know out my front teeth with a blow of his fist. first inkeeper's wife. here! plathané, plathané! do come! here is the rascal who once came into our shop and ate up sixteen loaves for us. second inkeeper's wife. aye, truly, 'tis he himself! xanthias. this is turning out rough for somebody. first wife. and besides that, twenty pieces of boiled meat at half an obolus apiece. xanthias. there's someone going to get punished. first wife. and i don't know how many cloves of garlic. dionysus. you are rambling, my dear, you don't know what you are saying. first wife. hah! you thought i should not know you, because of your buskins! and then all the salt fish, i had forgotten that! second wife. and then, alas! the fresh cheese that he devoured, osier baskets and all! ten, when i asked for my money, he started to roar and shoot terrible looks at me. xanthias. as! i recognize him well by that token; 'tis just his way. second wife. and he drew out his sword like a madman. first wife. by the gods, yes. second wife. terrified to death, we clambered up to the upper storey, and he fled at top speed, carrying off our baskets with him. xanthias. ah! this is again his style! but you ought to take action. first wife. run quick and call cleon, my patron. second wife. and you, should you run against hyperbolus,[ ] bring him to me; we will knock the life out of our robber. first wife. oh! you miserable glutton! how i should delight in breaking those grinders of yours, which devoured my goods! second wife. and i in hurling you into the malefactor's pit. first wife. and i in slitting with one stroke of the sickle that gullet that bolted down the tripe. but i am going to fetch cleon; he shall summon you before the court this very day and force you to disgorge. dionysus. may i die, if xanthias is not my dearest friend. xanthias. can i be the son of alcmena, i, a slave and a mortal? dionysus. i know, i know, that you are in a fury and you have the right to be; you can even beat me and i will not reply. but if i ever take this costume from you again, may i die of the most fearful torture--i, my wife, my children, all those who belong to me, down to the very last, and blear-eyed archidemus[ ] into the bargain. xanthias. i accept your oath, and on those terms i agree. chorus. 'tis now your cue, since you have resumed the dress, to act the brave and to throw terror into your glance, thus recalling the god whom you represent. but if you play your part badly, if you yield to any weakness, you will again have to load your shoulders with the baggage. xanthias. friends, your advice is good, but i was thinking the same myself; if there is any good to be got, my master will again want to despoil me of this costume, of that i am quite certain. ne'ertheless, i am going to show a fearless heart and shoot forth ferocious looks. and lo! the time for it has come, for i hear a noise at the door. aeacus (_to his slaves_). bind me this dog-thief,[ ] that he may be punished. hurry yourselves, hurry! dionysus. this is going to turn out badly for someone. xanthias. look to yourselves and don't come near me. aeacus. hah! you would show fight! ditylas, sceblyas, pardocas,[ ] come here and have at him! dionysus. ah! you would strike him because he has stolen! xanthias. 'tis horrible! dionysus. 'tis a revolting cruelty! xanthias. by zeus! may i die, if i ever came here or stole from you the value of a pin! but i will act nobly; take this slave, put him to the question, and if you obtain the proof of my guilt, put me to death. aeacus. in what manner shall i put him to the question? xanthias. in every manner; you may lash him to the wooden horse, hang him, cut him open with scourging, flay him, twist his limbs, pour vinegar down his nostrils, load him with bricks, anything you like; only don't beat him with leeks or fresh garlic.[ ] aeacus. 'tis well conceived; but if the blows maim your slave, you will be claiming damages from me. xanthias. no, certainly not! set about putting him to the question. aeacus. it shall be done here, for i wish him to speak in your presence. come, put down your pack, and be careful not to lie. dionysus. i forbid you to torture me, for i am immortal; if you dare it, woe to you! aeacus. what say you? dionysus. i say that i am an immortal, dionysus, the son of zeus, and that this fellow is only a slave. aeacus (_to xanthias_). d'you hear him? xanthias. yes. 'tis all the better reason for beating him with rods, for, if he is a god, he will not feel the blows. dionysus (_to xanthias_). but why, pray, since you also claim to be a god, should you not be beaten like myself? xanthias (_to aeacus_). that's fair. very well then, whichever of us two you first see crying and caring for the blows, him believe not to be a god. aeacus. 'tis spoken like a brave fellow; you don't refuse what is right. strip yourselves. xanthias. to do the thing fairly, how do you propose to act? aeacus. oh! that's easy. i shall hit you one after the other. xanthias. well thought of. aeacus. there! (_he strikes xanthias_.) xanthias. watch if you see me flinch. aeacus. i have already struck you. xanthias. no, you haven't. aeacus. why, you have not felt it at all, i think. now for t'other one. dionysus. be quick about it. aeacus. but i have struck you. dionysus. ah! i did not even sneeze. how is that? aeacus. i don't know; come, i will return to the first one. xanthias. get it over. oh, oh! aeacus. what does that "oh, oh!" mean? did it hurt you? xanthias. oh, no! but i was thinking of the feasts of heracles, which are being held at diomeia.[ ] aeacus. oh! what a pious fellow! i pass on to the other again. dionysus. oh! oh! aeacus. what's wrong? dionysus. i see some knights.[ ] aeacus. why are you weeping? dionysus. because i can smell onions. aeacus. ha! so you don't care a fig for the blows? dionysus. not the least bit in the world. aeacus. well, let us proceed. your turn now. xanthias. oh, i say! aeacus. what's the matter? xanthias. pull out this thorn.[ ] aeacus. what? now the other one again. dionysus. "oh, apollo!... king of delos and delphi!" xanthias. he felt that. do you hear? dionysus. why, no! i was quoting an iambic of hipponax. xanthias. 'tis labour in vain. come, smite his flanks. aeacus. no, present your belly. dionysus. oh, posidon ... xanthias. ah! here's someone who's feeling it. dionysus. ... who reignest on the aegean headland and in the depths of the azure sea.[ ] aeacus. by demeter, i cannot find out which of you is the god. but come in; the master and persephoné will soon tell you, for they are gods themselves. dionysus. you are quite right; but you should have thought of that before you beat us. chorus. oh! muse, take part in our sacred choruses; our songs will enchant you and you shall see a people of wise men, eager for a nobler glory than that of cleophon,[ ] the braggart, the swallow, who deafens us with his hoarse cries, while perched upon a thracian tree. he whines in his barbarian tongue and repeats the lament of philomela with good reason, for even if the votes were equally divided, he would have to perish.[ ] the sacred chorus owes the city its opinion and its wise lessons. first i demand that equality be restored among the citizens, so that none may be disquieted. if there be any whom the artifices of phrynichus have drawn into any error,[ ] let us allow them to offer their excuses and let us forget these old mistakes. furthermore, that there be not a single citizen in athens who is deprived of his rights; otherwise would it not be shameful to see slaves become masters and treated as honourably as plataeans, because they helped in a single naval fight?[ ] not that i censure this step, for, on the contrary i approve it; 'tis the sole thing you have done that is sensible. but those citizens, both they and their fathers, have so often fought with you and are allied to you by ties of blood, so ought you not to listen to their prayers and pardon them their single fault? nature has given you wisdom, therefore let your anger cool and let all those who have fought together on athenian galleys live in brotherhood and as fellow-citizens, enjoying the same equal rights; to show ourselves proud and intractable about granting the rights of the city, especially at a time when we are riding at the mercy of the waves,[ ] is a folly, of which we shall later repent. if i am adept at reading the destiny or the soul of a man, the fatal hour for little cligenes[ ] is near, that unbearable ape, the greatest rogue of all the washermen, who use a mixture of ashes and cimolian earth and call it potash.[ ] he knows it; hence he is always armed for war; for he fears, if he ventures forth without his bludgeon, he would be stripped of his clothes when he is drunk. i have often noticed that there are good and honest citizens in athens, who are as old gold is to new money. the ancient coins are excellent in point of standard; they are assuredly the best of all moneys; they alone are well struck and give a pure ring; everywhere they obtain currency, both in greece and in strange lands; yet we make no use of them and prefer those bad copper pieces quite recently issued and so wretchedly struck. exactly in the same way do we deal with our citizens. if we know them to be well-born, sober, brave, honest, adepts in the exercises of the gymnasium and in the liberal arts, they are the butts of our contumely and we have only a use for the petty rubbish, consisting of strangers, slaves and low-born folk not worth a whit more, mushrooms of yesterday, whom formerly athens would not have even wanted as scapegoats. madmen, do change your ways at last; employ the honest men afresh; if you are fortunate through doing this, 'twill be but right, and if fate betrays you, the wise will at least praise you for having fallen honourably. aeacus. by zeus, the deliverer! what a brave man your master is. xanthias. a brave man! i should think so indeed, for he only knows how to drink and to make love! aeacus. he has convicted you of lying and did not thrash the impudent rascal who had dared to call himself the master. xanthias. ah! he would have rued it if he had. aeacus. well spoken! that's a reply that does a slave credit; 'tis thus that i like to act too. xanthias. how, pray? aeacus. i am beside myself with joy, when i can curse my master in secret. xanthias. and when you go off grumbling, after having been well thrashed? aeacus. i am delighted. xanthias. and when you make yourself important? aeacus. i know of nothing sweeter. xanthias. ah! by zeus! we are brothers. and when you are listening to what your masters are saying? aeacus. 'tis a pleasure that drives me to distraction. xanthias. and when you repeat it to strangers? aeacus. oh! i feel as happy as if i were emitting semen. xanthias. by phoebus apollo! reach me your hand; come hither, that i may embrace you; and, in the name of zeus, the thrashed one, tell me what all this noise means, these shouts, these quarrels, that i can hear going on inside yonder. aeacus. 'tis aeschylus and euripides. xanthias. what do you mean? aeacus. the matter is serious, very serious indeed; all hades is in commotion. xanthias. what's it all about? aeacus. we have a law here, according to which, whoever in each of the great sciences and liberal arts beats all his rivals, is fed at the prytaneum and sits at pluto's side ... xanthias. i know that. aeacus. ... until someone cleverer than he in the same style of thing comes along; then he has to give way to him. xanthias. and how has this law disturbed aeschylus? aeacus. he held the chair for tragedy, as being the greatest in his art. xanthias. and who has it now? aeacus. when euripides descended here, he started reciting his verses to the cheats, cut-purses, parricides, and brigands, who abound in hades; his supple and tortuous reasonings filled them with enthusiasm, and they pronounced him the cleverest by far. so euripides, elated with pride, took possession of the throne on which aeschylus was installed. xanthias. and did he not get stoned? aeacus. no, but the folk demanded loudly that a regular trial should decide to which of the two the highest place belonged. xanthias. what folk? this mob of rascals? (_points to the spectators._) aeacus. their clamour reached right up to heaven. xanthias. and had aeschylus not his friends too? aeacus. good people are very scarce here, just the same as on earth. xanthias. what does pluto reckon to do? aeacus. to open a contest as soon as possible; the two rivals will show their skill, and finally a verdict will be given. xanthias. what! has not sophocles also claimed the chair then? aeacus. no, no! he embraced aeschylus and shook his hand, when he came down; he could have taken the seat, for aeschylus vacated it for him; but according to clidemides,[ ] he prefers to act as his second; if aeschylus triumphs, he will stay modestly where he is, but if not, he has declared that he will contest the prize with euripides. xanthias. when is the contest to begin? aeacus. directly! the battle royal is to take place on this very spot. poetry is to be weighed in the scales. xanthias. what? how can tragedy be weighed? aeacus. they will bring rulers and compasses to measure the words, and those forms which are used for moulding bricks, also diameter measures and wedges, for euripides says he wishes to torture every verse of his rival's tragedies. xanthias. if i mistake not, aeschylus must be in a rage. aeacus. with lowered head he glares fiercely like a bull. xanthias. and who will be the judge? aeacus. the choice was difficult; it was seen that there was a dearth of able men. aeschylus took exception to the athenians ... xanthias. no doubt he thought there were too many thieves among them. aeacus. ... and moreover believed them too light-minded to judge of a poet's merits. finally they fell back upon your master, because he understands tragic poetry.[ ] but let us go in; when the masters are busy, we must look out for blows! chorus. ah! what fearful wrath will be surging in his heart! what a roar there'll be when he sees the babbler who challenges him sharpening his teeth! how savagely his eyes will roll! what a battle of words like plumed helmets and waving crests hurling themselves against fragile outbursts and wretched parings! we shall see the ingenious architect of style defending himself against immense periods. then, the close hairs of his thick mane all a-bristle, the giant will knit his terrible brow; he will pull out verses as solidly bolted together as the framework of a ship and will hurl them forth with a roar, while the pretty speaker with the supple and sharpened tongue, who weighs each syllable and submits everything to the lash of his envy, will cut this grand style to mincemeat and reduce to ruins this edifice erected by one good sturdy puff of breath.[ ] euripides (_to dionysus_). your advice is in vain, i shall not vacate the chair, for i contend i am superior to him. dionysus. aeschylus, why do you keep silent? you understand what he says. euripides. he is going to stand on his dignity first; 'tis a trick he never failed to use in his tragedies. dionysus. my dear fellow, a little less arrogance, please. euripides. oh! i know him for many a day. i have long had a thorough hold of his ferocious heroes, for his high-flown language and of the monstrous blustering words which his great, gaping mouth hurls forth thick and close without curb or measure. aeschylus. it is indeed you, the son of a rustic goddess,[ ] who dare to treat me thus, you, who only know how to collect together stupid sayings and to stitch the rags of your beggars?[ ] i shall make you rue your insults. dionysus. enough said, aeschylus, calm the wild wrath that is turning your heart into a furnace. aeschylus. no, not until i have clearly shown the true value of this impudent fellow with his lame men.[ ] dionysus. a lamb, a black lamb! slaves, bring it quickly, the storm-cloud is about to burst.[ ] aeschylus. shame on your cretan monologues![ ] shame on the infamous nuptials[ ] that you introduce into the tragic art! dionysus. curb yourself, noble aeschylus, and as for you, my poor euripides, be prudent, protect yourself from this hailstorm, or he may easily in his rage hit you full in the temple with some terrible word, that would let out your telephus.[ ] come, aeschylus, no flying into a temper! discuss the question coolly; poets must not revile each other like market wenches. why, you shout at the very outset and burst out like a pine that catches fire in the forest. euripides. i am ready for the contest and don't flinch; let him choose the attack or the defence; let him discuss everything, the dialogue, the choruses, the tragic genius, peleus, aeolus, meleager[ ] and especially telephus. dionysus. and what do you propose to do, aeschylus? speak! aeschylus. i should have wished not to maintain a contest that is not equal or fair. dionysus. why not fair? aeschylus. because my poetry has outlived me, whilst his died with him and he can use it against me. however, i submit to your ruling. dionysus. let incense and a brazier be brought, for i want to offer a prayer to the gods. thanks to their favour, may i be able to decide between these ingenious rivals as a clever expert should! and do you sing a hymn in honour of the muses. chorus. oh! ye chaste muses, the daughters of zeus, you who read the fine and subtle minds of thought-makers when they enter upon a contest of quibbles and tricks, look down on these two powerful athletes; inspire them, one with mighty words and the other with odds and ends of verses. now the great mind contest is beginning. dionysus. and do you likewise make supplication to the gods before entering the lists. aeschylus. oh, demeter! who hast formed my mind, may i be able to prove myself worthy of thy mysteries![ ] dionysus. and you, euripides, prove yourself meet to sprinkle incense on the brazier. euripides. thanks, but i sacrifice to other gods.[ ] dionysus. to private gods of your own, which you have made after your own image? euripides. why, certainly! dionysus. well then, invoke your gods. euripides. oh! thou aether, on which i feed, oh! thou volubility of speech, oh! craftiness, oh! subtle scent! enable me to crush the arguments of my opponent. chorus. we are curious to see upon what ground these clever tilters are going to measure each other. their tongue is keen, their wit is ready, their heart is full of audacity. from the one we must expect both elegance and polish of language, whereas the other, armed with his ponderous words, will fall hip and thigh upon his foe and with a single blow tear down and scatter all his vain devices. dionysus. come, be quick and speak and let your words be elegant, but without false imagery or platitude. euripides. i shall speak later of my poetry, but i want first to prove that aeschylus is merely a wretched impostor; i shall relate by what means he tricked a coarse audience, trained in the school of phrynichus.[ ] first one saw some seated figure, who was veiled, some achilles or niobé,[ ] who then strutted about the stage, but neither uncovered their face nor uttered a syllable. dionysus. i' faith! that's true! euripides. meanwhile, the chorus would pour forth as many as four tirades one after the other, without stopping, and the characters would still maintain their stony silence. dionysus. i liked their silence, and these mutes pleased me no less than those characters that have such a heap to say nowadays. euripides. 'tis because you were a fool, understand that well. dionysus. possibly; but what was his object? euripides. 'twas pure quackery; in this way the spectator would sit motionless, waiting, waiting for niobé to say something, and the piece would go running on. dionysus. oh! the rogue! how he deceived me! well, aeschylus, why are you so restless? why this impatience, eh? euripides. 'tis because he sees himself beaten. then when he had rambled on well, and got half-way through the piece, he would spout some dozen big, blustering, winged words, tall as mountains, terrible scarers, which the spectator admired without understanding what they meant. dionysus. oh! great gods! aeschylus. silence! euripides. there was no comprehending one word. dionysus (_to aeschylus_). don't grind your teeth. euripides. there were scamanders, abysses, griffins with eagles' beaks chiselled upon brazen bucklers, all words with frowning crests and hard, hard to understand. dionysus. 'faith, i was kept awake almost an entire night, trying to think out his yellow bird, half cock and half horse.[ ] aeschylus. why, fool, 'tis a device that is painted on the prow of a vessel. dionysus. ah! i actually thought 'twas eryxis, the son of philoxenus.[ ] euripides. but what did you want with a cock in tragedy? aeschylus. but you, you foe of the gods, what have you done that is so good? euripides. oh! i have not made horses with cocks' heads like you, nor goats with deer's horns, as you may see 'em on persian tapestries; but, when i received tragedy from your hands, it was quite bloated with enormous, ponderous words, and i began by lightening it of its heavy baggage and treated it with little verses, with subtle arguments, with the sap of white beet and decoctions of philosophical folly, the whole being well filtered together;[ ] then i fed it with monologues, mixing in some cephisophon;[ ] but i did not chatter at random nor mix in any ingredients that first came to hand; from the outset i made my subject clear, and told the origin of the piece. aeschylus. well, that was better than telling your own.[ ] euripides. then, starting with the very first verse, each character played his part; all spoke, both woman and slave and master, young girl and old hag.[ ] aeschylus. and was not such daring deserving of death? euripides. no, by apollo! 'twas to please the people. dionysus. oh! leave that alone, do; 'tis not the best side of your case. euripides. furthermore, i taught the spectators the art of speech ... aeschylus. 'tis true indeed! would that you had burst before you did it! euripides. ... the use of the straight lines and of the corners of language, the science of thinking, of reading, of understanding, plotting, loving deceit, of suspecting evil, of thinking of everything.... aeschylus. oh! true, true again! euripides. i introduced our private life upon the stage, our common habits; and 'twas bold of me, for everyone was at home with these and could be my critic; i did not burst out into big noisy words to prevent their comprehension; nor did i terrify the audience by showing them cycni[ ] and memnons[ ] on chariots harnessed with steeds and jingling bells. look at his disciples and look at mine. his are phormisius and megaenetus of magnesia[ ], all a-bristle with long beards, spears and trumpets, and grinning with sardonic and ferocious laughter, while my disciples are clitophon and the graceful theramenes.[ ] dionysus. theramenes? an able man and ready for anything; a man, who in imminent dangers knew well how to get out of the scrape by saying he was from chios and not from ceos.[ ] euripides. 'tis thus that i taught my audience how to judge, namely, by introducing the art of reasoning and considering into tragedy. thanks to me, they understand everything, discern all things, conduct their households better and ask themselves, "what is to be thought of this? where is that? who has taken the other thing?" dionysus. yes, certainly, and now every athenian who returns home, bawls to his slaves, "where is the stew-pot? who has eaten off the sprat's head? where is the clove of garlic that was left over from yesterday? who has been nibbling at my olives?" whereas formerly they kept their seats with mouths agape like fools and idiots. chorus. you hear him, illustrious achilles,[ ] and what are you going to reply? only take care that your rage does not lead you astray, for he has handled you brutally. my noble friend, don't get carried away; furl all your sails, except the top-gallants, so that your ship may only advance slowly, until you feel yourself driven forward by a soft and favourable wind. come then, you who were the first of the greeks to construct imposing monuments of words and to raise the old tragedy above childish trifling, open a free course to the torrent of your words. aeschylus. this contest rouses my gall; my heart is boiling over with wrath. am i bound to dispute with this fellow? but i will not let him think me unarmed and helpless. so, answer me! what is it in a poet one admires? euripides. wise counsels, which make the citizens better. aeschylus. and if you have failed in this duty, if out of honest and pure-minded men you have made rogues, what punishment do you think is your meet? dionysus. death. i will reply for him. aeschylus. behold then what great and brave men i bequeathed to him! they did not shirk the public burdens; they were not idlers, rogues and cheats, as they are to-day; their very breath was spears, pikes, helmets with white crests, breastplates and greaves; they were gallant souls encased in seven folds of ox-leather. euripides. i must beware! he will crush me beneath the sheer weight of his hail of armour. dionysus. and how did you teach them this bravery? speak, aeschylus, and don't display so much haughty swagger. aeschylus. by composing a drama full of the spirit of ares. dionysus. which one? aeschylus. the seven chiefs before thebes. every man who had once seen it longed to be marching to battle. dionysus. and you did very wrongly; through you the thebans have become more warlike; for this misdeed you deserve to be well beaten. aeschylus. you too might have trained yourself, but you were not willing. then, by producing 'the persae,' i have taught you to conquer all your enemies; 'twas my greatest work. dionysus. aye, i shook with joy at the announcement of the death of darius; and the chorus immediately clapped their hands and shouted, "triumph!"[ ] aeschylus. those are the subjects that poets should use. note how useful, even from remotest times, the poets of noble thought have been! orpheus taught us the mystic rites and the horrid nature of murder; musaeus, the healing of ailments and the oracles; hesiod, the tilling of the soil and the times for delving and harvest. and does not divine homer owe his immortal glory to his noble teachings? is it not he who taught the warlike virtues, the art of fighting and of carrying arms? dionysus. at all events he has not taught it to pantacles,[ ] the most awkward of all men; t'other day, when he was directing a procession, 'twas only after he had put on his helmet that he thought of fixing in the crest. aeschylus. but he has taught a crowd of brave warriors, such as lamachus,[ ] the hero of athens. 'tis from homer that i borrowed the patrocli and the lion-hearted teucers,[ ] whom i revived to the citizens, to incite them to show themselves worthy of these illustrious examples when the trumpets sounded. but i showed them neither sthenoboea[ ] nor shameless phaedra; and i don't remember ever having placed an amorous woman on the stage. euripides. no, no, you have never known aphrodité. aeschylus. and i am proud of it. whereas with you and those like you, she appears everywhere and in every shape; so that even you yourself were ruined and undone by her.[ ] dionysus. that's true; the crimes you imputed to the wives of others, you suffered from in turn. euripides. but, cursed man, what harm have my sthenoboeas done to athens? aeschylus. you are the cause of honest wives of honest citizens drinking hemlock, so greatly have your bellerophons made them blush.[ ] euripides. why, did i invent the story of phaedra? aeschylus. no, the story is true enough; but the poet should hide what is vile and not produce nor represent it on the stage. the schoolmaster teaches little children and the poet men of riper age. we must only display what is good. euripides. and when you talk to us of towering mountains--lycabettus and of the frowning parnes[ ]--is that teaching us what is good? why not use human language? aeschylus. why, miserable man, the expression must always rise to the height of great maxims and of noble thoughts. thus as the garment of the demi-gods is more magnificent, so also is their language more sublime. i ennobled the stage, while you have degraded it. euripides. and how so, pray? aeschylus. firstly you have dressed the kings in rags,[ ] so that they might inspire pity. euripides. where's the harm? aeschylus. you are the cause why no rich man will now equip the galleys, they dress themselves in tatters, groan and say they are poor. dionysus. aye, by demeter! and he wears a tunic of fine wool underneath; and when he has deceived us with his lies, he may be seen turning up on the fish-market.[ ] aeschylus. moreover, you have taught boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted their arses to outrage,[ ] in order that they might learn to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers.[ ] in my day they only knew how to ask for their ship's-biscuit and to shout "yo ho! heave ho!" dionysus. ... and to let wind under the nose of the rower below them, to befoul their mate with filth and to steal when they went ashore. nowadays they argue instead of rowing and the ship can travel as slow as she likes. aeschylus. of what crimes is he not the author? has he not shown us procurers, women who get delivered in the temples, have traffic with their brothers,[ ] and say that life is not life.[ ] 'tis thanks to him that our city is full of scribes and buffoons, veritable apes, whose grimaces are incessantly deceiving the people; but there is no one left who knows how to carry a torch,[ ] so little is it practised. dionysus. i' faith, that's true! i almost died of laughter at the last panathenaea at seeing a slow, fat, pale-faced fellow, who ran well behind all the rest, bent completely double and evidently in horrible pain. at the gate of the ceramicus the spectators started beating his belly, sides, flanks and thighs; these slaps knocked so much wind out of him that it extinguished his torch and he hurried away. chorus. 'tis a serious issue and an important debate; the fight is proceeding hotly and its decision will be difficult; for, as violently as the one attacks, as cleverly and as subtly does the other reply. but don't keep always to the same ground; you are not at the end of your specious artifices. make use of every trick you have, no matter whether it be old or new! out with everything boldly, blunt though it be; risk anything--that is smart and to the point. perchance you fear that the audience is too stupid to grasp your subtleties, but be reassured, for that is no longer the case. they are all well-trained folk; each has his book, from which he learns the art of quibbling; such wits as they are happily endowed with have been rendered still keener through study. so have no fear! attack everything, for you face an enlightened audience. euripides. let's take your prologues; 'tis the beginnings of this able poet's tragedies that i wish to examine at the outset. he was obscure in the description of his subjects. dionysus. and which prologue are you going to examine? euripides. a lot of them. give me first of all that of the 'orestes.'[ ] dionysus. all keep silent, aeschylus, recite. aeschylus. "oh! hermes of the nether world, whose watchful power executes the paternal bidding, be my deliverer, assist me, i pray thee. i come, i return to this land."[ ] dionysus. is there a single word to condemn in that? euripides. more than a dozen. dionysus. but there are but three verses in all. euripides. and there are twenty faults in each. dionysus. aeschylus, i beg you to keep silent; otherwise, besides these three iambics, there will be many more attacked. aeschylus. what? keep silent before this fellow? dionysus. if you will take my advice. euripides. he begins with a fearful blunder. do you see the stupid thing? dionysus. faith! i don't care if i don't. aeschylus. a blunder? in what way? euripides. repeat the first verse. aeschylus. "oh! hermes of the nether world, whose watchful power executes the paternal bidding." euripides. is not orestes speaking in this fashion before his father's tomb? aeschylus. agreed. euripides. does he mean to say that hermes had watched, only that agamemnon should perish at the hands of a woman and be the victim of a criminal intrigue? aeschylus. 'tis not to the god of trickery, but to hermes the benevolent, that he gives the name of god of the nether world, and this he proves by adding that hermes is accomplishing the mission given him by his father. euripides. the blunder is even worse than i had thought to make it out; for if he holds his office in the nether world from his father.... dionysus. it means his father has made him a grave-digger. aeschylus. dionysus, your wine is not redolent of perfume.[ ] dionysus. continue, aeschylus, and you, euripides, spy out the faults as he proceeds. aeschylus. "be my deliverer, assist me, i pray thee. i come, i return to this land." euripides. our clever aeschylus says the very same thing twice over. aeschylus. how twice over? euripides. examine your expressions, for i am going to show you the repetition. "i come, i return to this land." but i _come_ is the same thing as i _return._ dionysus. undoubtedly. 'tis as though i said to my neighbour, "lend me either your kneading-trough or your trough to knead in." aeschylus. no, you babbler, no, 'tis not the same thing, and the verse is excellent. dionysus. indeed! then prove it. aeschylus. to come is the act of a citizen who has suffered no misfortune; but the exile both comes and returns. dionysus. excellent! by apollo! what do you say to that, euripides? euripides. i say that orestes did not return to his country, for he came there secretly, without the consent of those in power. dionysus. very good indeed! by hermes! only i have not a notion what it is you mean. euripides. go on. dionysus. come, be quick, aeschylus, continue; and you look out for the faults. aeschylus. "at the foot of this tomb i invoke my father and beseech him to hearken to me and to hear." euripides. again a repetition, to hearken and to hear are obviously the same thing. dionysus. why, wretched man, he's addressing the dead, whom to call thrice even is not sufficient. aeschylus. and you, how do you form your prologues? euripides. i am going to tell you, and if you find a repetition, an idle word or inappropriate, let me be scouted! dionysus. come, speak; 'tis my turn to listen. let us hear the beauty of your prologues, euripides. "oedipus was a fortunate man at first ..." aeschylus. not at all; he was destined to misfortune before he even existed, since apollo predicted he would kill his father before ever he was born. how can one say he was fortunate at first? euripides. "... and he became the most unfortunate of mortals afterwards." aeschylus. no, he did not become so, for he never ceased being so. look at the facts! first of all, when scarcely born, he is exposed in the middle of winter in an earthenware vessel, for fear he might become the murderer of his father, if brought up; then he came to polybus with his feet swollen; furthermore, while young, he marries an old woman, who is also his mother, and finally he blinds himself. dionysus. 'faith! i think he could not have done worse to have been a colleague of erasinidas.[ ] euripides. you can chatter as you will, my prologues are very fine. aeschylus. i will take care not to carp at them verse by verse and word for word;[ ] but, an it please the gods, a simple little bottle will suffice me for withering every one of your prologues. euripides. you will wither my prologues with a little bottle?[ ] aeschylus. with only one. you make verses of such a kind, that one can adapt what one will to your iambics: a little bit of fluff, a little bottle, a little bag. i am going to prove it. euripides. you will prove it? aeschylus. yes. dionysus. come, recite. euripides. "aegyptus, according to the most widely spread reports, having landed at argos with his fifty daughters[ ] ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. euripides. what little bottle? may the plague seize you! dionysus. recite another prologue to him. we shall see. euripides. "dionysus, who leads the choral dance on parnassus with the thyrsus in his hand and clothed in skins of fawns[ ] ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. dionysus. there again his little bottle upsets us. euripides. he won't bother us much longer. i have a certain prologue to which he cannot adapt his tag: "there is no perfect happiness; this one is of noble origin, but poor; another of humble birth[ ] ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. dionysus. euripides! euripides. what's the matter? dionysus. clue up your sails, for this damned little bottle is going to blow a gale. euripides. little i care, by demeter! i am going to make it burst in his hands. dionysus. then out with it; recite another prologue, but beware, beware of the little bottle. euripides. "cadmus, the son of agenor, while leaving the city of sidon[ ] ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. dionysus. oh! my poor friend; buy that bottle, do, for it is going to tear all your prologues to ribbons. euripides. what? am i to buy it of him? dionysus. if you take my advice. euripides. no, not i, for i have many prologues to which he cannot possibly fit his catchword: "pelops, the son of tantalus, having started for pisa on his swift chariot[ ] ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. dionysus. d'ye see? again he has popped in his little bottle. come, aeschylus, he is going to buy it of you at any price, and you can have a splendid one for an obolus. euripides. by zeus, no, not yet! i have plenty of other prologues. "oeneus in the fields one day[ ] ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. euripides. let me first finish the opening verse: "oeneus in the fields one day, having made an abundant harvest and sacrificed the first-fruits to the gods ..." aeschylus. ... lost his little bottle. dionysus. during the sacrifice? and who was the thief? euripides. allow him to try with this one: "zeus, as even truth has said[ ] ..." dionysus (_to euripides_). you have lost again; he is going to say, "lost his little bottle," for that bottle sticks to your prologues like a ringworm. but, in the name of the gods, turn now to his choruses. euripides. i will prove that he knows nothing of lyric poetry, and that he repeats himself incessantly. chorus. what's he going to say now? i am itching to know what criticisms he is going to make on the poet, whose sublime songs so far outclass those of his contemporaries. i cannot imagine with what he is going to reproach the king of the dionysia, and i tremble for the aggressor. euripides. oh! those wonderful songs! but watch carefully, for i am going to condense them all into a single one. dionysus. and i am going to take pebbles to count the fragments. euripides. "oh, achilles, king of phthiotis, hearken to the shout of the conquering foe and haste to sustain the assault. we dwellers in the marshes do honour to hermes, the author of our race. haste to sustain the assault." dionysus. there, aeschylus, you have already two assaults against you. euripides. "oh, son of atreus, the most illustrious of the greeks, thou, who rulest so many nations, hearken to me. haste to the assault." dionysus. a third assault. beware, aeschylus. euripides. "keep silent, for the inspired priestesses are opening the temple of artemis. haste to sustain the assault. i have the right to proclaim that our warriors are leaving under propitious auspices. haste to sustain the assault."[ ] dionysus. great gods, what a number of assaults! my kidneys are quite swollen with fatigue; i shall have to go to the bath after all these assaults. euripides. not before you have heard this other song arranged for the music of the cithara. dionysus. come then, continue; but, prithee, no more "assaults." euripides. "what! the two powerful monarchs, who reign over the grecian youth, phlattothrattophlattothrat, are sending the sphinx, that terrible harbinger of death, phlattothrattophlattothrat. with his avenging arm bearing a spear, phlattothrattophlattothrat, the impetuous bird delivers those who lean to the side of ajax, phlattothrattophlattothrat, to the dogs who roam in the clouds, phlattothrattophlattothrat."[ ] dionysus (_to aeschylus_). what is this 'phlattothrat'? does it come from marathon or have you picked it out of some labourer's chanty? aeschylus. i took what was good and improved it still more, so that i might not be accused of gathering the same flowers as phrynichus in the meadow of the muse. but this man borrows from everybody, from the suggestions of prostitutes, from the sons of melitus,[ ] from the carian flute-music, from wailing women, from dancing-girls. i am going to prove it, so let a lyre be brought. but what need of a lyre in his case? where is the girl with the castanets? come, thou muse of euripides; 'tis quite thy business to accompany songs of this sort. dionysus. this muse has surely done fellation in her day, like a lesbian wanton.[ ] aeschylus. "ye halcyons, who twitter over the ever-flowing billows of the sea, the damp dew of the waves glistens on your wings; and you spiders, who we-we-we-we-we-weave the long woofs of your webs in the corners of our houses with your nimble feet like the noisy shuttle, there where the dolphin by bounding in the billows, under the influence of the flute, predicts a favourable voyage; thou glorious ornaments of the vine, the slender tendrils that support the grape. child, throw thine arms about my neck."[ ] do you note the harmonious rhythm? dionysus. yes. aeschylus. do you note it? dionysus. yes, undoubtedly. aeschylus. and does the author of such rubbish dare to criticize my songs? he, who imitates the twelve postures of cyrené in his poetry?[ ] there you have his lyric melodies, but i still want to give you a sample of his monologues. "oh! dark shadows of the night! what horrible dream are you sending me from the depths of your sombre abysses! oh! dream, thou bondsman of pluto, thou inanimate soul, child of the dark night, thou dread phantom in long black garments, how bloodthirsty, bloodthirsty is thy glance! how sharp are thy claws! handmaidens, kindle the lamp, draw up the dew of the rivers in your vases and make the water hot; i wish to purify myself of this dream sent me by the gods. oh! king of the ocean, that's right, that's right! oh! my comrades, behold this wonder. glycé has robbed me of my cock and has fled. oh, nymphs of the mountains! oh! mania! seize her! how unhappy i am! i was full busy with my work, i was sp-sp-sp-sp-spinning the flax that was on my spindle, i was rounding off the clew that i was to go and sell in the market at dawn; and he flew off, flew off, cleaving the air with his swift wings; he left to me nothing but pain, pain! what tears, tears, poured, poured from my unfortunate eyes! oh! cretans, children of ida, take your bows; help me, haste hither, surround the house. and thou, divine huntress, beautiful artemis, come with thy hounds and search through the house. and thou also, daughter of zeus, seize the torches in thy ready hands and go before me to glycé's home, for i propose to go there and rummage everywhere."[ ] dionysus. that's enough of choruses. aeschylus. yes, faith, enough indeed! i wish now to see my verses weighed in the scales; 'tis the only way to end this poetic struggle. dionysus. well then, come, i am going to sell the poet's genius the same way cheese is sold in the market. chorus. truly clever men are possessed of an inventive mind. here again is a new idea that is marvellous and strange, and which another would not have thought of; as for myself i would not have believed anyone who had told me of it, i would have treated him as a driveller. dionysus. come, hither to the scales. aeschylus and euripides. here we are. dionysus. let each one hold one of the scales, recite a verse, and not let go until i have cried, "cuckoo!" aeschylus and euripides. we understand. dionysus. well then, recite and keep your hands on the scales. euripides. "would it had pleased the gods that the vessel argo had never unfurled the wings of her sails!"[ ] aeschylus. "oh! river sperchius! oh! meadows, where the oxen graze!"[ ] dionysus. cuckoo! let go! oh! the verse of aeschylus sinks far the lower of the two. euripides. and why? dionysus. because, like the wool-merchants, who moisten their wares, he has thrown a river into his verse and has made it quite wet, whereas yours was winged and flew away. euripides. come, another verse! you recite, aeschylus, and you, weigh. dionysus. hold the scales again. aeschylus and euripides. ready. dionysus (_to euripides_). you begin. euripides. "eloquence is persuasion's only sanctuary."[ ] aeschylus. "death is the only god whom gifts cannot bribe."[ ] dionysus. let go! let go! here again our friend aeschylus' verse drags down the scale; 'tis because he has thrown in death, the weightiest of all ills. euripides. and i persuasion; my verse is excellent. dionysus. persuasion has both little weight and little sense. but hunt again for a big weighty verse and solid withal, that it may assure you the victory. euripides. but where am i to find one--where? dionysus. i'll tell you one: "achilles has thrown two and four."[ ] come, recite! 'tis the last trial. euripides. "with his arm he seized a mace, studded with iron."[ ] aeschylus. "chariot upon chariot and corpse upon corpse."[ ] dionysus (_to euripides_) there you're foiled again. euripides. why? dionysus. there are two chariots and two corpses in the verse; why, 'tis a weight a hundred egyptians could not lift.[ ] aeschylus. 'tis no longer verse against verse that i wish to weigh, but let him clamber into the scale himself, he, his children, his wife, cephisophon[ ] and all his works; against all these i will place but two of my verses on the other side. dionysus. i will _not_ be their umpire, for they are dear to me and i will not have a foe in either of them; meseems the one is mighty clever, while the other simply delights me. pluto. then you are foiled in the object of your voyage. dionysus. and if i do decide? pluto. you shall take with you whichever of the twain you declare the victor; thus you will not have come in vain. dionysus. that's all right! well then, listen; i have come down to find a poet. euripides. and with what intent? dionysus. so that the city, when once it has escaped the imminent dangers of the war, may have tragedies produced. i have resolved to take back whichever of the two is prepared to give good advice to the citizens. so first of all, what think you of alcibiades? for the city is in most difficult labour over this question. euripides. and what does it think about it? dionysus. what does it think? it regrets him, hates him, and yet wishes to have him, all at the same time. but tell me your opinion, both of you. euripides. i hate the citizen who is slow to serve his country, quick to involve it in the greatest troubles, ever alert to his own interests, and a bungler where those of the state are at stake. dionysus. that's good, by posidon! and you, what is your opinion? aeschylus. a lion's whelp should not be reared within the city. no doubt that's best; but if the lion has been reared, one must submit to his ways. dionysus. zeus, the deliverer! this puzzles me greatly. the one is clever, the other clear and precise. now each of you tell me your idea of the best way to save the state. euripides. if cinesias were fitted to cleocritus as a pair of wings, and the wind were to carry the two of them across the waves of the sea ... dionysus. 'twould be funny. but what is he driving at? euripides. ... they could throw vinegar into the eyes of the foe in the event of a sea-fight. but i know something else i want to tell you. dionysus. go on. euripides. when we put trust in what we mistrust and mistrust what we trust.... dionysus. what? i don't understand. tell us something less profound, but clearer. euripides. if we were to mistrust the citizens, whom we trust, and to employ those whom we to-day neglect, we should be saved. nothing succeeds with us; very well then, let's do the opposite thing, and our deliverance will be assured. dionysus. very well spoken. you are the most ingenious of men, a true palamedes![ ] is this fine idea your own or is it cephisophon's? euripides. my very own,--bar the vinegar, which is cephisophon's. dionysus (_to aeschylus_). and you, what have you to say? aeschylus. tell me first who the commonwealth employs. are they the just? dionysus. oh! she holds _them_ in abhorrence. aeschylus. what, are then the wicked those she loves? dionysus. not at all, but she employs them against her will. aeschylus. then what deliverance can there be for a city that will neither have cape nor cloak?[ ] dionysus. discover, i adjure you, discover a way to save her from shipwreck. aeschylus. i will tell you the way on earth, but i won't here. dionysus. no, send her this blessing from here. aeschylus. they will be saved when they have learnt that the land of the foe is theirs and their own land belongs to the foe; that their vessels are their true wealth, the only one upon which they can rely.[ ] dionysus. that's true, but the dicasts devour everything.[ ] pluto (_to dionysus_). now decide. dionysus. 'tis for you to decide, but i choose him whom my heart prefers. euripides. you called the gods to witness that you would bear me through; remember your oath and choose your friends. dionysus. yes, "my tongue has sworn."[ ] ... but i choose aeschylus. euripides. what have you done, you wretch? dionysus. i? i have decided that aeschylus is the victor. what then? euripides. and you dare to look me in the face after such a shameful deed? dionysus. "why shameful, if the spectators do not think so?"[ ] euripides. cruel wretch, will you leave me pitilessly among the dead? dionysus. "who knows if living be not dying,[ ] if breathing be not feasting, if sleep be not a fleece?"[ ] pluto. enter my halls. come, dionysus. dionysus. what shall we do there? pluto. i want to entertain my guests before they leave. dionysus. well said, by zeus; 'tis the very thing to please me best. chorus. blessed the man who has perfected wisdom! everything is happiness for him. behold aeschylus; thanks to the talent, to the cleverness he has shown, he returns to his country; and his fellow-citizens, his relations, his friends will all hail his return with joy. let us beware of jabbering with socrates and of disdaining the sublime notes of the tragic muse. to pass an idle life reeling off grandiloquent speeches and foolish quibbles, is the part of a madman. pluto. farewell, aeschylus! go back to earth and may your noble precepts both save our city[ ] and cure the mad; there are such, a many of them! carry this rope from me to cleophon, this one to myrmex and nichomachus, the public receivers, and this other one to archenomous.[ ] bid them come here at once and without delay; if not, by apollo, i will brand them with the hot iron.[ ] i will make one bundle of them and adimantus,[ ] the son of leucolophus,[ ] and despatch the lot into hell with all possible speed. aeschylus. i will do your bidding, and do you make sophocles occupy my seat. let him take and keep it for me, against i should ever return here. in fact i award him the second place among the tragic poets. as for this impostor, watch that he never usurps my throne, even should he be placed there in spite of himself. pluto (_to the chorus of the initiate_). escort him with your sacred torches, singing to him as you go his own hymns and choruses. chorus. ye deities of the nether world, grant a pleasant journey to the poet who is leaving us to return to the light of day; grant likewise wise and healthy thoughts to our city. put an end to the fearful calamities that overwhelm us, to the awful clatter of arms. as for cleophon and the likes of him, let them go, an it please them, and fight in their own land.[ ] * * * * * finis of "the frogs" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] these were comic poets contemporary with aristophanes. phrynichus, the best known, gained the second prize with his 'muses' when the present comedy was put upon the stage. amipsias had gained the first prize over our author's first edition of 'the clouds' and again over his 'birds.' aristophanes is ridiculing vulgar and coarse jests, which, however, he does not always avoid himself. [ ] instead of the expected "son of zeus," he calls himself the "son of a wine-jar." [ ] at the sea-fight at arginusae the slaves who had distinguished themselves by their bravery were presented with their freedom. this battle had taken place only a few months before the production of 'the frogs.' had xanthias been one of these slaves he could then have treated his master as he says, for he would have been his equal. [ ] the door of the temple of heracles, situated in the deme of melité, close to athens. this temple contained a very remarkable statue of the god, the work of eleas, the master of phidias. [ ] a fabulous monster, half man and half horse. [ ] so also, in 'the thesmophoriazusae,' agathon is described as wearing a saffron robe, which was a mark of effeminacy. [ ] a woman's foot-gear. [ ] he speaks of him as though he were a vessel. clisthenes, who was scoffed at for his ugliness, was completely beardless, which fact gave him the look of a eunuch. he was accused of prostituting himself. [ ] heracles cannot believe it. dionysus had no repute for bravery. his cowardice is one of the subjects for jesting which we shall most often come upon in 'the frogs.' [ ] a tragedy by euripides, produced some years earlier, some fragments of which are quoted by aristophanes in his 'thesmophoriazusae.' [ ] an actor of immense stature. [ ] the gluttony of heracles was a byword. see 'the birds.' [ ] euripides, weary, it is said, of the ridicule and envy with which he was assailed in athens, had retired in his old age to the court of archelaus, king of macedonia, where he had met with the utmost hospitality. we are assured that he perished through being torn to pieces by dogs, which set upon him in a lonely spot. his death occurred in b.c., the year before the production of 'the frogs.' [ ] this is a hemistich, the scholiast says, from euripides. [ ] the son of sophocles. once, during his father's lifetime, he gained the prize for tragedy, but it was suspected that the piece itself was largely the work of sophocles himself. it is for this reason that dionysus wishes to try him when he is dependent on his own resources, now that his father is dead. the death of the latter was quite recent at the time of the production of 'the frogs,' and the fact lent all the greater interest to this piece. [ ] agathon was a contemporary of euripides, and is mentioned in terms of praise by aristotle for his delineation of the character of achilles, presumably in his tragedy of 'telephus.' from the fragments which remain of this author it appears that his style was replete with ornament, particularly antithesis. [ ] son of caminus, an inferior poet, often made the butt of aristophanes' jeers. [ ] a poet apparently, unknown. [ ] expressions used by euripides in different tragedies. [ ] parody of a verse in euripides' 'andromeda,' a lost play. [ ] heracles, being such a glutton, must be a past master in matters of cookery, but this does not justify him in posing as a dramatic critic. [ ] xanthias, bent double beneath his load, gets more and more out of patience with his master's endless talk with heracles. [ ] the mortar in which hemlock was pounded. [ ] an allusion to the effect of hemlock. [ ] a quarter of athens where the lampadephoria was held in honour of athené, hephaestus, and prometheus, because the first had given the mortals oil, the second had invented the lamp, and the third had stolen fire from heaven. the principal part of this festival consisted in the _lampadedromia_, or torch-race. this name was given to a race in which the competitors for the prize ran with a torch in their hand; it was essential that the goal should be reached with the torch still alight. the signal for starting was given by throwing a torch from the top of the tower mentioned a few verses later on. [ ] theseus had descended into hades with pirithous to fetch away persephoné. aristophanes doubtless wishes to say that in consequence of this descent pluto established a toll across acheron, in order to render access to his kingdom less easy, and so that the poor and the greedy, who could not or would not pay, might be kept out. [ ] morsimus was a minor poet, who is also mentioned with disdain in 'the knights,' and is there called the son of philocles. aristophanes jestingly likens anyone who helps to disseminate his verses to the worst of criminals. [ ] the pyrrhic dance was a lively and quick-step dance. cinesias was not a dancer, but a dithyrambic poet, who declaimed with much gesticulation and movement that one might almost think he was performing this dance. [ ] those initiated into the mysteries of demeter, who, according to the belief of the ancients, enjoyed a kind of beatitude after death. [ ] xanthias, his strength exhausted and his patience gone, prepares to lay down his load. asses were used for the conveyance from athens to eleusis of everything that was necessary for the celebration of the mysteries. they were often overladen, and from this fact arose the proverb here used by xanthias, as indicating any heavy burden. [ ] the ancients believed that meeting this or that person or thing at the outset of a journey was of good or bad omen. the superstition is not entirely dead even to-day. [ ] dionysus had seated himself _on_ instead of _at_ the oar. [ ] one of the titles given to dionysus, because of the worship accorded him at nysa, a town in ethiopia, where he was brought up by the nymphs. [ ] this was the third day of the anthesteria or feasts of dionysus. all kinds of vegetables were cooked in pots and offered to dionysus and athené. it was also the day of the dramatic contests. [ ] dionysus' temple, the lenaeum, was situated in the district of athens known as the _linnae_, or marshes, on the south side of the acropolis. [ ] he points to the audience. [ ] a spectre, which hecaté sent to frighten men. it took all kinds of hideous shapes. it was exorcised by abuse. [ ] this was one of the monstrosities which credulity attributed to the empusa. [ ] he is addressing a priest of bacchus, who occupied a seat reserved for him in the first row of the audience. [ ] a verse from the orestes of euripides.--hegelochus was an actor who, in a recent representation, had spoken the line in such a manner as to lend it an absurd meaning; instead of saying, [greek: gal_en_en], which means _calm_, he had pronounced it [greek: gal_en], which means _a cat_. [ ] the priest of bacchus, mentioned several verses back. [ ] high-flown expressions from euripides' tragedies. [ ] a second chorus, comprised of initiates into the mysteries of demeter and dionysus. [ ] a philosopher, a native of melos, and originally a dithyrambic poet. he was prosecuted on a charge of atheism. [ ] a comic and dithyrambic poet. [ ] this thorycion, a toll collector at aegina, which then belonged to athens, had taken advantage of his position to send goods to epidaurus, an argolian town, thereby defrauding the treasury of the duty of per cent, which was levied on every import and export. [ ] an allusion to alcibiades, who is said to have obtained a subsidy for the spartan fleet from cyrus, satrap of asia minor. [ ] an allusion to the dithyrambic poet, cinesias, who was accused of having sullied, by stooling against it, the pedestal of a statue of hecaté at one of the street corners of athens. [ ] athené. [ ] the route of the procession of the initiate was from the ceramicus (a district of athens) to eleusis, a distance of twenty-five stadia. [ ] a shaft shot at the _choragi_ by the poet, because they had failed to have new dresses made for the actors on this occasion. [ ] it was at the age of seven that children were entered on the registers of their father's tribe. aristophanes is accusing archidemus, who at that time was the head of the popular party, of being no citizen, because his name is not entered upon the registers of any tribe. [ ] at funerals women tore their hair, rent their garments, and beat their bosoms. aristophanes parodies these demonstrations of grief and attributes them to the effeminate clisthenes. sebinus the anaphlystian is a coined name containing an obscene allusion, implying he was in the habit of allowing connexion with himself a posteriori, and being masturbated by the other in turn. [ ] callias, the son of hipponicus, which the poet turns into hippobinus, i.e. one who treads a mare, was an athenian general, who had distinguished himself at the battle of arginusae; he was notorious for his debauched habits, which he doubtless practised even on board his galleys. he is called a new heracles, because of the legend that heracles triumphed over fifty virgins in a single night; no doubt the poet alludes to some exploit of the kind here. [ ] a proverb applied to silly boasters. the corinthians had sent an envoy to megara, who, in order to enhance the importance of his city, incessantly repeated the phrase, "_the corinth of zeus_." [ ] demeter. [ ] tartessus was an iberian town, near the avernian marshes, which were said to be tenanted by reptiles, the progeny of vipers and muraenae, a kind of fish. [ ] tithrasios was a part of libya, fabled to be peopled by gorgons. [ ] "invoke the god" was the usual formula which immediately followed the offering of the libation in the festival of dionysus. here he uses the words after a libation of a new kind and induced by fear. [ ] that is, heracles, whose temple was at melité, a suburban deme of athens. [ ] whose statues were placed to make the boundaries of land. [ ] one of the thirty tyrants, noted for his versatility. [ ] celon and hyperbolus were both dead, and are therefore supposed to have become the leaders and patrons of the populace in hades, the same as they had been on earth. [ ] already mentioned; one of the chiefs of the popular party in b.c. [ ] heracles had carried of cerberus. [ ] names of thracian slaves. [ ] as was done to unruly children; he allows every kind of torture with the exception of the mildest. [ ] a deme of attica, where there was a temple to heracles. no doubt those present uttered the cry "oh! oh!" in honour of the god. [ ] he pretends it was not a cry of pain at all, but of astonishment and admiration. [ ] pretending that it was the thorn causing him pain, and not the lash of the whip. [ ] according to the scholiast this is a quotation from the 'laocoon,' a lost play of sophocles. [ ] a general known for his cowardice; he was accused of not being a citizen, but of thracian origin; in b.c. he was in disfavour, and he perished shortly after in a popular tumult. [ ] according to athenian law, the accused was acquitted when the voting was equal. [ ] he had helped to establish the oligarchical government of the four hundred, who had just been overthrown. [ ] the fight of arginusae; the slaves who had fought there had been accorded their freedom.--the plataeans had had the title of citizens since the battle of marathon. [ ] things were not going well for athens at the time; it was only two years later, b.c., that lysander took the city. [ ] a demagogue; because he deceived the people, aristophanes compares him with the washermen who cheated their clients by using some mixture that was cheaper than potash. [ ] callistrates says that clidemides was one of sophocles' sons; apollonius states him to have been an actor. [ ] dionysus was, of course, the patron god of the drama and dramatic contests. [ ] the majestic grandeur of aeschylus' periods, coupled with a touch of parody, is to be recognized in this piece. [ ] it is said that euripides was the son of a fruit-seller. [ ] euripides is constantly twitted by aristophanes with his predilection for ragged beggars and vagabonds as characters in his plays. [ ] bellerophon, philoctetes, and telephus, were all characters in different tragedies of euripides. [ ] sailors, when in danger, sacrificed a black lamb to typhon, the god of storms. [ ] an allusion to a long monologue of icarus in the tragedy called 'the cretans.' [ ] in 'aeolus,' macareus violates his own sister; in 'the clouds,' this incest, which euripides introduced upon the stage, is also mentioned. [ ] the title of one of euripides' pieces. [ ] the titles of three lost tragedies of euripides. [ ] a verse from one of the lost tragedies of euripides; the poet was born at eleusis. [ ] aristophanes often makes this accusation of religious heterodoxy against euripides. [ ] a dramatic poet, who lived about the end of the sixth century b.c., and a disciple of thespis; the scenic art was then comparatively in its infancy. [ ] the scholiast tells us that achilles remained mute in the tragedy entitled 'the phrygians' or 'the ransom of hector,' and that his face was veiled; he only spoke a few words at the beginning of the drama during a dialogue with hermes.--we have no information about the niobé mentioned here. [ ] the scholiast tells us that this expression ([greek: hippalektru_on]) was used in 'the myrmidons' of aeschylus; aristophanes ridicules it again both in the 'peace' and in 'the birds.' [ ] an individual apparently noted for his uncouth ugliness. [ ] the beet and the decoctions are intended to indicate the insipidity of euripides' style. [ ] an intimate friend of euripides, who is said to have worked with him on his tragedies, to have been 'ghost' to him in fact. [ ] an allusion to euripides' obscure birth; his mother had been, so it was said, a vegetable-seller in the public market. [ ] euripides had introduced every variety of character into his pieces, whereas aeschylus only staged divinities or heroes. [ ] there are two cycni, one, the son of ares, was killed by heracles according to the testimony of hesiod in his description of the "shield of heracles"; the other, the son of posidon, who, according to pindar, perished under the blows of achilles. it is not known in which tragedy of aeschylus this character was introduced. [ ] memnon, the son of aurora, was killed by achilles; in the list of the tragedies of aeschylus there is one entitled 'memnon.' [ ] these two were not poets, but euripides supposes them disciples of aeschylus, because of their rude and antiquated manners. [ ] clitophon and theramenes were elegants of effeminate habits and adept talkers. [ ] a proverb which was applied to versatile people; the two greek names [greek: chios] and [greek: keios] might easily be mistaken for one another. both, of course, are islands of the cyclades. [ ] a verse from the 'myrmidons' of aeschylus; here achilles is aeschylus himself. [ ] the 'persae' of aeschylus (produced b.c.) was received with transports of enthusiasm, reviving as it did memories of the glorious defeat of xerxes at salamis, where the poet had fought, only a few years before, b.c. [ ] nothing is known of this pantacles, whom eupolis, in his 'golden age,' also describes as awkward ([greek: skaios]). [ ] aristophanes had by this time modified his opinion of this general, whom he had so flouted in 'the acharnians.' [ ] son of telamon, the king of salamis and brother of ajax. [ ] the wife of proetus, king of argos. bellerophon, who had sought refuge at the court of this king after the accidental murder of his brother bellerus, had disdained her amorous overtures. therefore she denounced him to her husband as having wanted to attempt her virtue and urged him to cause his death. she killed herself immediately after the departure of the young hero. [ ] cephisophon, euripides' friend, is said to have seduced his wife. [ ] meaning, they have imitated sthenoboea in everything; like her, they have conceived adulterous passions and, again like her, they have poisoned themselves. [ ] lycabettus, a mountain of attica, just outside the walls of athens, the "arthur's seat" of the city. parnassus, the famous mountain of phocis, the seat of the temple and oracle of delphi and the home of the muses. the whole passage is, of course, in parody of the grandiloquent style of aeschylus. [ ] an allusion to oeneus, king of aetolia, and to telephus, king of mysia; characters put upon the stage by euripides. [ ] it was only the rich athenians who could afford fresh fish, because of their high price; we know how highly the gourmands prized the eels from the copaic lake. [ ] if aristophanes is to be believed, the orators were of depraved habits, and exacted infamous complaisances as payment for their lessons in rhetoric. [ ] aristophanes attributes the general dissoluteness to the influence of euripides; he suggests that the subtlety of his poetry, by sharpening the wits of the vulgar and even of the coarsest, has instigated them to insubordination. [ ] augé, who was seduced by heracles, was delivered in the temple of athené (scholiast); it is unknown in what piece this fact is mentioned.--macareus violates his sister canacé in the 'aeolus.' [ ] i.e. they busy themselves with philosophic subtleties. this line is taken from 'the phryxus,' of which some fragments have come down to us. [ ] in the torch-race the victor was the runner who attained the goal first without having allowed his torch to go out. this race was a very ancient institution. aristophanes means to say that the old habits had fallen into disuse. [ ] a tetralogy composed of three tragedies, the 'agamemnon,' the 'choëphorae,' the 'eumenides,' together with a satirical drama, the 'proteus.' [ ] this is the opening of the 'choëphorae.' aeschylus puts the words in the mouth of orestes, who is returning to his native land and visiting his father's tomb. [ ] i.e. your jokes are very coarse. [ ] he was one of the athenian generals in command at arginusae; he and his colleagues were condemned to death for not having given burial to the men who fell in that naval fight. [ ] as euripides had done to those of aeschylus; that sort of criticism was too low for him. [ ] [greek: d_ekuthion ap_olesa], _oleum perdidi,_ i have lost my labour, was a proverbial expression, which was also possibly the refrain of some song. aeschylus means to say that all euripides' phrases are cast in the same mould, and that his style is so poor and insipid that one can adapt to it any foolery one wishes; as for the phrase he adds to every one of the phrases his rival recites, he chooses it to insinuate that the work of euripides is _labour lost_, and that he would have done just as well not to meddle with tragedy. the joke is mediocre at its best and is kept up far too long. [ ] prologue of the 'archelaus' of euripides, a tragedy now lost. [ ] from prologue of the 'hypsipilé' of euripides, a play now lost. [ ] from prologue of the 'sthenoboea' of euripides, a play now lost. [ ] from prologue of the 'phryxus' of euripides, a play now lost. [ ] from prologue of the 'iphigeneia in tauris' of euripides. [ ] prologue of 'the meleager' by euripides, lost. [ ] prologue of 'the menalippé sapiens,' by euripides, lost. [ ] the whole of these fragments are quoted at random and have no meaning. euripides, no doubt, wants to show that the choruses of aeschylus are void of interest or coherence. as to the refrain, "haste to sustain the assault," euripides possibly wants to insinuate that aeschylus incessantly repeats himself and that a wearying monotony pervades his choruses. however, all these criticisms are in the main devoid of foundation. [ ] this ridiculous couplet pretends to imitate the redundancy and nonsensicality of aeschylus' language; it can be seen how superficial and unfair the criticism of euripides is; probably this is just what aristophanes wanted to convey by this long and wearisome scene. [ ] the scholiast conjectures this melitus to be the same individual who later accused socrates. [ ] the most infamous practices were attributed to the lesbian women, amongst others, that of _fellation_, that is the vile trick of taking a man's penis in the mouth, to give him gratification by sucking and licking it with the tongue. dionysus means to say that euripides takes pleasure in describing shameful passions. [ ] here the criticism only concerns the rhythm and not either the meaning or the style. this passage was sung to one of the airs that euripides had adopted for his choruses and which have not come down to us; we are therefore absolutely without any data that would enable us to understand and judge a criticism of this kind. [ ] a celebrated courtesan, who was skilled in twelve different postures of venus. aeschylus returns to his idea, which he has so often indicated, that euripides' poetry is low and impure; he at the same time scoffs at the artifices to which euripides had recourse when inspiration and animation failed him. [ ] no monologue of euripides that has been preserved bears the faintest resemblance to this specimen which. aeschylus pretends to be giving here. [ ] beginning of euripides' 'medea.' [ ] fragment from aeschylus 'philoctetes.' the sperchius is a river in thessaly, which has its source in the pindus range and its mouth in the maliac gulf. [ ] a verse from euripides' 'antigoné.' its meaning is, that it is better to speak well than to speak the truth, if you want to persuade. [ ] from the 'niobe,' a lost play, of aeschylus. [ ] from the 'telephus' of euripides, in which he introduces achilles playing at dice. this line was also ridiculed by eupolis. [ ] from euripides' 'meleager.' all these plays, with the one exception of the 'medea,' are lost. [ ] from the 'glaucus potniensis,' a lost play of aeschylus. [ ] i.e. one hundred porters, either because many of the athenian porters were egyptians, or as an allusion to the pyramids and other great works, which had habituated them to carrying heavy burdens. [ ] euripides' friend and collaborator. [ ] the invention of weights and measures, of dice, and of the game of chess are attributed to him, also that of four additional letters of the alphabet. [ ] i.e. that cannot decide for either party. [ ] i.e. that a country can always be invaded and that the fleet alone is a safe refuge. this is the same advice as that given by pericles, and which thucydides expresses thus, "let your country be devastated, or even devastate it yourself, and set sail for laconia with your fleet." [ ] an allusion to the fees of the dicasts, or jurymen; we have already seen that at this period it was two obols, and later three. [ ] a half-line from euripides' 'hippolytus.' the full line is: [greek: h_e gl_ott' om_omok', h_e de phr_en an_omotos,] "my tongue has taken an oath, but my mind is unsworn," a bit of casuistry which the critics were never tired of bringing up against the author. [ ] a verse from the 'aeolus' of euripides, but slightly altered. euripides said, "why is is shameful, if the spectators, who enjoy it, do not think so?" [ ] a verse from the 'phrixus' of euripides; what follows is a parody. [ ] we have already seen aeschylus pretending that it was possible to adapt any foolish expression one liked to the verses of euripides: "a little bottle, a little bag, a little fleece." [ ] pluto speaks as though he were an athenian himself. [ ] that they should hang themselves. cleophon is said to have been an influential alien resident who was opposed to concluding peace; myrmex and nicomachus were two officials guilty of peculation of public funds; archenomus is unknown. [ ] he would brand them as fugitive slaves, if, despite his orders, they refused to come down. [ ] an athenian admiral. [ ] the real name of the father of adimantus was leucolophides, which aristophanes jestingly turns into leucolophus, i.e. _white crest_. [ ] i.e. in a foreign country; cleophon, as we have just seen, was not an athenian. the thesmophoriazusae or the women's festival introduction like the 'lysistrata,' the 'thesmophoriazusae, or women's festival,' and the next following play, the 'ecclesiazusae, or women in council' are comedies in which the fair sex play a great part, and also resemble that extremely _scabreux_ production in the plentiful crop of doubtful 'double entendres' and highly suggestive situations they contain. the play has more of a proper intrigue and formal dénouement than is general with our author's pieces, which, like modern extravaganzas and musical comedies, are often strung on a very slender thread of plot. the idea of the 'thesmophoriazusae' is as follows. euripides is summoned as a notorious woman-hater and detractor of the female sex to appear for trial and judgment before the women of athens assembled to celebrate the thesmophoria, a festival held in honour of the goddesses demeter and persephone, from which men were rigidly excluded. the poet is terror-stricken, and endeavours to persuade his confrère, the tragedian agathon, to attend the meeting in the guise of a woman to plead his cause, agathon's notorious effeminacy of costume and way of life lending itself to the deception; but the latter refuses point-blank. he then prevails on his father-in-law, mnesilochus, to do him this favour, and shaves, depilates, and dresses him up accordingly. but so far from throwing oil on the troubled waters, mnesilochus indulges in a long harangue full of violent abuse of the whole sex, and relates some scandalous stories of the naughty ways of peccant wives. the assembly suspects at once there is a man amongst them, and on examination of the old fellow's person, this is proved to be the case. he flies for sanctuary to the altar, snatching a child from the arms of one of the women as a hostage, vowing to kill it if they molest him further. on investigation, however, the infant turns out to be a wine-skin dressed in baby's clothes. in despair mnesilochus sends urgent messages to euripides to come and rescue him from his perilous predicament. the latter then appears, and in successive characters selected from his different tragedies--now menelaus meeting helen again in egypt, now echo sympathising with the chained andromeda, presently perseus about to release the heroine from her rock--pleads for his unhappy father-in-law. at length he succeeds in getting him away in the temporary absence of the guard, a scythian archer, whom he entices from his post by the charms of a dancing-girl. as may be supposed, the appearance of mnesilochus among the women dressed in women's clothes, the examination of his person to discover his true sex and his final detection, afford fine opportunities for a display of the broadest aristophanic humour. the latter part of the play also, where various pieces of euripides are burlesqued, is extremely funny; and must have been still more so when represented before an audience familiar with every piece and almost every line parodied, and played by actors trained and got up to imitate every trick and mannerism of appearance and delivery of the tragic actors who originally took the parts. the 'thesmophoriazusae' was produced in the year b.c., six years before the death of euripides, who is held up to ridicule in it, as he is in 'the wasps' and several other of our author's comedies. * * * * * the thesmophoriazusae or the women's festival dramatis personae euripides. mnesilochus, father-in-law of euripides. agathon. servant of agathon. chorus attending agathon. herald. women. clisthenes. a prytanis or member of the council. a scythian or police officer. chorus of thesmophoriazusae--women keeping the feast of demeter. scene: in front of agathon's house; afterwards in the precincts of the temple of demeter. * * * * * the thesmophoriazusae or the women's festival mnesilochus. great zeus! will the swallow never appear to end the winter of my discontent? why the fellow has kept me on the run ever since early this morning; he wants to kill me, that's certain. before i lose my spleen entirely, euripides, can you at least tell me whither you are leading me? euripides. what need for you to hear what you are going to see? mnesilochus. how is that? repeat it. no need for me to hear.... euripides. what you are going to see. mnesilochus. nor consequently to see.... euripides. what you have to hear.[ ] mnesilochus. what is this wiseacre stuff you are telling me? i must neither see nor hear. euripides. ah! but you have two things there that are essentially distinct. mnesilochus. seeing and hearing. euripides. undoubtedly. mnesilochus. in what way distinct? euripides. in this way. formerly, when ether separated the elements and bore the animals that were moving in her bosom, she wished to endow them with sight, and so made the eye round like the sun's disc and bored ears in the form of a funnel. mnesilochus. and because of this funnel i neither see nor hear. ah! great gods! i am delighted to know it. what a fine thing it is to talk with wise men! euripides. i will teach you many another thing of the sort. mnesilochus. that's well to know; but first of all i should like to find out how to grow lame, so that i need not have to follow you all about. euripides. come, hear and give heed! mnesilochus. i'm here and waiting. euripides. do you see that little door? mnesilochus. yes, certainly. euripides. silence! mnesilochus. silence about what? about the door? euripides. pay attention! mnesilochus. pay attention and be silent about the door? very well. euripides. 'tis there that agathon, the celebrated tragic poet, dwells.[ ] mnesilochus. who is this agathon? euripides. 'tis a certain agathon.... mnesilochus. swarthy, robust of build? euripides. no, another. you have never seen him? mnesilochus. he has a big beard? euripides. no, no, evidently you have never seen him. mnesilochus. never, so far as i know. euripides. and yet you have pedicated him. well, it must have been without knowing who he was. ah! let us step aside; here is one of his slaves bringing a brazier and some myrtle branches; no doubt he is going to offer a sacrifice and pray for a happy poetical inspiration for agathon. servant of agathon. silence! oh, people! keep your mouths sedately shut! the chorus of the muses is moulding songs at my master's hearth. let the winds hold their breath in the silent ether! let the azure waves cease murmuring on the shore!... mnesilochus. brououou! brououou! (_imitates the buzzing of a fly._) euripides. keep quiet! what are you saying there? servant. ... take your rest, ye winged races, and you, ye savage inhabitants of the woods, cease from your erratic wandering ... mnesilochus. broum, broum, brououou. servant. ... for agathon, our master, the sweet-voiced poet, is going ... mnesilochus. ... to be pedicated? servant. whose voice is that? mnesilochus. 'tis the silent ether. servant. ... is going to construct the framework of a drama. he is rounding fresh poetical forms, he is polishing them in the lathe and is welding them; he is hammering out sentences and metaphors; he is working up his subject like soft wax. first he models it and then he casts it in bronze ... mnesilochus. ... and sways his buttocks amorously. servant. who is the rustic who approaches this sacred enclosure? mnesilochus. take care of yourself and of your sweet-voiced poet! i have a strong instrument here both well rounded and well polished, which will pierce your enclosure and penetrate your bottom. servant. old man, you must have been a very insolent fellow in your youth! euripides (_to the servant_). let him be, friend, and, quick, go and call agathon to me. servant. 'tis not worth the trouble, for he will soon be here himself. he has started to compose, and in winter[ ] it is never possible to round off strophes without coming to the sun to excite the imagination. (_he departs._) mnesilochus. and what am i to do? euripides. wait till he comes.... oh, zeus! what hast thou in store for me to-day? mnesilochus. but, great gods, what is the matter then? what are you grumbling and groaning for? tell me; you must not conceal anything from your father-in-law. euripides. some great misfortune is brewing against me. mnesilochus. what is it? euripides. this day will decide whether it is all over with euripides or not. mnesilochus. but how? neither the tribunals nor the senate are sitting, for it is the third of the five days consecrated to demeter.[ ] euripides. that is precisely what makes me tremble; the women have plotted my ruin, and to-day they are to gather in the temple of demeter to execute their decision. mnesilochus. why are they against you? euripides. because i mishandle them in my tragedies. mnesilochus. by posidon, you would seem to have thoroughly deserved your fate. but how are you going to get out of the mess? euripides. i am going to beg agathon, the tragic poet, to go to the thesmophoria. mnesilochus. and what is he to do there? euripides. he would mingle with the women, and stand up for me, if needful. mnesilochus. would he be openly present or secretly? euripides. secretly, dressed in woman's clothes. mnesilochus. that's a clever notion, thoroughly worthy of you. the prize for trickery is ours. euripides. silence! mnesilochus. what's the matter? euripides. here comes agathon. mnesilochus. where, where? euripides. that's the man they are bringing out yonder on the machine.[ ] mnesilochus. i am blind then! i see no man here, i only see cyrené.[ ] euripides. be still! he is getting ready to sing. mnesilochus. what subtle trill, i wonder, is he going to warble to us? agathon. damsels, with the sacred torch[ ] in hand, unite your dance to shouts of joy in honour of the nether goddesses; celebrate the freedom of your country. chorus. to what divinity is your homage addressed? i wish to mingle mine with it. agathon. oh! muse! glorify phoebus with his golden bow, who erected the walls of the city of the simois.[ ] chorus. to thee, oh phoebus, i dedicate my most beauteous songs; to thee, the sacred victor in the poetical contests. agathon. and praise artemis too, the maiden huntress, who wanders on the mountains and through the woods.... chorus. i, in my turn, celebrate the everlasting happiness of the chaste artemis, the mighty daughter of latona! agathon. ... and latona and the tones of the asiatic lyre, which wed so well with the dances of the phrygian graces.[ ] chorus. i do honour to the divine latona and to the lyre, the mother of songs of male and noble strains. the eyes of the goddess sparkle while listening to our enthusiastic chants. honour to the powerful phoebus! hail! thou blessed son of latona! mnesilochus. oh! ye venerable genetyllides,[ ] what tender and voluptuous songs! they surpass the most lascivious kisses in sweetness; i feel a thrill of delight pass up my rectum as i listen to them. young man, whoever you are, answer my questions, which i am borrowing from aeschylus' 'lycurgeia.'[ ] whence comes this effeminate? what is his country? his dress? what contradictions his life shows! a lyre and a hair-net! a wrestling school oil flask and a girdle![ ] what could be more contradictory? what relation has a mirror to a sword? and you yourself, who are you? do you pretend to be a man? where is the sign of your manhood, your penis, pray? where is the cloak, the footgear that belong to that sex? are you a woman? then where are your breasts? answer me. but you keep silent. oh! just as you choose; your songs display your character quite sufficiently. agathon. old man, old man, i hear the shafts of jealousy whistling by my ears, but they do not hit me. my dress is in harmony with my thoughts. a poet must adopt the nature of his characters. thus, if he is placing women on the stage, he must contract all their habits in his own person. mnesilochus. then you ride the high horse[ ] when you are composing a phaedra. agathon. if the heroes are men, everything in him will be manly. what we don't possess by nature, we must acquire by imitation. mnesilochus. when you are staging satyrs, call me; i will do my best to help you from behind with standing tool. agathon. besides, it is bad taste for a poet to be coarse and hairy. look at the famous ibycus, at anacreon of teos, and at alcaeus,[ ] who handled music so well; they wore headbands and found pleasure in the lascivious dances of ionia. and have you not heard what a dandy phrynichus was[ ] and how careful in his dress? for this reason his pieces were also beautiful, for the works of a poet are copied from himself. mnesilochus. ah! so it is for this reason that philocles, who is so hideous, writes hideous pieces; xenocles, who is malicious, malicious ones, and theognis,[ ] who is cold, such cold ones? agathon. yes, necessarily and unavoidably; and 'tis because i knew this that i have so well cared for my person. mnesilochus. how, in the gods' name? euripides. come, leave off badgering him; i was just the same at his age, when i began to write. mnesilochus. at! then, by zeus! i don't envy you your fine manners. euripides (_to agathon_). but listen to the cause that brings me here. agathon. say on. euripides. agathon, wise is he who can compress many thoughts into few words.[ ] struck by a most cruel misfortune, i come to you as a suppliant. agathon. what are you asking? euripides. the women purpose killing me to-day during the thesmophoria, because i have dared to speak ill of them. agathon. and what can i do for you in the matter? euripides. everything. mingle secretly with the women by making yourself pass as one of themselves; then do you plead my cause with your own lips, and i am saved. you, and you alone, are capable of speaking of me worthily. agathon. but why not go and defend yourself? euripides. 'tis impossible. first of all, i am known; further, i have white hair and a long beard; whereas you, you are good-looking, charming, and are close-shaven; you are fair, delicate, and have a woman's voice. agathon. euripides! euripides. well? agathon. have you not said in one of your pieces, "you love to see the light, and don't you believe your father loves it too?"[ ] euripides. yes. agathon. then never you think i am going to expose myself in your stead; 'twould be madness. 'tis for you to submit to the fate that overtakes you; one must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace. mnesilochus. this is why you, you wretch, offer your posterior with a good grace to lovers, not in words, but in actual fact. euripides. but what prevents your going there? agathon. i should run more risk than you would. euripides. why? agathon. why? i should look as if i were wanting to trespass on secret nightly pleasures of the women and to ravish their aphrodité.[ ] mnesilochus. of wanting to ravish indeed! you mean wanting to be ravished--in the rearward mode. ah! great gods! a fine excuse truly! euripides. well then, do you agree? agathon. don't count upon it. euripides. oh! i am unfortunate indeed! i am undone! mnesilochus. euripides, my friend, my son-in-law, never despair. euripides. what can be done? mnesilochus. send him to the devil and do with me as you like. euripides. very well then, since you devote yourself to my safety, take off your cloak first. mnesilochus. there, it lies on the ground. but what do you want to do with me? euripides. to shave off this beard of yours, and to remove your hair below as well. mnesilochus. do what you think fit; i yield myself entirely to you. euripides. agathon, you have always razors about you; lend me one. agathon. take if yourself, there, out of that case. euripides. thanks. sit down and puff out the right cheek. mnesilochus. oh! oh! oh! euripides. what are you shouting for? i'll cram a spit down your gullet, if you're not quiet. mnesilochus. oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! (_he springs up and starts running away._) euripides. where are you running to now? mnesilochus. to the temple of the eumenides.[ ] no, by demeter i won't let myself be gashed like that. euripides. but you will get laughed at, with your face half-shaven like that. mnesilochus. little care i. euripides. in the gods' names, don't leave me in the lurch. come here. mnesilochus. oh! by the gods! (_resumes his seat._) euripides. keep still and hold up your head. why do you want to fidget about like this? mnesilochus. mu, mu. euripides. well! why, mu, mu? there! 'tis done and well done too! mnesilochus ah! great god! it makes me feel quite light. euripides. don't worry yourself; you look charming. do you want to see yourself? mnesilochus. aye, that i do; hand the mirror here. euripides. do you see yourself? mnesilochus. but this is not i, it is clisthenes![ ] euripides. stand up; i am now going to remove your hair. bend down. mnesilochus. alas! alas! they are going to grill me like a pig. euripides. come now, a torch or a lamp! bend down and take care of the tender end of your tail! mnesilochus. aye, aye! but i'm afire! oh! oh! water, water, neighbour, or my rump will be alight! euripides. keep up your courage! mnesilochus. keep my courage, when i'm being burnt up? euripides. come, cease your whining, the worst is over. mnesilochus. oh! it's quite black, all burnt below there all about the hole! euripides. don't worry! that will be washed off with a sponge. mnesilochus. woe to him who dares to wash my rump! euripides. agathon, you refuse to devote yourself to helping me; but at any rate lend me a tunic and a belt. you cannot say you have not got them. agathon. take them and use them as you like; i consent. mnesilochus. what must be taken? euripides. what must be taken? first put on this long saffron-coloured robe. mnesilochus. by aphrodité! what a sweet odour! how it smells of a man's genitals![ ] hand it me quickly. and the belt? euripides. here it is. mnesilochus. now some rings for my legs. euripides. you still want a hair-net and a head-dress. agathon. here is my night-cap. euripides. ah! that's capital. mnesilochus. does it suit me? agathon. it could not be better. euripides. and a short mantle? agathon. there's one on the couch; take it. euripides. he wants slippers. agathon. here are mine. mnesilochus. will they fit me? you like a loose fit.[ ] agathon. try them on. now that you have all you need, let me be taken inside.[ ] euripides. you look for all the world like a woman. but when you talk, take good care to give your voice a woman's tone. mnesilochus. i'll try my best. euripides. come, get yourself to the temple. mnesilochus. no, by apollo, not unless you swear to me ... euripides. what? mnesilochus. ... that, if anything untoward happen to me, you will leave nothing undone to save me. euripides very well! i swear it by the ether, the dwelling-place of the king of the gods.[ ] mnesilochus. why not rather swear it by the disciples of hippocrates?[ ] euripides. come, i swear it by all the gods, both great and small. mnesilochus. remember, 'tis the heart, and not the tongue, that has sworn;[ ] for the oaths of the tongue concern me but little. euripides. hurry yourself! the signal for the meeting has just been displayed on the temple of demeter. farewell. [_exit._ mnesilochus. here, thratta, follow me.[ ] look, thratta, at the cloud of smoke that arises from all these lighted torches. ah! beautiful thesmophorae![ ] grant me your favours, protect me, both within the temple and on my way back! come, thratta, put down the basket and take out the cake, which i wish to offer to the two goddesses. mighty divinity, oh, demeter, and thou, persephoné, grant that i may be able to offer you many sacrifices; above all things, grant that i may not be recognized. would that my young daughter might marry a man as rich as he is foolish and silly, so that she may have nothing to do but amuse herself. but where can a place be found for hearing well? be off, thratta, be off; slaves have no right to be present at this gathering.[ ] herald. silence! silence! pray to the thesmophorae, demeter and cora; pray to plutus,[ ] calligenia,[ ] curotrophos,[ ] the earth, hermes and the graces, that all may happen for the best at this gathering, both for the greatest advantage of athens and for our own personal happiness! may the award be given her, who, by both deeds and words, has most deserved it from the athenian people and from the women! address these prayers to heaven and demand happiness for yourselves. io paean! io paean! let us rejoice! chorus. may the gods deign to accept our vows and our prayers! oh! almighty zeus, and thou, god with the golden lyre,[ ] who reignest on sacred delos, and thou, oh, invincible virgin, pallas, with the eyes of azure and the spear of gold, who protectest our illustrious city, and thou, the daughter of the beautiful latona, the queen of the forests,[ ] who art adored under many names, hasten hither at my call. come, thou mighty posidon, king of the ocean, leave thy stormy whirlpools of nereus; come goddesses of the seas, come, ye nymphs, who wander on the mountains. let us unite our voices to the sounds of the golden lyre, and may wisdom preside at the gathering of the noble matrons of athens. herald. address your prayers to the gods and goddesses of olympus, of delphi, delos and all other places; if there be a man who is plotting against the womenfolk or who, to injure them, is proposing peace to euripides and the medes, or who aspires to usurping the tyranny, plots the return of a tyrant, or unmasks a supposititious child; or if there be a slave who, a confidential party to a wife's intrigues, reveals them secretly to her husband, or who, entrusted with a message, does not deliver the same faithfully; if there be a lover who fulfils naught of what he has promised a woman, whom he has abused on the strength of his lies, if there be an old woman who seduces the lover of a maiden by dint of her presents and treacherously receives him in her house; if there be a host or hostess who sells false measure, pray the gods that they will overwhelm them with their wrath, both them and their families, and that they may reserve all their favours for you. chorus. let us ask the fulfilment of these wishes both for the city and for the people, and may the wisest of us cause her opinion to be accepted. but woe to those women who break their oaths, who speculate on the public misfortune, who seek to alter the laws and the decrees, who reveal our secrets to the foe and admit the medes into our territory so that they may devastate it! i declare them both impious and criminal. oh! almighty zeus! see to it that the gods protect us, albeit we are but women! herald. hearken, all of you! this is the decree passed by the senate of the women under the presidency of timoclea and at the suggestion of sostrata; it is signed by lysilla, the secretary: "there will be a gathering of the people on the morning of the third day of the thesmophoria, which is a day of rest for us; the principal business there shall be the punishment that it is meet to inflict upon euripides for the insults with which he has loaded us." now who asks to speak? first woman. i do. herald. first put on this garland, and then speak. silence! let all be quiet! pay attention! for here she is spitting as orators generally do before they begin; no doubt she has much to say. first woman. if i have asked to speak, may the goddesses bear me witness, it was not for sake of ostentation. but i have long been pained to see us women insulted by this euripides, this son of the green-stuff woman,[ ] who loads us with every kind of indignity. has he not hit us enough, calumniated us sufficiently, wherever there are spectators, tragedians, and a chorus? does he not style us gay, lecherous, drunken, traitorous, boastful? does he not repeat that we are all vice, that we are the curse of our husbands? so that, directly they come back from the theatre, they look at us doubtfully and go searching every nook, fearing there may be some hidden lover. we can do nothing as we used to, so many are the false ideas which he has instilled into our husbands. is a woman weaving a garland for herself? 'tis because she is in love.[ ] does she let some vase drop while going or returning to the house? her husband asks her in whose honour she has broken it, "it can only be for that corinthian stranger."[ ] is a maiden unwell? straightway her brother says, "that is a colour that does not please me."[ ] and if a childless woman wishes to substitute one, the deceit can no longer be a secret, for the neighbours will insist on being present at her delivery. formerly the old men married young girls, but they have been so calumniated that none think of them now, thanks to the verse: "a woman is the tyrant of the old man who marries her."[ ] again, it is because of euripides that we are incessantly watched, that we are shut up behind bolts and bars, and that dogs are kept to frighten off the gallants. let that pass; but formerly it was we who had the care of the food, who fetched the flour from the storeroom, the oil and the wine; we can do it no more. our husbands now carry little spartan keys on their persons, made with three notches and full of malice and spite.[ ] formerly it sufficed to purchase a ring marked with the same sign for three obols, to open the most securely sealed-up door;[ ] but now this pestilent euripides has taught men to hang seals of worm-eaten wood about their necks.[ ] my opinion, therefore, is that we should rid ourselves of our enemy by poison or by any other means, provided he dies. that is what i announce publicly; as to certain points, which i wish to keep secret, i propose to record them on the secretary's minutes. chorus. never have i listened to a cleverer or more eloquent woman. everything she says is true; she has examined the matter from all sides and has weighed up every detail. her arguments are close, varied, and happily chosen. i believe that xenocles himself, the son of carcinus, would seem to talk mere nonsense, if placed beside her. second woman. i have only a very few words to add, for the last speaker has covered the various points of the indictment; allow me only to tell you what happened to me. my husband died at cyprus, leaving me five children, whom i had great trouble to bring up by weaving chaplets on the myrtle market. anyhow, i lived as well as i could until this wretch had persuaded the spectators by his tragedies that there were no gods; since then i have not sold as many chaplets by half. i charge you therefore and exhort you all to punish him, for does he not deserve it in a thousand respects, he who loads you with troubles, who is as coarse toward you as the green-stuff upon which his mother reared him? but i must back to the market to weave my chaplets; i have twenty to deliver yet. chorus. this is even more animated and more trenchant than the first speech; all she has just said is full of good sense and to the point; it is clever, clear and well calculated to convince. yes! we must have striking vengeance on the insults of euripides. mnesilochus. oh, women! i am not astonished at these outbursts of fiery rage; how could your bile not get inflamed against euripides, who has spoken so ill of you? as for myself, i hate the man, i swear it by my children; 'twould be madness not to hate him! yet, let us reflect a little; we are alone and our words will not be repeated outside. why be so bent on his ruin? because he has known and shown up two or three of our faults, when we have a thousand? as for myself, not to speak of other women, i have more than one great sin upon my conscience, but this is the blackest of them. i had been married three days and my husband was asleep by my side; i had a lover, who had seduced me when i was seven years old; impelled by his passion, he came scratching at the door; i understood at once he was there and was going down noiselessly. "where are you going?" asked my husband. "i am suffering terribly with colic," i told him, "and am going to the closet." "go," he replied, and started pounding together juniper berries, aniseed, and sage.[ ] as for myself, i moistened the door-hinge[ ] and went to find my lover, who embraced me, half-reclining upon apollo's altar[ ] and holding on to the sacred laurel with one hand. well now! consider! that is a thing of which euripides has never spoken. and when we bestow our favours on slaves and muleteers for want of better, does he mention this? and when we eat garlic early in the morning after a night of wantonness, so that our husband, who has been keeping guard upon the city wall, may be reassured by the smell and suspect nothing,[ ] has euripides ever breathed a word of this? tell me. neither has he spoken of the woman who spreads open a large cloak before her husband's eyes to make him admire it in full daylight to conceal her lover by so doing and afford him the means of making his escape. i know another, who for ten whole days pretended to be suffering the pains of labour until she had secured a child; the husband hurried in all directions to buy drugs to hasten her deliverance, and meanwhile an old woman brought the infant in a stew-pot; to prevent its crying she had stopped up its mouth with honey. with a sign she told the wife that she was bringing a child for her, who at once began exclaiming, "go away, friend, go away, i think i am going to be delivered; i can feel him kicking his heels in the belly ... of the stew-pot."[ ] the husband goes off full of joy, and the old wretch quickly picks the honey out of the child's mouth, which sets a-crying; then she seizes the babe, runs to the father and tells him with a smile on her face, "'tis a lion, a lion, that is born to you; 'tis your very image. everything about it is like you, even to its little tool, which is all twisty like a fir-cone." are these not our everyday tricks? why certainly, by artemis, and we are angry with euripides, who assuredly treats us no worse than we deserve! chorus. great gods! where has she unearthed all that? what country gave birth to such an audacious woman? oh! you wretch! i should not have thought ever a one of us could have spoken in public with such impudence. 'tis clear, however, that we must expect everything and, as the old proverb says, must look beneath every stone, lest it conceal some orator[ ] ready to sting us. there is but one thing in the world worse than a shameless woman, and that's another woman. third woman. by aglaurus![ ] you have lost your wits, friends! you must be bewitched to suffer this plague to belch forth insults against us all. is there no one has any spirit at all? if not, we and our maid-servants will punish her. run and fetch coals and let's depilate her cunt in proper style, to teach her not to speak ill of her sex. mnesilochus. oh! no! have mercy, friends. have we not the right to speak frankly at this gathering? and because i have uttered what i thought right in favour of euripides, do you want to depilate me for my trouble? third woman. what! we ought not to punish you, who alone have dared to defend the man who has done us so much harm, whom it pleases to put all the vile women that ever were upon the stage, who only shows us melanippés phaedras? but of penelopé he has never said a word, because she was reputed chaste and good. mnesilochus. i know the reason. 'tis because not a single penelopé exists among the women of to-day, but all without exception are phaedras. third woman. women, you hear how this creature still dares to speak of us all. mnesilochus. and, 'faith, i have not said all that i know. do you want any more? third woman. you cannot tell us any more; you have emptied your bag. mnesilochus. why, i have not told the thousandth part of what we women do. have i said how we use the hollow handles of our brooms to draw up wine unbeknown to our husbands. third woman. the cursed jade! mnesilochus. and how we give meats to our lovers at the feast of the apaturia and then accuse the cat.... third woman. she's mad! mnesilochus. ... have i mentioned the woman who killed her husband with a hatchet? of another, who caused hers to lose his reason with her potions? and of the acharnian woman ... third woman. die, you bitch! mnesilochus. ... who buried her father beneath the bath?[ ] third woman. and yet we listen to such things? mnesilochus. have i told how you attributed to yourself the male child your slave had just borne and gave her your little daughter? third woman. this insult calls for vengeance. look out for your hair! mnesilochus. by zeus! don't touch me. third woman. there! mnesilochus. there! tit for tat! (_they exchange blows._) third woman. hold my cloak, philista! mnesilochus. come on then, and by demeter ... third woman. well! what? mnesilochus. ... i'll make you disgorge the sesame-cake you have eaten.[ ] chorus. cease wrangling! i see a woman[ ] running here in hot haste. keep silent, so that we may hear the better what she has to say. clisthenes. friends, whom i copy in all things, my hairless chin sufficiently evidences how dear you are to me; i am women-mad and make myself their champion wherever i am. just now on the market-place i heard mention of a thing that is of the greatest importance to you; i come to tell it you, to let you know it, so that you may watch carefully and be on your guard against the danger which threatens you. chorus. what is it, my child? i can well call you child, for you have so smooth a skin. clisthenes. 'tis said that euripides has sent an old man here to-day, one of his relations ... chorus. with what object? what is his purpose? clisthenes. ... so that he may hear your speeches and inform him of your deliberations and intentions. chorus. but how would a man fail to be recognized amongst women? clisthenes. euripides singed and depilated him and disguised him as a woman. mnesilochus. this is pure invention! what man is fool enough to let himself be depilated? as for myself, i don't believe a word of it. clisthenes. are you mad? i should not have come here to tell you, if i did not know it on indisputable authority. chorus. great gods! what is it you tell us! come, women, let us not lose a moment; let us search and rummage everywhere! where can this man have hidden himself escape our notice? help us to look, clisthenes; we shall thus owe you double thanks, dear friend. clisthenes (_to a fourth woman_). well then! let us see. to begin with you; who are you? mnesilochus (_aside_). wherever am i to stow myself? clisthenes. each and every one must pass the scrutiny. mnesilochus (_aside_). oh! great gods! fourth woman. you ask me who i am? i am the wife of cleonymus.[ ] clisthenes. do you know this woman? chorus. yes, yes, pass on to the rest. clisthenes. and she who carries the child? mnesilochus (_aside_). i'm a dead man. (_he runs off._) clisthenes (_to mnesilochus_). hi! you there! where are you off to? stop there. what are you running away for? mnesilochus. i want to relieve myself. clisthenes. the shameless thing! come, hurry yourself; i will wait here for you. chorus. wait for her and examine her closely; 'tis the only one we do not know. clisthenes. you are a long time about your business. mnesilochus. aye, my god, yes; 'tis because i am unwell, for i ate cress yesterday.[ ] clisthenes. what are you chattering about cress? come here and be quick. mnesilochus. oh! don't pull a poor sick woman about like that. clisthenes. tell me, who is your husband? mnesilochus. my husband? do you know a certain individual at cothocidae[ ]...? clisthenes. whom do you mean? give his name. mnesilochus. 'tis an individual to whom the son of a certain individual one day.... clisthenes. you are drivelling! let's see, have you ever been here before? mnesilochus. why certainly, every year. clisthenes. who is your tent companion?[ ] mnesilochus. 'tis a certain.... oh! my god! clisthenes. you don't answer. fifth woman. withdraw, all of you; i am going to examine her thoroughly about last year's mysteries. but move away, clisthenes, for no man may hear what is going to be said. now answer my questions! what was done first? mnesilochus. let's see then. what was done first? oh! we drank. fifth woman. and then? mnesilochus. we drank to our healths. fifth woman. you will have heard that from someone. and then? mnesilochus. xenylla relieved herself in a cup, for there was no other vessel. fifth woman. you trifle. here, clisthenes, here! this is the man of whom you spoke. clisthenes. what is to be done then? fifth woman. take off his clothes, i can get nothing out of him. mnesilochus. what! are you going to strip a mother of nine children naked? clisthenes. come, undo your girdle, you shameless thing. fifth woman. ah! what a sturdy frame! but she has no breasts like we have. mnesilochus. that's because i'm barren. i never had any children. fifth woman. oh! indeed! just now you were the mother of nine. clisthenes. stand up straight. hullo! what do i see there? why, a penis sticking out behind. fifth woman. there's no mistaking it; you can see it projecting, and a fine red it is. clisthenes. where has it gone to now? fifth woman. to the front. clisthenes. no. fifth woman. ah! 'tis behind now. clisthenes. why, friend, 'tis for all the world like the isthmus; you keep pulling your tool backwards and forwards just as the corinthians do their ships.[ ] fifth woman. ah! the wretch! this is why he insulted us and defended euripides. mnesilochus. aye, wretch indeed, what troubles have i not got into now! fifth woman. what shall we do? clisthenes. watch him closely, so that he does not escape. as for me, i go to report the matter to the magistrates, the prytanes. chorus. let us kindle our lamps; let us go firmly to work and with courage, let us take off our cloaks and search whether some other man has not come here too; let us pass round the whole pnyx,[ ] examine the tents and the passages.[ ] come, be quick, let us start off on a light toe[ ] and rummage all round in silence. let us hasten, let us finish our round as soon as possible. look quickly for the traces that might show you a man hidden here, let your glance fall on every side; look well to the right and to the left. if we seize some impious fellow, woe to him! he will know how we punish the outrage, the crime, the sacrilege. the criminal will then acknowledge at last that gods exist; his fate will teach all men that the deities must be revered, that justice must be observed and that they must submit to the sacred laws. if not, then woe to them! heaven itself will punish sacrilege; being aflame with fury and mad with frenzy, all their deeds will prove to mortals, both men and women, that the deity punishes injustice and impiety, and that she is not slow to strike. but i think i have now searched everywhere and that no other man is hidden among us. sixth woman. where is he flying to? stop him! stop him! ah! miserable woman that i am, he has torn my child from my breast and has disappeared with it. mnesilochus. scream as loud as you will, but he shall never suck your bosom more. if you do not let me go this very instant, i am going to cut open the veins of his thighs with this cutlass and his blood shall flow over the altar. sixth woman. oh! great gods! oh! friends, help me! terrify him with your shrieks, triumph over this monster, permit him not to rob me of my only child. chorus. oh! oh! venerable parcae, what fresh attack is this? 'tis the crowning act of audacity and shamelessness! what has he done now, friends, what has he done? mnesilochus. ah! this insolence passes all bounds, but i shall know how to curb it. chorus. what a shameful deed! the measure of his iniquities is full! sixth woman. aye, 'tis shameful that he should have robbed me of my child. chorus. 'tis past belief to be so criminal and so impudent! mnesilochus. ah! you're not near the end of it yet. sixth woman. little i care whence you come; you shall not return to boast of having acted so odiously with impunity, for you shall be punished. mnesilochus. you won't do it, by the gods! chorus. and what immortal would protect you for your crime? mnesilochus. 'tis in vain you talk! i shall not let go the child. chorus. by the goddesses, you will not laugh presently over your crime and your impious speech. for with impiety, as 'tis meet, shall we reply to your impiety. soon fortune will turn round and overwhelm you. come! bring wood along. let us burn the wretch, let us roast him as quickly as possible. sixth woman. bring faggots, mania! (_to mnesilochus._) you will be mere charcoal soon. chorus. grill away, roast me, but you, my child, take off this cretan robe and blame no one but your mother for your death. but what does this mean? the little girl is nothing but a skin filled with wine and shod with persian slippers.[ ] oh! you wanton, you tippling woman, who think of nothing but wine; you are a fortune to the drinking-shops and are our ruin; for the sake of drink, you neglect both your household and your shuttle! sixth woman. faggots, mania, plenty of them. mnesilochus. bring as many as you like. but answer me; are you the mother of this brat? sixth woman. i carried it ten months.[ ] mnesilochus. you carried it? sixth woman. i swear it by artemis. mnesilochus. how much does it hold? three cotylae?[ ] tell me. sixth woman. oh! what have you done? you have stripped the poor child quite naked, and it is so small, so small. mnesilochus. so small? sixth woman. yes, quite small, to be sure. mnesilochus. how old is it? has it seen the feast of cups thrice or four times? sixth woman. it was born about the time of the last dionysia.[ ] but give it back to me. mnesilochus. no, may apollo bear me witness. sixth woman. well, then we are going to burn him. mnesilochus. burn me, but then i shall rip this open instantly. sixth woman. no, no, i adjure you, don't; do anything you like to me rather than that. mnesilochus. what a tender mother you are; but nevertheless i shall rip it open. (_tears open the wine-skin_.) sixth woman. oh, my beloved daughter! mania, hand me the sacred cup, that i may at least catch the blood of my child. mnesilochus. hold it below; 'tis the sole favour i grant you. sixth woman. out upon you, you pitiless monster! mnesilochus. this robe belongs to the priestess.[ ] sixth woman. what belongs to the priestess? mnesilochus. here, take it. (_throws her the cretan robe._) seventh woman. ah! unfortunate mica! who has robbed you of your daughter, your beloved child? sixth woman. that wretch. but as you are here, watch him well, while i go with clisthenes to the prytanes and denounce him for his crimes. mnesilochus. ah! how can i secure safety? what device can i hit on? what can i think of? he whose fault it is, he who hurried me into this trouble, will not come to my rescue. let me see, whom could i best send to him? ha! i know a means taken from palamedes; like him, i will write my misfortune on some oars, which i will cast into the sea. but there are no oars here. where might i find some?[ ] where indeed? bah! what if i took these statues[ ] instead of oars, wrote upon them and then threw them towards this side and that. 'tis the best thing to do. besides, like oars they are of wood. oh! my hands, keep up your courage, for my safety is at stake. come, my beautiful tablets, receive the traces of my stylus and be the messengers of my sorry fate. oh! oh! this b looks miserable enough! where is it running to then? come, off with you in all directions, to the right and to the left; and hurry yourselves, for there's much need indeed! chorus. let us address ourselves to the spectators to sing our praises, despite the fact that each one says much ill of women. if the men are to be believed, we are a plague to them; through us come all their troubles, quarrels, disputes, sedition, griefs and wars. but if we are truly such a pest, why marry us? why forbid us to go out or show ourselves at the window? you want to keep this pest, and take a thousand cares to do it. if your wife goes out and you meet her away from the house, you fly into a fury. ought you not rather to rejoice and give thanks to the gods? for if the pest has disappeared, you will no longer find it at home. if we fall asleep at friends' houses from the fatigue of playing and sporting, each of you comes prowling round the bed to contemplate the features of this pest. if we seat ourselves at the window, each one wants to see the pest, and if we withdraw through modesty, each wants all the more to see the pest perch herself there again. it is thus clear that we are better than you, and the proof of this is easy. let us find out which is worse of the two sexes. we say, "'tis you," while you aver, 'tis we. come, let us compare them in detail, each individual man with a woman. charminus is not equal to nausimaché,[ ] that's certain. cleophon[ ] is in every respect inferior to salabaccho.[ ] 'tis long now since any of you has dared to contest the prize with aristomaché, the heroine of marathon, or with stratonicé.[ ] among the last year's senators, who have just yielded their office to other citizens, is there one who equals eubulé?[ ] therefore we maintain that men are greatly our inferiors. you see no woman who has robbed the state of fifty talents rushing about the city in a magnificent chariot; our greatest peculations are a measure of corn, which we steal from our husbands, and even then we return it them the very same day. but we could name many amongst you who do quite as much, and who are, even more than ourselves, gluttons, parasites, cheats and kidnappers of slaves. we know how to keep our property better than you. we still have our cylinders, our beams,[ ] our baskets and our sunshades; whereas many among you have lost the wood of your spears as well as the iron, and many others have cast away their bucklers on the battlefield. there are many reproaches we have the right to bring against men. the most serious is this, that the woman, who has given birth to a useful citizen, whether taxiarch or strategus[ ] should receive some distinction; a place of honour should be reserved for her at the sthenia, the scirophoria,[ ] and the other festivals that we keep. on the other hand, she of whom a coward was born or a worthless man, a bad trierarch[ ] or an unskilful pilot, should sit with shaven head, behind her sister who had borne a brave man. oh! citizens! is it just, that the mother of hyperbolus should sit dressed in white and with loosened tresses beside that of lamachus[ ] and lend out money on usury? he, who may have done a deal of this nature with her, so far from paying her interest, should not even repay the capital, saying, "what, pay you interest? after you have given us this delightful son?" mnesilochus. i have contracted quite a squint by looking round for him, and yet euripides does not come. who is keeping him? no doubt he is ashamed of his cold palamedes.[ ] what will attract him? let us see! by which of his pieces does he set most store? ah! i'll imitate his helen,[ ] his lastborn. i just happen to have a complete woman's outfit. seventh woman. what are you ruminating over now again? why are you rolling up your eyes? you'll have no reason to be proud of your helen, if you don't keep quiet until one of the prytanes arrives. mnesilochus (_as helen_). "these shores are those of the nile with the beautiful nymphs, these waters take the place of heaven's rain and fertilize the white earth, that produces the black syrmea."[ ] seventh woman. by bright hecaté, you're a cunning varlet. mnesilochus. "glorious sparta is my country and tyndareus is my father."[ ] seventh woman. he your father, you rascal! why, 'tis phrynondas.[ ] mnesilochus. "i was given the name of helen." seventh woman. what! you are again becoming a woman, before we have punished you for having pretended it a first time! mnesilochus. "a thousand warriors have died on my account on the banks of the scamander." seventh woman. why have you not done the same? mnesilochus. "and here i am upon these shores; menelaus, my unhappy husband, does not yet come. ah! how life weighs upon me! oh! ye cruel crows, who have not devoured my body! but what sweet hope is this that sets my heart a-throb? oh, zeus! grant it may not prove a lying one!" euripides (_as menelaus_). "to what master does this splendid palace belong? will he welcome strangers who have been tried on the billows of the sea by storm and shipwreck?"[ ] mnesilochus. "this is the palace of proteus."[ ] euripides. "of what proteus?" seventh woman. oh! the thrice cursed rascal! how he lies! by the goddesses, 'tis ten years since proteas[ ] died. euripides. "what is this shore whither the wind has driven our boat?" mnesilochus. "it's egypt." euripides. "alas! how far we are from our own country!" seventh woman. but don't believe that cursed fool. this is demeter's temple. euripides. "is proteus in these parts?" seventh woman. ah, now, stranger, it must be sea-sickness that makes you so distraught! you have been told that proteas is dead, and yet you ask if he is in these parts. euripides. "he is no more! oh! woe! where lie his ashes?" mnesilochus. 'tis on his tomb you see me sitting. seventh woman. you call an altar a tomb! beware of the rope! euripides. "and why remain sitting on this tomb, wrapped in this long veil, oh, stranger lady?"[ ] mnesilochus. "they want to force me to marry a son of proteus." seventh woman. ah! wretch, why tell such shameful lies? stranger, this is a rascal who has slipped in amongst us women to rob us of our trinkets. mnesilochus (_to seventh woman_) "shout! load me with your insults, for little care i." euripides. "who is the old woman who reviles you, stranger lady?" mnesilochus. "'tis theonoé, the daughter of proteus." seventh woman. i! why, my name's critylla, the daughter of antitheus,[ ] of the deme of gargettus;[ ] as for you, you are a rogue. mnesilochus. "your entreaties are vain. never shall i wed your brother; never shall i betray the faith i owe my husband menelaus, who is fighting before troy." euripides. "what are you saying? turn your face towards me." mnesilochus. "i dare not; my cheeks show the marks of the insults i have been forced to suffer." euripides "oh! great gods! i cannot speak, for very emotion.... ah! what do i see? who are you?" mnesilochus. "and you, what is your name? for my surprise is as great as yours." euripides. "are you grecian or born in this country?" mnesilochus. "i am grecian. but now your name, what is it?" euripides. "oh! how you resemble helen!" mnesilochus. and you menelaus, if i can judge by those pot-herbs.[ ] euripides. "you are not mistaken, 'tis that unfortunate mortal who stands before you." mnesilochus. "ah! how you have delayed coming to your wife's arms! press me to your heart, throw your arms about me, for i wish to cover you with kisses. carry me away, carry me away, quick, quick, far, very far from here." seventh woman. by the goddesses, woe to him who would carry you away! i should thrash him with my torch. euripides. "do you propose to prevent me from taking my wife, the daughter of tyndareus, to sparta?" seventh woman you seem to me to be a cunning rascal too; you are in collusion with this man, and 'twas not for nothing that you kept babbling about egypt. but the hour for punishment has come; here is the magistrate come with his archer. euripides. this grows awkward. let me hide myself. mnesilochus. and what is to become of me, poor unfortunate man? euripides. be at ease. i shall never abandon you, as long as i draw breath and one of my numberless artifices remains untried. mnesilochus. the fish has not bitten this time. the prytanis. is this the rascal of whom clisthenes told us? why are you trying to make yourself so small? archer, arrest him, fasten him to the post, then take up your position there and keep guard over him. let none approach him. a sound lash with your whip for him who attempts to break the order. seventh woman. excellent, for just now a rogue almost took him from me. mnesilochus. prytanis, in the name of that hand which you know so well how to bend, when money is placed in it, grant me a slight favour before i die. prytanis. what favour? mnesilochus. order the archer to strip me before lashing me to the post; the crows, when they make their meal on the poor old man, would laugh too much at this robe and head-dress. prytanis. 'tis in that gear that you must be exposed by order of the senate, so that your crime may be patent to the passers-by. mnesilochus. oh! cursed robe, the cause of all my misfortune! my last hope is thus destroyed! chorus. let us now devote ourselves to the sports which the women are accustomed to celebrate here, when time has again brought round the mighty mysteries of the great goddesses, the sacred days which pauson[ ] himself honours by fasting and would wish feast to succeed feast, that he might keep them all holy. spring forward with a light step, whirling in mazy circles; let your hands interlace, let the eager and rapid dancers sway to the music and glance on every side as they move. let the chorus sing likewise and praise the olympian gods in their pious transport. 'tis wrong to suppose that, because i am a woman and in this temple, i am going to speak ill of men; but since we want something fresh, we are going through the rhythmic steps of the round dance for the first time. start off while you sing to the god of the lyre and to the chaste goddess armed with the bow. hail! thou god who flingest thy darts so far,[ ] grant us the victory! the homage of our song is also due to heré, the goddess of marriage, who interests herself in every chorus and guards the approach to the nuptial couch. i also pray hermes, the god of the shepherds, and pan and the beloved graces to bestow a benevolent smile upon our songs. let us lead off anew, let us double our zeal during our solemn days, and especially let us observe a close fast; let us form fresh measures that keep good time, and may our songs resound to the very heavens. do thou, oh divine bacchus, who art crowned with ivy, direct our chorus; 'tis to thee that both my hymns and my dances are dedicated; oh, evius, oh, bromius,[ ] oh, thou son of semelé, oh, bacchus, who delightest to mingle with the dear choruses of the nymphs upon the mountains, and who repeatest, while dancing with them, the sacred hymn, evius, evius, evoe. echo, the nymph of cithaeron returns thy words, which resound beneath the dark vaults of the thick foliage and in the midst of the rocks of the forest; the ivy enlaces thy brow with its tendrils charged with flowers. scythian archer.[ ] you shall stay here in the open air to wail. mnesilochus. archer, i adjure you. scythian. 'tis labour lost. mnesilochus. loosen the wedge a little.[ ] scythian. aye, certainly. mnesilochus. oh! by the gods! why, you are driving it in tighter. scythian. is that enough? mnesilochus. oh! la, la! oh! la, la! may the plague take you! scythian. silence! you cursed old wretch! i am going to get a mat to lie upon, so as to watch you close at hand at my ease. mnesilochus. ah! what exquisite pleasures euripides is securing for me! but, oh, ye gods! oh, zeus the deliverer, all is not yet lost! i don't believe him the man to break his word; i just caught sight of him appearing in the form of perseus, and he told me with a mysterious sign to turn myself into andromeda. and in truth am i not really bound? 'tis certain, then, that he is coming to my rescue; for otherwise he would not have steered his flight this way.[ ] euripides (_as perseus_). oh nymphs, ye virgins who are dear to me, how am i to approach him? how can i escape the sight of this scythian? and echo, thou who reignest in the inmost recesses of the caves, oh! favour my cause and permit me to approach my spouse. mnesilochus (_as andromeda_).[ ] a pitiless ruffian has chained up the most unfortunate of mortal maids. alas! i had barely escaped the filthy claws of an old fury, when another mischance overtook me! this scythian does not take his eye off me and he has exposed me as food for the crows. alas! what is to become of me, alone here and without friends! i am not seen mingling in the dances nor in the games of my companions, but heavily loaded with fetters i am given over to the voracity of a glaucetes.[ ] sing no bridal hymn for me, oh women, but rather the hymn of captivity, and in tears. ah! how i suffer! great gods! how i suffer! alas! alas! and through my own relatives too![ ] my misery would make tartarus dissolve into tears! alas! in my terrible distress, i implore the mortal who first shaved me and depilated me, then dressed me in this long robe, and then sent me to this temple into the midst of the women, to save me. oh, thou pitiless fate! i am then accursed, great gods! ah! who would not be moved at the sight of the appalling tortures under which i succumb? would that the blazing shaft of the lightning would wither... this barbarian for me! (_pointing to the scythian archer_) for the immortal light has no further charm for my eyes since i have been descending the shortest path to the dead, tied up, strangled, and maddened with pain. euripides (as _echo_). hail! beloved girl. as for your father, cepheus, who has exposed you in this guise, may the gods annihilate him. mnesilochus (_as andromeda_). and who are you whom my misfortunes have moved to pity? euripides. i am echo, the nymph who repeats all she hears. 'tis i, who last year lent my help to euripides in this very place.[ ] but, my child, give yourself up to the sad laments that belong to your pitiful condition. mnesilochus. and you will repeat them? euripides. i will not fail you. begin. mnesilochus. "oh! thou divine night! how slowly thy chariot threads its way through the starry vault, across the sacred realms of the air and mighty olympus." euripides. mighty olympus. mnesilochus. "why is it necessary that andromeda should have all the woes for her share?" euripides. for her share. mnesilochus. "sad death!" euripides. sad death! mnesilochus. you weary me, old babbler. euripides. old babbler. mnesilochus. oh! you are too unbearable. euripides. unbearable. mnesilochus. friend, let me talk by myself. do please let me. come, that's enough. euripides. that's enough. mnesilochus. go and hang yourself! euripides. go and hang yourself! mnesilochus. what a plague! euripides. what a plague! mnesilochus. cursed brute! euripides. cursed brute! mnesilochus. beware of blows! euripides. beware of blows! scythian. hullo! what are you jabbering about? euripides. what are you jabbering about? scythian. i go to call the prytanes. euripides. i go to call the prytanes. scythian. this is odd! euripides. this is odd! scythian. whence comes this voice? euripides. whence comes this voice. scythian. ah! beware! euripides. ah! beware! scythian (_to mnesilochus_). are you mocking me? euripides. are you mocking me? mnesilochus. no, 'tis this woman, who stands near you. euripides. who stands near you. scythian. where is the hussy? ah! she is escaping! whither, whither are you escaping? euripides. whither, whither are you escaping? scythian. you shall not get away. euripides. you shall not get away. scythian. you are chattering still? euripides. you are chattering still? scythian. stop the hussy. euripides. stop the hussy. scythian. what a babbling, cursed woman! euripides (_as perseus_). "oh! ye gods! to what barbarian land has my swift flight taken me? i am perseus, who cleaves the plains of the air with my winged feet, and i am carrying the gorgon's head to argos." scythian. what, are you talking about the head of gorgos,[ ] the scribe? euripides. no, i am speaking of the head of the gorgon. scythian. why, yes! of gorgus! euripides. "but what do i behold? a young maiden, beautiful as the immortals, chained to this rock like a vessel in port?" mnesilochus. take pity on me, oh, stranger! i am so unhappy and distraught! free me from these bonds. scythian. don't you talk! a curse upon your impudence! you are going to die, and yet you will be chattering! euripides. "oh! virgin! i take pity on your chains." scythian. but this is no virgin; 'tis an old rogue, a cheat and a thief. euripides. you have lost your wits, scythian. this is andromeda, the daughter of cepheus. scythian. but just look at this tool; is that like a woman? euripides. give me your hand, that i may descend near this young maiden. each man has his own particular weakness; as for me i am aflame with love for this virgin. scythian. oh! i'm not jealous; and as he has his back turned this way, why, i make no objection to your pedicating him. euripides. "ah! let me release her, and hasten to join her on the bridal couch." scythian. if this old man instils you with such ardent concupiscence, why, you can bore through the plank, and so get at his behind. euripides. no, i will break his bonds. scythian. beware of my lash! euripides. no matter. scythian. this blade shall cut off your head. euripides. "ah! what can be done? what arguments can i use? this savage will understand nothing! the newest and most cunning fancies are a dead letter to the ignorant. let us invent some artifice to fit in with his coarse nature." scythian. i can see the rascal is trying to outwit me. mnesilochus. ah! perseus! remember in what condition you are leaving me. scythian. are you wanting to feel my lash again! chorus. oh! pallas, who art fond of dances, hasten hither at my call. oh! thou chaste virgin, the protectress of athens, i call thee in accordance with the sacred rites, thee, whose evident protection we adore and who keepest the keys of our city in thy hands. do thou appear, thou whose just hatred has overturned our tyrants. the womenfolk are calling thee; hasten hither at their bidding along with peace, who shall restore the festivals. and ye, august goddesses,[ ] display a smiling and propitious countenance to our gaze; come into your sacred grove, the entry to which is forbidden to men; 'tis there in the midst of sacred orgies that we contemplate your divine features. come, appear, we pray it of you, oh, venerable thesmophoriae! if you have ever answered our appeal, oh! come into our midst. euripides. women, if you will be reconciled with me, i am willing, and i undertake never to say anything ill of you in future. those are my proposals for peace. chorus. and what impels you to make these overtures? euripides. this unfortunate man, who is chained to the post, is my father-in-law; if you will restore him to me, you will have no more cause to complain of me; but if not, i shall reveal your pranks to your husbands when they return from the war. chorus. we accept peace, but there is this barbarian whom you must buy over. euripides. that's my business. (_he returns as an old woman and is accompanied by a dancing-girl and a flute-girl._) come, my little wench, bear in mind what i told you on the road and do it well. come, go past him and gird up your robe. and you, you little dear, play us the air of a persian dance. scythian. what is this music that makes me so blithe? euripides (_as an old woman_). scythian, this young girl is going to practise some dances, which she has to perform at a feast presently. scythian. very well! let her dance and practise; i won't hinder her. how nimbly she bounds! one might think her a flea on a fleece. euripides. come, my dear, off with your robe and seat yourself on the scythian's knee; stretch forth your feet to me, that i may take off your slippers. scythian. ah! yes, seat yourself, my little girl, ah! yes, to be sure. what a firm little bosom! 'tis just like a turnip. euripides (_to the flute-girl_). an air on the flute, quick! (_to the dancing-girl._) well! are you still afraid of the scythian? scythian. what beautiful thighs! euripides. come! keep still, can't you? scythian. 'tis altogether a very fine morsel to make a man's cock stand. euripides. that's so! (_to the dancing-girl._) resume your dress, it is time to be going. scythian. give me a kiss. euripides (_to the dancing-girl_). come, give him a kiss. scythian. oh! oh! oh! my goodness, what soft lips! 'tis like attic honey. but might she not stop with me? euripides. impossible, archer; good evening. scythian. oh! oh! old woman, do me this pleasure. euripides. will you give a drachma? scythian. aye, that i will. euripides. hand over the money. scythian. i have not got it, but take my quiver in pledge. euripides. you will bring her back? scythian. follow me, my beautiful child. and you, old woman, just keep guard over this man. but what is your name? euripides. artemisia. can you remember that name? scythian. artemuxia.[ ] good! euripides (_aside_). hermes, god of cunning, receive my thanks! everything is turning out for the best. (_to the scythian._) as for you, friend, take away this girl, quick. (_exit the scythian with the dancing-girl._) now let me loose his bonds. (_to mnesilochus._) and you, directly i have released you, take to your legs and run off full tilt to your home to find your wife and children. mnesilochus. i shall not fail in that as soon as i am free. euripides (_releases mnesilochus_). there! 'tis done. come, fly, before the archer lays his hand on you again. mnesilochus. that's just what i am doing. [_exit with euripides._ scythian. ah! old woman! what a charming little girl! not at all the prude, and so obliging! eh! where is the old woman? ah! i am undone! and the old man, where is he? hi! old woman! old woman! ah! but this is a dirty trick! artemuxia! she has tricked me, that's what the little old woman has done! get clean out of my sight, you cursed quiver! (_picks it up and throws it across the stage._) ha! you are well named quiver, for you have made me quiver indeed.[ ] oh! what's to be done? where is the old woman then? artemuxia! chorus. are you asking for the old woman who carried the lyre? scythian. yes, yes; have you seen her? chorus. she has gone that way along with an old man. scythian. dressed in a long robe? chorus. yes; run quick, and you will overtake them. scythian. ah! rascally old woman! which way has she fled? artemuxia! chorus. straight on; follow your nose. but, hi! where are you running to now? come back, you are going exactly the wrong way. scythian. ye gods! ye gods! and all this while artemuxia is escaping. [_exit running._ chorus. go your way! and a pleasant journey to you! but our sports have lasted long enough; it is time for each of us to be off home; and may the two goddesses reward us for our labours! * * * * * finis of "the thesmophoriazusae" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] aristophanes parodies euripides' language, which is occasionally sillily sententious. [ ] he flourished about b.c. and composed many tragedies, such as 'telephus,' 'thyestes,' which are lost. some fragments of his work are to be found in aristotle and in athenaeus; he also distinguished himself as a musician. the banquet, which gave his name to one of plato's dialogues, is supposed to have taken place at his house. [ ] the thesmophoria were celebrated in the month of pyanepsion, or november. [ ] the thesmophoria lasted five days; they were dedicated to demeter thesmophoros, or legislatress, in recognition of the wise laws she had given mankind. for many days before the solemn event, the women of high birth (who alone were entitled to celebrate it) had to abstain from all pleasures that appealed to the senses, even the most legitimate, and to live with the greatest sobriety. the presiding priest at the thesmophoria was always chosen from the sacerdotal family of the eumolpidae, the descendants of eumolpus, the son of posidon. at these feasts, the worship of persephoné was associated with that of demeter. [ ] refers presumably to the [greek: ekkukl_ema], a piece of machinery by means of which interiors were represented on the greek stage--room and occupant being in some way wheeled out into view of the spectators bodily. [ ] a celebrated 'lady of pleasure'; agathon is like her by reason of his effeminate, wanton looks and dissolute habits. [ ] demeter is represented wandering, torch in hand, about the universe looking for her lost child proserpine (persephoné). [ ] troy. [ ] agathon, in accordance with his character, voluptuousness, is represented as preferring the effeminate music and lascivious dances of asia. [ ] goddesses who presided over generation; see also the 'lysistrata.' [ ] a tetralogy, a series of four dramas connected by subject, of which the principal character was lycurgus, king of the thracians. when bacchus returned to thrace as conqueror of the indies he dared to deride the god, and was punished by him in consequence. all four plays are lost. [ ] that is, the attributes of a man and those of a woman combined. [ ] that is, you make love in the posture known as 'the horse,' _equus_, in other words the woman atop of the man. there is a further joke intended here, inasmuch as euripides, in his 'phaedra,' represents the heroine as being passionately addicted to hunting and horses. [ ] ibycus, a lyric poet of the sixth century, originally from rhegium in magna graecia.--anacreon, a celebrated erotic poet of the beginning of the fifth century.--alcaeus, a lyric poet, born about b.c. at mytilené, in the island of lesbos, was driven out of his country by a tyrant and sang of his loves, his services as a warrior, his travels and the miseries of his exile. he was a contemporary of sappho, and conceived a passion for her, which she only rewarded with disdain. [ ] phrynichus, a disciple of thespis, improved the dramatic art, when still no more than a child; it was he who first introduced female characters upon the stage and made use of the iambic of six feet in tragedies. he flourished about b.c. [ ] philocles, xenocles, and theognis were dramatic poets and contemporaries of aristophanes. the two first were sons of carcinus, the poet and dancer. [ ] fragment of euripides' 'aeolus,' a lost drama. [ ] fragment of euripides' well-known play, the 'alcestis.' [ ] an allusion to the secret practices of mutual love which the women assembled for the thesmophoria were credited by popular repute with indulging in. [ ] that is, to sanctuary. [ ] an effeminate often mentioned by aristophanes. [ ] an allusion to the pederastic habits which the poet attributes to agathon. [ ] an obscene allusion. [ ] on the machine upon which he is perched. [ ] a fragment of the 'menalippé' of euripides. [ ] the ether played an important part in the physical theories of hippocrates, the celebrated physician. [ ] an allusion to a verse in his 'hippolytus,' where euripides says, "_the tongue has sworn, but the heart is unsworn._" see also 'the frogs.' [ ] the name of a slave; being disguised as a woman, mnesilochus has himself followed by a female servant, a thracian slave-woman. [ ] demeter and cora (or persephoné), who were adored together during the thesmophoria. [ ] women slaves were forbidden by law to be present at the thesmophoria; they remained at the door of the temple and there waited for the orders of their mistresses. [ ] the god of riches. [ ] the nurse of demeter. according to another version, calligenia was a surname of demeter herself, who was adored as presiding over the growth of a child at its mother's breast. [ ] a surname of demeter, who, by means of the food she produces as goddess of abundance, presides over the development of the bodies of children and young people. curotrophos is derived from [greek: trephein], to nourish, and [greek: kouros], young boy. [ ] apollo. [ ] artemis. [ ] an insult which aristophanes constantly repeats in every way he can; as we have seen before, euripides' mother was, or was commonly said to be, a market-woman. [ ] lovers sent each other chaplets and flowers. [ ] in parody of a passage in the 'sthenoboea' of euripides, which is preserved in athenaeus. [ ] he believes her pregnant. [ ] a fragment from the 'phoenix,' by euripides. [ ] it seems that the spartan locksmiths were famous for their skill. [ ] the women broke the seals their husbands had affixed, and then, with the aid of their ring bearing the same device, they replaced them as before. [ ] the impression of which was too complicated and therefore could not be imitated. [ ] as a remedy against the colic. [ ] so that it might not creak when opened. [ ] an altar in the form of a column in the front vestibule of houses and dedicated to apollo. [ ] because the smell of garlic is not inviting to gallants. [ ] the last words are the thoughts of the woman, who pretends to be in child-bed; she is, however, careful not to utter them to her husband. [ ] the proverb runs, "_there is a scorpion beneath every stone._" by substituting _orator_ for _scorpion_, aristophanes means it to be understood that one is no less venomous than the other. [ ] there were two women named aglaurus. one, the daughter of actaeus, king of attica, married cecrops and brought him the kingship as her dowry; the other was the daughter of cecrops, and was turned into stone for having interfered from jealousy with hermes' courtship of hersé her sister. it was this second aglaurus the athenian women were in the habit of invoking; they often associated with her her sister pandrosus. [ ] underneath the baths were large hollow chambers filled with steam to maintain the temperature of the water. [ ] by kicking her in the stomach. [ ] clisthenes is always represented by aristophanes as effeminate in the extreme in dress and habits. [ ] the coward, often mentioned with contempt by aristophanes, had thrown away his shield. [ ] the ancients believed that cress reduced the natural secretions. [ ] a deme of attica. [ ] the women lodged in pairs during the thesmophoria in tents erected near the temple of demeter. [ ] the corinthians were constantly passing their vessels across the isthmus from one sea to the other; we know that the grecian ships were of very small dimensions. [ ] this was the name of the place where the ecclesia, the public meeting of the people, took place; the chorus gives this name here to demeter's temple, because the women are gathered there. [ ] the spaces left free between the tents, and which served as passage-ways. [ ] a choric dance began here. [ ] a woman's footgear.--on undressing the supposed child, mnesilochus perceives that it is nothing but a skin of wine. [ ] dr. p. menier repeatedly points out in his "la médecine et les poètes latins," that the ancient writers constantly spoke of ten months as being a woman's period of gestation. [ ] a cotyla contained nearly half a pint. [ ] both the feast of cups and the dionysia were dedicated to bacchus, the god of wine; it is for this reason that mnesilochus refers to the former when guessing the wine-skin's age. [ ] the cretan robe that had covered the wine-skin. [ ] an allusion to the tragedy by euripides called 'palamedes,' which belonged to the tetralogy of the troades, and was produced in b.c. aristophanes is railing at the strange device which the poet makes oeax resort to. oeax was palamedes' brother, and he is represented as inscribing the death of the latter on a number of oars with the hope that at least one would reach the shores of euboea and thus inform his father, nauplias, the king of the fact. [ ] the images of the various gods which were invoked at the thesmophoria, and the enumeration of which we have already had. [ ] charminus, an athenian general, who had recently been defeated at sea by the spartans.--nausimaché was a courtesan, but her name is purposely chosen because of its derivation ([greek: naus], ship, and [greek: mach_e], fight), so as to point more strongly to charminus' disgrace. [ ] a general and an athenian orator. [ ] a courtesan. [ ] aristomaché ([greek: mach_e], fight, and [greek: arist_e], excellent) and stratonicé ([greek: stratos], army, and [greek: nik_e], victory) are imaginary names, invented to show the decadence of the athenian armies. [ ] eubulé ([greek: eu], well, and [greek: bouleuesthai], to deliberate) is also an imaginary name. the poet wishes to say that in that year wisdom had not ruled the decisions of the senate; they had allowed themselves to be humbled by the tyranny of the four hundred. [ ] the cylinder and the beams were the chief tools of the weaver. it was the women who did this work. [ ] the taxiarch had the command of men; the strategus had the direction of an army. [ ] the sthenia were celebrated in honour of athené sthenias, or the goddess of force; the women were then wont to attack each other with bitter sarcasms.--during the scirophoria ([greek: skiron], canopy) the statues of athené, demeter, persephone, the sun and posidon were carried in procession under canopies with great pomp. [ ] the trierarchs were rich citizens, whose duty it was to maintain the galleys or triremes of the fleet. [ ] hyperbolus is incessantly railed at by aristophanes as a traitor and an informer. lamachus, although our poet does not always spare him, was a brave general; he had been one of the commanders of the sicilian expedition. [ ] it will be remembered that mnesilochus had employed a similar device to one imputed to oeax by euripides in his 'palamedes,' in order to inform his father-in-law of his predicament. [ ] a tragedy, in which menelaus is seen in egypt, whither he has gone to seek helen, who is detained there. [ ] these are the opening verses of euripides' 'helen,' with the exception of the last words, which are a parody.--syrmea is a purgative plant very common in egypt. aristophanes speaks jestingly of the white soil of egypt, because the slime of the nile is very black. [ ] this reply and those that follow are fragments from 'helen.' [ ] an infamous athenian, whose name had become a byword for everything that was vile. [ ] the whole of this dialogue between mnesilochus and euripides is composed of fragments taken from 'helen,' slightly parodied at times. [ ] king of egypt. [ ] son of epicles, and mentioned by thucydides. [ ] aristophanes invents this in order to give coherence to what follows. [ ] an athenian general whom thucydides mentions. [ ] a deme of attica. [ ] no doubt euripides appeared on the stage carrying some herbs in his hand or wearing them in his belt, so as to recall his mother's calling. if the gibes of aristophanes can be believed, she dealt in vegetables, as we have noted repeatedly. [ ] a ruined man, living in penury, presumably well known to the audience. [ ] apollo. [ ] surnames of bacchus. [ ] the archers, or the police officers, at athens were mostly scythians. if not from that country always, they were known generally by that name. [ ] which the archer had driven in to tighten up the rope binding the prison to the pillory. [ ] perseus was returning from the land of the gorgons mounted upon pegasus, when, while high up in the air, he saw andromeda bound to a rock and exposed to the lusts and voracity of a sea monster. touched by the misfortune and the beauty of the princess, he turned the monster to stone by showing him the head of medusa, released andromeda and married her.--euripides had just produced a tragedy on this subject. [ ] mnesilochus speaks alternately in his own person and as though he were andromeda, the effect being comical in the extreme. [ ] a notorious glutton, mentioned also in the 'peace.' [ ] through euripides, his father-in-law. [ ] on the occasion of the presentation of the tragedy of 'andromeda,' in which the nymph echo plays an important part. [ ] unknown; aristophanes plays upon the similarity of name. [ ] that is, the thesmophoriae, viz. demeter and persephoné. [ ] throughout the whole scene the scythian speaks with a grotesque barbarian accent. [ ] the pun depends in the greek on the similarity of the final syllables of [greek: subin_e], and [greek: katabin_esi]. it can be given literally in english. the ecclesiazusae or women in council introduction the 'ecclesiazusae, or women in council,' was not produced till twenty years after the preceding play, the 'thesmophoriazusae' (at the great dionysia of b.c.), but is conveniently classed with it as being also largely levelled against the fair sex. "it is a broad, but very amusing, satire upon those ideal republics, founded upon communistic principles, of which plato's well-known treatise is the best example. his 'republic' had been written, and probably delivered in the form of oral lectures at athens, only two or three years before, and had no doubt excited a considerable sensation. but many of its most startling principles had long ago been ventilated in the schools." like the 'lysistrata,' the play is a picture of woman's ascendancy in the state, and the topsy-turvy consequences resulting from such a reversal of ordinary conditions. the women of athens, under the leadership of the wise praxagora, resolve to reform the constitution. to this end they don men's clothes, and taking seats in the assembly on the pnyx, command a majority of votes and carry a series of revolutionary proposals--that the government be vested in a committee of women, and further, that property and women be henceforth held in common. the main part of the comedy deals with the many amusing difficulties that arise inevitably from this new state of affairs, the community of women above all necessitating special safeguarding clauses to secure the rights of the less attractive members of the sex to the service of the younger and handsomer men. community of goods again, private property being abolished, calls for a regulation whereby all citizens are to dine at the public expense in the various public halls of the city, the particular place of each being determined by lot; and the drama winds up with one of these feasts, the elaborate menu of which is given in burlesque, and with the jubilations of the women over their triumph. "this comedy appears to labour under the very same faults as the 'peace.' the introduction, the secret assembly of the women, their rehearsal of their parts as men, the description of the popular assembly, are all handled in the most masterly manner; but towards the middle the action stands still. nothing remains but the representation of the perplexities and confusion which arise from the new arrangements, especially in connection with the community of women, and from the prescribed equality of rights in love both for the old and ugly and for the young and beautiful. these perplexities are pleasant enough, but they turn too much on a repetition of the same joke." we learn from the text of the play itself that the 'ecclesiazusae' was drawn by lot for first representation among the comedies offered for competition at the festival, the author making a special appeal to his audience not to let themselves be influenced unfavourably by the circumstance; but whether the play was successful in gaining a prize is not recorded. * * * * * the ecclesiazusae or women in council dramatis personae praxagora. blepyrus, husband of praxagora. women. a man. chremes. two citizens. herald. an old man. a girl. a young man. three old women. a servant maid. her master. chorus of women. scene: before a house in a public square at athens; a lamp is burning over the door. time: a little after midnight. * * * * * the ecclesiazusae or women in council praxagora (_enters carrying a lamp in her hand_). oh! thou shining light of my earthenware lamp, from this high spot shalt thou look abroad. oh! lamp, i will tell thee thine origin and thy future; 'tis the rapid whirl of the potter's wheel that has lent thee thy shape, and thy wick counterfeits the glory of the sun;[ ] mayst thou send the agreed signal flashing afar! in thee alone do we confide, and thou art worthy, for thou art near us when we practise the various postures in which aphrodité delights upon our couches, and none dream even in the midst of her sports of seeking to avoid thine eye that watches our swaying bodies. thou alone shinest into the depths of our most secret charms, and with thy flame dost singe the hairy growth of our privates. if we open some cellar stored with fruits and wine, thou art our companion, and never dost thou betray or reveal to a neighbour the secrets thou hast learned about us. therefore thou shalt know likewise the whole of the plot that i have planned with my friends, the women, at the festival of the scirophoria.[ ] i see none of those i was expecting, though dawn approaches; the assembly is about to gather and we must take our seats in spite of phyromachus,[ ] who forsooth would say, "it is meet the women sit apart and hidden from the eyes of the men." why, have they not been able then to procure the false beards that they must wear, or to steal their husbands cloaks? ah! i see a light approaching; let us draw somewhat aside, for fear it should be a man. first woman. let us start, it is high time; as we left our dwellings, the cock was crowing for the second time. praxagora. and i have spent the whole night waiting for you. but come, let us call our neighbour by scratching at her door; and gently too, so that her husband may hear nothing. second woman. i was putting on my shoes, when i heard you scratching, for i was not asleep, so there! oh! my dear, my husband (he is a salaminian) never left me an instant's peace, but was at me, for ever at me, all night long, so that it was only just now that i was able to filch his cloak. first woman. i see clinareté coming too, along with sostraté and their next-door neighbour philaeneté. praxagora. hurry yourselves then, for glycé has sworn that the last comer shall forfeit three measures of wine and a _choenix_ of pease. first woman. don't you see melisticé, the wife of smicythion, hurrying hither in her great shoes? methinks she is the only one of us all who has had no trouble in getting rid of her husband. second woman. and can't you see gusistraté, the tavern-keeper's wife, with a lamp in her hand, and the wives of philodoretus and chaeretades? praxagora. i can see many others too, indeed the whole of the flower of athens. third woman. oh! my dear, i have had such trouble in getting away! my husband ate such a surfeit of sprats last evening that he was coughing and choking the whole night long. praxagora. take your seats, and, since you are all gathered here at last, let us see if what we decided on at the feast of the scirophoria has been duly done. fourth woman. yes. firstly, as agreed, i have let the hair under my armpits grow thicker than a bush; furthermore, whilst my husband was at the assembly, i rubbed myself from head to foot with oil and then stood the whole day long in the sun.[ ] fifth woman. so did i. i began by throwing away my razor, so that i might get quite hairy, and no longer resemble a woman. praxagora. have you the beards that we had all to get ourselves for the assembly? fourth woman. yea, by hecaté! is this not a fine one? fifth woman. aye, much finer than epicrates'.[ ] praxagora (_to the other women_). and you? fourth woman. yes, yes; look, they all nod assent. praxagora. i see that you have got all the rest too, spartan shoes, staffs and men's cloaks, as 'twas arranged. sixth woman. i have brought lamias'[ ] club, which i stole from him while he slept. praxagora. what, the club that makes him puff and pant with its weight? sixth woman. by zeus the deliverer, if he had the skin of argus, he would know better than any other how to shepherd the popular herd. praxagora. but come, let us finish what has yet to be done, while the stars are still shining; the assembly, at which we mean to be present, will open at dawn. first woman. good; you must take up your place at the foot of the platform and facing the prytanes. sixth woman. i have brought this with me to card during the assembly. (_she shows some wool._) praxagora. during the assembly, wretched woman? sixth woman. aye, by artemis! shall i hear any less well if i am doing a bit of carding? my little ones are all but naked. praxagora. think of her wanting to card! whereas we must not let anyone see the smallest part of our bodies.[ ] 'twould be a fine thing if one of us, in the midst of the discussion, rushed on to the speaker's platform and, flinging her cloak aside, showed her hairy privates. if, on the other hand, we are the first to take our seats closely muffled in our cloaks, none will know us. let us fix these beards on our chins, so that they spread all over our bosoms. how can we fail then to be mistaken for men? agyrrhius has deceived everyone, thanks to the beard of pronomus;[ ] yet he was no better than a woman, and you see how he now holds the first position in the city. thus, i adjure you by this day that is about to dawn, let us dare to copy him and let us be clever enough to possess ourselves of the management of affairs. let us save the vessel of state, which just at present none seems able either to sail or row. sixth woman. but where shall we find orators in an assembly of women? praxagora. nothing simpler. is it not said, that the cleverest speakers are those who submit themselves oftenest to men? well, thanks to the gods, we are that by nature. sixth woman. there's no doubt of that; but the worst of it is our inexperience. praxagora. that's the very reason we are gathered here, in order to prepare the speech we must make in the assembly. hasten, therefore, all you who know aught of speaking, to fix on your beards. seventh woman. oh! you great fool! is there ever a one among us cannot use her tongue? praxagora. come, look sharp, on with your beard and become a man. as for me, i will do the same in case i should have a fancy for getting on to the platform. here are the chaplets. second woman. oh! great gods! my dear praxagora, do look here! is it not laughable? praxagora. how laughable? second woman. our beards look like broiled cuttle-fishes. praxagora. the priest is bringing in--the cat.[ ] make ready, make ready! silence, ariphrades![ ] go and take your seat. now, who wishes to speak? seventh woman. i do. praxagora. then put on this chaplet[ ] and success be with you. seventh woman. there, 'tis done! praxagora. well then! begin. seventh woman. before drinking? praxagora. hah! she wants to drink![ ] seventh woman. why, what else is the meaning of this chaplet? praxagora. get you hence! you would probably have played us this trick also before the people. seventh woman. well! don't the men drink then in the assembly? praxagora. now she's telling us the men drink! seventh woman. aye, by artemis, and neat wine too. that's why their decrees breathe of drunkenness and madness. and why libations, why so many ceremonies, if wine plays no part in them? besides, they abuse each other like drunken men, and you can see the archers dragging more than one uproarious drunkard out of the agora. praxagora. go back to your seat, you are wandering. seventh woman. ah! i should have done better not to have muffled myself in this beard; my throat's afire and i feel i shall die of thirst. praxagora. who else wishes to speak? eighth woman. i do. praxagora. quick then, take the chaplet, for time's running short. try to speak worthily, let your language be truly manly, and lean on your staff with dignity. eighth woman. i had rather have seen one of your regular orators giving you wise advice; but, as that is not to be, it behoves me to break silence; i cannot, for my part indeed, allow the tavern-keepers to fill up their wine-pits with water.[ ] no, by the two goddesses.... praxagora. what? by the two goddesses![ ] wretched woman, where are your senses? eighth woman. eh! what?... i have not asked you for a drink! praxagora. no, but you want to pass for a man, and you swear by the two goddesses. otherwise 'twas very well. eighth woman. well then. by apollo.... praxagora. stop! all these details of language must be adjusted; else it is quite useless to go to the assembly. seventh woman. pass me the chaplet; i wish to speak again, for i think i have got hold of something good. you women who are listening to me.... praxagora. women again; why, wretched creature, 'tis men that you are addressing. seventh woman. 'tis the fault of epigonus;[ ] i caught sight of him over yonder, and i thought i was speaking to women. praxagora. come, withdraw and remain seated in future. i am going to take this chaplet myself and speak in your name. may the gods grant success to my plans! my country is as dear to me as it is to you, and i groan, i am grieved at all that is happening in it. scarcely one in ten of those who rule it is honest, and all the others are bad. if you appoint fresh chiefs, they will do still worse. it is hard to correct your peevish humour; you fear those who love you and throw yourselves at the feet of those who betray you. there was a time when we had no assemblies, and then we all thought agyrrhius a dishonest man;[ ] now they are established, he who gets money thinks everything is as it should be, and he who does not, declares all who sell their votes to be worthy of death. first woman. by aphrodité, that is well spoken. praxagora. why, wretched woman, you have actually called upon aphrodité. oh! what a fine thing 'twould have been had you said that in the assembly! first woman. i should never have done that! praxagora. well, mind you don't fall into the habit.--when we were discussing the alliance,[ ] it seemed as though it were all over with athens if it fell through. no sooner was it made than we were vexed and angry, and the orator who had caused its adoption was compelled to seek safety in flight.[ ] is there talk of equipping a fleet? the poor man says, yes, but the rich citizen and the countryman say, no. you were angered against the corinthians and they with you; now they are well disposed towards you, be so towards them. as a rule the argives are dull, but the argive hieronymus[ ] is a distinguished chief. herein lies a spark of hope; but thrasybulus is far from athens[ ] and you do not recall him. first woman. oh! what a brilliant man! praxagora. that's better! that's fitting applause.--citizens, 'tis you who are the cause of all this trouble. you vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests; hence the state limps along like aesimus.[ ] but if you hearken to me, you will be saved. i assert that the direction of affairs must be handed over to the women, for 'tis they who have charge and look after our households. second woman. very good, very good, 'tis perfect! say on, say on. praxagora. they are worth more than you are, as i shall prove. first of all they wash all their wool in warm water, according to the ancient practice; you will never see them changing their method. ah! if athens only acted thus, if it did not take delight in ceaseless innovations, would not its happiness be assured? then the women sit down to cook, as they always did; they carry things on their head as was their wont; they keep the thesmophoria, as they have ever done; they knead their cakes just as they used to; they make their husbands angry as they have always done; they receive their lovers in their houses as was their constant custom; they buy dainties as they always did; they love unmixed wine as well as ever; they delight in being loved just as much as they always have. let us therefore hand athens over to them without endless discussions, without bothering ourselves about what they will do; let us simply hand them over the power, remembering that they are mothers and will therefore spare the blood of our soldiers; besides, who will know better than a mother how to forward provisions to the front? woman is adept at getting money for herself and will not easily let herself be deceived; she understands deceit too well herself. i omit a thousand other advantages. take my advice and you will live in perfect happiness. first woman. how beautiful this is, my dearest praxagora, how clever! but where, pray, did you learn all these pretty things? praxagora. when the countryfolk were seeking refuge in the city,[ ] i lived on the pnyx with my husband, and there i learnt to speak through listening to the orators. first woman. then, dear, 'tis not astonishing that you are so eloquent and clever; henceforward you shall be our leader, so put your great ideas into execution. but if cephalus[ ] belches forth insults against you, what answer will you give him in the assembly? praxagora. i shall say that he drivels. first woman. but all the world knows that. praxagora. i shall furthermore say that he is a raving madman. first woman. there's nobody who does not know it. praxagora. that he, as excellent a statesman as he is, is a clumsy tinker.[ ] first woman. and if the blear-eyed neoclides[ ] comes to insult you? praxagora. to him i shall say, "go and look at a dog's backside".[ ] first woman. and if they fly at you? praxagora. oh! i shall shake them off as best i can; never fear, i know how to use this tool.[ ] first woman. but there is one thing we don't think of. if the archers drag you away, what will you do? praxagora. with my arms akimbo like this, i will never, never let myself be taken round the middle. first woman. if they seize you, we will bid them let you go. second woman. that's the best way. but how are we going to lift up our arm[ ] in the assembly, we, who only know how to lift our legs in the act of love? praxagora. 'tis difficult; yet it must be done, and the arm shown naked to the shoulder in order to vote. quick now, put on these tunics and these laconian shoes, as you see the men do each time they go to the assembly or for a walk. then this done, fix on your beards, and when they are arranged in the best way possible, dress yourselves in the cloaks you have abstracted from your husbands; finally start off leaning on your staffs and singing some old man's song as the villagers do. second woman. well spoken; and let us hurry to get to the pnyx before the women from the country, for they will no doubt not fail to come there. praxagora. quick, quick, for 'tis all the custom that those who are not at the pnyx early in the morning, return home empty-handed. chorus. move forward, citizens, move forward; let us not forget to give ourselves this name and may that of _woman_ never slip out of our mouths; woe to us, if it were discovered that we had laid such a plot in the darkness of night. let us go to the assembly then, fellow-citizens; for the thesmothetae have declared that only those who arrive at daybreak with haggard eye and covered with dust, without having snatched time to eat anything but a snack of garlic-pickle, shall alone receive the triobolus. walk up smartly, charitimides,[ ] smicythus and draces, and do not fail in any point of your part; let us first demand our fee and then vote for all that may perchance be useful for our partisans.... ah! what am i saying? i meant to say, for our fellow-citizens. let us drive away these men of the city,[ ] who used to stay at home and chatter round the table in the days when only an obolus was paid, whereas now one is stifled by the crowds at the pnyx.[ ] no! during the archonship of generous myronides,[ ] none would have dared to let himself be paid for the trouble he spent over public business; each one brought his own meal of bread, a couple of onions, three olives and some wine in a little wine-skin. but nowadays we run here to earn the three obols, for the citizen has become as mercenary as the stonemason. (_the chorus marches away._) blepyrus (_husband of praxagora_). what does this mean? my wife has vanished! it is nearly daybreak and she does not return! wanting to relieve myself, lo! i awake and hunt in the darkness for my shoes and my cloak; but grope where i will, i cannot find them. meanwhile my need grew each moment more urgent and i had only just time to seize my wife's little mantle and her persian slippers. but where shall i find a spot suitable for my purpose. bah! one place is as good as another at night-time, for no one will see me. ah! what fatal folly 'twas to take a wife at my age, and how i could thrash myself for having acted so foolishly! 'tis a certainty she's not gone out for any honest purpose. however, that's not our present business. a man. who's there? is that not my neighbour blepyrus? why, yes, 'tis himself and no other. tell me, what's all that yellow about you? can it be cinesias[ ] who has befouled you so? blepyrus. no, no, i only slipped on my wife's tunic[ ] to come out in. man. and where is your cloak? blepyrus. i cannot tell you, for i hunted for it vainly on the bed. man. and why did you not ask your wife for it? blepyrus. ah! why indeed! because she is not in the house; she has run away, and i greatly fear that she may be doing me an ill turn. man. but, by posidon, 'tis the same with myself. my wife has disappeared with my cloak, and what is still worse, with my shoes as well, for i cannot find them anywhere. blepyrus. nor can i my laconian shoes; but as i had urgent need, i popped my feet into these slippers, so as not to soil my blanket, which is quite new. man. what does it mean? can some friend have invited her to a feast? blepyrus. i expect so, for she does not generally misconduct herself, as far as i know. man. come, i say, you seem to be making ropes. are you never going to be done? as for myself, i would like to go to the assembly, and it is time to start, but the thing is to find my cloak, for i have only one. blepyrus. i am going to have a look too, when i have done; but i really think there must be a wild pear obstructing my rectum. man. is it the one which thrasybulus spoke about to the lacedaemonians?[ ] blepyrus. oh! oh! oh! how the obstruction holds! whatever am i to do? 'tis not merely for the present that i am frightened; but when i have eaten, where is it to find an outlet now? this cursed achradusian fellow[ ] has bolted the door. let a doctor be fetched; but which is the cleverest in this branch of the science? amynon?[ ] perhaps he would not come. ah! antithenes![ ] let him be brought to me, cost what it will. to judge by his noisy sighs, that man knows what a rump wants, when in urgent need. oh! venerated ilithyia![ ] i shall burst unless the door gives way. have pity! pity! let me not become the night-stool of the comic poets.[ ] chremes. hi! friend, what are you after there? easing yourself! blepyrus. oh! there! it is over and i can get up again at last. chremes. what's this? you have your wife's tunic on. blepyrus. aye, 'twas the first thing that came to my hand in the darkness. but where do you hail from? chremes. from the assembly. blepyrus. is it already over then? chremes. certainly. blepyrus. why, it is scarcely daylight. chremes. i did laugh, ye gods, at the vermilion rope-marks that were to be seen all about the assembly.[ ] blepyrus. did you get the triobolus? chremes. would it had so pleased the gods! but i arrived just too late, and am quite ashamed of it; i bring back nothing but this empty wallet. blepyrus. but why is that? chremes. there was a crowd, such as has never been seen at the pnyx, and the folk looked pale and wan, like so many shoemakers, so white were they in hue; both i and many another had to go without the triobolus. blepyrus. then if i went now, i should get nothing. chremes. no, certainly not, nor even had you gone at the second cock-crow. blepyrus. oh! what a misfortune! oh, antilochus![ ] no triobolus! even death would be better! i am undone! but what can have attracted such a crowd at that early hour? chremes. the prytanes started the discussion of measures nearly concerning the safety of the state; immediately, that blear-eyed fellow, the son of neoclides,[ ] was the first to mount the platform. then the folk shouted with their loudest voice, "what! he dares to speak, and that, too, when the safety of the state is concerned, and he a man who has not known how to save even his own eyebrows!" he, however, shouted louder than they all, and looking at them asked, "why, what ought i to have done?" blepyrus. pound together garlic and laserpitium juice, add to this mixture some laconian spurge, and rub it well into the eyelids at night. that's what i should have answered, had i been there. chremes. after him that clever rascal evaeon[ ] began to speak; he was naked, so far as we all could see, but he declared he had a cloak; he propounded the most popular, the most democratic, doctrines. "you see," he said, "i have the greatest need of sixteen drachmae, the cost of a new cloak, my health demands it; nevertheless i wish first to care for that of my fellow-citizens and of my country. if the fullers were to supply tunics to the indigent at the approach of winter, none would be exposed to pleurisy. let him who has neither beds nor coverlets go to sleep at the tanners' after taking a bath; and if they shut the door in winter, let them be condemned to give him three goat-skins." blepyrus. by dionysus, a fine, a very fine notion! not a soul will vote against his proposal, especially if he adds that the flour-sellers must supply the poor with three measures of corn, or else suffer the severest penalties of the law; 'tis only in this way that nausicydes[ ] can be of any use to us. chremes. then we saw a handsome young man rush into the tribune, he was all pink and white like young nicias,[ ] and he began to say that the direction of matters should be entrusted to the women; this the crowd of shoemakers[ ] began applauding with all their might, while the country-folk assailed him with groans. blepyrus. and, 'faith, they did well. chremes. but they were outnumbered, and the orator shouted louder than they, saying much good of the women and much ill of you. blepyrus. and what did he say? chremes. first he said you were a rogue... blepyrus. and you? chremes. let me speak ... and a thief.... blepyrus. i alone? chremes. and an informer. blepyrus. i alone? chremes. why, no, by the gods! all of us. blepyrus. and who avers the contrary? chremes. he maintained that women were both clever and thrifty, that they never divulged the mysteries of demeter, while you and i go about babbling incessantly about whatever happens at the senate. blepyrus. by hermes, he was not lying! chremes. then he added, that the women lend each other clothes, trinkets of gold and silver, drinking-cups, and not before witnesses too, but all by themselves, and that they return everything with exactitude without ever cheating each other; whereas, according to him, we are ever ready to deny the loans we have effected. blepyrus. aye, by posidon, and in spite of witnesses. chremes. again, he said that women were not informers, nor did they bring lawsuits, nor hatch conspiracies; in short, he praised the women in every possible manner. blepyrus. and what was decided? chremes. to confide the direction of affairs to them; 'tis the one and only innovation that has not yet been tried at athens. blepyrus. and it was voted? chremes. yes. blepyrus. and everything that used to be the men's concern has been given over to the women? chremes. you express it exactly. blepyrus. thus 'twill be my wife who will go to the courts now in my stead. chremes. and it will be she who will keep your children in your place. blepyrus. i shall no longer have to tire myself out with work from daybreak onwards? chremes. no, 'twill be the women's business, and you can stop at home and take your ease. blepyrus. well, what i fear for us fellows now is, that, holding the reins of government, they will forcibly compel us ... chremes. to do what? blepyrus. ... to work them. chremes. and if we are not able? blepyrus. they will give us no dinner. chremes. well then, do your duty; dinner and love form a double enjoyment. blepyrus. ah! but i hate compulsion. chremes. but if it be for the public weal, let us resign ourselves. 'tis an old saying, that our absurdest and maddest decrees always somehow turn out for our good. may it be so in this case, oh gods, oh venerable pallas! but i must be off; so, good-bye to you! blepyrus. good-bye, chremes. chorus. march along, go forward. is there some man following us? turn round, examine everywhere and keep a good look-out; be on your guard against every trick, for they might spy on us from behind. let us make as much noise as possible as we tramp. it would be a disgrace for all of us if we allowed ourselves to be caught in this deed by the men. come, wrap yourselves up well, and search both right and left, so that no mischance may happen to us. let us hasten our steps; here we are close to the meeting-place, whence we started for the assembly, and here is the house of our leader, the author of this bold scheme, which is now decreed by all the citizens. let us not lose a moment in taking off our false beards, for we might be recognized and denounced. let us stand under the shadow of this wall; let us glance round sharply with our eye to beware of surprises, while we quickly resume our ordinary dress. ah! here is our leader, returning from the assembly. hasten to relieve your chins of these flowing manes. look at your comrades yonder; they have already made themselves women again some while ago. praxagora. friends, success has crowned our plans. but off with these cloaks and these boots quick, before any man sees you; unbuckle the laconian straps and get rid of your staffs; and do you help them with their toilet. as for myself, i am going to slip quietly into the house and replace my husband's cloak and other gear where i took them from, before he can suspect anything. chorus. there! 'tis done according to your bidding. now tell us how we can be of service to you, so that we may show you our obedience, for we have never seen a cleverer woman than you. praxagora. wait! i only wish to use the power given me in accordance with your wishes; for, in the market-place, in the midst of the shouts and danger, i appreciated your indomitable courage. blepyrus. eh, praxagora! where do you come from? praxagora. how does that concern you, friend? blepyrus. why, greatly! what a silly question! praxagora. you don't think i have come from a lover's? blepyrus. no, perhaps not from only one. praxagora. you can make yourself sure of that. blepyrus. and how? praxagora. you can see whether my hair smells of perfume. blepyrus. what? cannot a woman possibly be loved without perfume, eh! praxagora. the gods forfend, as far as i am concerned. blepyrus. why did you go off at early dawn with my cloak? praxagora. a companion, a friend who was in labour, had sent to fetch me. blepyrus. could you not have told me? praxagora. oh, my dear, would you have me caring nothing for a poor woman in that plight? blepyrus. a word would have been enough. there's something behind all this. praxagora. no, i call the goddesses to witness! i went running off; the poor woman who summoned me begged me to come, whatever might betide. blepyrus. and why did you not take your mantle? instead of that, you carry off mine, you throw your dress upon the bed and you leave me as the dead are left, bar the chaplets and perfumes. praxagora. 'twas cold, and i am frail and delicate; i took your cloak for greater warmth, leaving you thoroughly warm yourself beneath your coverlets. blepyrus. and my shoes and staff, those too went off with you? praxagora. i was afraid they might rob me of the cloak, and so, to look like a man, i put on your shoes and walked with a heavy tread and struck the stones with your staff. blepyrus. d'you know you have made us lose a _sextary_ of wheat, which i should have bought with the _triobolus_ of the assembly? praxagora. be comforted, for she had a boy. blepyrus. who? the assembly? praxagora. no, no, the woman i helped. but has the assembly taken place then? blepyrus. did i not tell you of it yesterday? praxagora. true; i remember now. blepyrus. and don't you know the decrees that have been voted? praxagora. no indeed. blepyrus. go to! you can eat cuttle-fish[ ] now, for 'tis said the government is handed over to you. praxagora. to do what--to spin? blepyrus. no, that you may rule ... praxagora. what? blepyrus. ... over all public business. praxagora. oh! by aphrodité! how happy athens will be! blepyrus. why so? praxagora. for a thousand reasons. none will dare now to do shameless deeds, to give false testimony or lay informations. blepyrus. stop! in the name of the gods! do you want me to die of hunger? chorus. good sir, let your wife speak. praxagora. there will be no more thieves, nor envious people, no more rags nor misery, no more abuse and no more prosecutions and lawsuits. blepyrus. by posidon! 'tis grand, if true. praxagora. the results will prove it; you will confess it, and even these good people (_pointing to the spectators_) will not be able to say a word. chorus. you have served your friends, but now it behoves you to apply your ability and your care to the welfare of the people. devote the fecundity of your mind to the public weal; adorn the citizens' lives with a thousand enjoyments and teach them to seize every favourable opportunity. devise some ingenious method to secure the much-needed salvation of athens; but let neither your acts nor your words recall anything of the past, for 'tis only innovations that please. don't delay the realization of your plans, for speedy execution is greatly esteemed by the public. praxagora. i believe my ideas are good, but what i fear is, that the public will cling to the old customs and refuse to accept my reforms. blepyrus. have no fear about that. love of novelty and disdain for the past, these are the dominating principles among us. praxagora. let none contradict nor interrupt me until i have explained my plan. i want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; no longer shall we see one man harvesting vast tracts of land, while another has not ground enough to be buried in, nor one man surround himself with a whole army of slaves, while another has not a single attendant; i intend that there shall only be one and the same condition of life for all. blepyrus. but how do you mean for all? praxagora. go and eat your excrements![ ] blepyrus. come, share and share alike! praxagora. no, no, but you shall not interrupt me. this is what i was going to say: i shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all. then we shall live on this common wealth, which we shall take care to administer with wise thrift. blepyrus. and how about the man who has no land, but only gold and silver coins, that cannot be seen? praxagora. he must bring them to the common stock, and if he fails he will be a perjured man. blepyrus. that won't worry him much, for has he not gained them by perjury? praxagora. but his riches will no longer be of any use to him. blepyrus. why? praxagora. the poor will no longer be obliged to work; each will have all that he needs, bread, salt fish, cakes, tunics, wine, chaplets and chick-pease; of what advantage will it be to him not to contribute his share to the common wealth? what do you think of it? blepyrus. but is it not the folk who rob most that have all these things? praxagora. yes, formerly, under the old order of things; but now that all goods are in common, what will he gain by not bringing his wealth into the general stock? blepyrus. if someone saw a pretty wench and wished to satisfy his fancy for her, he would take some of his reserve store to make her a present and stay the night with her; this would not prevent him claiming his share of the common property. praxagora. but he can sleep with her for nothing; i intend that women shall belong to all men in common, and each shall beget children by any man that wishes to have her. blepyrus. but all will go to the prettiest woman and beseech her to go with him. praxagora. the ugliest and the most flat-nosed will be side by side with the most charming, and to win the latter's favours, a man will first have to get into the former. blepyrus. but we old men, shall we have penis enough if we have to satisfy the ugly first? praxagora. they will make no resistance. blepyrus. to what? praxagora. never fear; they will make no resistance. blepyrus. resistance to what? praxagora. to the pleasure of the thing. 'tis thus that matters will be ordered for you. blepyrus. 'tis right well conceived for you women, for every wench's hole will be occupied; but as regards us poor men, you will leave those who are ugly to run after the handsome fellows. praxagora. the ugly will follow the handsomest into the public places after supper and see to it that the law, which forbids the women to sleep with the big, handsome men before having satisfied the ugly shrimps, is complied with. blepyrus. thus ugly lysicrates' nose will be as proud as the handsomest face? praxagora. yes, by apollo! this is a truly popular decree, and what a set-back 'twill be for one of those elegants with their fingers loaded with rings, when a man with heavy shoes says to him, "give way to me and wait till i have done; you will pass in after me." blepyrus. but if we live in this fashion, how will each one know his children? praxagora. the youngest will look upon the oldest as their fathers. blepyrus. ah! how heartily they will strangle all the old men, since even now, when each one knows his father, they make no bones about strangling him! then, my word! won't they just scorn and shit upon the old folks! praxagora. but those around will prevent it. hitherto, when anyone saw an old man beaten, he would not meddle, because it did not concern him; but now each will fear the sufferer may be his own father and such violence will be stopped. blepyrus. what you say is not so silly after all; but 'twould be highly unpleasant were epicurus and leucolophas to come up and call me father. praxagora. but 'twould be far worse, were ... blepyrus. were what? praxagora. ... aristyllus to embrace you and style you his father. blepyrus. ah! let him look to himself if he dares! praxagora. for you would smell vilely of mint if he kissed you. but he was born before the decree was carried, so that you have not to fear his kiss. blepyrus. 'twould be awful. but who will do the work? praxagora. the slaves. your only cares will be to scent yourself, and to go and dine, when the shadow of the gnomon is ten feet long on the dial. blepyrus. but how shall we obtain clothing? tell me that! praxagora. you will first wear out those you have, and then we women will weave you others. blepyrus. now another point: if the magistrates condemn a citizen to the payment of a fine, how is he going to do it? out of the public funds? that would not be right surely. praxagora. but there will be no more lawsuits. blepyrus. what a disaster for many people! praxagora. i have decreed it. besides, friend, why should there be lawsuits? blepyrus. oh! for a thousand reasons, on my faith! firstly, because a debtor denies his obligation. praxagora. but where will the lender get the money to lend, if all is in common? unless he steals it out of the treasury? blepyrus. that's true, by demeter! but then again, tell me this; here are some men who are returning from a feast and are drunk and they strike some passer-by; how are they going to pay the fine? ah! you are puzzled now! praxagora. they will have to take it out of their pittance; and being thus punished through their belly, they will not care to begin again. blepyrus. there will be no more thieves then, eh? praxagora. why steal, if you have a share of everything? blepyrus. people will not be robbed any more at night? praxagora. no, whether you sleep at home or in the street, there will be no more danger, for all will have the means of living. besides, if anyone wanted to steal your cloak, you would give it him yourself. why not? you will only have to go to the common store and be given a better one. blepyrus. there will be no more playing at dice? praxagora. what object will there be in playing? blepyrus. but what kind of life is it you propose to set up? praxagora. the life in common. athens will become nothing more than a single house, in which everything will belong to everyone; so that everybody will be able to go from one house to the other at pleasure. blepyrus. and where will the meals be served? praxagora. the law-courts and the porticoes will be turned into dining-halls. blepyrus. and what will the speaker's platform be used for? praxagora. i shall place the bowls and the ewers there; and young children will sing the glory of the brave from there, also the infamy of cowards, who out of very shame will no longer dare to come to the public meals. blepyrus. well thought of, by apollo! and what will you do with the urns? praxagora. i shall have them taken to the market-place, and standing close to the statue of harmodius,[ ] i shall draw a lot for each citizen, which by its letter will show the place where he must go to dine.[ ] thus, those for whom i have drawn a beta, will go to the royal portico;[ ] if 'tis a theta, they will go to the portico of theseus;[ ] if 'tis a kappa, to that of the flour-market.[ ] blepyrus. to cram[ ] himself there like a capon? praxagora. no, to dine there. blepyrus. and the citizen whom the lot has not given a letter showing where he is to dine will be driven off by everyone? praxagora. but that will not occur. each man will have plenty; he will not leave the feast until he is well drunk, and then with a chaplet on his head and a torch in his hand; and then the women running to meet you in the cross-roads will say, "this way, come to our house, you will find a beautiful young girl there."--"and i," another will call from her balcony, "have one so pretty and as white as milk; but before touching her, you must sleep with me." and the ugly men, watching closely after the handsome fellows, will say, "hi! friend, where are you running to? go in, but you must do nothing, for 'tis the ugly and the flat-nosed to whom the law gives the first right of admission; amuse yourself in the porch while you wait, in handling your fig-leaves and playing with your tool." well, tell me, does that picture suit you? blepyrus. marvellously well. praxagora. i must now go to the market-place to receive the property that is going to be placed in common and to choose a woman with a loud voice as my herald. i have all the cares of state on my shoulders, since the power has been entrusted to me. i must likewise go to busy myself about establishing the common meals, and you will attend your first banquet to-day. blepyrus. are we going to banquet? praxagora. why, undoubtedly! furthermore, i propose abolishing the courtesans. blepyrus. and what for? praxagora. 'tis clear enough why; so that, instead of them, _we_ may have the first-fruits of the young men. it is not meet that tricked-out slaves should rob free-born women of their pleasures. let the courtesans be free to sleep with the slaves and to depilate their privates for them. blepyrus. i will march at your side, so that i may be seen and that everyone may say, "admire our leader's husband!" [_exeunt blepyrus and praxagora._ [_the chorus which followed this scene is lost._] first citizen. come, let us collect and examine all my belongings before taking them to the market-place. come hither, my beautiful sieve, i have nothing more precious than you, come, all clotted with the flour of which i have poured so many sacks through you; you shall act the part of canephoros[ ] in the procession of my chattels. where is the sunshade carrier?[ ] ah! this stew-pot shall take his place. great gods, how black it is! it could not be more so if lysicrates[ ] had boiled the drugs in it with which he dyes his hair. hither, my beautiful mirror. and you, my tripod, bear this urn for me; you shall be the waterbearer;[ ] and you, cock, whose morning song has so often roused me in the middle of the night to send me hurrying to the assembly, you shall be my flute-girl. scaphephoros,[ ] do you take the large basin, place in it the honeycombs and twine the olive-branches over them, bring the tripods and the phial of perfume; as for the humble crowd of little pots, i will just leave them behind. second citizen. what folly to carry one's goods to the common store; i have a little more sense than that. no, no, by posidon, i want first to ponder and calculate over the thing at leisure. i shall not be fool enough to strip myself of the fruits of my toil and thrift, if it is not for a very good reason; let us see first, which way things turn. hi! friend, what means this display of goods? are you moving or are you going to pawn your stuff? first citizen. neither. second citizen. why then are you setting all these things out in line? is it a procession that you are starting off to the public crier, hiero? first citizen. no, but in accordance with the new law, that has been decreed, i am going to carry all these things to the marketplace to make a gift of them to the state. second citizen. oh! bah! you don't mean that. first citizen. certainly. second citizen. oh! zeus the deliverer! you unfortunate man! first citizen. why? second citizen. why? 'tis as clear as noonday. first citizen. must the laws not be obeyed then? second citizen. what laws, you poor fellow? first citizen. those that have been decreed. second citizen. decreed! are you mad, i ask you? first citizen. am i mad? second citizen. oh! this is the height of folly! first citizen. because i obey the law? is that not the first duty of an honest man? second citizen. say rather of a ninny. first citizen. don't you propose taking what belongs to you to the common stock? second citizen. i'll take good care i don't until i see what the majority are doing. first citizen. there's but one opinion, namely, to contribute every single thing one has. second citizen. i am waiting to see it, before i believe that. first citizen. at least, so they say in every street. second citizen. and they will go on saying so. first citizen. everyone talks of contributing all he has. second citizen. and will go on talking of it. first citizen. you weary me with your doubts and dubitations. second citizen. everybody else will doubt it. first citizen. the pest seize you! second citizen. it _will_ take you. what? give up your goods! is there a man of sense who will do such a thing? giving is not one of our customs. receiving is another matter; 'tis the way of the gods themselves. look at the position of their hands on their statues; when we ask a favour, they present their hands turned palm up so as not to give, but to receive. first citizen. wretch, let me do what is right. come, i'll make a bundle of all these things. where is my strap? second citizen. are you really going to carry them in? first citizen. undoubtedly, and there are my three tripods strung together already. second citizen. what folly! not to wait to see what the others do, and then ... first citizen. well, and then what? second citizen. ... wait and put it off again. first citizen. what for? second citizen. that an earthquake may come or an ill-omened flash of lightning, that a weasel may run across the street and that none carry in anything more, you fool! first citizen. 'twould be a fine matter, were i to find no room left for placing all this. second citizen. you are much more likely to lose your stuff. as for placing it, you can be at ease, for there will be room enough as long as a month hence. first citizen. why? second citizen. i know these folk; a decree is soon passed, but it is not so easily attended to. first citizen. all will contribute their property, my friend. second citizen. but what if they don't? first citizen. but there is no doubt that they will. second citizen. but _anyhow_, what if they don't? first citizen. we shall compel them to do so. second citizen. and what if they prove the stronger? first citizen. i shall leave my goods and go off. second citizen. and what if they sell them for you? first citizen. the plague take you! second citizen. and if it does? first citizen. 'twill be a good riddance. second citizen. you are bent on contributing then? first citizen. 'pon my soul, yes! look, there are all my neighbours carrying in all they have. second citizen. ha, ha! 'tis no doubt antisthenes.[ ] he's a fellow who would rather sit on his pot for thirty days than not! first citizen. the pest seize you! second citizen. and perhaps callimachus[ ] is going to take in more money than callias owns? that man want to ruin himself! first citizen. how you weary me! second citizen. ah! i weary you! but, wretch, see what comes of decrees of this kind. don't you remember the one reducing the price of salt, eh? first citizen. why, certainly i do. second citizen. and do you remember that about the copper coinage? first citizen. ah! that cursed money did me enough harm. i had sold my grapes and had my mouth stuffed with pieces of copper;[ ] indeed i was going to the market to buy flour, and was in the act of holding out my bag wide open, when the herald started shouting, "let none in future accept pieces of copper; those of silver are alone current." second citizen. and quite lately, were we not all swearing that the impost of one-fortieth, which euripides[ ] had conceived, would bring five talents to the state, and everyone was vaunting euripides to the skies? but when the thing was looked at closely, it was seen that this fine decree was mere moonshine and would produce nothing, and you would have willingly burnt this very same euripides alive. first citizen. the cases are quite different, my good fellow. we were the rulers then, but now 'tis the women. second citizen. whom, by posidon, i will never allow to piss on my nose. first citizen. i don't know what the devil you're chattering about. slave, pick up that bundle. herald. let all citizens come, let them hasten at our leader's bidding! 'tis the new law. the lot will teach each citizen where he is to dine; the tables are already laid and loaded with the most exquisite dishes; the couches are covered with the softest of cushions; the wine and water is already being mixed in the ewers; the slaves are standing in a row and waiting to pour scent over the guests; the fish is being grilled, the hares are on the spit and the cakes are being kneaded, chaplets are being plaited and the fritters are frying; the youngest women are watching the pea-soup in the saucepans, and in the midst of them all stands smaeus,[ ] dressed as a knight, washing the crockery. and geres[ ] has come, dressed in a grand tunic and finely shod; he is joking with another young fellow and has already divested himself of his heavy shoes and his cloak.[ ] the pantryman is waiting, so come and use your jaws. second citizen. aye, i'll go. why should i delay, since the republic commands me? first citizen. and where are you going to, since you have not deposited your belongings? second citizen. to the feast. first citizen. if the women have any wits, they will first insist on your depositing your goods. second citizen. but i am going to deposit them. first citizen. when? second citizen. i am not the man to make delays. first citizen. how do you mean? second citizen. there will be many less eager than i. first citizen. in the meantime you are going to dine. second citizen. what else should i do? every sensible man must give his help to the state. first citizen. but if admission is forbidden you? second citizen. i shall duck my head and slip in. first citizen. and if the women have you beaten? second citizen. i shall summon them. first citizen. and if they laugh you in the face? second citizen. i shall stand near the door ... first citizen. and then? second citizen. ... and seize upon the dishes as they pass. first citizen. then go there, but after me. sicon and parmeno,[ ] pick up all the baggage. second citizen. come, i will help you carry it. first citizen. no, no, i should be afraid of your pretending to the leader that what i am depositing belonged to you. second citizen. let me see! let me think of some good trick by which i can keep my goods and yet take my share of the common feast. ha! that's a good notion! quick! i'll go and dine, ha, ha! [_exit laughing_. first old woman. how is this? no men are coming? and yet it must be fully time! 'tis then for naught that i have painted myself with white lead, dressed myself in my beautiful yellow robe, and that i am here, frolicking and humming between my teeth to attract some passer-by! oh, muses, alight upon my lips, inspire me with some soft ionian love-song! a young girl. you rotten old thing, you have placed yourself at the window before me. you were expecting to strip my vines during my absence and to trap some man in your snares with your songs. if you sing, i shall follow suit; all this singing will weary the spectators, but is nevertheless very pleasant and very diverting. first old woman. ha! here is an old man; take him and lead him away. as for you, you young flute-player, let us hear some airs that are worthy of you and me. let him who wishes to taste pleasure come to my side. these young things know nothing about it; 'tis only the women of ripe age who understand the art of love, and no one could know how to fondle the lover who possessed me so well as myself; the young girls are all flightiness. young girl. don't be jealous of the young girls; voluptuousness resides in the pure outline of their beautiful limbs and blossoms on their rounded bosoms; but you, old woman, you who are tricked out and perfumed as if for your own funeral, are an object of love only for grim death himself. first old woman. may your hole be stopped; may you be unable to find your couch when you want to be fucked. and on your couch, when your lips seek a lover, may you embrace only a viper! young girl. alas! alas! what is to become of me? there is no lover! i am left here alone; my mother has gone out and the rest care little for me. oh! my dear nurse, i adjure you to call orthagoras, and may heaven bless you. first old woman. ah! poor child, desire is consuming you like an ionian woman; i think you are no stranger to the wanton arts of the lesbian women, but you shall not rob me of my pleasures; you will not be able to reduce or filch the time that first belongs to me, for your own gain. sing as much as you please, peep out like a cat lying in wait, but none shall pass through your door without first having been to see me. young girl. if anyone enter your house, 'twill be to carry out your corpse. first old woman. that's new to me. young girl. what! you rotten wretch, can anything be new to an old hag like you? first old woman. my old age will not harm you. young girl. ah! shame on your painted cheeks! first old woman. why do you speak to me at all? young girl. and why do you place yourself at the window? first old woman. i am singing to myself about my lover, epigenes. young girl. can you have any other lover than that old fop geres? first old woman. epigenes will show you that himself, for he is coming to me. see, here he is. young girl. he's not thinking of you in the least, you old witch. first old woman. aye, but he is, you little pest. young girl. let's see what he will do. i will leave my window. first old woman. and i likewise. you will see i am not far wrong. a young man. ah! could i but sleep with the young girl without first satisfying the old flat-nose! 'tis intolerable for a free-born man. first old woman. willy nilly, you must first gratify my desire. there shall be no nonsense about that, for my authority is the law and the law must be obeyed in a democracy. but come, let me hide, to see what he's going to do. young man. ah! ye gods, if i were to find the sweet child alone! for the wine has fired my lust. young girl. i have tricked that cursed old wretch; she has left her window, thinking i would stay at home. first old woman. ah! here is the lover we were talking of. this way, my love, this way, come here and haste to rest the whole night in my arms. i worship your lovely curly hair; i am consumed with ardent desire. oh! eros, in thy mercy, compel him to my bed. young man (_standing beneath the young girl's window and singing_).[ ] come down and haste to open the door unless you want to see me fall dead with desire. dearest treasure, i am burning to yield myself to most voluptuous sport, lying on your bosom, to let my hands play with your buttocks. aphrodité, why dost thou fire me with such delight in her? oh! eros, i beseech thee, have mercy and make her share my couch. words cannot express the tortures i am suffering. oh! my adored one, i adjure you, open your door for me and press me to your heart; 'tis for you that i am suffering. oh! my jewel, my idol, you child of aphrodité, the confidante of the muses, the sister of the graces, you living picture of voluptuousness, oh! open for me, press me to your heart, 'tis for you that i am suffering. first old woman. are you knocking? is it i you seek? young man. what an idea! first old woman. but you were tapping at the door. young man. death would be sweeter. first old woman. why do you come with that torch in your hand? young man. i am looking for a man from anaphlystia.[ ] first old woman. what's his name? young man. oh! 'tis not sebinus,[ ] whom no doubt you are expecting. first old woman. by aphrodité, you _must_, whether you like it or not. young man. we are not now concerned with cases dated sixty years back; they are remanded for a later day; we are dealing only with those of less than twenty.[ ] first old woman. that was under the old order of things, sweetheart, but now you must first busy yourself with us. young man. aye, _if i want to_, according to the rules of draughts, where we may either take or leave. first old woman. but 'tis not according to the rules of draughts that you take your seat at the banquet.[ ] young man. i don't know what you mean; 'tis at this door i want to knock. first old woman. not before knocking at mine first. young man. for the moment i really have no need for old leather. first old woman. i know that you love me; perhaps you are surprised to find me at the door. but come, let me kiss you. young man. no, no, my dear, i am afraid of your lover. first old woman. of whom? young man. the most gifted of painters. first old woman. why, whom do you mean to speak of? young man. the artist who paints the little bottles on coffins.[ ] but get you indoors, lest he should find you at the door. first old woman. i know what you want. young man. i can say as much of you. first old woman. by aphrodité, who has granted me this good chance, i won't let you go. young man. you are drivelling, you little old hag. first old woman. rubbish! i am going to lead you to my couch. young man. what need for buying hooks? i will let her down to the bottom of the well and pull up the buckets with her old carcase, for she's crooked enough for that. first old woman. a truce to your jeering, poor boy, and follow me. young man. nothing compels me to do so, unless you have paid the levy of five hundredths for me.[ ] first old woman. look, by aphrodité, there is nothing that delights me as much as sleeping with a lad of your years. young man. and i abhor such as you, and i will never, never consent. first old woman. but, by zeus, here is something will force you to it. young man. what's that? first old woman. a decree, which orders you to enter my house. young man. read it out then, and let's hear. first old woman. listen. "the women have decreed, that if a young man desires a young girl, he can only possess her after having satisfied an old woman; and if he refuses and goes to seek the maiden, the old women are authorized to seize him by his privates and so drag him in." young man. alas! i shall become a procrustes.[ ] first old woman. obey the law. young man. but if a fellow-citizen, a friend, came to pay my ransom? first old woman. no man may dispose of anything above a medimnus.[ ] young man. but may i not enter an excuse? first old woman. there's no evasion. young man. i shall declare myself a merchant and so escape service.[ ] first old woman. beware what you do! young man. well! what is to be done? first old woman. follow me. young man. is it absolutely necessary? first old woman. yes, as surely as if diomedes had commanded it.[ ] young man. well then, first spread out a layer of origanum[ ] upon four pieces of wood; bind fillets round your head, bring phials of scent and place a bowl filled with lustral water before your door.[ ] first old woman. will you buy a chaplet for me too? young man. aye, if you outlast the tapers; for i expect to see you fall down dead as you go in. young girl. where are you dragging this unfortunate man to? first old woman. 'tis my very own property that i am leading in. young girl. you do ill. a young fellow like him is not of the age to suit you. you ought to be his mother rather than his wife. with these laws in force, the earth will be filled with oedipuses.[ ] first old woman. oh! you cursed pest! 'tis envy that makes you say this; but i will be revenged. young man. by zeus the deliverer, what a service you have done me, by freeing me of this old wretch! with what ardour i will show you my gratitude in a form both long and thick! second old woman. hi! you there! where are you taking that young man to, in spite of the law? the decree ordains that he must first sleep with me. young man. oh! what a misfortune! where does _this_ hag come from? 'tis a more frightful monster than the other even. second old woman. come here. young man (_to the young girl_). oh! i adjure you, don't let me be led off by her! second old woman. 'tis not i; 'tis the law that leads you off. young man. no, 'tis not the law, but an empusa[ ] with a body covered with blemishes and blotches. second old woman. follow me, my handsome little friend, come along quick without any more ado. young man. oh! let me first do the needful, so that i may gather my wits somewhat. else i should be so terrified that you would see me letting out something yellow. second old woman. never mind! you can stool, if you want, in my house. young man. oh! i fear doing more than i want to; but i offer you two good securities. second old woman. i don't require them. third old woman. hi! friend, where are you off to with that woman? young man. i am not going with her, but am being dragged by force. oh! whoever you are, may heaven bless you for having had pity on me in my dire misfortune. (_turns round and sees the third old woman._) oh heracles! oh heracles! oh pan! oh ye corybantes! oh ye dioscuri! why, she is still more awful! oh! what a monster! great gods! are you an ape plastered with white lead, or the ghost of some old hag returned from the dark borderlands of death? third old woman. no jesting! follow me. second old woman. no, come this way. third old woman. i will never let you go. second old woman. nor will i. young man. but you will rend me asunder, you cursed wretches. second old woman. 'tis i he must go with according to the law. third old woman. not if an uglier old woman than yourself appears. young man. but if you kill me at the outset, how shall i afterwards go to find this beautiful girl of mine? third old woman. that's your business. but begin by obeying. young man. of which one must i rid myself first? second old woman. don't you know? come here. young man. then let the other one release me. third old woman. come to my house. young man. if this dame will let me go. second old woman. no, by all the gods, i'll not let you go. third old woman. nor will i. young man. you would make very bad boatwomen. second old woman. why? young man. because you would tear your passengers to pieces in dragging them on board. second old woman. then come along, do, and hold your tongue. third old woman. no, by zeus, come with me. young man. 'tis clearly a case of the decree of cannonus;[ ] i must cut myself in two in order to fuck you both. but how am i to work two oars at once? second old woman. easily enough; you have only to eat a full pot of onions.[ ] young man. oh! great gods! here i am close to the door and being dragged in! third old woman (_to second old woman_). you will gain nothing by this, for i shall rush into your house with you. young man. oh, no! no! 'twould be better to suffer a single misfortune than two. third old woman. ah! by hecaté, 'twill be all the same whether you wish it or not. young man. what a fate is mine, that i must gratify such a stinking harridan the whole night through and all day; then, when i am rid of her, i have still to tackle a hag of brick-colour hue! am i not truly unfortunate? ah! by zeus the deliverer! under what fatal star must i have been born, that i must sail in company with such monsters! but if my bark sinks in the sewer of these strumpets, may i be buried at the very threshold of the door; let this hag be stood upright on my grave, let her be coated alive with pitch and her legs covered with molten lead up to the ankles, and let her be set alight as a funeral lamp. a servant-maid to praxagora (_she comes from the banquet_). what happiness is the people's! what joy is mine, and above all that of my mistress! happy are ye, who form choruses before our house! happy all ye, both neighbours and fellow-citizens! happy am i myself! i am but a servant, and yet i have poured on my hair the most exquisite essences. let thanks be rendered to thee, oh, zeus! but a still more delicious aroma is that of the wine of thasos; its sweet bouquet delights the drinker for a long enough, whereas the others lose their bloom and vanish quickly. therefore, long life to the wine-jars of thasos! pour yourselves out unmixed wine, it will cheer you the whole night through, if you choose the liquor that possesses most fragrance. but tell me, friends, where is my mistress's husband? chorus. wait for him here; he will no doubt pass this way. maid-servant. ah! there he is just going to dinner. oh! master! what joy! what blessedness is yours! blepyrus. ah! d'you think so? maid-servant. none can compare his happiness to yours; you have reached its utmost height, you who, alone out of thirty thousand citizens, have not yet dined. chorus aye, here is undoubtedly a truly happy man. maid-servant. where are you off to? blepyrus. i am going to dine. maid-servant. by aphrodité, you will be the last of all, far and away the last. yet my mistress has bidden me take you and take with you these young girls. some chian wine is left and lots of other good things. therefore hurry, and invite likewise all the spectators whom we have pleased, and such of the judges as are not against us, to follow us; we will offer them everything they can desire. let our hospitality be large and generous; forget no one, neither old nor young men, nor children. dinner is ready for them all; they have but to go ... home.[ ] chorus. i am betaking myself to the banquet with this torch in my hand according to custom. but why do you tarry, blepyrus? take these young girls with you and, while you are away a while, i will whet my appetite with some dining-song. i have but a few words to say: let the wise judge me because of whatever is wise in this piece, and those who like a laugh by whatever has made them laugh. in this way i address pretty well everyone. if the lot has assigned my comedy to be played first of all, don't let that be a disadvantage to me; engrave in your memory all that shall have pleased you in it and judge the competitors equitably as you have bound yourselves by oath to do. don't act like vile courtesans, who never remember any but their last lover. it is time, friends, high time to go to the banquet, if we want to have our share of it. open your ranks and let the cretan rhythms regulate your dances.[ ] semi-chorus. ready; we are ready! chorus. and you others, let your light steps too keep time. very soon will be served a very fine menu[*]--oysters-saltfish-skate-sharks'-heads left-over-vinegar-dressing-laserpitium-leek-with-honey-sauce-thrush blackbird-pigeon-dove-roast-cock's-brains-wagtail-cushat-hare-stewed in-new-wine-gristle-of-veal-pullet's-wings.[ ] come, quick, seize hold of a plate, snatch up a cup, and let's run to secure a place at table. the rest will have their jaws at work by this time. [* transcriber's note: in the original, all following words until 'wings' are connected with hyphens, i.e. they form _one_ word.] semi-chorus. let up leap and dance, io! evoë! let us to dinner, io! evoë. for victory is ours, victory is ours! ho! victory! io! evoë! * * * * * finis of "the ecclesiazusae" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] a parody of the pompous addresses to inanimate objects so frequent in the prologues and monodies of euripides. [ ] a festival which was kept in athens in the month of scirophorion (june), whence its name; the statues of athené, demeter, persephoné, apollo and posidon were borne through the city with great pomp with banners or canopies ([greek: skira]) over them. [ ] unknown. [ ] so as to get sunburnt and thus have a more manly appearance. [ ] a demagogue, well known on account of his long flowing beard; he was nicknamed by his fellow-citizens [greek: sakesphoros] that is, shield-bearer, because his beard came down to his waist and covered his body like a shield. [ ] unknown. [ ] whereas the arms must be extended to do carding, and folk could not fail to recognize her as a woman by their shape. [ ] agyrrhius was an athenian general, who commanded at lesbos; he was effeminate and of depraved habits. no doubt he had let his beard grow to impose on the masses and to lend himself that dignity which he was naturally wanting in.--pronomus was a flute-player, who had a fine beard. [ ] young pigs were sacrificed at the beginning of the sittings; here the comic writer substitutes a cat for the pig, perhaps because of its lasciviousness. [ ] a pathic; aristophanes classes him with the women, because of his effeminacy. [ ] the orators wore green chaplets, generally of olive leaves; guests also wore them at feasts, but then flowers were mingled with the leaves. [ ] an allusion to the rapacity of the orators, who only meddled in political discussions with the object of getting some personal gain through their influence; also to the fondness for strong drink we find attributed in so many passages to the athenian women. [ ] a sort of cistern dug in the ground, in which the ancients kept their wine. [ ] this was a form of oath that women made use of; hence it is barred by praxagora. [ ] another pathic, like ariphrades, mentioned above. [ ] before the time of pericles, when manners had not yet become corrupt, the fame of each citizen was based on fact; worthy men were honoured, and those who resembled agyrrhius, already mentioned, were detested. for this general, see note a little above. [ ] the alliance with corinth, boeotia and argolis against sparta in b.c. [ ] conon, who went to asia minor and was thrown into prison at sardis by the persian satrap. [ ] an argive to whom conon entrusted the command of his fleet when he went to the court of the king of persia.--in this passage the poet is warning his fellow-citizens not to alienate the goodwill of the allies by their disdain, but to know how to honour those among them who had distinguished themselves by their talents. [ ] the lacedaemonians, after having recalled their king, agesilas, who gained the victory of coronea, were themselves beaten at sea off cnidus by conon and pharnabazus. 'twas no doubt this victory which gave a _spark of hope_ to the athenians, who had suffered so cruelly during so many years; but aristophanes declares that, in order to profit by this return of fortune, they must recall thrasybulus, the deliverer of athens in b.c. he was then ostensibly employed in getting the islands of the aegean sea and the towns of the asiatic coast to return under the athenian power, but this was really only an honourable excuse for thrusting him aside for reasons of jealousy. [ ] unknown. [ ] during the earlier years of the peloponnesian war, when the annual invasion of attica by the lacedaemonians drove the country population into the city. [ ] a demagogue, otherwise unknown. [ ] cephalus' father was said to have been a tinker. [ ] the comic poets accused him of being an alien by birth and also an informer and a rogue. see the 'plutus.' [ ] there was a greek saying, "_look into the backside of a dog and of three foxes_" which, says the scholiast, used to be addressed to those who had bad eyes. but the precise point of the joke here is difficult to see. [ ] an obscene allusion; [greek: hupokrouein] means both _pulsare_ and _subagitare_,--to strike, and also to move to the man in sexual intercourse. [ ] in order to vote. [ ] the chorus addresses the leaders amongst the women by the names of men. charitimides was commander of the athenian navy. [ ] the countryfolk affected to despise the townspeople, whom they dubbed idle and lazy. [ ] the fee of the citizens who attended the assembly had varied like that of the dicasts, or jurymen. [ ] an athenian general, who gained brilliant victories over the thebans during the period prior to the peloponnesian war. [ ] a dithyrambic poet, and notorious for his dissoluteness; he was accused of having daubed the statues of hecate at the athenian cross-roads with ordure. [ ] the women wore yellow tunics, called [greek: krok_otoi], because of their colour. [ ] this thrasybulus, not to be confounded with the more famous thrasybulus, restorer of the athenian democracy, in b.c., had undertaken to speak against the spartans, who had come with proposals of peace, but afterwards excused himself, pretending to be labouring under a sore throat, brought on by eating wild pears (b.c. ). the athenians suspected him of having been bribed by the spartans. [ ] a coined word, derived from [greek: _achras_], a wild pear. [ ] amynon was not a physician, according to the scholiast, but one of those orators called [greek: europr_oktoi] (_laticuli_) 'wide-arsed,' because addicted to habits of pathic vice, and was invoked by blepyrus for that reason. [ ] a doctor notorious for his dissolute life. [ ] the grecian goddess who presided over child-birth. [ ] he is afraid lest some comic poet should surprise him in his ridiculous position and might cause a laugh at his expense upon the stage. [ ] in accordance with a quaint athenian custom a rope daubed with vermilion was drawn across from end to end of the agora (market-place) by officials of the city at the last moment before the ecclesia, or public assembly, was to meet. any citizen trying to evade his duty to be present was liable to have his white robe streaked red, and so be exposed to general ridicule on finally putting in an appearance on the pnyx. [ ] a parody on a verse in 'the myrmidons' of aeschylus.--antilochus was the son of nestor; he was killed by memnon, when defending his father. [ ] see above. [ ] he was very poor, and his cloak was such a mass of holes that one might doubt his having one at all. this surname, evaeon ([greek: eu ai_on], delicious life) had doubtless been given him on the 'lucus a non' principle because of his wretchedness. [ ] apparently a wealthy corn-factor. [ ] presumably this refers to the grandson of nicias, the leader of the expedition to sicily; he must have been sixteen or seventeen years old about that time, since, according to lysias, niceratus, the son of the great nicias, was killed in b.c. and had left a son of tender age behind him, who bore the name of his grandfather. [ ] that is, the pale-faced folk in the assembly already referred to--really the women there present surreptitiously. [ ] to eat cuttle-fish was synonymous with enjoying the highest felicity. [ ] a common vulgar saying, used among the athenians, as much as to say, _to the devil with interruptions!_ [ ] this stood in the centre of the market-place. [ ] it was the custom at athens to draw lots to decide in which court each dicast should serve; praxagora proposes to apply the same system to decide the dining station for each citizen. [ ] in greek [greek: h_e basileius]([greek: stoa], understood), the first letter a [greek: b_eta.] [ ] commencing with a [greek: th_eta]. [ ] [greek: ha alphitop_olis stoa]; why [greek: kappa], it is hard to say; from some popular nickname probably, which is unknown to us. [ ] the pun cannot be kept in english; it is between [greek: kaptein], to gobble, to cram oneself, and [greek: kappa], the designating letter. [ ] that is, one of the beautiful maidens selected to bear the baskets containing the sacred implements in procession at the festival of demeter, bacchus and athené. [ ] the slave-girl who attended each canephoros, and sheltered her from the sun's rays. [ ] mentioned a little above for his ugliness; the scholiast says he was a general. [ ] hydriaphoros; the wives of resident aliens ([greek: metoikoi]) were allowed to take part in these processions, but in a subordinate position; they carried vessels full of water for the service of the sacrifice. [ ] scaphephoros, bearer of the vases containing the honey required for the sacrifices. the office was assigned to the [greek: metoikoi] as a recognition of their semi-citizenship. [ ] a miser, who, moreover, was obstinately constipated. [ ] presumably a man in extreme poverty. [ ] the ancients carried small coins in their mouth; this custom still obtains to-day in the east. [ ] this euripides was the son of the tragic poet. [ ] this smaeus was a notorious debauchee; the phrase contains obscene allusions, implying that he was ready both to ride a woman or to lick her privates--[greek: kel_etizein] or [greek: lesbiazein]. [ ] geres, an old fop, who wanted to pass as a young man. [ ] according to greek custom, these were left at the entrance of the banqueting-hall. [ ] the names of his slaves. [ ] a specimen of the _serenades_ ([greek: paraklausithura]) of the greeks. [ ] an attic deme. there is an obscene jest here; the word [greek: anaphlan] means to masturbate. [ ] [greek: ton sebinon], a coined name, representing [greek: ton se binounta], 'the man who is to tread you.' [ ] the passage is written in the language of the bar. it is an allusion to the slowness of justice at athens. [ ] i.e. the new law must be conformed to all round. [ ] it was customary to paint phials or little bottles on the coffins of the poor; these emblems took the place of the perfumes that were sprinkled on the bodies of the rich. [ ] i.e. unless i am your slave; no doubt this tax of five hundredths was paid by the master on the assumed value of his slave.--we have, however, no historical data to confirm this. [ ] nickname of the notorious brigand. the word means 'one who stretches and tortures,' from [greek: prokrouein], and refers to his habit of fitting all his captives to the same bedstead--the 'bed of procrustes'--stretching them if too short to the required length, lopping their limbs as required if they were too long. here a further pun is involved, [greek: prokrouein] meaning also 'to go with a woman first.' [ ] athenian law declared it illegal for a woman to contract any debt exceeding the price of a _medimnus_ of corn; this law is now supposed to affect the men. [ ] merchants were exempt from military service; in this case, it is another kind of service that the old woman wants to exact from the young man. [ ] a thracian brigand, who forced strangers to share his daughters' bed, or be devoured by his horses. [ ] dead bodies were laid out on a layer of origanum, which is an aromatic plant. [ ] the young man is here describing the formalities connected with the laying out of the dead. [ ] who had married his mother jocasta without knowing it. [ ] a hideous spectre that hecaté was supposed to send to frighten men. [ ] which provided that where a number of criminals were charged with the same offence, each must be tried separately. [ ] as an aphrodisiac. [ ] we have already seen similar waggish endings to phrases in the 'lysistrata'; the figure is called [greek: para prosdokian]--'contrary to expectation.' [ ] nothing is known as to these cretan rhythms. according to the scholiast, this is a jest, because the cretans, who were great eaters, sat down to table early in the morning. this is what the chorus supposes it is going to do, since 'the ecclesiazusae' was played first, i.e. during the forenoon. [ ] this wonderful word consists, in the original greek, of seventy-seven syllables. for similar burlesque compounds see the 'lysistrata,' , ; 'wasps,' and . compare shakespeare, 'love's labour's lost,' act v. sc. : "i marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word; for thou art not so long by the head as _honorificabilitudinitatibus_." this is outdone by rabelais' _antipericatametaanaparbeugedamphicribrationibus_. plutus[*] [* transcriber's note: this caption is missing in the original.] introduction the 'plutus' differs widely from all other works of its author, and, it must be confessed, is the least interesting and diverting of them all. "in its absence of personal interests and personal satire," and its lack of strong comic incidents, "it approximates rather to a whimsical allegory than a comedy properly so called." the plot is of the simplest. chremylus, a poor but just man, accompanied by his body-servant cario--the redeeming feature, by the by, of an otherwise dull play, the original type of the comic valet of the stage of all subsequent periods--consults the delphic oracle concerning his son, whether he ought not to be instructed in injustice and knavery and the other arts whereby worldly men acquire riches. by way of answer the god only tells him that he is to follow whomsoever he first meets upon leaving the temple, who proves to be a blind and ragged old man. but this turns out to be no other than plutus himself, the god of riches, whom zeus has robbed of his eyesight, so that he may be unable henceforth to distinguish between the just and the unjust. however, succoured by chremylus and conducted by him to the temple of aesculapius, plutus regains the use of his eyes. whereupon all just men, including the god's benefactor, are made rich and prosperous, and the unjust reduced to indigence. the play was, it seems, twice put upon the stage--first in b.c., and again in a revised and reinforced edition, with allusions and innuendoes brought up to date, in b.c., a few years before the author's death. the text we possess--marred, however, by several considerable lacunae--is now generally allowed to be that of the piece as played at the later date, when it won the prize. * * * * * plutus dramatis personae chremylus. cario, servant of chremylus. plutus, god of riches. blepsidemus, friend of chremylus. wife of chremylus. poverty. a just man. an informer, or sycophant. an old woman. a youth. hermes. a priest of zeus. chorus of rustics. scene: in front of a farmhouse--a road leading up to it. * * * * * plutus cario. what an unhappy fate, great gods, to be the slave of a fool! a servant may give the best of advice, but if his master does not follow it, the poor slave must inevitably have his share in the disaster; for fortune does not allow him to dispose of his own body, it belongs to his master who has bought it. alas! 'tis the way of the world. but the god, apollo, whose oracles the pythian priestess on her golden tripod makes known to us, deserves my censure, for 'tis assured he is a physician and a cunning diviner; and yet my master is leaving his temple infected with mere madness and insists on following a blind man. is this not opposed to all good sense? 'tis for us, who see clearly, to guide those who don't; whereas he clings to the trail of a blind fellow and compels me to do the same without answering my questions with ever a word. (_to chremylus._) aye, master, unless you tell me why we are following this unknown fellow, i will not be silent, but i will worry and torment you, for you cannot beat me because of my sacred chaplet of laurel. chremylus. no, but if you worry me i will take off your chaplet, and then you will only get a sounder thrashing. cario. that's an old song! i am going to leave you no peace till you have told me who this man is; and if i ask it, 'tis entirely because of my interest in you. chremylus. well, be it so. i will reveal it to you as being the most faithful and the most rascally of all my servants.[ ] i honoured the gods and did what was right, and yet i was none the less poor and unfortunate. cario. i know it but too well. chremylus. other amassed wealth--the sacrilegious, the demagogues, the informers,[ ] indeed every sort of rascal. cario. i believe you. chremylus. therefore i came to consult the oracle of the god, not on my own account, for my unfortunate life is nearing its end, but for my only son; i wanted to ask apollo, if it was necessary for him to become a thorough knave and renounce his virtuous principles, since that seemed to me to be the only way to succeed in life. cario. and with what responding tones did the sacred tripod resound?[ ] chremylus. you shall know. the god ordered me in plain terms to follow the first man i should meet upon leaving the temple and to persuade him to accompany me home. cario. and who was the first one you met? chremylus. this blind man. cario. and you are stupid enough not to understand the meaning of such an answer? why, the god was advising you thereby, and that in the clearest possible way, to bring up your son according to the fashion of your country. chremylus. what makes you think that? cario. is it not evident to the blind, that nowadays to do nothing that is right is the best way to get on? chremylus. no, that is not the meaning of the oracle; there must be another, that is nobler. if this blind man would tell us who he is and why and with what object he has led us here, we should no doubt understand what our oracle really does mean. cario (_to plutus_). come, tell us at once who you are, or i give effect to my threat. (_he menaces him_.) and quick too, be quick, i say. plutus. i'll thrash you. cario (_to chremylus_). ha! is it thus he tells us his name? chremylus. 'tis to you and not to me that he replies thus; your mode of questioning him was ill-advised. (_to plutus._) come, friend, if you care to oblige an honest man, answer me. plutus. i'll knock you down. cario. ah! what a pleasant fellow and what a delightful prophecy the god has given you! chremylus. by demeter, you'll have no reason to laugh presently. cario. if you don't speak, you wretch, i will surely do you an ill turn. plutus. friends, take yourselves off and leave me. chremylus. that we very certainly shan't. cario. this, master, is the best thing to do. i'll undertake to secure him the most frightful death; i will lead him to the verge of a precipice and then leave him there, so that he'll break his neck when he pitches over. chremylus. well then, i leave him to you, and do the thing quickly. plutus. oh, no! have mercy! chremylus. will you speak then? plutus. but if you learn who i am, i know well that you will ill-use me and will not let me go again. chremylus. i call the gods to witness that you have naught to fear if you will only speak. plutus. well then, first unhand me. chremylus. there! we set you free. plutus. listen then, since i must reveal what i had intended to keep a secret. i am plutus.[ ] chremylus. oh! you wretched rascal! you plutus all the while, and you never said so! cario. you, plutus, and in this piteous guise! chremylus. oh, phoebus apollo! oh, ye gods of heaven and hell! oh, zeus! is it really and truly as you say? plutus. aye. chremylus. plutus' very own self? plutus. his own very self and none other. chremylus. but tell me, whence come you to be so squalid? plutus. i have just left patrocles' house, who has not had a bath since his birth.[ ] chremylus. but your infirmity; how did that happen? tell me. plutus. zeus inflicted it on me, because of his jealousy of mankind. when i was young, i threatened him that i would only go to the just, the wise, the men of ordered life; to prevent my distinguishing these, he struck me with blindness! so much does he envy the good! chremylus. and yet, 'tis only the upright and just who honour him. plutus. quite true. chremylus. therefore, if ever you recovered your sight, you would shun the wicked? plutus. undoubtedly. chremylus. you would visit the good? plutus. assuredly. it is a very long time since i saw them. chremylus. that's not astonishing. i, who see clearly, don't see a single one. plutus. now let me leave you, for i have told you everything. chremylus. no, certainly not! we shall fasten ourselves on to you faster than ever. plutus. did i not tell you, you were going to plague me? chremylus. oh! i adjure you, believe what i say and don't leave me; for you will seek in vain for a more honest man than myself. cario. there is only one man more worthy; and that is i. plutus. all talk like this, but as soon as they secure my favours and grow rich, their wickedness knows no bounds. chremylus. and yet all men are not wicked. plutus. all. there's no exception. cario. you shall pay for that opinion. chremylus. listen to what happiness there is in store for you, if you but stay with us. i have hope; aye, i have good hope with the god's help to deliver you from that blindness, in fact to restore your sight. plutus. oh! do nothing of the kind, for i don't wish to recover it. chremylus. what's that you say? cario. this fellow hugs his own misery. plutus. if you were mad enough to cure me, and zeus heard of it, he would overwhelm me with his anger. chremylus. and is he not doing this now by leaving you to grope your wandering way? plutus. i don't know; but i'm horribly afraid of him. chremylus. indeed? ah! you are the biggest poltroon of all the gods! why, zeus with his throne and his lightnings would not be worth an obolus if you recovered your sight, were it but for a few instants. plutus. impious man, don't talk like that. chremylus. fear nothing! i will prove to you that you are far more powerful and mightier than he. plutus. i mightier than he? chremylus. aye, by heaven! for instance, what is the origin of the power that zeus wields over the other gods?[ ] cario. 'tis money; he has so much of it. chremylus. and who gives it to him? cario (_pointing to plutus_). this fellow. chremylus. if sacrifices are offered to him, is not plutus their cause? cario. undoubtedly, for 'tis wealth that all demand and clamour most loudly for. chremylus. thus 'tis plutus who is the fount of all the honours rendered to zeus, whose worship he can wither up at the root, if it so please him. plutus. and how so? chremylus. not an ox, nor a cake, nor indeed anything at all could be offered, if you did not wish it. plutus. why? chremylus. why? but what means are there to buy anything if you are not there to give the money? hence if zeus should cause you any trouble, you will destroy his power without other help. plutus. so 'tis because of me that sacrifices are offered to him? chremylus. most assuredly. whatever is dazzling, beautiful or charming in the eyes of mankind, comes from you. does not everything depend on wealth? cario. i myself was bought for a few coins; if i'm a slave, 'tis only because i was not rich. chremylus. and what of the corinthian courtesans?[ ] if a poor man offers them proposals, they do not listen; but if it be a rich one, instantly they offer their buttocks for his pleasure. cario. 'tis the same with the lads; they care not for love, to them money means everything. chremylus. you speak of those who accept all comers; yet some of them are honest, and 'tis not money they ask of their patrons. cario. what then? chremylus. a fine horse, a pack of hounds. cario. aye, they would blush to ask for money and cleverly disguise their shame. chremylus. 'tis in you that every art, all human inventions, have had their origin; 'tis through you that one man sits cutting leather in his shop. cario. that another fashions iron or wood. chremylus. that yet another chases the gold he has received from you. cario. that one is a fuller. chremylus. that t'other washes wool. cario. that this one is a tanner. chremylus. and that other sells onions. cario. and if the adulterer, caught red-handed, is depilated,[ ] 'tis on account of you.[ ] plutus. oh! great gods! i knew naught of all this! cario. is it not he who lends the great king all his pride? chremylus. is it not he who draws the citizens to the assembly?[ ] cario. and tell me, is it not you who equip the triremes?[ ] chremylus. and who feed our mercenaries at corinth?[ ] cario. are not you the cause of pamphilus' sufferings?[ ] chremylus. and of the needle-seller's[ ] with pamphilus? cario. is it not because of you that agyrrhius[ ] lets wind so loudly? chremylus. and that philepsius[ ] rolls off his fables? cario. that troops are sent to succour the egyptians?[ ] chremylus. and that laïs is kept by philonides?[ ] cario. that the tower of timotheus[ ] ... chremylus. ... (_to cario._) may it fall upon your head! (_to plutus._) in short, plutus, 'tis through you that everything is done; be it known to you that you are the sole cause both of good and evil. cario. in war, 'tis the flag under which you serve that victory favours. plutus. what! i can do so many things by myself and unaided? chremylus. and many others besides; wherefore men are never tired of your gifts. they get weary of all else,--of love ... cario. of bread. chremylus. of music. cario. of sweetmeats. chremylus. of honours. cario. of cakes. chremylus. of battles. cario. of figs. chremylus. of ambition. cario. of gruel. chremylus. of military advancement. cario. of lentils.[ ] chremylus. but of you they never tire. has a man got thirteen talents, he has all the greater ardour to possess sixteen; is that wish achieved, he will want forty or will complain that he knows not how to make the two ends meet. plutus. all this, methinks, is very true; there is but one point that makes me feel a bit uneasy. chremylus. and that is? plutus. how could i use this power, which you say i have? chremylus. ah! they were quite right who said, there's nothing more timorous than plutus. plutus. no, no; it was a thief who calumniated me. having broken into a house, he found everything locked up and could take nothing, so he dubbed my prudence fear. chremylus. don't be disturbed; if you support me zealously, i'll make you more sharp-sighted than lynceus.[ ] plutus. and how should you be able to do that, you, who are but a mortal? chremylus. i have great hope, after the answer apollo gave me, shaking his sacred laurels the while. plutus. is _he_ in the plot then? chremylus. aye, truly. plutus. take care what you say. chremylus. never fear, friend; for, be well assured, that if it has to cost me my life, i will carry out what i have in my head. cario. and i will help you, if you permit it. chremylus. we shall have many other helpers as well--all the worthy folk who are wanting for bread. plutus. ah! ha! they'll prove sorry helpers. chremylus. no, not so, once they've grown rich. but you, cario, run quick ... cario. where? chremylus. ... to call my comrades, the other husbandmen, that each of them may come here to take his share of the gifts of plutus. cario. i'm off. but let someone come from the house to take this morsel of meat.[ ] chremylus. i'll see to that; you run your hardest. as for you, plutus, the most excellent of all the gods, come in here with me; this is the house you must fill with riches today, by fair means or foul.[ ] plutus. i don't like at all going into other folks' houses in this manner; i have never got any good from it. if i got inside a miser's house, straightway he would bury me deep underground; if some honest fellow among his friends came to ask him for the smallest coin, he would deny ever having seen me. then if i went to a fool's house, he would sacrifice me as a prey to gaming and to girls, and very soon i should be completely stripped and pitched out of doors. chremylus. that's because you have never met a man who knew how to avoid the two extremes; moderation is the strong point in my character. i love saving as much as anybody, and i know how to spend, when 'tis needed. but let us go in; i want to make you known to my wife and to my only son, whom i love most of all after yourself. plutus. aye, after myself, i'm very sure of that. chremylus. why should i hide the truth from you? cario. come, you active workers, who, like my master, eat nothing but garlic and the poorest food, you who are his friends and his neighbours, hasten your steps, hurry yourselves; there's not a moment to lose; this is the critical hour, when your presence and your support is needed by him. chorus. why, don't you see we are speeding as fast as men can, who are already enfeebled by age? but do you deem it fitting to make us run like this before ever telling us why your master has called us? cario. i've grown hoarse with the telling, but you won't listen. my master is going to drag you all out of the stupid, sapless life you are leading and ensure you one full of all delights. chorus. and how is he going to manage that? cario. my poor friends, he has brought with him a disgusting old fellow, all bent and wrinkled, with a most pitiful appearance, bald and toothless; upon my word, i even believe he is circumcised like some vile barbarian. chorus. these are news worth their weight in gold! what are you saying? repeat it to me; no doubt it means he is bringing back a heap of wealth. cario. no, but a heap of all the infirmities attendant on old age. chorus. if you are tricking us, you shall pay us for it. beware of our sticks! cario. do you deem me so brazen as all that, and my words mere lies? chorus. what serious airs the rascal puts on! look! his legs are already shrieking, "oh! oh!" they are asking for the shackles and wedges. cario. 'tis in the tomb that 'tis your lot to judge. why don't you go there? charon has given you your ticket.[ ] chorus. plague take you! you cursed rascal, who rail at us and have not even the heart to tell us why your master has made us come. we were pressed for time and tired out, yet we came with all haste, and in our hurry we have passed by lots of wild onions without even gathering them. cario. i will no longer conceal the truth from you. friends, 'tis plutus whom my master brings, plutus, who will give you riches. chorus. what! we shall really all become rich! cario. aye, certainly; you will then be midases, provided you grow ass's ears. chorus. what joy, what happiness! if what you tell me is true, i long to dance with delight. cario. and i too, threttanello![ ] i want to imitate cyclops and lead your troop by stamping like this.[ ] do you, my dear little ones, cry, aye, cry again and bleat forth the plaintive song of the sheep and of the stinking goats; follow me with erected organs like lascivious goats ready for action. chorus. as for us, threttanello! we will seek you, dear cyclops, bleating, and if we find you with your wallet full of fresh herbs, all disgusting in your filth, sodden with wine and sleeping in the midst of your sheep, we will seize a great flaming stake and burn out your eye.[ ] cario. i will copy that circé of corinth,[ ] whose potent philtres compelled the companions of philonides to swallow balls of dung, which she herself had kneaded with her hands, as if they were swine; and do you too grunt with joy and follow your mother, my little pigs. chorus. oh! circé[ ] with the potent philtres, who besmear your companions so filthily, what pleasure i shall have in imitating the son of laertes! i will hang you up by your testicles,[ ] i will rub your nose with dung like a goat, and like aristyllus[ ] you shall say through your half-opened lips, "follow your mother, my little pigs." cario. enough of tomfoolery, assume a grave demeanour; unknown to my master i am going to take bread and meat; and when i have fed well, i shall resume my work. chremylus. to say, "hail! my dear neighbours!" is an old form of greeting and well worn with use; so therefore i embrace you, because you have not crept like tortoises, but have come rushing here in all haste. now help me to watch carefully and closely over the god. chorus. be at ease. you shall see with what martial zeal i will guard him. what! we jostle each other at the assembly for three obols, and am i going to let plutus in person be stolen from me? chremylus. but i see blepsidemus; by his bearing and his haste i can readily see he knows or suspects something. blepsidemus. what has happened then? whence, how has chremylus suddenly grown rich? i don't believe a word of it. nevertheless, nothing but his sudden fortune was being talked about in the barbers' booths. but i am above all surprised that his good fortune has not made him forget his friends; that is not the usual way! chremylus. by the gods, blepsidemus, i will hide nothing from you. to-day things are better than yesterday; let us share, for are you not my friend? blepsidemus. have you really grown rich as they say? chremylus i shall be soon, if the god agrees to it. but there is still some risk to run. blepsidemus. what risk? chremylus. what risk? blepsidemus. what do you mean? explain. chremylus. if we succeed, we are happy for ever, but if we fail, it is all over with us. blepsidemus. 'tis a bad business, and one that doesn't please me! to grow rich all at once and yet to be fearful! ah! i suspect something that's little good. chremylus. what do you mean, that's little good? blepsidemus. no doubt you have just stolen some gold and silver from some temple and are repenting. chremylus. nay! heaven preserve me from that! blepsidemus. a truce to idle phrases! the thing is only too apparent, my friend. chremylus. don't suspect such a thing of me. blepsidemus. alas! then there is no honest man! not one, that can resist the attraction of gold! chremylus. by demeter, you have no common sense. blepsidemus. to have to persist like this in denial one's whole life long! chremylus. but, good gods, you are mad, my dear fellow! blepsidemus. his very look is distraught; he has done some crime! chremylus. ah! i know the tune you are playing now; you think i have stolen, and want your share. blepsidemus. my share of what, pray? chremylus. you are beside the mark; the thing is quite otherwise. blepsidemus. 'tis perhaps not a theft, but some piece of knavery! chremylus. you are insane! blepsidemus. what? you have done no man an injury? chremylus. no! assuredly not! blepsidemus. but, great gods, what am i to think? you won't tell me the truth. chremylus. you accuse me without really knowing anything. blepsidemus. listen, friend, no doubt the matter can yet be hushed up, before it gets noised abroad, at trifling expense; i will buy the orators' silence. chremylus. aye, you will lay out three minae and, as my friend, you will reckon twelve against me. blepsidemus. i know someone who will come and seat himself at the foot of the tribunal, holding a supplicant's bough in his hand and surrounded by his wife and children, for all the world like the heraclidae of pamphilus.[ ] chremylus. not at all, poor fool! but, thanks to me, worthy folk, intelligent and moderate men alone shall be rich henceforth. blepsidemus. what are you saying? have you then stolen so much as all that? chremylus. oh! your insults will be the death of me. blepsidemus. 'tis rather you yourself who are courting death. chremylus. not so, you wretch, since i have plutus. blepsidemus. you have plutus? which one? chremylus. the god himself. blepsidemus. and where is he? chremylus. there. blepsidemus. where? chremylus. indoors. blepsidemus. indoors? chremylus. aye, certainly. blepsidemus. get you gone! plutus in your house? chremylus. yes, by the gods! blepsidemus. are you telling me the truth? chremylus. i am. blepsidemus. swear it by hestia. chremylus. i swear it by posidon. blepsidemus. the god of the sea? chremylus. aye, and by all the other posidons, if such there be. blepsidemus. and you don't send him to us, to your friends? chremylus. we've not got to that point yet. blepsidemus. what do you say? is there no chance of sharing? chremylus. why, no. we must first ... blepsidemus. do what? chremylus. ... restore him his sight. blepsidemus. restore whom his sight? speak! chremylus. plutus. it must be done, no matter how. blepsidemus. is he then really blind? chremylus. yes, undoubtedly. blepsidemus. i am no longer surprised he never came to me. chremylus. and it please the gods, he'll come there now. blepsidemus. must we not go and seek a physician? chremylus. seek physicians at athens? nay! there's no art where there's no fee.[ ] blepsidemus. let's bethink ourselves well. chremylus. there is not one. blepsidemus. 'tis a positive fact, i don't know of one. chremylus. but i have thought the matter well over, and the best thing is to make plutus lie in the temple of aesculapius.[ ] blepsidemus. aye, unquestionably 'tis the very best thing. be quick and lead him away to the temple. chremylus. i am going there. blepsidemus. then hurry yourself. chremylus. 'tis just what i am doing. poverty. unwise, perverse, unholy men! what are you daring to do, you pitiful, wretched mortals? whither are you flying? stop! i command it! blepsidemus. oh! great gods! poverty. my arm shall destroy you, you infamous beings! such an attempt is not to be borne; neither man nor god has ever dared the like. you shall die! chremylus. and who are you? oh! what a ghastly pallor! blepsidemus. 'tis perchance some erinnys, some fury, from the theatre;[ ] there's a kind of wild tragedy look in her eyes. chremylus. but she has no torch. blepsidemus. let's knock her down! poverty. who do you think i am? chremylus. some wine-shop keeper or egg-woman. otherwise you would not have shrieked so loud at us, who have done nothing to you. poverty. indeed? and have you not done me the most deadly injury by seeking to banish me from every country? chremylus. why, have you not got the barathrum[ ] left? but who are you? answer me quickly! poverty. i am one that will punish you this very day for having wanted to make me disappear from here. blepsidemus. might it be the tavern-keeper in my neighbourhood, who is always cheating me in measure? poverty. i am poverty, who have lived with you for so many years. blepsidemus. oh! great apollo! oh, ye gods! whither shall i fly? chremylus. now then! what are you doing? you poltroon! will you kindly stop here? blepsidemus. not i. chremylus. will you have the goodness to stop. are two men to fly from a woman? blepsidemus. but, you wretch, 'tis poverty, the most fearful monster that ever drew breath. chremylus. stay where you are, i beg of you. blepsidemus. no! no! a thousand times, no! chremylus. could we do anything worse than leave the god in the lurch and fly before this woman without so much as ever offering to fight? blepsidemus. but what weapons have we? are we in a condition to show fight? where is the breastplate, the buckler, that this wretch has not pledged? chremylus. be at ease. plutus will readily triumph over her threats unaided. poverty. dare you reply, you scoundrels, you who are caught red-handed at the most horrible crime? chremylus. as for you, you cursed jade, you pursue me with your abuse, though i have never done you the slightest harm. poverty. do you think it is doing me no harm to restore plutus to the use of his eyes? chremylus. is this doing you harm, that we shower blessings on all men? poverty. and what do you think will ensure their happiness? chremylus. ah! first of all we shall drive you out of greece. poverty. drive me out? could you do mankind a greater harm? chremylus. yes--if i gave up my intention to deliver them from you. poverty. well, let us discuss this point first. i propose to show that i am the sole cause of all your blessings, and that your safety depends on me alone. if i don't succeed, then do what you like to me. chremylus. how dare you talk like this, you impudent hussy? poverty. agree to hear me and i think it will be very easy for me to prove that you are entirely on the wrong road, when you want to make the just men wealthy. blepsidemus. oh! cudgel and rope's end, come to my help! poverty. why such wrath and these shouts, before you hear my arguments? blepsidemus. but who could listen to such words without exclaiming? poverty. any man of sense. chremylus. but if you lose your case, what punishment will you submit to? poverty. choose what you will. chremylus. that's all right. poverty. you shall suffer the same if you are beaten! chremylus. do you think twenty deaths a sufficiently large stake? blepsidemus. good enough for her, but for us two would suffice. poverty. you won't escape, for is there indeed a single valid argument to oppose me with? chorus. to beat her in this debate, you must call upon all your wits. make no allowances and show no weakness! chremylus. it is right that the good should be happy, that the wicked and the impious, on the other hand, should be miserable; that is a truth, i believe, which no one will gainsay. to realize this condition of things is as great a proposal as it is noble and useful in every respect, and we have found a means of attaining the object of our wishes. if plutus recovers his sight and ceases from wandering about unseeing and at random, he will go to seek the just men and never leave them again; he will shun the perverse and ungodly; so, thanks to him, all men will become honest, rich and pious. can anything better be conceived for the public weal? blepsidemus. of a certainty, no! i bear witness to that. it is not even necessary she should reply. chremylus. does it not seem that everything is extravagance in the world, or rather madness, when you watch the way things go? a crowd of rogues enjoy blessings they have won by sheer injustice, while more honest folks are miserable, die of hunger, and spend their whole lives with you. chorus. yes, if plutus became clear-sighted again and drove out poverty, 'twould be the greatest blessing possible for the human race. poverty. here are two old men, whose brains are easy to confuse, who assist each other to talk rubbish and drivel to their hearts' content. but if your wishes were realized, your profit would be great! let plutus recover his sight and divide his favours out equally to all, and none will ply either trade or art any longer; all toil would be done away with. who would wish to hammer iron, build ships, sew, turn, cut up leather, bake bricks, bleach linen, tan hides, or break up the soil of the earth with the plough and garner the gifts of demeter, if he could live in idleness and free from all this work? chremylus. what nonsense all this is! all these trades which you just mention will be plied by our slaves. poverty. your slaves! and by what means will these slaves be got? chremylus. we will buy them. poverty. but first say, who will sell them, if everyone is rich? chremylus. some greedy dealer from thessaly--the land which supplies so many. poverty. but if your system is applied, there won't be a single slave-dealer left. what rich man would risk his life to devote himself to this traffic? you will have to toil, to dig and submit yourself to all kinds of hard labour; so that your life would be more wretched even than it is now. chremylus. may this prediction fall upon yourself! poverty. you will not be able to sleep in a bed, for no more will ever be manufactured; nor on carpets, for who would weave them if he had gold? when you bring a young bride to your dwelling, you will have no essences wherewith to perfume her, nor rich embroidered cloaks dyed with dazzling colours in which to clothe her. and yet what is the use of being rich, if you are to be deprived of all these enjoyments? on the other hand, you have all that you need in abundance, thanks to me; to the artisan i am like a severe mistress, who forces him by need and poverty to seek the means of earning his livelihood. chremylus. and what good thing can you give us, unless it be burns in the bath,[ ] and swarms of brats and old women who cry with hunger, and clouds uncountable of lice, gnats and flies, which hover about the wretch's head, trouble him, awake him and say, "you will be hungry, but get up!" besides, to possess a rag in place of a mantle, a pallet of rushes swarming with bugs, that do not let you close your eyes for a bed; a rotten piece of matting for a coverlet; a big stone for a pillow, on which to lay your head; to eat mallow roots instead of bread, and leaves of withered radish instead of cake; to have nothing but the cover of a broken jug for a stool, the stave of a cask, and broken at that, for a kneading-trough, that is the life you make for us! are these the mighty benefits with which you pretend to load mankind? poverty. 'tis not my life that you describe; you are attacking the existence beggars lead. chremylus. is beggary not poverty's sister? poverty. thrasybulus and dionysius[ ] are one and the same according to you. no, my life is not like that and never will be. the beggar, whom you have depicted to us, never possesses anything. the poor man lives thriftily and attentive to his work; he has not got too much, but he does not lack what he really needs. chremylus. oh! what a happy life, by demeter! to live sparingly, to toil incessantly and not to leave enough to pay for a tomb! poverty. that's it! jest, jeer, and never talk seriously! but what you don't know is this, that men with me are worth more, both in mind and body, than with plutus. with him they are gouty, big-bellied, heavy of limb and scandalously stout; with me they are thin, wasp-waisted, and terrible to the foe. chremylus. 'tis no doubt by starving them that you give them that waspish waist. poverty. as for behaviour, i will prove to you that modesty dwells with me and insolence with plutus. chremylus. oh! the sweet modesty of stealing and breaking through walls.[ ] blepsidemus. aye, the thief is truly modest, for he hides himself. poverty. look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy. chremylus. that is absolutely true, although your tongue is very vile. but it matters not, so don't put on those triumphant airs; you shall not be punished any the less for having tried to persuade me that poverty is worth more than wealth. poverty. not being able to refute my arguments, you chatter at random and exert yourself to no purpose. chremylus. then tell me this, why does all mankind flee from you? poverty. because i make them better. children do the very same; they flee from the wise counsels of their fathers. so difficult is it to see one's true interest. chremylus. will you say that zeus cannot discern what is best? well, he takes plutus to himself ... blepsidemus. ... and banishes poverty to earth. poverty. ah me! how purblind you are, you old fellows of the days of saturn! why, zeus is poor, and i will clearly prove it to you. in the olympic games, which he founded, and to which he convokes the whole of greece every four years, why does he only crown the victorious athletes with wild olive? if he were rich he would give them gold. chremylus. 'tis in that way he shows that he clings to his wealth; he is sparing with it, won't part with any portion of it, only bestows baubles on the victors and keeps his money for himself. poverty. but wealth coupled to such sordid greed is yet more shameful than poverty. chremylus. may zeus destroy you, both you and your chaplet of wild olive! poverty. thus you dare to maintain that poverty is not the fount of all blessings! chremylus. ask hecaté[ ] whether it is better to be rich or starving; she will tell you that the rich send her a meal every month and that the poor make it disappear before it is even served. but go and hang yourself and don't breathe another syllable. i will not be convinced against my will. poverty. "oh! citizens of argos! do you hear what he says?"[ ] chremylus. invoke pauson, your boon companion, rather.[ ] poverty. alas! what is to become of me? chremylus. get you gone, be off quick and a pleasant journey to you. poverty. but where shall i go? chremylus. to gaol; but hurry up, let us put an end to this. poverty. one day you will recall me. chremylus. then you can return; but disappear for the present. i prefer to be rich; you are free to knock your head against the walls in your rage. blepsidemus. and i too welcome wealth. i want, when i leave the bath all perfumed with essences, to feast bravely with my wife and children and to break wind in the faces of toilers and poverty. chremylus. so that hussy has gone at last! but let us make haste to put plutus to bed in the temple of aesculapius. blepsidemus. let us make haste; else some bothering fellow may again come to interrupt us. chremylus. cario, bring the coverlets and all that i have got ready from the house; let us conduct the god to the temple, taking care to observe all the proper rites. chorus. [_missing._][ ] cario. oh! you old fellows, who used to dip out the broth served to the poor at the festival of theseus with little pieces of bread[ ] hollowed like a spoon, how worthy of envy is your fate! how happy you are, both you and all just men! chorus. my good fellow, what has happened to your friends? you seem the bearer of good tidings. cario. what joy for my master and even more for plutus! the god has regained his sight; his eyes sparkle with the greatest brilliancy, thanks to the benevolent care of aesculapius. chorus. oh! what transports of joy! oh! what shouts of gladness! cario. aye! one is compelled to rejoice, whether one will or not. chorus. i will sing to the honour of aesculapius, the son of illustrious zeus, with a resounding voice; he is the beneficent star which men adore. chremylus' wife. what mean these shouts? is there good news. with what impatience have i been waiting in the house, and for so long too! cario. quick! quick! some wine, mistress. and drink yourself, for 'tis much to your taste; i bring you all blessings in a lump. wife. where are they? cario. in my words, as you are going to see. wife. have done with trifling! come, speak. cario. listen, i am going to tell you everything from the feet to the head. wife. ah! don't throw anything at my head. cario. not even the happiness that has come to you? wife. no, no, nothing ... to annoy me. cario. having arrived near to the temple with our patient, then so unfortunate, but now at the apex of happiness, of blessedness, we first led him down to the sea to purify him. wife. ah! what a singular pleasure for an old man to bathe in the cold sea-water! cario. then we repaired to the temple of the god. once the wafers and the various offerings had been consecrated upon the altar, and the cake of wheaten-meal had been handed over to the devouring hephaestus, we made plutus lie on a couch according to the rite, and each of us prepared himself a bed of leaves. wife. had any other folk come to beseech the deity? cario. yes. firstly, neoclides,[ ] who is blind, but steals much better than those who see clearly; then many others attacked by complaints of all kinds. the lights were put out and the priest enjoined us to sleep, especially recommending us to keep silent should we hear any noise. there we were all lying down quite quietly. i could not sleep; i was thinking of a certain stew-pan full of pap placed close to an old woman and just behind her head. i had a furious longing to slip towards that side. but just as i was lifting my head, i noticed the priest, who was sweeping off both the cakes and the figs on the sacred table; then he made the round of the altars and sanctified the cakes that remained, by stowing them away in a bag. i therefore resolved to follow such a pious example and made straight for the pap. wife. you wretch! and had you no fear of the god? cario. aye, indeed! i feared that the god with his crown on his head might have been near the stew-pan before me. i said to myself, "like priest, like god." on hearing the noise i made, the old woman put out her hand, but i hissed and bit it, just as a sacred serpent might have done.[ ] quick she drew back her hand, slipped down into the bed with her head beneath the coverlets and never moved again; only she let go some wind in her fear which stunk worse than a weasel. as for myself, i swallowed a goodly portion of the pap and, having made a good feed, went back to bed. wife. and did not the god come? cairo. he did not tarry; and when he was near us, oh! dear! such a good joke happened. my belly was quite blown out, and i let wind with the loudest of noises. wife. doubtless the god pulled a wry face? cario. no, but iaso blushed a little and panacea[ ] turned her head away, holding her nose; for my perfume is not that of roses. wife. and what did the god do? cario. he paid not the slightest heed. wife. he must then be a pretty coarse kind of god? cario. i don't say that, but he's used to tasting shit.[ ] wife. impudent knave, go on with you! cario. then i hid myself in my bed all a-tremble. aesculapius did the round of the patients and examined them all with great attention; then a slave placed beside him a stone mortar, a pestle and a little box.[ ] wife. of stone? cario. no, not of stone. wife. but how could you see all this, you arch-rascal, when you say you were hiding all the time? cario. why, great gods, through my cloak, for 'tis not without holes! he first prepared an ointment for neoclides; he threw three heads of tenian[ ] garlic into the mortar, pounded them with an admixture of fig-tree sap and lentisk, moistened the whole with sphettian[ ] vinegar, and, turning back the patient's eyelids, applied his salve to the interior of the eyes, so that the pain might be more excruciating. neoclides shrieked, howled, sprang towards the foot of his bed and wanted to bolt, but the god laughed and said to him, "keep where you are with your salve; by doing this you will not go and perjure yourself before the assembly." wife. what a wise god and what a friend to our city! cario. thereupon he came and seated himself at the head of plutus' bed, took a perfectly clean rag and wiped his eye-lids; panacea covered his head and face with a purple cloth, while the god whistled, and two enormous snakes came rushing from the sanctuary. wife. great gods! cario. they slipped gently beneath the purple cloth and, as far as i could judge, licked the patient's eyelids; for, in less time than even you need, mistress, to drain down ten beakers of wine, plutus rose up; he could see. i clapped my hands with joy and awoke my master, and the god immediately disappeared with the serpents into the sanctuary. as for those who were lying near plutus, you can imagine that they embraced him tenderly. dawn broke and not one of them had closed an eye. as for myself, i did not cease thanking the god who had so quickly restored to plutus his sight and had made neoclides blinder than ever. wife. oh! thou great aesculapius! how mighty is thy power! (_to cario._) but tell me, where is plutus now? cario. he is approaching, escorted by an immense crowd. the rich, whose wealth is ill-gotten, are knitting their brows and shooting at him looks of fierce hate, while the just folk, who led a wretched existence, embrace him and grasp his hand in the transport of their joy; they follow in his wake, their heads wreathed with garlands, laughing and blessing their deliverer; the old men make the earth resound as they walk together keeping time. come, all of you, all, down to the very least, dance, leap and form yourselves into a chorus; no longer do you risk being told, when you go home, "there is no meal in the bag." wife. and i, by hecate! i will string you a garland of cakes for the good tidings you have brought me. cario. hurry, make haste then; our friends are close at hand. wife. i will go indoors to fetch some gifts of welcome, to celebrate these eyes that have just been opened. cario. meantime i am going forth to meet them. chorus. [_missing._] plutus. i adore thee, oh! thou divine sun, and thee i greet thou city, the beloved of pallas; be welcome, thou land of cecrops, which hast received me. alas! what manner of men i associated with! i blush to think of it. while, on the other hand, i shunned those who deserved my friendship; i knew neither the vices of the ones nor the virtues of the others. a twofold mistake, and in both cases equally fatal! ah! what a misfortune was mine! but i want to change everything; and in future i mean to prove to mankind that, if i gave to the wicked, 'twas against my will. chremylus (_to the crowd who impede him_). get you gone! oh! what a lot of friends spring into being when you are fortunate! they dig me with their elbows and bruise my shins to prove their affection. each one wants to greet me. what a crowd of old fellows thronged round me on the market-place! wife. oh! thou, who art dearest of all to me, and thou too, be welcome! allow me, plutus, to shower these gifts of welcome over you in due accord with custom. plutus. no. this is the first house i enter after having regained my sight; i shall take nothing from it, for 'tis my place rather to give. wife. do you refuse these gifts? plutus. i will accept them at your fireside, as custom requires. besides, we shall thus avoid a ridiculous scene; it is not meet that the poet should throw dried figs and dainties to the spectators; 'tis a vulgar trick to make 'em laugh. wife. you are right. look! yonder's dexinicus, who was already getting to his feet to catch the figs as they flew past him.[ ] chorus. [_missing_.] cario. how pleasant it is, friends, to live well, especially when it costs nothing! what a deluge of blessings flood our household, and that too without our having wronged ever a soul! ah! what a delightful thing is wealth! the bin is full of white flour and the wine-jars run over with fragrant liquor; all the chests are crammed with gold and silver, 'tis a sight to see; the tank is full of oil,[ ] the phials with perfumes, and the garret with dried figs. vinegar flasks, plates, stew-pots and all the platters are of brass; our rotten old wooden trenchers for the fish have to-day become dishes of silver; the very night-commode is of ivory. we others, the slaves, we play at odd and even with gold pieces, and carry luxury so far that we no longer wipe ourselves with stones, but use garlic stalks instead. my master, at this moment, is crowned with flowers and sacrificing a pig, a goat and a ram;[ ] 'tis the smoke that has driven me out, for i could no longer endure it, it hurt my eyes so. a just man. come, my child, come with me. let us go and find the god. chremylus. who comes here? just man. a man who was once wretched, but now is happy. chremylus. a just man then? just man. you have it. chremylus. well! what do you want? just man. i come to thank the god for all the blessings he has showered on me. my father had left me a fairly decent fortune, and i helped those of my friends who were in want; 'twas, to my thinking, the most useful thing i could do with my fortune. chremylus. and you were quickly ruined? just man. entirely. chremylus. since then you have been living in misery? just man. in truth i have; i thought i could count, in case of need, upon the friends whose property i had helped, but they turned their backs upon me and pretended not to see me. chremylus. they laughed at you, 'tis evident. just man. just so. with my empty coffers, i had no more friends. chremylus. but your lot has changed. just man. yes, and so i come to the god to make him the acts of gratitude that are his due. chremylus. but with what object now do you bring this old cloak, which your slave is carrying? tell me. just man. i wish to dedicate it to the god.[ ] chremylus. were you initiated into the great mysteries in that cloak?[ ] just man. no, but i shivered in it for thirteen years. chremylus. and this footwear? just man. these also are my winter companions. chremylus. and you wish to dedicate them too? just man. unquestionably. chremylus. fine presents to offer to the god! an informer. alas! alas! i am a lost man. ah! thrice, four, five, twelve times, or rather ten thousand times unhappy fate! why, why must fortune deal me such rough blows? chremylus. oh, apollo, my tutelary! oh! ye favourable gods! what has overtaken this man? informer. ah! am i not deserving of pity? i have lost everything; this cursed god has stripped me bare. ah! if there be justice in heaven, he shall be struck blind again. just man. methinks i know what's the matter. if this man is unfortunate, 'tis because he's of little account and small honesty; and i' faith he looks it too. chremylus. then, by zeus! his plight is but just. informer. he promised that if he recovered his sight, he would enrich us all unaided; whereas he has ruined more than one. chremylus. but whom has he thus ill-used? informer. me. chremylus. you were doubtless a villainous thief then. informer (_to chremylus and cario_). 'tis rather you yourselves who were such wretches; i am certain you have got my money. chremylus. ha! by demeter! 'tis an informer. what impudence! cario. he's ravenously hungry, that's certain. informer. you shall follow me this very instant to the marketplace, where the torture of the wheel shall force the confession of your misdeeds from you. cario. ha! look out for yourself! just man. by zeus the deliverer, what gratitude all greeks owe to plutus, if he destroys these vile informers! informer. you are laughing at me. ho! ho! i denounce you as their accomplice. where did you steal that new cloak from? yesterday i saw you with one utterly worn out. just man. i fear you not, thanks to this ring, for which i paid eudemus[ ] a drachma. chremylus. ah! there's no ring to preserve you from the informer's bite. informer. the insolent wretches! but, my fine jokers, you have not told me what you are up to here. nothing good, i'll be bound. chremylus. nothing of any good for you, be sure of that. informer. by zeus! you're going to dine at my expense! chremylus. you vile impostor, may you burst with an empty belly, both you and your witness. informer. you deny it? i reckon, you villians, that there is much salt fish and roast meat in this house. hu! hu! hu! hu! hu! hu! (_he sniffs._) chremylus. can you smell anything, rascal? informer. can such outrages be borne, oh, zeus! ye gods! how cruel it is to see me treated thus, when i am such an honest fellow and such a good citizen! chremylus. you an honest man! you a good citizen! informer. a better one than any. chremylus. ah! well then, answer my questions. informer. concerning what? chremylus. are you a husbandman? informer. d'ye take me for a fool? chremylus. a merchant? informer. i assume the title, when it serves me.[ ] chremylus. do you ply any trade? informer. no, most assuredly not! chremylus. then how do you live, if you do nothing? informer. i superintend public and private business. chremylus. you! and by what right, pray? informer. because it pleases me to do so. chremylus. like a thief you sneak yourself in where you have no business. you are hated by all and you claim to be an honest man? informer. what, you fool? i have not the right to dedicate myself entirely to my country's service? chremylus. is the country served by vile intrigue? informer. it is served by watching that the established law is observed--by allowing no one to violate it. chremylus. that's the duty of the tribunals; they are established to that end. informer. and who is the prosecutor before the dicasts? chremylus. whoever wishes to be.[ ] informer. well then, 'tis i who choose to be prosecutor; and thus all public affairs fall within my province. chremylus. i pity athens for being in such vile clutches. but would you not prefer to live quietly and free from all care and anxiety? informer. to do nothing is to live an animal's life. chremylus. thus you will not change your mode of life? informer. no, though they gave me plutus himself and the _silphium_ of battus.[ ] chremylus (_to the informer_). come, quick, off with your cloak. cario. hi! friend! 'tis you they are speaking to. chremylus. off with your shoes. cario. all this is addressed to you. informer. very well! let one of you come near me, if he dares. cario. i dare. informer. alas! i am robbed of my clothes in full daylight. cario. that's what comes of meddling with other folk's business and living at their expense. informer (_to his witness_). you see what is happening; i call you to witness. chremylus. look how the witness whom you brought is taking to his heels. informer. great gods! i am all alone and they assault me. cario. shout away! informer. oh! woe, woe is me! cario. give me that old ragged cloak, that i may dress out the informer. just man. no, no; i have dedicated it to plutus. cario. and where would your offering be better bestowed than on the shoulders of a rascal and a thief? to plutus fine, rich cloaks should be given. just man. and what then shall be done with these shoes? tell me. cario. i will nail them to his brow as gifts are nailed to the trunks of the wild olive. informer. i'm off, for you are the strongest, i own. but if i find someone to join me, let him be as weak as he will, i will summon this god, who thinks himself so strong, before the court this very day, and denounce him as manifestly guilty of overturning the democracy by his will alone and without the consent of the senate or the popular assembly. just man. now that you are rigged out from head to foot with my old clothes, hasten to the bath and stand there in the front row to warm yourself better; 'tis the place i formerly had. chremylus. ah! the bath-man would grip you by the testicles and fling you through the door; he would only need to see you to appraise you at your true value.... but let us go in, friend, that you may address your thanksgivings to the god. chorus. [_missing._] an old woman. dear old men, am i near the house where the new god lives, or have i missed the road? chorus. you are at his door, my pretty little maid, who question us so sweetly.[ ] old woman. then i will summon someone in the house. chremylus. 'tis needless! i am here myself. but what matter brings you here? old woman. ah! a cruel, unjust fate! my dear friend, this god has made life unbearable to me through ceasing to be blind. chremylus. what does this mean? can you be a female informer? old woman. most certainly not. chremylus. have you not drunk up your money then? old woman. you are mocking me! nay! i am being devoured with a consuming fire. chremylus. then tell me what is consuming you so fiercely. old woman. listen! i loved a young man, who was poor, but so handsome, so well-built, so honest! he readily gave way to all i desired and acquitted himself so well! i, for my part, refused him nothing. chremylus. and what did he generally ask of you. old woman. very little; he bore himself towards me with astonishing discretion! perchance twenty drachmae for a cloak or eight for footwear; sometimes he begged me to buy tunics for his sisters or a little mantle for his mother; at times he needed four bushels of corn. chremylus. 'twas very little, in truth; i admire his modesty. old woman. and 'twas not as a reward for his complacency that he ever asked me for anything, but as a matter of pure friendship; a cloak i had given would remind him from whom he had got it. chremylus. 'twas a fellow who loved you madly. old woman. but 'tis no longer so, for the faithless wretch has sadly altered! i had sent him this cake with the sweetmeats you see here on this dish and let him know that i would visit him in the evening.... chremylus. well? old woman. he sent me back my presents and added this tart to them, on condition that i never set foot in his house again. besides, he sent me this message, "once upon a time the milesians were brave."[ ] chremylus. an honest lad, indeed! but what would you? when poor, he would devour anything; now he is rich, he no longer cares for lentils. old woman. formerly he came to me every day. chremylus. to see if you were being buried? old woman. no! he longed to hear the sound of my voice. chremylus. and to carry off some present. old woman. if i was downcast, he would call me his little duck or his little dove in a most tender manner.... chremylus. and then would ask for the wherewithal to buy a pair of shoes. old woman. when i was at the mysteries of eleusis in a carriage,[ ] someone looked at me; he was so jealous that he beat me the whole of that day. chremylus. 'twas because he liked to feed alone. old woman. he told me i had very beautiful hands. chremylus. aye, no doubt, when they handed him twenty drachmae. old woman. that my whole body breathed a sweet perfume. chremylus. yes, like enough, if you poured him out thasian wine. old woman. that my glance was gentle and charming. chremylus. 'twas no fool. he knew how to drag drachmae from a hot-blooded old woman. old woman. ah! the god has done very, very wrong, saying he would support the victims of injustice. chremylus. well, what must he do? speak, and it shall be done. old woman. 'tis right to compel him, whom i have loaded with benefits, to repay them in his turn; if not, he does not merit the least of the god's favours. chremylus. and did he not do this every night? old woman. he swore he would never leave me, as long as i lived. chremylus. aye, rightly; but he thinks you are no longer alive.[ ] old woman. ah! friend, i am pining away with grief. chremylus. you are rotting away, it seems to me. old woman. i have grown so thin, i could slip through a ring. chremylus. yes, if 'twere as large as the hoop of a sieve. old woman. but here is the youth, the cause of my complaint; he looks as though he were going to a festival. chremylus. yes, if his chaplet and his torch are any guides. youth. greeting to you. old woman. what does he say? youth. my ancient old dear, you have grown white very quickly, by heaven! old woman. oh! what an insult! chremylus. it is a long time, then, since he saw you? old woman. a long time? my god! he was with me yesterday. chremylus. it must be, then, that, unlike other people, he sees more clearly when he's drunk. old woman. no, but i have always known him for an insolent fellow. youth. oh! divine posidon! oh, ye gods of old age! what wrinkles she has on her face! old woman. oh! oh! keep your distance with that torch. chremylus. yes, 'twould be as well; if a single spark were to reach her, she would catch alight like an old olive branch. youth. i propose to have a game with you. old woman. where, naughty boy? youth. here. take some nuts in your hand. old woman. what game is this? youth. let's play at guessing how many teeth you have. chremylus. ah! i'll tell you; she's got three, or perhaps four. youth. pay up; you've lost! she has only one single grinder. old woman. you wretch! you're not in your right senses. do you insult me thus before this crowd? youth. i am washing you thoroughly; 'tis doing you a service. chremylus. no, no! as she is there, she can still deceive; but if this white-lead is washed off, her wrinkles would come out plainly. old woman. you are only an old fool! youth. ah! he is playing the gallant, he is fondling your breasts, and thinks i do not see it. old woman. oh! no, by aphrodité, no, you naughty jealous fellow. chremylus. oh! most certainly not, by hecaté![ ] verily and indeed i would need to be mad! but, young man, i cannot forgive you, if you cast off this beautiful child. youth. why, i adore her. chremylus. but nevertheless she accuses you ... youth. accuses me of what? chremylus. ... of having told her insolently, "once upon a time the milesians were brave." youth. oh! i shall not dispute with you about her. chremylus. why not? youth. out of respect for your age; with anyone but you, i should not be so easy; come, take the girl and be happy. chremylus. i see, i see; you don't want her any more. old woman. nay! this is a thing that cannot be allowed. youth. i cannot argue with a woman, who has been making love these thirteen thousand years. chremylus. yet, since you liked the wine, you should now consume the lees. youth. but these lees are quite rancid and fusty. chremylus. pass them through a straining-cloth; they'll clarify. youth. but i want to go in with you to offer these chaplets to the god. old woman. and i too have something to tell him. youth. then i don't enter. chremylus. come, have no fear; she won't harm you. youth. 'tis true; i've been managing the old bark long enough. old woman. go in; i'll follow after you. chremylus. good gods! that old hag has fastened herself to her youth like a limpet to its rock. chorus. [_missing._] cario (_opening the door_). who knocks at the door? halloa! i see no one; 'twas then by chance it gave forth that plaintive tone. hermes (_to carlo, who is about to close the door_). cario! stop! cario. eh! friend, was it you who knocked so loudly? tell me. hermes. no, i was going to knock and you forestalled me by opening. come, call your master quick, then his wife and his children, then his slave and his dog, then thyself and his pig. cario. and what's it all about? hermes. it's about this, rascal! zeus wants to serve you all with the same sauce and hurl the lot of you into the barathrum. cario. have a care for your tongue, you bearer of ill tidings! but why does he want to treat us in that scurvy fashion? hermes. because you have committed the most dreadful crime. since plutus has recovered his sight, there is nothing for us other gods, neither incense, nor laurels, nor cakes, nor victims, nor anything in the world. cario. and you will never be offered anything more; you governed us too ill. hermes. i care nothing at all about the other gods, but 'tis myself. i tell you i am dying of hunger. cario. that's reasoning like a wise fellow. hermes. formerly, from earliest dawn, i was offered all sorts of good things in the wine-shops,--wine-cakes, honey, dried figs, in short, dishes worthy of hermes. now, i lie the livelong day on my back, with my legs in the air, famishing. cario. and quite right too, for you often had them punished who treated you so well.[ ] hermes. ah! the lovely cake they used to knead for me on the fourth of the month![ ] cario. you recall it vainly; your regrets are useless! there'll be no more cake. hermes. ah! the ham i was wont to devour! cario. well then! make use of your legs and hop on one leg upon the wine-skin,[ ] to while away the time. hermes. oh! the grilled entrails i used to swallow down! cario. your own have got the colic, methinks. hermes. oh! the delicious tipple, half wine, half water! cario. here, swallow that and be off. (_he discharges a fart._) hermes. would you do a friend a service? cario. willingly, if i can. hermes. give me some well-baked bread and a big hunk of the victims they are sacrificing in your house. cario. that would be stealing. hermes. do you forget, then, how i used to take care he knew nothing about it when you were stealing something from your master? cario. because i used to share it with you, you rogue; some cake or other always came your way. hermes. which afterwards you ate up all by yourself.[ ] cario. but then you did not share the blows when i was caught. hermes. forget past injuries, now you have taken phylé.[ ] ah! how i should like to live with you! take pity and receive me. cario. you would leave the gods to stop here? hermes. one is much better off among you. cario. what! you would desert! do you think that is honest? hermes. "where i live well, there is my country."[ ] cario. but how could we employ you here? hermes. place me near the door; i am the watchman god and would shift off the robbers. cario. shift off! ah! but we have no love for shifts. hermes. entrust me with business dealings. cario. but we are rich; why should we keep a haggling hermes? hermes. let me intrigue for you.[ ] cario. no, no, intrigues are forbidden; we believe in good faith. hermes. i will work for you as a guide. cario. but the god sees clearly now, so we no longer want a guide. hermes. well then, i will preside over the games. ah! what can you object to in that? nothing is fitter for plutus than to give scenic and gymnastic games.[ ] cario. how useful 'tis to have so many names! here you have found the means of earning your bread. i don't wonder the jurymen so eagerly try to get entered for many tribunals.[ ] hermes. so then, you admit me on these terms. cario. go and wash the entrails of the victims at the well, so that you may show yourself serviceable at once. a priest of zeus. can anyone direct me where chremylus is? chremylus. what would you with him, friend? priest. much ill. since plutus has recovered his sight, i am perishing of starvation; i, the priest of zeus the deliverer, have nothing to eat! chremylus. and what is the cause of that, pray? priest. no one dreams of offering sacrifices. chremylus. why not? priest. because all men are rich. ah! when they had nothing, the merchant who escaped from shipwreck, the accused who was acquitted, all immolated victims; another would sacrifice for the success of some wish and the priest joined in at the feast; but now there is not the smallest victim, not one of the faithful in the temple, but thousands who come there to ease themselves. chremylus. don't you take your share of those offerings? priest. hence i think i too am going to say good-bye to zeus the deliverer, and stop here myself. chremylus. be at ease, all will go well, if it so please the god. zeus the deliverer[ ] is here; he came of his own accord. priest. ha! that's good news. chremylus. wait a little; we are going to install plutus presently in the place he formerly occupied behind the temple of athené;[ ] there he will watch over our treasures for ever. but let lighted torches be brought; take these and walk in solemn procession in front of the god. priest. that's magnificent! chremylus. let plutus be summoned. old woman. and i, what am i to do? chremylus. take the pots of vegetables which we are going to offer to the god in honour of his installation and carry them on your head; you just happen luckily to be wearing a beautiful embroidered robe. old woman. and what about the object of my coming? chremylus. everything shall be according to your wish. the young man will be with you this evening. old woman. oh! if you promise me his visit, i will right willingly carry the pots. chremylus. those are strange pots indeed! generally the scum rises to the top of the pots, but here the pots are raised to the top of the old woman.[ ] chorus. let us withdraw without more tarrying, and follow the others, singing as we go.[ ] * * * * * finis of "plutus" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] the poet jestingly makes chremylus attribute two utterly opposed characteristics to his servant. [ ] literally _sycophants_ i.e. denouncers of figs. the senate, says plutarch, in very early times had made a law forbidding the export of figs from attica; those who were found breaking the edict were fined to the advantage of the sycophant ([greek: phainein], to denounce, and [greek: sukon], fig). since the law was abused in order to accuse the innocent, the name sycophant was given to calumniators and to the too numerous class of informers at athens who subsisted on the money their denunciations brought them. [ ] a parody of the tragic style. [ ] plutus, the god of riches, was included amongst the infernal deities, because riches are extracted from the earth's bosom, which is their dwelling-place. according to hesiod, he was the son of demeter; agriculture is in truth the most solid foundation of wealth. he was generally represented as an old blind man, halting in gait and winged, coming with slow steps but going away on a rapid flight and carrying a purse in his hand. at athens the statue of peace bore plutus represented as still a child on her bosom as a symbol of the wealth that peace brings. [ ] a rich man, who affected the sordid habits of lacedaemon, because of his greed. "more sordid than patrocles" had become a byword at athens. even the public baths were too dear for patrocles, because, in addition to the modest fee that was given to the bath-man, it was necessary to use a little oil for the customary friction after the bath. [ ] this catechizing is completely in the manner of the sophistical teaching of the times, and has its parallel in other comedies. it reminds us in many ways of the socratic 'elenchus' as displayed in the platonic dialogues. [ ] corinth was the most corrupt as well as the most commercial of greek cities, and held a number of great courtesans, indeed some of the most celebrated, e.g. laïs, cyrené, sinopé, practised their profession there; they, however, set a very high value on their favours, and hence the saying, "_non cuivis homini contingit adire corinthum_"--"it is not for every man to go to corinth." [ ] this was the mild punishment inflicted upon the adulterer by athenian custom. the laws of solon were very indulgent to this kind of crime; they only provided that the guilty woman might be repudiated by her husband, but were completely silent concerning her accomplice. [ ] cario means to convey that women often paid their lovers, or at all events made it their business to open up the road to fortune for them. [ ] in order to receive the _triobolus,_ the fee for attendance. [ ] the richest citizens were saddled with this expense and were called trierarchs. [ ] athens had formed an alliance with corinth and thebes against sparta in b.c., a little before the production of the 'plutus.' corinth, not feeling itself strong enough to resist the attacks of the spartans unaided, had demanded the help of an athenian garrison, and hence athens maintained some few thousand mercenaries there. [ ] a civil servant, who had been exiled for embezzling state funds. [ ] no doubt an accomplice of pamphilus in his misdeeds; the scholiast says he was one of his parasites. [ ] an upstart and, through the favour of the people, an admiral in the year b.c., after thrasybulus; he had enriched himself through some rather equivocal state employments and was insolent, because of his wealth, 'as a well-fed ass.' [ ] a buffoon, so the scholiasts inform us, who was in the habit of visiting the public places of the city in order to make a little money by amusing the crowd with ridiculous stories. others say he was a statesman of the period, who was condemned for embezzlement of public money; in his defence he may well have invented some fabulous tales to account for the disappearance of the money out of the treasury. [ ] the precise historical reference here is obscure. [ ] laïs, a celebrated courtesan.--of philonides little is known, except that he was a native of melita and a rich and profligate character. [ ] the reference is no doubt to a pretentious construction that had been built for the rich and over-proud timotheus, the son of conon. he was a clever general of great integrity; when the 'plutus' was produced, he was still very young. [ ] chremylus rises in a regular climax from love to military glory; the slave in as direct an anti-climax comes from bread, sweetmeats, etc., down to lentils. [ ] the son of aphareus, the king of messenia; according to the legends, he had such piercing sight that he could see through walls, and could even discover what was going on in heaven and in the nether world. he took part in the expedition of the argonauts. [ ] a part of the victim which cario was bringing back from the temple; it was customary to present the remains of a sacrifice to friends and relations. [ ] as soon as chremylus sees himself assured of wealth he adopts less honest principles. [ ] the citizens appointed to act as dicasts, or jurymen, drew lots each year to decide in which court they should sit. there were ten courts, each of which was indicated by one of the first ten letters of the alphabet, and the urn contained as many tickets marked with these letters as there were dicasts. cario means to say here that the old men of the chorus should remember that they have soon to die themselves instead of bothering about punishing him. [ ] a word invented to imitate the sound of a lyre. [ ] the cyclops let his flocks graze while he played the lyre; it was thus that philoxenus had represented him in a piece to which aristophanes is here alluding.--cario assumes the part of the cyclops and leaves that of the flock to the chorus. [ ] in allusion to ulysses' adventures in the cave of polyphemus. [ ] laïs. [ ] i.e. cario, who is assuming the rôle of circé of corinth. [ ] this was the torture which odysseus inflicted on melanthius, one of the goatherds. [ ] a poet of debauched and degraded life, one of those who, like ariphrades mentioned in 'the knights,' "defiled his tongue with abominable sensualities," that is to say, was a _fellator_ and a _cunnilingue._ [ ] it is uncertain whether pamphilus, a tragedian, is meant here, who, like euripides and aeschylus, made the heraclidae the subject of a tragedy, or the painter of that name, so celebrated in later times, who painted that subject in the poecilé stoa. [ ] physicians at athens were paid very indifferently, and hence the most skilled sought their practice in other cities. [ ] the temple of aesculapius stood on the way from the theatre to the citadel and near the tomb of talos. a large number of invalids were taken there to pass a night; it was believed that the god visited them without being seen himself, because of the darkness, and arranged for their restoration to health. [ ] like the furies who composed the chorus in aeschylus' 'eumenides.' [ ] a ravine into which criminals were hurled at athens. [ ] during the winter the poor went into the public baths for shelter against the cold; they could even stop there all night; sometimes they burnt themselves by getting too near the furnace which heated the water. [ ] i.e. the most opposite things; the tyranny of dionysius of syracuse and the liberty which thrasybulus restored to athens. [ ] crimes to which men are driven through poverty. [ ] the ancients placed statues of hecaté at the cross-roads ([greek: triodoi], places where three roads meet), because of the three names, artemis, phoebé and hecaté, under which the same goddess was worshipped. on the first day of the month the rich had meals served before these statues and invited the poor to them. [ ] a verse from euripides' lost play of 'telephus.' the same line occurs in 'the knights.' [ ] and not the citizens of argos, whom agriculture and trade rendered wealthy.--pauson was an athenian painter, whose poverty had become a proverb. "poorer than pauson" was a common saying. [ ] there is here a long interval of time, during which plutus is taken to the temple of aesculapius and cured of his blindness. in the first edition probably the parabasis came in here; at all events a long choral ode must have intervened. [ ] the athenians had erected a temple to theseus and instituted feasts in his honour, which were still kept up in the days of plutarch and pausanias. barley broth and other coarse foods were distributed among the poor. [ ] he was an orator, who was accused of theft and extortion, and who, moreover, was said not to be a genuine athenian citizen. [ ] the serpent was sacred to aesculapius; several of these reptiles lived in the temple of the god. [ ] iaso (from [greek: iasthai], to heal) and panacea (from [greek: pan], everything, and [greek: akeisthai], to cure) were daughters of aesculapius. [ ] he has to see, examine, and taste pill, potion, urine ... and worse. [ ] an apothecary's outfit. [ ] tenos is one of the cyclades, near andros. [ ] a deme of attica, where the strongest vinegar came from. [ ] the scholiast says that this was an individual as poor as he was greedy, and on the watch for every opportunity to satisfy his voracity.--the comic poets often had nuts, figs and other petty dainties thrown to the audience. it was a fairly good way to secure the favour of a certain section of the public. [ ] the ancients used oil in large quantities, whether for rubbing themselves down after bathing or before their exercises in the palaestra, or for the different uses of domestic life. it was kept in a kind of tank, hollowed in the ground and covered with tiles or stones. the wine-sellers had similar tanks, but of larger size, for keeping their wine. [ ] this was what was styled the triple or complete sacrifice. [ ] as evidence of the sorry condition from which he had been raised. [ ] the clothes a man wore on the day that he was initiated into the mysteries of eleusis had, according to custom, to be dedicated to the gods, but only after they had been worn. most people only decided to do this when they were full of holes and torn; it is because his visitor's cloak is in such a sorry condition that chremylus takes it to be the cloak of an initiate. [ ] this eudemus was a kind of sorcerer, who sold magic rings, to which, among other virtues, he ascribed that of curing, or rather of securing him who wore them, from snake-bites. [ ] the merchants engaged in maritime commerce were absolved from military service; the scholiast even declares, though it seems highly unlikely, that all merchants were exempt from imposts on their possessions. when it was a question of escaping taxes and military service the informer passed as a merchant. [ ] at athens 'twas only the injured person who could prosecute in private disputes; everyone, however, had this right where wrongs against the state were involved; but if the prosecutor only obtained one-fifth of the votes, he was condemned to a fine of drachmae or banished the country. [ ] a proverbial saying, meaning, _the most precious thing_.--battus, a lacedaemonian, led out a colony from thera, an island in the aegean sea, and, about b.c., founded the city of cyrené in africa. he was its first king, and after death was honoured as a god. the inhabitants of that country gathered great quantities of _silphium_ or 'laserpitium,' the sap of which plant was the basis of medicaments and sauces that commanded a high price. the coins of cyrené bore the representation of a stalk of _silphium_. [ ] the old woman had entered dressed as a young girl. or is it merely said ironically? [ ] a proverb, meaning, "_all things change with time._" addressed to the old woman, it meant that she had perhaps been beautiful once, but that the days for love were over for her.--miletus, the most powerful of the ionic cities, had a very numerous fleet and founded more than eighty colonies; falling beneath the persian yoke, the city never succeeded in regaining its independence. [ ] eleusis was some distance from athens, about seven and a half miles, and the wealthy women drove there. it was an occasion when they vied with each other in the display of luxury. [ ] you are so old. [ ] the goddess of death and old age. [ ] wineshop-keepers were often punished for serving false measure. hermes, who allowed them to be punished although he was the god of cheating and was worshipped as such by the wineshop-keepers, deserved to be neglected by them. [ ] the greater gods had a day in each month specially dedicated to them; thus hermes had the fourth, artemis the sixth, apollo the seventh, etc. [ ] this game, which was customary during the feasts of bacchus' consisted in hopping on one leg upon a wine-skin that was blown out and well greased with oil; the competitor who kept his footing longest on one leg, gained the prize. [ ] the cake was placed on the altar, but eaten afterwards by the priest or by him who offered the sacrifice. [ ] an allusion to the occupation of phylé, in attica on the boeotian border, by thrasybulus; this place was the meeting-place of the discontented and the exiled, and it was there that the expulsion of the thirty tyrants was planned. once victorious, the conspirators proclaimed a general amnesty and swore to forget everything, [greek: m_e mn_esikakein], 'to bear no grudge,' hence the proverb which aristophanes recalls here. [ ] a verse taken from a lost tragedy by euripides. [ ] hermes runs through the gamut of his different attributes. [ ] as the rich citizens were accustomed to do at athens. [ ] this trick was very often practised, its object being to secure the double fee. [ ] he is giving plutus this title. [ ] within the precincts of the acropolis, and behind the temple of zeus polias, there stood a building enclosed with double walls and double gates, where the public treasury was kept. plutus had ceased to dwell there, i.e. the peloponnesian war and its disastrous consequences had emptied the treasury; however, at the time of the production of the 'plutus,' athens had recovered her freedom and a part of her former might, and money was again flowing into her coffers. [ ] in the greek there is a pun on the different significations of [greek: graus],_ _an old woman,_ and the _scum_, or 'mother,' which forms on the top of boiling milk. [ ] in the 'lysistrata' the chorus similarly makes its exit singing. index[*] [* transcriber's note: the original index of this volume differs slightly in formatting from that of volume one. in order to increase consistency, i've reformatted this index according to the format in the first volume.] a achilles, when mute achradusian, coined word adimantus, an admiral --his father admetus, the king adulterers, depilated aeagrus, an actor aeschylus, verse from --lost tragedy --periods imitated --ridiculed --supposed disciples --'the persae,' --parodied --unfair criticism --"philoctetes" --'niobe' quoted --'glaucus potniensis' quoted aesculapius, temple of --daughters of aesimus, unknown agathon, tragic poet --pederastic habits aglaurus, two women agoranomi (the) agyrrhius, an effeminate general --an upstart alcaeus, a parody of alcibiades, lisp in speech --obtains a subsidy alcmena, seduced by zeus alimos, the town of alliance against sparta --garrison at corinth allusion, obscene --and smaeus --to ulysses alopé, seduced by posidon ammon, temple to zeus amynon, infamy of anacreon andromeda, the play --release of anti-dicasts and lawsuits antilochus, nestor's son antiphon, a gluttonous parasite antisthenes, a constipated miser antithenes, a dissolute doctor antitheus aphareus, son of, his piercing vision aphrodisiac _apodrasippides_, explained apollo as god of healing --priestesses of --physician --altar, how misused apothecary, outfit of archers, mounted corps of --at athens archidemus ares, a fighting-cock arginusae, sea-battle of --slaves who fought at argos, citizens of ariphrades, his infamous habits aristocrates, a general aristophanes, why uncrowned --modifies opinion aristyllus, debaucheries of artemis, goddess of chase --the surname of artemisium, battle of asia minor, coast towns asses' (the) shadow --asses used for the mysteries athenian law attica, invasion of audience, favour, how gained augé, the seduced b bacchus, "feast of cups" --surnames of baptism, the pagan bar, the, language of barathrum, a ravine barriers, let down bastard, when of strange women baths, how heated --use in winter battus, silphium of bed of procrustes beginning, fable of the bell, to awaken sentinels birds as love-gifts boasters, the, of corinth bottles painted on coffins boxing, story of brasidas, an athenian general brigand, the option of buffoonery at megara bullocks' intestines, as comparison buzzard, double meaning byzantium c cake, eaten by priest callias, identity of callias, the general, his debaucheries calligenia, adoration of callimachus, poverty of canephori, rank in feasts canephoros, the part of cannonus, the decree of carians, mountaineers carcinus, tragic poet --pun on name --his three sons carding, woman's shape at caskets, how perfumed cats, lascivious centaur, the cephalae, pun on word cephalus, a demagogue --his father cephisophon, a "ghost" --seduces a wife ceramicus, the chaerephon --compared to the bat chaplets of flowers charitimides, an admiral chians, the, named in prayers children, when registered choenix (the) chorus, the lost --exit singing choruses, when given cinesias, the poet --his build --befouls a statue --the dissolute circumcision, where practised citizens, the fame of cleocritus, the strut of cleonymus, cowardly --gluttony of --wife of cleophon, a general --an alien clepsydra (the) cloak. _see_ clothes clothes, dedication of clidemides cligenes, a demagogue climax and anti- clisthenes, an effeminate --accused of prostitution cock-fighting coffins, emblems on coins, in the mouth colaconymus, the flatterer colic, the, a remedy colonus, and croydon connus, a flute-player conon, flight of coot's head, likeness to cunnus muliebris corcyra, whips of corinth, boasting at --corruption at --garrison at corinthian ships, obscene comparison --courtesans corybantes (the), mysteries of --sacred instrument cotyle, a measure courtesans, high prices court-opening, formula cramming oneself crane, herald of winter --carry ballast cratinus, a comic poet cress, its properties "cretan monologues" --rhythms crime and poverty criticism, too low critylla _crows, going to_ cuckoo, the curotrophos, meaning cuttle-fish cyclops, the, and lyre cycni, the two cynna, the courtesan cyrené, the courtesan d dardanus, flute-girls from daughters, lent to strangers dead bodies on plants debts, in relation to women demagogues as drones demeter, mysteries of --how represented --goddess of abundance democracy in olympus demolochocleon, explained demos, a young athenian depilation, for adultery "descend," term explained _devil, to the_, how expressed dexinicus, the greedy diagoras, a convert to atheism dicasts, insignia diitrephes, rich basket-maker dining stations diomedes, a brigand diomeia, temple at dionysus, not brave dionysus, temple --the god diopithes, a diviner diopithes, the orator discontented, the rendezvous of division (the), of lands dog, backside of door-hinge, moistened drachma (the) draughts, rules of dreams, fee to interpret duck's domain, the e eagle, symbol of royalty egypt, soil of ekkiklyma, the elegants, effeminate eleusis, mysteries of --women at eleven (the), who they were embezzling state funds empusa, a spectre engastromythes, explained englottogastors, meaning of epicrates, a demagogue epigonus, a pathic erasinidas, a general erinnys, a fury eryxis, noted for ugliness ether (the), physical theory of euathlus, a diffamer eudemus, the sorcerer euphemius, a flatterer euripides, a verse from --date of his death --distich from --expressions from --verse from orestes --origin --lost tragedies --verse from --heterodoxy --insipid style --"ghost" of --birth --stage-characters of --influence of his poetry --labour criticised --_versus_ aeschylus --rhythm --monologue --'antigoné' quoted --'telephus' and 'meleager' quoted --'hippolytus,' line from --'aeolus' and 'phryxus' quoted --parodied --'aeolus,' --'alcestis' quoted --'menalippé,' --mother insulted --'sthenoboea,' --'phoenix,' --'palamedes,' --'helen' quoted --how staged --son of --verse from eurycles, the diviner evaeon, poverty of excrement, voiding --eating of, proverb execestides, stranger at athens --his tutelary deity eyes, bad, proverb on f fear, effect of feast of pots, the fees to citizens felicity, and cuttle-fish "fig leaves in fire" figs with tongues --"denouncers of figs" figure of rhetoric fish, high price of flamingo, the fleet (the), supremacy of flowers, worn at feasts flute-girls, genitalia, ref. to fop, an old forest, pun on word four hundred, the _friend of strangers_, the g gables, pun on word galleys, land of games given at athens gargettus garlic, and gallants genetyllides, the geres, old fop gestation, ten months gibberish uttered by a god girls, unmarried, ornaments glaucetes, a glutton gods, the days of the gorgos, head of grasshopper, the, as comparison greek words, puns on grudge, bearing no gull, the voracious h hades, leaders in harmodius, statue of hecaté, altars of --the poor fed --goddess of death hegelochus, an actor heliasts, tribunal of --manner of voting --daily salary --acrid temper --separated from public --choice of _hellé's sacred waves_ hellebore, for madness hemlock, effect of heracles, gluttony of --descends to hades heracles, temple of hermes, attributes of hesiod on plutus "hestia, addressing first" hiero, of syracuse hieronymus, the argive hippias, tyranny of hippocrates, theories of hipponicus, the orator homer's text corrupted "horse, the," an erotic posture horses, devoured by hydriaphoros, the alien i ibycus, the poet ilithyia, goddess of child-birth illyrians, the incest, in the 'aeolus,' informer, business of ino, metamorphosis of intercourse, sexual interrupters, how dismissed _invoke the god_ iophon, son of sophocles j jar of wine comp. to ass jest, obscene jocasta, married by son jokes, coarse jurymen, fees of --tricks of justice, slowness of k _kimos_, top of voting urn kite, the, and springtime l laches, an athenian general --comic trial of dog and --ref. to his peculations laespodias, a general laïs, the courtesan lamachus, better opinion of lamia, transformed lamiae (the) lamias, unknown lampadephoria, the lampon, a diviner --prediction of lasus, the poet laurium, the mines of leather, allusion to old leogaras, an epicure leotrophides, his leanness lesbian women, tricks of literature, heavy locksmiths, spartan lots, drawing love exercises, ref. to _love's labour's lost_ lovers, gifts of --paid lycabettus 'lycimnius,' a tragedy lycus, a titulary god --statue of lyre, sound imitated lysicrates, a treacherous general --famed for ugliness m magic rings marathon, ref. to masks, use of masturbation, jest on measure, false, punished medusa, head of melanthius, a poet and leper megabyzus, a general megara, birthplace of comedy memnon memière (dr. p.), ref. to merchants, exemption of meton, a geometrician "milesian bravery" military service (_see_ merchants) molon, a gigantic actor morsimus, a minor poet morychus, poet --mantle of "mother of the gods," the mother, son marries mouth-strap, (the) munychion, april myronides, a general myrtia, a baker's wife myrtle boughs, use of mysteries, insulting the --of eleusis n nausicydes naxos, island of neoclides, an orator nephelococcygia, meaning nicias, grandson of nicias, the general --his slackness nightingale, song of "niobe," tragedies of nysa, a town of dionysus o odeon (the), by whom built odysseus, manner of escape --as spy --how he tortured odyssey, the, quoted offal, human, tasting oil, extensive use of olive leaves olophyxians, the omen, word for --satire on --starting on journey onions, as aphrodisiac oracles, trees as orators, infamous --venom of --wear chaplets --rapacity of "orestes," prologue of the orestes, the robber --cave alluded to origanum, used for corpses ornaments, worn by girls orneae, a town --alluded to by prophet owls, as omen --at athens ox-fat, syn. for people p palamedes, the inventor pamphilus, two of the name pan, the god "pankration" (the) pantacles, unknown "parsley and the rue" pathos and bathos patrocles, a rich miser pauson, ruined --poverty of peace, mother of plutus peacock and hoopoe pebble, the, how held pelargicon, the pellené, a town peplus, the perfumes, on dead bodies perseus, legend of persian (the), cloak phanae, land of informers pharnaces and bribery pharsalus, a town philepsius, a buffoon philippus, traitor and alien philocles, the poet phlegra, plain of phratria, registers of the phrygian graces, the phrygians, origin of phrynichus, tragic writer --precocious talent of phrynondas, the infamous 'phryxus' (the), lines from phylarchs, the phylé, occupation of physicians, poorly paid pig-trough, for bar pigs, young, sacrificed pisander, a coward pittalus, a physician plants, aromatic, use of plutus --god of riches --cured of blindness pnyx (the) poetry, and dissoluteness poets, seduction of pole, play on word polemarch (the) policemen, at athens poltroons, names for poor, the --coffins of --the, fed monthly porphyrion, name of a titan poverty, cause of crime presents, by lovers priestesses, title of private disputes, law anent procrustes, notorious brigand prodicus, the sophist pronomus, beard of proteas, play on name proteus, palace of proxeni, their duties purses, substitute for pyrrhic, the, dance q quiver, pun on word r rabelais, long word from racine, in the _plaideurs_ raven, a muzzled rewards, promised rich, the, dead ridicule feared rites for dead robe, cretan rope, the vermilion rope's end, for _membrum virile_ rowing, command to stop s sacrifice, the complete sacrificial remains sailors, in danger saffron robe, meaning of salabaccha, a courtesan salaminian, the, a state galley samians, plot with persians sardanapalus, used as title scaphephoros, symbol of sceptre, the, how made sciapodes, big feet of the scioné, a town scirophoria, feast of scorpions and orators scythian, the --use as police --his accent seal, how protected seals, broken sebinus, the treader semelé, mother of bacchus serenades, greek serpent, the sacred sesame cakes shakespeare, long word from shoemakers, women as shoes, etc., where left sight, extraordinary simois, city of the singing, exit whilst slaves --branding of --names smaeus, the debauchee socratic, the, "elenchus" socrates, etc. --comp. to vampires --the accuser of soldier, as ambassador solon, laws of son, marries mother sophocles --mentioned --parodied --the laocoon of sore throat and bribery "sows, little," obscene pun sparta --play on word --alliance against sperchius, the sphettian vinegar spintharus sporgilus, a barber state funds, embezzled state, prosecuting the statutes, how protected sthenelus, an actor sthenoboea, an amorous queen stool, position at strangers, enjoy host's daughters streak, the red strouthian, the poulterer sun, the, parodied sunburnt, how to get sunshade carrier surnames of characters swearing, by the birds sybaris, the town of sycophants, origin of word syllables, seventy-seven syrmea, a plant t tablets and scrolls taleas, a citizen talent, value of tartessus, a town taxes on slaves tenian garlic tereus, legend of terminus, the god testicles --play on word --tortured teucers thales, his fame thallophores (the) tharelides, the jay theagenes, his farting theogenes, a boaster theognis theorus, comp. to crow theramenes theseus, descent to hades --feasts of thesmophoria, when celebrated --duration --beautiful women --women slaves forbidden --lodging of women --images of the gods thesmothetes (the) --described --again thespis, the dances of thorycion, frauds of thrace, towns of thrasybulus, deliverer of athens --compared --takes phylé thrasybulus the orator, sore throat of _threttanello_ (_see_ lyre) thucydides, tongue-tied thymaetia, coats of tiara, how worn timon, the misanthrope timotheus, a general tithrasios torch-race (the) tortures allowed --ingenious townspeople despised tragic style, parodied treasure, proverb on treasury, the public triballi, the, a term of reproach trierarchs tyranny, jest on death of u ulysses' adventures urns, the two --threatened versatile people, proverb verse, a borrowed verses, sung by maidens vine-prop (the), a comparison vote, of juryman, how given w wealth, and principle wild pears and sore throats wine-skin, hopping on wine-pits, the wineshop-keepers punished woman and carding --"to go with," pun on word --debt in relation to --old woman, pun on women, at funerals --secret loves of --in child-bed --period of gestation --love of strong drink --their form of oath --addressed as men --yellow tunics of --pale-faced --pay their lovers --display of luxury word, a wonderful wren, play on word --in french and german x xenocles, an inferior poet y yellow tunics young men, how seduced z zeus, the deliverer none the acharnians by aristophanes [translator uncredited. footnotes have been retained because they provide the meanings of greek names, terms and ceremonies and explain puns and references otherwise lost in translation. occasional greek words in the footnotes have not been included. footnote numbers, in brackets, start anew at ( ) for each piece of dialogue, and each footnote follows immediately the dialogue to which it refers, labeled thus: f( ).] introduction the acharnians introduction this is the first of the series of three comedies--'the acharnians,' 'peace' and 'lysistrata'--produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the peloponnesian war, and impressing on the athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency of asking peace. in date it is the earliest play brought out by the author in his own name and his first work of serious importance. it was acted at the lenaean festival, in january, b.c., and gained the first prize, cratinus being second. its diatribes against the war and fierce criticism of the general policy of the war party so enraged cleon that, as already mentioned, he endeavoured to ruin the author, who in 'the knights' retorted by a direct and savage personal attack on the leader of the democracy. the plot is of the simplest. dicaeopolis, an athenian citizen, but a native of acharnae, one of the agricultural demes and one which had especially suffered in the lacedaemonian invasions, sick and tired of the ill-success and miseries of the war, makes up his mind, if he fails to induce the people to adopt his policy of "peace at any price," to conclude a private and particular peace of his own to cover himself, his family, and his estate. the athenians, momentarily elated by victory and over-persuaded by the demagogues of the day--cleon and his henchmen, refuse to hear of such a thing as coming to terms. accordingly dicaeopolis dispatches an envoy to sparta on his own account, who comes back presently with a selection of specimen treaties in his pocket. the old man tastes and tries, special terms are arranged, and the play concludes with a riotous and uproarious rustic feast in honour of the blessings of peace and plenty. incidentally excellent fun is poked at euripides and his dramatic methods, which supply matter for so much witty badinage in several others of our author's pieces. other specially comic incidents are: the scene where the two young daughters of the famished megarian are sold in the market at athens as suck(l)ing-pigs--a scene in which the convenient similarity of the greek words signifying a pig and the 'pudendum muliebre' respectively is utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive 'double entendres' and ludicrous jokes; another where the informer, or market-spy, is packed up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by the boeotian buyer. the drama takes its title from the chorus, composed of old men of acharnae. the acharnians dramatis personae dicaeopolis herald amphitheus ambassadors pseudartabas theorus wife of dicaeopolis daughter of dicaeopolis euripides cephisophon, servant of euripides lamachus attendant of lamachus a megarian maidens, daughters of the megarian a boeotian nicarchus a husbandman a bridesmaid an informer messengers chorus of acharnian elders scene: the athenian ecclesia on the pnyx; afterwards dicaeopolis' house in the country. dicaeopolis( ) (alone) what cares have not gnawed at my heart and how few have been the pleasures in my life! four, to be exact, while my troubles have been as countless as the grains of sand on the shore! let me see! of what value to me have been these few pleasures? ah! i remember that i was delighted in soul when cleon had to disgorge those five talents;( ) i was in ecstasy and i love the knights for this deed; 'it is an honour to greece.'( ) but the day when i was impatiently awaiting a piece by aeschylus,( ) what tragic despair it caused me when the herald called, "theognis,( ) introduce your chorus!" just imagine how this blow struck straight at my heart! on the other hand, what joy dexitheus caused me at the musical competition, when he played a boeotian melody on the lyre! but this year by contrast! oh! what deadly torture to hear chaeris( ) perform the prelude in the orthian mode!( ) --never, however, since i began to bathe, has the dust hurt my eyes as it does to-day. still it is the day of assembly; all should be here at daybreak, and yet the pnyx( ) is still deserted. they are gossiping in the marketplace, slipping hither and thither to avoid the vermilioned rope.( ) the prytanes( ) even do not come; they will be late, but when they come they will push and fight each other for a seat in the front row. they will never trouble themselves with the question of peace. oh! athens! athens! as for myself, i do not fail to come here before all the rest, and now, finding myself alone, i groan, yawn, stretch, break wind, and know not what to do; i make sketches in the dust, pull out my loose hairs, muse, think of my fields, long for peace, curse town life and regret my dear country home,( ) which never told me to 'buy fuel, vinegar or oil'; there the word 'buy,' which cuts me in two, was unknown; i harvested everything at will. therefore i have come to the assembly fully prepared to bawl, interrupt and abuse the speakers, if they talk of anything but peace. but here come the prytanes, and high time too, for it is midday! as i foretold, hah! is it not so? they are pushing and fighting for the front seats. f( ) a name invented by aristophanes and signifying 'a just citizen.' f( ) clean had received five talents from the islanders subject to athens, on condition that he should get the tribute payable by them reduced; when informed of this transaction, the knights compelled him to return the money. f( ) a hemistich borrowed from euripides' 'telephus.' f( ) the tragedies of aeschylus continued to be played even after the poet's death, which occurred in b.c., ten years before the production of 'the acharnians.' f( ) a tragic poet, whose pieces were so devoid of warmth and life that he was nicknamed (the greek for) 'snow.' f( ) a bad musician, frequently ridiculed by aristophanes; he played both the lyre and the flute. f( ) a lively and elevated method. f( ) a hill near the acropolis, where the assemblies were held. f( ) several means were used to force citizens to attend the assemblies; the shops were closed; circulation was only permitted in those streets which led to the pnyx; finally, a rope covered with vermilion was drawn round those who dallied in the agora (the market-place), and the late-comers, ear-marked by the imprint of the rope, were fined. f( ) magistrates who, with the archons and the epistatae, shared the care of holding and directing the assemblies of the people; they were fifty in number. f( ) the peloponnesian war had already, at the date of the representation of 'the acharnians,' lasted five years, - b.c.; driven from their lands by the successive lacedaemonian invasions, the people throughout the country had been compelled to seek shelter behind the walls of athens. herald move on up, move on, move on, to get within the consecrated area.( ) f( ) shortly before the meeting of the assembly, a number of young pigs were immolated and a few drops of their blood were sprinkled on the seats of the prytanes; this sacrifice was in honour of ceres. amphitheus has anyone spoken yet? herald who asks to speak? amphitheus i do. herald your name? amphitheus amphitheus. herald you are no man.( ) f( ) the name, amphitheus, contains (the greek) word (for) 'god.' amphitheus no! i am an immortal! amphitheus was the son of ceres and triptolemus; of him was born celeus. celeus wedded phaenerete, my grandmother, whose son was lucinus, and, being born of him i am an immortal; it is to me alone that the gods have entrusted the duty of treating with the lacedaemonians. but, citizens, though i am immortal, i am dying of hunger; the prytanes give me naught.( ) f( ) amongst other duties, it was the office of the prytanes to look after the wants of the poor. a prytanis guards! amphitheus oh, triptolemus and ceres, do ye thus forsake your own blood? dicaeopolis prytanes, in expelling this citizen, you are offering an outrage to the assembly. he only desired to secure peace for us and to sheathe the sword. prytanis sit down and keep silence! dicaeopolis no, by apollo, i will not, unless you are going to discuss the question of peace. herald the ambassadors, who are returned from the court of the king! dicaeopolis of what king? i am sick of all those fine birds, the peacock ambassadors and their swagger. herald silence! dicaeopolis oh! oh! by ecbatana,( ) what a costume! f( ) the summer residence of the great king. an ambassador during the archonship of euthymenes, you sent us to the great king on a salary of two drachmae per diem. dicaeopolis ah! those poor drachmae! ambassador we suffered horribly on the plains of the cayster, sleeping under a tent, stretched deliciously on fine chariots, half dead with weariness. dicaeopolis and i was very much at ease, lying on the straw along the battlements!( ) f( ) referring to the hardships he had endured garrisoning the walls of athens during the lacedaemonian invasions early in the war. ambassador everywhere we were well received and forced to drink delicious wine out of golden or crystal flagons.... dicaeopolis oh, city of cranaus,( ) thy ambassadors are laughing at thee! f( ) cranaus, the second king of athens, the successor of cecrops. ambassador for great feeders and heavy drinkers are alone esteemed as men by the barbarians. dicaeopolis just as here in athens, we only esteem the most drunken debauchees. ambassador at the end of the fourth year we reached the king's court, but he had left with his whole army to ease himself, and for the space of eight months he was thus easing himself in the midst of the golden mountains.( ) f( ) lucian, in his 'hermotimus,' speaks of these golden mountains as an apocryphal land of wonders and prodigies. dicaeopolis and how long was he replacing his dress? ambassador the whole period of a full moon; after which he returned to his palace; then he entertained us and had us served with oxen roasted whole in an oven. dicaeopolis who ever saw an oxen baked in an oven? what a lie! ambassador on my honour, he also had us served with a bird three times as large as cleonymus,( ) and called the boaster. f( ) cleonymus was an athenian general of exceptionally tall stature; aristophanes incessantly rallies him for his cowardice; he had cast away his buckler in a fight. dicaeopolis and do we give you two drachmae, that you should treat us to all this humbug? ambassador we are bringing to you pseudartabas( ), the king's eye. f( ) a name borne by certain officials of the king of persia. the actor of this part wore a mask, fitted with a single eye of great size. dicaeopolis i would a crow might pluck out thine with his beak, you cursed ambassador! herald the king's eye! dicaeopolis eh! great gods! friend, with thy great eye, round like the hole through which the oarsman passes his sweep, you have the air of a galley doubling a cape to gain port. ambassador come, pseudartabas, give forth the message for the athenians with which you were charged by the great king. pseudartabas jartaman exarx 'anapissonia satra.( ) f( ) jargon, no doubt meaningless in all languages. ambassador do you understand what he says? dicaeopolis by apollo, not i! ambassador (to the prytanes) he says that the great king will send you gold. come, utter the word 'gold' louder and more distinctly. pseudartabas thou shalt not have gold, thou gaping-arsed ionian.( ) f( ) the persians styled all greeks 'ionians' without distinction; here the athenians are intended. dicaeopolis ah! may the gods forgive me, but that is clear enough! ambassador what does he say? dicaeopolis that the ionians are debauchees and idiots, if they expect to receive gold from the barbarians. ambassador not so, he speaks of medimni( ) of gold. f( ) a greek measure, containing about six modii. dicaeopolis what medimni? thou are but a great braggart; but get your way; i will find out the truth by myself. come now, answer me clearly, if you do not wish me to dye your skin red. will the great king send us gold? (pseudartabas makes a negative sign.) then our ambassadors are seeking to deceive us? (pseudartabas signs affirmatively.) these fellows make signs like any greek; i am sure that they are nothing but athenians. oh! ho! i recognize one of these eunuchs; it is clisthenes, the son of sibyrtius.( ) behold the effrontery of this shaven rump! how! great baboon, with such a beard do you seek to play the eunuch to us? and this other one? is it not straton? f( ) noted for his extreme ugliness and his obscenity. aristophanes frequently holds him to scorn in his comedies. herald silence! let all be seated. the senate invites the king's eye to the prytaneum.( ) f( ) ambassadors were entertained there at the public expense. dicaeopolis is this not sufficient to drive one to hang oneself? here i stand chilled to the bone, whilst the doors of the prytaneum fly wide open to lodge such rascals. but i will do something great and bold. where is amphitheus? come and speak with me. amphitheus here i am. dicaeopolis take these eight drachmae and go and conclude a truce with the lacedaemonians for me, my wife and my children; i leave you free, my dear citizens, to send out embassies and to stand gaping in the air. herald bring in theorus, who has returned from the court of sitalces.( ) f( ) king of thrace. theorus i am here. dicaeopolis another humbug! theorus we should not have remained long in thrace... dicaeopolis forsooth, no, if you had not been well paid. theorus ...if the country had not been covered with snow; the rivers were ice-bound at the time that theognis( ) brought out his tragedy here; during the whole of that time i was holding my own with sitalces, cup in hand; and, in truth, he adored you to such a degree, that he wrote on the walls, "how beautiful are the athenians!" his son, to whom we gave the freedom of the city, burned with desire to come here and eat chitterlings at the feast of the apaturia;( ) he prayed his father to come to the aid of his new country and sitalces swore on his goblet that he would succour us with such a host that the athenians would exclaim, "what a cloud of grasshoppers!" f( ) the tragic poet. f( ) a feast lasting three days and celebrated during the month pyanepsion (november). the greek word contains the suggestion of fraud. dicaeopolis may i die if i believe a word of what you tell us! excepting the grasshoppers, there is not a grain of truth in it all! theorus and he has sent you the most warlike soldiers of all thrace. dicaeopolis now we shall begin to see clearly. herald come hither, thracians, whom theorus brought. dicaeopolis what plague have we here? theorus 'tis the host of the odomanti.( ) f( ) a thracian tribe from the right bank of the strymon. dicaeopolis of the odomanti? tell me what it means. who has mutilated them like this? theorus if they are given a wage of two drachmae, they will put all boeotia( ) to fire and sword. f( ) the boeotians were the allies of sparta. dicaeopolis two drachmae to those circumcised hounds! groan aloud, ye people of rowers, bulwark of athens! ah! great gods! i am undone; these odomanti are robbing me of my garlic!( ) will you give me back my garlic? f( ) dicaeopolis had brought a clove of garlic with him to eat during the assembly. theorus oh! wretched man! do not go near them; they have eaten garlic( ). f( ) garlic was given to game-cocks, before setting them at each other, to give them pluck for the fight. dicaeopolis prytanes, will you let me be treated in this manner, in my own country and by barbarians? but i oppose the discussion of paying a wage to the thracians; i announce an omen; i have just felt a drop of rain.( ) f( ) at the lest unfavourable omen, the sitting of the assembly was declared at an end. herald let the thracians withdraw and return the day after tomorrow; the prytanes declare the sitting at an end. dicaeopolis ye gods, what garlic i have lost! but here comes amphitheus returned from lacedaemon. welcome, amphitheus. amphitheus no, there is no welcome for me and i fly as fast as i can, for i am pursued by the acharnians. dicaeopolis why, what has happened? amphitheus i was hurrying to bring your treaty of truce, but some old dotards from acharnae( ) got scent of the thing; they are veterans of marathon, tough as oak or maple, of which they are made for sure--rough and ruthless. they all started a-crying: "wretch! you are the bearer of a treaty, and the enemy has only just cut our vines!" meanwhile they were gathering stones in their cloaks, so i fled and they ran after me shouting. f( ) the deme of acharnae was largely inhabited by charcoal-burners, who supplied the city with fuel. dicaeopolis let 'em shout as much as they please! but have you brought me a treaty? amphitheus most certainly, here are three samples to select from,( ) this one is five years old; take it and taste. f( ) he presents them in the form of wines contained in three separate skins. dicaeopolis faugh! amphitheus well? dicaeopolis it does not please me; it smells of pitch and of the ships they are fitting out.( ) f( ) meaning, preparations for war. amphitheus here is another, ten years old; taste it. dicaeopolis it smells strongly of the delegates, who go around the towns to chide the allies for their slowness.( ) f( ) meaning, securing allies for the continuance of the war. amphitheus this last is a truce of thirty years, both on sea and land. dicaeopolis oh! by bacchus! what a bouquet! it has the aroma of nectar and ambrosia; this does not say to us, "provision yourselves for three days." but it lisps the gentle numbers, "go whither you will."( ) i accept it, ratify it, drink it at one draught and consign the acharnians to limbo. freed from the war and its ills, i shall keep the dionysia( ) in the country. f( ) when athens sent forth an army, the soldiers were usually ordered to assemble at some particular spot with provisions for three days. f( ) these feasts were also called the anthesteria or lenaea; the lenaem was a temple to bacchus, erected outside the city. they took place during the month anthesterion (february). amphitheus and i shall run away, for i'm mortally afraid of the acharnians. chorus this way all! let us follow our man; we will demand him of everyone we meet; the public weal makes his seizure imperative. ho, there! tell me which way the bearer of the truce has gone; he has escaped us, he has disappeared. curse old age! when i was young, in the days when i followed phayllus,( ) running with a sack of coals on my back, this wretch would not have eluded my pursuit, let him be as swift as he will; but now my limbs are stiff; old lacratides( ) feels his legs are weighty and the traitor escapes me. no, no, let us follow him; old acharnians like ourselves shall not be set at naught by a scoundrel, who has dared, great gods! to conclude a truce, when i wanted the war continued with double fury in order to avenge my ruined lands. no mercy for our foes until i have pierced their hearts like sharp reed, so that they dare never again ravage my vineyards. come, let us seek the rascal; let us look everywhere, carrying our stones in our hands; let us hunt him from place to place until we trap him; i could never, never tire of the delight of stoning him. f( ) a celebrated athlete from croton and a victor at olympia; he was equally good as a runner and at the 'five exercises.' f( ) he had been archon at the time of the battle of marathon. dicaeopolis peace! profane men!( ) f( ) a sacred formula, pronounced by the priest before offering the sacrifice. chorus silence all! friends, do you hear the sacred formula? here is he, whom we seek! this way, all! get out of his way, surely he comes to offer an oblation. dicaeopolis peace, profane men! let the basket-bearer( ) come forward, and thou xanthias, hold the phallus well upright.( ) f( ) the maiden who carried the basket filled with fruits at the dionysia in honour of bacchus. f( ) the emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, call 'phallics,' full of obscenity and suggestive 'double entendres.' wife of dicaeopolis daughter, set down the basket and let us begin the sacrifice. daughter of dicaeopolis mother, hand me the ladle, that i may spread the sauce on the cake. dicaeopolis it is well! oh, mighty bacchus, it is with joy that, freed from military duty, i and all mine perform this solemn rite and offer thee this sacrifice; grant that i may keep the rural dionysia without hindrance and that this truce of thirty years may be propitious for me. wife of dicaeopolis come, my child, carry the basket gracefully and with a grave, demure face. happy he, who shall be your possessor and embrace you so firmly at dawn,( ) that you belch wind like a weasel. go forward, and have a care they don't snatch your jewels in the crowd. f( ) the most propitious moment for love's gambols, observes the scholiast. dicaeopolis xanthias, walk behind the basket-bearer and hold the phallus well erect; i will follow, singing the phallic hymn; thou, wife, look on from the top of the terrace.( ) forward! oh, phales,( ) companion of the orgies of bacchus, night reveller, god of adultery, friend of young men, these past six( ) years i have not been able to invoke thee. with what joy i return to my farmstead, thanks to the truce i have concluded, freed from cares, from fighting and from lamachuses!( ) how much sweeter, oh phales, oh, phales, is it to surprise thratta, the pretty woodmaid, strymodorus' slave, stealing wood from mount phelleus, to catch her under the arms, to throw her on the ground and possess her, oh, phales, phales! if thou wilt drink and bemuse thyself with me, we shall to-morrow consume some good dish in honour of the peace, and i will hang up my buckler over the smoking hearth. f( ) married women did not join in the processions. f( ) the god of generation, worshipped in the form of a phallus. f( ) a remark which fixes the date of the production of 'the acharnians,' viz. the sixth year of the peloponnesian war, b.c. f( ) lamachus was an athenian general, who figures later in this comedy. chorus it is he, he himself. stone him, stone him, stone him, strike the wretch. all, all of you, pelt him, pelt him! dicaeopolis what is this? by heracles, you will smash my pot.( ) f( ) at the rural dionysia a pot of kitchen vegetables was borne in the procession along with other emblems. chorus it is you that we are stoning, you miserable scoundrel. dicaeopolis and for what sin, acharnian elders, tell me that! chorus you ask that, you impudent rascal, traitor to your country; you alone amongst us all have concluded a truce, and you dare to look us in the face! dicaeopolis but you do not know why i have treated for peace. listen! chorus listen to you? no, no, you are about to die, we will annihilate you with our stones. dicaeopolis but first of all, listen. stop, my friends. chorus i will hear nothing; do not address me; i hate you more than i do cleon,( ) whom one day i shall flay to make sandals for the knights. listen to your long speeches, after you have treated with the laconians? no, i will punish you. f( ) cleon the demagogue was a currier originally by trade. he was the sworn foe and particular detestation of the knights or aristocratic party generally. dicaeopolis friends, leave the laconians out of debate and consider only whether i have not done well to conclude my truce. chorus done well! when you have treated with a people who know neither gods, nor truth, nor faith. dicaeopolis we attribute too much to the laconians; as for myself, i know that they are not the cause of all our troubles. chorus oh, indeed, rascal! you dare to use such language to me and then expect me to spare you! dicaeopolis no, no, they are not the cause of all our troubles, and i who address you claim to be able to prove that they have much to complain of in us. chorus this passes endurance; my heart bounds with fury. thus you dare to defend our enemies. dicaeopolis were my head on the block i would uphold what i say and rely on the approval of the people. chorus comrades, let us hurl our stones and dye this fellow purple. dicaeopolis what black fire-brand has inflamed your heart! you will not hear me? you really will not, acharnians? chorus no, a thousand times, no. dicaeopolis this is a hateful injustice. chorus may i die, if i listen. dicaeopolis nay, nay! have mercy, have mercy, acharnians. chorus you shall die. dicaeopolis well, blood for blood! i will kill your dearest friend. i have here the hostages of acharnae;( ) i shall disembowel them. f( ) that is, the baskets of charcoal. chorus acharnians, what means this threat? has he got one of our children in his house? what gives him such audacity? dicaeopolis stone me, if it please you; i shall avenge myself on this. (shows a basket.) let us see whether you have any love for your coals. chorus great gods! this basket is our fellow-citizen. stop, stop, in heaven's name! dicaeopolis i shall dismember it despite your cries; i will listen to nothing. chorus how! will you kill this coal-basket, my beloved comrade? dicaeopolis just now, you would not listen to me. chorus well, speak now, if you will; tell us, tell us you have a weakness for the lacedaemonians. i consent to anything; never will i forsake this dear little basket. dicaeopolis first, throw down your stones. chorus there! 'tis done. and you, do put away your sword. dicaeopolis let me see that no stones remain concealed in your cloaks. chorus they are all on the ground; see how we shake our garments. come, no haggling, lay down your sword; we threw away everything while crossing from one side of the stage to the other.( ) f( ) the stage of the greek theatre was much broader, and at the same time shallower, than in a modern playhouse. dicaeopolis what cries of anguish you would have uttered had these coals of parnes( ) been dismembered, and yet it came very near it; had they perished, their death would have been due to the folly of their fellow-citizens. the poor basket was so frightened, look, it has shed a thick black dust over me, the same as a cuttle-fish does. what an irritable temper! you shout and throw stones, you will not hear my arguments--not even when i propose to speak in favour of the lacedaemonians with my head on the block; and yet i cling to life. f( ) a mountain in attica, in the neighbourhood of acharnae. chorus well then, bring out a block before your door, scoundrel, and let us hear the good grounds you can give us; i am curious to know them. now mind, as you proposed yourself, place your head on the block and speak. dicaeopolis here is the block; and, though i am but a very sorry speaker, i wish nevertheless to talk freely of the lacedaemonians and without the protection of my buckler. yet i have many reasons for fear. i know our rustics; they are delighted if some braggart comes, and rightly or wrongly, loads both them and their city with praise and flattery; they do not see that such toad-eaters( ) are traitors, who sell them for gain. as for the old men, i know their weakness; they only seek to overwhelm the accused with their votes.( ) nor have i forgotten how cleon treated me because of my comedy last year;( ) he dragged me before the senate and there he uttered endless slanders against me; 'twas a tempest of abuse, a deluge of lies. through what a slough of mud he dragged me! i almost perished. permit me, therefore, before i speak, to dress in the manner most likely to draw pity. f( ) orators in the pay of the enemy. f( ) satire on the athenians' addiction to law-suits. f( ) 'the babylonians.' cleon had denounced aristophanes to the senate for having scoffed at athens before strangers, many of whom were present at the performance. the play is now lost. chorus what evasions, subterfuges and delays! hold! here is the sombre helmet of pluto with its thick bristling plume; hieronymus( ) lends it to you; then open sisyphus'( ) bag of wiles; but hurry, hurry, pray, for discussion does not admit of delay. f( ) a tragic poet; we know next to nothing of him or his works. f( ) son of aeolus, renowned in fable for his robberies, and for the tortures to which he was put by pluto. he was cunning enough to break loose out of hell, but hermes brought him back again. dicaeopolis the time has come for me to manifest my courage, so i will go and seek euripides. ho! slave, slave! slave who's there? dicaeopolis is euripides at home? slave he is and he isn't; understand that, if you have wit for't. dicaeopolis how? he is and he isn't!( ) f( ) this whole scene is directed at euripides; aristophanes ridicules the subtleties of his poetry and the trickeries of his staging, which, according to him, he only used to attract the less refined among his audience. slave certainly, old man; busy gathering subtle fancies here and there, his mind is not in the house, but he himself is; perched aloft, he is composing a tragedy. dicaeopolis oh, euripides, you are indeed happy to have a slave so quick at repartee! now, fellow, call your master. slave impossible! dicaeopolis so much the worse. but i will not go. come, let us knock at the door. euripides, my little euripides, my darling euripides, listen; never had man greater right to your pity. it is dicaeopolis of the chollidan deme who calls you. do you hear? euripides i have no time to waste. dicaeopolis very well, have yourself wheeled out here.( ) f( ) "wheeled out"--that is, by means of a mechanical contrivance of the greek stage, by which an interior was shown, the set scene with performers, etc., all complete, being in some way, which cannot be clearly made out from the descriptions, swung out or wheeled out on to the main stage. euripides impossible. dicaeopolis nevertheless... euripides well, let them roll me out; as to coming down, i have not the time. dicaeopolis euripides.... euripides what words strike my ear? dicaeopolis you perch aloft to compose tragedies, when you might just as well do them on the ground. i am not astonished at your introducing cripples on the stage.( ) and why dress in these miserable tragic rags? i do not wonder that your heroes are beggars. but, euripides, on my knees i beseech you, give me the tatters of some old piece; for i have to treat the chorus to a long speech, and if i do it ill it is all over with me. f( ) having been lamed, it is of course implied, by tumbling from the lofty apparatus on which the author sat perched to write his tragedies. euripides what rags do you prefer? those in which i rigged out aeneus( ) on the stage, that unhappy, miserable old man? f( ) euripides delighted, or was supposed by his critic aristophanes to delight, in the representation of misery and wretchedness on the stage. 'aeneus,' 'phoenix,' 'philoctetes,' 'bellerophon,' 'telephus,' ino' are titles of six tragedies of his in this genre of which fragments are extant. dicaeopolis no, i want those of some hero still more unfortunate. euripides of phoenix, the blind man? dicaeopolis no, not of phoenix, you have another hero more unfortunate than him. euripides now, what tatters does he want? do you mean those of the beggar philoctetes? dicaeopolis no, of another far more the mendicant. euripides is it the filthy dress of the lame fellow, bellerophon? dicaeopolis no, 'tis not bellerophon; he, whom i mean, was not only lame and a beggar, but boastful and a fine speaker. euripides ah! i know, it is telephus, the mysian. dicaeopolis yes, telephus. give me his rags, i beg of you. euripides slave! give him telephus' tatters; they are on top of the rags of thyestes and mixed with those of ino. slave catch hold! here they are. dicaeopolis oh! zeus, whose eye pierces everywhere and embraces all, permit me to assume the most wretched dress on earth. euripides, cap your kindness by giving me the little mysian hat, that goes so well with these tatters. i must to-day have the look of a beggar; "be what i am, but not appear to be";( ) the audience will know well who i am, but the chorus will be fools enough not to, and i shall dupe 'em with my subtle phrases. f( ) line borrowed from euripides. a great number of verses are similarly parodied in this scene. euripides i will give you the hat; i love the clever tricks of an ingenious brain like yours. dicaeopolis rest happy, and may it befall telephus as i wish. ah! i already feel myself filled with quibbles. but i must have a beggar's staff. euripides here you are, and now get you gone from this porch. dicaeopolis oh, my soul! you see how you are driven from this house, when i still need so many accessories. but let us be pressing, obstinate, importunate. euripides, give me a little basket with a lamp alight inside. euripides whatever do you want such a thing as that for? dicaeopolis i do not need it, but i want it all the same. euripides you importune me; get you gone! dicaeopolis alas! may the gods grant you a destiny as brilliant as your mother's.( ) f( ) report said that euripides' mother had sold vegetables on the market. euripides leave me in peace. dicaeopolis oh, just a little broken cup. euripides take it and go and hang yourself. what a tiresome fellow! dicaeopolis ah! you do not know all the pain you cause me. dear, good euripides, nothing beyond a small pipkin stoppered with a sponge. euripides miserable man! you are robbing me of an entire tragedy.( ) here, take it and be off. f( ) aristophanes means, of course, to imply that the whole talent of euripides lay in these petty details of stage property. dicaeopolis i am going, but, great gods! i need one thing more; unless i have it, i am a dead man. hearken, my little euripides, only give me this and i go, never to return. for pity's sake, do give me a few small herbs for my basket. euripides you wish to ruin me then. here, take what you want; but it is all over with my pieces! dicaeopolis i won't ask another thing; i'm going. i am too importunate and forget that i rouse against me the hate of kings.--ah! wretch that i am! i am lost! i have forgotten one thing, without which all the rest is as nothing. euripides, my excellent euripides, my dear little euripides, may i die if i ask you again for the smallest present; only one, the last, absolutely the last; give me some of the chervil your mother left you in her will. euripides insolent hound! slave, lock the door! dicaeopolis oh, my soul! i must go away without the chervil. art thou sensible of the dangerous battle we are about to engage upon in defending the lacedaemonians? courage, my soul, we must plunge into the midst of it. dost thou hesitate and art thou fully steeped in euripides? that's right! do not falter, my poor heart, and let us risk our head to say what we hold for truth. courage and boldly to the front. i wonder i am so brave. chorus what do you purport doing? what are you going to say? what an impudent fellow! what a brazen heart! to dare to stake his head and uphold an opinion contrary to that of us all! and he does not tremble to face this peril. come, it is you who desired it, speak! dicaeopolis spectators, be not angered if, although i am a beggar, i dare in a comedy to speak before the people of athens of the public weal; comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. i shall not please, but i shall say what is true. besides, cleon shall not be able to accuse me of attacking athens before strangers;( ) we are by ourselves at the festival of the lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute and their soldiers is not yet. here is only the pure wheat without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they and the citizens are one, like the straw and the ear. i detest the lacedaemonians with all my heart, and may posidon, the god of taenarus,( ) cause an earthquake and overturn their dwellings! my vines also have been cut. but come (there are only friends who hear me), why accuse the laconians of all our woes? some men (i do not say the city, note particularly that i do not say the city), some wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the megarians of introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret, a suck(l)ing pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its being said, "halloa! these come from megara," and their being instantly confiscated. thus far the evil was not serious and we were the only sufferers. but now some young drunkards go to megara and carry off the courtesan simaetha; the megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of aspasia; and so for three gay women greece is set ablaze. then pericles, aflame with ire on his olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, "that the megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent."( ) meanwhile the megarians, who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the lacedaemonians to bring about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there was horrible clatter of arms everywhere. you will say that sparta was wrong, but what should she have done? answer that. suppose that a lacedaemonian had seized a little seriphian( ) dog on any pretext and had sold it, would you have endured it quietly? far from it, you would at once have sent three hundred vessels to sea, and what an uproar there would have been through all the city! there 'tis a band of noisy soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a trierarch; elsewhere pay is being distributed, the pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets, sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers; we hear nothing but the sound of whistles, of flutes and fifes to encourage the work-folk. that is what you assuredly would have done, and would not telephus have done the same? so i come to my general conclusion; we have no common sense. f( ) 'the babylonians' had been produced at a time of year when athens was crowded with strangers; 'the acharnians,' on the contrary, was played in december. f( ) sparta had been menaced with an earthquake in b.c. posidon was 'the earthshaker,' god of earthquakes, as well as of the sea. f( ) a song by timocreon the rhodian, the words of which were practically identical with pericles' decree. f( ) a small and insignificant island, one of the cyclades, allied with the athenians, like months of these islands previous to and during the first part of the peloponnesian war. first semi-chorus oh! wretch! oh! infamous man! you are naught but a beggar and yet you dare to talk to us like this! you insult their worships the informers! second semi-chorus by posidon! he speaks the truth; he has not lied in a single detail. first semi-chorus but though it be true, need he say it? but you'll have no great cause to be proud of your insolence! second semi-chorus where are you running to? don't you move; if you strike this man, i shall be at you. first semi-chorus lamachus, whose glance flashes lightning, whose plume petrifies thy foes, help! oh! lamachus, my friend, the hero of my tribe and all of you, both officers and soldiers, defenders of our walls, come to my aid; else is it all over with me! lamachus whence comes this cry of battle? where must i bring my aid? where must i sow dread? who wants me to uncase my dreadful gorgon's head?( ) f( ) a figure of medusa's head, forming the centre of lamachus' shield. dicaeopolis oh, lamachus, great hero! your plumes and your cohorts terrify me. chorus this man, lamachus, incessantly abuses athens. lamachus you are but a mendicant and you dare to use language of this sort? dicaeopolis oh, brave lamachus, forgive a beggar who speaks at hazard. lamachus but what have you said? let us hear. dicaeopolis i know nothing about it; the sight of weapons makes me dizzy. oh! i adjure you, take that fearful gorgon somewhat farther away. lamachus there. dicaeopolis now place it face downwards on the ground. lamachus it is done. dicaeopolis give me a plume out of your helmet. lamachus here is a feather. dicaeopolis and hold my head while i vomit; the plumes have turned my stomach. lamachus hah! what are you proposing to do? do you want to make yourself vomit with this feather? dicaeopolis is it a feather? what bird's? a braggart's? lamachus ah! ah! i will rip you open. dicaeopolis no, no, lamachus! violence is out of place here! but as you are so strong, why did you not circumcise me? you have all the tools you want for the operation there. lamachus a beggar dares thus address a general! dicaeopolis how? am i a beggar? lamachus what are you then? dicaeopolis who am i? a good citizen, not ambitious; a soldier, who has fought well since the outbreak of the war, whereas you are but a vile mercenary. lamachus they elected me... dicaeopolis yes, three cuckoos did!( ) if i have concluded peace, 'twas disgust that drove me; for i see men with hoary heads in the ranks and young fellows of your age shirking service. some are in thrace getting an allowance of three drachmae, such fellows as tisamenophoenippus and panurgipparchides. the others are with chares or in chaonia, men like geretotheodorus and diomialazon; there are some of the same kidney, too, at camarina and at gela,( ) the laughing-stock of all and sundry. f( ) indicates the character of his election, which was arranged, so aristophanes implies, by his partisans. f( ) town in sicily. there is a pun on the name gela and 'ridiculous' which it is impossible to keep in english. apparently the athenians had sent embassies to all parts of the greek world to arrange treaties of alliance in view of the struggle with the lacedaemonians; but only young debauchees of aristocratic connections had been chosen as envoys. lamachus they were elected. dicaeopolis and why do you always receive your pay, when none of these others ever gets any? speak, marilades, you have grey hair; well then, have you ever been entrusted with a mission? see! he shakes his head. yet he is an active as well as a prudent man. and you, dracyllus, euphorides or prinides, have you knowledge of ecbatana or chaonia? you say no, do you not? such offices are good for the son of caesyra( ) and lamachus, who, but yesterday ruined with debt, never pay their shot, and whom all their friends avoid as foot passengers dodge the folks who empty their slops out of window. f( ) a contemporary orator apparently, otherwise unknown. lamachus oh! in freedom's name! are such exaggerations to be borne? dicaeopolis lamachus is well content; no doubt he is well paid, you know. lamachus but i propose always to war with the peloponnesians, both at sea, on land and everywhere to make them tremble, and trounce them soundly. dicaeopolis for my own part, i make proclamation to all peloponnesians, megarians and boeotians, that to them my markets are open; but i debar lamachus from entering them. chorus convinced by this man's speech, the folk have changed their view and approve him for having concluded peace. but let us prepare for the recital of the parabasis.( ) never since our poet presented comedies, has he praised himself upon the stage; but, having been slandered by his enemies amongst the volatile athenians, accused of scoffing at his country and of insulting the people, to-day he wishes to reply and regain for himself the inconstant athenians. he maintains that he has done much that is good for you; if you no longer allow yourselves to be too much hoodwinked by strangers or seduced by flattery, if in politics you are no longer the ninnies you once were, it is thanks to him. formerly, when delegates from other cities wanted to deceive you, they had but to style you, "the people crowned with violets," and at the word "violets" you at once sat erect on the tips of your bums. or if, to tickle your vanity, someone spoke of "rich and sleek athens," in return for that "sleekness" he would get all, because he spoke of you as he would have of anchovies in oil. in cautioning you against such wiles, the poet has done you great service as well as in forcing you to understand what is really the democratic principle. thus, the strangers, who came to pay their tributes, wanted to see this great poet, who had dared to speak the truth to athens. and so far has the fame of his boldness reached that one day the great king, when questioning the lacedaemonian delegates, first asked them which of the two rival cities was the superior at sea, and then immediately demanded at which it was that the comic poet directed his biting satire. "happy that city," he added, "if it listens to his counsel; it will grow in power, and its victory is assured." this is why the lacedaemonians offer you peace, if you will cede them aegina; not that they care for the isle, but they wish to rob you of your poet.( ) as for you, never lose him, who will always fight for the cause of justice in his comedies; he promises you that his precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. i scoff at cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to the highest bidder. i invoke thee, acharnian muse, fierce and fell as the devouring fire; sudden as the spark that bursts from the crackling oaken coal when roused by the quickening fan to fry little fishes, while others knead the dough or whip the sharp thasian pickle with rapid hand, so break forth, my muse, and inspire thy tribesmen with rough, vigorous, stirring strains. we others, now old men and heavy with years, we reproach the city; so many are the victories we have gained for the athenian fleets that we well deserve to be cared for in our declining life; yet far from this, we are ill-used, harassed with law-suits, delivered over to the scorn of stripling orators. our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. when standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps for us; the onslaught troubles, upsets and ruins poor old tithonus, who, crushed with age, stands tongue-tied; sentenced to a fine,( ) he weeps, he sobs and says to his friend, "this fine robs me of the last trifle that was to have bought my coffin." is this not a scandal? what! the clepsydra( ) is to kill the white-haired veteran, who, in fierce fighting, has so oft covered himself with glorious sweat, whose valour at marathon saved the country! 'twas we who pursued on the field of marathon, whereas now 'tis wretches who pursue us to the death and crush us! what would marpsias reply to this?( ) what an injustice that a man, bent with age like thucydides, should be brow-beaten by this braggart advocate, cephisodemus,( ) who is as savage as the scythian desert he was born in! is it not to convict him from the outset? i wept tears of pity when i saw an archer( ) maltreat this old man, who, by ceres, when he was young and the true thucydides, would not have permitted an insult from ceres herself! at that date he would have floored ten orators, he would have terrified three thousand archers with his shouts; he would have pierced the whole line of the enemy with his shafts. ah! but if you will not leave the aged in peace, decree that the advocates be matched; thus the old man will only be confronted with a toothless greybeard, the young will fight with the braggart, the ignoble with the son of clinias;( ) make a law that in the future, the old man can only be summoned and convicted at the courts by the aged and the young man by the youth. f( ) the 'parabasis' in the old comedy was a sort of address or topical harangue addressed directly by the poet, speaking by the chorus, to the audience. it was nearly always political in bearing, and the subject of the particular piece was for the time being set aside altogether. f( ) it will be remembered that aristophanes owned land in aegina. f( ) everything was made the object of a law-suit in athens. the old soldiers, inexpert at speaking, often lost the day. f( ) a water-clock used to limit the length of speeches in the courts. f( ) a braggart speaker, fiery and pugnacious. f( ) cephisodemus was an athenian, but through his mother possessed scythian blood. f( ) the city of athens was policed by scythian archers. f( ) alcibiades. dicaeopolis these are the confines of my market-place. all peloponnesians, megarians, boeotians, have the right to come and trade here, provided they sell their wares to me and not to lamachus. as market-inspectors i appoint these three whips of leprean( ) leather, chosen by lot. warned away are all informers and all men of phasis.( ) they are bringing me the pillar on which the treaty is inscribed( ) and i shall erect it in the centre of the market, well in sight of all. f( ) the leather market was held in lepros, outside the city. f( ) mean an informer ((from the greek) 'to denounce'). f( ) according to the athenian custom. a megarian hail! market of athens, beloved of megarians. let zeus, the patron of friendship, witness, i regretted you as a mother mourns her son. come, poor little daughters of an unfortunate father, try to find something to eat; listen to me with the full heed of an empty belly. which would you prefer? to be sold or to cry with hunger? daughters to be sold, to be sold! megarian that is my opinion too. but who would make so sorry a deal as to buy you? ah! i recall me a megarian trick; i am going to disguise you as little porkers, that i am offering for sale. fit your hands with these hoofs and take care to appear the issue of a sow of good breed, for, if i am forced to take you back to the house, by hermes! you will suffer cruelly of hunger! then fix on these snouts and cram yourselves into this sack. forget not to grunt and to say wee-wee like the little pigs that are sacrificed in the mysteries. i must summon dicaeopolis. where is be? dicaeopolis, do you want to buy some nice little porkers? dicaeopolis who are you? a megarian? megarian i have come to your market. dicaeopolis well, how are things at megara?( ) f( ) megara was allied to sparta and suffered during the war more than any other city because of its proximity to athens. megarian we are crying with hunger at our firesides. dicaeopolis the fireside is jolly enough with a piper. but what else is doing at megara, eh? megarian what else? when i left for the market, the authorities were taking steps to let us die in the quickest manner. dicaeopolis that is the best way to get you out of all your troubles. megarian true. dicaeopolis what other news of megara? what is wheat selling at? megarian with us it is valued as highly as the very gods in heaven! dicaeopolis is it salt that you are bringing? megarian are you not holding back the salt? dicaeopolis 'tis garlic then? megarian what! garlic! do you not at every raid grub up the ground with your pikes to pull out every single head? dicaeopolis what do you bring then? megarian little sows, like those they immolate at the mysteries. dicaeopolis ah! very well, show me them. megarian they are very fine; feel their weight. see! how fat and fine. dicaeopolis but what is this? megarian a sow, for a certainty.( ) f( ) throughout this whole scene there is an obscene play upon (a) word which means in greek both 'sow' and 'a woman's organs of generation.' dicaeopolis you say a sow! of what country, then? megarian from megara. what! is it not a sow then? dicaeopolis no, i don't believe it is. megarian this is too much! what an incredulous man! he says 'tis not a sow; but we will stake, an you will, a measure of salt ground up with thyme, that in good greek this is called a sow and nothing else. dicaeopolis but a sow of the human kind. megarian without question, by diocles! of my own breed! well! what think you? will you hear them squeal? dicaeopolis well, yes, i' faith, i will. megarian cry quickly, wee sowlet; squeak up, hussy, or by hermes! i take you back to the house. girl wee-wee, wee-wee! megarian is that a little sow, or not? dicaeopolis yes, it seems so; but let it grow up, and it will be a fine fat bitch. megarian in five years it will be just like its mother. dicaeopolis but it cannot be sacrificed. megarian and why not? dicaeopolis it has no tail.( ) f( ) sacrificial victims were bound to be perfect in every part; an animal, therefore, without a tail could not be offered. megarian because it is quite young, but in good time it will have a big one, thick and red. dicaeopolis the two are as like as two peas. megarian they are born of the same father and mother; let them be fattened, let them grow their bristles, and they will be the finest sows you can offer to aphrodite. dicaeopolis but sows are not immolated to aphrodite. megarian not sows to aphrodite! why, 'tis the only goddess to whom they are offered! the flesh of my sows will be excellent on the spit. dicaeopolis can they eat alone? they no longer need their mother! megarian certainly not, nor their father. dicaeopolis what do they like most? megarian whatever is given them; but ask for yourself. dicaeopolis speak! little sow. daughter wee-wee, wee-wee! dicaeopolis can you eat chick-pease? daughter wee-wee, wee-wee, wee-wee! dicaeopolis and attic figs? daughter wee-wee, wee-wee! dicaeopolis what sharp squeaks at the name of figs. come, let some figs be brought for these little pigs. will they eat them? goodness! how they munch them, what a grinding of teeth, mighty heracles! i believe those pigs hail from the land of the voracians. but surely 'tis impossible they have bolted all the figs! megarian yes, certainly, bar this one that i took from them. dicaeopolis ah! what funny creatures! for what sum will you sell them? megarian i will give you one for a bunch of garlic, and the other, if you like, for a quart measure of salt. dicaeopolis i buy them of you. wait for me here. megarian the deal is done. hermes, god of good traders, grant i may sell both my wife and my mother in the same way! an informer hi! fellow, what countryman are you? megarian i am a pig-merchant from megara. informer i shall denounce both your pigs and yourself as public enemies. megarian ah! here our troubles begin afresh! informer let go that sack. i will punish your megarian lingo!( ) f( ) the megarians used the doric dialect. megarian dicaeopolis, dicaeopolis, they want to denounce me. dicaeopolis who dares do this thing? inspectors, drive out the informers. ah! you offer to enlighten us without a lamp!( ) f( ) a play upon (a) word which both means 'to light' and 'to denounce.' informer what! i may not denounce our enemies? dicaeopolis have a care for yourself, if you don't go off pretty quick to denounce elsewhere. megarian what a plague to athens! dicaeopolis be reassured, megarian. here is the price for your two swine, the garlic and the salt. farewell and much happiness! megarian ah! we never have that amongst us. dicaeopolis well! may the inopportune wish apply to myself. megarian farewell, dear little sows, and seek, far from your father, to munch your bread with salt, if they give you any. chorus here is a man truly happy. see how everything succeeds to his wish. peacefully seated in his market, he will earn his living; woe to ctesias,( ) and all other informers who dare to enter there! you will not be cheated as to the value of wares, you will not again see prepis( ) wiping his foul rump, nor will cleonymus( ) jostle you; you will take your walks, clothed in a fine tunic, without meeting hyperbolus( ) and his unceasing quibblings, without being accosted on the public place by any importunate fellow, neither by cratinus,( ) shaven in the fashion of the debauchees, nor by this musician, who plagues us with his silly improvisations, artemo, with his arm-pits stinking as foul as a goat, like his father before him. you will not be the butt of the villainous pauson's( ) jeers, nor of lysistratus,( ) the disgrace of the cholargian deme, who is the incarnation of all the vices, and endures cold and hunger more than thirty days in the month. f( ) an informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown. f( ) a debauchee of vile habits; a pathic. f( ) mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly. f( ) an athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an informer into the bargain. f( ) a comic poet of vile habits. f( ) a painter. f( ) a debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty. a boeotian by heracles! my shoulder is quite black and blue. ismenias, put the penny-royal down there very gently, and all of you, musicians from thebes, pipe with your bone flutes into a dog's rump.( ) f( ) this kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like the bagpipes of to-day. dicaeopolis enough, enough, get you gone. rascally hornets, away with you! whence has sprung this accursed swarm of charis( ) fellows which comes assailing my door? f( ) a flute-player, mentioned above. boeotian ah! by iolas!( ) drive them off, my dear host, you will please me immensely; all the way from thebes, they were there piping behind me and have completely stripped my penny-royal of its blossom. but will you buy anything of me, some chickens or some locusts? f( ) a hero, much honoured in thebes; nephew of heracles. dicaeopolis ah! good day, boeotian, eater of good round loaves.( ) what do you bring? f( ) a form of bread peculiar to boeotia. boeotian all that is good in boeotia, marjoram, penny-royal, rush-mats, lamp-wicks, ducks, jays, woodcocks, water-fowl, wrens, divers. dicaeopolis 'tis a very hail of birds that beats down on my market. boeotian i also bring geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats, lyres, martins, otters and eels from the copaic lake.( ) f( ) a lake in boeotia. dicaeopolis ah! my friend, you, who bring me the most delicious of fish, let me salute your eels. boeotian come, thou, the eldest of my fifty copaic virgins, come and complete the joy of our host. dicaeopolis oh! my well-beloved, thou object of my long regrets, thou art here at last then, thou, after whom the comic poets sigh, thou, who art dear to morychus.( ) slaves, hither with the stove and the bellows. look at this charming eel, that returns to us after six long years of absence.( ) salute it, my children; as for myself, i will supply coal to do honour to the stranger. take it into my house; death itself could not separate me from her, if cooked with beet leaves. f( ) he was the lucullus of athens. f( ) this again fixes the date of the presentation of 'the acharnians' to b.c., the sixth year of the war, since the beginning of which boeotia had been closed to the athenians. boeotian and what will you give me in return? dicaeopolis it will pay for your market dues. and as to the rest, what do you wish to sell me? boeotian why, everything. dicaeopolis on what terms? for ready-money or in wares from these parts? boeotian i would take some athenian produce, that we have not got in boeotia. dicaeopolis phaleric anchovies, pottery? boeotian anchovies, pottery? but these we have. i want produce that is wanting with us and that is plentiful here. dicaeopolis ah! i have the very thing; take away an informer, packed up carefully as crockery-ware. boeotian by the twin gods! i should earn big money, if i took one; i would exhibit him as an ape full of spite. dicaeopolis hah! here we have nicarchus,( ) who comes to denounce you. f( ) an informer. boeotian how small he is! dicaeopolis but in his case the whole is one mass of ill-nature. nicarchus whose are these goods? dicaeopolis mine; they come from boeotia, i call zeus to witness. nicarchus i denounce them as coming from an enemy's country. boeotian what! you declare war against birds? nicarchus and i am going to denounce you too. boeotian what harm have i done you? nicarchus i will say it for the benefit of those that listen; you introduce lamp-wicks from an enemy's country. dicaeopolis then you go as far as denouncing a wick. nicarchus it needs but one to set an arsenal afire. dicaeopolis a wick set an arsenal ablaze! but how, great gods? nicarchus should a boeotian attach it to an insect's wing, and, taking advantage of a violent north wind, throw it by means of a tube into the arsenal and the fire once get hold of the vessels, everything would soon be devoured by the flames. dicaeopolis ah! wretch! an insect and a wick devour everything! (he strikes him.) nicarchus (to the chorus) you will bear witness, that he mishandles me. dicaeopolis shut his mouth. give me some hay; i am going to pack him up like a vase, that he may not get broken on the road. chorus pack up your goods carefully, friend; that the stranger may not break it when taking it away. dicaeopolis i shall take great care with it, for one would say he is cracked already; he rings with a false note, which the gods abhor. chorus but what will be done with him? dicaeopolis this is a vase good for all purposes; it will be used as a vessel for holding all foul things, a mortar for pounding together law-suits, a lamp for spying upon accounts, and as a cup for the mixing up and poisoning of everything. chorus none could ever trust a vessel for domestic use that has such a ring about it. dicaeopolis oh! it is strong, my friend, and will never get broken, if care is taken to hang it head downwards. chorus there! it is well packed now! boeotian marry, i will proceed to carry off my bundle. chorus farewell, worthiest of strangers, take this informer, good for anything, and fling him where you like. dicaeopolis bah! this rogue has given me enough trouble to pack! here! boeotian, pick up your pottery. boeotian stoop, ismenias, that i may put it on your shoulder, and be very careful with it. dicaeopolis you carry nothing worth having; however, take it, for you will profit by your bargain; the informers will bring you luck. a servant of lamachus dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis what do you want crying this gait? servant lamachus wants to keep the feast of cups,( ) and i come by his order to bid you one drachma for some thrushes and three more for a copaic eel. f( ) the second day of the dionysia or feasts of bacchus, kept in the month anthesterion (february), and called the anthesteria. they lasted three days; the second being the feast of cups, the third the feast of pans. vases, filled with grain of all kinds, were borne in procession and dedicated to hermes. dicaeopolis and who is this lamachus, who demands an eel? servant 'tis the terrible, indefatigable lamachus, who is always brandishing his fearful gorgon's head and the three plumes which o'ershadow his helmet. dicaeopolis no, no, he will get nothing, even though he gave me his buckler. let him eat salt fish, while he shakes his plumes, and, if he comes here making any din, i shall call the inspectors. as for myself, i shall take away all these goods; i go home on thrushes' wings and black-birds' pinions.( ) f( ) a parody on some verses from a lost poet. chorus you see, citizens, you see the good fortune which this man owes to his prudence, to his profound wisdom. you see how, since he has concluded peace, he buys what is useful in the household and good to eat hot. all good things flow towards him unsought. never will i welcome the god of war in my house; never shall he chant the "harmodius" at my table;( ) he is a sot, who comes feasting with those who are overflowing with good things and brings all manner of mischief at his heels. he overthrows, ruins, rips open; 'tis vain to make him a thousand offers, "be seated, pray, drink this cup, proffered in all friendship," he burns our vine-stocks and brutally pours out the wine from our vineyards on the ground. this man, on the other hand, covers his table with a thousand dishes; proud of his good fortunes, he has had these feathers cast before his door to show us how he lives. f( ) a feasting song in honour of harmodius, the assassin of hipparchus the tyrant, son of pisistratus. dicaeopolis oh, peace! companion of fair aphrodite and of the sweet graces, how charming are thy features and yet i never knew it! would that eros might join me to thee, eros, crowned with roses as zeuxis( ) shows him to us! perhaps i seem somewhat old to you, but i am yet able to make you a threefold offering; despite my age i could plant a long row of vines for you; then beside these some tender cuttings from the fig; finally a young vine-stock, loaded with fruit and all around the field olive trees, which would furnish us with oil, wherewith to anoint us both at the new moons. f( ) the celebrated painter, born in heraclea, a contemporary of aristophanes. herald list, ye people! as was the custom of your forebears, empty a full pitcher of wine at the call of the trumpet; he, who first sees the bottom, shall get a wine-skin as round and plump as ctesiphon's belly. dicaeopolis women, children, have you not heard? faith! do you not heed the herald? quick! let the hares boil and roast merrily; keep them a-turning; withdraw them from the flame; prepare the chaplets; reach me the skewers that i may spit the thrushes. chorus i envy you your wisdom and even more your good cheer. dicaeopolis what then will you say when you see the thrushes roasting? chorus ah! true indeed! dicaeopolis slave! stir up the fire. chorus see, how he knows his business, what a perfect cook! how well he understands the way to prepare a good dinner! a husbandman ah! woe is me! dicaeopolis heracles! what have we here? husbandman a most miserable man. dicaeopolis keep your misery for yourself. husbandman ah! friend! since you alone are enjoying peace, grant me a part of your truce, were it but five years. dicaeopolis what has happened to you? husbandman i am ruined; i have lost a pair of steers. dicaeopolis how? husbandman the boeotians seized them at phyle.( ) f( ) a deme and frontier fortress of attica, near the boeotian border. dicaeopolis ah! poor wretch! and yet you have not left off white? husbandman their dung made my wealth. dicaeopolis what can i do in the matter? husbandman crying for my beasts has lost me my eyesight. ah! if you care for poor dercetes of phyle, anoint mine eyes quickly with your balm of peace. dicaeopolis but, my poor fellow, i do not practise medicine. husbandman come, i adjure you; perhaps i shall recover my steers. dicaeopolis 'tis impossible; away, go and whine to the disciples of pittalus.( ) f( ) an athenian physician of the day. husbandman grant me but one drop of peace; pour it into this reedlet. dicaeopolis no, not a particle; go a-weeping elsewhere. husbandman oh! oh! oh! my poor beasts! chorus this man has discovered the sweetest enjoyment in peace; he will share it with none. dicaeopolis pour honey over this tripe; set it before the fire to dry. chorus what lofty tones he uses! did you hear him? dicaeopolis get the eels on the gridiron! chorus you are killing me with hunger; your smoke is choking your neighbours, and you split our ears with your bawling. dicaeopolis have this fried and let it be nicely browned. a bridesmaid dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis who are you? bridesmaid a young bridegroom sends you these viands from the marriage feast. dicaeopolis whoever he be, i thank him. bridesmaid and in return, he prays you to pour a glass of peace into this vase, that he may not have to go to the front and may stay at home to do his duty to his young wife. dicaeopolis take back, take back your viands; for a thousand drachmae i would not give a drop of peace; but who are you, pray? bridesmaid i am the bridesmaid; she wants to say something to you from the bride privately. dicaeopolis come, what do you wish to say? (the bridesmaid whispers in his ear.) ah! what a ridiculous demand! the bride burns with longing to keep by her her husband's weapon. come! \bring hither my truce; to her alone will i give some of it, for she is a woman, and, as such, should not suffer under the war. here, friend, reach hither your vial. and as to the manner of applying this balm, tell the bride, when a levy of soldiers is made to rub some in bed on her husband, where most needed. there, slave, take away my truce! now, quick, bring me the wine-flagon, that i may fill up the drinking bowls! chorus i see a man, striding along apace, with knitted brows; he seems to us the bearer of terrible tidings. herald oh! toils and battles, 'tis lamachus! lamachus what noise resounds around my dwelling, where shines the glint of arms. herald the generals order you forthwith to take your battalions and your plumes, and, despite the snow, to go and guard our borders. they have learnt that a band of boeotians intend taking advantage of the feast of cups to invade our country. lamachus ah! the generals! they are numerous, but not good for much! it's cruel, not to be able to enjoy the feast! dicaeopolis oh! warlike host of lamachus! lamachus wretch! do you dare to jeer me? dicaeopolis do you want to fight this four-winged geryon? lamachus oh! oh! what fearful tidings! dicaeopolis ah! ah! i see another herald running up; what news does he bring me? herald dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis what is the matter? herald come quickly to the feast and bring your basket and your cup; 'tis the priest of bacchus who invites you. but hasten, the guests have been waiting for you a long while. all is ready--couches, tables, cushions, chaplets, perfumes, dainties and courtesans to boot; biscuits, cakes, sesame-bread, tarts, lovely dancing women, the sweetest charm of the festivity. but come with all haste. lamachus oh! hostile gods! dicaeopolis this is not astounding; you have chosen this huge, great ugly gorgon's head for your patron. you, shut the door, and let someone get ready the meal. lamachus slave! slave! my knapsack! dicaeopolis slave! slave! a basket! lamachus take salt and thyme, slave, and don't forget the onions. dicaeopolis get some fish for me; i cannot bear onions. lamachus slave, wrap me up a little stale salt meat in a fig-leaf. dicaeopolis and for me some good greasy tripe in a fig-leaf; i will have it cooked here. lamachus bring me the plumes for my helmet. dicaeopolis bring me wild pigeons and thrushes. lamachus how white and beautiful are these ostrich feathers! dicaeopolis how fat and well browned is the flesh of this wood-pigeon! lamachus bring me the case for my triple plume. dicaeopolis pass me over that dish of hare. lamachus oh! the moths have eaten the hair of my crest. dicaeopolis i shall always eat hare before dinner. lamachus hi! friend! try not to scoff at my armor? dicaeopolis hi! friend! will you kindly not stare at my thrushes. lamachus hi! friend! will you kindly not address me. dicaeopolis i do not address you; i am scolding my slave. shall we wager and submit the matter to lamachus, which of the two is the best to eat, a locust or a thrush? lamachus insolent hound! dicaeopolis he much prefers the locusts. lamachus slave, unhook my spear and bring it to me. dicaeopolis slave, slave, take the sausage from the fire and bring it to me. lamachus come, let me draw my spear from its sheath. hold it, slave, hold it tight. dicaeopolis and you, slave, grip, grip well hold of the skewer. lamachus slave, the bracings for my shield. dicaeopolis pull the loaves out of the oven and bring me these bracings of my stomach. lamachus my round buckler with the gorgon's head. dicaeopolis my round cheese-cake. lamachus what clumsy wit! dicaeopolis what delicious cheese-cake! lamachus pour oil on the buckler. hah! hah! i can see reflected there an old man who will be accused of cowardice. dicaeopolis pour honey on the cake. hah! hah! i can see an old man who makes lamachus of the gorgon's head weep with rage. lamachus slave, full war armour. dicaeopolis slave, my beaker; that is my armour. lamachus with this i hold my ground with any foe. dicaeopolis and i with this with any tosspot. lamachus fasten the strappings to the buckler; personally i shall carry the knapsack dicaeopolis pack the dinner well into the basket; personally i shall carry the cloak. lamachus slave, take up the buckler and let's be off. it is snowing! ah! 'tis a question of facing the winter. dicaeopolis take up the basket, 'tis a question of getting to the feast. chorus we wish you both joy on your journeys, which differ so much. one goes to mount guard and freeze, while the other will drink, crowned with flowers, and then sleep with a young beauty, who will excite him readily. i say it freely; may zeus confound antimachus, the poet-historian, the son of psacas! when choregus at the lenaea, alas! alas! he dismissed me dinnerless. may i see him devouring with his eyes a cuttle-fish, just served, well cooked, hot and properly salted; and the moment that he stretches his hand to help himself, may a dog seize it and run off with it. such is my first wish. i also hope for him a misfortune at night. that returning all-fevered from horse practice, he may meet an orestes,( ) mad with drink, who breaks open his head; that wishing to seize a stone, he, in the dark, may pick up a fresh stool, hurl his missile, miss aim and hit cratinus.( ) f( ) an allusion to the paroxysms of rage, as represented in many tragedies familiar to an athenian audience, of orestes, the son of agamemnon, after he had killed his mother. f( ) no doubt the comic poet, rival of aristophanes. slave of lamachus slaves of lamachus! water, water in a little pot! make it warm, get ready cloths, cerate greasy wool and bandages for his ankle. in leaping a ditch, the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his gorgon shot far away from his buckler. his mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "radiant star, i gaze on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, i die." having said this, he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways and pursues the robbers with his spear at their backsides.( ) but here he comes, himself. get the door open. f( ) unexpected wind-up of the story. aristophanes intends to deride the boasting of lamachus, who was always ascribing to himself most unlikely exploits. lamachus oh! heavens! oh! heavens! what cruel pain! i faint, i tremble! alas! i die! the foe's lance has struck me! but what would hurt me most would be for dicaeopolis to see me wounded thus and laugh at my ill-fortune. dicaeopolis (enters with two courtesans) oh! my gods! what bosoms! hard as a quince! come, my treasures, give me voluptuous kisses! glue your lips to mine. haha! i was the first to empty my cup. lamachus oh! cruel fate! how i suffer! accursed wounds! dicaeopolis hah! hah! hail! knight lamachus! (embraces lamachus.) lamachus by the hostile gods! (bites dicaeopolis.) dicaeopolis ah! great gods! lamachus why do you embrace me? dicaeopolis and why do you bite me? lamachus 'twas a cruel score i was paying back! dicaeopolis scores are not evened at the feast of cups! lamachus oh! paean, paean! dicaeopolis but to-day is not the feast of paean. lamachus oh! support my leg, do; ah! hold it tenderly, my friends! dicaeopolis and you, my darlings, take hold of this, both of you! lamachus this blow with the stone makes me dizzy; my sight grows dim. dicaeopolis for myself, i want to get to bed; i am bursting with lustfulness, i want to be bundling in the dark. lamachus carry me to the surgeon pittalus. dicaeopolis take me to the judges. where is the king of the feast? the wine-skin is mine! lamachus that spear has pierced my bones; what torture i endure! dicaeopolis you see this empty cup! i triumph! i triumph! chorus old man, i come at your bidding! you triumph! you triumph! dicaeopolis again i have brimmed my cup with unmixed wine and drained it at a draught! chorus you triumph then, brave champion; thine is the wine-skin! dicaeopolis follow me, singing "triumph! triumph!" chorus aye! we will sing of thee, thee and thy sacred wine-skin, and we all, as we follow thee, will repeat in thine honour, "triumph, triumph!" ******************************************************************* this ebook was one of project gutenberg's early files produced at a time when proofing methods and tools were not well developed. there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed as ebook (# ) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ ******************************************************************* transcriber's note: obvious errors in spelling and punctuation have been silently corrected. footnotes have been renumbered and moved from the page end to the end of their respective chapters. images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. callias [illustration: socrates and alcibiades.] callias a tale of the fall of athens "_athenae lysandro superfuerunt: occiso socrate tum demum civitas eversa est._" by rev. alfred j. church, m. a. _professor of latin in university college, london_ [illustration] meadville penna flood and vincent the chautauqua-century press copyright, , by flood & vincent. _the chautauqua-century press, meadville, pa., u. s. a._ electrotyped, printed and bound by flood & vincent. contents chapter page i. a new play ii. news from the fleet iii. hippocles the alien iv. a council v. running the blockade vi. arginusÆ vii. after the fight viii. the news at athens ix. socrates x. the murder of the generals xi. rescued xii. the voyage of the skylark xiii. alcibiades xiv. bisanthe xv. Ægos potami xvi. to pharnabazus xvii. athens in the dust xviii. "noblesse oblige" xix. the end of alcibiades xx. dionysius xxi. cyrus the younger xxii. the retreat xxiii. the diary xxiv. a thanksgiving xxv. business and pleasure xxvi. invalided xxvii. back to athens xxviii. the story of the trial xxix. the last conversation xxx. the condition of exile author's postscript index callias a tale of the fall of athens. chapter i. a new play. it is the second year of the ninety-third olympiad[ ] and the theatre at athens is full, for the great dramatic season is at its height, and to-day there is to be performed a new play by aristophanes, the special favorite of the athenian public. it is a brilliant scene, but a keen observer, who happened to see the same gathering some five and twenty years ago, must now notice a certain falling off in its splendor. for these five and twenty years have been years of war, and latterly, years of disaster. eleven years ago, the city wild with the pride of power and wealth, embarked on the mad scheme of conquering sicily, and lost the finest fleet and army that it ever possessed. since then it has been a struggle for life with it, and year by year it has been growing weaker and weaker. this has told sadly on the glories of its great festivals. the furnishing of the stage, indeed, is as perfect as ever, and the building itself has been pushed on several stages towards completion.[ ] however scarce money may be in the public treasury, the theatre must not be starved. but elsewhere there are manifest signs of falling off. the strangers' gallery is almost empty. all the greek world from massilia in gaul to cyrene among the sands of africa used to throng it in happier days. now more than half that world is hostile, and the rest has little to hope or fear from the dispossessed mistress of the seas. dionysius of syracuse, has sent an embassy, and the democracy, which once would have treated with scant courtesy the representatives of a tyrant, is fain to flatter so powerful a prince. there are some persian envoys too, for the persians are still following their old game of playing off one great state against another. a few greeks from sinope and from one of the italian cities, persons of no importance, who would hardly have found a place in the gallery during the palmy times of athens, make up the company of visitors. look at the body of the theatre, where the citizens sit, and the spectacle is deplorable indeed. the flower of athens' sons has perished, and their successors are puny and degenerate. examine too the crowd that throngs the benches, and you will see that the slaves, distinguished by their unsleeved tunics, fill up no small portion of space. and boys form an unusually large proportion of the audience. altogether the theatre is a dispiriting sight to a patriotic athenian. to-day, however, all is gaiety, for, as has been said, there is a new play to be brought out, and an athenian must be in desperate straits indeed, if he cannot forget his sorrows at a new play. when the curtain rises, or rather, is withdrawn, as the greek arrangement was, into an opening in the floor of the stage, a murmur of recognition runs through the audience. the scene is the market place of thebes, and a familiar figure occupies the foreground. the portly figure, the ruddy face, the vine-leaf crown, and the buskins show him to be bacchus, the patron-god, it will be remembered, of the drama. but why this lion's skin and club? the god gives a lordly kick at the door of the house which was one of the familiar stage-properties, and hercules appears. he roars with laughter to see his own emblems in such strange company. bacchus explains. "the tragic poets grow worse and worse. there is not one who can write a decent line. i am going down to the regions of the dead to fetch euripides,[ ] and thought that i had better dress myself up in your fashion, for you, i know, made this same journey very successfully. perhaps you will tell me something about the way, and what inns you can recommend, where they are free from fleas, you know." "are you really going?" "yes, yes. don't try to dissuade me; but tell me the way, which must not be either too hot or too cold." "well there is the hanging way, by the sign of the rope and noose." "too stifling." "there is a very short cut by the mortar and pestle." "the hemlock road,[ ] you mean?" "exactly so." "too cold and wintry for me." "well; i'll tell you of a quick road and all downhill." "excellent! for i am not a good walker." "you know the tower in the cemetery? well; climb up to the top when the torch race is going to begin; and when the people cry out 'start,' start yourself." "how do you mean 'start'? start from where?" "why, start down from the top." "what, and dash my brains out? no, not for me, thank you." so it is settled that bacchus and his slave, for he has a slave with him to carry his baggage, shall take the usual route by the styx. to the styx, accordingly, they make their way. charon the ferryman is plying for hire, "any one for rest-from-toil-and-labor land? for no-mansland? for the isle of dogs?[ ]" bacchus steps in, and by charon's order, takes an oar which he handles very helplessly. the slave has to go round: charon does not carry slaves, he says. as they slowly make their way across, the frogs from the marsh raise the song of their kind, ending with the burden which is supposed to represent their note, _brekekekex, coax, coax_. it is pitch dark on the further side. when the slave turns up, he advises his master to go on at once. "'tis the very spot," he says, "where hercules told us those terrible wild beasts were." bacchus is very valiant. "a curse upon him! 'twas an idle tale, he feigned to frighten me, for well he knew, how brave i am, the envious braggart soul! grant, fortune, i may meet some perilous chance meet for so bold a journey." "o master, i hear a noise." "where, where?" "it is behind us." "get behind then." "no--it is in front." "why don't you go in front?" "o master, i see such a monster." "what is it like?" "why! it keeps on changing--now it's a bull, now it's a stag, and now it's a woman; and its face is all fire. what shall we do? o hercules, hercules help." "hold your tongue. don't call me hercules." "bacchus, then." "no, no; bacchus is worse than hercules." the travellers pass these dangers, and reach the palace of pluto. bacchus knocks at the door. "who's there?" cries Æacus the porter. "the valiant hercules," says bacchus. the name calls forth a torrent of reproaches, and threats. hercules was only too well remembered there. "o villain, villain, doubly, trebly dyed! 'twas thou didst take our dog, our guardian dog, sweet cerberus, my charge. but, villain, now we have thee on the hip. for thee the rocks of styx, and acheron's dripping well of blood, and hell's swift hounds encompass." "did you hear that dreadful voice?" says bacchus to the slave. "didn't it frighten you?" "frighten me? no, i didn't give it a thought." "well, you are a bold fellow. i say; suppose you become me, and i become you. take the club and the lion skin, and i'll carry the baggage." "as you please." they change parts accordingly. no sooner is this done, than a waiting maid of queen proserpine appears. "my dear hercules," she says, "come with me. as soon as my mistress heard of your being here she had a grand baking, made four or five gallons of soup, and roasted an ox whole." "excellent," cries the false hercules. "she won't take a refusal. and, hark you! there's _such_ wine!" "i shall be delighted. boy, bring along the baggage with you." "hold," cries the "boy." "don't you see it was a joke of mine, dressing you up as hercules? come, hand over the club and the skin." "you are not going to take the things away when you gave me them yourself." "yes, but i am: a pretty hercules you would be. come, hand them over." "well; if i must, i must. but i shouldn't wonder if you were sorry for it sooner or later." it turns out to be sooner rather than later. as soon as the exchange is made, two landladies appear on the scene. hercules had committed other misdemeanors besides stealing the dog. _first landlady._ "this is the villain. he came to my house, and ate sixteen loaves." _the slave_ (aside). "some one is getting into trouble." _first landlady._ "yes, and twenty fried cutlets at three-half-pence apiece." _the slave_ (aside). "some one will suffer for this." _first landlady._ "yes, and any quantity of garlic." _bacchus._ "woman this is all rubbish. i don't know what you are talking about." _first landlady._ "ah! you villain, because you have buskins on, you thought i should not know you--and then there was the salt-fish." _second landlady._ "yes, and the fresh cheeses which he ate, baskets and all; and when i asked him for the money he drew his sword, and we ran up, you remember, into the attic." _the slave._ "that is just the man. that's how he goes on everywhere." the angry women run off to fetch their lawyers; and bacchus begins again. "my dear boy, i am very fond of you." "i know what you are after. say no more; i'm not going to be hercules; 'a pretty hercules i should make,' you say." "i don't wonder that you're angry. but do take the things again. the gods destroy me and mine, root and branch, if i rob you of them again." "very well; i'll take them, but mind, you have sworn." so the exchange is made again. then Æacus with his infernal policemen appears on the scene. "that's the fellow who stole the dog," he cries to his men, "seize him," while the false slave murmurs aside, "some one is getting into trouble." "i steal your dog!" says the false hercules. "i have never been here, much less stolen the worth of a cent. but come. i'll make you a fair offer. here's my slave. take him, and put him to the torture, and if you get anything out of him against me, then cut my head off." "very fair," says Æacus; "and of course, if i do him any damage, i shall pay for it." "never mind about the damage; torture away." "hold," shouts bacchus, as the policemen lay hold of him, "i warn you not to torture me, i'm a god." _Æacus._ "what do you say?" _bacchus._ "i am bacchus, son of zeus, and that fellow there is my slave." _Æacus_ (to the false bacchus) "what do you say to that?" _the false bacchus._ "say? lay on the lash; if he's a god, of course he can't feel." _bacchus._ "and you're a god too, you say. so you won't mind taking blow for blow with me." _the false bacchus._ "quite right." (to Æacus) "lay on, and the first that cries out, you may be sure he's not the real god." so the trial takes place. both bear it bravely, till at last Æacus cries in perplexity. "i can't make it out. i don't know which is which. well, you shall both come to my master and queen proserpine. they're gods, and they ought to know their own kind." _bacchus._ "an excellent idea; i only wish that you had thought of it before you gave me that beating." things are now supposed to be set right. bacchus goes to dine with pluto and proserpine; the slave is entertained by Æacus in the servants' hall. while they are talking a tremendous uproar is heard outside; and Æacus explains to his guest that it is a rule in their country that the best poet or writer or artist should have a seat at the king's table and a place at the king's right hand. this honor Æschylus had held as the first of the tragic poets, but when euripides came, all the crowd of pick-pockets and burglars and murderers, who were pretty numerous in these parts, had been so delighted with his twists and turns, that they were for giving him the first place; and on the strength of their support he had claimed the tragic throne. "but had not Æschylus any friends?" "o yes, among the respectable people; but respectable people are scarce down here, as they are up above." "what about sophocles?" "oh! as soon as he came, he went up to Æschylus and kissed him on the cheek, and took him by the hand. he yielded the throne, he said, to Æschylus; but if euripides came off best, he should contest it with him." "well, what is going to be done?" "there will be a trial." "who is to be judge?" "ah! there's the difficulty. wise men, you see, are not so plenty. even with the athenians Æschylus didn't get on very well. however they have made your master judge. he is supposed to know all about it." i have tried to give some idea of the first, the farcical half of the play. it is possible to appreciate the fun, though much of its flavor has evaporated, and there are many strokes of humor which, for one reason or another, it has not been possible to reproduce. the second half is a series of subtle literary criticisms on the language, style, dramatic construction, and ruling sentiment of the two poets. no one can appreciate it who is not familiar with their works; no version is possible that would give any that idea of it. one specimen i shall attempt. Æschylus finds fault with the prosaic matter-of-fact character of his rival's opening scenes. "i'll spoil them all with a flask," he says. "go on and repeat whichever you please." euripides begins with the opening lines of the danaides (a play now lost). "aegyptus--so the common story runs-- crossed with his fifty sons the ocean plains, and reaching argos--" "lost a little flask." puts in Æschylus. he begins again with the opening lines of another "cadmus, agenor's offspring, setting sail from sidon's city--" "lost a little flask." then he tries with the first lines of a third "great bacchus, who with wand and fawn-skin decked, in pine-groves of parnassus, plies the dance, and leads the revel--" "lost a little flask." the reader may have had enough. it will suffice to give the result of the contest. all the tests have been applied. euripides, as a last resource, reminds the judge that he has sworn to take him back with him. bacchus replies: "my tongue hath sworn; yet Æschylus i choose." a cruel cut, for it is an adaptation of one of the poet's own lines (from the hippolytus) when the hero, taunted with the oath that he had taken and is about to violate, replies: "my tongue hath sworn it, but my mind's unsworn." when the curtain rose from the floor and hid the last scene, it was manifest that the "frogs" of aristophanes, son of philippus, of the tribe pandionis, and the township cydathenæa, was a success. of course there were malcontents among the audience. euripides had a good many partisans in young athens. they admired his ingenuity, his rhetoric, and the artistic quality of his verse, in which beauty for beauty's sake, quite apart from any moral purpose, seemed to be aimed at. they were captivated by the boldness and novelty of his treatment of things moral and religious. Æschylus they considered to be old-fashioned and bigoted. hence among the seats allotted to the young men there had been some murmurs of dissent while the performance was going on, and now there was a good deal of adverse criticism. and there were some among the older men who were scarcely satisfied. the fact was that comedy was undergoing a change, the change which before twenty more years had passed was to turn the old comedy into the middle and the new, or to put the matter briefly, to change the comedy of politics into the comedy of manners. "this is poor stuff," said an old aristocrat of this school, "poor stuff indeed, after what i remember in my younger days. why can't the man leave euripides alone, especially now he is dead, and won't bother us with any more of his plays? there are plenty of scoundrel politicians who might to much more purpose come in for a few strokes of the lash. but he daren't touch the fellows. ah! it was not always so. i remember the play he brought out eighteen years ago. the 'knights' he called it. that was something like a comedy! cleon was at the very height of his power, for he had just made that lucky stroke at pylos[ ]. but aristophanes did not spare him one bit for that. he could not get any one to take the part; he could not even get a mask made to imitate the great man's face. so he took the part himself, and smeared his face with the lees of wine. cleon was there in the magistrates' seats. i think we all looked at him as much as we looked at the stage. whenever there was a hard hit--and, by bacchus, how hard the hits were!--all the theatre turned to see how he bore it. he laughed at first. then we saw him turn red and pale--i was close by him and i heard him grind his teeth. good heavens! what a rage he was in! well, that is the sort of a play i like to see, not this splitting words, and picking verses to pieces, just as some schoolmaster might do." but, in spite of these criticisms, the greater part of the audience were highly delighted with what they had seen and heard. the comic business, with its broad and laughable effects, pleased them, and they were flattered by being treated as judges of literary questions. and the curious thing was that they were not unfit to be judges of such matters. there never was such a well-educated and keen-witted audience in the world. they knew it, and they dearly liked to be treated accordingly. the judges only echoed the popular voice when at the end of the festival they bestowed the first prize upon aristophanes. one criticism, strange to say, no one ever thought of making--and yet, to us, it seems the first, the most obvious of all criticisms, and that is that the play was horribly profane. this cowardly, drunken, sensual bacchus--and he is ten times worse in the original than i have ventured to make him here--this despicable wretch was one of the gods whom every one in the audience was supposed to worship. the festival which was the occasion of the theatrical exhibition was held in his honor, his altar was the centre round which the whole action of every piece revolved. and yet he was caricatured in this audacious manner, and it did not occur to anyone to object! verily the religion of the greeks sat very lightly on their consciences, and we cannot wonder if it had but small effect on their lives. footnotes: [ ] according to our reckoning b. c. . [ ] it was not actually finished till twenty-three years later. [ ] euripides had died a few months before. [ ] the athenians used to inflict the penalty of death by a draught of hemlock. [ ] for the "crows" in the original. "going to the crows" was the first equivalent for our "going to the dogs." the "isle of dogs" is a wellknown spot near london. [ ] when he captured the spartan garrison of the island of sphacteria, b. c. . chapter ii. news from the fleet. i anticipated the course of my story when i spoke of the first prize being adjudged to the comedy exhibited by aristophanes. there were various competing plays--how many we do not know, but the titles and authors of two that won the second and third prizes have been preserved--and all those had of course to be performed before a decision could be made. two or three days at least must have passed before the exhibition was at an end. the next competitor had certainly reason to complain of his ill-luck. just before the curtain fell for the opening scene of his comedy an incident occurred which made the people little disposed to listen to anything more that day. the spectators had just settled themselves in their places, when a young officer hastily made his way up to the bench where the magistrates were seated, and handed a roll to the president. the occurrence was very unusual. it was reckoned almost an impiety to disturb the festival of bacchus with anything of business; only matters of the very gravest importance could be allowed to do it. the entrance of the young man, happening as it did, just in the pause of expectation before the new play began, had been generally observed. every one could see from his dress that he was a naval officer, and many knew him as one of the most promising young men in athens. "news from the fleet," was the whisper that ran through the theatre, and there were few among the thousands there assembled to whom news from the fleet did not mean the life or death of father, brother, or son. the president glanced at the document put into his hands, and whispering a few words to the messenger, pointed to a seat by his side. all eyes were fastened upon him. (the magistrates, it may be explained, occupied one of the front or lowest rows of seats, and were therefore more or less in view of the whole theater, which was arranged in the form of a semicircle, with tier upon tier of benches rising upon the slope of the hill on the side of which the building was constructed.) when a moment afterwards, the curtain was withdrawn, scarcely a glance was directed to the stage. the action and the dialogue of the new piece were absolutely lost upon what should have been an audience, but was a crowd of anxious citizens, suddenly recalled from the shows of the stage to the realities of life. the president now carefully read the document and passed it on to his colleagues. some whispered consultations passed between them. when at the end of the first act a change of scenery caused a longer pause than usual the president quietly left the theatre, taking the bearer of the despatch with him. some of the other magistrates followed him, the rest remaining behind because it would have been unseemly to leave the official seats wholly untenanted while the festival was still going on. this proceeding increased the agitation of the people, because it emphasized the importance of the news that had arrived. some slipped away, unable to sit quietly in their places and endure the suspense, and vaguely hoping to hear something more outside. among those that remained the buzz of conversation grew louder and louder. only a few very determined play-goers even pretended to listen to what was going on upon the stage. meanwhile the unfortunate author, to whom, after all, the fate of his play was not less urgent a matter than the fate of the city, sat upon his prompter's stool--the author not uncomonly did the duty of prompter--and heartily cursed the bad luck which had distracted in so disastrous a way the attention of his audience. when at last, to the great relief of everyone concerned, the performance was brought to a conclusion, the young officer told his story, supplementing the meagre contents of the despatch which he had brought, to a full conclave of magistrates, assembled in one of the senate-rooms of the prytaneum or town-hall of athens. i may introduce him to my readers as callias, the hero of my story. many of the details that follow had already been given by callias, but as he had to repeat them for the benefit of the magistrates who had stopped behind in the theatre, i may as well put them all together. "we know," said the president, "that conon was beaten in a battle in the harbor of mitylene. so much we heard from hippocles, a very patriotic person by the way, though he is an alien. he has a very swift yacht that can outstrip any war-ship in greece, and often gives us very valuable intelligence. do you know him?" "yes," said callias, flushing with pleasure, for indeed he knew and respected hippocles greatly, "i know him very well." [illustration: the theater of dionysus at the present day.] "well, to go on," resumed the president. "so much we know, but no more. tell us exactly how conon fared in the battle." "sir," answered the young man, "he lost thirty ships." "and the crews," asked the president. "they escaped; happily they were able to get to land." "thank athene for that;" and a murmur of relief ran round the meeting. "and the other forty--he had seventy, i think, in all?" callias nodded assent. "what happened to the forty?" "they were hauled up under the walls when the day went against us." "now tell us exactly what has been going on since." "the spartans blockaded the harbor, having some of their ships within, and some without. our general saw that it was only a matter of time when he should have to surrender. the spartans had four times as many ships, the ships not, perhaps, quite as good as his, but the crews, i am afraid, somewhat better." "shade of themistocles," murmured one of the magistrates, "that it should come to this--the spartan crews 'somewhat better' than ours. but i am afraid that it is only too true." "he could not break through; and could not stand a long siege. mitylene was fairly well provisioned for its ordinary garrison, but here were seventy crews added all of a sudden to the number. he sent some officers--i had the honor of being one of them--and we found that by sparing everything to the very utmost, we might hold out for five weeks. the only chance was to send news to athens. you might help us, we thought." "we might; we _must_, i say. but how it is to be done is another matter. tell us how you got here?" "the general took the two fastest ships in his squadron, manned them with the very best rowers that he could find, practised the crews for four days in the inner harbor, and then set about running the blockade with them. the spartans, you see, had grown a little careless. we hadn't made any attempt to get out, and conon got a lesbian freedman to desert to the spartans with a story that we were meaning to surrender. this put them off their guard still more. they got into a way of leaving their ships at noon, to take their meal and their siesta afterwards on shore. we made a dart at an unguarded place between two of their blockading ships and we got through. i don't think that we lost a single man. by the time that the crews of the blockading galleys regained their vessels we were well out of bow-shot. our instructions were to separate, when we got outside the harbor. we did not do this at once because we had planned a little trick which might, we hoped, help to put the enemy off the scent. the ship that i was in was really the swifter of the two. this was, of course, the reason why i was put into it. but as long as we kept together we made believe that we were the slower. when they came out after us--they had manned half-a-dozen ships or so as quickly as they could--we separated. my ship, which you will understand, was really the faster of the two, was put about the north as if making for hellespont; the other kept on its course, straight for athens. the spartans told off their best ships to follow the latter which they thought that they had the better chance of catching. and of course, as it was headed this way, it seemed the more important of the two." "i suppose that they overtook it," said the president, "or it would have been here before this." "well, we soon outstripped the two galleys that were told to look after us. when we were well out of sight, we headed westward again, took a circuit round the north side of lemnos, and got here without seeing another enemy." "how long is it since you left mitylene?" "about five days." "but how long did conon think he could hold out?" "about forty days; perhaps more, if the men were put on short rations." "you have done well, my son," said the president kindly, "and athens will not forget it. we will consult together, though there is small need of consulting, i take it. the relief _must_ be sent. is it not so gentlemen?" his colleagues nodded assent. "but there are things to be talked over. we must decide how much we can send, and that cannot be done upon the spot. but there is a matter that can be settled at once. conon must be told that he is going to be relieved. now, who will tell him? will you?" "certainly, if you see fit to give me the order." "and how?" "i would consult with hippocles." "excellent!" cried the president. "he is just the man to help us. you will go and see him, and then report to me. come to me to-night; it will not matter how late it is; i shall be waiting for you." callias saluted, and withdrew. chapter iii. hippocles the alien. hippocles has been described as an alien. an "alien," then at athens, as in the other greek cities, was a resident foreigner. he might be an enfranchised slave, he might be a barbarian (as all persons not greek were described), or he might be a greek of the purest descent, but if he had not the rights of athenian citizenship, he was an "alien." he could not hold any landed or house property: he was obliged to appear in any law suit in which he might be concerned in the person of an athenian citizen who was described as his "patron," and he was heavily taxed. a special impost that went under the name of an "alien-tax" was only a slight matter, some twelve drachmas[ ] a year, but all the imposts were made specially heavy for them. and though they had no share in directing the policy of the state, they were required to serve in its fleets and armies. this treatment however, did not keep aliens from settling in athens. on the contrary they were to be found there in great numbers, and as almost all the trade of the place was in their hands, some of them were among its richest inhabitants. at the time of which i am writing hippocles had the reputation, which we may say was by no means undeserved, of being the richest resident in athens. and more than that, he was one of the most patriotic. he loved the city as if it had been his native place, and did the duty and more than the duty of a son to her. the special contributions which as a wealthy man he was called upon to make to the public service[ ] were made with a princely liberality. he even voluntarily undertook services which were not required of him by law. every year he had come forward to furnish the crew and munitions of a ship-of-war, a charge to which citizens only were properly liable. and of the fleet of which such gloomy tidings had just reached athens, he had equipped no less than three. hippocles had a curious history. he was born in the greek colony of poseidonia.[ ] he was just entering on manhood when his native city fell into the hands of its lucanian neighbors. the barbarians did not abuse their victory. they did not treat the conquered city, as the greeks of croton some ninety years before had treated sybaris, reducing it to an absolute ruin. on the contrary they contented themselves with imposing a tribute, and leaving a governor, with a garrison to support him, to see that their new subjects did not forget their duty. but the presence of the foreigner was a grievous burden to the proud greeks. for ages afterwards their descendants were accustomed to assemble once a year and to bewail their fate, as the sons of jacob at the vale of weeping, the gentile domination over their city. the disaster broke the heart of hippocles' father cimon who was one of pacidoninus' most distinguished citizens and had actually held the office of tagus or chief magistrate in the year of its fall. he survived the event scarcely a year, recommending his son with his last breath to leave the place for some city where he could live in a way more worthy of a greek. his son spent the next two years in quietly realizing his property, nor did he meet with any interference from the lucanian masters of the place. his house he had to sacrifice; to sell it might have attracted too much notice; but everything else that he had was converted into money. when this was safely invested at athens--athens having been for various reasons the city of his choice--he secretly departed. but he did not depart alone. he took with him a companion, who, he declared, more than made up to him for all that as a poseidonian citizen he had lost. pontia, the daughter of the lucanian governor, was a girl of singular beauty. the lucanian, in common with the other italian tribes, gave to their women a liberty which was unknown in greek households. under the circumstances of life in which he had been brought up, hippocles though a frequent visitor at the governor's house, would never, except by the merest accident, have seen the governor's daughter. as it was he had many opportunities of making her acquaintance. instead of being shut up, after the greek fashion in the women's apartments, she shared the common life of the family. at first the novelty of the situation almost shocked the young man; before long it pleased him; it ended by conquering his heart. the young greek, who was leaving his native land because it did not suit his pride of race to live under the rule of a barbarian, did not submit without an effort. again and again he reproached himself with the monstrous inconsistency of which he was guilty. "madman that i am," he said to himself, "i cannot endure to live with barbarians for neighbors and yet i think of taking a barbarian to wife." again and again he resolved to break free from the influence that was enthralling him. but love was too strong for him. nor indeed, were there wanting arguments on the other side. "actually," he said to himself, "i am a greek no more; a greek without a city is only not a barbarian in name." this argument, of little weight, perhaps, in itself, gained force from the loveliness and mental charms of the young pontia. she had long felt a distaste for the rough, uncultured life into which she had been born. the culture and refinement of her father's young greek guest charmed her. the sadness of his mien touched the chord of pity in her heart, and admiration and pity together soon grew into love. hippocles had just completed the settlement of his affairs, and was ruefully contemplating the curious dilemma in which he found himself--everything ready for his departure from poseidonia, but poseidonia holding him from such departure by ties which he could break only by breaking his heart--when circumstances suggested a way of escape. the governor was a widower, and had more than the usual incapacity of busy men in middle life for discerning the symptoms of love. it was accordingly, with a cheerful unconsciousness of his guest's feelings that he said to him one morning:--"i have good news about my dear pontia. the girl is growing up, and should be settled in life, and i have had a most eligible proposal for her. i have told you, i think, that i am getting tired of this life, and want to get back to my farm among the hills. so i have asked to be relieved, and i hear from the senate that they have chosen a successor, hostius of vulsi, a cousin, i should say, of my own, and a most respectable man. hostius has come to announce the fact in person, and at the same time to ask for my daughter in marriage. a most eligible proposal, i say. perhaps he is a little old, about five years younger than myself. but that's of no consequence. i mentioned the matter to her. she did not say much, but, of course, a girl must seem to hold back. i suggested that the marriage should take place next week--for i should dearly like to be at home in time for the barley harvest. that roused her. of course she said that she had no clothes. i don't know about that--she always seems to me to look very nice--but i should not like to annoy her, for she is a dear, good girl, and i gave her another month. it's an excellent arrangement--don't you think so?" hippocles muttered a few words of assent; but long before the month was out, he and his pontia were on their way to athens. the marriage and the settlement in athens had taken place twenty-one years before the time of which i am writing. two children had been born, a son and a daughter. the son had fallen, not many months before, at the battle of notium[ ] and the death of the mother, who had been in feeble health, had soon followed. the daughter, to whom her parents had given the name of hermione, had just completed her sixteenth year. hermione united in herself some of the happiest characteristics of the two races from which she sprang. her father was a greek of the greeks. poseidonia had been founded by dorian settlers from sybaris, who could not contrive to live on good terms with the achaean greeks that had become the predominant element in that city; and hippocles, who claimed descent from the messenian kings, yielded to none in nobility of birth. a purer type of the genuine hellenes it would have been impossible to find. pontia brought from the lucanian hills, among which she had been reared, some of the best qualities, moral and physical, of the italian race. the simplicity, frugality, and temperance which then and long after distinguished rural italy, were to be seen in her united with a singular feminine charm not so often found among that somewhat rude population; until the close air of the piraeus, ill-suited to a daughter of the hills, sapped her constitution, she had had a frame magnificently healthy and strong. to the daughter the climate which had shortened her mother's days, happily did no harm. it was in fact her native air, and she throve in it. she was still undeveloped, for she had only just completed her sixteenth year; but she gave promise of remarkable beauty, and indeed, the promise was already more than half fulfilled. when she had performed the duty, sometimes imposed on the daughters of resident aliens,--it might be called, rather, privilege conceded to them--and walked in the great procession of the patron-goddess, holding a sunshade over some high-born athenian maiden,[ ] all the spectators agreed that the prize of beauty belonged to the stranger. her stature reached the very utmost height that the canons of beauty conceded to women; so far she was more of an athene than an aphrodite. but her face and her whole bearing were exquisitely feminine. the sapphire-colored eyes, shaded by long drooping lashes, the forehead, broad and low with the clustering ringlets of light chestnut on either side, perfectly rounded cheeks, firm, delicate mouth, showing a glimpse, but only a glimpse of pearly teeth, and a faultlessly clear complexion, just tinted with the brown caught from Ægæan suns and winds--for she was dearly fond of a cruise in her father's yacht--made up together a remarkable combination of charms. callias had seen her but once before, and that was on a melancholy occasion. he had been commissioned by the general in command to break to her father the death of her brother, killed as has been said, in the unlucky conflict at notium. he had behaved there with conspicuous gallantry, having led the boarding party which captured the only lacedaemonian galley that the athenians had to set off against their own fifteen losses, and had fallen in the moment of victory. it was not the first time that he had shown distinguished valor, and it was for this reason, as well as on account of the high reputation of his father, that alcibiades had sent callias with a special message of condolence. the blow, which could not be softened by any delicacy in the telling, and for which the praises of the general were but a slight consolation, broke hippocles down completely. it was then that hermione showed the strength of her character. tenderly attached herself to her brother she had come forward to support her broken-hearted father. with a patient endurance that was beyond all praise, she had battled with her own grief in the effort to help a sorrow even more agonizing than her own, till for very shame hippocles had raised himself to bear his loss with resignation. the effort saved his life; for even the physicians had at one time been greatly alarmed. callias, accustomed to think of women as encumbrances rather than helps in time of need was profoundly impressed by the girl's demeanor. if he had been inclined, for a moment, to think that her singular self-possession indicated a want of womanly feeling, he would have been soon undeceived. paying a visit of inquiry to the house next day, he found that hermione's endurance had not lasted beyond the occasion for which it was wanted. her father received him, and told him that his daughter had broken down under the strain. "i was cowardly enough," he said, "yesterday to rest upon her strength when i should have summoned up my own. the gods grant that i may not have taxed it overmuch, and that i may not lose both my children. i have learned that i ought not to have grudged my son to the city which has been a second mother to me; if only i have not learnt it at too terrible a price." callias had to leave athens on the next day to rejoin the fleet, but he had the satisfaction of hearing before his departure that hermione was on a fair way to recovery. since then he had not been in athens. footnotes: [ ] this would amount to about $ . --a drachma being equal to about c or - / d. in english money. [ ] these "liturgies," as they were called, were charges imposed upon all residents in athens whose property was assessed at more than a certain amount (three talents, which, as a talent contained , drachmæ, may be roughly estimated at $ , , equivalent, it is probable, to much more in actual value). these were originally equivalents for special privileges and powers which the wealthy enjoyed under the earlier constitution, but they were continued in force after the democratic changes which put all citizens on an equality. the aliens were not liable to all. [ ] better known by its latin name of paestum. [ ] fought in . notium was the harbor of colophon a city of asia minor, about nine miles north of ephesus, and about fifteen miles from the sea. [ ] noble athenian damsels were the "basket-bearers" (_canephoroi_), daughters of aliens "sunshade-bearers" (_skiaphoroi_) in the paratheraea, or great procession of athens. chapter iv. a council. the house of hippocles was on a smaller scale than might have seemed suitable to his vast wealth. the fact was that both he and his daughter had simple tastes. they had a special dislike to the enormous establishments of slaves which it was the fashion for rich athenians, whether of native or of foreign birth, to maintain. in each division of the house--for, it was divided after the usual greek fashion, into two "apartments," to use that word in its proper sense, belonging respectively to the men and the women[ ]--there were but three or four inmates besides the master and mistress. hippocles had his house steward and his personal attendant, both older than himself, long since emancipated, who had accompanied him from his italian home, and a lad of seventeen, who was still a slave, but who, if he conducted himself well, would certainly earn his freedom by the time that he had reached the age of thirty. hermione's establishment, on the other hand, consisted of a lady who had just exchanged the post of governess, now no longer necessary, for that of companion or duenna, a housekeeper, and two domestics who may be described by the modern terms of lady's-maid and house-maid. stephanion, the companion, was of pure athenian descent. she belonged to one of the many families which had been reduced to poverty by the war, and she had been glad to take employment in the house of the wealthy alien. she had more education than was commonly given to athenian ladies, but this is not to say much, and hermione would have fared but ill for teaching, according at least to our standard if her father had not always found time even in his busiest days, to supplement her education. the housekeeper was a laconian woman. she, too, had found her way into the family through circumstances connected with the war. she had been nurse in a wealthy athenian household. before the war it had been the fashion, my readers should know, for the upper classes at athens to get their nurses from sparta. a true spartan, a daughter that is, of the military aristocracy that ruled laconia and its dependencies, it was, of course, impossible to obtain, but girls from the farmer class that cultivated the lands of their soldier masters often sought situations in other countries. this was the case with milanion, who as the youngest of the five daughters of a laconian farmer, had been delighted to find a place with an athenian lady, melissa, wife of demochares, at a salary which almost equalled her father's income. this was just before the commencement of the long war. she had been nurse to melissa's five children when the disastrous expedition to sicily brought irretrievable ruin upon her employer's family. demochares was one of the army that surrendered with nicias, was thrown with his comrades into that most dreadful of prisons, the stone-quarries of syracuse, and died of a fever before the end of the year. his property had consisted, for the most part, of farms in the island of chios, and when chios revolted from athens, the widow and her children were reduced to something very like poverty. nothing was left to them but a small farm at marathon, and as it so happened, the rent of the house which hippocles unable, as has been said, to own real property in attica, had been accustomed to hire. the establishment had to be broken up, the slaves being sold and the free persons looking for employment elsewhere. milanion was about to return, much against her will, to laconia, where her long residence at athens would have rendered her an object of suspicion and dislike, when an opening suddenly presented itself in the family of hippocles. pontia's long illness had come to a fatal end, and the widower was looking for an experienced woman to take charge of the young hermione. milanion seemed to him exactly the person that he wanted, and she, on the other hand, was delighted to come to him. as her charge grew older, her duties as nurse gradually changed into the duties of a housekeeper. she had come to her new situation accompanied by a middle-aged woman, a marian by birth, manto by name, whom hippocles had bought, at her suggestion, at the sale of demochares' slaves. manto had steadily refused the emancipation which her master had several times offered to her. "no, sir," she said, "i thank you very much, but i am better as i am. i desire nothing more than to live in your house, and, when my time comes, to die in it." "what if i should die first," suggested the merchant. "the gods know, my master, the gods know," cried the poor woman in an agony. "but it is impossible; the gods would not do anything so cruel, so unjust. but, if you wish, you may put what you please into your will. as long as you live you are my master, and i am your slave." so matters stood when my story opens. perhaps it may be added that manto's condition did not prevent her tongue from being truthful; but affectionate, faithful, and honest, she allowed herself and was allowed--no unusual circumstance, yet she was under a system of slavery--a liberty of speech which in one free born would certainly have been impossible. finally, to complete my account of the household, hermione had for her maid a girl about a year older than herself. she too had come into the family along with milanion and manto. demochares had bought her at the sale of the prisoners taken by the athenians when a little sicilian town was captured. she was then a singularly pretty child about seven years old, and demochares had meant her to be a playfellow or plaything, as the case might be, of a daughter of his own of about the same age. she was of mixed race; her mother was a sicanian, that is, one of the so-called aboriginal inhabitants of sicily, her father a carthaginian trader. she was now grown up into a handsome maiden, who with her raven-black hair, dark piercing eyes, and deep brunette complexion, made a remarkable contrast to the fair beauty of her mistress. when callias reached the house the hour was late, later than etiquette allowed for a visit, except from an intimate friend, or on a matter of urgent business. his business, however, was urgent, and he did not hesitate to knock, that is to strike the door sharply with a brass ring which was attached to it by a staple. the day-porter had gone home for the night, and the door was opened by the young slave mentioned above. he explained that his master was just about to sit down to his evening meal. "take him my name," said callias, "and say that i come from the magistrates on an important matter of business." the lad invited him to enter, and to take a seat in a small chamber which looked upon the central court of the andronitis, a grass plot, bordered on all sides by myrtle and orange. in a few minutes he returned, and invited the visitor to follow him. callias crossed the court and passed through the door which led into the women's apartment. hippocles, it should be said, was accustomed to see visitors on business in the front or men's portion of the dwelling, but spent his leisure time in the rooms assigned to his daughter. the two had just taken their places at the table, hippocles reclining on a couch, hermione sitting on a chair by his right hand, so that his face was turned towards her.[ ] the steward had placed the first dish on the table, and was standing in front, with hippocles' personal attendant behind him. the latter at a sign from his master, prepared a place for the new-comer. hippocles saluted his guest in a most friendly fashion, and hermione gave him her hand with a charming smile, though the moment afterwards tears gathered in her eyes, when she remembered the last occasion on which they had met. [illustration: plan of a large grecian house, probably more pretentious than the house of hippocles. . main door. . entrance passage. . central court of the men's part of the house (_andronitis_). . . . various rooms of the _andronitis_. . passage connecting the _andronitis_ with the _gynæconitis_ (women's apartments). . court of the _gynæconitis_. . . . various rooms of the _gynæconitis_. . the prostas--a hall opening from . . . apartments probably used as a family bedroom and sitting room. . . rooms for looms and woolen manufacture.] "if the business will wait for half-an-hour," said the host, "postpone it for so long. i have had a long day's work, and shall be scarcely myself till i have eaten. and you--doubtless you have dined before this; but you will take a cup with us." as a matter of fact callias had not dined, though in the excitement of the day's business he had almost forgotten food. a hasty meal snatched on board the trireme which had brought him to athens had been his only refreshment since the morning. "nay, sir, but i have not dined; unless you call some five or six dried anchovies and a hunk of barley bread, washed down with some very sharp hymettus, a dinner; and that was rather before noon than after it." the meal was simple. it consisted of some fresh anchovies, a piece of roast pork, a hare brought from euboea, for attica swept as it had been again and again by hostile armies, had almost ceased to supply this favorite food, and a pudding of wheat flour, seasoned with spices. this last had been made by hermione herself. the rest of the dinner had been cooked by a man who came in daily for the purpose. when the viands had been cleared away, hippocles proposed the usual toast, "to our good fortune," the toast not being drank, but honored by pouring some drops from the goblet. a second libation followed, this time to "athene the keeper of the city." the host then pledged his guest in a cup of chian wine. his daughter followed the rule of the best grecian families, and drank no wine. "we can dispense, i think, with these," he said, when the steward was about to put some apples, nuts and olives on the table. "just so," replied his guest, "and this excellent cup of chian will be all the wine that i shall want." "now then for business," said hippocles. "let us hope that the city will pardon us for postponing it so long. but we must eat. shall my daughter leave us? for my part, i find her a very athene for counsel." "as you will, sir," replied callias, "i have nothing to say but what all may know, and indeed will know before a day is past." the young man then proceeded to tell the story with which my readers are already acquainted. the question was briefly this: how was conon to be told that relief was coming? "i see," said hippocles, "that he must be told. he is a brave fellow, and a good general, too, though perhaps a little rash. but he must make terms for himself and his men, unless he has a project of relief. he would not be doing his duty to the state if he did not. but if he capitulates before the relief comes--how many ships has he?" "forty," said callias. "and we can have a hundred, or possibly, a hundred and ten here, by straining every nerve. the spartans have a hundred and forty, i think." "a few may have been disabled in the battle; but it would not be safe to reckon on less, for very likely others have been dropping in since then." "then conon's party will turn the scale, and they will be better manned, i take it, than any that we shall be able to send out from here. they must not be lost to us. if they are, we shall do better not to send out the fleet at all, but to stand on our defence." "is the _skylark_ in harbor now?" asked callias. my readers must know that the _skylark_ was hippocles' fast sailing yacht. "yes," was the reply, "she is in harbor and very much at the service of the state." "trust me with her," said callias, "and i will run the blockade." "i don't think it is possible," answered hippocles. "i gathered from what you said that the spartans are inside the harbor. now you may give the slip to a blockading squadron when it is watching a harbor from the outside. they always keep close to the mouth you see; and a really good craft, smartly handled, that can sail in the eye of the wind, and does not draw much water, has always a good chance. i'll warrant the _skylark_ to do it, if it is to be done. but with the blockade _inside_ the harbor, the case is different, and i must own that i don't see my way." "may i speak, father?" said hermione. "since when have you begun to ask leave to use your tongue, my darling?" replied her father with a smile. "you should hear her lecturing me when we are alone," he went on, turning to his guest. "but our counsellor is not used to speaking in an assembly." "would it be of any use," said the girl, "to disguise the _skylark_, by painting her another color and altering the cut of her rigging?" "a good thought, my darling," replied her father, "and one that i shall certainly make use of. now let me think; just for the present, things do not seem to piece themselves together." he rose from the couch on which he had been reclining, and paced up and down the room in profound thought. fully half an hour had passed when he suddenly stopped short in his walk, and turned to his daughter. "my darling," he said, "i see that you are getting sleepy." "sleepy, father?" cried the girl, who indeed was as wide awake as possible, "sleepy? what can you mean? how could i possibly feel sleepy, when we are talking about such things?" "nevertheless your father says it," replied hippocles, "and fathers are never mistaken." and he laid his hand upon her shoulder. without another word hermione rose from her chair, kissed her father, held out her hand again to callias, and left the room. hippocles waited for a few minutes, and then sat down on the couch by callias' side. "you will have guessed," he said, "that i wanted the girl away. i wish that i had never let her stay; now she will suspect something; but it cannot be helped. now, listen. what the girl said about disguising the _skylark_ set me thinking. that will be useful another time; indeed i shall do it now. but it won't do all that we want. disguised or not disguised, i don't see how she is to get past the spartan ships in mitylene harbor. now we must try a bolder play. i shall disguise myself, and go." "you, sir," cried callias in astonishment. "but think of the danger." "well," replied hippocles, "we cannot expect to get anything really valuable without danger. and i am something of a fatalist. what will be will be. now listen: i shall disguise myself as a trader of cos. i am a dorian by birth, you know, and i can use the broad vowels and the lisps to perfection i flatter myself. i say cos,[ ] because i happen to be particularly well acquainted with its dialect. i shall go to callicratidas[ ] and tell him my story--what the story shall be i have not yet made up my mind, but it is not hard to impose upon a spartan. however leave all that to me. go and tell the magistrates that i undertake to tell conon that he will be relieved. and, mind--not a word to my daughter. i shall tell her that i am called away on important business. very likely she will guess something of the truth; but it would only trouble her to tell her more." "and the magistrates, sir?" asked callias, "how much are they to know?" "nothing more, i think, than what i said, that hippocles the alien undertakes to communicate with conon. i don't doubt the good faith and discretion of our friends; but the fewer there are in the secret of such a plan, the better. keep a thing in your own mind, i say. if you whisper a secret even unto the earth, when the reed grows up it will repeat it.[ ] you will say simply that it is a matter which it is well for the state to conceal. if i succeed, i justify myself; if not--well, i take it, no man's anger here will concern me much. and now farewell! don't vex yourself about me. all will turn out well; and if not--how can a man die better than in saving athens. all my affairs are arranged, if i should not return. my patron melesippus will, of course, be my executor, and i have ventured to join your name with his in the trust? have i your permission?" callias pressed his hand in silence. "that is well, and now my mind is easy. and now," he went on in a cheerful tone, "farewell again; but before you go, we must have a libation to hermione who for the next ten days must be my special patron. if i come back safe, i will regild this temple from roof to basement." the libation was duly poured, and the vow repeated as the drops fell upon the ground. footnotes: [ ] the andronitis and gynaekonitis, as they were called. [ ] a greek at table, after it became the fashion to recline instead of sit (as had been the practice in the heroic ages) lay on his left side, supporting his head by his left arm, the other arm being left free to help himself from the dishes when they were placed before him. women and children always sat at table. [ ] cos was one of the cities belonging to the dorian pentapolis. [ ] callicratidas was the admiral in command of the spartan fleet. [ ] hippocles is alluding to a well known story. midas deciding in favor of pan as a better musician than apollo was punished by being given the long ears of an ass. he hid them under his thurgian cap from all men except the barber who cut his hair. this man, oppressed with the secret, dug a hole in the earth, whispered into it, "king midas has asses' ears," and filling it up again, so found relief from his burden. but a reed grew from the spot, and as it was moved by the wind whispered the secret to the world. chapter v. running the blockade. hippocles, who was a ship builder as well as a merchant, put all available hands to work on the alterations which he proposed to make in the _skylark_. to disguise her effectually was a more difficult thing than hermione had imagined when she had suggested this idea. to disguise her beyond all risk of discovery was probably impossible, a landsman might be deceived by different colored paint, and a nautical observer, if he did not give more than a casual glance, by an altered rigging. but the lines of the ship would remain. these hippocles endeavored to conceal by a false and much broader bow which was ingeniously fitted on to the true hull, and which made her look anything but the fast sailer that she really was. heavy bulwarks were substituted for the light ones that had been a familiar feature of the _skylark_. altogether she was metamorphosed in a fairly satisfactory way from a smart yacht into a clumsy merchantman. as the venturous owner intended to time his arrival for the night, and to do his errand before day-break, he hoped that the disguise would save her as long as it should be wanted. so much energy did the workmen, stimulated by their master's presence and by his liberal promises of renumeration, throw into their work, that by the evening of the seventh day the _skylark_ was ready for sea in her new dress, disguised beyond recognition, except by very skilful eyes indeed. the dockyard had been strictly closed against all visitors while the work was in progress, and the men had been lodged within its walls, so that no hint of what was going on might leak out. hippocles had paid a daily visit to his home, and did not conceal from his daughter that he was busy in carrying out her suggestions. so frank, indeed, was he, and so cheerful in manner, that the girl was fairly thrown off her guard. not a suspicion crossed her mind, that her father was meditating a desperate enterprise in which the chances were certainly rather against his life than otherwise, nor did she realize the extraordinary haste with which the work was being pressed on, though she was generally aware that a good deal of expedition was being used. hence she was taken by surprise, when on the eighth day instead of her father's usual visit, timed so that he might share her noon-day meal, a written message was delivered to her, to the effect that her father was suddenly called away from athens on business of importance, and that he could not be certain of the day of his return. the surprise almost overwhelmed her, chiefly because she felt that this unusual hurry on the part of her father was significant of the perilous nature of the enterprise. it was only her unusual fortitude, backed by the feeling that she herself must not deviate from doing her duty, that enabled her to bear up at all. meanwhile hippocles was on his way to the scene of action. the _skylark_ crossed the Ægean without meeting with any misadventure. she was overhauled, indeed, when about half her journey was accomplished by an athenian cruiser, and her owner had the satisfaction of finding that so far his disguise was successful. the athenian captain was an acquaintance of his own (indeed there were few prominent people in the city to whom he was not known) and had actually been on board the _skylark_ more than once; but he did not recognize either hippocles or his vessel. in fact he was about to carry her off as a prize when hippocles, still without discovering himself, produced the pass with which he had been provided under the seal of the athenian authorities. his arrival at mitylene was happily timed in more ways than one. by a stroke of that good fortune which is proverbially said to help the bold it so happened that there was a violent north-east wind blowing. this was a wind from which the harbor of mitylene afforded little or no shelter. in fact, when it was blowing, most sailors preferred to be out on the open sea. hippocles accordingly found everything in commotion. the blockading ships, which moored as they were across the mouth of the harbor, felt the full force of the wind, were anxious about their moorings, and had little attention to give to any strange ship. the _skylark_ was in fact hardly noticed in the darkness and confusion, and actually got beyond the line of the blockading galleys, and as far as the admiral's ship, without being challenged. for a few moments he thought of boldly pushing on to the inner part of the harbor, where, as has been said, the remainder of the athenian fleet was lying hauled up under the walls; but when he was hailed by a voice from a spartan ship, one of two that lay almost directly in his way, he abandoned the idea. "anaxilaus, merchant of cos, to see the admiral, on business of importance," was his reply to the challenge. at the last moment he dropped his anchor. a few minutes afterward, he came on board the admiral's galley and reported himself to that officer. it would be unjust to callicratidas--for this was the admiral's name--to describe him as a model spartan. he was rather a model greek. the spartans had great virtues which however, it is curious to observe, seldom survived transplantation from their native soil.[ ] they were frugal, temperate, and just; but they were narrow in their habits of thought and their conceptions of duty. a good soldier whose efficiency was not diminished by any vice was their ideal man. they could not enter into any large and liberal views of life. and their views of statesmanship whether as regarded their own city or the whole race in general were as narrow as were their notions of private virtue. they sometimes showed a great amount of diplomatic skill, a strange contrast with the bluntness which was their traditional characteristic, but of wide and general views they seem to have been incapable. yet callicratidas seems to have been an exception. we know comparatively little about him. he emerges from absolute obscurity at the beginning of the year with which my story opens, and it is only for a few months that he plays a conspicuous part in history, but from now up to the hour when we see him for the last time, all his words and acts are marked with a rare nobility. it was not difficult for hippocles to invent a story which should account for his presence at mitylene. the domestic politics of almost every greek state were mixed up with the great struggle that was going on between athens and sparta. everywhere the democratic party looked to athens as its champion, the aristocratic to sparta. this was especially true of the states which were called the allies but were really the subjects or tributaries of athens. a turn of the political wheels that brought the aristocrats to the top was commonly followed by a revolt from the sovereign state; when, as was usually the case, they remained underneath, they busied themselves in plotting for a change, and their first step was to open communications with the spartan general or admiral in command. in cos the popular or pro-athenian party was in the ascendant, and their opponents were weak. the fact was that the spartans were not in good repute there. six years before their admiral astyochus had plundered the island laying hands impartially on the property of friends and of foes. still there was a party which remained faithful to sparta, and hippocles preferred to speak as their representative. his wide-spread connections as a merchant--and cos had a large trade with its famous vintages and equally famous woven stuffs--gave him a knowledge of details and persons that would have deceived a far more acute and suspicious person than callicratidas. the merchant began the conversation by offering the admiral a present of wine, and one of those almost transparent robes of silk that were a specialty of the island. "i will not be so churlish as to refuse what you have the good will to offer me," said callicratidas, "but you must understand that i do not accept these things for myself. i accept no personal gifts; it is a dangerous practice, and has given rise to much scandal. i shall send them to sparta, and the magistrates will dispose of them as they think fit. what is this?" he went on, taking up the robe and holding it between his eyes and the lamp. "what do you use it for? for straining the wine?" hippocles explained that it was a material for garments. "garments!" exclaimed the spartan, "why, we might as well wear a spider's web. it is not clothing at all. it neither warms nor covers. is it possible that there are people so foolish as to spend their money on it? it is costly, i suppose?" "as you ask me," replied hippocles, "i may say that it costs about two minas a yard." "two minas a yard!" cried callicratidas, whose spartan frugality was scandalized at such a price. "why," he added after a short calculation, "it is very nearly a seaman's pay for a year,[ ] are there many who buy such costly stuff?" "a dress of this material is the top of the fashion for ladies in athens and corinth." "what?" said the spartan, "do women wear such things? it is incredible. i have always thought that things had changed for the worse at home, but we have not got as far as that. and now for your business." hippocles explained that there was a dissatisfied party in cos which was very anxious to get rid of athenian rule. "we are not strong enough," he went on, "to do it of ourselves, but send on a force and we will open the gates to you. cos is a strong place now, since the athenians fortified it, and, i should think, quite worth having." "and if we put you in power," said the admiral, "you would begin, i suppose, by putting all your opponents to death." callicratidas was quite a different person from what hippocles, with his former experience of spartans in command, had expected to find. his disinterestedness, simplicity and directness were embarrassing, and made him not a little ashamed of the part that he was playing. he would have dearly liked to speak out of his own heart to a man who was transparently honest and well-meaning, but in his position it was impossible. "we have, as you may suppose, sir," he said in answer to this last suggestion, "a great many injuries to avenge, but we should not wish to do anything that does not meet with your approval." "the whole thing does not meet with my approval," said the spartan, "i hate these perpetual plots; i hate to see every city divided against itself, and see the big persons in greece hounding them on to bloody deeds, and making our own gain out of them. i wish to all the gods that i could do something to bring this wretched war to an end. why should not athens and sparta be friends as they were in the old days? surely that would be better than our going on flying at each others' throats as we have been doing for now nearly twenty years past, while the persian stands by, and laughs to see us play his game. where should we be--you seem an honest man, by your face, though i cannot say that i particularly like the errand on which you have come--where should we be, i ask, if we had shown this accursed folly twenty-odd years ago, when xerxes brought up all asia against us? as it was we stood shoulder to shoulder, and greece was saved. and now we have to go cap in hand, and beg of the very persians who are only biding their time to make slaves of us. i tell you, sir, i feel hot with shame at the thought of what i have had myself to put up with in this way. when i came here i found the pay-chest empty; i don't want to complain of anybody, so i won't say how this came about; but that was the fact, it was empty; the men had had no wages for some time, and they would very soon have had no food. i asked my officers for advice. 'you must go to cyrus,' they said, 'cyrus is paymaster.'[ ] it was a bitter draught to swallow, but i managed to get it down. i went to his palace at sardis. 'tell your master,' i said to the slave who came to the door, a gorgeous creature whose dress i am sure i could not afford to buy, 'tell your master that callicratidas, admiral of the spartan fleet, is here, and wishes to speak with him.' the fellow left me standing outside, and went to deliver his message. after i had waited till my patience was almost exhausted, the man came back, and said 'cyrus is not at leisure to see you. he is drinking.' well, i put up with that. 'very good,' i said, 'i will wait till he has done drinking.' i thought that i would go earlier the next day, though even then it was scarcely an hour after noon. so i went at a time when i thought that he could not possibly have taken to his cups, and asked again to see him. this time they had not the grace even to make an excuse. 'cyrus is not at leisure to see you,' was the answer, and nothing more. that was more than i could stand, and i went away. i vowed that day, and believe me it was not only because i had myself been insulted, that if i lived to go home, i would do my very best to bring sparta and athens together again. and now, sir, as to your business. i will send home a report of what you say. if the authorities direct me to take any action in the matter, i shall do my best to take it with effect, but i tell you frankly that this idea does not commend itself to me, and let me give you a bit of advice: do your best to make peace in your city, as i shall do my best to make peace in greece. depend upon it, that if we don't, we shall have some one coming down upon us from outside. it may be the persian, though he does not seem to me to have improved as a soldier; it may be the macedonian, who is a sturdy fellow, and helps us already to fight our battles. whoever it is he will find us helpless with an endless quarrel and will make short work with us. and now good night." hippocles left the spartan admiral full of admiration for his manly and patriotic temper, and not at all pleased that he had been obliged to play a false part with a man so transparently honest. about an hour after midnight the harbor was alarmed by the cry that the ship from cos had parted from her moorings. hippocles had taken advantage of a temporary increase in the force of the wind to cut his cables, and to drift toward the athenian part of the harbor. nobody was able to answer the cry for help, even if it had not been purposely raised too late. the _skylark_ had run the blockade, and conon knew that he was to be relieved. footnotes: [ ] the instances in which a spartan general sent to fill some office abroad seemed to lose all self-restraint and all sense of shame are deplorably numerous. pausanias, the spartan who commanded at platæa, and was afterwards banished for treacherous dealings with the persians, was the first conspicuous example of this national failing, as it may be called; but it was an example often followed. the spartan governors in allied or conquered cities were almost proverbial for profligacy, tyranny and corruption. [ ] a seaman was paid four obols a day, the rate having been increased by the liberality of cyrus from three to four. five obols went to the drachma, and a hundred drachmas to the mina. [ ] this was the prince commonly called the younger cyrus, the second of the two sons of darius nothus, king of persia, by his queen parysatis. he had come down about a year and a half before the time of which i am writing to take the government of a large portion of asia minor, viz: lydia, phrygia, and cappadocia. he was strongly pro-spartan in his views, and as has been explained in a previous note, had increased the rate furnished by the persian treasury to the spartan fleet. but lysander, in his anger at being suspended in the command, had, with the selfishness, characteristic of spartan officers, paid back to cyrus all the money that had been furnished for the pay of the sailors. chapter vi. arginusÆ. at athens, meanwhile, the relieving fleet was being fitted out with a feverish energy such as had never been witnessed within the memory of man. nine years before, indeed, preparations on a larger scale, if cost and magnificence are to be taken into account, had been made for the disastrous expedition against syracuse; but there was all the difference in the world between the temper of the city at the one time and at the other. athens was at the height of her strength and her wealth when she sent out her armament, splendid, so to speak, with silver and gold, against syracuse. it was a mighty effort, but she did it, one may almost say, out of the superfluity of her strength. now she was sadly reduced in population and in revenue; she was struggling not for conquest but for life; she was making her last effort, and spending on it her last talent, her last man. to find a juster parallel it would have been necessary to go back a life-time, to the day when the athenians gave up their homes and the temples of their gods to the persian invaders, falling back on their last defences, the "wooden walls" of their ships. many men had heard from father or grandfather, it was just possible that one or two tottering veterans may have seen with their own eyes, how on that day a band of youths, the very flower of the athenian aristocracy, headed by cimon, the son of miltiades, had marched with a gay alacrity through the weeping multitude, to hang up their bridles in the temple of athene. for the time the goddess needed not horsemen but seamen, and they gave her the service that she asked for. now the same sight was seen again. again the knights, the well-born and wealthy citizens of athens, dedicated their bridles to the patron goddess, and went to serve as mariners on board the fleet. every ship that could float was hastily repaired and equipped. old hulks that had been lying in dock since the palmy days when the veteran phormion[ ] led the fleet of athens to certain victory, were launched again and manned. in this way the almost unprecedented number[ ] of one hundred and ten triremes were got ready. to man these a general levy of the population was made. every one within the age of service not actually disabled by sickness, was taken to form the crews, and not a few who had passed the limit volunteered. even then the quota had to be made up by slaves, who were promised their freedom in return for their services. it was a stupendous effort, and one which athens made with her own strength. these were not mercenaries, but her own sons whom she was sending out to make their last struggle for life. night and day the preparations were carried on, and before a month was out from the day on which the tidings of the disaster at mitylene reached the city, the fleet was ready to sail. its destination was samos, an island that had remained faithful to athens even after the disastrous end of the war in sicily. here it was joined by a contingent of forty ships, made up of the same squadron scattered about the Ægean, the two triremes of diomedon[ ] being among them. diomedon was related to callias, and the young man asked and obtained leave from the captain with whom he had sailed from athens to transfer himself to his ship. a battle was imminent. the spartan admiral had left fifty ships to maintain the blockade of mitylene, and sailed to meet the relieving force. his numbers were inferior, but pride, and perhaps policy, forbade him to decline the combat. he had made a haughty boast to conon, and he had to make it good. "the sea is sparta's bride," he had said. "i will stop your insults to her." his fleet was now off cape malta, the south-eastern promontory of lesbos. the athenians had taken up their position at some little islands between it and the mainland, the arginusæ, or white cliffs, as the name may be translated, a name destined to become notable as the scene of the great city's last victory. callicratidas had watched the arrival of the athenians, and had concluded that, according to the usual custom of greek sailors, they would take their evening meal on shore. before long the fires lighted over all the group of islets showed that he was right. his own men had supped, and they were ordered to embark in all haste and make an attack which would probably be a surprise. what success his bold and energetic action would have had we can only guess. the stars in their courses fought against him. a violent thunderstorm with heavy rain came on, and prevented him from putting to sea. the next day was fine and calm and the two fleets were early afloat. their arrangement and plan of action showed a curious contrast, a contrast such as was almost enough to make one of the great athenian seamen of the past turn in his grave. the athenian ships were massed together; the spartans and their allies were formed in a single line. callias, who had never before been present at a great sea-fight, but who had taken pains to acquire as much professional knowledge as he could, expressed his surprise to diomedon. "how is this, sir?" he said, "how can our ships maneuver when they are packed together in this fashion?" diomedon, an old sailor who had been afloat for nearly forty years, smiled somewhat bitterly as he answered. "maneuver, my dear boy! that is exactly what we want to avoid. we can't do it ourselves, and we don't mean to let our enemies do it, if it can be helped. the generation that could manoeuver is gone. five and twenty years of fighting have used it up. but, happily, we can still fight, at least such a fleet as we have got to-day, the real athenian grit, can fight. if the weather holds fine, and i think it will for the day, though i don't quite like the looks of the sky, we shall do well, because we shall be able to keep together." the arrangement of the athenian line may be very briefly described. it had two strong wings, each consisting of sixty ships, formed in four squadrons of fifteen. these wings consisted wholly of athenian galleys; the contingents of the allies were posted in the centre, and were in single line, either because they were better sailors, or because, as being directly in front of the group of islets, they were protected by their position. the policy of the athenian commander was successful. arginusæ was not a battle of skillful maneuvers, but of hard fighting. such battles are often determined by the fate of the general, and so it was that day. callicratidas, had that pride of valor which had often done such great things for sparta and for greece, but which some times resulted in immediate disaster. his sailing master, a man of megara, had advised him to decline a battle. a rapid survey of the position, of the numbers of the enemy and of the tactics which they were evidently intending to pursue, had convinced this skillful, experienced seaman, that the chances were against him. callicratidas would not listen to him. "if i perish," he said, "sparta will not be one whit the worse off." it was the answer of a man who was as modest as he was brave; but it was not to the point. sparta would be a great deal worse off if she lost not only him--and he was worth considering--but, as actually happened, nearly the half of her fleet. the signal to advance was passed along the line, and the admiral himself took up his place in the foremost ship. the whole fleet could see him as he stood a conspicuous figure in the lead. his stately and chivalrous presence, the feeling that a man whom it was a privilege to follow anywhere, gave, for a time, an effective encouragement. but the loss was proportionately great when that presence was removed. early in the day his ship endeavored to ram that which carried the athenian admiral diomedon, itself in the van of the opposing force. diomedon himself was at the rudder and managed his galley with remarkable skill. he avoided or rather half avoided the blow of the enemy's boat, and this in such a way that the spartan admiral lost his balance, and fell into the water. callias, who was standing on the rear of the athenian galley, at the head of a detachment of men ready either to board or to repel boarders, endeavored to save him; but the weight of his armor was fatal. he sank almost instantaneously. his death, it is easy to believe, cost athens even more than it cost sparta. it would have been infinitely better for her to fall into his hands than to have to sue for terms, as she did not many months afterwards, to the less generous lysander. the battle lasted for several hours. about noon the weather became threatening. the wind changed to the south-west and the sea began to rise. by general consent the struggle was suspended. both sides had fought with conspicuous valor, but there could be no doubt that the victory remained with the athenians. their losses were serious, nearly a fifth of their force, or to give the numbers exactly, twenty-nine ships out of one hundred and fifty. but they had inflicted much more damage than they had suffered. out of the small squadron of spartan ships, ten in number, nine had been destroyed; and more than sixty belonging to the various allied contingents were either sunk or taken. the fifty that remained--and there were barely fifty of them--made the best of their way either to the friendly island of chios, or to phocæa on the mainland. without doubt the athenians had won a great victory. whether the opportunity could have been used to restore permanently the fortunes of the city, is doubtful; but it is certain that it was lamentably wasted. footnotes: [ ] phormion won some brilliant victories in the corinthian gulf in the early years of the war. he died prematurely, it would seem about b. c. [ ] the number of triremes contributed by athens to the greek fleet of salamis was one hundred and eighty, but this comprised, of course, literally every ship that they possessed. in the expedition against syracuse, the triremes numbered one hundred and thirty-four. [ ] diomedon was the officer in command of samos, and had already attempted with the twelve ships that composed his squadron, to relieve conon. his force was so inferior to that of the spartans that he could only have hoped to succeed by eluding their observations. accordingly he had avoided the harbors and endeavored to make his way up a narrow channel, known by the common name of "euripus" (a channel with a swift current) by which mitylene could be approached. callicratidas, however, had discovered the maneuver and captured ten out of the twelve ships. chapter vii. after the fight. a council of war was held by the athenian admirals on one of the arginusæ islets as soon as they could meet after the fighting had come to an end. callias, by diomedon's desire, waited outside the tent in which the deliberations were being held, and could not help hearing, so high were the voices of the speakers raised, that there was an angry argument about the course to be pursued. the intolerably clumsy system of having ten generals of equal authority was on its trial, if indeed any trial was needed, and was once more found wanting.[ ] even if the right decision should be reached, time was being wasted, time that, as we shall see, was of a value absolutely incalculable. when at last the council broke up--its deliberations had lasted for more than an hour--and diomedon rejoined the young officer, he wore a gloomy and anxious look. "i am afraid," he said, "that mischief will come of this. i feel it so strongly that, though i ought not, perhaps, to tell outside the council what has been going on within, i must call you to witness. i did my very best to persuade my colleagues. 'our first business,' i said, 'is to save our friends. there were twenty-six ships, i said, disabled. a few were sunk on the spot; others, i am afraid, have gone down since; but more than half, i hope, are still afloat. even where the ship is gone already, there are sure to be some of the crew who have been able to keep themselves afloat either by swimming or by holding on to floating stuff. for the sake of the gods, gentlemen,'--i give you my very words--'don't lose another moment. we have lost too many already. send every seaworthy ship that you have got to the rescue of the shipwrecked. it is better to let ten enemies escape, than lose a single friend.' they would not listen to me. they were bent, they said, on following up their victory, an excellent thing, i allow; but only when the first duty of making all that you have got quite safe has been performed. one of them--i will mention no names--positively insulted me. 'diomedon,' he said, 'has doubtless had enough fighting for the day.' why, in the name of athene, do they put such lowbred villains into office. the fellow has a long tongue, and so the people elect him. i 'tired of fighting' indeed? i might have some excuse if i were, for i was hard at it, when he was a thievish boy, picking up unconsidered trifles in the market-place. well; the end of it was that we came to a sort of compromise. forty-odd ships are to go and save what can be saved from the wrecks--the gods only know how many will be left by this time--while the rest are to make the best of their way to mitylene, and cut off the blockading squadron." "and you, sir?" asked callias, "with which squadron are you to be?" "i am to go to mitylene, of course, after what that fellow said, i could not ask to have the other duty; but i feel that it is what i ought to be doing." "who is to have it, sir," said callias. "no one, if you will believe it," answered the admiral, with an angry stamp of the foot. "i mean no one of ourselves, of the ten. they are all so anxious to follow up the victory, as they put it, and make a great show of taking spartan ships, that they will not take the trouble. theramenes and thrasybulus are to do it. i know that they have been in command in former years and may be supposed to be competent. thrasybulus, too, is trustworthy; but theramenes--to put it plainly--is a scoundrel. you know that i don't care about politics; i am a plain sailor and leave such things to others; but i say this, politics or no politics, a man who turns against his friends is a scoundrel.[ ] i don't know what trick he is not capable of playing. anyhow, whether these two do the business ill or well, one of the ten ought to go. it would be better; and i am sure trouble will come of our not going. mind this is all in confidence. you are never to breathe a word of it, till i give you leave." "and am i to go with you, sir?" said callias. "no," was the answer; "i forgot to tell you; the worry of all this put it out of my mind. you are to take the despatch to athens." "but the shipwrecked men"--exclaimed callias. "we must obey orders." an hour afterward callias was on his way to athens; the storm had now increased to something like a gale. as the waves came from the south it was impossible to take a straight course for the point in view, lying as it did almost due west. few ships in those days could keep a straight line with the wind on the quarter.[ ] indeed it was soon impossible to keep up any sail at all, nor was it safe, even if the strength of the rowers already wearied by the labors of the day, had permitted it to keep the ship broadside to the waves. nothing remained but to put her about and drive before the wind, a sail being now hoisted again and the rowers exerting themselves to the utmost to avoid being "pooped" by the heavy waves. toward morning the wind moderated, but by that time the _swallow_, for that was the name of the despatch-boat which had been told off for the service, had been driven as much as fifty miles out of her course. this would not have been of much consequence, but that the timber of the _swallow_ had been so strained by her battle with the sea that she began to leak inconveniently, if not dangerously. her crew, too, were now in urgent need of rest. under ordinary circumstances, chios, which could be seen, as the day broke, about ten miles on the right bow, would have afforded a convenient shelter; but chios was in the hands of the enemy. the little island of vara, lying some ten miles to the north-west, was the only alternative. here callias, much against his will, for he feared that his news would be anticipated, was compelled to stop, the captains of the despatch-boat refusing to proceed, until vessel and men were better able to face the weather. as it turned out, the delay did no harm. in fact it was the means of his reaching athens with more speed and safety than he might otherwise have done. a day indeed was lost in doing such repairs as the imperfect resources of the little island permitted, but on the morrow, callias set out again, and was groaning over the day that had been lost, and the very little good that the clumsy boat-builders had been able to do for him, when he found himself being rapidly overhauled by a vessel which had not long before hove in sight. before noon he recognized the cut of the disguised _skylark_, and at once ran up a signal which hippocles whom he supposed to be on board would, he knew, recognize. the signal was immediately answered, and before another half-hour had passed the _skylark_ was along-side. after a brief colloquy it was arranged that the _swallow_ should make the best of her way to samos, where there was an arsenal in which she could be properly repaired and that callias with his dispatches should take his passage to athens in the yacht. hippocles was acquainted with the general fact that the athenian fleet had won a great victory; but he knew no details, and was eager to hear from the lips of one who had taken a part in the action. and he had much that was interesting to say to his young friend. the three weeks which he had spent in mitylene with the blockaded squadron had not made him hopeful about the first issue of the war. he had found that conon was not hopeful, and conon was as able and intelligent an officer as athens had in her service. "this has been a stupendous effort on the part of the city," he said, "and it has saved us for a time, but it can't be kept, and it can't be repeated. athens is like a gambler reduced to his last stake. he wins it; very good. but then he has to throw again; and as often as he throws, it is the same--if he loses, he loses all. and, sooner or later, lose he must. in the long run the chances are against us. we have lost our _morale_. i saw a good deal of conon's men when i was shut up, and i thought very badly of them; and he thinks badly, too, i know. it is only a question of time. do you know," he went on, sinking his voice to a whisper--"and mark you, this is a thing that i should not venture to say to anyone in the world but you--i am half inclined to wish that we had been beaten in the last battle--that is, if callicratidas had lived. a noble fellow indeed! do you know that he let the athenians whom he took at methymna go on their _parole_? any one else would have sold them for slaves." "well," said callias, who was a little staggered by his friend's view of affairs, "as your hero is drowned--mind that i quite agree in what you say of him--perhaps it is better that things have turned out as they have. and i can't believe that our chances are as bad as you make out. anyhow we are better off than when i saw you last." "i hope so; i hope so;" said hippocles in a despondent tone, "but they might have done better. for instance, we have let the blockading squadron at mitylene escape." "how was that?" asked callias. "did you see nothing of our fleet. it was to sail northward at once." "no--i never saw or heard of it. now listen to what happened. on the day after the battle--though of course i knew nothing of what happened--_two_ despatch-boats came into the harbor--so at least everyone thought--and the second had wreaths on mast and stern, as if it had brought good news. and eteonicus--he was in command of the blockading squadron--was good enough to send us a herald with the intelligence that callicratidas had won a great sea fight, and that the whole of the athenian fleet had been destroyed. of course we did not quite believe that, but if only a quarter of it was true, it was not pleasant hearing. my old sailing master, who has as sharp eyes as any man i know, said to me. 'my belief, sir, is that it is all nonsense about this great victory, and that the second boat was only the first _dressed up_. i observed them both particularly, and they were amazingly alike. in both the bow sides oars were just a little behind the stroke, and one of the oars, i noticed, was a new one, and not painted like the rest. and why should the man take the trouble to tell us about the victory as he calls it. if it is true, he has us safe, and can cut us up at his leisure. no, sir, i don't believe a word of it.' well, i was not certain that the old man was right, but i strongly suspected that he was. anyhow i was so convinced of it that i spent the whole night in getting ready; and, sure enough, the next morning the blockading squadron had slipped off, with nobody to hinder them." "that was a very smart trick for a spartan," said callias. footnotes: [ ] i may refer my readers to a signal instance in earlier greek history where the same system almost led to disaster. it was only by the unusual personal influence of miltiades, a personal influence almost unparalleled in athenian history, that thus the ten generals were induced to fight at marathon. there can be little doubt that, if the conflict had been delayed the pro-persian party might have seriously hampered, if it did not altogether defeat, the efforts of the patriots. [ ] theramenes had taken a prominent part four years before this date in the establishment of the oligarchy of the four hundred; finding that his own position was not such as he conceived to be suited to his merits, and having reason also to believe that the oligarchy would soon be overthrown--the fleet had declared against them--he changed sides and was the means of bringing up the condemnation of two of his own intimate friends, antiphon and archeptolemus. [ ] catullus mentions it as a special excellence of his yacht that it could "carry its load o'er stormy seas whether from right or left the breeze call o'er the main, as safe and fleet over course, as when, on either sheet with equal strength blew fair behind, with level keel the following wind." chapter viii. the news at athens. the _skylark_ excelled herself in the display of her sailing qualities. thanks to this, callias, in spite of the untoward delays which had occurred on his journey, was the first to bring intelligence of the victory to athens. the news ran like wild fire through the city, gathering, as may be supposed, a vast number of imaginary details, as it passed from mouth to mouth, and the assembly which was called by proclamation for the next day, to hear the reading of the despatches, was, considering the empty condition of the city, most unusually crowded. no one who could crawl to the market-place was absent, and all the entrances and approaches were thronged by women, children, and slaves. the first stress of fear had been relieved, for it was known that a victory had been won; but there was still much room for anxiety. the victory had not been gained without cost--no victories ever were--and it was only too probable that in this case the cost had been heavy. the despatch was brief and formal. it told the numbers engaged, and the order of formation, with the number of hostile vessels captured or sunk. it mentioned the fact that there had been losses on the side of the conquerors, and promised details when there should have been time to ascertain the facts. after the assembly had been dismissed, callias was overwhelmed with enquiries. to these he thought it well to return very vague answers. the fact was that there was much that he knew and much that he did not know. he knew the name of more than one of the ships that had been sunk or disabled. two or three had been run down before his eyes. about others he had information almost equally certain. he could have told some of his questioners what would have confirmed their worst fears. on the other hand he could not give anything like a complete list of the losses. some enquirers he could reassure. he had seen or even talked to their friends after the battle. all the admirals, he knew, were safe. and steps, he was sure, had been taken to rescue the shipwrecked crews. on the subject of diomedon's fears he preserved absolute silence. if any disaster had happened, it was only too sure to be heard of before long. on the evening of the day of assembly a great banquet was held in the prytaneum, or town-hall of athens. such a banquet was always an interesting sight, and on this occasion callias, as he witnessed it for the first time, also saw it to the very greatest advantage. all the public guests[ ] of the city that were not absent on active service or were not positively hindered from coming by age or infirmity were present. the ranks of these veterans were indeed sadly thinned. the war had been curiously deadly to officers high in command. the fatal expedition to sicily had swept off many of the most distinguished. others had fallen in the "little wars" in which athens like all states that have wide dominions had been perpetually involved. one famous survivor of a generation that had long since passed away was there, myronides, the victor of oenophyta. the old man had been born in the marathon year, and was therefore now eighty-four. his life, it will be seen, embraced with remarkable exactitude the period of the greatness of athens. the victory that had made him famous had been won fifty-one years before, and had been, so to speak, the "high water mark" of athenian dominion.[ ] he had lived to see almost its lowest ebb, though happily for himself as he died before the year was out, he was spared from seeing the absolute ruin of his country. callias was distantly related to him and was on terms of as close a friendship as the difference of age permitted with his son eteonicus, one of the ablest and most patriotic statesmen of the time. after the libation which was the usual signal for the wine drinking, had been poured, the old man rose from his place, as his habit was, and walked down the hall, touching our hero on his shoulder as he passed. "come," he said, as callias looked up, "if you can spare half an hour from the wine cup to bear an old man company." the young man immediately left his place and accompanied the veteran to one of the small chambers leading from the hall. "and now tell me all about it," he said, when they were seated. callias gave him as full an account as he could of all that he had seen during the campaign. myronides plied him with questions that showed an intelligence of unabated vigor. the armament and sailing qualities of the ships, the _morale_ and _physique_ of the crews, every detail, in fact, that concerned the efficiency of the force that athens had in the field, were subjects of liveliest interest to the old man. when he had heard all that his young kinsman had to say, he heaved a deep sigh. "ah! my dear boy," he said, "things have come to a pretty pass with athens. as an old soldier i know what some of the things that you tell me mean better than you do yourself. we are near the beginning of the end, and i can only hope that i shall be gone when the end itself comes. i don't mean that this is not a great victory that diomedon and the rest of them have won; but it is a victory that will never be won again. in the very nature of things it can not. do you think that the old men and boys that i won the day with at oenophyta[ ] would have sufficed for a regular force, a force that the city could rely on? of course not. i could not even have afforded to risk the chance if they had not had something strong behind them. but now what is there? old men and boys, and nothing behind them. the slaves, you say? very good; they fought very well, i hear. and of course they will get their freedom. do you think that they will fight as well again after they have got it? why should they? a man may as well die as be a slave, and so they might very well risk their lives to get free. but, once free, why should they risk them again?" "what!" cried callias, "not to keep the spartans out of athens?" "you talk as an athenian," said the old man, "and they are not athenians. you and i, i allow, would sooner die than see spartans within the walls: but what would it matter to them? they could eat and drink, buy and sell just as comfortably whoever might be their masters. yes, my son; it is all over with a city that has to fall back on its slaves. there is only one chance, and that is to make peace _now_, before we lose all that we have gained. but what chance is there of that? is there any one who would even dare to propose such a thing?" "you would, sir," said the young man. "yes, i might; but to what profit? i don't suppose they would do me any harm. 'poor old man!' they would say, 'he dotes.' but as for listening to me--i know better than that. is there one of the responsible statesmen who would venture to give such advice? would my son eteonicus venture? not he; and yet he is a sensible and honest young man, and knows that i am right. but it would be as much as his life, or, what he values more, his whole career is worth, to hint at such thing. oh! what opportunities i have seen lost in this way. unfortunately a victory makes the athenians quite impracticable.[ ] they don't seem capable of realizing that the wheel is certain to take a turn. but you have had enough of an old man's croakings. the gods grant that these things may turn out better than my fears! and now give me your arm to the gate, where my people will be waiting for me." callias conducted the old man to the door, and saw him put safely into the litter which was waiting for him. he then stood meditating how he should dispose of himself for the rest of the evening. he was unwilling to return to the banquet. questions would be put to him, he knew, by many of the guests to which it would be difficult either to give or to refuse an answer. he would gladly, indeed, have hidden himself altogether till the fuller despatches should have arrived, which would relieve him of the necessity of playing any longer the difficult part which had been imposed upon him. his thoughts naturally turned to hippocles and hermione, and he had already taken some steps in the direction of the peiraeus, when the thought occurred to him that he was scarcely on terms of such intimacy with the family as would warrant a visit at so late an hour. as he stood irresolute, the door of a neighboring house opened, and a party of four young men issued from it into the street. "ah!" cried one of them, "'tis the sober callias. seize him, glaucus and eudaemon, and make him come with us." the two men addressed ran up to our hero, and laid hold each of an arm. "you are a prisoner of my spear," said the first speaker, whose name, i may say, was ctesiphon, "and may as well submit to your fate with as much grace as possible. you shall not suffer anything unendurable, and shall be released at the proper time. meanwhile you must join our expedition." "i submit," said callias, willing, perhaps, to have the question that had been puzzling him settled for him. "but tell me, if i have to follow you, whither you are bound." "we are going to the house of euctemon, where there will be something, i know, worth seeing and hearing." "but i am a stranger," said callias. "a stranger!" cried ctesiphon, "you are no such thing. the man who brings good news to athens is the friend of everybody. besides euctemon is my first cousin, and he is always pleased to see my friends. you should have been at his dinner, but that there was no room on his couches for more guests. but now when the tables are removed[ ] we shall easily find places. but come along or we shall lose something." there was no want of heartiness in euctemon's greeting to his new guests. to callias he was especially polite, making room for him on his own couch. when the new arrivals were settled in their places, the host clapped his hands. a white-haired freedman, who acted as major-domo, appeared. "we are ready for stephanos," said euctemon. a few minutes afterwards a figure appeared, so curiously like the traditional representations of homer that every one was startled. stephanos was a rhapsodist, or professional writer, and he had made it one of the aims of his life to imitate as closely as he could the most distinguished member that his profession could boast. in early life he had been a school master, and an accident, if we may so describe a blow from the staff of a haughty young aristocrat, whom he had ventured to chastise, had deprived him of sight. his professional education had included the knowledge of the authors whom the greeks looked upon as classics, homer holding the first place among them, and he was glad to turn this knowledge to account, when he was no longer able to teach. in this occupation too his blindness could be utilized. it had its usual effect of strengthening the memory, and it helped him to look the part, which, as has been said, he aspired to play. the blind minstrel was guided to the seat which had been reserved for him in the middle of the company by an attendant, who also carried his harp. "what shall we have, gentlemen?" asked the host. "you will hardly find anything worth learning that stephanos does not know." the guests had various tastes, so various that it seemed very difficult to make a choice. one wanted the story of the cyclops, another the tale as told by demodocus to alcinous and the phæacian princes, of the loves of ares and aphrodite. a third, of a more sober turn of mind, called for one of the didactic poems of solon, and a fourth would have one of the martial elegies with which the old athenian bard tyrtaeus stirred, as was said, the spirits of the spartan warriors. "let callias, the bringer of good news, name it," said euctemon, after some dozen suggestions had been made. the proposal was received with a murmur of approval. the young man thought for a moment. then a happy idea struck him. about a year before there had occurred an incident which had roused the deepest feeling in athens. the aged sophocles, accused by his son iophon before a court of his clansmen, of imbecility and incapacity for managing his affairs, had recited as a sufficient vindication of his powers, a noble chorus from a play which he was then composing, the last and ripest fruit of his genius--the "oedipus in colonus." the verses had had a singular success, as indeed they deserved to have, in catching the popular fancy. they were exquisitely beautiful, and they were full of patriotic pride. every one had them on his lips; and before they had time to grow hackneyed, the interest in them had been revived by the death of the veteran poet himself. "let us have the 'praises of athens' by sophocles the son of sophilus of colonus." the choice met with a shout of applause. the minstrel played a brief prelude on his harp in the dorian or martial mood,[ ] and then began: "swell the song of praise again; other boons demand my strain, other blessings we inherit, granted by the mighty spirit; on the sea and on the shore, ours the bridle and the oar. son of chronos old whose sway stormy winds and waves obey, thine be heaven's well-earned meed, tamer of the champing steed; first he wore on attic plain bit of steel and curbing rein. oft too, o'er the water blue, athens strains thy laboring crew; practiced hands the barks are plying, oars are bending, spray is flying, sunny waves beneath them glancing. sportive myriads round them dancing, with their hundred feet in motion, twinkling 'mid the foam of ocean." he concluded amidst thunders of applause, the reference to the fleet being especially rewarded with a purse from the host and a shower of gold pieces from the guests. other recitations followed, not all, it must be confessed, in so elevated a strain; each was produced with a few bars of music appropriate to its character. the next entertainment was of a less intellectual kind. now dancers were introduced into the room by the trainer who had taught them, and whose slaves in fact they were. the man was a red-faced, bloated looking creature, who, however, had been very active in his time, and could still display a wonderful amount of agility when he was engaged in teaching his pupils. the dancers were brother and sister, twins, and curiously alike, though the boy was nearly a half-head taller, and generally on a larger scale than the girl. the performance commenced with a duet of the harps and the flute. the harp, a small instrument not larger than a violin was played by the boy, the flute by a female player, who had come into the room along with the dancers. after a while the harp became silent, the flute continuing to give out a very marked measure. to this the girl began to dance, whirling hoops into the air as she moved, and catching them as they fell. many were in the air at once, and the girl neither made a single step out of time nor let a single hoop fall to the ground. a more difficult and exciting performance followed. the flute-player changed the character of her music. the lydian measure which had been admirably suited to the graceful steps of the dance gave place to the swift phrygian scale, wild and fantastic music such as might move the devotees of cybele or dionysus to the mysterious duties of their worship. at the same time an attendant of the trainer brought in a large hoop, studded round its inner circle with pointed blades. the girl commenced to dance again with steps that grew quicker and quicker with the music, till, as it reached a climax of sound, she leapt through the hoop. the flute-player paused for a moment, as the dancer turned to recover her breath, her bosom rising and falling rapidly, and her eyes flashing with excitement. then the music and the dance began again, with the same _crescendo_ of sound and motion, till the same culminating point was reached, and the same perilous leap repeated. the spectators watched the scene with breathless interest; but it was an exhibition that was scarcely suited to greek taste. a greek could be even horribly cruel on occasions, but a cruel spectacle--and spectacles that depend for their attraction on the danger to the performer are critically cruel--offended their artistic taste. the company began to feel a little uneasy, and euctemon finally interrupted the festival when after the second leap had been sucessfully accomplished he signed to the flute-player to cease her music. "child," he said to the dancer, "aphrodite and the graces would never forgive me, if you were to come to any harm in my house. it is enough; you have shown us that no one could be more skilful or more graceful than you." the boy and girl now performed together in what was called the pyrrhic or war dance. each carried a light shield and spear, made of silvered tin. they represented two warriors engaged in single combat. each took in turn the part of the assailant and the assailed, the one darting forward the spear which had been carefully made incapable of doing any harm, the other either receiving the blow upon his shield or avoiding it with agile movements of the body.[ ] the flute-player accompanied the dance with a very lovely and spirited tune, while the company looked on with the greatest admiration, so agile, so dexterous, and so invariably graceful were the motions of the two dancers. when the boy and girl had retired, and while the guests were again devoting themselves to the wine, callias was accosted by a neighbor with whose handsome features, characterized as they were by a gravity not often seen in young athenians, he was familiar, though he did not happen ever to have made his acquaintance. "i am about to retire," said the stranger, "and if i may presume so far, i would recommend you to do the same. our host is hospitable and generous, and has other virtues which i need not enumerate; but his entertainments are apt to become after a certain hour in the night such as no modest young man--and such from your face i judge you to be--would willingly be present at. so far we have had an excellent and blameless entertainment; but why not depart. what say you?" "that i am ready to go with you," answered callias. "my friend ctesiphon brought me hither, and i know nothing of our host except the report of his riches and liberality." "what! are you going?" cried the host, as the two young men rose from their places. "nay, but you are losing the best part of the entertainment. it is but a short time to the first watch when lyricles will come with his troop of dancers. he says that they are quite incomparable." "nay, sir," said the young man who had spoken to callias, "you must excuse us." "ah!" cried one of the guests, a young dandy, whose flushed face and flower-garland set awry on his forehead seemed to show that he had been indulging too freely in his host's strong chian wine, "'tis old silverside. he pretends to be a young man; but i believe that he is really older than my father. at least i know that the old gentleman is far more lively. come, philip and hermogenes," he went on addressing two of his neighbors, "don't let us permit our pleasant party to be broken up in this way." the three revellers started up from their places, and were ready to stop the departing guests by force. but the host, who was still sober, and was too much of a gentleman to allow annoyances of the kind to be inflicted upon anyone in his house, interfered. "nay, gentlemen," he cried, "i will put force on no man for if our friends think that they can be better or more pleasantly employed elsewhere, i can only wish them good night, and thank them for so much of their company as they have been pleased to bestow upon us." the two, accordingly, made their escape without any further interference. "will you walk with me as far as my house," said callias' companion to him. "it lies in the agræ.[ ] the night is fine and i shall be glad of your company." callias cheerfully consented, and was glad that he had done so, so witty and varied was his companions conversation. when they had reached their destination his new friend invited him to enter. this he declined to do for the hour was late, and he wished to be at home. "well then," said the other, "we can at least meet again. this, you see, is my house, and my name is xenophon, the son of gryllus." footnotes: [ ] persons who had rendered distinguished services to their country in peace or war received, among other rewards, the privilege, lasting for life, of dining in the town hall. the city had no greater honor to bestow. [ ] it had brought about for a time the subjection of all the boeotian towns (thebes only excepted) and of phocis to athens. [ ] myronides marched out with the citizens above and under the military age--all the available force that was left at athens at the time--and won two victories, the first at megara, the second and most famous of the two at oenophyta in boeotia. [ ] the old man was thinking of the spartan offer to make peace after the capture of the five hundred and ninety-two prisoners at pylos (b. c. ). terms much more favorable might have been secured than were obtained four years afterwards by the peace of nicias. again, after the defeat and death of the spartan admiral mindarus in b. c. peace might have been made, and the ruin of athens probably postponed for many years; but the people refused to enter into negotiations. [ ] when the meal was ended the tables were not cleared, but removed. [ ] there were three original moods in greek music, the dorian, phrygian, and lydian. the last of these was in a major scale, and was reckoned to be plaintive and effeminate. so milton writes in _l'allegro_. "and ever against eating cares lap one in soft lydian airs married to immortal verse; such as the melting soul may pierce in notes with many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out." the dorian was in a minor scale, and was considered to be manly and vigorous. martial music was of this kind. so, to quote milton again, we have: "anon they move in perfect phalanx to the dorian mood of flutes and soft melodies; such as raised to heights of noblest temper heroes old coming to battle." the third, or phrygian, was also minor, and was considered to be suitable for sacrifices and other religious functions as being of an ecstatic kind. there were combinations and modifications of these moods. readers who may desire to know more of the subject, should consult professor mahaffy's _rambles and studies in greece_, pp. - ( rd edition). a more elaborate account may be found in mr. chappell's history of music. [ ] so hector in the single combat with ajax. [ ] a quarter of athens south of the city on the ilissus. chapter ix. socrates. callias lost no time in cultivating the acquaintance of his new friend. the very next day he called upon him at as early an hour as etiquette permitted, and was lucky enough to find him at home. he had lately returned, indeed, from drilling with the troop of knights to which he belonged, and was just finishing his breakfast, which had been delayed till his military duties had been performed. "will you drink a cup to our new friendship--if you will allow me to call it so?" said xenophon, to the young man as he entered the room. "excuse me," replied callias, "if i decline." "you are right," said xenophon, "this is one of the offers which formality commands us to make--whether rightly or wrongly, i cannot say--but which i always myself refuse, and am glad to see refused by others. but what will you? a game of koltabos, or a walk to the springs of the ilissus?" "either," replied callias, "would be agreeable, but first now i have set my heart on something else. you are a disciple of socrates, i am told. can you manage that i may have the privilege of hearing him? i have never had the chance of doing so before." xenophon's face brightened with pleasure when he heard the request. "excellent, my dear sir, you could not have suggested anything that would have pleased me better. we shall certainly be good friends. i always judge a man by what he thinks of socrates. you are ready, i know, to admire and love him, and i offer you my friendship in advance. now let us go and find him. it will not be difficult, for i know his ways pretty well. there is a sacrifice in the temple of theseus, and he will probably be there. there is no more diligent attendant at such functions, and yet the fools and knaves say that he is an atheist. we shall catch him just as he is leaving." the subject of conversation between the two young men as they walked along was naturally the character of this philosopher whom they were about to see. callias had much to ask, and xenophon had still more to tell. "as you are going to see this man for the first time," said the latter, "you will be interested in hearing how i first came to make his acquaintance. it was about nine years ago, very soon, i remember, after the first expedition sailed for syracuse. i had been hearing a course of lectures by prodicus of ceos, who was then all the fashion in athens, and was hurrying home to be in time for the midday meal. socrates met us in a narrow alley, and put his staff across it to bar the way. what a strange figure he was, i thought. i had never seen him before, you must know; for we had been living for some years on my father's estate in euboea. certainly he looked more like a silenus than an apollo. 'well,' my son, he said, looking at me with a smile that made him look quite beautiful, 'can you tell me where a good tunic is to be bought?' i thought it was an odd question, though certainly he might want a tunic for himself, for his own was exceedingly shabby. however i answered it to the best of my ability. 'and a good sword--where may that be purchased?' that i told him also as well as i could. some half-dozen more things he asked me about, and i did my best to reply. at last he said, 'tell me then, my son, since you know so well where so many good things are to be procured, tell me where the true gentleman[ ] is to be found?' that puzzled me exceedingly, and i could only lift my eyebrows and shrug my shoulders. how could i answer such a question? then he said, 'follow me my son, and be taught.' i never went near prodicus again, you may be sure. my father was somewhat vexed, for he had paid a quarter of a talent as fee for the course of lectures. however it did not cost him anything, for socrates will never take a fee. from that day to this i have never missed an opportunity when i was not campaigning of hearing him. but see there he is!" [illustration: the temple of theseus.] socrates was standing in the open space in front of the temple of poseidon, with the customary group of listeners round him. as the two young men came up the discussion which had been going on came to an end, and the philosopher turned to greet the new comers. "hail! xenophon," he cried, "and you, too, sir, for the friends of xenophon are always welcome." "you, sir," he went on addressing callias, "are recently back from the war; now tell me this." and he asked questions which showed that military details were perfectly well known to him, better known to him in fact than they were to callias himself. these questions were becoming a little perplexing, for socrates had an inveterate habit of driving into a corner, it may be said, every one with whom he conversed. luckily for callias, another friend came up at the moment, and the great examiner's attention was diverted. "ho! aristarchus," he cried to the new comer, "how fare you?" "but poorly, socrates," was the reply. "things are going very ill with me." "and indeed," said the philosopher, "i thought that you had a somewhat gloomy look. but tell me--what is your trouble? xenophon here is your kinsman, i know, and you will not mind speaking before him, and he will answer for the discretion of his friend. or would you prefer that we should go apart and talk, for to that too, i doubt not, these two gentlemen will consent?" "nay," said the man who had been addressed as aristarchus, "i am not ashamed or unwilling to speak before xenophon and his friend callias, in whom i have the pleasure of recognizing a kinsman of my own. for that from which i am suffering, though it troubles me, has nothing shameful in it." "speak on then," said socrates, "and, perhaps, among us we shall be able to find some remedy for your trouble. for surely it is of some use to share a burden if it be too heavy for one." "listen then, socrates," said aristarchus, "i have been compelled for kindred's sake to take into my home not a few ladies, sisters, and nieces, and cousins, whose husbands or fathers, or other lawful protectors, have either perished in the war, or have been banished. there are fourteen of them in all. now, as you know, nothing comes in from my country estate, for who will farm that which at any time the enemy may ravage? and from my houses in the city there comes but very little, for how few are they who are able to pay rent? and no business is being done in the city, nor can i borrow any money. verily there is more chance of finding money in the street, than of borrowing. o, socrates, 'tis a grievous thing to see my own flesh and blood perish of hunger, and yet, when things are as they are, i cannot find food for so many." "'tis grievous indeed," said socrates. "but tell me--how comes it to pass that keramon feeds many persons in his name, and yet can not only provide what is needful for himself and his inmates, but has so much over that he grows rich while you are afraid of perishing of hunger?" "nay, socrates, why ask such a question? the many persons whom he so keeps are slaves, while the inmates of my house are free." "which then, think you, are the worthier, your free persons, or keramon's slaves?" "doubtless my free persons." "but, surely, it is a shame, that he having the less worthy should prosper, and you with the more worthy, be in poverty." "doubtless 'tis because his folk are artisans while mine have been liberally educated." "by artisans you mean such as know how to make useful things." "certainly." "barley meal is a useful thing, for instance?" "very much so." "and bread?" "very much so." "and men's and women's cloaks, and short frocks, and mantles, and vests?" "very much so." "but your folk don't know how to make any of these things. is it so?" "nay, but they know how to make them all." "do you not know then, how nausicydes not only supports himself and his household by making barley meal, and has become so rich that he is often called upon to make special contributions to the state[ ] and how coroelus, the baker, lives in fine style on the profits of bread-making, and demias on mantle-making, and menon on cloak-making, and nearly every one in megara on the making of vests?" "that is very true, socrates. but all these buy barbarians for slaves, and make them work; but my people are free by birth and kinsfolk of my own." "and because they are free and kinsfolk of yours must they do nothing but eat and sleep? do you suppose that other free people are happier when they live in this indolent fashion, or when they employ themselves in useful occupations? what about your kinsfolk, my friend? at present i take it, you do not love them, and they do not love you, for you think them a great trouble and loss to you, and they see that you feel them to be a burden. it is only too likely that all natural affection will turn under these circumstances to positive dislike. but if you will put them in the way of making their own livelihood, every thing will go right; you will have a kindly feeling for them because they will be helping you, and they will have as much regard for you, because they will see that you are pleased with them. they know, you say, how to do the things that are a woman's becoming work; don't hesitate therefore to set them in the way of doing it. i am sure that they will be glad enough to follow." "by all the gods, socrates, you are right. i dare say i could borrow a little money to set the thing going; but to tell you the truth, i did not like to run into debt, when all the money would simply be eaten. it is a different thing, now that there will be a chance of paying it back, and i have no doubt that there will be some way of managing it." just at this point a little boy came up with a message for socrates. "my mistress bids me say," he cried in a somewhat undertone, "that the dinner is waiting, and that you must come at once." "there are commands which all must obey," said the philosopher with a smile, "and this is one of them. and indeed it would be ungrateful to the excellent xanthippe, if after hearing she has taken so much pains to prepare one's dinner, one was to refuse the very easy return of eating it. farewell, my friends." and the philosopher went his way. to callias the conversation which he had just heard was peculiarly interesting, because the theory in his family was that which was probably accepted in almost every upper class house in athens, that it was a disgrace for a free-born woman to work for her living, and that all handicrafts, even in those who constantly exercised them, were degrading and lowering to the character. xenophon already knew what his master thought upon these points, but to his younger friend this "gospel of work," as it may be called, was a positive revelation. he did not value it even when, a few days later, he heard from aristarchus that the experiment had succeeded to admiration. "i only had to buy a few pounds of wool," he said; "the women are as happy as queens, and i have not got to think all day and night, but never find out, how to make both ends meet." footnotes: [ ] the "kalokagathos" (literally handsome and good), combining the two greek ideals, beauty of mind and beauty of body. [ ] see note page . chapter x. the murder of the generals. all this time a gloom had been settling down over the athenian people. the official despatch, which, as giving details of the loss in the late engagement, was so anxiously expected, did not arrive; but quite enough information to cause a very general anxiety came to hand in various ways. private letters from men serving with the fleet began to be brought by merchantships; and not a few persons were found who had talked or who professed to have talked with sailors and marines who had taken part in the action. these written and oral accounts were indeed far from being consistent with each other. some were obviously impossible; more were presumably exaggerated. but they were all agreed in one point. not only had there been a serious loss of ships and men during the battle, but this loss had been grievously aggravated by the casualties that had taken place after the battle. it was pretty clear, unless the whole of these stories were fictitious, that the second loss had been more fatal than the first. at last the long expected despatch arrived. it ran somewhat in this fashion: "the victory which, by the favor of the gods and the good fortune of the athenian people, we lately won over the spartans and their allies at the islands of arginusæ has turned out to be no less important and beneficial to the state than we had hoped it would be. the squadron of the enemy that was blockading the harbor of mitylene has disappeared: nor indeed are any of his ships anywhere to be seen. our fleet, on the contrary, is stronger than it has been for some years past; and we are daily receiving overtures of friendship from cities that have hitherto been indifferent or hostile. but this success has not been achieved without loss. the late battle was long and obstinately contested, and, as has been mentioned in a former despatch, not a few of our ships were either disabled or sunk. we did not neglect the duty of succoring the crews of the vessels that had met with this ill-fortune, committing to officers whom we knew to be competent, the task of giving such help and assigning to them a sufficient number of ships. at the same time we did not omit to make provision for a pursuit of the enemy. but unluckily when the battle was but just finished, a storm arose so severe that we could not either rescue our friends or pursue our enemy. these then escaped, and those, or the greater part of them perished, having behaved as brave men toward their country. lists of those that have so died, so far as their names are at present known, are sent herewith." in this official communication, it will be seen, no blame was laid on any person. the weather, and the weather alone, was given as the cause of the disaster that had occurred. but in their private communications with friends at home the generals were not so reticent. they had commissioned, they said, theramenes and thrasybulus to save the shipwrecked men. if all that was possible had not been done to execute this commission it was they and they only who were to be blamed. such words, even if they are intended only for the private reading of the people to whom they are written, seldom fail sooner or later to get out. in this case so many people were profoundly and personally interested in the matter that they got out very soon. and, of course, among the first persons whom they reached were the two incriminated officers, theramenes and thrasybulus. it was a charge, hinted at if not exactly made, which no man would allow to be made against him without at least an attempt to refute it. theramenes, who had come back on leave not many days after the battle, at once bestirred himself in his own defense. he was an able speaker, all the more able because he was utterly unscrupulous; and he had a large following of personal friends and partisans. on the present occasion he was reinforced by the many citizens who had lost relatives or friends in the late engagement. these were furious and not without some cause. what had been at first represented as a great victory had at length turned out to be as fatal as a great defeat. they loudly demanded a victim. somebody, they said, must be punished for so scandalous, so deadly a neglect. theramenes had the advantage of being on the spot, and of being able to guide these feelings in a way that suited his own personal interests. "i was commissioned," he said, "to do the work; i do not deny it. but the charge was given me when it was almost too late to execute it, and i hadn't the proper means at hand. i could not get hold of the ships that were told off for this task, or of the crews who should have manned them. if one of the ten had come himself to help me, things might have been different. as it was, the men either could not be found, or refused to come. a subordinate must not be blamed for failing in what ought to have been undertaken by a chief in command." these representations, in which, as has been seen, there was a certain measure of truth, had a great effect. an assembly was held to consider the contents of the second despatch, and at this it was resolved, with scarcely an opposing voice, that the generals should be recalled. they were publicly thanked for the victory which they had won, but they were suspended, at least for the present, in their command, and successors were sent out to replace them. conon, as having been shut up at the time in mitylene, and being therefore manifestly clear of all blame in the matter, was continued in office, and another of the ten had died. eight, therefore, were left to be affected by the decree. of these eight two determined not to run the risk of returning; the other six sailed at once for home. of these six diomedon, about whom something has been said already, was one. as soon as was practicable after their arrival at athens, an assembly was held and they were called upon for their defence. the chief speaker against them was theramenes. his colleague, thrasybulus, stood by apparently approving by his presence the charge that was brought but not opening his mouth. one man among the accused men might have easily secured his own safety at the expense of his colleagues. if diomedon had stood up and recapitulated the advice which he had given in the council held after the battle; if he had affirmed what none of his fellows would have been able to deny, "i urged you to make the rescue of the imperilled crews your first business, to use for it all the means at your disposal, and to undertake it yourselves," he must have been triumphantly acquitted, but he was of too generous a temper thus to save himself. he chose to stand or fall with his fellows. all, accordingly, put forward the same defence, and it was in substance this: "we did what seemed best in our judgment. we detailed for the duty of saving the crews what we considered to be an adequate force, and put over it men whom we knew to be competent. if theramenes accuses us, we do not accuse him. we believe that he was hindered from doing the duty intrusted to him by the storm, and that if he had had double the number of ships, even the whole fleet, at his disposal, he would have been no less powerless to give the shipwrecked men any effectual help." there was a sincerity of tone about their defense which was just the thing to win favor of such an audience as the athenian assembly. there were murmurs indeed. the friends and kinsfolk of the drowned men could not endure to think that no one would be punished for what they believed to be a shameful neglect. but the general applause drowned the dissenting voices, and the friends of the accused began to hope that they were safe. if there had been only a few more minutes of daylight, such might have been the result. a show of hands was taken by the presiding magistrate, and it was believed to be in favor of the accused, but it was too dark to count; no regular decision could be made; and the matter had to be adjourned to another meeting of the assembly. but now came another change in the impulsive, passionate temper of the people. the next day or the next day but one was the first of the great family festival of athens, the apaturia, a celebration something like the christmas day or the new year's day of the modern world. it was one of the most cherished, as it was one of the most ancient of the national festivals. all the great ionic race, with scarcely an exception, kept it, and had kept it from times running back far beyond history. the family annals were now, so to speak, made up, and consecrated by a solemn association with the past. if a marriage had been celebrated in the family during the year it was now formally registered; if a son of the house had reached his majority his name was now entered upon the roll. these formalities were duly marked by customary sacrificing and sacrifices were accompanied, as always in the ancient world, by festivities. but family festivities are apt, as most of us know only too well, to be marred by melancholy associations. it is delightful to greet those that remain, but what of those who are gone? and so it had been year after year, since the day when athens embarked on the fatal war which for nearly thirty years drained her resources. so it was, in a special way, in the year of which i am writing. the men whom athens had lost were not hired servants but sons. every one, the slaves only excepted, left an empty place in some family gathering. and now for the first time the city realized the greatness of her loss. the numbers had been known before; but numbers, however startling, do not impress the mind like visible facts, and now the visible facts were before the eyes of all. the streets were filled with men and women in mourning garb, for the families which had suffered individually assumed it. it seemed as if almost every passer by had lost a kinsman. there could scarcely have been any such proportion of mourners, but any uniform garb renders the impression of being much more numerously worn than is really the case. and there can be but little doubt that the demonstration was purposely exaggerated. for now came in the sinister influence of political strife, which since the oligarchical revolution of five years before had grown more than ever bitter and intense. the accused leaders belonged to the party of moderate aristocrats; a party loyal to the democratic constitution of athens, but disposed to interpret its provisions in a conservative sense. the oligarchy hated them, and theramenes had been an oligarchical conspirator before, and was about to be again. and the extremists on the other side hated them. between the two a plot was concocted. men who had no kinsfolk among the lost soldiers and sailors were bribed or otherwise persuaded to behave as if they had,[ ] to come into the streets with black clothes and shaven heads, and to swell the numbers of the mourners, thus increasing the popular excitement. strangely enough it was the senate, the upper chamber of the athenian constitution that first gave this excitement an expression. at the first meeting after the festival, callixenus, a creature of theramenes--the man himself was probably too notorious to take an active part--proposed a resolution which ran as follows: "for as much as both the parties in this case, to wit, the prosecutor, on the one hand, and the accused, on the other were heard in the late assembly, it seems good to us that the athenian people now vote on the matter by their tribes, there being provided for each tribe two urns, and that the public crier make proclamation as follows in the hearing of each tribe: 'let every one who finds the generals guilty of not rescuing the heroes of the late sea fight deposit his vote in urn no. . let him who is of the contrary opinion deposit his vote in urn no. .' furthermore it seems good to us, that, if the aforesaid generals be found guilty, death should be the penalty; that they should be handed over to the eleven,[ ] and their property confiscated to the state, excepting a tenth part, which falls to the goddess [athene]." the senate passed this resolution, though there was a strong minority that protested against it. the assembly was held next day, and callixenus came forward again and proposed his resolution as having received the senate's sanction. it was received with a roar of approval from the majority. but there were some honest men who were not inclined to sanction a proceeding so grossly illegal, for such indeed it was. one of them, euryptolemus by name, rose in his place, and spoke: "there is an enactment which for many years has been observed by the people of athens for the due protection of persons accused of crime. by this enactment it is provided that every person so accused shall be tried separately, and shall have proper time allowed him for the preparation of his defence. seeing then that the resolution just proposed to the assembly contravenes this enactment by providing that the accused persons should be tried altogether and without such allowance of due time, i hereby give notice that i shall indict callixenus its proposer for unconstitutional action." a tremendous uproar followed the utterance of these words. "who shall hinder us from avenging the dead?" cried one man. "shall this pedant with his indictment stand between the athenian people and their desire to do justice?" shouted another. but the excitement rose to its height when a man clad as a mariner forced his way through the crowded meeting, and struggled by the help of his companions into the _bema_, the platform or hustings of the place of assembly. it was a strange figure to stand in that place from which some of the famous orators and statesmen of the world had addressed their countrymen. he was evidently of the lowest rank. his dress was ragged and soiled. his voice, when he spoke, was rough and uncultured. yet not pericles himself who so often speaking from that place "had swayed at will that fierce democracy," ever spoke with more effect. "men of athens," he cried, "i was on the _cheiron_. i was run down by a corinthian ship just before the battle came to an end. the _cheiron_ sank immediately; i went down with her, but managed to get free, and came up again to the surface of the water. i saw a meal-tub floating by me, and caught hold of it. some ten or twelve men were near me. they kept themselves up for a time by swimming, but sank one by one. i spoke to several of them, and bade them keep up their spirits, because the admirals would be sure to rescue us. no help came. at last only one was left. he was my brother-in-law. i made him lay hold of the other side of the meal-tub; but it was not big enough to keep us both up. he let go of it again. he said to me 'agathon'--that is my name--'you have a wife and children; i am alone. bid them remember me; and tell the men of athens that we have done our best in fighting for our country, and that the admirals have left us to perish.'" was the man telling the truth, or was he one of those historic liars that have made themselves famous or infamous for all time by the magnitude of the fictions that they have invented just at the critical time when men were most ready to accept them.[ ] whether it was true or false, the story roused the people to absolute fury. thousands stood up in their places and shook their fists at the accused, and at the orators who had spoken in their favor, while they screamed at the top of their voices, "death to the generals! death to the murderers!" a momentary silence fell upon the excited crowd when a well-known orator of the intense democratic party threw himself into the hustings. "i propose that the names of euryptolemus and of all those who have given notice of the indicting callixenus be added to the names of the accused generals, and be voted upon in the same way for life and death." the speaker added no arguments; and the roars of approval that went up from the assembly showed sufficiently that no arguments were needed. the advocates of constitutional practice were cowed. it was only too plain that to persist would surely be to meet themselves the fate of the accused. euryptolemus was a brave man, and as we shall soon see, did not intend to desert his friends; but for the present he gave way. "i withdraw my notice," he cried, reflecting doubtless that he could renew it when the people should become more ready to listen to reason and justice. but there was still another constitutional bulwark to be thrown down. the presiding magistrates refused to put the motion to the assembly. their chief (or chairman as we should call him) rose in his place. he was pale and agitated, and his voice could not be heard beyond the benches nearest to him when he said, "the motion of callixenus is against the laws, and we cannot put it to the assembly." "they refuse! they refuse!" was the cry that went from mouth to mouth. again the rage of the multitude rose to boiling point, and again the popular orator saw his opportunity. "i propose," he said, appearing again in the hustings, "that the names of the presiding magistrates be added to those of the accused in the voting for life and death." a shout of approval more vehement than ever greeted this announcement. once more the policy of concession, or shall we say of cowardice prevailed. the magistrates conversed a few moments in hurried whispers, and then advanced to the railings in front of their seats. it was immediately seen that they had yielded, and loud applause followed. "hail to the popular magistrates! hail to the friends of the people!" was the universal cry. but one was still sitting in his place. his colleagues turned back to bring him. they talked, they gesticulated, they laid hold of him by the arms; they were trying to force him out of his seat. he heeded them not; to all persuasion he returned the same answer: "i am set to administer the laws, and will do nothing that is contrary to them." the most of the house could, of course, hear nothing of what was being said; but they could see plainly what had happened. "socrates refuses! socrates refuses!" was now the cry, followed by shouts of "death to socrates!" "death to the blasphemer! death to the atheist!" the philosopher sat unmoved, and his colleagues made no further attempt to persuade him. they took what was, perhaps, the only possible course under the circumstances--for they had not all the martyr-like temper of socrates--and put the question without him. it was carried by a large majority. the presiding magistrate, having announced the result of the vote, went on: "seeing that it has seemed good to the athenian people to try the generals accused of negligence in saving the lives of citizens, the said generals are hereby put upon their trial. if they, or any citizen on their behalf, wish to address the assembly, let them or him speak." it might have been thought that the furious crowd which had been ready to overpower with violence the advocates of constitutional practice would have howled down any who dared to advocate so unpopular a cause. but it was not so. the majority, having swept away, as they thought, the trammels of technicality, in their eagerness for justice, had no wish to disregard justice by refusing a hearing to persons on their defense. whatever the faults of the athenian democracy, it was at least ready to hear both sides. when therefore euryptolemus rose to address the assembly on behalf of the generals, an instantaneous silence followed; nor was he interrupted during the delivery of his speech except, it may be, by occasional murmurs of approval. he spoke as follows: "men of athens, i have three things to do now that i address you. first, i have to blame in some degree my dear friend and kinsman pericles, and my friend diomedon; second, i have to plead somewhat on their behalf; third, i have to give you such advice as will in my judgment best advantage athens. i blame them because they, through their generous temper, have taken upon themselves the fault which, if it exists, lies upon others. for indeed what happened after the battle was this: diomedon advised that the whole fleet should proceed to the relief of the disabled ships and their crews. herasinides counselled that the whole fleet should be sent in pursuit of the enemy. meranylus declared that both duties might be discharged together, part being sent against the enemy, and part to help the shipwrecked men. and this last course was actually taken. forty-seven ships were told off for this duty. three, that is, from each of the eight divisions, ten belong to private captains, ten that were from samos, and three that belonged to the commander-in-chief. and three ships were committed to the charge of thrasybulus and theramenes, the very men who now bring these charges against the accused. yet these men i do not even now, on behalf of the generals, myself accuse. i allow that the violence of the storm prevented them from executing this order which had been given them. "so far then, men of athens, do i blame the accused, and i do plead for them. and now let me venture to give you some advice. give these men time, if it be but one day only, to make their defence. you know that there is yet a form of law by which it is enacted: 'if any person hath aggrieved the people of athens, he shall be imprisoned and brought to a trial before the people; and in case he be convicted, he shall be put to death and thrown into the pit, his goods and chattels to be confiscated to the state, reserving a tenth part for the goddess.' by this law try the accused. give to each a separate day and try them in due order. so will you judge them according to the law, and not seem, as verily you will seem if you adopt the resolution of callixenus, to be allies of the lacedæmonians, by putting to death the very men who have taken twenty of their ships. "why indeed are you in such vehement haste? are you afraid to lose your hold of life and death? that right no one doubts or threatens. should you not rather be afraid lest you put an innocent man to death? one man do i say, nay many innocent men? and lest, afterwards repenting of your deed, you shall reflect how ill and unjustly you have acted? forbid it, ye gods, that the athenians should do any such thing. take care, therefore, i implore you, that you, being successful, do not act as they often act, who are on the brink of despair and ruin. only those who are without hope insult the gods; yet somehow you will insult them, if instead of submitting to them on points that are subject to their will alone, you condemn those men who failed because it was the pleasure of the gods that they should fail. you would do more justly if you honor these men with crowns of victory rather than visit them with this punishment of death." a visible effect was produced by this speech. that the republic should put to death its successful generals almost in the moment of victory seemed to many to be the very height of folly, even of impiety. the gods had favored these men. to lay hands upon them would be an insult to heaven. but supposing they had erred, would it be well for the state to deprive itself of the services of its most skillful servants? this seemed the common sense view. the question was: would it prevail against the sticklers for law, those who were hardened by the sense of personal loss, and the unscrupulous partisans who were ready to seize any pretext for destroying political opponents? the voters filed past the balloting urns, and dropped their votes as they passed. no one could guess what the result would be, for no one could watch more than one of the ten pairs of urns--a pair to each tribe--which were placed to receive the suffrages. the process took no little time, and then when it was finished, there was the counting, also a long and tedious process. it was almost dark when the tables were finished. in the midst of a profound silence the presiding magistrate stood up. it was now dark, and his figure was thrown into striking relief by the lamps with the help of which the votes had been counted. he read the numbers from a small slip of paper.[ ] "there have voted," he said, "for condemnation , for acquittal ." the sensation produced by the announcement was intense. not a few who had voted 'guilty' already half repented of what they had done. indeed the reaction which ended in the banishment and ultimately the death by starvation of the author of the proposal may be said to have begun at that moment. the general excitement rose to a still higher pitch when the officers of the eleven, the magistrates to whose custody condemned criminals were handed, were seen making their way, lighted by slaves holding torches, to the place where the accused were sitting. there was not one of the six whose features were not familiar to many in the assembly. more than one had tendered distinguished service to athens; and one, pericles, son of the great statesman by aspasia, bore a name which no athenian could pronounce without some emotion of pride and gratitude. it so happened that it was he on whom the officers laid hands. something like a groan went up from the crowd; but it was too late to undo what they had done, and it was too early for the repentance that had already begun to work to have any practical effect. the six were led off to immediate execution. callias anxious to say a few words of farewell to his friend and kinsman diomedon had hurried round, as soon as he heard the announcement of the numbers, to the door by which he knew the condemned would be taken from the place of assembly. the president of the eleven who was conducting the matter in person, as became an occasion so important, allowed a brief interview. the young man was so overcome with grief that he could only throw himself into the arms of his friend and cling to him in speechless agony. diomedon, on the contrary, was perfectly calm and collected. "my son," he said, "this has ended as badly as i thought that it would--you will remember what i said to you after the battle. for myself, this that i am about to suffer is scarcely a thing to be lamented. it is hard indeed to have such a return for my services to athens; and i would gladly have served her again. it has not so seemed good to the athenians. let it be so. i am delivered from trouble to come. i would not have fled from them willingly, but if my countrymen compel me, why should i complain? that at least socrates has taught me not to do. and this day has at least brought this good, that no one can doubt hereafter that he believes what he says. for you, my son, i have but one word. do not despair of your country. a grateful child pays his dues of nurture even to an impassive mother. and now farewell!" an hour afterwards he and his colleagues were lying mangled corpses at the bottom of the pit.[ ] footnotes: [ ] xenophon, who was probably in athens at the time, positively asserts that this was done, and i cannot think that the arguments of mr. grote countervail his authority. [ ] the "eleven" were commissioners of police who had, besides the charge of the guardians of public order, the care of the prisoners, and the custody of criminals. [ ] one of the most notorious instances in modern times was that of the tartar who after the battle of the alma invented the news that sebastopol was taken. the report was almost universally believed in england for some days, and the contradiction of it caused the bitterest disappointment. [ ] paper made from the rind of the _papyrus_, a reed which grew in the nile and which the egyptians knew by the name of _byblos_ (hence our 'bible'). parchment in its present form did not become common till much later than this time (even b. c. ), though skin seems to have been used for writing. for ordinary purposes paper was used. [ ] mr. grote says that the condemned generals drank hemlock but it is evident from the report of euryptolemus which is substantially taken from xenophon's report that the mode of execution for persons condemned under such charges as that brought against the generals was by being thrown into the pit. this place was called the _barathron_ and was within the city walls and was a deep pit with hooks fastened into the walls. the officer in charge of it was called "the man of the pit." chapter xi. rescued. the execution of the generals was a blow of such severity that callias was absolutely prostrated by it. as a patriotic athenian he felt overwhelmed both with shame and with despair. that his country should be capable of such ingratitude and folly, should allow private revenge or party spite to deprive her of the generals who could lead her troops to victory made it impossible to hope. the end must be near, for the gods must have smitten her with the madness which they send upon those whom they are determined to destroy. and then he had loved diomedon almost as a son loves a father. left an orphan at an early age he had found in this kinsman an affectionate and loyal guardian; and he had made his first acquaintance with war under his auspices. he had in him a friend whom he felt it would be quite impossible to replace. for some days callias remained in strict seclusion at home, refusing all visitors, and, in fact, seeing no one, except the aged house-steward, who had been now the faithful servant and friend of three generations of his family. even when hippocles himself, on the fifth day after the disastrous meeting of the assembly, sent in an urgent request that he might be allowed to see him, the steward was directed to meet him with the same refusal. the old man contrary to his custom of prompt and unhesitating obedience, lingered in the room after he had received this answer, and was obviously anxious to speak. "well! lycides," said the young man, his attention attracted even in the midst of his preoccupation by this unusual circumstance, "what is it? what do you want?" "it would be well, sir," replied the man, "if you would see the worthy hippocles. he declares that the affair of which he is come is one of the very highest importance." callias simply shook his head. the steward began again, "oh! sir--" callius interrupted him. "you are an old man, and a friend whom my father and my grandfather trusted, and i would not say a harsh word to you. but if you will not leave the room, i must." the old man's eyes filled with tears. he had never heard his young master speak in such a tone before. still he would not go, without making another effort. he rapidly advanced to where his master was sitting, his face buried in his hands, and throwing himself on the ground, caught the young man by the knees. "listen, sir," he cried, "i implore you, by the gods, and by the memory of your father and your grandfather, who both died in my arms." "speak on," cried callias. "it seems i am not my own master any longer." "oh! sir," the old man continued, "your liberty, your life is in danger." these words, uttered as they were in a tone of conviction that could not be mistaken, startled the young man out of the indifference which his profound depression had hardened. "what do you mean?" he cried. "i have known it since yesterday at noon," the steward replied, "and have been anxiously thinking over with myself how i could best make it known to you. and now hippocles has come to say the same thing. for the sake of all the gods, trust and listen to what he has to tell you." "bring him in, if you will have it so," said callias. hippocles came into the room with outstretched hands and caught the young man in a close embrace. the warmth and tenderness of this greeting had the happiest result. callias was moved from the stupor of grief which had overwhelmed him. bowing his head on his friend's shoulder, he burst into a passion of tears,--for tears were a relief which the most heroic souls of the ancient world did not refuse to themselves. his friend allowed his feelings to express themselves without restraint, and then as the violence of the young man's emotion began to subside, he put in a few words, instinct with heartfelt sympathy, about the friend whom they had lost. thus, with his usual tact, he waited for callias himself to open the subject in which he now felt sure his interest had been aroused. it was soon after that the young man asked: "what is this that old lycides has been saying about my liberty and life being in danger? he has known it, he says, since yesterday, and you know it too. what can he mean?" "he is quite right," replied hippocles. "he knows something and i know something. now listen. your parting with diomedon was observed. the men who murdered him--and by all the gods! there never was a fouler murder done in athens--cannot but look for vengeance to come upon them. to avoid it or to postpone it they will stick at nothing. no near friend or relative of their victims is safe. i know--for i have friends in places you would not think--mark you, i _know_ that your name is among those who will be accused in the next assembly." "accused," cried callias, "accused of what? of being bound by kindred and affection to one of the noblest of men. by heavens! let them accuse me. i should glory to stand and defend myself on such a charge. if i could only tell that villain theramenes what i think of him i should be afraid of nothing." "that is exactly what i thought you would say," replied hippocles, "nor can i blame you. but have patience. theramenes will get his deserts if there are gods in heaven and furies in hell. but have patience. leave his punishment to them. but meanwhile don't give him the chance of burdening his soul with another crime." "what would you have me do then?" asked callias. "fly from athens," replied his older friend. "what! fly, and leave these traitors and murderers to enjoy their triumph! not so; not if i were to die to-morrow." "my dear young friend, you will help your country, which, in spite of all her faults, you wish, i presume, to serve, and avenge your friends all the more surely if you will yield to the necessities of the time." "don't press me any further: it would be a dishonor to me to leave athens now." the argument was continued for some time longer; but hippocles could not flatter himself with the idea that he had made any impression. at last he seemed to abandon the attempt. "well," he said, "a willful man must have his way. i can only hope that you will never live to repent it. but you will not refuse to come and see us--my daughter adds her invitation to mine--you will not be so ungallant as to refuse." "no, i should not think of refusing," said callias. "you have called me back to life. i thought that my heart would have burnt with grief and rage. you can't imagine what your sympathy is to me." "well," said hippocles, "show your gratitude by dining with us to-night." callias promised that he would, and accordingly at the time appointed presented himself at the merchant's house. after dinner the discussion was resumed. hippocles and hermione urged all the arguments that they knew to persuade the young man to think of his own safety, but they urged in vain. "no!" said the young man, as he rose to take his leave, "no, i thank you for your care for me, but your advice i may not follow. i refuse to believe that the athenian people can keep the the base and ungrateful temper which they showed the other day. it was the madness of an hour, and they must have repented of it long ago. if they have not, then an honest man who happens to be born into this citizenship had best die. athens is no place for him. anyhow, i shall try, at the very next assembly, unless i can get some other and abler man than i am to do it for me, to indict callixenus for unconstitutional practices. did i pass by this occasion of vengeance, the blood of diomedon and his brave colleagues might well cry out of the ground against me." several days passed without any disturbing incident. callias had warnings indeed. mysterious letters were brought to him, bidding him beware of dangers that were imminent; more than one stranger who found him in the streets let fall, it seemed by the merest accident, words that could not but be meant to give a warning; friends spoke openly to the same effect; but the young man remained unmoved. at the table of hippocles, where he was a frequent guest, the subject was dropped. it seemed to be conceded by common consent that callias was to have his own way. he was returning to his home in the upper city from the piraeus on a dark and stormy night, picking his way under the shelter of one of the long walls[ ] when he felt himself suddenly seized from behind. so suddenly and so skilfully made was the attack that in an instant the young man, though sufficiently active and vigorous, was reduced to absolute helplessness. his arms were fastened to his side; his legs pinioned; his eyes blindfolded, and a gag thrust into his mouth. all this was done without any unnecessary violence, but with a firmness that made resistance impossible. the young man then felt himself lifted on to some conveyance which had been waiting, it seemed, in the neighborhood, and driven rapidly in a northerly direction. so much the prisoner could guess from feeling the wind which he knew had been coming from the east, blowing upon his right cheek. after being driven rapidly for a few minutes the gag was removed with an apology for the necessity that had compelled its use. the journey was continued with unabated and even increased rapidity, the lash, as callias' ear told him, being freely used to urge the animals to their full speed. before long the sound of the waves breaking upon the shore could be distinctly heard above the clatter of the horses' hoofs and the grinding of the chariot wheels upon the road. then came a stoppage. the prisoner was lifted from his seat and put on board what he guessed to be a small boat. he felt that this was pushed out from the land, that it began by making fair progress, and that not long after starting, when it had passed, as he conjectured beyond the shelter of some bay or promontory, it began to meet bad weather. the waves were breaking, it was easy to tell, over the boat, in which the water was rising in spite of the efforts of the men who were busy bailing to keep it under. it was time for our hero to speak; so busy were the sailors in struggling with their difficulties, that they might easily have forgotten their prisoner, and let him go to the bottom like a stone. "friends," he cried, "you had best let me help you and myself." "by poseidon! i had forgotten him," he heard one of the men cry. "if he drowns there will be no profit to us in floating." a consultation carried on in low, rapid whispers followed. it ended in the prisoner's bonds being severed, and the bandage being removed from his eyes. when the situation became visible to the young athenian it was certainly far from encouraging. the boat was low in the water, and was getting lower. it was evident that it could not live more than a few minutes more. the night was dark, and the sea so high that even the most expert swimmer could not expect to survive very long. the only hope seemed to lie in the chance of being blown ashore. but obviously the first thing to be done was to prepare for a swim. callias, accordingly, threw off his upper garment and untied his sandals. this done he waited for the end. it was not long in coming. the boat was too low in the water to rise to the waves, and one of unusual size now broke over and swamped it, immersing the crew, who numbered nine persons including callias. happily they were good swimmers, and if speedy help were to come, might hope to escape. and, luckily, help was nearer than any of them had hoped. a light became visible in the darkness; and the swimmers shouted in concert to let the new comers know of their whereabouts. an answering shout came from the galley, for as may be supposed, it was a galley that carried the light. "be of good cheer," shouted a voice which callias thought that he recognized. the swimmers shouted in answer, and felt new hope and new life infused into them. but the rescue was no easy task. each man in turn had to fasten under his armpits a rope with a noose at the end which was thrown to him, and was then drawn up the side of the galley. this took time. some of the men found it hard to do their part of the work, and so delayed the rescue of the others. by the time that callias was reached, and he was the last of the nine, he was almost beyond the reach of help. by one supreme effort, however, he managed to slip the rope about him. as he was dragged on to the deck the last conscious impression that he had--and so strange was it that he thought it must be a dream--was the face of hermione bent over him with an expression of intense anxiety. footnotes: [ ] the "long walls" ran from athens down to its chief harbor the piraeus. chapter xii. the voyage of the skylark. it was not long before callias recovered his consciousness; but he was so worn out by excitement and fatigue, coming as they did after the exhausting emotions through which he had passed since the death of the generals, that he found it impossible to rouse himself to any exertion. the yacht, which as my readers will have guessed was that excellent sea-boat the _skylark_, had never been in any danger, though she had had to be very skillfully handled while she was engaged in picking up the swimmers. this task accomplished, her head was put northward, and before very long she had gained the shelter of euboea. callias guessed as much when he found that she ceased to roll, and gladly resigned himself to the slumber against which he had hitherto done his best to struggle. he slept late into the morning; indeed it wanted only an hour of noon when at last he opened his eyes. the first object that they fell upon was the figure of hippocles, who was sitting by the side of his berth. "then it was not a dream," said the young man. "i thought i saw your daughter on board last night, but could not believe my eyes." "yes, she is on board," said hippocles, with a slight smile playing about the corners of his mouth. "but tell me what it all means. i was seized in the streets of athens, pinioned, blindfolded, and gagged. i was carried off i know not where, thrown into a boat, as nearly as possible drowned, and now, when i come to myself, i see you. surely i have a right to ask what it means." "my dear callias," replied hippocles, "i have always tried to be your friend, as it was my priviledge to be your father's before you. you will allow so much?" "certainly," said the young man. "i shall never forget how much i owe you." "well, then, trust me for an hour. i will not ask you to do anything more. if you are not fully satisfied then, i will make you any redress that you may demand. i know that you have a right to ask for it. i know," he added with an air of proud humility that sat very well upon him, "that hippocles the alien is asking a great favor when he makes such a request of callias the eupatrid,[ ] but believe me i do not ask it without a reason." the young athenian could do nothing else than consent to a request so reasonable. some irritation he felt, for there was no doubt in his mind that hippocles had had something to do with the violence to which he had been subjected. the intention, however, had been manifestly friendly, and there might be something to tell which would change annoyance into gratitude. a sailor now brought him some refreshment, and when this had been disposed of, another furnished him with some clothing. his own, it will be remembered, he had thrown away, when preparing to swim for his life. his toilet completed, he came up on deck and found hippocles and his daughter seated near the stern. both rose to greet him. he could not fail to observe that hermione was pale and agitated. the frank friendliness of her old manner, which, blended as it had been with a perfect maidenly modesty, had been inexpressibly charming, had disappeared. she was now timid and hesitating. she could not lift her eyes when she acknowleged his greeting. he could even see that she trembled. the young man stood astonished and perplexed. what was this strange reserve of which he had never before seen a trace? was there anything in himself that had caused it? had he--so he asked himself, being a modest young fellow and ready to lay the blame on his own shoulders--had he given any offence? "tell him the story, father," she said, after an anxious pause during which her agitation manifestly increased, "tell him the story. i feel that i cannot speak." "my little girl has a confession to make. in a word, it is her doing that you are here to-day." "her doing that i am here to-day," echoed callias, his astonishment giving a certain harshness to his voice. the girl burst into tears. callias stepped forward, and would have caught her hand. she drew back. "tell him, father, tell him all," she whispered again in an agitated voice. "well then," said her father, "if i must confess your misdeeds, i will speak. you know," he went on addressing himself to the young athenian, "you know how we vainly sought to persuade you to leave athens. i had a better and stronger reason for speaking as i did than i could tell you. from private information, the source of which i could not divulge, if you had asked it, as you probably would have done, i had found out that you were in the most serious danger. not only were you to be arrested--so much you know--but having been arrested, you were to be put out of the way. you talked of answering for yourself before the assembly, even of accusing your enemies and the men who murdered your friends. you never would have had the chance. there are diseases strangely sudden and fatal to which prisoners are liable, and there was only too much reason to fear that you would be attacked by one of them. there are other poisons, you know, besides the hemlock, which the state administers to the condemned, and an adverse verdict is not always wanted before they are given. well; we were at our wits' end. you were obstinate--pardon me for using the word--and i would not tell you the whole truth. even if i had, it was doubtful, in the temper of mind you were in, whether you would have believed me. then hermione here came to the rescue. 'we must save him,' she cried, 'against his will.' 'how can we do that?' i asked; and i assure you that i had not the least idea of what she meant. 'you must contrive to carry him off to some safe place.' i was astonished. 'what!' i said, 'a free citizen of athens.' 'what will that help him, with the men who are plotting to take his life?' she answered. then she told me her plan. i need not describe it to you. it was carried out exactly. now can you forgive her?" "oh! lady"--the young man began. "stop a moment," cried hippocles. "i have something more to say, before you pronounce your judgment. you must take into account that if she has erred, she has already suffered." "oh! father," interrupted the girl, "it is enough; say nothing more. i am ready to bear the blame." and she sank back into her seat and covered her face with her mantle. hippocles went on: "i say she has suffered. we did not reckon on that unlucky wind. it was bad enough to have carried you off against your will; but when it seemed that we might drown you as well, that looked serious. i was not much afraid, myself. i felt pretty sure that we should be able to pick you up. but still there was a chance of something going wrong. and she, of course, felt responsible for it all. it was true that it was the only way of saving you--that, i swear by zeus and athene, and all the gods above and below, is the simple, literal fact--but still, i must own, it was a trying moment, and if anything _had_ happened--then you were the last to be picked up, and just at the last moment, something went wrong. the clumsy fellow at the helm--i ought to have been there myself, but i wanted to help in getting you on board--the clumsy fellow at the helm, i say, gave us a wrong turn. we should have had a world of trouble in bringing the _skylark_ about again. hermione saw it, sprang to the tiller, and put things right--i have always taught her how to steer. so you really owe her something for that. i don't exactly say that she saved your life, but you might have been in the water a little longer than you liked. well, it was trying to the poor girl. i can imagine how she felt; but she bore up till we got you on board. then she fainted; for the very first time in her life, i give you my word, for she is not given to that sort of thing. now, say, can you forgive her and us? we really did it for the best, and thanks to poseidon, it has ended pretty well, so far, after all." "this is no case for forgiveness," cried the young athenian earnestly; "it is a case of gratitude which i shall never exhaust as long as i live. i am a headstrong young fool, a silly child, in fact, and you were quite right in dealing with me as grown people must deal with a child, help it and do it good against its will. forgive me, lady," he went on, and kneeling before her chair, he took one of her hands in his own, and carried it to his lips. so far all was well. a bold achievement had ended happily, but the situation was a little strained, to use a common phrase, and callias, like the well bred gentleman that he was, felt that it would be a relief to the girl if it was brought to an end. happily, too, at that moment the ludicrous side of the affair struck him, and it was without any affectation that he sprang to his feet and burst into a hearty laugh. "and now that you have captured me," he said, "what is your pleasure? what are you going to do with me?" "you shall go where you please," said hippocles. "even if you want to return to athens i will not hinder you. but my plan is this, subject of course, to your consent. come with me as far as thasus. i have business there, to look after my vineyard, or rather the vintage. my people, i find, are sadly apt to blunder about it. this will take me no little time, and while i am engaged there, the _skylark_ shall take you on to alcibiades' castle in thrace. i was going to say that i would commend you to him. but that will not be necessary. he is, you know, a distant kinsman, and is hospitality itself. in my judgment he has had hard usage. it would have been better for athens, if she had trusted him more. but all that is past. meanwhile i think that his castle is the safest place for you just now. you and he are very much in the same case, i fancy. athens has not treated either of you fairly and yet you wish well to her." "your plan seems a good one," replied callias, "let me think it over for a few hours. anyhow you shall have my company as far as thasus, if you will accept it." meanwhile the _skylark_ was making headway gaily through the well-sheltered waters that lie between euboea and the mainland of greece. when the shelter ceased the wind had fallen, shifting at the same time to the south-west. nearly two hundred miles had yet to be traversed before thasus could be sighted, and this was accomplished without accident or delay. the time of year was later than a greek seaman commonly chose for a voyage of any duration, for it was the latter end of october, and the ninth of november was the extreme limit of the sailing season.[ ] hippocles, however, was more venturesome in this way than most of his contemporaries, and his confidence was rewarded by a most pleasant and prosperous voyage. so blue were the cloudless skies, so deep the answering color of the seas, that it was only when the travellers saw the sunset tints on the forest-clad ridge of thasus--"the ass's back-bone laden with wood," as it was called--that they remembered that summer had long since given place to autumn. two days were spent in a visit to the vineyard which hippocles had come to inspect, and then callias, who had soon concluded to follow his friend's advice, resumed his voyage. the course of the _skylark_ was now south-easterly. the voyage had all the interest of novelty for him, for he had never before visited these waters. when the _skylark_ started at early dawn there was a mist which contracted the horizon. as this cleared away under the increasing power of the sun the striking peak of samothrace became visible in the distance. all day its bold outlines became more and more clearly defined. on the following morning--for the good ship pursued her course all night--it had been left behind, but another height, not less striking in appearance, and even more interesting in its associations, the snow-capped ida, at whose feet lay the world-famed trojan plains, took its place. as evening fell the _skylark_ was brought to land at the western end of the hellespont, the rapid current of which could be better encountered by the rowers when they had been refreshed by a night's rest. progress was now somewhat slow; and it was on the afternoon of the fourth day after the start from thasus that the cliffs of bisanthe and the northern shore of the propontis came in sight. this was our hero's destination, for it was here that alcibiades, after quitting athens in the previous year, had fixed his abode. footnotes: [ ] the eupatridae were the old aristocracy of athens. under the early constitution they were the ruling castæ, and they always retained the monopoly of certain religious offices. [ ] "the seas are closed," says vegetius in his treatise _de re militari_, "from the ninth of november to the tenth of march." chapter xiii. alcibiades. the sun was just setting when the _skylark_ cast anchor about two hundred yards from the shore and opposite the castle with which the loftiest point of the cliffs was crowned. the signal flag which the captain ran up to his mast-head was answered by another from the castle, and in a few minutes a boat was seen to start from a little quay which had been built out into the sea at the foot of the cliff. callias had written a letter to alcibiades in which he briefly described himself and his errand, and hippocles, though modestly depreciating the value of any thing that he could say, had also written, at the young man's request, a letter of introduction. these documents were handed over to the officer in charge of the boat, and conveyed by him to the castle. after a very short delay the boat returned again, this time in the charge of an officer of obviously higher rank. this higher personage mounted the side of the _skylark_, and after giving a courteous greeting to callias, delivered to him an invitation from alcibiades to make his castle his home for as long a period as he might find it convenient to stay there, explaining at the same time that his master would have come in person to welcome his guest, if he had not been detained by business of importance with a neighboring chief. the young athenian's baggage--for he had been liberally fitted out by the thoughtful and generous care of hippocles--was transferred to the boat, and in a few minutes more he had set his foot on the landing-place. he had been speculating as he neared the shore, about the way in which the castle was to be approached. an observer looking from the sea might have thought that there was no way of getting to it except by scaling the almost perpendicular base of the cliff. once landed on the quay, however, the traveller discovered that a passage had been cut through the cliff. this passage, which could be closed at its lower end by a massive door, was something like a winding staircase. it was somewhat stifling and dark, though light and air were occasionally admitted by holes bored to the outer surface of the rock. its upper end opened in to a courtyard round which the castle was built. the approach from the sea was, it will have been seen, sufficiently secure. on that side indeed the castle of bisanthe was absolutely impregnable. from the land, it was, to say the least, safely defensible. it was approached by one narrow ridge, so formed that a few resolute men could hold it against a numerous body of assailants. the walls were lofty and massive, and so constructed that a galling fire of missiles could be kept up on either flank of an attacking force. callias was escorted to his chamber by a young thracian slave, who informed him in broken speech that a bath room in which he would find hot and cold water was at his service, and further that his master hoped to have the pleasure of his company at supper in an hour's time. the chamber, it may be said, was furnished with a clepsydra, or water-clock, marked with divisions.[ ] callias awaited his introduction to his host with no little curiosity. alcibiades was, as has been said, a kinsman of his own, and he had heard of him--what athenian, indeed, had not,--but he had never happened to see him. callias' father had been an aristocrat of the old-fashioned type, and had so strongly disapproved of his cousin's reckless and extravagant behavior that he had broken off all intercourse with him, and had been particularly careful that his son should never come in contact with him. callias was about fourteen when alcibiades left athens in command (along with two colleagues) of the sicilian expedition. the absence thus begun lasted about eight years. for the first half of this time he was an exile; for the second half in command of the fleets and armies of athens, but still postponing his return to his native city. then came his brief visit, lasting it would seem, only a few days,[ ] and at that time callias, as it happened, had been absent in foreign service. he was now in what was or should have been, the prime of life, having just completed his forty-fourth year, but the dissipation of his youth and early manhood and the anxieties of his later years had left their mark upon him, and he looked older than his age. yet there were traces of the brilliant beauty that in earlier days had helped to make him the spoiled darling of athens. the wrinkles had begun to gather about his eyes, but they were still singularly lustrous, and could either flash with anger, or melt with tenderness. his temples were hollow and his cheeks had somewhat fallen in; but his complexion was almost as brilliant as ever, while the abundant auburn curls that fell clustering about his neck had scarcely a streak of gray in them. his greeting to his guest was more than courteous. it was affectionate, exactly such as was fitting from an older to a younger relative. indeed then, as ever afterward during their acquaintance, callias was greatly struck by the perfection of his manners. it seemed impossible that the stories told of his haughty insolence by which in former years he had made himself one of the best-hated men in athens could possibly be true. supper was announced shortly after callias had been ushered into the chamber. alcibiades took his guest by the hand, led him into the dining-room, and assigned him a place next to himself. some other guests were present. two of these were officers in the military force which alcibiades maintained in his stronghold; the third was an aged man, who had been his tutor many years, and for whom he retained an affection that was honorable to both master and pupil. the fourth was the thracian chief with whom alcibiades had been engaged when the _skylark_ arrived. the meal was simple. the chief feature was one of the huge turbot for which the euxine was famous. "that would have cost a fortune in the fish market at athens," said the host pointing to the dish, "even if it could have been procured at all. here a fisherman thinks himself well paid for such a monster by three, or at the most, four _drachmae_."[ ] a piece of venison and a platter of quails were the other dishes. the second course consisted of a maize pudding and some sweet-meats. during the repast the conversation turned speedily on local matters, and was carried on (but not till after a courteous apology had been offered to the young athenian) in the bastard greek largely mixed with thracian words, in which the chief was accustomed to express himself. the meal ended, a handsome silver cup was handed by the major-domo, a venerable looking man, who made the comfort of his master and his most honored guests his special care. alcibiades took it and poured out a few drops upon the table, uttering as he did so, the words: "to athene the champion." this was equivalent to the loyal toasts of an english banquet. he then took a very moderate draught, the wine being unmixed, in obedience to the rule which demanded that all wine used in religious ceremonies--and this libation was such a ceremony--should be pure.[ ] he then tipped the cup to each guest in turn. all were equally moderate, for it was not the custom, even for a greek drunkard, it may be said, to drink his wine unmixed. but when the cup came to the thracian chief he drank a deep draught as if the liquor had been liberally diluted. callias who had never been at table with a thracian before, watched the man with amazement. he saw that while the other guests were supplied with the usual mixtures of wine and water the chief remained steadfast in his devotion to the undiluted liquid, and that he emptied his cup at a draught, and that the cup itself was of an unusual capacity. nor did the drinker seem affected by these extraordinary potations, except that his voice became louder, and his manner more boastful. at last, however, and that without a moment's notice, he rolled over senseless on his back. so sudden was the change that it suggested the idea of a fit. "is he ill?" he whispered in some alarm, to his neighbor. "ill? not a whit. it is the way in which he always finishes his evenings. his slaves will carry him to bed, and he will awake to-morrow morning without the suspicion of a headache. bacchus, i verily believe, has a special favor for these fellows, and, truly, they do worship him with a most admirable earnestness." the thracian's collapse was the signal for breaking up the party. callias and the old tutor, timanthes by name, declined to drink any more, and the two officers, who were on duty for the night, departed to make their round. strong as was the place alcibiades omitted no precautions for its safe custody. timanthes, who was old and feeble retired to rest. "come with me to my own room," said alcibiades to his guest, "we shall be here alone." the chamber to which he led the way was little like what one would have expected to find in free-booter's stronghold, for really the castle of bisanthe was more of that than anything else. art and letters were amply represented in it. on one wall hung a panel painting[ ] by polygnotus, a masterly composition, of that serenity, that ethical meaning, as the great critic aristotle expresses it, which was characteristic of the artist. this represented the gods in council at olympus. it was faced on the opposite wall by an exceedingly graceful painting from the hand of xeuxis, aphrodite and the graces, and a spirited picture by the same artist, of the duel between ajax and hector. there were other works by men of less note. sculpture was represented by only a single specimen, a bust of socrates. "paintings are easily carried about," alcibiades afterwards explained to his guest, "but sculpture is inconveniently heavy. you will understand that a man in my situation has always to be ready for a move; and i always like to have two or three really good things that i can always take with me. one bust, indeed, i have indulged myself with, that of my old teacher. ah! if i had heard him to more purpose, i should not be here! you know him, of course?" callias said that he did. "an excellent likeness! is it not? who would think that such features concealed a soul so divinely beautiful? did you have any talk with him when you were in athens?" "yes," replied callias, "and i admired above all things his practical wisdom. but what was that to what i afterwards saw of him?" and he went on to relate how the philosopher stood firm, though in imminent peril of his life, and had steadfastly refused to put the unconstitutional proposal of callixenus to the assembly. alcibiades heard the story with uncontrollable delight. he started up from his seat, and walked up and down the room with flashing eyes. "tell me everything about it," he said, and he insisted upon the repetition of every detail. "that is magnificent," he cried, when his curiosity had been satisfied. "that is exactly what one would have expected from socrates. i suppose that it is the very first time that he ever acted as presiding magistrate--he had never been so, i know, when i left athens, nor have i heard of his having been since--and that first time he did what nobody else dared to do. you say that the others gave way?" "yes," replied callias, "they stood up against it at first, but gave in afterwards. socrates was absolutely alone, and at last they put the question without him." "it is just like him," cried alcibiades with enthusiasm. "he is simply the bravest and most enduring man alive. i could tell you stories about him that would astonish you. we served together in the campaign at potidæa. indeed we were in the same mess. when we had short commons, as we had many a time, there was no one like him in holding out. he seemed to be able to go without food altogether, but when we had plenty, he could enjoy it as well as anybody. we had a foolish way, as young men will, of making people drink whether they wished it or not. but nothing ever affected socrates. no one ever saw him one whit the worse for what he had taken. and as for the way in which he bore cold, it was absolutely incredible, only that one saw it with one's own eyes. the winters here are terrible, as you will find out, if, as i hope you will, you stop with me, but he used to make nothing of them. during the very hardest frost we had, when every one who could, stayed in doors, and those who were obliged to go out, wrapped themselves till you would hardly know them, he wore nothing but his common cloak, and went absolutely barefoot. "once, i remember, something came into his mind. that was in the early morning. well, he stood trying to think it out till noon, and from noon he went on till evening. some greeks from asia wanted to see how long this would go on; so, after dinner, they brought out their mattresses, and took up their quarters for the night in the open air--it was summer-time, you must understand. some of them slept, and some watched him, taking it by turns. their report was that he stood there till morning, and the sun rose, and that then he made a prayer to the sun, and so went to his quarters. "his courage, too, is astonishing. in one of the battles at potidæa he saved my life. i had been wounded and must infallibly have been killed, if it had not been for him. he took me up and carried me off to our line. the generals gave me the prize for valor, when they ought, by right, to have given it to him. but they took account of my family and rank, and curiously enough, he was just as anxious as they were that i should have it and not he. then at delium, again, when the day went against us, and the army was in full retreat. i was in the cavalry; he was serving as a foot soldier. our men would not keep together, and he and laches--he was killed, afterward, at mantinea--were making the best of their way back. i rode up to them and told them to keep up their courage and i would not leave them. a cavalry soldier has, you know, a great advantage in a retreat. there was no need to tell socrates to keep up his courage. laches, i could see, though a brave enough man, was terribly frightened; but socrates was as cool as a man could be. he held up his head finely, and marched steadily on. it was plain enough to see that anyone who meddled with him would find out his mistake. the end of it was that he got back safe, and brought laches back safe also. the fact is that at such times it is the men who are in a hurry to get away that are cut down. i do not think that there ever was a braver man than socrates. and what you have just been telling me bears it out. a man may be brave enough in battle and be timidly frightened when the assembly is howling and raging against him. this has been a dismal business of the generals and i have never been so near despairing of my country, as i have since i heard it. how is it possible to help a city that makes such a requital to those who save her? but still, while there are men like socrates in her, all is not lost. but no more now; you must be weary, and ready to sleep. there will be plenty of time hereafter to talk. and now farewell." footnotes: [ ] it is convenient in a narrative to speak of "hours," and the greeks had a division of time that was so named. but it must not be supposed that these hours were exact periods of time such as we mean by the word. the day between sunrise and sunset was divided into twelve equal parts, which varied in length according to the season of the year. the divisions of the whole period of a day and night into twenty-four equal unvarying parts was later than the period of which i am writing, being attributed to hipparchus, the astronomer, a native of nicæa in bithynia who lived in the second century b. c. the water-clock mentioned in the text may have been one of those large ones which served for the whole night (plato is said to have had one). the slave in announcing to the guest the time at which the meal would be served would probably indicate it by pointing to this or that division marked upon it. the water-clock may be roughly compared to a sand-glass, but the water flowed through several orifices, which were very minute. [ ] he returned in may, , conducted in person the procession to eleusis; a ceremony which had been discontinued for some time on account of the presence of the spartan garrison at decelea, and left again to take command of the fleet a few days afterward. he never saw athens again. [ ] three _drachmae_ would be something more than half-a-dollar, ( s. d. in english money). this is taking silver at its present conventional value. what its purchasing power would be now it would be difficult to say, but it would certainly be greater than that of the sum by which it is represented. [ ] so we have in homer (iliad , ) "the libations of wine unmingled" mentioned together with "the hand-holt trusted of yore," a thing that gave a solemn sanction to treaties. similar references abound in the greek and latin poets. [ ] the ancients painted on panel, not on canvass. thus the latin equivalent for 'picture' is tabula or tabella, words which may otherwise be used for a 'plank.' chapter xiv. bisanthe. life at bisanthe would, in any case, have been remarkably attractive to callias. the taste for sport was hereditary with him, as it was with most athenians of his class. but, ever since his boyhood, circumstances had been altogether adverse to any indulgence of it. for a quarter of a century an athenian's life had been perforce a city life.[ ] the country outside the walls was not available for when it was not actually in the occupation of a hostile army, it was still in a state of desolation. game, it is probable, had almost disappeared from it. it had long been too thickly populated for the larger animals to exist in it. these the sportsman had been obliged to seek in the mountain regions of phocis, doris, and thessaly. now the smaller such as the hare, always reckoned a special dainty in athens, could scarcely be found, even when it was possible to seek for it. callias was delighted to find a totally different condition of things at bisanthe. here there were to be found fierce and powerful animals the pursuit of which gave something of the delightful excitement of danger, the bear, the wild-boar, and the wolf. lion, too, could be sometimes seen, though they were not so common as they had been some eighty years before when the army of xerxes, marching through this very region, had had so many of the camels attacked and killed by them. our young athenian highly appreciated this abundance of noble game. he had had no experience, indeed, in the huntsman's craft, but he became fairly expert at it. he was an excellent rider; this accomplishment was a necessary part of the education of a well-born athenian. he was expert in all martial exercises, especially in the use of the javelin and the spear; and, above all, he had a cool courage which his warlike experience by land and sea had admirably developed. but there were more serious matters than sport to occupy him. the relation of his host to his neighbors, both greek and barbarian, was of curious interest to a thoughtful young man. he had heard something of it at athens, for alcibiades was a much talked of personage, all of whose movements were earnestly, even anxiously, discussed both by friends and foes. now he was, so to speak, behind the scenes, and saw and heard much that the outside world did not know or did not understand. the neighbors with whom his host came in contact, friendly or unfriendly, were three. there were the greek cities along the northern coast of the propontis; there was seuthes, the king of thrace; a potentate whose kingdom had many uncertain and varying boundaries, and there were the free or independent thracians. between these last and alcibiades there was constant war. accustomed for centuries to plunder their neighbors, they now found themselves repaid in their own coin. at the head of a picked force, highly disciplined and admirably armed, alcibiades harried their country with an audacity and a skill which made his name a constant terror to them. the greek cities, on the other hand, were uniformly friendly. before his coming they had been sadly harrassed and distressed by their barbarian neighbors. they had not been able to call anything beyond their walls exactly their own, and even their walls had sometimes scarcely sufficed to protect them. all this was altered by the military genius of this remarkable man. the robber bands which had been accustomed to ride unchecked up to their fortifications were now compelled to keep at a respectful distance from them, and not only the cities themselves but their territories were practically safe. land which it had been impossible to cultivate at all, or from which only a precarious crop could be snatched with imminent danger to the cultivator, was now covered with prosperous farms and pleasant homesteads. for this protection, enabling them as it did to save the exhausting expense of imported food, the cities were willing to pay, and considerable sums which were practically a tribute, only much more cheerfully paid, came regularly into the treasury at bisanthe, and enabled its master to keep up a numerous and efficient force. as for king seuthes, his relations with the powerful stranger who had settled on these his territories were more doubtful. he was not an enemy, but he certainly was not a friend. all that alcibiades could do in weakening the independent thracians was altogether to his mind. let them be weakened enough, and they would gladly seek protection by becoming his subjects. on the other hand he did not approve the idea of any one but himself becoming the patron of the greek cities on his coast. what they were willing to pay for protection ought to come, he felt, into his coffers, not into those of an interloping adventurer. meanwhile he was content to remain on outwardly good terms with the master of bisanthe, and to await the development of events. in the little town of the same name that was dominated by the castle of bisanthe, the young athenian found some pleasant society. he was the more at home in it because it was an ionian colony, and the inhabitants were akin to him in race and sympathies. they had the same culture, a quality that always flourished more kindly in the ionic branch of the hellenic race. plays of the great dramatists of his own country were performed in a small but well appointed theatre, and there was at least one circle in the town in which literary topics were discussed with interest and intelligence. the resources available in the way of native society were not great. thracian habits in general were not unfairly represented by the behavior of the chief to whom my readers were introduced in the last chapter. their hard drinking habits had already made them notorious throughout greece. our hero accordingly kept away from the entertainments which his host felt it a matter of policy to attend. the one great social function at which he assisted was the marriage of a prince who was nearly related to king seuthes. athenian habits were commonly frugal. their public buildings, whether for political or religious purposes, were splendid in the extreme. on these, and on the ceremonies of worship, they were accustomed to spare no expense. but their private expenditure was, as a rule, not large. our hero was proportionately astonished at the profusion which prevailed at the wedding festivities of the thracian caranus. there were twenty guests. each as he entered the banqueting chamber had a circle of gold put upon his head, and in taking his place was presented with a silver cup. these and indeed all the dishes, plates, and cups with which the guests were furnished during the entertainment, were supposed to become their actual property. a brass platter, covered with pastry, on which were birds of various kinds, was put before each, and after this another of silver, furnished with a variety of fresh meats. these disposed of--they were just tasted and handed to the slaves who stood behind the guests--two flasks of perfume, one of silver, the other of gold, fastened together with a link of gold, were distributed. each flask held about half a pint. then came a piece of quite barbarous extravagance--a silver gilt charger, large enough to hold a porker of considerable size. the creature lay on its back with its belly stuffed with thrushes, the yolks of eggs, oysters, scollops, and other dainties. the carrying capacity of the slaves was nearly exhausted, and the bridegroom received a hearty round of applause when he ordered his guests to be supplied with baskets, themselves richly ornamented with silver in which they might carry away his bounty. at this point alcibiades and his friend made an excuse to depart. "caranus," said the former, as they returned to bisanthe, "must have embarassed himself for life by this silly extravagance. he must have borrowed money largely before he could indulge in all this silver-ware, for though his estates are large, he is far from being wealthy. but it is a point of honor with these people to go as near to ruining themselves as the money-lender will permit them, when they celebrate a birth, a wedding, or a funeral." but callias found the chief interest of the months which he spent at bisanthe in the frequent conversations which he held with his host. in these alcibiades expressed himself with the utmost freedom and frankness. what he said was in fact at once a confession and an apology, the substance of them may be given as follows: "you have heard i dare say very much evil of me, and i cannot deny that much of it is perfectly true. it ill becomes a man to complain of circumstances, for everyone, i take it, can make his own life and if he goes to ruin has only himself to blame for it. yet the gods, or fate, or whatever it is that rules the world, were certainly adverse to me from the beginning. my father fell at coronea when i was but a mere child, and the loss of a father is especially damaging when his son is rich and noble. every one seems to agree in spoiling the boy, the lad, the young man, who is the master of his own fortune. i know that i was fooled to the top of my bent. however, that is all past, and the free man who lets others turn him about to their own purposes has nothing to say in his own defence; and i had at least one good thing on my side of which if i had been so minded i might have made good use. socrates never wearied of convicting me out of my own mouth of folly and ignorance, and he knew my great weakness and told me of it in the most unsparing fashion. i remember once how he convicted me of what i know has been the great fault of my life. 'if,' he said, 'you can convince the athenians that you deserve to be honored as no man, not even pericles himself deserved, if you gain an equal name among the other greeks and barbarians, if you cross over from europe and meddle with matters in asia, all these things will not satisfy you. you desire to be nothing less than master of the whole human race.' that perhaps was somewhat exaggerated, but i certainly have had big schemes in my head, bigger than i ever had, or could hope to have, the means of carrying out. my hopes took in all greece, persia, carthage, the western barbarians who inhabit the shores of the ocean, and i know not what else. it was too great a structure to build on the slight foundation of an athenian dock-yard; it was piling olympus and ossa and pelion on the hill of hymettus, and such structures are sure to fall even without the thunder-bolt of zeus. yet it is only fair to myself to say that in my ambitions i did think of my country as well as of myself; and i think that i have not always had fair play in carrying them out. there was the expedition to sicily, for instance. i suppose that no one will ever speak of it but as a piece of hair-brained folly into which i was the means of leading athens. looked at by the event, it seems so, i allow, and yet it might have succeeded. indeed it was within an iota of succeeding, and this though the people showed the incredible folly of putting as senior in command, a man who hated the whole business. even nicias almost took syracuse. if they had only left me without a colleague or with colleagues who would have yielded to my counsels! but what did they do? just at the critical time they recalled the man whom everyone in the expedition, from the first to the last, identified with its success; and why did they recall me? on that trumpery charge of having broken the hermæ.[ ] you would like to ask me, i know, whether i had anything to do with the matter. no; i had not, but i could have told them all about it if i had had the chance. as it was, they were ready to listen to any one but me. why, there was an outrageous liar came forward, and declared he had seen the whole thing done by the light of the moon; and on the night it was done there was no moon at all. but i had enemies, personal enemies who would stick at nothing as long as they could injure me. and here i must confess a fault, a fault that has been fatal to me. i deserved to have enemies. i made them by my annoyance and insolence; and if they ruined me, and, as i think, my country with me, i have only myself to blame. you would like to know how i justify myself for what i did after my banishment, for getting sparta to help syracuse against my own country? i do not justify myself at all. it was madness, tho' it was only too successful. but it made me frantic to think what a chance, what a splendid opportunity for myself and for athens, the fools who were in power at home were throwing away. no; on that point i have nothing to say for myself. but since then i have honestly tried to do the best that i could for the city. and if the athenians could only have trusted me and had had a little more patience, i believe that i could have saved them. but it is always the same story with them; they must have what they want at once, and if they don't get it, some one has to suffer. how could they expect that i could put right at once all that had been going wrong for years?" such was the substance of what alcibiades said to his guest on the many occasions on which they discussed these matters, said of course, with a variety of details and a wealth of illustration, which it is impossible to reproduce. more than once callias asked his host what were his views and expectations of the future of the war. he found that alcibiades did not take a cheerful view of the prospects of the campaign that would be soon beginning. "i was always afraid," he said, "that the victory at arginusæ would be only a reprieve, a postponing of the evil day. the effort which athens then made was too exhausting to be repeated--her next fleet will be nothing like as good as the last, and the last had hard enough work to win the day. and then there was the disastrous folly and crime of putting the generals to death. mind, i don't say that they were not to blame; but i do say that to kill the only good officers the city had, even if they had deserved death ten times more than they did, was mere madness. whom have they got to put in their place? conon is a man who knows his business and would do his duty, but as for the rest," he went on, anticipating a witticism which was made many hundred years afterwards by an english statesman, "i can only say that i hope they will inspire the enemy with half the terror with which they inspire me." footnotes: [ ] from to (the year of which i am now writing). the eight years from - , during which the peace of nicias and the truce that followed it were in force, must be excepted. [ ] a day or two before the expedition started the pedestal statues of hermes which stood at the street corners were broken down. alcibiades was charged with being an accomplice in this outrage, refused an opportunity of defending himself, sent out in joint command, and recalled when the campaign was in progress. chapter xv. Ægos potami. alcibiades had established a system of communication with all the principal stations in the Ægean which gave him early information of what was going on. early in the new year ( ) intelligence reached him at his castle, that lysander was coming out from sparta to assume the command of the allied fleet. this news affected alcibiades very considerably. "i anticipated this," he said to his guest after the evening meal on the day when the news had reached him, "and it is the worst thing that could have happened for athens. there was just a chance that the spartans, who, happily for us, are very stupid and obstinate, would stick to their rule that no man should be appointed naval commander-in-chief thrice. but they had, as i heard from a friend in chios, a very strong requisition from the allies to appoint lysander, and so they have sent him out again, saving their rule by appointing a nominal chief, a man called arrachus, who, of course, is a mere figure head. now lysander is by far the ablest man that the spartans have got; he is quite unscrupulous; he is a bitter enemy of ours; and what is worst of all, he can do anything that he pleases with cyrus. you have not been campaigning for two or three years without finding out that the persian money bags are the real weights that make the scales of fate go up and down. last year callicratidas was crippled because cyrus, at this very lysander's request, kept his purse strings tight. now everything will be straight and easy, and before two months are over the spartans will have as good a fleet as money can make." the year wore slowly on. the long thracian winter, which callias, though not unused to cold weather in athens found exceedingly severe, yielded at last to spring, and spring in its turn to summer. all the while the news which reached bisanthe continued to have a gloomy complexion. at miletus, as well as in other of the mainland towns, thorough-going partisans of lysander were installed in power. cyrus had been called away to upper asia, where the old king, his father, was lying sick to death, and had left all his treasuries at the disposal of the spartan admiral. with this supply of money the pay of the sailors had been increased, and new ships had been laid down on the stocks. in march the athenian fleet sailed for the seat of war. it was larger than any that had been sent forth by the city in recent years, for it numbered no less than one hundred and eighty ships; but private letters gave an unfavorable account of the way in which it was equipped, and officered. this adverse opinion continued to be borne out by the news that arrived from time to time of its doings. it seemed to be moving about aimlessly and fruitlesly, always behind, always in the wrong place. it offered battle to lysander, who lay in harbor near ephesus, but in vain. the wary spartan had no mind to fight but at his own time, and the athenian admirals had no way of compelling him. then the ships were scattered in plundering expeditions along the mainland coasts and among the islands which had accepted the spartan alliance. the gain was small, for the booty was insignificant, but the demoralization and relaxation of discipline were great. about midsummer followed a bold maneuver on the part of lysander. he sailed across the Ægean to the coast of attica, where his sudden appearance caused no little consternation. the athenian commanders were as usual behind hand. if they had heard of this movement as soon as they ought, and had been ready to follow immediately, it is quite possible that they might have inflicted a damaging blow on their adversaries. as it was, the news was long in reaching them, and when it came, found them with their fleet scattered and unprepared. accordingly they missed their chance of forcing lysander to an engagement off an hostile shore, an engagement, too, which he would hardly have been able to decline. lysander crossed and recrossed the Ægean without molestation, and shortly afterward sailed northward. alcibiades, whose intelligence department was, as has been said, admirably organized, received information that this movement was intended, and in consequence took up his quarters at a little fort which he possessed at the extremity of the chersonesus. he and his guest had not been there more than a day when the spartan fleet came in sight. he watched it pass at a distance of two or three miles, with eager interest. "they have a very formidable appearance," he said to callias when he had scanned with his practical eye every detail of their equipment. "i shall be agreeably surprised if our ships have anything as good to show." on the following day the athenian fleet appeared, showing only too plainly how just had been alcibiades' forebodings. the effects of wind and weather--the ships had now been nearly six months at sea--were plainly visible; the sails, which, as there was a slight breeze from the west, they used to assist their progress, were dirty and ragged; the rowers were deplorably out of time. "things," he said to his companion, "are even worse than i expected; that fleet will be no match for its enemy, except under far more skillful management than it is likely to have. still let us hope for the best; and it may be possible to give our friends some good advice, if they will take it." this, unfortunately, was the last thing that the athenian admirals, certainly incompetent, and probably traitorous, were willing to do. the progress of events, briefly described, was this: lysander possessed himself, by a sudden attack, of the town of lampsacus, which was in alliance with athens. this conquest put him in possession of abundant supplies, and of what was more valuable, a safe and convenient base of operations. while securing these material advantages, he also, with a generosity which he could always assume on occasion, allowed the lampsacenes to go unharmed. he gained thus not only a strong position but a friendly population. on the other hand the position occupied by the athenians was by no means so favorable. they moved their fleet to the mouth of a little stream known by the name of Ægos potami, or the goat's river. this spot was directly opposite lampsacus--the hellespont here is somewhat less than two miles broad--but it had no conveniences for the purpose for which it was chosen. there was no harbor, the anchorage was indifferent, there were no houses in the neighborhood, and the nearest point from which supplies could be obtained was the town of sestos, nearly two miles distant. the opportunity for offering advice which alcibiades had foreseen had now occurred, and he promptly took advantage of it. the morning after the arrival of the fleet, he rode, with callias in his company, to the spot where the athenian generals had pitched their headquarters, and requested an interview. he was introduced into the tent which they used for purposes of consultation, and saw the two officers, menander and tydeus by name, who happened to be detailed that day for duty on shore. they received him with a coldness and hauteur which augured ill for the success of his mission. "allow me, gentlemen," he said, "to offer you a piece of advice which, from my knowledge of the country, i feel sure will be useful. transfer your fleet from this position, which, you must allow me to say, has nothing to recommend it, to sestos. you must go to sestos for your supplies; why not stay there altogether. the harbor is good and you will be able to do what you please, fight, or not fight, as it may seem best. here, if it comes on a blow from the south and--you will remember that the equinox is near--you will be in a very awkward predicament; and, anyhow, i do not see how you are to keep your men together when they have to forage in this manner for supplies." "we are obliged to you for the trouble you have taken in coming," said menander, "but you must allow us to remind you that it is we, and not you whom the athenian people have appointed to the command of this fleet." "the gods prosper you in it," replied alcibiades with unruffled coolness. "and now, farewell." "i have done all that i could," observed alcibiades to his companion, who had been expecting his return outside the tent. "now we can only await the event. as for these men, i would say of them that the gods strike with madness those whom they are determined to destroy, but for one thing. there may be a method in their madness. they may _mean_ to bring about a disaster. in a word they may have sold their country. it is a hard thing to say of any man, but could any admiral, not being a madman or a traitor, keep his fleet in such a place as this? and yet i do not know. i have seen honest men act with a folly so outrageous that one could not help suspecting something more. let us go home, and prepare for the worst. but stay--there is yet a chance. there is conon. he must know better than this. will you see him? i cannot, for there is too deadly a feud between us. do you know him?" "yes," said callias, "i was with him last year when he was shut up in mitylene, and he sent me with despatches to athens." "and will you go to him?" "certainly, if it would not seem too presumptuous." "you can give your authority; he will understand why i did not come myself; and he is too sensible not to listen to good advice from whomsoever it may come." conon was on board his ship in which he was practicing some maneuvers about half a mile from the shore. the young athenian was rowed out to see him, and returned in about an hour. the report which he brought back was this: "conon was very reserved, but courteous. he wished me to thank you for your message, and to say he was sure you wished well to athens. he would do what he could, but he was only one out of many, and he might be out-voted. anyhow, he would keep his own men from straggling." "then," said alcibiades, "we have shot our last bolt, let us go back." for some days the two companions waited for news in a suspense that they often felt to be almost beyond bearing. one night--it was the night of the fifteenth of september--they had watched through the hours of darkness till the day began to show itself in the eastern sky. both had felt the presentiment that their waiting was about to end, though neither had acknowledged it to the other. "is it never coming?" said the elder man, as he rose from his seat, and looked from the window across the sea, just beginning to glitter with the morning light. in a moment his attitude of weariness changed to one of eager attention. "look!" he cried to callias. "what is that?" and he pointed to a boat that had just rounded the nearest point to the westward. it was a fishing boat, manned, apparently, by seven or eight men, and making all the speed it could with both oars and sails. the two men hurried down to the castle pier, and awaited the arrival of what they were sure was the long expected message. the boat was still about two hundred yards away when alcibiades recognized the steersman. "ah!" he cried, "it is old hipparchus." and he waved his hand with a friendly gesture. "it is a bad news he brings," he said again after a quiet pause, "he makes no reply." a few more strokes brought the boat alongside of the pier. alcibiades reached his hand to the steersman, and helped him to disembark. that his errand was bad was only too evident from his look. he was deadly pale, and in his eyes was the expression of one who had lately seen some terrible sight. "it is all over," he said, "athens is lost." for a few minutes the three men stood silent. perhaps it was then that alcibiades felt the keenest remorse of his life. after all, it was he who, more than any living man, had brought this ruin to his country. he had led her into an enterprise which overmatched her strength; and he had suggested to her enemies, the too successful policy that had ended in her overthrow. if athens was indeed lost it was his doing--and yet he loved her. much of this the younger man could guess at, for he had not been at bisanthe for now nearly a year without learning something of his host's inner thoughts. he turned away his face unwilling to witness the emotion which he felt could be seen in the other's countenance. the messenger from the scene of the disaster stood with downcast eyes, absorbed in the dismal recollections of what he had lately witnessed. "tell us how it happened," said alcibiades. "for five days," so he began, "we manned our ships every morning about the third hour, formed them in line of battle, and moved across the strait to the harbor of lampsacus. the spartan fleet was ranged in line outside the harbor with their army drawn up upon the shore on either side. our admirals did not venture to attack; and so we sailed back. i noticed that a few quick-sailing galleys followed us at about half a mile distance. when we got back to our station, our men used to scatter in search of provisions for their noonday meal--our commissariat, you must know, was very ill-supplied. some went up the country, but most made their way to sestos. none of our admirals, except conon, seemed to have a notion that this was dangerous, though some of us old sailors could have warned them if we had dared. conon always kept his men together. well, on the fifth day--our men, you must understand, had been growing more and more careless--about an hour after we got back, a shield was run up to the masthead of one of the spartan swift-sailing galleys. i saw it flash in the sunshine; and a few moments afterwards the whole spartan fleet rowed from their anchorage and made their way across the strait. they caught us entirely unprepared. there was no battle; scarcely a blow was struck. i can easily believe that they did not lose a single man. some of our ships they found absolutely deserted. none of them had more than two-thirds of their complement. no, i should not say none; twelve were ready, conon's eight and four others, one of which was the parelus.[ ] i was on board menander's own ship, of which i was steersman. there were eight others with me. we hurried as fast as we could to sestos. there, the next day, i was able to hire this boat, and thought the best thing that i could do was to come here." "you say that twelve ships escaped," said alcibiades, "how many then were taken?" "about a hundred and seventy," answered the man. "and how many prisoners?" "i cannot say, but certainly several thousand. before we came away, a boat from lampsacus brought an awful story of what had been done there. all the athenian prisoners were put to death, between three and four thousand. only the admiral adeimantus was spared." "ah! i see," cried alcibiades, "he was the traitor." footnotes: [ ] the parelus was one of the two consecrated ships, (the other being the salanimia) which were used for such purposes as the conveyance of ambassadors, the carrying of offerings to shrines, and, in case of need, the conveyance of important tidings. they were always manned with picked crews. chapter xvi. to pharnabazus. there was little sleep that night for the inhabitants of the castle of bisanthe. every one felt that the situation was full of peril. if it had not been for the confidence which every one brought into contact with alcibiades felt in his capacities of leadership there would have been something like a panic. as it was, the garrison awaited with calmness, though not without intense anxiety, the course of action which their commander would take for himself, and recommend to them. they were not kept long in suspense. shortly after dawn the notes of a trumpet were heard through the castle giving the well known signal by which a general assembly of the garrison was called. a few minutes sufficed to collect the men. the meeting was held in the central court of the castle, and alcibiades, taking his stand on the topmost step of an outside staircase which led up to one of the chambers, addressed them. "comrades," he said, "you have heard of the disaster by which athens has lost its last fleet. i will blame no man for what happened or inquire whether it might not have been averted--" the speaker was interrupted by loud cries of "long live alcibiades, the invincible!" a flush of pleasure passed over the speaker's face, but he made a gesture imperative of silence, and continued. "the only thing that remains for us is to consider what it is most expedient to do. here, my friends, we cannot stay. bisanthe indeed, protected by its situation, its walls, and stout hands and tried valor, it would not be easy to take. but, with both sea and land hostile, with all the country and cities from which we have drawn our supplies in the hands of the spartans, we cannot long continue to hold it. what then shall we do? you, my friends, i can only advise, for from this day i of necessity cease to command. go, then, i would say, to king seuthes, and offer yourselves to him. he will receive you kindly. brave men--and your valor has been shown times without number--are always valued and honored by him, and now that, for a time at least, the spartans and their allies have became supreme in these parts, he will want men more than ever. if you require it, you shall have my good word; but your reputation will speak for you more effectually than i can. my gratitude to you, who have served me so well, i can never express. yet such return as i can make shall not be left undone. the paymaster will pay you all arrears of pay, with a donation of thrice as much again." a loud burst of applause followed this announcement. the speaker continued: "this gift would be many times greater, if my means were equal to my sense of your courage and your services. from some of you i have a favor to ask. it is not expedient publicly to declare my plans; but i may say that i shall need a few associates in them. for these i shall not ask you, not because i am doubtful of raising them, but because i know that you would all offer yourselves--" a roar of assent went up from the whole assembly. "i have already exercised the choice which in any case i should have been compelled afterwards to make. twelve companions--more i am forbidden by circumstances to take--will go with me. to the rest i say, 'farewell.' the gods grant that at some happier time we may again render our service to athens and to greece. till then, farewell!" a loud answering cry of farewell went up from the men, which was renewed again and again as the speaker entered the room at the head of the staircase. here the twelve chosen associates were assembled, callias and hipparchus, the messenger from the scene of the late conflict, making up the number to fourteen. alcibiades addressed them: "i have long since anticipated and prepared myself for this misfortune which has now overtaken us, though the blow has fallen more suddenly and more heavily than i had feared. to you, my chosen friends, i reveal the counsels which it would not have been expedient to publish to a multitude. briefly they are these: lysander has conquered by the help of the persians, for had it not been for the gold of cyrus, his fleet could never have been kept together. we also must go to the persians for help. it is an evil necessity, i confess, that makes free-born greeks court the favor of their slaves; but a necessity it is. and the time favors us for using it. cyrus covets the throne of persia which he claims against his elder brother artaxerxes as having been born after his father's accession whereas artaxerxes was born before it. as lysander, then, has used cyrus against us, so we must use artaxerxes against cyrus. 'how,' you will ask, 'is artaxerxes to be approached?' through pharnabazus, the satrap, with whom i have a warm friendship of now some years' standing. to pharnabazus, therefore, i now purpose to go. i shall demand of him that which he will himself be most willing to grant--for he is no friend to cyrus--that he send me up to susa. this themistocles did before me; but he, at least in word, went as the enemy of his country, though indeed he was unwilling to harm it. i shall go, both in word and in deed, as its friend. and now for other things. for my most valuable possessions i have prepared hiding-places. much i shall leave to king seuthes, to whom i sent a message concerning my immediate departure. this morning, my friends, i would ask you to receive at my hands a year's pay. do not hesitate to receive it; i can give it now, i may not be able so to do a year hence. we will start this day at sunset. there is no time to be lost. to-morrow, i doubt not, or the next day at the latest, lysander will be here." with callias, after the rest had departed to make preparations for their departure, alcibiades had some private conversation as to the subject of ways and means. "you must let me be your banker," he began by saying. callias thanked him heartily, but declined to receive anything more than would suffice for immediate needs. "you may as well take it," returned his host, "there is a good deal more here than i can take with me; and why should you not? for myself, i carry most of my possessions about with me in this fashion,"--and he showed a leather purse filled with pearls and precious stones. "gold is too cumbrous to carry in any quantity. this no man will take as long as i am alive. besides this, my worthy friend hippocles, who, as you know, is as trustworthy as the treasury of delphi, has most of my property in his hands. and, if we once get safely to pharnabazus, we need not trouble any more about this matter. i must do the persians the justice to say that they are always open-handed. and they can afford to be. it is not too much to say that for one talent of gold that we have in greece they have at least a hundred. any one who should have the ransacking of one of their great treasure cities--and they have others besides susa; babylon, for instance, and persepolis and pasargadæ--would see something that would astonish them. and"--he added, with a profound sigh--"if only things had gone straight, i might have been the man." the journey along the northern shore of the propontis was accomplished in safety. no spartan ship had as yet made its way so far eastward. at a little town on the asiatic shore alcibiades provided his party with horses for riding and serviceable mules for the conveyance of their baggage and of such a selection of his own possessions as he had thought it well to take with him. the old sailor hipparchus here wanted to leave them, and to make his way to byzantium, where he had relatives. the remainder alcibiades addressed before setting out, to the following effect: "we have to make our way to gordium in phrygia, for it is there that, if he keeps to his usual habits, we shall find the satrap pharnabazus. he is accustomed to winter there. but we shall not find it easy to get there. these bithynians are not effeminate asiatics, a hundred of whom will fly before five stout greeks. they are thracians from the other side of the sea, and we all know how hard are their heads, and how strong their arms. we cannot force our way through them; we must elude them if we can." the route which the party followed lay for some time within sight of the sea. this was commonly followed by travellers, as the mountaineers seldom ventured within the border of the maritime plain. when they had reached the head of the gulf of olbia they struck inland. the road usually followed would have taken them by the valley of sangarius, a river which divides the great chain of the mysian olympus. their guide strongly dissuaded them from taking it. it was constantly watched, he said, by the mountaineers. no one could hope to escape them, and only a very strong party could force its way through. the safest plan would be by certain paths which he knew, and by which they might hope to cross olympus unmolested. only hunters and shepherds know them, or a chance traveller on foot for whom it would not be worth the robbers' while to wait. it was a toilsome and even dangerous journey. the first snows of autumn had began to fall, and even the practical eye of the guide found it difficult to discover the path, while the sufferings of the travellers, who had to bivouac for several nights in the open air, with but scanty fire to warm them, were exceedingly severe. still, but for one unlucky incident, it would have been accomplished in safety. the party was now half-way down the southern slopes of olympus when they halted for the night at a roadside inn, or rather caravansary. they found the large reception chamber--it contained two only--already occupied by a party of the vagrant priests of cybele. while alcibiades and callias found accommodation, such as it was, in the smaller room, the rest of the party were thrown upon the hospitality of the priests, unless indeed, they chose to bivouac outside. unluckily, the priests were only too hospitable. they invited the new comers to an entertainment which was prolonged into a revel. during the passage of the mountains the allowances of food had been small, and for drink the party had had perforce to be satisfied with the wayside springs or even with melted snow. when they found themselves under shelter, in a room which was at least weather-tight, and warmed with a blazing fire, the sense of contrast tended to relax their powers of self-restraint. the priests had roasted a couple of sheep, and broached a cask of the heady wine of mount tmolus, with which a wealthy devotee had presented them. this they drank, and insisted on their guests drinking, unmixed. by the time the mutton bones had been picked bare, and the cask drained to its dregs, not a man out of the twelve was sober. a heavy slumber, lasting late into the morning, was the natural consequence of this debauch, and when the sleepers were at last aroused, they set about the preparation for a start in a very languid fashion. it was nearly noon before the party was fairly on its way. darkness came on before the next stage could be reached. it was while the travellers were bivouacking in a wholly unprotected situation that a company of marauders, who had indeed been watching their movements for some days in the hopes of finding such an opportunity, fell upon them. the result was disastrous. alcibiades and callias, who had been sleeping with their horses picketed close to their camp fire, were roused by the noise, and springing to their saddles made their escape. not one of their followers was equally fortunate. some were cut down in their sleep, others as they were endeavoring to collect their senses. the sumpter-horses and their burdens of course fell into the hands of the assailants. it was only with what they carried on their own persons that the two survivors of the party made their way about six days afterward to the satrap's winter palace at gordium. chapter xvii. athens in the dust. "i feel that my place is at athens," said callias to his host a few days after their arrival. "in spite of the past?" "yes. at such a time no one thinks of the past, but only of the future." "well; i cannot say that you are wrong. if you think fit to go, i shall not seek to hold you back. i must frankly say that i see little hope." "and you?" callias went on after a pause. "what shall you do, if i may make so bold as to ask?" "if i can save my country at all, it will be here. the only hope now is to detach persia from sparta. perhaps now that athens has fallen so low, the persians will see what their true interests are. the worst of it is that there is no real ruler, no one to carry out a consistent policy. the great king is absolute at the capital, but in the provinces he is little more than a name. the satraps do almost as they please; they actually make war on each other if it suits their purpose. so, it is not what is best for persia, but what tissaphernes or pharnabazus may think best for himself that will be done. still there is a chance left; only i must be on the spot to seize it if it comes. were i to go to athens, i should be only one man among a useless crowd, and you, my young friend, will, i very much fear, be little more." "anyhow i shall go," replied the young man, "at all events there will be one sword more to be drawn for athens." "yes," muttered alcibiades to himself, as his companion left the room, "if you get the chance of drawing it. i rather think that with that fox lysander in command, you will do nothing more for athens than bring one more mouth to be fed." callias made his way to the coast with no difficulty. assuming, at the suggestion of alcibiades, a citizen's dress, he joined a caravan of traders which was on its way westward, and in their company travelled pleasantly and safely. arrived at miletus he took passage in a merchant ship that was bound for Ægina, hoping if he could only get so far, to be able to make his way somehow into the city. at one time, indeed, he was terribly afraid that this hope would be disappointed. the _swallow_--this was the name of the vessel of Ægina--was challenged and overhauled by a corinthian ship of war. callias made no attempt to conceal his nationality. indeed it would have been useless, for an athenian in those days was about as easily recognized over the whole of the greek world as an englishman is recognized in these, anywhere in europe. to his great surprise the corinthian captain simply said: "you can go; i have no order to detain you." that there was no kindness in his permission callias was perfectly well aware, for the hatred of corinth for athens was tenfold more bitter than that of sparta. it was a quarrel between athens and corinth, on the tender point of a rebellious corinthian colony, that had been the immediate cause of the peloponnesian war; and even before this there had always been the potent influence of commercial rivalry to set the two states against each other. the young athenian noticed also a sinister smile on the captain's face; but what it meant he was at a loss to determine. landed at Ægina he lost no time in enquiring how he might best reach his destination. "oh! you will get in easily enough," said the Æginetan merchant, the owner of the _swallow_, to whom he stated his case. "is not the city blockaded then?" "yes, in a way," replied the man. "please to explain what you mean," said callias, who was getting a little heated by these mysterious remarks. "well," said the merchant, "king pausanias is encamped outside the city in some place that they call the grove of academus, i think. do you know it?" callias assented with a nod. "and lysander has a hundred and fifty ships off the piraeus. still i think that you will be able to get in. the blockade is not kept very strictly." "had i best go by night?" "perhaps it would be better." "can you help me to a boat?" "certainly; but you will have to pay the boatman pretty highly, for, of course, it is a risk, though it can be done." "will you make the arrangements if i pay you the money in advance?" "certainly, if you do not mind going so far as a _mina_. it is really worth the money." callias paid the money, and was told to be in readiness to embark at midnight. it would have enlightened him considerably if he could have seen the merchant's behavior as soon as he was safely out of the room. "ah, you young serpent," the man cried, "you will be allowed to creep into your hole easily enough; but if we don't suffocate you and your whole brood when we have got you there, my name is not timagenes." the fact was that a revolution of which callias knew nothing had taken place at Ægina. an old rival and enemy of athens, the city had been conquered many years before, and the anti-athenian party expelled. and now everything was changed. lysander had brought back the exiles, and though athens had still friends, it was the hostile party that was in power. callias had observed a certain change in the demeanor of the people, but was too much engrossed in his own affairs to think much about it. the blockade was run as easily as the Æginetan had foretold. the boat passed within fifty yards of one of the squadron, and callias could have sworn that he saw a sentinel on the watch pacing the vessel's deck. but the man did not challenge, and the piraeus was reached without any difficulty. it was not long before all the mystery was explained. "this is just what i feared," said hippocles, to whose house the young athenian hastened. "i knew that you would come back, and i could not warn you." "what do you mean," cried the young man in astonishment. "was it not my duty to return?" "yes, in one way it was. but tell me how you got here?" callias related the incidents of his journey, and expressed some surprise that the corinthian captain had not taken him prisoner, and that the blockade was so negligently kept. "and you did not understand what all this meant?" "no; i understood nothing." "my dear friend," said the merchant, "it simply means that lysander is going to starve us out, and that the more there are of us the easier and the speedier his work will be. this has been his policy all along. he has taken no prisoners. whenever he has taken a city, and there is hardly one that has not either been taken or given itself up, he has sent every athenian citizen home. they are simply put on their parole to come here. the consequence is that the city is fairly swarming with people, and that there is next to no food. i have a good store--for some time past i have kept myself well provisioned, not knowing what might happen--and i am able to do something for my poor neighbors. but the state of things in the city is simply awful. people, and people too whom i know as really well-to-do citizens, are dying of sheer starvation. as for the poor women and children it is truly heart breaking. oh, my dear friend, if you had only stopped away; for here you can do nothing. but i knew you would come back, and i honor you for it." "but can nothing be done?" cried the young man. "it is better to die than be starved like a wolf in his den." "the people have lost all heart. and indeed, if they were all brave as lions, we are hopelessly outnumbered. pausanias must have as many as forty thousand men outside the city, for every city in the island[ ] except argos, has sent its contingent; and we could not muster a fourth part of the number, and such troops too! and where is our fleet? at the bottom of the Ægean, or in the arsenals of the enemy. i do not suppose that there are fifty ships, all told, in our docks. and of these a third are not sea-worthy. no, we must submit; and yet it is almost as much as a man's life is worth to mention the word." "but could we not make terms of some kind, not good terms i fear, but still such as would be endurable? has anything been done?" "the senate sent to agis, who was at deccleia,[ ] and proposed peace on these terms: athens was to become the ally of sparta on the condition of having the same friends and the same enemies, but was to be allowed to keep the long walls[ ] and the piraeus. agis said that he had no authority to treat, and bade the envoys go to sparta. so they came back here, and were directed to go. they reached a place on the borders of laconia and sent on their message to the ephors at sparta, not being allowed to proceed any further themselves. the ephors sent back this answer: 'begone instantly; if the athenians really desire peace, let them send you again with other proposals, such as having reflected more wisely they may be disposed to make.' so the envoys returned. some had hoped that they would do some good. i must confess that i had not. there was terrible dismay. at last one archistratus plucked up courage to speak. 'the lacedaemonians can force us to accept what conditions they please. let us acknowledge what we cannot deny, and make peace with them on their own terms.' there was a howl of rage at this, for in truth the lacedaemonian terms were nothing less than this: 'pull down a mile of the long walls, and give up your fleet.' the unlucky archistratus was thrown into prison where he lies still. well, one said one thing, one another. at last theramenes got up and said: 'the real manager of affairs is neither agis nor pausanias, nor even the ephors, but lysander. send me to him--he is a personal friend of mine own--and i will make the best terms i can with him.' to this the assembly agreed, having indeed nothing better to do. that was three or four days ago. theramenes started the same night. i very much doubt whether he will be able to do any good. i am not even sure that he means to. but we shall see." a miserable period of waiting followed. day after day passed, and the envoy neither returned nor sent any communication to his fellow countrymen. no one knew where he was. whether he was still with lysander or had gone on to sparta--all was a mystery. meanwhile the distress in the city grew more and more acute. callias had taken up his abode with hippocles, and was so out of absolute want. he was perfectly ready to acquiesce in the extreme frugality which was the rule of the house. free and bond all fared alike, and none had anything beyond the most absolute necessaries of life. whatever could be spared was devoted to the relief of the needy. not the least trying part of the situation was the forced inaction. not even a sally was made. indeed, it would have been a useless waste of life. not only were the forces of the enemy vastly superior, but the besieged soldiers were almost unable to support the weight of their arms, so scanty was the fare to which they were reduced. there were times when callias was disposed to rush sword in hand on some outpost of the enemy, sell his life as dearly as he could, and perish. two things held him back from carrying this idea into execution, things curiously unlike, yet working together for the same result. one was his love for hermione. life had not lost all its charm, his horizon was not wholly dark, while there remained the light of this hope. indeed it was the one consolation of his life that he was permitted to help her in her daily ministration among her needy neighbors. a string of pensioners presented themselves at the merchant's gates, and received such relief as he could give. but hermione was not content with this. there were some, she knew, whose pride would not permit them to mingle in the train of mendicants; there were others whose strength did not permit them to come abroad. these she sought out in their own homes. callias found a melancholy pleasure in accompanying and helping her. not a word of love passed his lips. he would have scorned himself if he had added the smallest grain to the burden of care that she bore. but he never failed in his attendance, and he was hailed by many a poor sufferer with a pleasure only second to that which greeted the gracious presence of the girl. when, as happened before long, fever the unfailing follower of famine, began to spread its ravages over the piraeus, his labors and hers grew more arduous. battling with these two fearful enemies within the walls, callias almost forgot the foes that were without. the other restraining and strengthening influence was that which socrates exercised on the young man's mind. all the time that callias could spare from the labors that he shared with hermione was given to the society of the philosopher. the sage's indomitable courage and endurance were in themselves an encouragement of the highest order. doubtless his physical strength, which made him capable of bearing an almost incredible degree of cold and hunger, helped him to show a dauntless heart to the troubles which were breaking down so many. indeed he seemed scarcely to want food or drink. but the steadfastness with which he pursued his usual course of life, still keeping up his untiring search for wisdom was a spectacle nothing less than splendid, while nothing could exceed his practical sagacity. anyone who wanted shrewd advice in the actual circumstances of life, anyone who desired to be lifted out of the sordid present, with its miserable hopes and cares, on to a higher plane of life, came to socrates and did not come in vain. at length, when nearly three months had passed, the long period of suspense seemed about to come to an end. the report ran through the city that theramenes had returned. what were the terms he had brought back, no one knew. on that point he remained obstinately silent. in fact he had nothing to say, nothing further, that is, than the fact that lysander professed himself unable to treat; the ephors must be approached, if anything was to be done. had lysander amused him with hopes that instructions and power to treat would soon be sent down to him from sparta, or had he deliberately waited till the city should be reduced to such a pitch of starvation that it would be ready to consent to any terms? there was a brutal, cold-blooded cruelty in such conduct that makes it difficult to credit; yet many believed it to be the true explanation of the delay.[ ] to picture the dismay that prevailed through the assembly when theramenes had given his report of the negotiations which he had _not_ concluded would be impossible. there was nothing to be done but accept the bitter necessity. theramenes, with nine others, was sent to sparta with full power to treat. they were to accept any terms that might be offered. the proud city had fallen as low as that. then came another time of waiting. happily it was not long. theramenes felt that the endurance of his countrymen had been tried to the uttermost, and that nothing more was to be gained. athens was on her knees. it did not suit him and his purposes--for he had purposes of his own, possibly a tyranny, certainly power--that she should be actually prostrate. he and his colleagues made all the haste that they could; and as their instructions were simple--to accept anything that might be offered--there was little to delay them. [illustration: the parthenon at the present day.] at the end of about twelve days they returned. it was in the midst of a breathless suspense that theramenes stood up to make his report. what he said may be thus given in outline. "we went with all speed to sellasia[ ] and there waited, having sent on a message to the ephors that we had come with full power to treat. on the second day we were summoned to sparta. there we found envoys assembled from the allies of the lacedaemonians. aristides also was there. "at the mention of the name of aristides a murmur of fear and rage ran through the assembly. the man was one of the most notorious of the anti-patriotic party. he had been in exile for many years, and was believed to have done more harm than any one else to his native city. "the senior of the ephors stood up, and said: 'friends and allies, the athenians seek for peace. what say you? shall we grant it to them?' one after another the envoys rose in their places. they did not use many words. it was not the custom of the place to be long in speech as they knew. all said the same thing. 'we give our vote against peace. let athens be destroyed. there will be no true peace so long as she is permitted to exist.' when all had spoken we were called on to speak. 'you hear what these say,' said the ephor who had not spoken before. 'what have you to reply?' i answered that the athenians were ready to give all pledges that might be asked from them that they would not harm either sparta or her allies or any city of the greeks. after this we were all commanded to withdraw. in about the space of an hour we were summoned again into the chamber. the ephor rose in his place and spoke. 'the corinthians and the other allies demand that athens should be destroyed. nor do they this without reason. the athenians have destroyed many cities of the greeks. yet can we not forget that they have also in time past done good service to greece. but of these things which you all know it is needless to speak. our sentence is this: let the athenians pull down their long walls for the space of a mile. let them also surrender their fleet, keeping only twelve ships. on these terms they shall have peace. these then, o men of athens,' the speaker continued, 'are the conditions which the spartans demand. i confess that they are hard. yet they are better than those which the rest of greece would impose upon you. truly the lacedaemonians stand between us and utter destruction. and there is nothing beyond remedy in what they would lay upon us. walls that are broken down may be repaired, and for ships that have been given up many others may be built; but of a city against which the decree of destruction has gone forth, there is an end. therefore i propose that peace be made with the lacedaemonians on these terms.' "one or two speakers ventured to rise in opposition. but they could scarcely get a hearing. probably they only went through the form of opposing in order that they might be able at some future time to say that they had done so. with but short delay the proposition was put to the vote and carried by an overwhelming majority. the same evening envoys were sent to lysander announcing that the spartan conditions had been accepted. "the next day the gates of the city were thrown open, and the fleet of lysander sailed into the piraeus. the ships of war were handed over to him. many were destroyed, and indeed the once famous and powerful fleet of atticus had been reduced to a state of most deplorable weakness. the sacrifice of the fleet, such as it was, was not so very costly after all. the few sea-worthy ships that remained, besides the twelve that the city was permitted to retain, were sent off to the lacedaemonian arsenal of gytheum. this done, the next thing was to beat down the long walls. 'this is the first day of the freedom of greece,' said lysander, 'we must keep it as a festival. send for the flute players.' accordingly the services of every flute player in attica were requisitioned; and to the sound of the gayest tunes which they could find in their _repertoire_ the work of demolition went on. every decent athenian whatever his policy, kept, of course, close within doors; but there was nevertheless a vast concourse of spectators, the rabble who will crowd to any sight, however brutal and humiliating, the army of pausanias and the crews of lysander's fleet, with a miscellaneous crowd of foreigners who had come to gloat over the downfall of the haughty city. loud was the shout that went up when a clean breach was made through the walls. the general feeling was that athens had suffered a blow from which she could never recover. but there were some who doubted. 'you have scratched the snake, not killed it,' said a corinthian, as he turned away." footnotes: [ ] the peloponnesus or island of pelops. [ ] deccleia was the fort established in athenian territory by the peloponnesians early in the war and used as their headquarters during their annual invasion of the country. [ ] the long walls were the great strength of athens. they joined the harbor of the piraeus to the city. [ ] xenophon distinctly says that he lingered with lysander, waiting for the time when the athenians, at the last pinch of starvation, should be ready to accept any terms that might be offered. [ ] sellasia was a town on the border where the previous embassy had been bidden to wait till the ephors could be communicated with. chapter xviii. "noblesse oblige." some fourteen or fifteen days have passed since the humiliation of athens was completed. to have come to the end, bitter as it was, was in one way a relief. to know the worst always brings a certain comfort, and that worst might have been, was, in fact, very near being far more terrible than what actually happened. then there was a great material relief. the pressure of famine was removed. supplies poured plentifully into athens, for the city, in spite of all its sacrifices and losses, was still rich. if fever still remained--it always lingers a while after its precursor, hunger, has departed--it was now possible to cope with it effectually. and then, last not least, it was the delightful season of spring. the athenians could once more enjoy the delights of that country life from which they had been shut out so long, but which they had never ceased to love. attica, indeed, had suffered sadly from the presence, repeated year after year, of the invading host; but it had suffered less than might have been expected. the olive yards in particular, had not been touched. a religious feeling had forbidden any injury to a tree which was supposed to be under the special protection of the patron goddess of the land. the sacred groves also of the heroes, that were scattered about the country, had not been harmed. not a few houses with their gardens had been saved by having served as residences for officers high in command in the peloponnesian army. and now nature, the restorer, was busy in the genial season of growth in healing or at least hiding the wounds that had been made by the ravages of war. "what do you say to a trip to marathon?" said hippocles one day, to his daughter and callias. "you both of you look as if a little fresh air would do you good." "an excellent idea," cried hermione, clapping her hands, "it is years since i have seen the place." "what say you, callias?" said hippocles, turning to the young man. callias was only too glad to join any expedition when he was to have the company of hermione. he did not give this reason, but he assented to the proposal very heartily. "but, father, how shall we go?" said hermione. "there is scarcely a horse to be found, i suppose." "why not go by sea?" was her father's reply. "i have a pinnace which would just suit us. we will go to-morrow if the weather holds fine, stop the first night at sunium, and the second at marathon. at sunium there is my villa, and at marathon there is a little house of which i can get the use, and which will serve us if we do not mind roughing it a little. we can return the next day. only we must take provisions, for except such fish as we may catch in the marathon stream, and possibly, some goats' milk, if all the goats have not been eaten up, we shall have nothing but what we bring. that must be your care, hermione." "trust me, father," cried the girl joyously. "if you have gone through four months' famine, depend upon it you shall not be starved now." the weather on the following day was all that could be desired. a warm and gentle west wind was blowing. this served them very well as they sailed southward to sunium. in such good time did they reach the promontory, that by unanimous vote they agreed to finish their journey that same day. sailing northward was as easy as sailing southward, and the sun was still an hour from setting when they reached the northern end of the plain, having travelled a distance of upwards of sixty miles. this was about four times as far as they would have had to go, had they made the journey by land. no one, however, regretted having followed hippocles' suggestion. the voyage was indeed as delightful an excursion as could have been devised. the deep blue sky overhead, the sea, borrowing from the heavens a color as intense, and only touched here and there with a speck of white where a little wave swelled and broke, sea birds now flying high in the air, now darting for their prey into the waters, the white cliffs tipped with the fresh green of spring that framed the coast line, made a picture that the party intensely enjoyed, although they did not put their enjoyment into words with the fluency and ease which would have come readily to a modern. the ancients loved nature, but, as a rule, they felt this love much more than they expressed it. the little house at marathon was one that had escaped destruction by having been occupied by a spartan officer. it was bare indeed of furniture, but it was habitable; and the party had brought with them the few things that were absolutely necessary, far fewer, we must remember, than what we now consider to be indispensable. supper was felt by all to be a most enjoyable meal. the room in which they sat was bare, for, of course, the luxurious couches on which it was the fashion to recline were absent. there was not even a table, and there was but one broken chair, which was naturally resigned to hermione. but it was lightened with a cheerful fire, which was not unwelcome after seven or eight hours' exposure to a high wind. happily the late occupant had left a store of logs, which had been cut on the slopes of pentelicus in the previous autumn, and which now blazed up most cheerfully. the meal was declared by both hippocles and callias to be good enough for a state-banquet in the prytaneum. one of the sailors had caught a basketful of fish in the stream, and these hermione had cooked with her own hands. an athenian who had plenty of fish, seldom wanted anything in the way of flesh, and the provisions which hermione, not liking to trust to the skill or the luck of the anglers had brought with her, were not touched. a cold maize pudding, some of the famous attic figs, which had been preserved through the winter, bread with honey from hymettus, and dried grapes completed the repast. some of the goats, it turned out, had survived, and a jug of their milk was forthcoming for hermione. the two men had a flask of wine which they largely diluted with water. when, after the libation, hippocles proposed the toast of the evening, as, in consideration of the locality it might fairly be called, "to the memory of the heroes of marathon," hermione honored it by putting her lips to the cup. it was the first time that wine had ever passed them, but she could not refuse this tribute to the chief glory of the city of her adoption. hermione, fatigued, it may be said, with all the delights of the day, retired early to rest. soon after she had gone callias took the opportunity of opening his heart to his companion on a subject which had long occupied his thoughts. "we have peace at last," he said, "not such a peace as i had ever hoped for, but still better than the utter ruin which lately i had begun to fear. a good citizen may now begin to think of himself and of his own happiness. you, sir, can hardly have failed to observe why i have begun to look for that happiness. if your daughter will only consent to share my life, i feel that i shall have to ask the gods for nothing more. she is free as far as i know. and me you have known from my childhood. you were my father's friend and since he died you have stood in his place. can you give her to me?" hippocles caught his young companion's hand, and gave it a hearty grasp. "i will not pretend," he said, "not to have observed something of what you say; nor will i deny that i have observed it with pleasure. what father would not be glad if callias, the son of hipponicus, loved his daughter? of hermione's feelings i say nothing, indeed i know nothing, save that she has regarded you since childhood with a strong affection, and that as you say she is free. but there are facts which neither you nor i can forget; and the chief of them is this, that while you are callias, son of hipponicus, an eupatrid of the eupatrids,[ ] i am hippocles, the alien. i am well-born in my own country, but that is nothing here. i am wealthy--so wealthy that i care not a single drachma whether my future son-in-law has a thousand talents for his patrimony or one. i am, i hope and believe, not without honor in the city of my adoption. but i am an alien, my child is an alien. whether you have thought of all that this means i know not--love is apt to hide these difficulties from a man's eyes--but the fact must be faced; you and my daughter must face it. you speak of my giving her to you. but, if hermione is a greek, she is also an italian. the italian women choose for themselves. i could not if i would constrain her will. she must decide, and she must answer." "there is nothing that i should desire better. but you do not tell me, sir, what you yourself wish. have i your consent and your good wishes?" "yes," said hippocles, "you have. i have thought over the difficulties, for i foresaw that you would some day speak to me on this subject. as far as i am concerned i am ready to waive them. but then, they do not concern me in the first place." the two men sat in silence for some time after this conversation had passed between them, buried each of them in his own thoughts. at last hippocles rose from his seat. "it is time to sleep," he said; "i will speak to my daughter to-morrow; you shall not want my good word, but i can do nothing more. you must speak to her yourself. that is, i think, what few fathers in greece would tell a suitor to do. but then hermione is not as other maidens." callias passed a restless night, and was glad, to make his way into the open air when the first streaks of dawn appeared on the euboean hills, which were in full view from the house. he shrank from meeting hermione till he could meet her alone, and ask the momentous question which was occupying his whole mind. partly to employ the time, partly to banish thought, if it might be done by severe bodily exercise, he started to climb the height of pentelicus, which rose on the southern side of the marathonian plain. the excursion occupied him the whole morning. on his way back he traversed the hills which skirted the western side of the plain, and, following what was evidently a well-beaten track, came at last in view of the mound under which reposed the athenian dead who had fallen in that great battle. his quick eye soon perceived a familiar figure, conspicuous in its white garments among the monuments which stood on the top of the mound. hippocles had fulfilled his promise, and had said all that he could to hermione in favor of her suitor. he had dwelt upon his noble birth, the reputation as a soldier which he had already won, his culture and taste for philosophy, and his blameless life. "as for wealth," he ended by saying, "that is of little account where my daughter is concerned. yet a man should be independent of his wife, and i may tell you as one who knows--and i have had charge of his property for some years past--that callias is one of the richest men in athens. that will not weigh with you i know, but i would have you know all the circumstances." hermione said nothing; she took her father's hand and kissed it. a tear dropped on it as she raised it to her lips. as she turned away, hippocles noticed that she was shaken by a sob. an instinct in the girl's heart told her that it was on the mound that her lover would speak to her, and it was here that she wished to give her answer to him. it was not the first time that she had visited it. indeed there was not a woman, and not many men in athens who knew so much about its records. on the top of this tumulus, which still rises thirty feet above the surrounding plain, and which was then, it is probable, considerably higher, there stood in those days eleven stone columns inscribed with the names of those who had fallen in the great battle. each of the ten athenian tribes had its own peculiar column, while the eleventh commemorated the gallant men of plataea, plataea, which alone among the cities of greece, had sent her sons on that day to stand shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of athens. hermione was apparently engrossed in the task of deciphering the names, now grown somewhat obliterated by time, which were engraved on one of the columns. so intent was she on this occupation that she did not notice the young man's approach. turning suddenly round, she faced him. at that moment, though she had expected him to come, his actual coming was a surprise, and the hot blood crimsoned her face and neck. "hermione," he said, "i have spoken to your father, and he bids me speak to you. you can hardly have failed to read my heart, and if i have not spoken to you before, it has been because i have not presumed. you know all that needs be known about me, and though i do not think myself worthy of you, i need not be ashamed of my fathers or of myself." the brilliant color had faded from the girl's cheek, her hand trembled, her bosom heaved. twice she opened her lips; twice the voice seemed to fail her. at last she spoke. "you speak of your fathers. you are, i think, of the tribe of pandion?" "i am," said callias. "and this is the column of their tribe, and this"--she pointed as she spoke--"the name of an ancestor of yours?" "yes," replied the young man, "this hipponicus whose name you see engraved here was my great grandfather." "he had been archon at athens the year before the great battle. you see," she added with a faint smile, "i know something of your family history." "it was so." "and his son, a callias like yourself, was archon general many times--held, in fact, every honor that athens could bestow?" "yes, there was no more distinguished man in the city than he." "and your father; he died, i think i have heard, in early manhood; but he was already far advanced in the career of honor?" "doubtless had he lived he would not have been inferior in distinction to my grandfather." "and you have started well in the same course? i need not ask you that. we all know it better, perhaps, than you know it yourself, and we are proud of it. my dear brother," the girl's voice which hitherto had been clear and even commanding in its tones, faltered at the mention of the dead, "my dear brother used to say that there was nothing that you might not hope for, nothing to which you might not rise." "you speak too well of me; but i hope that i am not altogether unworthy of my ancestors." the girl paused for a while. she seemed unable to utter what she had next to say. the flush mounted again to her cheek, and she stood silent and with downcast eyes. meanwhile the young man stood in utter perplexity. he had heard nothing from the girl's lips but what might have made any man proud to hear. she knew, as she had said, the history of his race, and she believed him to be not unworthy of it. yet this was not the way in which he had hoped to hear her speak. he was conscious that there was something behind that did not promise well for his hopes. at last she went on. her voice was low but distinct, her eyes were still bent on the ground. "and what your fathers have been in athens, what you hope to be yourself, you would have your son to be after you?" "surely," he answered without thinking of what he was admitting. "could it be so if i--" she altered the phrase--"if a woman not of athenian blood were his mother?" he was struck dumb. so this was the end she had before her when she enumerated the honors and distinctions of his race. "mind," she said, "i do not say that my race is unworthy of yours. i am not ashamed of my ancestors. they were chiefs; they were good men. i am proud to be their daughter. but here in athens their goodness and their nobility goes for nothing. i am hermione, the daughter of hippocles, the alien. marrying me you shut out, not perhaps yourself, but your children from the career which is their inheritance. i am too proud,"--and here the girl dropped her voice to a whisper,--"and i love you too well for that." "what is my career to your love?" cried the young man passionately; "i am ready to give up country and all for that." "that," said hermione, "is the only unworthy thing that i ever heard you say. your better thoughts will make you withdraw it. athens has fallen; the gods know that it has wrung my heart to see it. but she needs all the more such sons as you are. she has little now to offer. it is a thankless office, perhaps, to command her fleets and armies. all the more honor to those who cling to her still and cherish her still. you must not leave her or betray her. i should think foul shame of myself if i tempted you for a moment to waver in your loyalty to her. i may not love you--that the gods have forbidden me--but you will let me be proud of you." the young man turned away. the final word, he knew, had been spoken. this resolution was not to be shaken by indignant reproaches or by tender pleadings. all that remained was to forget, if that was possible. he would not see hippocles or his daughter again till the wound of this bitter disappointment had had time to heal. returning to the house, which he found empty but for a single attendant, he snatched a hasty meal, and then set out to return over-land to athens. footnotes: [ ] the class name of the athenian nobility. chapter xix. the end of alcibiades. three days after the events recorded in the last chapter--it took so much time for the young man to screw up his courage to the point--callias made his way to the ship-yard of hippocles at an hour when he knew that he would be pretty certain to find the master there. he was not disappointed, nor could he help being touched by the warm sympathy with which he was received. "ah! my dear friend," cried the merchant, "this has been a great disappointment to me. i must own that i had my fears. i know something, you see, of my daughter's temper. i knew that she had always chafed under our disabilities. things that have ceased to trouble me--and i must own that they never troubled me much--are grievous to her. you see that i have a power of my own which is quite enough to satisfy any reasonable man. i can't speak or vote in your assembly, but i have a voice, if i choose to use it, in your policy. she knows very little about this, and would not appreciate it if she did. besides it would not avail her. no; she feels herself an inferior here, and it galls her; yet that is scarcely the way to put it, for she was thinking much more of you than of herself. i believe that she loves you--she has not confided in me, you must understand, but i guess as much--and she would sooner cut off her right hand than injure you or yours. and then her pride comes in also. 'am i, daughter of kings as i am,' she says to herself, 'am i to be one to bring humiliation into an ancient house?' her mother's forefathers would be called barbarians here, but they were kings and heroes for all that. and that is the bitterness of it to her: to feel herself your equal in birth, and yet to know that to marry you would be to drag you down." "i understand," said callias, "it is noble; but just now my heart rebels very loudly against it. let us say no more. i have come to ask you what you would advise. for the present i cannot stay at athens." "that," said hippocles, "is exactly what i wanted to talk to you about; if you had not come to-day i should have sought for you. you wish to leave athens, you say. it is well, for it would not be safe for you to stay. we shall have a bad time in athens for the next few months, perhaps for longer. the exiles have come back full of rage and thirsting for revenge. and then there is theramenes; he is the man you have to fear. he has the murder of the generals on his soul. that, perhaps, would not trouble him much but he fears all who might be disposed to call him to account for it. he knows that you were the kinsman and dear friend of diomedon, and he will take the first opportunity that may occur of doing you a mischief. and opportunities will not be wanting. i suspect that for some time to come, with the oligarchs in power and the lacedaemonians to back them up, laws and constitutional forms will not go for much in athens." "and you advise me to go?" said callias. "certainly there is nothing to keep you. for the present there is no career for you here. i don't despair of athens; but for some time to come she will have a very humble part to play." "have you anything to suggest?" "i have been thinking over it for two or three days. many things have occurred to me, but nothing so good as was suggested by a letter which i received this morning. it came from a merchant in rhodes with whom i have had dealings for some years past. my correspondent asks for a large advance in money for a commercial speculation which he says promises large profits. i have always found the man honest; in fact the outcomes of my dealings with him in the past have been quite satisfactory. but this new venture that he proposes is a very large one indeed. i like what he tells me of it. it opens up quite a new field of enterprise; and new fields, i need hardly tell you, have a great charm for a man in my position. the ordinary routine of commerce does not interest me very much; but something new is very attractive. now i want you to go to rhodes for me. make all the enquiries you can about the character and standing of my correspondent, whom, curiously enough, i have never seen. i will give you introductions to those who will put you in the way of hearing all that is to be heard. if the man's credit is shaky at all, then i shall know that this proposition of his is a desperate venture. if all is sound, i shall feel pretty sure that he has got hold of a really good thing." "i know very little of such matters," said the young callias after a pause. "i do not ask you to go that you may judge of this particular enterprise; i simply want you to find out what people are saying about diagoras--that is my correspondent's name; you will be simply an athenian gentleman on his travels. keep your ears open and you will be sure to hear something." "well," said callias, "i will do my best; but don't expect too much." "can you start to-morrow?" "yes, if you think it necessary." "well, my affair is not urgent for some days, at least. but for yourself, i fancy you cannot get out of the way too soon. i don't think that theramenes and his friends will stick much at forms and ceremonies. i own that i shall feel much happier when there are two or three hundred miles of sea between you and them. be here an hour after sunset to-morrow. by that time i shall have arranged for your passage and got ready your letters of introduction and the rest of it." "well," said the young man to himself as he went to make his preparations for departure, "this, it must be confessed, is a little hard on me. hermione says, 'stop in athens and stick to your career'; her father says, 'if you stop in athens you are as good as a dead man, and your career will be cut short by the hemlock cup.' i have to give up my love for my career and then give up my career for my life." it is needless to relate the incidents of my hero's voyage to rhodes or of his stay on that island. his special mission he was able to accomplish easily enough. diagoras' speculation was, as he soon found out, the last resource of an embarrassed man; and the loan for which he asked would be a risk too great for any prudent person to undertake. the letter in which he communicated what he had heard to hippocles was crossed by one from athens. from this he learned that the political anticipations of the merchant had been more than fulfilled. the oligarchical revolution had been carried on with the most outrageous violence. on the very day on which he had left athens, an officer of the government had come with an order for his arrest. all this was interesting; still more so was a brief communication from alcibiades which the merchant enclosed. it ran thus: "alcibiades to callias son of hipponicus, greeting. great things are possible now to the bold of whom i know you to be one. more i do not say, but come to me as soon as you can. farewell." the merchant had added a postscript. "i leave this for your consideration. alcibiades has a certain knack of success. but the risk will be great." "what is risk to me?" said callias, "i can't spend my life idling here." the next day he left the island, taking his passage in a merchant ship which, by great good luck was just starting for smyrna. smyrna was reached without any mishap. four days afterwards, he started with a guide for the little village in phrygia from which alcibiades had dated his note. halting at noon on the first day's journey to rest their horses, they were accosted by a miserable looking wayfarer, who begged for some scraps of food, declaring that he had not broken his fast for four and twenty hours. something in the man's voice and face struck callias as familiar, and he puzzled in vain for a solution of the mystery, while the stranger sat eagerly devouring the meal with which he had been furnished. "here," said callias, when the man had finished his repast and was thanking him, "here is something to help you along till you can find friends or employment." and he gave him four or five silver pieces. it was the first time he had spoken in the fugitive's hearing, and the man, who, now that his ravenous hunger was appeased, had leisure to notice other things, started at the sound of his voice. he, on his part, seemed to recognize something. "many thanks, sir," he said; "the gods pay you back ten-fold. but surely," he went on, "i have seen you before. ah! now i remember. you are callias the son of hipponicus, and you were my master's guest in thrace." a light flashed on the young athenian's mind. the man had been one of alcibiades' attendants in his thracian castle. "ah! i remember," he cried, "and your master was alcibiades. but what do you here? how does he fare?" the man burst into tears. "ah, sir, he is dead, cruelly killed by those villains of spartans. he was the very best of masters. i never had a rough word from him. we all loved him." "tell me," said callias, "how it happened. i was on my way to him," and he read to the man the brief note that had been forwarded to him at rhodes. "yes, i understand. i know when that was written. he had great hopes of being able to do something. i did not rightly understand what it was, but the common talk among us who were of his household was that he was going to the great king to persuade him that the best thing that he could do would be to set athens on her feet again to help him against sparta. oh! he was a wonderful man to persuade, was my master. nobody could help being taken by him." "but tell me the story," said the young man. "well, it happened in this way. my master had gone up to see pharnabazus, the satrap, who had promised to aid him on his way up to susa to see the great king. there were six of us with him; his secretary, myself and four slaves. there was timandra, also, whom he used to call his wife; but his real wife was an athenian lady, hipparete, i have heard say." "yes," interrupted callias, "i knew her; a cousin of my own; a most unhappy marriage. but go on." "well, pharnabazus received him most hospitably. there was no good house in the village, so we had three cottages. alcibiades had one; the secretary and i another, and the slaves, a third. every day the satrap sent a handsome supply of provisions for us; dishes and wine from his own table for my master, and for us all that we could want for ourselves. i never fared better in my life. and my master had long talks with him and seemed in excellent spirits. everything was going on as well as possible. then there came a change. i never could find out whether my master had heard anything to make him suspicious. if he had, he certainly told the secretary nothing about it. but he was very much depressed. first he sent timandra away. she was very unwilling to go, poor lady, for she did love my master very much, though, as i say, she was not really his wife. but my master insisted on it, so she went away to stay with some friends. after that his spirits grew worse and worse. he used to tell his secretary the dreams he had. once he dreamt he was dressed in timandra's clothes, and that she was putting rouge and powder on his face. at another time he seemed to see himself laid on a funeral pyre and the people standing round ready to set it on fire. the very night after he had that dream we were awakened by a tremendous uproar; the secretary and i got up and looked out. the master's cottage, which was about a stadium[ ] away from ours was on fire, and there were a number of persians, about fifty or sixty, standing round it, shouting out and cursing him. the next moment we saw the door of the cottage open, and the master ran out with a cloak round his head, to keep himself from being choked by the smoke, and with a sword in his hand. as soon as he was clear of the burning cottage he threw down the cloak and rushed straight at the nearest persian. the man turned and ran. there was not one of them that dared stand for a moment. but they shot at him with arrows. they had fastened the gates of the enclosure in which the cottages stood, you must understand, so that he could not escape. in fact he was climbing over one of them when he was killed." "and you; what did you do?" "ah! sir," cried the man, "we were helpless, we had not a sword between us. we hid ourselves, and the next morning took our master's body and carried it to timandra. she made a great funeral, spending upon it, poor thing, nearly every drachma she had. when we had seen the last of my dear master, the secretary said that he had friends at tarsus, and set out to go there. i thought that i had best make my way to smyrna. thanks to your goodness, i shall now be able to get there, but i was very nearly dying of starvation. but what, if i may ask, are you thinking of doing?" "that i can't tell," replied the athenian; "as i told you, i was on my way to alcibiades." "well, sir, i can tell you this," rejoined the stranger, "no friends of my master's will be safe here. pharnabazus, i feel sure, had no great love for him, notwithstanding all his politeness; as for the spartans, they hated him; and i did hear that the people who are now in power at athens had sent to say that peace could not last unless he were put out of the way. yes, sir, if anyone recognizes that you are my master's friend, you are a dead man." "why," said callias, "i have made no secret of it. in smyrna i spoke about him to the people with whom i was staying. no one said a word against him." "very likely not," replied the man, "for they thought that he was alive, and no one liked to have my master for an enemy. he had a wonderful way of making friends to have the upper hand and contriving that his adversaries should have the worst of it. but now that he is dead you will find things very different." "what is to be done?" asked the young athenian. "can you trust your guide?" "i know nothing of the man. i simply hired him because i was told that he was a fairly honest fellow, knew the country very well, and would not run away if a robber made his appearance." "well, then get rid of him." "but how?" "tell him that you have a headache, and that you will come on after him when you have rested a little and the sun is not so hot, and that he had better go on, get quarters at the next stage and have everything ready for you when you shall arrive. as soon as he is gone, get back as fast as you can to smyrna. the news will hardly have reached that place yet, indeed we may be sure that it has not, or you would have heard of it before you started. go down to the docks, and take your passage in any ship that you can find ready to start. even if it is going to athens never mind; you will be able to leave it on the way. anyhow, get out of asia at any risk." "and you?" "oh, no one will care about me. i am a very insignificant person. but, as a matter of fact, i shall try to get to syracuse. i was born there." "syracuse will do as well for me as any other place. why not come with me if it can be managed? i was able to do you a little service, and you have done me a great one. let us go together." the plan was carried out with the greatest success. callias made the best of his way to smyrna, and left his horse at an inn, not, of course, the one from which he had started. as he had plenty of money for immediate wants, besides letters of credit from hippocles, he thought it safer not to attempt to sell the animal. he then provided himself with different clothes, purchasing at the same time a suit for his new acquaintance. these he ordered to be sent to a small house of entertainment near the docks which they had arranged should be the place of meeting. shortly before sunset the man appeared. meanwhile callias had arranged for a passage for himself and his servant in a ship bound for corinth. they would not venture into corinth itself, but would transfer themselves at the port of cenchreae into some ship bound for sicily. before the morning of the next day the two were on their way westward. everything went well. at cenchreae they found a syracusan merchantman just about to start, shipped on board her and after a prosperous voyage found themselves in the chief city of sicily. footnotes: [ ] a stadium was nearly a furlong; to be exact, yards. chapter xx. dionysius. it was with no common emotion that the young athenian entered the great harbor of syracuse. it was here that the really fatal blow had been struck from which his country had never recovered. she had struggled gallantly on for nearly ten years after she had lost the most magnificent armament that she had ever sent forth, but the wound had been mortal. thenceforward she had been as a man of whose life-blood a half had been drained away. callias had read, shortly before leaving athens for the last time, the magnificent passage, then recently published, in which the great historian of athens had described the decisive battle in the harbor.[ ] the sight of the place now enabled him to realize it to himself in the most vivid way. he seemed to see the hostile fleets crowded together in a way for which there was no precedent, two hundred war galleys in a space so narrow that manoeuvre was impossible, and nothing availed but sheer fighting and hard blows; while the shores seemed alive again as they had been on that eventful day with a crowd of eager spectators, the armies of the two contending powers, who looked on with passionate cries and gestures at such a spectacle as human eyes had scarcely witnessed before, a mighty war-game in which their own liberties and lives were the stake. the heights that ran above the harbor were scarcely less significant. there, its remains still visible, had been the athenian line of investment. if only a few yards more had been completed, the young man thought to himself, the whole course of history might have been changed.[ ] not far away was the spot where the sturdy infantry of thebes had withstood the fiery shock of his own countrymen, and so, not for the first time, wrested from them the empire that seemed almost within their grasp.[ ] and somewhere--no one knew where--his own father had fallen, one of the thousands of noble victims who had been sacrificed to the greed and ambition of a restless democracy. the noble house of which callias was the representative had, of course, its hereditary guest-friend at syracuse. naturally there had been very little intercourse between citizens of the two states in late years; but the old tie remained unbroken, and medon, for that was the syracusan's name, was as ready to give a hospitable welcome to the young athenian, as if he had been a citizen of one of his country's allies, a merchant prince of corinth, or a scion of one of the two royal houses of sparta. he insisted upon his guest taking up his quarters in his house, and exerted himself to the utmost to supply and even anticipate every want. "now you have seen something of the outside of our city," said medon to his friend as they sat together after the evening meal on the third day after his arrival, "you should know something of its politics. but first let me make sure that we are alone." the dining chamber in which the two were sitting had an ante-room. the door of this the syracusan proceeded to bolt. "now," he said, "we shall have no eavesdroppers. any inquisitive friend may listen at that other door, with all this space between us and him, without getting much idea of what we are talking about. all the other walls are outer walls, as you know, and unless a certain great personage has the birds of the air in his pay, we may talk without reserve. you look surprised. well, you will understand things a little better when you have heard what i have to tell you. you know something, i suppose, of what has been happening here of late years. the fact is we have been going through an awful time. no sooner were we free of the danger that you put us in--you must pardon me for alluding to it--than we were confronted with another which was every whit as formidable. another wretched quarrel between two towns in the island--curiously enough the very same two that were concerned in your expedition against us[ ]--brought in a foreign invader. this time it was the carthaginians. they had had settlements in the island for many years, had always coveted the dominion of the whole, and more than once had been very near getting it. they were not far from success this time. first they took selinus and massacred every creature in it; then they took acragas;[ ] then they utterly destroyed himera. something made them hold their hands, and we had a short breathing space. four years afterwards they came back in greater force than ever. acragas was besieged; it held out bravely, but at last the population had to leave it; only syracuse was left. again when in the full tide of victory, the carthaginians held their hand. do you ask me why? i cannot tell you. but listen to the fourth article of the treaty of peace." in spite of the precautions that he had taken against being overheard, medon, at this point lowered his voice. "syracuse is to be under the rule of dionysius. yes; the secret is there; it was he that made it worth their while to go; and you may be sure that it was worth his while to buy them off. i must allow that he was the only man who showed a grain of sense or courage in the whole matter; the other generals as they were called were hopelessly imbecile. well, they went, and dionysius became, shall we call it, 'commander-in-chief,' or perhaps as we are quite alone, 'tyrant?' he had not an easy time of it at first; i don't suppose that he will ever have an easy time, tyrants seldom do. the nobles and the heads of the democratic party leagued together against him, and drove him out. that did not last long. of course the conquerors used their victory most brutally. they were furious that dionysius had slipped out of their hands, and wreaked their vengeance on his poor wife. i can't tell you the horrible way in which they killed her. she was the daughter, too, of hermocrates, one of the very best and noblest men that syracuse ever had. equally of course they quarrelled over the spoils. naturally, before long they had nothing left to quarrel over. dionysius hired a force of campanian mercenaries, the hardest hitters, by the way, that i ever saw, and drove them out of the city. now, i fancy, he is pretty firmly seated. the people like him; they were never as fit, you must know, for popular government as yours are. he gives them plenty of employment and amusements, wrings the money out of us with a tight hand, and scatters it among them with an open one. of course a dagger may reach him, and there are not a few that are kept ready sharpened for the chance. barring that, he is likely to be master here as long as he lives. and to tell you the truth, though personally i hate the idea, as any noble must--it is the nobles that always hate a tyrant most--yet i do not see that anything could be better for syracuse. the carthaginian danger is not over yet, and dionysius is the very ablest soldier and administrator that we have. of course the pinch will come later. a ruler of this sort always becomes harder, more cruel, more suspicious as he grows older. and if he has a son, brought up in the bad atmosphere of tyranny, the country has a terrible time of it. happily the son is generally a fool, and brings the whole thing down with a crash. but all this is far off. dionysius is still a young man, not more than twenty-six years old, i fancy. however, you shall see him--we are very good friends in public--and judge for yourself." callias, who had the hereditary abhorrence of his race for anything like tyranny,[ ] demurred at the proposed introduction to the despot. medon was very urgent in overruling his objection. "don't mistake sicily for greece," he said; "we are half barbarous, and what would be monstrous with you is quite in its right place here. i grant you that an honest man should have no dealings with a tyrant who should set himself up at thebes, or corinth, or argos. but it is different here. i am sure that the man governs us better than we should be governed by the people, or, for the matter of that, by the nobles either." at last the athenian consented. "very good," cried medon, "you will go. then we will lose no time about it. depend upon it, dionysius knows all about you; and if you do not pay your respects to him without loss of time he will be suspicious. suspicion is the bane of his situation. servant, friend, wife; he trusts nobody." the next day medon and his guest presented themselves at the palace. the athenian had half turned back when he found that he must be searched. no one was admitted into the presence until that precaution had been taken, and his freeman's pride revolted. medon simply shrugged his shoulders. "he is quite right," he whispered to his indignant friend, "he would not live a month if he did not do it." dionysius was, or pretended to be, busy with his studies, when the two visitors were announced. a slave was reading to him from a roll, and he was taking notes on a wax tablet. he welcomed the newcomers with much cordiality. "so, medon, you have brought your athenian friend at last. i hope that you have not been slandering me to him." "my lord," answered medon with a courtly bow, "i have told him the history of the last five years, and have taken him to see syracuse. that is not the way to slander you." "good," said dionysius, "i shall have you a courtier yet." he then turned to the athenian, asked him a few questions, all with the nicest tact, about his movements, and finally named a time when he should be at leisure to have some real conversation with him. "believe me," he said, "i honor the athenians more than any other people in greece; a strange thing you may think for a syracusan to say, but it is true." certainly when callias presented himself at the appointed time, everything that his royal host had said seemed to bear out this assurance. "after to-day," he said, "politics shall be banished from our talk. don't suppose for a moment that if i had been a citizen of athens, i should have attempted, that i should even have wished, to be what i am here. but syracuse is not capable of being what athens is. even you find liberty a little hard to manage sometimes. here it is a farce, only a very bloody farce. listen to what happened to my father-in-law, hermocrates. there never was an abler man in the country. if it had not been for him, i verily believe that you would have conquered us. he saved the city; and then, a little time afterwards, because he did not do what ten years before no one would have dreamt of doing, that is, conquer you athenians in a sea-fight, they banished him. can you imagine such ingratitude, such folly? well; he was not disposed to put up with it; he saw what i see, that the syracusans are not fit to govern themselves, and if it had not been for an accident, perhaps i ought rather to say his own reckless courage, he would have been in my place now.[ ] what he intended to do i have done. i saved syracuse as he saved her from athens; and i dare say that in a year or two my grateful countrymen would have banished me as they banished him. only i have been beforehand with them. so much for politics; now let us talk of something more pleasant and more profitable." "tell me now, do you know one socrates in your city, a very wise man they tell me?" "yes, i know him well." "and he is wise?" "yes, indeed; there is no one like him; and so the god thought, for the pythia declared him to be the wisest of men." "i should dearly like to see him. do you think it likely that he would come here, if i were to invite him? i would make it worth his while." "i fear there is no chance of it. he never leaves athens; never has left it except when he served abroad with the army, and as for money, he is quite careless about it." "but he takes a fee for his teaching, i suppose." "not a drachma." "well, that astonishes me. why, georgias would not teach anyone for less than half a talent, and has got together, i suppose, a pretty heap of money by this time. but, perhaps, if i could not get the great man himself, i might get one of his disciples. whom do men reckon to be the first among them?" "i think that one plato is the most famous. he was a poet when he was quite young, indeed he is young now, and had a great reputation; but he has given up poetry for philosophy." "that seems a pity. i don't see why a man should not be both poet and philosopher. i am a little of both myself. can you remember anything that he has written?" "yes; there was an epigram which everyone was repeating when i left athens. it was written for the tomb of one of his fellow disciples." "let me hear it." callias repeated, "in life like morning star thy shining head; and now the star of evening 'mid the dead." "very pretty indeed. i have something very like it of my own. would you like to hear it?" callias of course politely assented and expressed as much admiration as his conscience permitted, possibly a little more, for the composition was vapid and clumsy. but though dionysius was an indifferent composer, he had really a very strong interest in literary matters. personal vanity had something to do with it, for he was fully convinced of his own abilities in this way; but he had a genuine pleasure in talking on the subject. this was indeed the first of many conversations which the young athenian had with him. politics were never mentioned again, but poetry, the drama, indeed every kind of literary work, supplied topics of unfailing interest. the drama was, perhaps, the despot's favorite topic. he had received not long before callias' arrival, a copy of the play which was described in my first chapter, and was never tired of asking questions about various points of interest in it. it soon became evident that his special ambition lay in this direction. "so, now that your two great men are gone," he said to the young athenian, "you have no man of really the first rank among your dramatists?" "i should say not," replied callias. "some think well of iophon, who is the son of sophocles. others say that he would be nothing without his father. they declare that the old man helped him when he was alive, and that what he has brought out since his father's death is really not his own." "well," said dionysius, "the stock will be exhausted before long. and there is no one, you say, besides him?" "no one, certainly of any reputation." "then there would be a chance for an outsider? but would a dramatist that was not an athenian be allowed to exhibit?" "i know nothing to the contrary. but i do not know that there has ever been a case. anyhow it would be easy to exhibit in the name of a citizen." "an excellent idea! i shall certainly manage it somehow. the first prize at your festival would be almost as well worth having as the tyranny itself."[ ] it is not surprising that a ruler who cherished such tastes should have reckoned a library among the ornaments which were to make syracuse the most splendid among greek cities. in his athenian guest he believed himself to have found a competent agent for carrying this purpose into effect; and callias was in truth a well educated person who knew what books were worth buying. he was well acquainted with the literature of his own country and had a fairly competent knowledge of what had been produced elsewhere in greece. for the next three years it was his employment, and one, on the whole not uncongenial to his tastes, to collect volumes for dionysius. in sicily there was little culture, but the greek cities of italy furnished a more fertile field. there was not indeed much in the way of _belles-lettres_. works of this kind had to be imported for the most part, either from athens, or from lesbos, where the traditions of the school of sappho and alcæus were not extinct, but books on philosophy and science, could be secured in considerable numbers. at crotona, for instance, callias was fortunate enough to secure a valuable scientific library which had been for some years in the family of democedes, while at tarentum he purchased a handsome collection of treatises by teachers of the school of pythagoras. this occupation was varied in the second year of his residence by an interesting mission to rome. that city, the rising greatness of which so keen an observer as dionysius was able to discern, was at this time sorely distressed by a visitation of famine, and had applied far and wide for help. the harvests of sicily had been remarkably abundant, and dionysius sent a magnificent present of a hundred thousand bushels of wheat, putting callias in charge of the mission. in spite of these honorable and not distasteful employments the young athenian did not greatly like his position. it would indeed have been scarcely endurable to a soul that had been reared in an atmosphere of liberty, but for the fact that his work took him much away from syracuse. dionysius was all courtesy and generosity in his dealings with him; but he was a tyrant; there was iron under his velvet glove. it was therefore with a considerable feeling of relief that in the early spring of the third (or according to classical reckoning) the fourth year after the fall of athens, he received a missive from xenophon couched in the following terms.[ ] "meet me at tarsus with all the speed you can. great things lie before us, of which you will hear more at the proper time. farewell." leave of absence was obtained with some difficulty, and towards the end of june, callias found himself at the appointed place. footnotes: [ ] see thucydides, vii. . [ ] a very small space yet remained to be erected when gylippus and his lacedaemonians broke through, relieved syracuse, and practically decided the issue of the campaign. [ ] coronea ( ) and delium ( ) had been defeats inflicted by the boeotians on the athenian army at very critical periods when the victory of the latter must have had very far reaching results. [ ] the two were selinus and egesta. [ ] commonly known by its latinized name of agrigentum. [ ] tyranny, in its greek sense, it may be explained, is the unconstitutional rule of a single person. it does not necessarily connote, as in english, cruelty or oppression. except in sparta, where the kings, indeed, were only hereditary commanders-in-chief, there was no king in any greek state. wherever an individual ruled, he was, of necessity, a tyrant. [ ] hermocrates, resenting the decree of banishment that had been passed against him, attempted to make himself master of the city. he marched with the force that he had raised from selinus, where he was encamped, and made such haste that he found himself with only a few companions far in advance, and close to the gates of syracuse. while he halted to allow the army to come up, the leaders within the walls sallied out, overpowered the little party, and killed their leader. there is very little doubt but that he had resolved to seize absolute power. [ ] dionysius did actually compete many times. he is said to have gained the second and third prizes more than once; and finally in the last year of his life won the first honors for a play entitled "the ransoming of hector." one of the various accounts of his death attributes it to the excessive feasting in which he indulged on hearing of his victory. [ ] athens capitulated in march, ; callias is supposed to have received the letter about august, . chapter xxi. cyrus the younger. almost the first person that the athenian saw when he disembarked at tarsus was xenophon. the latter was evidently in the highest spirits. "you are come at exactly the right moment," he cried. "all is going well; but, three days ago, i should have said that all would end badly. cyrus and clearchus have thrown for great stakes, and they have won; but at first the dice were against them. but i forget; you know nothing of what happened. i will explain. you know something about cyrus, the great king's brother?" callias assented. "you know that he was scarcely contented to be what he was, in fact that he was disposed to claim the throne." "i heard some talk of the kind when i was with alcibiades." "listen then to what happened. cyrus, to put a long story in a few words, collected by one means or another about thirteen thousand greek soldiers. he gave out that he was going to lead them against the mountain tribes of cilicia. but his real object has all along been to march up to susa, and drive the king from his throne. clearchus knew this; i fancy some others guessed it; i know i did for one. but the army knew nothing about it. of course it had to come out at last. when we came to tarsus, the men had to be told. if we were going to act against the cicilian mountaineers, now was the time. if not, why had we been brought so far? when the truth was known there was a frightful uproar. the men declared that they would go back. it was madness, they said, for a few thousand men to march against the great king. for four days i thought all was lost. clearchus and cyrus managed admirably. i will tell you all about it some day. meanwhile it is enough to say that all is settled. the men have changed their tone completely. they talk of nothing but ransacking the treasuries of the king, and cyrus is quite magnificent in his promises. he gives a great banquet to the officers to-night. i am going with proxenus, who is my special friend among the generals, and i have no doubt that i can take you. cyrus, i assure you, is a man worth knowing, and, though we should call him a barbarian, worth serving." the persian prince, when callias came to make his acquaintance, bore out, and more than bore out, the high character which xenophon had given of him. a more princely man in look and bearing never lived. that he was a stern ruler was well known, but his subjects needed stern methods; but for courtesy and generosity he could not be matched, and he had that genial manner which makes these qualities current coin in the market of the world. he was of unusual stature, his frame well knit and well proportioned, and his face, though slightly disfigured by scars which he had received in early life in a fierce death struggle with a bear, singularly handsome. proxenus introduced his friend's friend as a young athenian who had come to put his sword at his disposal, and cyrus at once greeted him with that manner of friendliness and even comradeship which made him so popular. at the same time he made some complimentary remark about athens, saying that the athenians had been formidable enemies, and would hereafter, he hoped, be valuable friends. the banquet could not fail, under such circumstances, of being a great success. everyone was in the highest spirits, and when cyrus, in thanking his guests for their company, said that though greece and persia had been enemies in the past they would be firm friends in the future, he was greeted with a burst of tumultuous applause. the next day the army set out, their last remaining scruples dispelled by an increase of pay.[ ] there was still a certain reserve in speaking about the object of the campaign but every one knew that it was directed against the great king. two days' march took them to issi, a town destined to become famous in later days.[ ] the difficult pass of the cicilian gate was found unguarded. about a month later the ford of the euphrates at thapsacus[ ] was reached. then all disguise was thrown off. cyrus was marching against his brother, and he would give each man a bonus of a year's pay when he had reached babylon. so the long and tedious march went on. the king made no signs of resistance. line after line of defense was found unguarded. at last, just ten weeks after the army had marched out of tarsus, a persian horseman attached to cyrus' person, came galloping up with the news, which he shouted out in greek and persian, "the king is coming with a great army ready for battle." something like a panic followed, for the invaders had almost begun to think that they would not have to fight. cyrus sprang from the carriage in which he had been riding, donned his corslet, and mounted his charger; the greeks rushed to the wagons in which they had deposited their armor and weapons, and prepared themselves hastily for battle. by mid-day all was ready. clearchus was in command of the right wing, which consisted of the heavy-armed greeks, and rested on the euphrates the light-armed greeks, with some paphlagonian cavalry, stood in the center; on the left were the persians under ariæus, cyrus' second in command. the extreme left of all was occupied by cyrus himself with his body guard of six hundred horsemen. all wore cuirasses, cuisses and helmets; but cyrus, wishing to be easily recognized, rode bareheaded. it was afternoon before the enemy came in sight. first, a white cloud of dust became visible; then something like a black pall spread far and wide over the plain, with now and then a spear point or bronze helmet gleaming through the darkness. silently the huge host advanced, its left on the river, its right far overlapping cyrus' left, so great was its superiority in numbers. "strike at the center," said the prince to clearchus, as he rode along the line, "then our work will be done." he knew his countrymen; the king himself was in the center. if he should be killed or driven from the field, victory was assured. the hostile lines were only two furlongs apart, when the greeks raised the battle shout, and charged at a quick pace, which soon became a run. a few minutes afterwards the persians broke. their front line, consisting of scythe-armed chariots, for the most part, turned and drove helter skelter through the ranks of their countrymen; the few that charged the advancing foe did, perhaps attempted to do, no harm. the ranks were opened to let them through, and they took no further part in the battle. anyhow the greeks won the victory without losing a single man. meanwhile the king, posted, as has been said, in the center, seeing no one to oppose him, advanced as if he would take the greeks on their flank. cyrus, seeing this, charged with his six hundred, and broke the line in front of the king. the troopers were scattered in the ardor of pursuit, and the prince was left alone with a handful of men. even then all might have been well but for the fit of ungovernable rage which seized him. he spied his brother the king in the throng, and, crying out, "there is the man," pressed furiously towards him. one blow he dealt him, piercing his corslet, and making a slight wound. then one of the king's attendants struck cyrus with a javelin under the eye. the two brothers closed for a moment in a hand-to-hand struggle. but cyrus and his followers were hopelessly overmatched. in a few minutes the prince and eight of his companions were stretched on the ground. one desperate effort was made to save him. artapates, the closest of his friends, leaped from his horse, and threw his arms around his body. it did but delay the fatal blow for the briefest space. the next moment cyrus was dead. footnotes: [ ] from one daric to one daric and a half per month, $ to $ . . [ ] for the second of the great victories of alexander. [ ] thipsach or "the passage." chapter xxii. the retreat. seven weeks have passed since the catastrophe recorded in my last chapter.[ ] curiously enough the greeks had returned to their camp after their easily won victory without any suspicion of what had happened on the other side of the battle field. they wondered, indeed, that cyrus neither came nor sent to congratulate them on their success, but the news of his death which was brought to them next morning by an ionian greek, who had been in the service of cyrus, came upon them like a thunderclap. then had followed a period of indecision and perplexity. so long as they had to answer insolent messages from the king or tissaphernes, bidding them give up their arms and be content with such chance of pardon as they might have, their course was plain. to such demands only one answer was possible. "we will die sooner than give them up," had been the reply which cleanor the arcadian, the senior officer, had made. but when the persians began to treat, when they agreed upon a truce, and even allowed the greeks to provision themselves, the course to be followed became less plain. tissaphernes made indeed the most liberal offers. "we will lead you back to greece," he said, "and find you provisions at a fair price. if we do not furnish them, you are at liberty to take them for yourselves, only you must swear that you will behave as if you were marching through the country of friends." there were some who roundly said that the greeks had best have no dealings with the man; he was known to be treacherous and false; this was only his way of luring them on to their death. on the other hand it was difficult to refuse terms so advantageous. it was possible that the satrap, though not in the least friendly, was genuinely afraid, and would be glad to get rid at any price of visitants so unwelcome. this was the common opinion. if the army could find its way home without fighting, it would be madness to reject the chance. for many days past, every thing had gone smoothly; relations between the greeks and tissaphernes seemed to become more and more friendly. clearchus, the general, commanding in chief, had even dined with the satrap, had been treated in the most friendly fashion, and was now come back to the camp with a proposition from him for a formal conference at which the greeks were to be represented by their principal generals. some voices were raised against this proposal. "no one ever trusted tissaphernes without repenting it," was the sentiment of not a few, xenophon amongst the number. but the opposition was overruled. five generals and twenty inferior officers proceeded to the tent of tissaphernes, followed by a troop of stragglers, who availed themselves of the favorable opportunity, as they thought it, of marketing within the enemy's lines. "callias," said xenophon to his friend on the morning of this eventful day, "my mind misgives me. the soothsayer tells me that, though the sacrifices have been generally favorable, there have always been some sinister indications. and certain it is that we have never put ourselves so completely in the enemy's power as we have this day. tissaphernes has only to say the word and our most skillful leaders are dead men. but, hark, what is that?" a cry of surprise and wrath went up from the camp, and the two athenians rushed out of the tent in which they had been sitting, to ascertain the cause. one glance was enough. the stragglers were hurrying back at the top of their speed with the persians in hot pursuit. among the foremost of the fugitives was an arcadian officer, who, fearfully wounded as he was, managed to make his way to the camp. "to arms!" he cried, "clearchus and the rest are either dead or prisoners." instantly there was a wild rush for arms. everyone expected that the next moment would bring the whole persian army in sight. but the king and his satraps knew how formidable the greeks really were. as long as they had a chance of succeeding by fraud, they would not use force. fraud was immediately attempted. ariæus, who by this time had made his peace with the king, rode up to within a short distance of the camp, and said, "let the greeks send some one that is in authority to bear a message from the king." the veteran cleanor accordingly went forward. "let me go with you," cried xenophon, "i am eager to hear what has become of my friend proxenus. come you, too," he whispered to callias. ariæus addressed them: "thus saith the king; clearchus, having forsworn himself and broken the truth, has been put to death. proxenus and medon are honorably treated. as for you, the king demands your arms, seeing that they belonged to cyrus, who was his slave." cleanor's answer was brief and emphatic, "thou villain, ariæus, and the rest of you, have you no shame before gods or men, that you betray us in this fashion, and make friends with that perjurer tissaphernes?" ariæus could only repeat that clearchus was a traitor. "then," cried xenophon, "why send us not back proxenus and medon, good men you say, who would advise both you and us for the best?" to this no answer was made; and the party slowly made their way back to the camp. the worst had happened. they were in the midst of their enemies, more than a thousand miles from the sea, and they had lost their leaders. the two athenians, who shared the same tent, lay down to rest at an early hour. it still wanted some time to midnight, when xenophon surprised his companion by suddenly starting up. "i believe," he cried, "all will be well after all. i have had a most encouraging dream." "what was it?" asked callias. "i dreamed," returned the other, "that i was at home and that there was a great storm of thunder and lightning and that the lightning struck the house and that it blazed up all over." callias stared. "but that does not sound very encouraging." "ah! but listen to what i have to tell you. when proxenus asked me to come with him on this expedition, i applied to socrates for his advice. 'ask the god at delphi,' he said. so i asked the god but not, as he meant me to do, whether i should go or not, but to what gods, if i went, i should sacrifice. well, this has been a great trouble to me, and i look upon this dream as an answer. first--this is the encouragement--zeus shows me a light in darkness. the house all on a blaze, i take it, means that we are surrounded with dangers." "may it turn out well," was all that callias could find it in his heart to say. but if he was tempted to think meanly of his companion, he had soon reason to alter his opinion. "whether my dream means what i think or any thing else," xenophon went on, "we must act. to fall into the hands of the king means death, and death in the most shameful form. and yet no one stirs hand or foot to avoid it; we lie quiet, as though it were time to take our rest. i shall go and talk to my comrades about it." the first thing was to call together his own particular friends, the officers of proxenus' division. he found them as wakeful as himself. "friends," he said, "we must get out of the king's clutches. you know what he did to his own brother. the man was dead; but he must nail his body to a cross. what will he do, think you, to us? no; we must get out of his reach. but how? not by making terms with him. that only gives him time to hem us in more and more completely. no; we must fight him; and we, who are more enduring and brave than our enemies, have a right to hope that we shall fight to good purpose. and surely the gods will help us rather than them. for are they not faithless and forsworn? "but, if we are to fight, we must have leaders. let us choose them then. as for me, i will follow another, or, if you will have it so, i will lead myself. young i am, but i am at least of an age to take care of myself." then there was a loud cry--"xenophon for general!" only one voice was raised in protest, that of a captain, who spoke in very broad boeotian. "escape is impossible; we should better try persuasion." such was the burden of his speech. xenophon turned on him fiercely. "escape impossible! and yet you know what the king did. first came a haughty command that we should give up our arms. when we refused, he took to soft words and cajolery. he is afraid of us; but if we trust to persuasion we are lost." then turning to the others, he cried, "is this man fit to be a captain? make him a bearer of burdens. he is a disgrace to the name of greek." "greek," cried an arcadian captain, "he is no boeotian, nor greek at all. he is a mysian slave. i see his ears are bored." and the man was promptly turned out of camp. not a moment was now lost. a representative body of officers from the whole army was promptly collected, and xenophon was asked to repeat what he had said to the smaller gathering. the meeting ended in the election of five generals to replace those who had been murdered. chirisophus, a spartan, made the sixth, having held the office before. the day was now beginning to dawn. it was scarcely light when the whole army assembled in obedience to a hasty summons which had been sent through the camp. chirisophus opened the proceedings. "we have fared ill, fellow soldiers," he said, "in that we have been robbed of so many officers and have been deserted by our allies. still we must not give in. if we cannot conquer, at least we can die gloriously. anyhow we must not fall alive into the hands of the king." after an address by another general, xenophon stood up. he had dressed himself in his best apparel. "fine clothes will suit victory best," he said to himself, "and if i die, let me at least die like a gentleman." "gentlemen," he said, "if we were going to treat with the barbarians, then, knowing how faithless they are, we might well despair; but if we mean, taking our good swords in our hands, to punish them for what they have done, and to secure our own safety, then we may hope for the best." at this point, a soldier sneezed. a sneeze was a lucky omen, and by a common impulse all the soldiers bowed their heads. xenophon seized the opportunity. "i spoke of safety, gentlemen, and as i was speaking, zeus the savior, sent us an omen of good fortune. let us therefore vow to him a thank-offering for deliverance, if we ever reach our native country. this let us do as an army; and besides, let everyone vow to offer according to his ability in return for his own safe arrival." these propositions were unanimously accepted, and the hymn of battle was solemnly sung by the whole army. "now," said the speaker, "we have set ourselves right with the gods, who will doubtless reward our piety, while they will punish these perjurers and traitors who seek to destroy us." then, after appealing to the glorious memories of the past, when the greeks, fighting against overwhelming odds, had once and again turned back the tide of persian invasion, he addressed himself to deal with the circumstances of the situation. "our allies have deserted us; but we shall fight better without such cowards. we have no cavalry; but battles are won by the sword; our foes will have the better only in being able to run away more quickly. no market will be given us; but it is better to take our food than to buy it. if rivers bar our way, we have only to cross them higher up. verily, i believe that not only can we get away, but that if the king saw us preparing to settle here, he would be glad to send us away in coaches and four, so terribly afraid is he of us. "but how shall we go? let us burn our tents and all superfluous baggage. the baggage too often commands the army. that is the first thing to do. our arms are our chief possession. if we use them aright, everything in the country is ours. let us march in a hollow square, with the baggage animals and the camp followers in the middle. and let us settle at once who is to command each section of the army." all this was accepted without demur. chirisophus was appointed to command the van, xenophon, with a colleague, as the youngest of the generals, the rear. practically these two divided the command between them. the first experience of an encounter with the enemy was not reassuring; in fact it was almost disastrous. early in the first day's march, one mithridates, a personage well known to the greeks, for he had been high in cyrus' confidence, rode up with a couple of hundred horsemen and twice as many slingers and bowmen. he had a look of coming as a friend; indeed, earlier in that day he had come with what purported to be a conciliatory message from tissaphernes. but on arriving within a moderate distance of the greeks he halted, and the next moment there was a shower of bullets and arrows from the slings and bows. the greeks were helpless. they suffered severely, but could do nothing to the enemy in return. the cretan archers had a shorter range than that of the persian bows, and the javelin could not, of course, come anywhere near the slingers. at last xenophon gave the order to charge. charge the men did, heavy-armed and light-armed alike. possibly it was better than standing still to be shot at. but they did not contrive to catch a single man. as foot soldiers they were fairly outpaced; and they had no cavalry. only three miles were accomplished that day, and the army reached the villages in which they were to bivouac, in a state of great despondency. unless such attacks could be resisted with better success, the fate of the army was sealed. xenophon was severely blamed by his colleagues for his action in charging. he frankly acknowledged his fault. "i could not stand still," he said, "and see the men falling round me without striking a blow, but the charge was no good. we caught none of them, and we did not find it easy to get back. thanks to the gods, there were not very many of them; if they had come on in force, we must have been cut to pieces." after a short silence, he addressed his colleagues again. "we are at a great disadvantage. our cretans cannot shoot as far as their persian archers; and our hand throwers are useless against the slingers. as for the foot soldiers, no man, however fleet of foot, can overtake another who has a bowshot's start of him, especially as we cannot push the pursuit far from the main body. the simple truth is that we must have slingers and horsemen of our own. i know that there are rhodians in the army who can sling leaden bullets to a much greater distance than these persian slings can reach. i propose, first, that we find out who among them have slings of their own; these we will buy at the proper value; if any know how to plait some more, we will pay them the proper price for doing it; the slings thus obtained, we shall soon get a corps of slingers to use them. give them some advantage and they will enroll themselves fast enough. now for the cavalry. we have some horses i know. there are some in the rear-guard with me; there are others that belonged to clearchus; a good many have been taken from the enemy, and are being used as baggage animals. let us take the pick of these and equip them for the use of cavalry; we shall soon have some very capable horsemen at our service." the idea was promptly carried out. that very night a couple of hundred slingers were enrolled, and the next day, which was spent without any attempt to advance, fifty horsemen passed muster, fairly well-mounted and duly furnished with buff jackets and cuirasses. this was only the first of many instances in which xenophon showed the fertility and readiness of device which did so much to save the army. the very next day the new forces were brought into action with the happiest results. mithridates came up again with his archers and slingers, but encountered a reception on which he had not calculated. the cavalry made a brilliant charge, cutting down a number of the infantry and taking prisoners some seventeen horsemen. at the end of the day's march, the army reached the tigris. fourteen weeks of hard and perilous marching lay before them; but they were fairly well-equipped for the work. i shall take an account of some of the principal incidents of the journey from a diary kept by callias, who acted throughout as aid-de-camp to xenophon. footnotes: [ ] the battle of cunaxa, in which cyrus fell, was fought on sept. d. the day at which we have now arrived is oct. st. chapter xxiii. the diary. october .[ ]--our new corps have covered themselves with glory to-day. about noon tissaphernes himself appeared with a large force of cavalry. he had his own regiments with him; among the others we recognized some of cyrus' persian troops. they want, i suppose, to make the king forget their rebellion. the satrap did not wish to come to close quarters; but he found after all that the quarters were closer than he liked. he was well within range; and as his men were posted in great masses every arrow and every bullet told. it would, in fact, have been impossible to miss, with such a mark to aim at. as for the persian archers they did no damage at all. but we found their arrows very useful. our men are now well-equipped, for we discovered an abundant store of bow-strings and lead for the sling bullets in the villages. november .--things have not been going so well to-day. the barbarians occupied a post of vantage on our route and showered down darts, stones, and arrows upon us as we passed. our light-armed were easily driven in. when the heavy-armed tried to scale the height, they found the climbing very hard work, and of course the enemy were gone by the time that they reached the top. three times this was done, and i was never more pleased in my life than when at last we got to the end of our day's march. eight surgeons are busy attending to the wounded, of whom there is a terrible number. we are going to stop here three days, xenophon tells me. meanwhile we are in a land of plenty. there are granaries full of wheat, and cellars of wine, and barley enough to supply our horses if we had fifty times as many. hereafter we are to follow a new plan. as soon as we are attacked, we halt. to march and fight at the same time puts us at a disadvantage. and we are to try to get as far in advance as possible. november .--we had our three days' rest, and then three days' quick marching. to-day, however, there has been a smart brush with the enemy. they had occupied a ridge commanding our route, which just then descended from the hills into the plain. chirisophus sent for xenophon to bring his light-armed to the front. this, of course, was a serious thing to do, as tissaphernes was not far from our rear. xenophon accordingly galloped to the front to confer with his colleague. "certainly," he said, when he saw how the enemy was posted, "these fellows must be dislodged, but we can't uncover our rear. you must give me some troops, and i will do my best." just at that moment he caught sight of a height rising above us just on our right--he has a true general's eye--and saw that it gave an approach to the enemy's position. "that is the place for us to take," he cried. "if we get that, the barbarians can't stay where they are." as soon as the troops were told off for service, we started; and lo! as soon as we were off, the barbarians seeing what we were after started too. it was a race who should get there first. xenophon rode beside the men, and urged them on. "now for it, brave sirs!" he cried. "'tis for hellas! 'tis for wives and children! win the race, and you will march on in peace! now for it!" the men did their best, but of course it was hard work. i never had harder in my life. at last a grumbling fellow in the ranks growled out, "we are not on equal terms, xenophon. you are on horseback, and i have got to carry my shield." in a moment xenophon was off his horse. he snatched the fellow's shield from him, and marched on with the rest. that was hard work indeed, for he had his horseman's cuirass on; still he kept up. then the men fell on the grumbler. they abused him, pelted him, and cuffed him, till he was glad enough to take his shield again. then xenophon re-mounted, and rode on as before as far as the horse could go. then he left him tethered to a tree, and went on foot. in the end we won the race; and the barbarians left the way clear. november .--we had a great disappointment to-day. the route lay either across a river which was too deep to ford--we tried it with our spears, and could find no bottom--or through a mountainous region inhabited by a set of fierce savages whom the king has never been able to subdue. he once sent an army of a hundred thousand men among them, they say, and not a single soldier ever came back! first we considered about crossing the river. a rhodian had a grand plan, he said, for taking the army across. he would sell it for a talent. i must confess, by the way, that i am more and more disgusted by the manner in which everything is for sale. citizen soldiers think of the common good, though, it must be confessed, they are not so sturdy in action as these fellows; mercenaries think only of the private purse. however, the rhodian never got his talent. his plan was clever enough, making floats of skins, but impracticable, seeing that the enemy occupied the other shore in force. nothing, then, remained for it but to take to the mountains. we must do our best to fight our way through them, if the mountaineers won't be friends. this done, we shall find ourselves in armenia; once there, we shall be able to go anywhere we please. november .--we have had three awful days. the carduchians--so they call the barbarians--are as hostile and as fierce as they can be. it seems unreasonable, for they must hate the great king as much as we do. still they will not listen to our overtures for friendly intercourse, but keep up an incessant attack. to-day there was very near being a positive disaster. we in the rear-guard had, of course, the worst of it. generally when we find our work particularly hard we pass on the word to the van, and they slacken their pace; otherwise we should get divided from the main army. to-day no attention was paid to our messages; chirisophus did nothing but send back word that we must hurry on. consequently our march became something very like a rout, and we lost two of our best men. at the first halt xenophon rode to the front. "why this hurry?" he asked. "it has cost us two men, and we had to leave their bodies behind." "see you that?" said chirisophus, and he pointed to a height straight before us, which was strongly held by the enemy. "i wanted to get there first, for the guide says that there is no other way." "says he so?" said xenophon. "let us hear what my fellows have to say. i laid an ambush, you must know, and caught two barbarians. they would be useful, i thought, as guides!" the two were brought up and questioned. "is there any other way than what we see?" "no," said the first. try all we could, he would make no other answer. at last chirisophus had him killed. "now," he said, turning to the other, "can you tell us anything more?" "o yes," said the man, "there is another way, and one that horses can pass over. but the other would not say anything about it, because he had kinsfolk living near it, and was afraid that you would do them an injury." poor fellow! i was sorry for him, when i knew how loyal he had been. but i don't know what else could have been done. the second man told us that there was a height which we must occupy if we would make the new route practicable. two thousand men have set off to get hold of it. if they fail, we shall be in terrible straits. november .--the army is safe for the present, but some--i among the number--have had a very narrow escape. the two thousand found their work very much harder than at first they thought it was going to be. they took the first height without any difficulty, and fancied they had done all that was wanted. but there were no less than three heights beyond, and each of these had to be stormed. my part in the business was this. xenophon thought that the second of the four heights--there were four in all--ought to be held permanently till our army had passed. some two hundred men were told off for this duty, and i volunteered to be one of them. all of a sudden we found ourselves attacked by a whole swarm of mountaineers. they outnumbered us by at least ten to one. it was a case for running, for there was really no position that we could hold. but running was no easy matter. our only chance was to climb down a very steep mountain side to the pass below, where the last columns of the van-guard were just making their way. some of the men did not like to try it; and, indeed, it did look desperately dangerous. while they were hesitating, the barbarians were upon them. as for myself, i felt that i would sooner break my neck than fall into the enemy's hands, so i started off at full pace, and was safe. nor do i think that any who followed my example were seriously hurt, though some got very nasty falls. those who stayed behind were killed to a man. just now we are in comfortable quarters. wine is in such plenty hereabouts that positively the people keep it in great cisterns. november .--we have crossed the centrites, which is the eastern branch of the tigris. november .--the march through armenia has been on the whole as pleasant as we had hoped. the lieutenant governor, one tiribazus, made an agreement with our generals that he would do us no harm, if we would not burn the houses, but content ourselves with taking such provisions as we wanted. four days ago, we had a heavy fall of snow, and the general thought it as well to billet out the army in the villages, which are very thick in these parts. there was no enemy in sight, and, as we had no tents, bivouacking in the open would be neither pleasant nor safe. we all enjoyed it vastly, particularly as the villages were full of good things, oxen, and sheep, and wine, some of the very best i ever tasted, and raisins, and vegetables of all kinds. but after the first night we had an alarm. a great army was reported in sight; and certainly there were watchfires in every direction. the generals thereupon determined to bring the army together again, and to bivouac on the plain. the weather too, promised to be fine. but in the night there was another heavy snow fall, so heavy that it covered us all up. it was not uncomfortable lying there under the snow; in fact, it felt quite warm; but of course it was not safe. i have heard of people going to sleep under such circumstances and not waking up again. anyhow xenophon set the example of getting up, and setting to work splitting wood. before long we were all busy. but there was no more bivouacking in the open. we went to the villages again; and some foolish fellows who had wantonly set their houses on fire were now punished for their folly. december .--the weather becomes colder and colder, and is our worst enemy now. the other day there was a cutting north wind, which drifted the snow till it was more than six feet deep in places. xenophon, whose faith and piety are admirable, suggested a sacrifice to the north wind. this was made; and certainly the weather did begin to abate shortly afterwards. the doubters say that the wind always does go down after a time. these are matters on which i do not pretend to judge; but i do see that xenophon's pious belief makes him very cheerful and courageous. the day before yesterday many of our men were afflicted, what with the long march and what with the cold, with a sort of ravenous hunger. they fell down, and either would not, or could not, move a step forward. at first we did not know what was the matter with them; but then some one who had campaigned before in cold countries suggested the real cause. when we gave them a little food we found that they recovered. yesterday we nearly lost a number of men who were simply overpowered with the cold. the enemy was close behind, and we tried to raise the poor fellows up; but they would not stir. "kill us," they said, "but leave us alone." they were simply stupid with cold. all that could be done was to frighten the enemy away. on the barbarians came, till the rear guard, who were lying in ambush, dashed out upon them, and at the same time the sick men shouted as loud as they could, and rattled their spears against their shields. the enemy fled in a hurry, and we saw and heard no more of them. but what would have happened if they had persisted, is more than i can say. the whole army was demoralized with the cold. the men lay down as they could with their cloaks round them. there was not a single guard placed anywhere. as it was, no harm was done; and in the afternoon to-day the sick men were brought safe into good quarters. we are now in excellent quarters, with all that we could wish to eat and drink. december .--just as i had finished my entries yesterday an athenian with whom i have struck up a great friendship asked me to come with him on an expedition. his name is polycrates, and he is the captain of a company. "let us raid that village," he said, "before the people have time to get away." so we did, and we had a fine catch. we laid hands on the villagers and their head man. with the head man was his daughter who had been married only eight days before. her husband was out hare-hunting, and so escaped. the village was a curious place. all the houses were underground; beasts and men lived there together, the beasts entering by a sloping way, the men by a ladder. there were great stores of barley, and wheat, and green stuff of all kinds. the drink was barley wine, which they keep in great bowls. you have to suck it up by a reed. it is very strong. as to the flavor i feel a little doubtful. to-day xenophon has been taking the head man, whom he had to sup with him last night, all round the camp, by which i mean the villages, for the men are encamped in them. at chirisophus' quarters there was a strange sight. the men were feasting with wisps of hay round their heads, for lack of flowers; and armenian boys, in the costume of their country, were waiting on them. everything of course had to be explained by signs, for neither soldiers nor waiters knew a word of each other's language. xenophon gave the head man his old charger, which indeed was pretty well worn out with marching, and took for himself and his officers a number of young horses which were going to be sent, we were told, as part of the king's tribute. december .--nothing of much moment has happened, except it be a quarrel, the first that has taken place--and i devoutly hope the last--between our generals. after resting in the villages for a week, we started again, taking the head man with us as a guide. if he did this duty properly, he was to be allowed to depart and to take his son with him, for he had a young son in his company. all the rest of his family were safe in his own village with a very handsome lot of presents. at the end of the third day chirisophus got into a great rage because the head man had not taken them to any village. the man declared that there was no village near. but chirisophus would not listen, and struck the man. the next night he ran away. xenophon was very angry. "you ought not to have struck him," he said; "but having struck him, you certainly ought to have kept a doubly strict guard on him." december .--we have crossed the river phasis, and got through what is, i hope, our last difficult pass. i have not time to write about it; but i must record an amusing little controversy that took place between our two generals. it shows anyhow that they have made up their quarrel. xenophon had been insisting that they must do as much as they could by craft, and had been speaking of _stealing_ somewhere at night, _stealing_ a march, and so forth. then he went on, "but why do i talk about stealing in your presence chirisophus, for you spartans are experts in the art. you practice it, i am told, from your youth up. it is honorable among you to take anything except what the law forbids. but to encourage you and to make you master thieves you get a whipping if you are found out. i must not therefore presume to instruct you about _stealing_." "nay," replied the other, "you have the best possible right to do it. you athenians, i am told, are wonderfully clever hands at stealing the public money and the best men among you do it the most. no; we spartans must yield to you." in the end the pass was carried without much loss. january .--for several days we have been on very short commons. the taochi, through whose country we are passing, have collected all their possessions, alive and dead, into strong places. at last we felt that something had to be done, for we were simply starving. accordingly, when we came about noon to-day to one of these strongholds which happened to lie directly on our route, chirisophus made up his mind to take it. it could be seen to be full of flocks and herds besides a mixed crowd of men, women and children. first one regiment went up against it; then a second; then a third. they could do nothing with it; the slingers and archers, which were the only troops we could use, made no impression at all. just then xenophon came up with the rear-guard, i being close behind him. "you have come just in the nick of time my friend," said chirisophus, "we must take this place or starve." "but what," xenophon asked, "is to hinder our simply walking in?" chirisophus answered, "you see that one narrow path, that is the only way of approaching the place. whenever anyone attempts to go by it, these fellows roll down huge masses of rock from the crag up there," and he pointed to a cliff that overhung the plain. "see what has happened to some of my poor fellows who were unlucky enough to get in the way!" and sure enough there was one man with one leg broken and another with both, and a third with his ribs crushed in. "but," said my own general, "when these fellows have expended their ammunition--and they can't have a perpetual supply of it--there will be nothing else to hinder our going in. i can only see a very few men, and of these not more than two or three are armed. as for the distance that we have to get across, it cannot be more than one hundred and fifty yards; and two-thirds of this are covered at intervals by great pine trees. as long as we are among these, stones cannot hurt us. these past, there are only fifty yards more to be crossed." "very good," said chirisophus, "but the moment we get near, the fire of stones begins again." "all the better," said xenophon, "the hotter their fire, the quicker the enemy will use up their ammunition. however, let us begin by picking out the place where the run across the open space will be shortest." first we occupied the trees. i had the luck, by special favor of xenophon, to be among them. we were only seventy, for no more could find proper shelter behind the pines. then one of us came forward a yard or two from under cover of the pines. no sooner did the taochi see him than they sent down a vast quantity of stones. before they reached him he was under cover again. this he did several times; and every time a wagon-load of rocks, at the very least, must have been whizzing and whistling down the slope. before long, however, the ammunition gave signs of not holding out. as soon as agasias, an arcadian from lake stymphalus, perceived this, he ran forward at full speed. the man who had been amusing himself with the rocks, caught hold of his shield as he ran by. then two other men started. altogether it was a splendid race, and curiously enough not another stone was thrown. then the rest of us followed. but when i saw the horrible thing that ensued, i was inclined to be sorry that i had anything to do with it. the women threw their children over the cliff, and then threw themselves after them, and the men did the same. i caught hold of one man to stop him, but he wriggled out of my grasp, and threw himself over the top. it was well for me that he did so or else i might have fared as Æneas of stymphalus did. he saw a man very finely dressed just about to throw himself over, and tried to hold him. the man did not try to get away, but clasped Æneas tightly in his arms. the next moment both had fallen headlong over the edge. of course they were both killed. we took very few prisoners, but flocks and herds as many as we wanted and more. january .--the marching has been easy enough on the whole, though we have met with the bravest enemies that we have yet come across, the chalybes, they are called. they did not hang on our rear, taking care never to fight unless they had some vantage ground, but met us fairly face to face. they were not as well armed as we. indeed, they had no armor on the body except cuirasses of linen. their chief weapon was a very long and clumsy spear. nevertheless they made a good fight of it; and if they did kill a man they cut his head off directly with a short sabre that they carried at their waists. we got nothing but hard knocks here. all the property of the country was stored away in strongholds; still what we got from the taochi has lasted us up to this time, and will supply us for some days to come. the country of the chalybes past, we came to the city, the first, by the way, that we have seen. it seemed very populous and rich, and its governor was extremely civil. he gave us a guide who told us the best news that we had heard for a long time. "within five days you shall see the sea," he said. "if i fail, my life shall be the forfeit." according to this we ought to see it to-morrow. january .--we have seen it! i was in the van-guard as usual. we had our hands full, for the people of the country were up in arms against us. our friend, the guide, had been very urgent with us to ravage and burn the country; and the men had not been backward in following his advice. so now there was a whole swarm of enemies hanging on our heels, and we of the rear guard had to keep them in check. all of a sudden we heard a tremendous uproar. "there is another attack on the van," cried xenophon, "this looks serious." but the shouting grew louder and nearer. as soon as a company came up, it began racing towards the shouters, and then took to shouting itself. xenophon mounted his horse to see for himself what had happened. he took the cavalry with him in case anything should have happened, and i made the best of my way after them. presently we could distinguish the words. the men were shouting, _the sea! the sea!_ then everybody started running, rear guard and all; even the very baggage horses were taken with it and came galloping up. and, sure enough, there it was, right before our eyes, a glimpse of blue in the distance with the sunshine upon it. what a scene it was! we all fell to embracing one another; rank was forgotten; generals, officers, and common men were friends. indeed the gods could not have given to our eyes a more delightful sight. presently the soldiers fell to erecting a great cairn of stones. on this they put skins and staves and wicker shields that we had taken from the enemy. of course the guide had a very handsome present from the common store, a purse, a silver bowl, a persian dress, and ten gold pieces. then he begged some rings, and got not a few. the soldiers were ready to give him anything. february .--we have passed safely through another country. the people were drawn out in order of battle when the luckiest thing happened, saving, i doubt not, many lives. one of the men came up to xenophon and said: "i think i know the language these people talk. i verily believe that it is my own." and so it turned out to be. the man had been a slave in athens. he explained to them that we did not wish to do them any harm, but simply wanted to get back to our own country. since then it has been peaceful. the people--macrones they call themselves--have been as helpful as possible, making roads for us, and supplying us with as good food as they possessed. february .--yesterday i really thought that after all that i had gone through, i was going to die of eating a mouthful of honey. we found a great store of this in one of the colchian villages that we came to, and of course ate it freely. it was poisonous, at least to persons not used to it. i know that i was desperately ill and so were many of my comrades. happily no one died. we reach trapezus to-morrow. we are in greece again. thanks be to zeus and all the gods! footnotes: [ ] for convenience' sake i have translated the dates of the attic year which callias, of course, used with the corresponding days in our reckoning. october would be the "fifth day of the middle of boedromia." each month was divided into three portions, often days each, respectively called beginning, middle, and ending. the days of the last were reckoned backwards. if this month had twenty-nine days only, the third division had nine. chapter xxiv. a thanksgiving. the worst severity of the winter was over when the army reached trapezus. the days were longer, for it was already half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, and though the nights were still bitterly cold, the sun was daily gaining power. sometimes a breeze from the west gave to the air quite a feeling of spring. still callias was very thankful to find quarters in the city. he discovered but scarcely with surprise, that as soon as he returned within the circle of greek influence, the credentials furnished him by hippocles made life much smoother for him. trapezus was the very farthest outpost of civilization; it was at least nine hundred miles from athens, yet the name of hippocles seemed as well known and his credit as good as if it had been the piraeus itself. as soon as permission could be obtained to enter the town--for the people of trapezus, though kind and even generous to the new arrivals, kept their gates jealously shut--callias made his way to the house of a citizen who was, he was told, the principal merchant in the place. nothing could have been warmer than the welcome which he received, when he produced the slip of parchment to which hippocles had affixed his seal and signature. "all i have is at your disposal," cried demochares; this was the name of the trapezuntine merchant. "i cannot do too much for any friend of hippocles. you will, of course, take up your quarters with me; and any advance that you may want,--unless," he added with a smile, "you have learnt extravagance among the persians, for we are not very rich here in trapezus--any advance within reason you have only to ask for." the young athenian ventured to borrow fifty gold pieces, astonishing his new friend by the moderation of his demand. he knew that some of his comrades, mercenaries who had not received an _obolus_ of pay for several months, must be very badly off, and he was glad to make a slight return for many little services that he had received, and acts of kindness and good fellowship that had been done for him on the march. as for hospitality, he begged to be allowed to postpone his answer till he could consult his general. "i don't like to leave you, sir," he said when he broached the subject to xenophon after their evening meal. "why should i have the comforts of a house, lie soft, and feed well, while you are sleeping on the ground, and getting or not getting a meal, as good luck or bad luck will have it?" "my dear fellow," replied xenophon, "there is no reason why you should not take the good the gods provide you. you are not one of us; you never have been. you came as a volunteer, and a volunteer you have remained. you are perfectly free to do as you please. besides, if you want anything more to satisfy you, you are attached to my command, and i formally give you leave." callias, accordingly, took up his quarters in the merchant's house. never was guest more handsomely treated. demochares and his family were never wearied of his adventures, a story which has indeed interested the world ever since, and which to these greeks of trapezus had a meaning which it had lost for us. living as they did on the farthest boundaries of the greater greece, the greece of the colonies, they were keenly alive to all that could be known about the barbarian world with which they were brought in constant contact. the young athenian, indeed, held a sort of levee which was thronged day after day with visitors young and old. all that he had to tell them about the great king, on whose dominions they were in some sort trespassers, and about the unknown tribes who dwelt between the sea and the persian capital, was eagerly listened to. pleasant as his sojourn was to himself, it was not without some advantage to his old comrades. his host was an important person in trapezus, holding indeed the chief magistracy for the year, and he had much to do with the liberal present of oxen, corn, and wine which the town voted to the army. a month passed in a sufficiently pleasant way. meanwhile the army was preparing to offer a solemn thanksgiving for the safe completion of the most perilous part of its journey. the vows made at the moment of its greatest danger were now to be paid, and paid, after the usual greek fashion, in a way that would combine religion and festivity. there was to be a sacrifice; the sacrifice was to be followed by a feast, and the feast again by a celebration which was, of course, in a great measure an entertainment, but was also, in a way, a function of worship. wrestlers, boxers, and runners not only amused the spectators and contended for glory and prizes, but were also supposed in some way to be doing honor to the gods. the sacrifice and the feast it is not necessary to describe. necessarily there was nothing very splendid or costly about them. the purses of the soldiers were empty, though they had a good deal of property, chiefly in the way of prisoners whom they had captured on the way, and whom they would sell in the slave markets as the opportunity might come. trapezus, however, and the friendly colchian tribes in the neighborhood furnished a fair supply of sheep and oxen to serve as victims, and a sufficient quantity of bread, wine, dried fruit and olive oil, this last being a luxury which the greeks had greatly missed during their march, and which they highly appreciated. a few of the officers, the pious xenophon among them, went to the expense of gilding the horns of the beasts which were their special offerings; but for the most part the arrangements were of a plain and frugal kind. the games had at least the merit of affording a vast amount of entertainment to a huge multitude of spectators. they were celebrated, it may be easily understood, under considerable difficulties, for trapezus did not possess any regular race course, and the only rings for wrestling and boxing were within the walls, and therefore not available on this occasion. by common consent the management of the affair was handed over to a certain dracontius. he was a spartan, and to the spartans, who had been undisputed lords of greece since the fall of athens, had been conceded a certain right of precedence on all such occasions as these. dracontius, too, was a man of superior rank to his comrades. he belonged to one of the two royal houses of sparta, but had been banished from his country in consequence of an unlucky accident. in one of the rough sports which the spartan lads were accustomed to practice, sports which were commonly a more or less close mimicry of war, a blow of his dagger, dealt without evil intention but with a criminal carelessness, had been fatal to a companion. hence, from boyhood, he had been an exile; cut off from the more honorable career to which he might have looked forward in the service of his country, he had been content to enlist as a mercenary. dracontius, accordingly, was made president of the games. the skins of the sacrificed animals were presented to him, as his fee, and he was asked to lead the way to the racecourse where the contests were to be held. "race course!" cried the spartan, with the _brusquerie_ which it was the fashion of his country to use, "race course! what more do you want than what we have here?" a murmur of astonishment ran through the army. indeed there could have been nothing less like a race course than the ground on which they were standing. it was the slope of a hill, a slope that sometimes became almost precipitous. most of it was covered with brushwood and heather. grass there was none, except here and there where it covered with a treacherously smooth surface some dangerous quagmire. here and there, the limestone rock cropped up with jagged points. "but where shall we wrestle?" asked timagenes, an arcadian athlete, who had won the prize for wrestling two or three years before at the lithurian games, and who naturally considered himself as an authority on the subject. "here of course," was the president's reply. "but how can a man wrestle on ground so hard and so rough?" asked the arcadian, who had no idea of practising his art except in a regular ring. "well enough," said dracontius, "but those who are thrown will get worse knocks." the wrestler's face fell and he walked off amid a general laugh. his comrades fancied, not without reason, that he was a great deal too careful of his person. but if the ground, broken with rocks and overgrown with wood was not suited to scientific wrestling, it certainly helped to make some of the other sports more than usually amusing. the first contest was a mile race for boys. most of the competitors were lads who had been taken prisoners on the march, but a few colchians entered for the prize, as did also two or three boys of trapezus, who had the reputation of being particularly fleet of foot. but the natives of the plain, still more the inhabitants of the town, found themselves entirely outpaced on this novel race course by the young mountaineers. a carduchian came in first, and was presented with his liberty, his master being compensated out of the prize fund which had been subscribed by the army. as soon as he understood that he was free, he set out at full speed in the direction of his home. a true mountaineer, he sickened for his native hills, and in the hope of seeing them again was ready to brave alone the perils which an army had scarcely survived. a foot race for men followed, but the distance to be traversed was, according to the common custom of the great games, only two hundred yards. there were as many as sixty competitors; but curiously enough, they were to a man cretans. another foot race, this time for men in heavy armor, was next run. the president had a spartan's admiration for all exercises that had a real bearing on military training, and the race of the heavy armed was unquestionably one of these. it was won by a gigantic arcadian, an Ætolian whose diminutive stature made a curious contrast to his competitor, coming in close behind him. next came the great event of the day, the "contest of the five exercises," or "pentathlon." the five were leaping, wrestling, running, quoit-throwing, and javelin-throwing. the competitor who won most successes had the prize adjudged to him.[ ] callias had been trained for some time at home with the intention of becoming a competitor at olympia; but various causes had hindered him from carrying out his purpose, and, of course, he was now wholly out of practice. he was sitting quietly among the spectators when he felt a hand upon his shoulder and looking up, saw his general standing by. "stand up for the honor of athens," said xenophon, "don't let the men of the island[ ] carry everything before them." "but i am not in training," said callias. "you are in as good training, i fancy," replied the general, "as are any of these; better i should say, to judge from the way in which they have been eating and drinking since the retreat was ended. besides, it is only the boxers who absolutely require anything very severe in that way. and you have youth." callias still made objections, but yielded when his general made the matter a personal favor. the competitors were five in number, the winner of the foot-race, the tall arcadian and his diminutive rival from Ætolia, two achaeans, and callias. the first contest was leaping at the bar. here the arcadian's long legs served him well. he was a singularly ungainly fellow, and threw himself over the bar, if i may be allowed the expression, in a lump. every time the bar was raised, he managed just to clear it, though the spectators could not understand how his clumsy legs, which seemed sprawling everywhere, managed to avoid touching it. still they did manage it, and when he had cleared four cubits short of a palm, which may be translated into the english measure of five feet nine inches, his rivals had to own themselves beaten. callias, who came second, declared that he had been balked by the infamous playing of the flute player, whose music according to the custom followed at olympia, accompanied the jumping. "the wretch," he declared to the friends who condoled with him on the loss of what they had put down to him for a certainty, "the wretch played a false note just as i was at my last trial. if i had not heard him do the same at least half-a-dozen times before, i should have said that he did it on purpose." if chance or fraud had been against him in this trial, in the next he was decidedly favored by fortune. this was the foot race. the course was, as usual, round a post fixed about a hundred yards from the starting point, and home again. whenever a turn has to be made, a certain advantage falls to the competitor who has the inner place, and when, as in this case, the distance is short, the advantage is considerable. the places were determined by lot. the innermost fell to the arcadian; callias came next to him; fortunately for him, his most dangerous competitor, the cretan who had won the foot race, had the outermost, _i. e._, the worst station. the arcadian jumped away with a lead, and for fifty yards managed, thanks to the long strides which his long legs enabled him to take, to keep in front; but the effort was soon spent; by the time that the turning point was reached, callias had gained enough upon him to attempt the dangerous manoeuvre of taking his ground. if it had not been for this, he must have been beaten, for the fleet-footed cretan, weighted though he was by his disadvantageous place, ran a dead heat with him. in the quoit-throwing, the arcadian's strength and stature brought him to the front again. with us quoit-playing is a trial of skill as well as of strength. the quoit is thrown at a mark, and the player who contrives to go nearest to this mark, without touching it (for to touch it commonly ends in disaster) wins. at the same time the throw does not count unless the quoit either sticks into the ground or lies flat upon it with the right side uppermost. in the greek game there were no requirements of this kind. the quoit was a huge mass of metal with notches by which it could be conveniently grasped, or, sometimes, a hole in the middle through which a leather strap or wooden handle could be put. he who threw it farthest was the winner. some little knack was required, as is indeed the case in every feat of strength, and, as has been said before, stature was the chief qualification. the arcadian hurled the quoit, a mass of iron weighing ten pounds, to the vast distance of forty-two feet. none of his rivals came near him. as he had now won two events out of three, and his gigantic height and weight would make him, to say the least, a formidable opponent in the wrestling, he was a favorite for the prize. his arcadian countrymen, who formed, as has been said, a large proportion of the army, were in high hope, and staked sums that were far beyond their means on his success. the quoit-throwing was followed by hurling the javelin at a mark. here the arcadian was hopelessly distanced, for here skill was as much wanted as strength had been in the preceding trial. he threw the javelin indeed with prodigious force, but threw it wholly wide of the mark. indeed, when he was performing, the near neighborhood of the mark would have been the safest place to stand. the spectators were more than once in danger of their lives, so at random and at the same time so vigorous were his strokes. the first mark was a post rudely fashioned into the figure of a man. to hit the head was the best aim that could be made; to hit a space marked out upon the body and roughly representing the heart was the next; the third in merit was a blow that fell on some other part of the body. the legs counted for nothing. callias and the cretan scored precisely the same. the athenian hit the head twice, scoring six for the two blows. the third time his javelin missed altogether. the cretan, on the other hand, in his three strokes hit the third, second, and the first places successively, scoring for them one, two, and three respectively. further trials of skill were now given. a wand about three fingers wide was set up at a distance of twelve yards. the cretan's javelin pierced it, making it, as may be supposed, an exceedingly difficult thing for a rival to equal, much more to surpass the performance. but callias was equal to the occasion. amid tumultuous applause from the spectators, for his courtesy and carriage had made him a great favorite, he hurled his javelin with such accuracy that he split that which was already sticking in the mark. again the cretan and he were pronounced to have made a tie. the two achaeans and the Ætolian did creditably, scoring five each. as they had failed in four out of the five contests, the prize was clearly out of their reach, and they stood out of the last competition, the wrestling. and now came the last and deciding struggle. here again fortune decidedly favored the athenian. the president, following the rule always observed at olympia, ordered three lots marked a, b, and c, and representing respectively callias, the arcadian, and the cretan, to be put into an urn. the two first drawn were to contend in the first heat, the third was to have what is technically called a "bye." the "bye" fell to the lot of callias, and with it, it need hardly be said, the not inconsiderable advantage of coming fresh to contend with a rival who had undergone the fatigue of a previous struggle. the issue of the contest between the arcadian and the cretan was not long in doubt. the latter was an agile fellow, who would have had a very good chance with "light-weights," to use again a technical term, if the competitors had been so classed, as indeed they are by the customs of the modern wrestling ring. but against his gigantic opponent he had scarcely a chance. in the first bout the arcadian lifted his antagonist clean from the ground, and threw him down at full length without more ado. the second was more equal. the cretan struck his antagonist's left ankle so sharply with his foot that the giant fell, but he could not loose the other's hold, and fell also, scoring only the advantage of being the uppermost. if there had been a tie in the other two bouts this might have sufficed to give him the victory, or the president might have ordered a fresh trial. but the third bout was decisive. it was in fact a repetition of the first, only, if possible, still more decisive. the cretan was again lifted from the ground, before he had the chance of practising any of his devices, and again hurled at full length upon the ground. this time he was stunned, and carried insensible from the ground by his companions. a brief interval was now allowed. it was thought unfair that the arcadian should be called upon to engage a fresh antagonist without some chance of resting himself. but what was meant for an advantage turned out to be exactly the contrary. the man was not particularly tired, but he was exceedingly thirsty, and he had not learnt the habit of self-control. regardless of the remonstrance of his companions, he indulged himself with a huge goblet of wine and water. so imprudent was he indeed that he put less water than was usual in the mixture, and slightly confused his brain by the potency of the draught. when he came forth to meet his antagonist, he had not only damaged his wind but had made his footing somewhat unsteady. three bouts, as before, were fought. the arcadian first tried the simple tactics which had been successful with the cretan. he did his best to lift the athenian from the ground, and callias had all he could do to prevent it. but his weight and his strength, which he made the most of by his coolness, stood him in good stead. after a fierce struggle both fell together, and fell in such a way that the president declared that neither had gained any advantage. practically, however, the victory was decided in favor of callias. the arcadian's strength was impaired, and he was so scant of breath that he could not use what was left to him. and he had little skill to fall back upon, whereas his antagonist had been the favorite pupil of one of the best trainers in athens. in the second bout callias struck the arcadian on the right foot with his own left; in the third he simply reversed the device, striking the left with his right. in both he contrived to free himself when his opponent fell. thus the fifth contest ended for him in an unquestioned victory. the prize of victory was an ox and a purse of twenty-five gold pieces, for soldiers who fought for pay would not have relished the barren honor of a wreath of wild olive with which the olympian judges were accustomed to reward the victors. callias won golden opinions from his comrades by the liberality with which he disposed of his gains. the ox he presented to the company to which he had been attached; the money he divided, in such proportion as seemed right, among the unsuccessful competitors. one more contest remained, and it turned out to be the most entertaining of them all. this was a horse race. the competitors were to make their way from the hill-top to the shore and back again. the headlong, break-neck speed at which they galloped down, and the slow and painful effort by which they crawled back again, were witnessed with inextinguishable laughter by the assembled crowds. xenophon himself took a part in this sport, and gained great favor not only by his condescension but by his skillful riding. he did not win indeed, for the animal which he rode was hopelessly inferior, but his performance did not discredit the land which claimed by the bounty of the god of the sea to have been the birthplace of the horse.[ ] the piety of xenophon always ready to show itself, did not fail to improve the occasion of his young friend's success. "you have gained the prize," he said in a tone of the deepest earnestness, "nor did you fail to deserve it. prize it the more because it is manifest that the gods favor you. youth and strength pass away, but piety you can cherish always, and cherishing piety, you have also the favor of the gods." footnotes: [ ] according to some accounts no competitor was crowned unless he was successful in all. but victory in five exercises so dissimilar could seldom, if ever, have been gained. quoit-throwing, for instance, corresponding to our "putting the stone," required lofty stature and great muscular strength, and would very seldom be the specialty of a very fleet runner. [ ] the island of pelops or peloponnesus. [ ] the legend was that poseidon and athene contended together for the honor of being the patron deity of attica. this was to be adjudged to the power which should present it with the most useful gift. poseidon struck the ground with his trident, and produced the horse; athene bade the olive spring forth, and was judged to have surpassed her rival. reference is made to this legend in the most beautiful of the choral odes of sophocles, the "praise of colonas" in the second of the two plays in the story of oedipus. chapter xxv. business and pleasure. its religious obligations discharged, for the games, as has been already said, were regarded as a service of thanksgiving for deliverance, the army turned its attention to secular affairs. one indispensable duty, one curiously characteristic, by the way, of the greek soldier's temper of mind, was to call the generals to account. for a greek soldier, even when he was selling his sword to the highest bidder, never forgot that he was a citizen, and that as a citizen he had the right of satisfying himself that his superiors had done their duty with due care and with integrity. the ten thousand accordingly put aside for the time their military character, and resolved themselves into a civil assembly. their generals were no longer the commanding officers to whom they owed an unhesitating obedience, but the magistrates who had just completed their term of office, and had now to render their accounts[ ] to those who had elected them. the meeting of the army, perhaps i should rather say the assembly, was held on the same ground which had served for a race course. one by one the officers were called to answer for themselves. with many, indeed, the proceeding was purely formal. the name was called, and the man stepped forward on a platform which had been erected where it could be best seen by the whole meeting. if no one appeared to make a complaint or to ask a question, the soldiers gave him a round of applause, if i may use the word of the noise made by clashing their spears against their shields; this was a verdict of acquittal and the officer retired with a bow. and this was what commonly happened. after all, the leaders had, on the whole, done their duty sufficiently well; there was proof of that in the simple fact that such a meeting was being held. but all did not escape so easily. if, indeed, only a few voices of dissatisfaction were heard, the matter was not pushed any further. when the second appeal was made by the malcontents, they, seeing that they were not supported by their comrades, preferred to keep silence. the man would, in all probability, be their officer again and he would not be likely to think pleasantly of any one who had accused him. but where, on the other hand, there was anything like an agreement of dissatisfied voices, the complainants took courage to come forward, and the examination was proceeded with in earnest. one officer had had charge of some of the property of the army; there was a deficiency in his accounts and he was fined twenty himal[ ] to make it good. another was accused of carelessness in his duties as leader, and had to pay half this sum. then came the _cause celebre_, as it may be called, of the day, the trial of xenophon himself. xenophon was generally popular with the army, as, indeed, he could scarcely fail to be, considering all that he had done for it; but he had enemies. the mere fact of his being an athenian made him an object of dislike to some; others, as will be seen, he had been compelled to offend in the discharge of his duty. "xenophon, the son of gryllus," shouted the herald at the top of his voice. the athenian stepped on to the platform. an arcadian soldier, nicharchus by name, came forward and said, "i accuse xenophon the athenian of violence and outrage." a few voices of assent were heard throughout the meeting; and some half dozen men came forward to support the the prosecutor. accuser and accused were now confronted. "of what do you accuse me?" asked xenophon. "of wantonly striking me," replied the man. "when and where did you suffer these blows?" "after we had crossed the euphrates, when there was a heavy fall of snow." "i remember. you are right. the weather was terrible; our provisions had run out; the wine could not so much as be smelt; many men were dropping down, half dead with fatigue; the enemy were close upon our heels. were not these things so?" "it is true. things were as bad as you say, or even worse." "you hear," said xenophon, turning to the assembly, "how we were situated, and indeed, seeing that you suffered these things yourself, you are not likely to forget them. verily; if in such a condition of things, i struck this man wantonly and without cause, you might fairly count me more brutal than an ass. but say--" he went on, addressing himself again to his accuser, "was there not a cause for my beating you?" "yes, there was a cause," the fellow sullenly admitted. "did i ask you for something, and strike you because you refused to give it?" "no." "did i demand payment for a debt, and lose my temper because the money was not forthcoming?" "no." "was i drunken?" "no." "tell me now; are you a heavy-armed soldier?" "no; i am not." "are you a light-armed then?" "no; nor yet a light-armed." "what were you doing then?" "i was driving a mule." "being a slave?" "not so; i am free; but my commander compelled me to drive it." a light broke in upon xenophon. he had had a general recollection of the occasion, but could not remember the particular incident. now it all came back to him. "ah," he cried, "i remember; it was you who were carrying the sick man?" "yes," the man confessed, "i did so, by your compulsion; and a pretty mess was made of the kit that i had upon the mule's back." "nay, not so; the men carried the things themselves, and nothing was lost. but hear the rest of the story," he went on, turning to the assembly, "and, indeed it is worth hearing. i found a poor fellow lying upon the ground, who could not move a step further. i knew the man, and knew him as one who had done good service. and i compelled you, sir," addressing nicharchus, "to carry him. for if i mistake not, the enemy were close behind us." the arcadian nodded assent. "well then; i sent you forward with your burden, and after a while, overtook you again, when i came up with the rear-guard. you were digging a trench in which to bury the man. i thought it a pious act, and praised you for it. but, lo! while i was speaking, the dead man, as i thought he was, twitched his leg. 'why he's alive,' the bystanders cried out. 'alive or dead, as he pleases,' you said, 'but i am not going to carry him any further.' then i struck you. i acknowledge it. it seemed to me that you were going to bury the poor fellow alive." "well," said the arcadian, "you won't deny, i suppose, that the man died after all." "yes," replied xenophon, "he died, i acknowledge. we must all die some day; but, meanwhile, there is no reason why we should be buried alive." the man hung his head and said nothing. "what say you, comrades?" cried xenophon. one of the oldest men in the ranks got up and said, "if xenophon had given the scoundrel a few more blows he had done well." a deafening clash of swords and spears followed, and the verdict was accepted. the other complainants were now called to state the particulars of their grievances. dismayed by the reception which their spokesman had met with, they remained silent, one and all. xenophon then entered upon a general defence of his conduct. "comrades," he said, "i confess that i have many times struck men for want of discipline. these were men who, leaving others to provide for their safety, thought only of their own gain. while we were fighting they would leave their place in the ranks to plunder, and so enriched themselves at our expense. some also i have struck, when i found them playing the coward and ready to give themselves helplessly up to the enemy. then i forced them to march on, and so saved their lives. for i know, having once myself sat down in a sharp frost, while i was waiting for my comrades, how loath one is to rise again. therefore, for their sake, i raised them even with blows, as i should myself wish, were i so found, to be raised. others also have i struck whom i found straggling behind that they might rest. i struck them for your sake, for they were hindering both you that were in front, and us that were behind, and i struck them for their own sake. for verily it was a lighter thing to have a blow with the fist from me than a spear's thrust from the enemy. of a truth, if they are able to stand up now to accuse me, it is because i saved them thus. had they fallen into the enemy's hand, what satisfaction would they be able to get, even if their wrongs were ten times worse than that nicharchus complains of? no," he went on, "my friends, i have done nothing more to any one than what a wise father does to his child, or a good physician does to his patient. you see how i behave myself now. i am in better case; i fare better; i have food and wine in plenty. yet i strike no one. why? because there is no need; because we have weathered the storm, and are in smooth water. i need no more defence; you have, i see, acquitted me. yet i cannot forbear to say that i take it ill that this accusation has been made. you remember the times when i had for your good to incur your dislike; but the times when i eased the burden of storm or winter for any of you, when i beat off an enemy, when i ministered to you in sickness or in want, these no one remembers--" and here the speaker's voice half broke, partly with real emotion, partly at the suggestion of the orator's art. a thrill of sympathy ran through the audience. "and you forget," he went on, "that i never failed to praise the doer of any noble deed, or to do such honor as i could, to the brave, living or dead. yet, surely it were more noble, more just, more after the mind of the gods, a sweeter and kindlier act, to treasure the memory of the good than to cherish these hateful thoughts." when the speaker sat down, there was nothing that he might not have obtained from his comrades. that night there was a great banquet. this served a double purpose. quarrels were made up, and some other difficult relations of the army to its neighbors were satisfactorily adjusted. the fact was, that the greeks, partly from their want, and partly in the hope of filling their pockets after a long and profitless campaign, had been plundering right and left. the natives, on the other hand, had not been slow to retaliate. plundering cannot be done satisfactorily in company; but any who ventured to do a little business on his own account ran a great chance of being cut off. under these circumstances both parties thought it might be possible to come to an agreement. if the greeks would not plunder, the natives would leave them unmolested and even furnish them with supplies. the chief of the country, accordingly, sent an embassy, with a handsome present of horses and robes of native manufacture. the generals entertained them at a banquet, to which, at the same time, they invited the most influential men of the army. the chief's proposals would be informally discussed, and proposed in regular form at a general meeting the next day. the generals did their best to impress their guests. meat, bread and wine were in plenty; and the eparch of trapezus sent one of the magnificent turbots for which the waters of the black sea were famous. all the plate that was in the camp was put into requisition to make as brave a show as possible; and, at the instance of callias, some handsome vessels of gold and silver were lent by the town authorities. but, in the eyes of the guests, the most impressive part of the entertainment was in the performances which followed it. the libation having been made and the hymn, which supplied the part of grace after meat, having been sung, some of the thracian soldiers came upon the platform which had been prepared for the performers. they wore the usual armor of their country, a helmet, greaves, light cuirass, and sword, and danced a national dance to the sound of a flute, leaping into the air with extraordinary nimbleness, and brandishing their swords. one pair of dancers were conspicuous for their agility. faster and faster grew their movements, and with gestures of defiance they alternately retreated and advanced. at last, one of them, carried, it seemed, out of himself by his rage, thrust at his fellow with his sword. the man fell. "he is killed!" screamed out the guests, and rose from their seats. indeed, the man had fallen so artistically and lay so still that any one would have thought that he had received a fatal blow. the greeks, however, looked on unmoved, and the strangers, not knowing whether this wonderful people might not be wont to kill each other for the entertainment of their guests, resumed their seats. the dancer who had dealt the blow stripped the other of his arms, and hurried off, singing the thracian national song: "all praise to sitalces, invisible lord, the spear point that errs not, the death-dealing sword, the chariot that scatters the close ranks of war, red ruin behind it, blind panic before!" when he had left the stage a party of thracians appeared and carried off the fallen man, who had remained without giving the slightest sign of life. another dance in armor succeeded, performed this time by Æolian tribesmen from the menalian coast. a man came on the stage, and, laying aside his arms, made believe to drive a yoke of oxen, and to sow as he drove. every now and then he looked round, with an admirable imitation of expecting some unpleasant interruption. this came in the shape of another armed man, who was supposed to represent a cattle-lifter. the ploughman caught up his arms, and ran to encounter him. the two fought in front of the team, keeping time as they struck and parried to the sound of the flute. at last the robber appeared to vanquish his adversary, to bind him, strip him of his arms, and drive off the team. the next performer was a mysian, who danced, again in armor, what we should call a _pas seul_. he had a light shield in each hand, and seemed to be fighting with two adversaries at once; his action was extraordinarily life-like and his agility almost more than human. in curious contrast with his performance was the stately movement of some arcadians heavy-armed, who, with all the weight of their armor and accoutrements upon them, moved to the tune of the warriors' march with as much ease as if they had been perfectly unencumbered. "good heavens!" cried one of the envoys to his next neighbor, "what men these are! their armor seems not one whit heavier to them than a shirt, and they carry their swords and their spears as if they were twigs of osier." one of the mysians, whose dialect was not very different from that of the speaker, overheard the remark. "ah!" he said to himself, "we will astonish these gentlemen still more." he drew one of the arcadians who had just performed, aside. "send cleone on the stage," he said. cleone was a dancing-girl, famous for her agility. by good luck she was at hand, having indeed expected to perform for the amusement of the company. the arcadian made her put on a light cuirass of silvered steel, which she wore over a scarlet tunic. she had a short gilded helmet, buskins of purple, and sandals tied with crimson strings. in her left hand she carried a small shield, and in her right, a light spear. thus accoutred, she came on the stage and danced the pyrrhic dance with tremendous applause from all the spectators. the astonishment of the native guests was beyond all expression. "what!" cried their chief, "do your women fight?" "of course," said the general whom he addressed, "of course they fight, and very pretty soldiers they make." "women soldiers!" gasped the man. "why," said his host, "did you not know that it was the women who routed the great king, and drove him out of our camp?" footnotes: [ ] the examination of accounts (euthuna) was one of the most important constitutional usages in the athenian commonwealth. all magistrates on coming out of office, and ambassadors returning from a mission had to undergo it. the existence of this usage would make the difference in the eyes of an athenian between a constitutional and a despotic government. the other greek states, though we know but little of their internal arrangements, probably had some similar institution. [ ] rather more than £ . chapter xxvi. invalided. callias found it very hard to sit out the banquet and the entertainment that followed it. he had felt a headache before sitting, or to speak more correctly, lying down, and this grew so bad during the evening that he gladly took the earliest opportunity of leaving. the fact was that he had been ailing for some days; the excitement of the games had carried him through the labors of the day, but he suffered doubly from the reaction, and before nightfall he was seriously ill. and now he found the advantage of having followed xenophon's advice and taken up his quarters in the town. had he been reduced to such nursing and attendance as the camp could have supplied, his chances of moving would have been small indeed. at the house of demochares, on the contrary, he had everything in his favor, an exceptionally good nurse, and an exceptionally skillful physician. in those days neither branch of the healing art, for nursing has certainly as much to do with healing as physicking, was very successfully cultivated. women nursed the sick, indeed, often with kindness and devotion, for woman's nature was substantially the same then as it is now, but they did it in a blind and ignorant fashion. as for the practice of medicine it was a mass of curious superstitions and prejudices, leavened here and there with a few grains of experience, and, if the practitioner happened to have that inestimable quality, of good sense. of systems there was only the beginning. the great physician hippocrates had indeed acquired a vast reputation, and was beginning to influence the opinion of the faculty throughout greece; but the medical profession has always been slow to adopt new ideas--what profession, indeed, has not?--the means of communication, too, were very limited, and as yet his teaching had had but little effect. but callias happened to be exceedingly fortunate both in his nurse and in his doctor. the house of demochares was kept by his sister, a widow, who after her husband's death had returned to her old home, and had devoted herself to a life of kindness and charity. the young athenian had won her heart, not only by his sunny temper and gracious manners, but by his resemblance to a son of her own whose early death--he had been slain in a skirmish with the barbarian neighbors of trapezus--had been the second great sorrow of her life. his illness called forth her tenderest sympathies, and nothing could have exceeded the devotion with which she ministered to her patient. the physician, demoleon by name, was a very remarkable man. he was a native of the island of cos, and was at this time between fifty and sixty years of age. he had been one of the first pupils of the famous hippocrates, who was a native of the same island, and had lived on terms of great intimacy with his teacher whom he assisted in his private practice. when hippocrates was summoned to the plague-stricken city of athens, demoleon accompanied him, and, by a curious coincidence, in the course of his residence there had treated the father of callias. whatever the benefit that followed the prescriptions of hippocrates, it is certain that the fact of his being called in to administer them by the most famous citizen of greece, largely increased his reputation, and that even beyond the border of greece. the great physician's return from athens was speedily followed by an invitation from artaxerxes, king of persia.[ ] the plague that had devastated greece had passed eastward, and was committing destructive ravages throughout the persian empire. artaxerxes implored hippocrates to give him and his subjects the benefit of his advice. he offered at the same time the magnificent _honorarium_ of two talents of gold yearly.[ ] the patriotism or the prudence of hippocrates led him to refuse this offer, tempting as it was. he would not, he said, and doubtless with sincerity, give the benefit of his advice to the hereditary enemy of his country. at the same time, we may suppose, he reflected to himself that he would be putting himself, without any possibility of appeal, at the mercy of a tyrannical and unscrupulous master. but one of the persian envoys succeeded in doing a little business of the same kind on his own account. he found the pupil less resolute against the temptations of a great bribe than the master had been. accordingly he engaged demoleon to come in the capacity of physician to himself and his household. the king would have the opportunity of availing himself of his advice if he pleased. artaxerxes was disappointed at the refusal of hippocrates, but he did not disdain the help of a man who had shared his practice, and was probably acquainted with his system. demoleon prescribed at susa and persepolis the remedies which his master had employed at athens, the burning of huge fires in the street and squares, and the use of an antidote. the pestilence either yielded to these influences, or, as is more probable, had exhausted its force. at any rate demoleon got the credit of having vanquished the enemy, and was rewarded by a munificent present from the king and by an enormous practice. he might have accumulated great wealth but for an unlucky complication for which he can scarcely be considered to have been to blame. necessity sometimes compelled a departure, in the case of the physician, from the strict rules of seclusion with which the persian women were surrounded. demoleon was called in to visit the daughter of a persian noble. she was a beautiful girl, or rather would have been beautiful but for the fact that she was blind. it was a case of cataract, and the greek physician, who was as bold as he was skillful, ventured on an operation which at that time had scarcely been attempted, or even thought of. it proved entirely successful. the gratitude of the father was shown by a munificent present of gold and jewels; that of the daughter by the gift of her heart. one of the very first objects on which her eyes rested when the bandage was permitted to be removed was the form of the young physician who had restored to her one of the greatest joys of life. under any circumstances it was likely to please her; and demoleon was in the bloom of early manhood, and his fair complexion and golden hair showed in attractive contrast to the swarthy hues of her countrymen. the result was that she fell deeply in love. demoleon was not without prudence, and would have hesitated to listen to any promptings of his own heart, for he too had been greatly impressed by the beauty and grace as well as by the pathetic patience of the sufferer. amestris--that was the young lady's name--guessed readily enough that the physician would not venture to speak, and she took the matter into her own hands. she did not speak herself; for that, passionate as was her affection, would have been impossible; but she got some one to speak for her. her nurse--the nurse was generally the _confidante_ of antiquity--undertook the task of communicating with the young man. one day she gave him a pomegranate, saying at the same time that he would find the fruit especially sweet. her words would have seemed ordinary enough to any one that might have happened to hear them; but the young physician, whose feelings made him susceptible, suspected, he could not say why, a particular meaning. opening the fruit he found a ring engraved with a single greek word--_be bold_. the next day he thanked the giver of the fruit with emphasis. "it was sweet to the core," he said. after that the affair proceeded rapidly. the young man, who, as may be guessed, did not hurry the case of his patient, found an opportunity of declaring his love, and in the following summer the two lovers fled together. all the arrangements had been carefully made. the girl feigned sickness, and the physician prescribed a residence among the hills and a simpler life and plainer diet than the patient was likely to get in her father's house. her foster-mother was the wife of a sheep master who rented some extensive pasture on the hills of southern armenia, and it was settled that amestris should pay her a visit. the lady was sent off under a small escort, no one dreaming that the family of an influential noble would be molested on its journey. yet, curiously enough, a band of brigands was bold enough to enter the caravanserai where the party was lodging on the fourth night after their departure from susa. certainly the keeper of the inn, and, possibly, the commander of the escort, had been bribed--demoleon's successful practice had put him in the command of as much money as he wanted. for a long time amestris absolutely disappeared. her father searched everywhere and offered munificent rewards for information, but he could find and hear nothing. no one knew that a couple of travellers, who might have been two brothers journeying in company and followed by three well armed servants, were in fact demoleon, amestris, and the pretended robbers. the party followed much the same route as was afterwards taken by the ten thousand, and, after not a few hair-breadth escapes, arrived in safety at the same destination,--the city of trapezus. three years of happiness followed. then the beautiful persian died. she never repented of having given her heart to the young physician, who was the best and most affectionate of husbands. but she missed her family and all the associations of her early life, and pined away under the loss. return was impossible; she could not go back without her husband, and to return with him would have been to expose him, if not herself, to the certainty of death. the hopelessness of the situation broke her heart; and all her husband's skill, even the more potent influence of her husband's love, failed to work a cure. the widower could not prevail upon himself to leave the place where he had enjoyed his short-lived happiness. he might have gained wealth and fame in larger cities, but he preferred to spend the rest of his days at trapezus. there, indeed, he was almost worshipped. he had a singularly light and skillful hand; his experience, though, of course, not so large as he might have collected elsewhere, was always ready for use; and he had the rare, the incommunicable gift of felicitous guessing--guessing we call it, but it is really the power of forming rapid conclusions from a number of trifling, often half discerned indications. anyhow he achieved some very marvellous cures; performed with success operations which others did not venture to attempt; diagnosed diseases with remarkable skill, and was extraordinarily fertile in his expedients. it was specially characteristic of him that while he was never satisfied till he had thoroughly enquired into the causes of disease, he was unwearied in his efforts to relieve the inconvenience and painfulness of a patient's symptoms. so alarming did the condition of callias become after his return from the banquet, that demoleon was called in without loss of time. all that he could do at the moment was to give a sleeping draught, intending to make a thorough examination of the case next morning. shortly after sunrise he was by the bedside. callias was conscious enough to be able to describe his feelings; what he said indicated plainly enough that his illness had been developing for some days past, and had been postponed by sheer courage and determination. it was in fact something like what we call gastric fever; and the experienced physician saw enough to convince him that he should have a hard battle to fight. the patient was young, vigorous, apparently sound of constitution, and, as far as he could learn, of temperate habits. all this was in favor of recovery; but it was not more than was needed to give a glimpse of hope. demochares, who had a strong regard for the young man, as indeed every one had that had been brought into contact with him, intercepted the physician as he was leaving the house after a prolonged examination of the patient. "how do you find him?" he asked. demoleon shook his head. the gesture was not exactly despairing, but it indicated plainly enough that the situation was serious. "you will put him all right before long?" returned the merchant, alarmed at the gravity of the physician's manner. "all these things lie on the knees of the gods," said demoleon, quoting from his favorite homer. (it was a maxim of his that a man who did not know his homer was little better than a fool.) it may be said that the physician was more than a little brusque in manner and speech. twenty years of solitary life had made him so, for since his wife's death he had held aloof from all the social life of the place. "what ails him?" enquired the merchant. "a fever," was the brief reply. "does it run high?" "very high indeed." "you have bled him, of course." the physician's answers to enquiries were generally as short as the rules of politeness permitted; occasionally, some of his questioners were disposed to think, even shorter; but there were remarks that always made him fluent of speech, though the fluency was not always agreeable to his audience. "bleed him, sir," he cried, "why don't you say at once stab him, poison him? no, sir, i have not bled him, and do not intend to." "i thought that it was usual in such cases," said the merchant timidly. "very likely you did," answered demoleon, "and there are persons, i do not doubt, who would have done it, persons, too, who ought to know better." this was levelled at a rival practitioner in the town for whom he entertained a most thorough contempt. "do you know, sir," he went on, "where men learnt the practice of bleeding?" "no, i do not," said demochares. "it was from the hippopotamus. that animal has been observed to bleed himself. doubtless the operation does him good. but it does not follow that what is good for an animal as big as a cottage is good also for a man. doubtless there _are_ men for whom it is good. when i have to deal with a mountain of a man, one of your city dignitaries bloated by rich feeding, by chines of beef and pork and flagons of rich wine, i don't hesitate to bleed him. his thick skin, his rolls of fat flesh, seem to require it. in fact he is a human hippopotamus. but to bleed a spare young fellow, who has been going through months of labor and hard living would be to kill him. i wonder that you can suggest such a thing." "i am sure i am very sorry," said the merchant humbly. "happily no harm is done," replied the physician, cooling down a little. "and, after all, this is not your business, and you may be excused for your ignorance, but there are others," he went off muttering in a low voice, "who ought to know better, and ought to be punished for such folly. it is sheer murder." i do not intend to describe the course of the long illness of which this was the beginning. there were times when even the hopefulness of the physician--and his hopefulness was one of his strongest and most helpful qualities--failed him. relapse after relapse, coming with disheartening frequency, just when he had seemed to have gathered a little strength, brought him close to the gates of death. "i have done all that i can," said demoleon one evening to epicharis the nurse. "if any one is to save him, it must be you. if you want me, send for me, of course. otherwise i shall not come. it breaks my heart to see this fine young fellow dying, when there are hundreds of worthless brutes whom the earth would be better without." epicharis never lost heart; for a nurse to lose heart is more fatal than the physician's despair. for nearly a week she scarcely slept. not a single opportunity of administering some strengthening food did she lose--for now the fever had passed, and the danger lay in the excessive exhaustion. at last her patience was rewarded. the sick man turned the corner, and demoleon, summoned at last, to alleviate, he feared, the last agony, found, to his inexpressible delight, that the cure was really begun. "you are the physician," he cried, as he seized the nurse's hand and kissed it; "i am only a fool." winter had passed into spring, and spring into summer, before callias could be pronounced out of danger. even then his recovery was slow. some months were spent in a mountain village where the bracing air worked wonders in giving him back his strength. as the cold weather came on he returned to his comfortable home in trapezus. though scarcely an invalid, he was still a little short of perfect recovery. besides it was not the time for travelling. anyhow it was the spring of the following year, and now more than twelve months from the time of his first illness, when he was pronounced fit to travel. even then it was only something like flat rebellion on the part of his patient that induced demoleon to give way. the young man was wearying for home and friends. he had heard nothing of them for several months, for communication was always stopped during the winter between athens and the ports of the euxine, while the eastward bound ships that always started after the dangerous season of the equinox had passed, had not yet arrived. footnotes: [ ] artaxerxes longimanus, so called from the circumstance of his right hand being longer than his left. he reigned from to . [ ] about £ , , ($ , ), if gold is to be reckoned at thirteen times the value of silver. this is herodotus' calculation, and it probably held good in greece for a century or more from his time, until, in fact, the enormous influx of gold from the asiatic conquests of alexander altered the proportion. chapter xxvii. back to athens. callias started about the middle of april, according to our reckoning. his journey to the bosphorus was much retarded by contrary winds. for some days no progress could be made, and it was well into may before he reached byzantium. there he was fortunate enough to get a passage in a spartan despatch boat, which took him as far as the port of corinth, thus carrying him, of course, beyond his destination, but to a point from which it was easy for him to find his way to athens. it was about the beginning of june when he landed at the piraeus. he did not doubt for a moment about the place where his first visit was due. the fact was that he had no near relations. the kinsman who was his legal guardian had always given up the business of looking after his ward's property to hippocles; and now that callias was his own master, there was little more than a friendly acquaintance between the two cousins. the alien's house was, he felt, his real home, nor had he given up the hope that in spite of hermione's strongly expressed determination, he might some day become a member of his family. hippocles happened to have just returned from his business at the shipyard, when the young athenian presented himself at the gate. nothing could be warmer than the welcome he gave his visitor. [illustration: the acropolis at the present day.] "now zeus and athene be thanked for this," he cried as he wrung the young man's hand. "that you had come back safely from the country of the great king i heard. your friend xenophon told me so much in a letter that i had from him about a year ago. then i heard from him that you were dangerously ill. after that all was a blank, and i feared the worst. but why not a word all this time?" "pardon me, my dear friend, i think i may say that it was not my fault. for months i was simply too ill to write. when i came back to trapezus, the winter had begun, and there were no more ships sailing westward. i should have written when communications were opened again, but i was always in hopes of being allowed by the physician to start, and i had a fancy for bringing my own news. and how are you?" "i am well enough," replied hippocles, "but we have been passing through times bad enough to shorten any man's life. i don't speak of trade. there have been troubles there, but when one has ventures all over the world, it does not matter very much as far as profits are concerned, if things do not go right at one place or another. it has been the state of home affairs that has been the heaviest burden to bear. i thought we had touched the bottom when the city had to surrender to lysander. but it was not so, and i might have known better. the spartans, of course, upset the democracy." "well," interrupted callias, "i should have thought that that would not have been by any means an altogether unmixed evil." "yes," said hippocles, "and there have been times when i have been ready to think the same. but wait till you see an oligarchy in power, really in power, i mean, not with a possible appeal to the people, and so a chance of having to answer for themselves before them, but with a strong foreign garrison behind them. we had that state of things in athens for more than half a year. one might almost say that it was like a city taken by storm. no man's life was safe unless he was willing to do the bidding of the tyrants--the "thirty tyrants" was the nickname of the men that were in power in those days. who would have thought that theramenes would ever have been regretted by honest men? yet it was so. he thought his colleagues were going too far, and opposed them. he was carrying the senate with him, for many besides him were beginning to feel uncomfortable; so they murdered him. the thirty had, you must know, a sort of sham general assembly--three thousand citizens picked out of the whole number as holding strong oligarchical opinions. amongst the laws that they had made one was that none of these three thousand were to be condemned without a vote of the senate. the name of theramenes was, of course, on the list, and, as he had a majority of the senate with him, he seemed safe. well what did critias, who was the leader of the violent party, do? he filled the outer circle of the senate house with armed men, the senate, you must understand, sitting in the middle surrounded by them. then he got up and said, 'a good president, when he sees the body over which he presides about to be duped, does not suffer them to follow their own counsel. theramenes has duped you, and i and these men here will not suffer one who is the enemy of his country to do so any longer. i have therefore struck his name off the list of the three thousand. this leaves me and my colleagues free to deal with him without your assent.' the senate murmured, but dared do nothing more. the officers came and dragged the man from the altar to which he was clinging. an hour afterwards he had drunk the hemlock. the gods below be propitious to him, for great as were his misdeeds he died in a good cause and as a brave man should die.[ ] things have not been so bad since the 'thirty' were upset, but there is a sad story to tell you." callias paused awhile. at last he screwed up his courage to put a question which he had both longed and feared to put ever since he had set foot in the house. "and your daughter, is she well?" "yes, she is well." "and still with you?" "yes, she is at home," briefly answered the father. hermione had in fact, refused several offers which every one else had thought highly eligible. hippocles, though by no means anxious to lose a daughter who was not only a companion but a counsellor, was growing anxious at what appeared her manifest determination to remain single. he would have dearly liked to have a son-in-law who would be able to take up in time the burden of his huge business, a burden which he began to feel already somewhat heavy for his strength. callias would have been entirely to his heart, but he had accepted, though not without great reluctance, his daughter's views on this subject. that she should deny the young athenian's suit, and yet for his sake dismiss all other suitors--and this he began to suspect to be the fact--seemed to his practical mind a quite unreasonable course of action. when a distant kinsman from italy, a handsome youth of gracious manners and of unexceptionable character, with even a tincture of culture, was emphatically refused, hippocles ventured a remonstrance. its reception was such that he resolved never under any circumstances to repeat it. hermione had been always the most obedient of daughters, but this roused her to open rebellion. "father," she said, "in this matter i am and must be a freeborn italian. a greek father can arrange a marriage for his daughter, but you must not think of it. i shall give myself as my mother gave herself before me--if i could find one as worthy as she did," and she caught her father's hand and kissed it, breaking at the same time into a passion of tears. "forgive me," she went on in a broken voice, "for setting up myself against you; but if you love me, never speak on this subject again." and her father resolved that he never would. the young athenian felt a glow of renewed hope pass through him at the father's reply, studiously brief and cold as it was. anyhow hermione was not married. what could ever occur to change her purpose he did not care to speculate. nevertheless, as long as she did not belong to another, he need not despair. "you will dine with me of course," said hippocles to his visitor, "by good luck i have invited xenophon. doubtless that is he," he went on, as a kick was heard at the door.[ ] a few moments afterwards a slave introduced xenophon; and before the two friends had finished their greetings it was announced that dinner had been served. hermione was not present at the meal, nor did her father make any excuse for her absence. the presence of any guest not belonging to the regular family circle, was sufficient to account for it; and callias, though he hoped against hope to see her, could not but acknowledge to himself that a meeting would have been highly embarrassing. conversation did not flag during the meal. when it was finished, the host excused himself on the score of having some business matters on hand which did not brook delay; and xenophon and callias were left to talk over each other's adventures. when callias had told the story with which my readers are already acquainted, xenophon proceeded to give him a brief outline of his fortunes since they had parted. "well, my dear callias," he said, "you did not lose much by not being with us. while we were in danger, we stuck fairly together, though there were always cowardly and selfish fellows who thought, not of the general welfare, but only of their own skins or their own pockets. but when we were safe at the coast and among friends, then there arose endless division. and, indeed, i must allow that the situation of the army was very trying. here were thousands of men who lived by their pay, and there was no paymaster. i had a scheme of my own which would really have kept us together. if it could have been carried out, the gathering of the ten thousand, even though it had failed of its first object, would not have been altogether in vain. i wanted to found a new greek colony. we might have taken pharis or some other city of the barbarians; and if only half of my comrades had been willing to stay, we might have made a rich and powerful place of it before long. but it was not to be. perhaps i was not worthy of being the founder of such a colony; anyhow the scheme came to nothing. i will tell you how it was. you remember silanus, the soothsayer. i never trusted the man. he was quite capable of garbling signs to suit his own advantage. however i could not help going to him on this occasion, as he was the chief of his craft. so i said, 'offer sacrifices and determine the omens concerning this scheme of a new colony.' now silanus was about the only man who had any money in his pocket. cyrus had given him three thousand darics[ ] for a prophecy that had come true, and he wanted to get home with the spoil. so he was altogether against the idea of a colony. when he had sacrificed he could not say that the omens were altogether against the scheme; for i knew nearly as much about the matter as he did. what he did say was that there were indications of a conspiracy against me. and he took good care to make them true, for he spread about reports of what i was going to do that turned the army against me. so the scheme came to nothing. "this did one good thing, however, for it helped us on our way home. trapezus and the other colonies in the east of the euxine did not relish the idea of a new greek city which might turn out to be a formidable rival. so they offered to transport the army to the hellespont and to furnish pay from the first new moon after the departure. this seemed a good offer, and i recommended the soldiers to close with it, and said that i gave up my scheme. 'only,' i said, 'let us all keep together and let any one who leaves us be counted a malefactor.' for i did not choose that my friend the soothsayer should get the better of it. "well, we set sail; our first halt was at sinope, which is roughly speaking, about halfway between trapezus and byzantium. then the army wanted to make me commander-in-chief. happily the omen was against it, and i was able to decline. we started again, and got to heraclea. the people were very hospitable; but some scoundrels in the army wanted to lay a contribution upon the city. chirisophus, the spartan--i should have told you that on my refusal the army gave him the chief command--refused to have anything to do with such an abominable business, and i backed him up. of course the city shut its gates against us, and we got nothing at all. after this the army broke up into three. one of the divisions, made up of arcadians and achaeans, the most unscrupulous and greedy of the whole number, got into serious trouble when they were trying to plunder the country, and i had to rescue them, for two thousand men had stuck to me when the army was thus broken up. then the other division under chirisophus were nearly as badly off, and i had to get them out of a scrape. after this they came together again, and it was made a matter of death for anyone to propose a separation. "it was well we did, for everyone seemed bent on treating us as villanously as possible. would you believe that the spartan governor of byzantium actually sold as slaves four hundred soldiers who had found their way into the city? it is true that they were stragglers and had no business there; but it was an abominable act. at last, one seuthes, who had been chief of the odrysians, and deposed by a usurper, offered to take the whole army into his pay, if we would help him to recover his dominions. every man was to receive a stater[ ] per month, the captains twice, and the generals four times as much. also he offered lands, oxen to plough it with, and a city with walls. in fact the colony scheme seemed likely to be carried out after all. to me he was very munificent in his promises. i was to have one of his daughters to wife and a city of my own." "what did you say to that?" said callias. "well, the only one of these things that seuthes really had in his possession was the daughter. i saw the young lady, handsome i will allow, and tall; but, oh, such a savage! as for the money, and the land, and the oxen, and the towns, walled and unwalled, we had to get them for him and then have our portion back. however, it seemed to me the best thing for the army to do, and i advised the men to that effect, and they agreed, only it was provided that we were never to march more than seven days' journey from the seacoast. we had all had enough of marches up the country. then seuthes gave us a feast by way of striking the bargain. "it was a wonderful scene, and some day i must tell you all about it. but i must own that for a time i felt as uncomfortable as ever i did in my life. after dinner when the bowl had passed round two or three times, in came a thracian leading a white horse. he took the bowl from the cup-bearer, and said, 'here is a health to thee, king seuthes. let me give you this horse. mounted on him thou shalt take whom thou wilt, and when thou retirest from the battle thou shalt dread no pursuer.' then another gave a slave, and another some robes for the queen, and a fourth a silver saucer and a finely embroidered carpet. all the while i was sitting in an agony, for i was in the place of honor, and had nothing to offer. however 'our lady of athens,' who is the inspirer of clever devices, and, it may be father bacchus also, for i had drained two or three cups, helped me out of my difficulty. when the cup-bearer handed me the goblet, i rose and said, 'king seuthes, i present you with myself and these my trusty comrades. with their help you will recover the lands that were your forefathers' and gain many new lands with them. nor shall you win lands only, but horses many, and men many, and fair women also.' up got the king, at this, and we drained the cup together. "seuthes was not going to let the grass grow under his feet. when we left the banqueting tent--this was at sunset because we wanted to set the guards about our camp--the king, who, for all his potations, was as sober as a water-drinker, sent for the generals and said, 'my neighbors have not yet heard of this alliance of ours. let us go and take them by surprise.' and so we did. we went that night and brought back booty enough to pay for our day's pay, i warrant you. "well, we went on fighting for seuthes for two months till we had conquered the whole countryside for him. then the conquered tribes flocked to him--give a thracian plenty to eat and drink and good pay and he will fight in any quarrel--till he did not want any more. that perhaps was not to be wondered at, but, like the mean hound that he was, he tried to get out of paying us. "just at this moment when i thought that we should have to settle with the sword for judge, sparta declared war against the persians and wanted all the men she could get. so thuisbron, their commander-in-chief, came over and engaged the men at the same rate of pay that seuthes was giving or rather promising. we never got anything but a wretched fragment from the king. "by this time i had had about enough of campaigning of this fashion. not a drachma had i made. in fact i was poorer than when i set out. i had even to sell my favorite horse, but thuisbron bought it back for me. "just at the last i had a stroke of luck. that is another story i must tell you some day. but fortunately we took prisoners a persian noble with his wife and children, his horses and cattle and all that he had. the next day i left the army, but before i went they gave me the pick of the beasts of all kinds. it was a handsome present, i can tell you." "so, on the whole," said callias, "you came pretty well out of the business. you returned at least not poorer than you went, you have won for yourself a name which those who come after us will not, i take it, forget, and you helped, at least, to save the lives of many greeks from perishing shamefully by the hands of the barbarians. are you not content?" "yes," replied xenophon, "all the more content on account of one thing you have not mentioned. for this indeed pleases me in the matter that we greeks have now found a way by which we may both go to the capital of the persians and return therefrom. verily, i sometimes wish we had not been so eager to retreat, but had stopped and made ourselves masters of the country of our enemies. perhaps we were not strong enough; but, if i can see so far into the future, some one will do this hereafter, and greece will be avenged of all that she has suffered at the hands of the barbarians." "the master will be glad," callias went on after a pause. the "master" of course was socrates. xenophon looked at the young man with some surprise. "you seem very confident on this point. he indeed was always somewhat doubtful, and certainly there are great difficulties when you come to look into it a little more closely." "i really do not know what you mean," answered callias; "you have seen him i suppose, for you have been in athens several days and know what he thinks." for a few moments xenophon stared at the speaker in utter perplexity. then a light broke in upon him. "what," he cried, "you do not know? you have not heard?" "know what? have heard what? you speak in riddles." "that he is dead." the young man covered his face with his hands. after a few minutes he recovered calmness enough to speak. "no, indeed, i did not know it. i never thought of such a thing. he seemed so full of life and vigor. yet he must have been an old man, not far from seventy i suppose, for he was more than forty at delium.[ ] tell me of what did he die?" "they killed him." "killed him! who killed him?" "the people of athens." footnotes: [ ] the last scene of his life is described by xenophon. i give the passage with some explanation. when he drank the fatal cup he threw the dregs on the floor with the peculiar jerk given in playing the game of cottabos. this game had several forms; but the feature common to them all was the heaving of wine out of a cup. sometimes the object seems to have been a kind of fortune telling. a guest when he had finished his cup would jerk out any dregs that might be left. at the same time he named the guest who was to drink next, and the sound made by the drops falling was supposed to give some omen good or bad. "to the gracious critias," said theramenes. it was to be a prophecy of his fate. as a matter of fact critias fell a few weeks afterward in a battle with thrasybulus and the exiles of the democratic party. [ ] it was usual to kick not to knock with the hand. [ ] about $ , . [ ] something less than $ . [ ] the battle of delium (between the boeotians and the athenians) was fought in . the precise age of socrates at the time of his death was seventy. chapter xxviii. the story of the trial. it is not too much to say that the young man was prostrated by the news which he had just heard, for the blow fell upon him with a suddenness that seemed to increase the pain tenfold. he had not been indeed on the same intimate terms of friendship with the great philosopher as the older disciples, crito, simmias, cebes, phaedo and others had been. but he had regarded him with an affection and admiration that was nothing less than enthusiastic; and he had looked forward to getting his advice about the future conduct of his life with a hopeful eagerness that made disappointment very bitter. to find himself in athens after all the vicissitudes of fortune through which he had passed, and to learn that the man without whom athens scarcely seemed itself, was lost to him forever, was a terrible shock. xenophon's sorrow had not been less keen, but he had been prepared for his loss by at least a few days' previous knowledge. the news had reached him while he was on his way, and the first shock was over when he landed. but there had been nothing to break the news to callias. he felt as a son might feel who returns home after a long absence in full expectation of a father's greeting, and finds himself an orphan. so overpowered was the young man that he felt solitude to be absolutely necessary for a time. "let me talk to you about it another day," he said to xenophon, "at present i am not master of myself." xenophon clasped his friend's hand with a warm and sympathetic pressure. "i understand," he said. "yet, i think it will comfort you when you hear how he bore himself at the last and what he said. come to me to-morrow; hippocles will tell you where i live." early the next morning, callias presented himself at xenophon's house, a modest little dwelling, not far from the garden of academus. he found him in the company of some friends, most of whom were more or less known to the young man as having been members of the circle which had been accustomed to listen to the teaching of the great master. crito, menexenus and Æschines, and the two thebans, cebes and simmias, were among the number; and there were others whom he did not recognize. he was greeted with kindness and even distinction. his host had evidently been giving a favorable account of him to the company. "i thought it best," xenophon went on to explain, "to ask some of those who were actually present when these things happened, to meet you. i myself, as you know, was not here; and it is well that you should hear a story so important from eye-witnesses, men who saw his demeanor with their own eyes, and heard his words with their own ears." "i thank you," said callias. "but tell me first how it was that such things came to pass. it seems incredible to me. i have heard that here and there a man has been found so monstrously wicked that he could kill his own father, though solon thought it so impossible a crime that he would impose no penalty on it. but that a whole people should be stricken with such madness of wickedness seems to pass all imagination or belief." "ah! you do not understand," said simmias; "i am a foreigner you know; and those who look at things from outside often see more of them than they who are within. i had long thought that socrates was making many enemies in athens. and verily if he had said such things in my own city, as he said here, i doubt whether he had been suffered to live so long." "but he always spoke true things," said the young man, "and things that were to the real profit of his hearers." "just so," replied simmias, "but that they were true and profitable did not make them pleasant, or the speaker of them welcome. what think you would happen to a school-master if his pupils whom he daily corrects and disciplines, sometimes with hard tasks and sometimes with blows, were permitted to judge him, or to a physician if the children whom he seeks to cure of their ailments with nauseous drugs, or, it may be, with the knife or cautery, had him in their power?" "truly, it might fare ill with him," callias confessed, thinking to himself of certain angry thoughts that in his own boyhood he had cherished against his own teacher and doctor. "yes," said crito, "simmias is right, nor did this matter escape the notice of us athenians, though we did not perceive it so plainly. you, i know, have been much absent from athens since you grew to manhood, yet you must have seen something of this. you were here, for example, when the admirals were condemned after the battle at arginusæ. is it not so?" "i was here," said callias. "and you know how socrates set himself against the will of the people, refusing to put to the vote a proposal which he believed to be unconstitutional. well, he suffered nothing at that time, because their will prevailed in spite of him. yet we saw that there were many who remembered this against him, and only waited for the opportunity of avenging themselves upon him. nor was he less constant in opposing the few, when he believed them to be acting wrongfully, than in opposing the many. listen now, to what he did and said in the days of the thirty. were you in athens at that time?" "no," replied callias, "i left the city, or rather was carried away from it--" at this there was a general laugh, most of the company having heard of the curious story of his abduction--"after the murder of the generals, and did not set foot in it till the other day." "but you know what manner of men these thirty were." "yes, i know." "well, among other vile things that they did was this, that they put to death many excellent men whom they conceived to be enemies to themselves. then socrates, in that free way of his, said, 'if a herdsman were so to manage his herd that the cattle became fewer and not more, men would consider him a bad herdsman. still more would they consider him to be a bad ruler of a city who should so manage it that the citizens became not more but less numerous.' this being reported to critias, who was a chief among the thirty, he sent for socrates, and said to him, 'there is a law that no man shall teach or use the art of words.' socrates said, 'mean you by this, the art of words rightly spoken or the art of words wrongly spoken?' on this, one charicles, who was a colleague of critias, and was standing by him, broke in violently: 'since, socrates, you find it so hard to understand an altogether easy thing, take this as a plain rule, that you are not to talk with young men at all.' 'truly i desire to obey the law,' said socrates; 'tell me then what you mean by young men. how young? up to what age?' charicles said, 'up to thirty, at which age men are able to take part in affairs of the state.' 'but,' said socrates, 'if i desire to buy a thing of a man who is under thirty, is it permitted me to ask what it costs?' 'yes,' said charicles, 'you may say so much.' 'and if a man under thirty asks me where critias lives or charicles lives, may i answer him?' 'yes, you may answer such questions,' said charicles. then critias broke in, 'but you must not talk about blacksmiths and coppersmiths and tanners; and indeed you have worn these themes pretty well threadbare by this time.' 'nor about righteousness and wickedness and such things, i suppose,' said socrates. 'no, indeed, nor about herdsmen. if you speak of herdsmen and of the herd being diminished, take care that it be not diminished by one more, even by you.'" callias listened with delight. "oh, how like him!" he cried. "yes," replied crito, "like him indeed, and truly admirable. but such things do not please those to whom they are spoken, especially do not please men in power. then consider the number of empty-headed, ignorant fellows whose vanity and conceit he exposed every day by his pitiless questioning. there was not a pretentious fool in athens whom he had not at some time or other held up to ridicule." "and they deserved it richly," said callias. "yes," replied the other, "but i have never found that a man liked punishment more because he knew that he deserved it. so you see that the city was full of his enemies. and there were some honest men who really believed that he did harm by his teaching. what with knaves whom he opposed with all his might, and fools whom he exposed, and right-minded, wrong-headed men whom he could not help offending, there was a very formidable host arrayed against him." "i see," said callias. "but they must have had some pretext, they could not put any of the things you have been speaking about into a formal charge. tell me, what did they accuse him of?" "oh, it was the old story, treason and blasphemy. men who would have sold their country for a quarter of a talent, men who believe in no other gods than their own lusts, were loud in proclaiming that socrates had ruined the state, and was teaching the young not to worship the gods." "good heavens!" cried callias, "how dared they utter such lies? a better patriot, a truer worshipper of the gods never lived." "you are right; yet, these were the charges against him, these and other things equally absurd, as that he taught the young to despise their fathers and to think meanly of all their relatives and friends, as if he himself were the only friend that was worth having; that he perverted words from homer and the old poets to a bad sense, making them mean that no work was disgraceful so that it brought in gain, and that it was lawful for kings and nobles to beat the common people[ ]--these were the charges that they brought against him. and then they added the accusation that critias and alcibiades who had done great harm to athens had both been disciples of his." "but tell me," said callias, "how did these liars and villains proceed? and first, who were they? who took the lead?" "one meletus was the chief." "what! the foolish poet whom every one laughs at?" "yes, the very same. he represented the poets. there was one lycon, of whom, i suppose, you never heard, who represented the public speakers, and anytus, one of those who came back with thrasybulus. he had been badly treated, it is true, banished without any good reason, but only a madman could have supposed that socrates had had anything to do with it. these three brought the indictment. it was in these words:-- "'socrates is guilty of a crime. he does not acknowledge the gods whom the state acknowledges, and he introduces other and new gods. he is also guilty of corrupting the youth. the penalty--death.'" "but such charges hardly needed a defence. is it possible that a number of athenian judges found a verdict of guilty?" "it was so indeed," said crito, "and i am not sure that you will be altogether surprised when you hear what the accused said in his own defence. i am an old man now, and have watched the courts now for many years; and i have seen not a few men who might have escaped but for what they said in their own behalf. now i can't tell you all that socrates said, or even the greater part of it. our friend plato is going to set it forth regularly in a book that he is writing. but i can tell you enough to make you see what i mean. "after he had dealt with various other matters--those calumnies for instance, that aristophanes set afloat about him now more than thirty years ago--he went on: 'some years ago, men of athens, a certain chaerephon--you know him; some of you went into exile along with him--having been my companion from my youth up, ventured to go to delphi, and to propose this question to the god: "is there any man wiser than socrates?" the pythia[ ] made reply, "there is none wiser than he." when i heard this i said to myself, what can the god mean? he cannot tell a lie, yet i am not conscious to myself of possessing any kind of wisdom. so at last i devised this plan. i went to one of the men who are reckoned wise, thinking thus to test the oracle, so that i might say, here at least is one that is wiser than i. now when i came to examine this man--he was one of our statesmen, men of athens,--i found that though he was accounted wise by many and especially by himself, he was not wise in reality. but in vain i tried to convince him, and i even became odious to him and to many others who were present and admired him. then i thought to myself, i am at least wiser than this man, for he not knowing, thinks that he knows, while i at least know that i do not know. after this, i went to the poets, tragic, lyrical, and others, and taking to them poems which they had written, asked of them what they meant thereby. and i found that almost always those that had not written these things knew better what they meant than the authors. so i concluded that these also were not wise. and at last i went to the artisans, knowing that they were acquainted with many things of which i knew nothing. and this, indeed, i found to be the case. but i also found that, because they had mastered their own art, each thought himself very wise in other things, things, too, of the greatest importance, and that this self-conceit spoilt their wisdom. these also seemed to be less wise than myself. but all the time that i was doing this i knew that i was making myself hateful to many, yet, because i was bound to obey the god as best i could, i did not desist. "'it is true also that many young men hearing me thus questioning others have found delight in this employment and have learnt to imitate me. and they have obtained this result: they have found many persons who think that they know much but in reality know nothing. but they who are thus discovered are irritated, not so much against their questioners, but against me whom they suppose to have taught them this habit. hence comes this fable of a certain wicked socrates who is said to corrupt the young men. "'nevertheless, o men of athens, if you this day release me, i shall not therefore cease to do that which, as i conceive, the god commands. i shall go about the city seeking wisdom; nor shall i cease to say to such as come in my way, my friend, can you, being a citizen of athens, the most famous city of greece, help being ashamed if you make riches or rank your highest aim, and care not for that which is indeed the greatest good? this shall i still do to young or old, for it is this that the god orders me to do!'" crito paused in his story. "magnificent!" cried callias, "but how did the judges take it? it was a downright defiance of them." "certainly it was, and so they thought it. there was a tremendous uproar. when the noise had ceased, he began again:--'do not clamor against me, men of athens, but hear me patiently; 'tis indeed for your own good that you should. for be assured that putting me to death, you will harm yourselves rather than me. for, having rid yourselves of me, you will not easily find any one who will do for you the office that i have done, which has been, i take it, that of a rider upon a horse of good breed, indeed, and strong, but needing the spur. such a rider have i been to the city, sitting close and exciting you continually by persuasion and reproach. you will not easily find another like me; and if you are angry with me, yet remember that persons awakened out of sleep are angry with the man who rouses them, though it may be to the saving of their lives. and remember this too: what i have done, i have done without pay; no one can bring up this against me that i have done anything for gain. if you ask a proof, look at my poverty--that is proof enough. "'and if any one ask me why i go about meddling with every body and giving them advice, and yet never come forward and give any advice about matters of state, i make him this answer: there is a voice within me, of which meletus idly speaks as if it were another god, which never indeed urges me to do anything, but often warns me against doing this or that. this same voice has often warned me against taking part in public affairs, and rightly so indeed, for be assured that if i had so taken part, i should long ago have perished. and do not be offended if i tell you the truth. no man can be safe who opposes things wrong and illegal that are done by the people. if he would live, even but for a short time, he must keep to a private station. "'do you not remember, men of athens, how when you had to judge the admirals that did not save the shipwrecked men at arginusæ, i would not put the motion to the vote? for though i had never held any public office i was in the senate, and it so chanced that my tribe that day had the presidency. you chose to judge all the men together, acting wrongfully, as you afterward acknowledged. and i alone of all the presidents opposed this thing, and would not yield, no not when the orators denounced me, and would have joined me with the accused. this was in the time of the democracy. "'and afterwards when the democracy was overthrown, and the oligarchy was in power, what happened? did not the thirty send for me along with four others to their council-chamber, and bid us fetch leon of salamis, that he might be put to death. this they did, after their habit, seeking to involve as many as possible in their wicked deeds. then also i showed not in words only, but in deeds that i cared not one jot for death. for in the chamber i declared that i would not do this thing, and when we had gone out, the other four indeed went to salamis, and fetched leon, but i went to my own home. doubtless i should have died for this act, but that the thirty were overthrown soon afterward. "'and what i have done publicly that i have privately also. never have i conceded anything that was wrong to any man. but if any man would hear what i said i never grudged him the opportunity. i have offered myself to rich and poor, whether they would question me themselves or answer my questions, nor have i spoken for pay, nor been silent because i was not paid, nor have i ever said aught to any man that i have not said to all. "'so much, men of athens, might suffice for my defence, but if any of you, remembering that other men when accused have brought their children before you seeking to rouse compassion, are angry with me because i have not so done, let him listen to me. i, too, have family ties. "'from no gnarled oak i sprang, or flinty rock, as homer has it, but am born of man. three sons i have; two of them are children, one an infant. should i then bring them before you, and seek to move your pity by the sight of them? not so. i have seen many thus demeaning themselves, as if, forsooth, you acquitting them, they would escape death altogether; but such behavior would ill befit those who seek to follow after virtue and honor. nor is such behavior only unseemly; it is wrong. for we are bound to convince a judge, not to persuade him, and he is set in his place not to give justice as a favor, but because it is justice. verily, if i should have to persuade you to act against your oaths i should be condemning myself of the very charge that meletus has brought against me, for i should act as if i did not believe that the gods by whom ye have sworn to do right are gods at all. far be it from me so to act. i believe in the gods more than my accusers believe; and i leave it to these gods and to you to judge concerning me as it may be best for you and for me.'" "no man," said cebes, "could have spoken better; but it was not the speech that would please or conciliate." "and what was the result?" asked callias. "after all there was only a majority of _six_ against him; two hundred and eighty-one against two hundred and seventy-five were the numbers. then came the question of the sentence. the prosecutor had demanded the penalty of death. 'socrates,' said the president of the court, 'what penalty do you yourself propose?'[ ] 'you ask me,' said socrates, 'what penalty i myself propose. what then do i deserve, i who have not sought to make money, or to hold office in the state, or to command soldiers and ships, who have not even attended to my own affairs, but have sought to do to others what i thought to be their highest good? what should be done to me for being such a man? surely something good, something suitable to one who is your benefactor, and who requires leisure that he may spend it in giving you good advice. there is nothing, i conceive, more suitable than that i should be maintained at the public expense in the town hall, with those who have done great services to the state. surely i deserve such a reward far more than he who has won a chariot race at the olympic games; for he only makes you think yourselves fortunate, whereas i teach you to be happy.' "of course there was a loud murmur of disapprobation at this. even some of those who had voted for acquittal were vexed at language so bold. "socrates began again: 'you think that i show too much pride when i talk in this fashion. but it is not so. let me show you what i mean. as to the penalty which the accuser demands, i cannot say whether it be good or evil; but the other things which i might propose in its stead i know to be evils--imprisonment, or a fine with imprisonment till it be paid, or exile, which last, indeed, you might accept. but if you cannot endure my ways, o men of athens, think you that others would endure them? and what a life for a man of my age to lead, this wandering from city to city! but if anyone should say, why, o socrates, will you not depart to some other city, and there live quietly, and hold your tongue? i answer, to do this would be to disobey the god, and i cannot do it. and indeed to live without talking and questioning about such matters is not to live at all. but i have not yet named the penalty. if i had money i should propose some fine which i could pay; but i have none, except indeed you are willing to impose upon me some small fine, for i think that i could raise a pound of silver.' at this there was another growl from the judges; and some of us who were standing by socrates caught him by the robe, and whispered to him. after a pause, he said, 'some of my friends, crito and plato and apollodorus, advise me to propose a fine of thirty minas[ ] and offer to be security. so i propose that sum.' "of course the result was certain. a majority much larger than before voted for the death penalty. then the condemned man spoke for the last time. you will be able to read for yourself the very words that he said. i can now give you only an idea of the end of his speech. he had told the judges, speaking especially to those who had voted for his acquittal, that the voice that was wont to warn him had never hindered him in the course of his speech, though it was not the speech that he should have made if he had wanted to save his life. from this he argued that he and they had reason to believe that death was a good thing. 'either,' he said, 'the dead are nothing and feel nothing, or they remove hence to some other place. what can be better than to feel nothing? what days or nights in all our lives are better than those nights in which we sleep soundly without even a dream? but if the common belief is true, and we pass in death to that place wherein are all who have ever died, what greater good can there be than this? if one passes from those who are called judges here to those who really judge and administer true justice, to Æacus and minos and rhadamanthus, is this a change to be lamented? what would not any one of you give to join the company of homer and orpheus and hesiod? or talk with those who led that great army of greeks to troy, or with any of the many thousands of good men and women that have lived upon the earth? verily, i would die many times if i could only hope to do this. and now it is time'--for these were his very last words of all--'that we should separate. i go to die, you remain to live; but which of us is going the better way, only the gods know.'" there was a deep silence in the room after crito had finished speaking. it was broken at last by callias, who asked, "how long since was that?" "nearly two months," said simmias, "but by a strange chance socrates was not put to death for nearly a month after his condemnation. it so happened that the sacred ship started for delos just at the time, and during its voyage--in fact from the moment that the priest fastens the chaplet on the stern--no man can be put to death. for thirty days then he was kept in prison. there we were permitted to visit him, and there we heard many things that are well worth being remembered." "i want to hear everything," cried callias. "you shall in good time," said crito. "come to my house to-morrow and i will put you in the way of your getting what you want." "but you ought to hear," cried apollodorus, who had hitherto taken no part in the conversation, "what the teacher said to me, though, indeed, it shows no great wisdom in me that he had occasion to say it. 'o socrates,' i said, when i saw him turning away from the place where he had stood before his judges--and nothing could be more cheerful than his look--'o socrates, this indeed is the hardest thing to bear that you should have been condemned unjustly.' 'nay, not so, my friend,' he answered, 'would the matter have been more tolerable if i had been condemned justly?'" there was a general laugh. "that is true," said crito, "but certainly as far as athens is concerned, it was a more shameful thing." footnotes: [ ] the lines from hesiod: "no labor mars an honest name; 'tis only idleness is shame," was one instance (quoted by xenophon in the recollections of socrates). another (from the same source) is the story of how ulysses stayed the greeks from hurrying to their ships and leaving the siege of troy. the common men he struck, but if he found a chief in the crowd he only remonstrated with him, "but if he saw perchance, some common man blinded with panic, clamorous of tongue, with staff he smote him, adding blow to blame." [ ] the priestess of apollo at delphi. [ ] it was the curious custom in the athenian courts of criminal justice that the accused, if found guilty, was required to name a counter penalty to that proposed by the prosecutor. the prosecutor, as has been seen, had proposed death. socrates, under the circumstances, could hardly have proposed anything less than banishment, if he had any wish that it should be accepted by the court. [ ] rather more than $ . chapter xxix. the last conversation. callias, as may be supposed, did not fail to keep his appointment with the utmost punctuality. he found at crito's house very nearly the same company that had been assembled the day before at xenophon's. after the usual greetings had been interchanged, the host said, "i propose, if it is agreeable to you all, to hold the conversation which we are to have to-day at the house of our friend plato. he has written to invite us, not because he can himself see us, for he is not sufficiently recovered from his late illness, but because we shall thus be able to talk with his friend phaedo; for as all know there is no more fitting person than phaedo to tell our young friend callias the things that he desires to hear. for though we were all present, xenophon only excepted, on that day when the master left us, having given us his last instructions, yet there is no one who so well remembers and is so well able to describe all that was then said or done. i propose, therefore, that we transfer ourselves to his house." the proposition met with general assent and the party set out. crito naturally took charge of callias as being his special guest. as the two were walking, the young man said, "tell me, crito, if it is not unpleasing to you, whether in the thirty days during which the master was held in prison, any efforts were made to save his life?" "i am glad," said crito, "that you have asked me that question privately and not before others, for, indeed, this is a matter which has caused me no little amount of trouble and shame. some people blame me because, they say, though a rich man i did not bribe the jailer of the prison in which socrates was confined, and thus enable him to escape. i am blameable, indeed, but for an exactly opposite reason. i did bribe the man--this of course is in absolute confidence between you and me--and in this, as the master showed me, i was wrong. indeed i never received from him so severe a rebuke as i did concerning this matter. but let me tell you what happened. i had arranged everything. the jailer was to let him escape. there were people ready to carry him out of the country. i went to him early in the morning of the day when the ship was expected to return. i told him what i had done. i made light of the money that the affair was to cost. i could well afford it, i said, and if i could not there were others ready to contribute. and then i attacked him, it was an impudent thing to do, but i felt as if i could do anything that we should not lose him. i told him that it was wrong of him to do his best to let his enemies get their way. i said to him, 'thus acting you desert your children, whom you might bring up and educate. but if you die you will leave them orphans and friendless. either you ought not to have children or you ought to take some trouble about them. surely this does not become one who has made virtue his study throughout his life. and remember what a disgrace will fall upon us, for it will certainly be said that we did not do our best to save your life.' "well, i cannot tell you now a tenth part of what he said. i have it all written down at home, but i may say what you will easily believe that i was as helpless in his hands as the veriest pretender whom he has ever cross-examined. i know that he ended by making me thoroughly ashamed of myself. one of his chief arguments was this: "'suppose, crito, that as i was in the act of escaping, the state itself were to say to me: are you not seeking to destroy by so acting the laws of the state itself? is not that state already dissolved wherein public sentences are set aside by private persons? what should i answer to such questions? and if the laws were to say, what complaint have you got to make against us that you seek to destroy us? do you not owe your being to us, seeing that your father and mother married according to our ordering? have we not given you nurture, education, all the good things that you possess as being an athenian? have you not acknowledged us by living in the city, by having children in it? and if they were further to say, verily, he who acts in this way in which you are about to act is a corrupter of youth--what could i answer? "'and tell me, crito,' he went on, 'whither would you have me betake myself? not surely to any well-ordered city seeing that i had shown myself the enemy of such order, but rather to some abode of riot, which would indeed ill become one who had professed to be a lover of virtue and righteousness. and as for my children, how shall i benefit them? by taking them elsewhere and bringing them up not as citizens of athens, but as citizens of some other state which i myself here have judged inferior, seeing that all my life long i have deliberately preferred athens to it?' verily, callias, when he said this, i had no answer. but here we are at phaedo's house." callias was not a little surprised when he was introduced to the man whom he had been brought to see. phaedo was a man much younger than himself; indeed he had scarcely completed his eighteenth year. his appearance was singularly attractive, and his manners had all the grace and ease of a well-born and well-bred man. that he was not an athenian was evident from his speech, which was somewhat tinged with a doric accent. altogether callias was at a loss to think who or what he could be, and how he came to be regarded as the best interpreter of the master's last words. an opportunity, however, arrived for enlightening him. after a few minutes' conversation, a slave appeared with a message for the master of the house. plato who had been compelled to absent himself from the last interview with socrates, as has been said, was still so unwell that his physician forbade the excitement of seeing visitors. he now sent for phaedo to entrust him with a message of apology for his fellow disciples whom he was unable to entertain, and partly to set him free to act the part of host in his stead. crito seized the opportunity of his temporary absence from the room to give some particulars about him. "he comes of a very good family in elis, and was taken prisoner about this time last year when athens and sparta were allies and acting against that country. he was sold in the slave market here, and i cannot tell the cruelties that he endured from the wretch who bought him. somehow he heard of socrates, ran away from his owner and begged for the master's protection. of course, the only thing was to buy him, and equally of course, socrates was wholly unable to do this. but the master, if he had no wealth of his own, happily had wealthy friends. he went to plato and, by great good luck, plato had a very powerful hold over the poor fellow's owner; the man owed him a large sum of money, the interest of which was overdue. he was purchased, and at once set free. plato found that he had been remarkably well educated and that he showed an extraordinary aptitude for philosophy. the lad's devotion to socrates was unbounded. he never lost a chance of being near him; he was present of course at the last day, and he watched and listened with an intense earnestness that seemed to engrave everything on his mind as one engraves letters upon marble or bronze. but, see, he is coming back. now you will understand why i have brought you to see him." the young man, at this moment, returned to the room. "tell me, phaedo," said crito, "what you saw and heard on the last day of the master's life. my friend callias here, who has just come back from campaigning against the great king, desires to hear it from you, and, indeed, though we all were present on that day, you seem to remember it more accurately than any." "i will do my best," said the youth modestly. "i do not know," he went on, addressing himself especially to callias, "whether you will wholly understand me when i say that i did not feel compassion as one might feel for one who was dying--he was so calm and so happy. neither, on the other hand, did i feel the pleasure that commonly followed from his discourses, for i knew that he would soon cease to be." "it was just so with all of us," said crito, "but go on." "we had been to visit socrates daily through the time of his imprisonment, assembling very early in the morning, and waiting till the doors of the prison were opened, and so we did on this day, only earlier than usual, because we knew that the sacred ship had arrived the evening before. the jailer came out. 'you must wait, gentlemen,' he said, 'the eleven[ ] are with him. they are taking off his chains, and are telling him that he must die to-day.' after a little while the man came out again, and said that we might go in. when we went in, we found socrates sitting on the side of his bed, and his wife, xanthippe, near him, holding one of his children in her arms. as soon as she saw us, she began to lament and say, 'o socrates, here are your friends come to see you for the last time.' then socrates, looking at her, said to crito, 'let some one take her home.' so one of crito's servants led her away. after a while, for of course i must leave out many things, the master said, 'i have a message for evenus, who seeks to know, i am told, why i have taken to writing verses in prison. tell him that a god appeared to me in a dream and told me to cultivate the muses. tell him also that if he is wise he will follow me as speedily as possible, for it seems that the athenians command that i depart to-day.' "'but, socrates,' said simmias, 'this is a strange piece of advice, and one which evenus is not likely to take.' "'why so,' said socrates, 'is he not a philosopher? surely he should be ready to go the road which i am going. only he must not kill himself.' 'why do you say this?' said cebes. "you will correct me," said phaedo, turning to the company, "if i misrepresent anything that you said." "speak on without fear," said simmias, "you seem to have the memory of all the muses." phaedo resumed, "socrates said, 'you ask me why a man may not kill himself? well, there is first this reason that we are as sentinels set at a post, which we must not leave until we are bidden; then again if men be servants of the gods, as seems likely, how can they withdraw from this service without leave? would you not be angry if one of your servants were to do it?' "'true,' said cebes, "'but if we are the servants of the gods, and therefore in the best guardianship, should we not be sorry to quit it? if so, is it not for the foolish to desire death and for the wise to regret it?' 'you are right,' replied the master, 'and if i did not expect when i depart hence to go to the realms of the wise and good gods and to the company of righteous men, i should indeed grieve at death. and that i am right in so expecting let me now seek to prove to you, for what better could i do on this the last day of my life? but stay; crito wishes to say something. what is it?' crito said, 'he who has to give the poison says that you must talk as little as possible, for that if a man so excites himself he has to drink sometimes two potions or even three.' 'let him take his course,' said the master, 'and prepare what he thinks needful. and now to the matter in hand. death, then, is nothing but a separation of the soul from the body. that you concede. and you concede further that a philosopher should care little for the things of the body, and that when he is most free from the body, then he sees most clearly the highest and best things, perceiving, for instance, right and justice and honor and goodness, veritable things all of them, but such as cannot be discerned with the eyes or handled with the hands. for the body with its desires and wants hinders us, and makes us waste our time on the things that it covets, so that we have neither time nor temper for wisdom. if then we are ever to reach absolute truth we must get rid of the hindrance. while we live we do this to the best of our ability, and he is the wisest man and best philosopher who does it most completely; but wholly we cannot do it, till the god shall liberate us from the control of this companion--and this is done by death, which is the complete separation of soul and body. shall then the philosopher, who has all his life been striving for such partial separation as may be possible, complain when the gods send him this separation that is complete? and this is my defence, my friends, for holding it to be a good thing to die.' 'yes,' replied cebes, 'but many fear that when the soul is thus parted from the body, it may be nowhere, being dissipated like a breath or a puff of smoke when the body with which it has been united dies.' 'you desire, then,' said socrates, 'that i should prove to you that the soul does not perish when it is thus separated from the body?' 'yes,' we all said, 'that is what we all wish.' 'first then,' he went on, 'is it not true that every thing implies that which is opposite to it, as right implies wrong, and fair implies foul, and _to sleep_ is the opposite of _to wake_? if so does not _to die_ imply its opposite _to live again_? "'secondly, is it not true that the highest part of our knowledge is a remembering again? for there are things which we know not through our senses. how then do we know them? surely because we had this knowledge of them at some previous time.' "'but,' said cebes, 'may it not be true that the soul has been made beforehand to enter the body; and having entered it lives therein, and yet perishes when its dwelling is dissolved?' "'being of a frail nature, i suppose,' said the master, 'it's all to be blown away by the wind, so that a man should be especially afraid to die on a stormy day.' "at this we all laughed, for we did laugh many times and heartily that day, though now this may seem to others and indeed to ourselves almost incredible, seeing what we were about to lose. "'well,' the master went on, 'i will seek to relieve you of this fear. is it not true that things that are made up of parts are liable to be separated? and is it not also true that the soul is not made up of parts, but is simple and not compounded? also it is visible things that perish; but the soul is not visible. again the soul is the ruler, and the body the servant. is it not true that the divine and immortal rule the human and mortal senses?' "to this we all agreed. "the master began again, for he now, as i may say, had to put before us the conclusion of the whole matter. 'we may think thus, then, may we not? if the soul depart from the body in a state of purity, not taking with it any of the uncleannesses of the body, from which indeed it has kept itself free during life as far as was possible--for this is true philosophy--then it departs into that invisible region which is of its own nature, and being freed from all fears and desires and other evils of mortality, spends the rest of its existence with the gods and the spirits of the good that are like unto itself. but if it depart, polluted and impure, having served the body, and suffered itself to be bewitched by its pleasures and desires, then it cannot attain to this pure and heavenly region, but must abide in some place that is more fitted for it.' "much else he said on this point to which we listened as though it were another orpheus that was singing to us. and when he had ended and sat wrapt in thought, we were silent, fearing to disturb him. and so we remained for no little space of time in silence, he sitting on the bed, as if he neither saw nor heeded any of the things that were about him, and we regarded him most earnestly. "after a while he woke up, as it were, from his reverie and said, 'you have agreed with me so far; yet it may be that you have yet fears and doubts in your minds which i have not yet dispersed. if so let me hear them, that i may, if it be possible, rid you of them, for indeed i cannot, as i conceive, leave behind me a greater gift for you than such a riddance. speak then, if there is anything that you would say.' "simmias said--i put, you will perceive, his argument in a few words: 'may it not be that the soul is in the body as a harmony is in a harp? for the harmony is invisible and beautiful and divine, and the harp is visible and material and mortal. yet when the harp perishes, then the harmony also, of necessity, ceases to be.' "when simmias had ended, cebes began: 'i do indeed believe that the soul is more durable than the body. just so; the wearer is more durable than the thing which he wears. yet at the last, one thing that he weaves proves to be more durable than he. so may the soul outlast many bodies, and yet perish finally, worn out, so to speak, by having gone through so many births.' "have i put these things rightly, o simmias and cebes?" said the young philosopher, addressing them, "though indeed i have made them very brief." "you have put them rightly," the two agreed. "when we heard these things," phaedo went on, "we were also greatly disturbed; for we desired to believe that which the master was seeking to prove, and seemed to have attained certainly, and now we were thrown back again into confusion and doubt." "and how did the master take it, o phaedo?" said callias; "for indeed i feel much as you describe yourselves as having felt. having reached a certain hope, not to say conviction, i am now disturbed by fears." "nothing could be more admirable than his behavior. that he should be able to answer, was to be expected; but that he should receive these objections so sweetly, so gently, and perceiving our dismay, quickly encourage us, and, so to speak, reform our broken ranks--this indeed was beyond all praise. "i myself was sitting on a low seat by the side of his bed. he dropped his hand, and stroked my head and the hair which lay upon my neck, i wore it long in those days,[ ] for he was often wont to play with my hair. then he said, 'i suppose, phaedo, that you intend to cut off these beautiful locks to-morrow, as mourners are wont to do.' "'i suppose so,' i said. "'but you must cut them off to-day and not to-morrow if our doctrine be stricken to death, and we cannot bring it to life again.' then he turned to simmias and cebes, and said, 'hear now what i have to say, but while you hear, think much of the truth but little of socrates; and be on your guard lest in my eagerness i deceive not myself only but you also, and leave my sting behind me when i die even as does a bee. you, simmias, think that the soul may be but as a harmony in the body. but do you not remember what we said about all knowledge being a remembering, and that what the soul knows it has before learnt? it existed then before the body; but a harmony cannot exist before the things are put together of which it proceeds. then again harmony may be more or less; but one soul cannot be more a soul than another. and if, as the wise men say, virtue is harmony and vice discord, we have a harmony of a discord, which cannot be; finally one part of the soul often opposes another, as reason opposes appetite; how then is the soul a harmony? you, cebes, hold, indeed, that the soul is durable, but may not be immortal. hear then my answer. you believe that there are ideas or principles of things, and that these ideas, being invisible, are the real causes of things that are visible.' cebes acknowledged that he did so believe. 'is not now the soul the principle of life, and is not this principle the opposite of death? in its essence, therefore, it is immortal; but that which is immortal cannot be destroyed, no, even though there are things which seem to threaten its existence.' "in this we all agreed. after this socrates discoursed in many words about the abodes and dwelling-places of the dead both good and bad, and of the manner in which they are dealt with by the powers thereunto appointed. but of this i will speak on some other occasion, if you will. at present time is short, for i must not leave the sick man any longer, only i will relate the very end of the master's discourse and the things that happened after. "'to affirm positively about such matters,' he said, 'is not the part of a wise man. yet what i have said seems reasonable. and anyhow he who has scorned the body and its pleasures during life, and has adorned the soul with her proper virtues, justice and courage and truth, may surely await his passage to the other world with a good hope. but now destiny calls me, and i must obey. but i will bathe before i take the poison, that the women may not have the trouble of washing my body.' "then crito asked: 'have you any directions to give us?' "'nothing now; if you rightly order your own lives, you will do the best for me and my children; but if you do not, then whatever you may promise, you will fail.' "'but,' crito asked, 'how shall we bury you?' "'as you will,' said he, 'provided only you can catch me and that i do not slip out of your hands.' then he smiled, and said, 'crito here will not be persuaded that i am saying the truth. he thinks that _i_ am the dead body that he will soon see here, and asks how he shall bury me. assure him then that when this dead body is laid in the grave or put upon the pyre to be burnt it is not socrates that he sees. for to speak in this way, o crito, is not only absurd but harmful.' "after this he bathed, remaining in the bath-chamber for some time. this being ended, his children were brought to him, and the women of his family also. with these he talked awhile in the presence of crito, and afterward commanded that some one should take the women and children away. and it was now near sunset. hereupon the servant of the eleven came in, and said, 'o socrates, you will not be angry with me and curse me when i tell you, as the magistrates constrained me to do, that you must drink the poison. i have always found you most gentle and generous, the best by far of all that have come into this place. you will be angry, not with me, for you know that i am blameless, but with those whom you know to be in fault. and now, for you know what i am come to tell you, bear what must be borne as cheerfully as may be.' and saying this the man turned away his face and wept. "'farewell!' said socrates, 'i will do as you bid,' and looking to us he said, 'how courteous he is! all the time he has been so, sometimes talking to me, and showing himself the best of fellows. and now see how generously he weeps for me! but we must do what he says. let some one bring the poison, if it has been pounded; if not, let the man pound it.' "'but,' said crito, 'the sun is still upon the mountains. i have known some who would prolong the day eating and drinking till it was quite late before they drank. anyhow do not be in a hurry. there is still plenty of time.' "'ah!' said socrates, 'these men were quite consistent. they thought that they were gaining so much time. but i too must be consistent. i believe that i shall gain nothing by dying an hour or two later, except indeed the making of myself a laughing stock by clinging to life when there is really nothing left of it to cling to.' "then crito made a sign to the slave that was standing by; he went out, and after some time had passed brought in the man whose duty it was to give the poison, and who brought it in ready mixed in a cup. when socrates caught sight of him, he said: "'well, my friend, you know all about these matters. what must i do?' "'you will only have to walkabout after you have drunk the poison, till you feel a sort of weight in your legs. then you should lie down, and the poison will do the rest.' "so saying, he reached the cup to the master, who took it. his hand did not shake; there was not the least change in his color or his look. only he put his head forward in the way he had, and said to the man: "'how about making a libation from the cup? may we do it?' "'socrates,' said the man, 'we pound just so much as we think sufficient.' "'i understand,' said the master. 'still we may, nay we must, pray to the gods that my removal hence to that place may be fortunate. the gods grant this! amen!' and as he said this he put the cup to his lips and drank it off in the easiest, quietest way possible. "up to that time we had all been fairly well able to keep from tears. but when we saw him drinking the poison, when we knew that he had finished it, we could restrain them no longer. as for myself i covered my face with my mantle, and wept to myself. not for him did i weep, but for myself, thinking what a friend i had lost. and others were still more overcome than i was. only socrates was quite unmoved. "'why all this,' he said, 'my dear friends? i sent the women away for this very reason, that they might not vex us in this fashion. i have heard it said that a man ought to die with good words in his ears. be quiet, i beseech, and bear yourselves like men.' "when we heard this we were not a little ashamed of ourselves, and kept back our tears. he walked about till he felt the weight in his legs, and then lay down on his back--this was what the man bade him do. then the man who administered the poison squeezed his foot pretty strongly, and asked him whether he felt anything. he said no. then the man showed us how the numbness was going higher and higher. "'when it reaches his heart,' he said, 'he will die.' "when the groin was cold the master uncovered his face--for he had covered it before--and said, 'crito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius; pay it, do not forget.' "these were the last words he said. "'i will,' said crito, 'is there anything more?' "but he made no answer. a little time after, we saw him move. then the man uncovered the face, and we saw that his eyes were set. then crito closed his mouth and his eyes." phaedo left the room hastily when he had finished his narrative. for some time there was silence. then apollodorus spoke. "you know, my friends," he said, "that i am not very wise nor at all learned; but he bore with me and my foolishness, and you will also because you know i loved him. let me say then one thing. much that socrates said that day i did not understand, nor do i understand it now when i hear it again. yet no one could be more fully persuaded than i was that he spoke the truth. and what persuaded me was the sight of the man. so brave was he, so cheerful, so wholly convinced in his own mind, that no one could doubt that he was indeed about to depart to a better place." footnotes: [ ] the eleven were the executioners of the law rather taking the place of the sheriff and the under-sheriff than that of the hangman. the vagueness of its name is an interesting example of the greek distaste for naming anything terrible. [ ] a young greek wore his hair long till he reached the age of eighteen. this little detail is a proof of phaedo's extreme youth at this time. chapter xxx. the condition of exile. the story that callias had heard of the last days of his master, and heard, of course, with many details which it is now impossible to reproduce, made, it need hardly be said, a profound impression on him. first and foremost--and this was what the dead man himself would have been most rejoiced to see--was the profound conviction that this teaching, inspired, as it was, with a faith which the immediate prospect of death had not been able to shake, was absolutely true. the young man can hardly be said to have had any feeling of religion in the sense in which we understand that word. to believe in the fables, grotesque or even immoral, which made up the popular theology, in gods who were only exaggerated men, stronger, indeed, but more cruel, treacherous, and lustful, was an impossibility. the poets' tales of the elysian plain and of the abyss of tartarus had in no wise helped towards producing any emotions of the spiritual kind, any wish to dwell in an invisible world. the most sacred of these poets in his description of that world as another earth in which everything was feebler, paler, less satisfying than it is here, had certainly repelled rather than attracted him. now this want had been supplied; the lofty teaching of duty, duty owed to country, kinsfolk, friends, fellow-citizens, fellow-men, that he had heard from the master was now supplemented and sanctioned by this clear enunciation of a doctrine of immortality. the young man felt that he could face the world, whether it brought him prosperity or adversity, joy or sorrow, life or death, with a more equable soul or more assured spirit than he had ever dreamed could be possible. his immediate duty, however, was less clear. when his country lay under the heel of the spartan conqueror, hermione had pointed out to him--not without sacrifice of herself, as he sometimes could not help feeling, what he owed to the city that had given him birth. but now, how did the case stand? athens had suffered a second, a more fatal fall. she might repair her losses; she might retrieve defeat. but when she had definitely broken with right and truth, had deliberately chosen the worse rather than the better, what hope, what remedy was there? and what was the obligation on himself? could he aspire to a career in a state which was so false to all the principles of life and government? the two or three days that followed the conversation related in my last chapter were spent by the young athenian in debating with himself the question: what am i to do? but the more he thought over the problem, the more complex and intricate did it seem to become. just when he was beginning to despair, a solution, rude and peremptory, but satisfactory in so far as it admitted of no questioning, was forced upon him. he had just risen on the morning of the fourth day, when a visitor was announced. it was xenophon, looking, as callias thought, serious, but not depressed. "and what have you been doing these three days?" cried the newcomer. "thinking," replied callias. "that is exactly what i have been doing myself, and i would wager my chance of being archon next year, a very serious stake indeed, that we have had the same subject for our thoughts. you have been debating with yourself what you are to do?" "exactly so; and i am no nearer a conclusion than i was when i began." "well, some one else has been good enough to save us the trouble of deciding. listen to this. i have a friend in office, i should tell you, and he has given me an early copy of what will be soon known all over athens. 'it is proposed by erasinides, son of lysias, of the township of colonus, that xenophon, son of grythus, of the township of orchia, and callias, son of hipponicus, of the township of eleusis,' and some twenty others, whose names i need not trouble you with, 'be banished from athens for unpatriotic conduct, especially in aiding and abetting the designs of cyrus, who was a notorious enemy of the athenian people.' well; that is going to be proposed to the senate to-day. my friend, who knows all about the strings, and how they are pulled, tells me that it is certain to be carried. in the course of a few days it will be brought before the assembly, and i have no doubt whatever that it will be accepted." "but what have the athenian people got to do with cyrus, who is dead and gone, and can neither help nor hurt?" "ah! you don't understand. the lacedaemonians, you know, have declared war against the persian king. of course that gives the athenians a chance of becoming his friends. it is true that things are not ripe just yet for anything decisive or public. we are allies with the lacedaemonians, and can't venture to quarrel with them. but this is a matter at which they cannot take offence, but which will most certainly please the great king. he has not forgotten the cyrus business, you may depend upon it, and it will delight him to hear of any, who had a part in it suffering for their act. that is why we are to be banished. it is disgraceful, i allow, to find a great city banishing its citizens in order to curry favor with the barbarians; but it is a fact, and we must take it into account." "and what shall you do?" "i shall go to asia. i had intended to go in any case, for i have private affairs there, nothing less important, i may tell you in confidence, than marrying a wife. then i shall find something to do with the spartans, among whom i have some very good friends. come with me. you too, might find a wife; that will be as you please; but anyhow i can guarantee you employment." "i confess," said callias, after meditating awhile, "that i do not feel greatly drawn by what you suggest. as for the wife, that prospect does not please me at all; and, as you know, i am not so much of a spartan-lover[ ] as you. you must let me think about it; you shall have a final answer to-morrow." when xenophon had taken leave, callias went straight to hippocles, and happened to arrive just as a messenger was leaving the house with a note addressed to himself, and asking for an early visit. callias related what he had just heard from xenophon. "you do not surprise me. in fact i also have had a private intimation from a member of the senate that this is going to be done, and it is exactly the matter about which i wished to see you. but tell me, what does xenophon advise?" callias told him. "and you hesitate about accepting his offer?" "yes; i do more than hesitate; i feel more and more averse to it the more i think of it." "you are right; to take service with the spartans must, almost of necessity, mean, sooner or later, some collision with your own country. it was this that ruined alcibiades. if he could only have had patience, he could have saved himself and the athenians too, but that visit to sparta ruined both. no; i should advise you against xenophon's suggestion." "but where am i to go? i have thought of syracuse. but i do not care to go back to dionysius. he was all courtesy and kindness; but i felt suffocated in the air of his court. and we never feel quite safe with a tyrant." "i have thought of something else that might suit you. i am going to start in a few days' time on a visit to my own native country, not to poseidonia--i could not bear to see the barbarians masters there--but to italy. there are other greek cities which still hold their own, and they are well worth seeing. you might, too, if you choose, pay another visit to rome. you will at least have the advantage of being out of this dismal round of strife to which greece itself seems doomed. our countrymen there have, i know, faults of their own; but they do contrive to live on tolerably good terms with each other." the plan proposed seemed to callias to promise better than any that he could think of and he accepted the offer with thankfulness. a few days afterwards he was gazing for what he felt might well be the last time at the city of his birth. bathed in the sunshine of a summer morning stood the acropolis, crowned with its marble temples, and, towering above all, the gigantic statue of athene the champion, her outstretched spear-point flashing in the light. what glories he was leaving behind him! what lost hopes, what unfulfilled aspirations of his own! the tears of no unmanly emotion were in his eyes as he turned away, but not before he had caught sight of a well-known house by the harbor of piraeus. this seemed to be the last drop of bitterness in his cup. she had lost him for his country's sake, and now he had lost her, too. he turned and found himself face to face with hermione! there was something in her look which made his heart thrill; but she did not give him time to speak. "callias," she said, "you gave up what you said was dear to me," and her blush deepened as she spoke, "for athens' sake. but now--if you have not forgotten--" he needed to hear no more. the next moment, careless of the eyes of the old helmsman, he had clasped her in his arms. "i can allow myself to love the exile," she whispered in his ear. footnotes: [ ] the greek _philo-lacon_. the word had been applied to cimon, son of miltiades, who had always been a popular statesman and so might be used in a friendly way. if callias had spoken of xenophon as disposed to _laconismus_ it would have been almost an affront, this word meaning not so much admiration of spartan ways of life as devotion to spartan interests. author's postscript. it is impossible for the writer of historical fiction, especially if he wishes to suggest to his readers as many subjects of interest as possible, to adapt the literary necessities of his work to fit in with the actual course of events. but he is bound to point out such departures from historical accuracy as he feels constrained to make. it is quite possible that a correction may serve to impress the real facts upon his readers more deeply than an originally accurate statement would have done. i therefore append to my tale a list of _corrigenda._ . i was anxious to include the battle of arginusæ in my story. it was the first scene in the last act of the great drama of the peloponnesian war. at the same time i felt bound, having made up my mind to give a description of a greek comedy, to choose the _frogs_. it has a literary interest such as no other aristophanic play possesses, and it is at once more important and more intelligible to a modern reader. but to bring the two things together it was necessary to ante-date the representation of the play. i have put it in the year b. c. it really took place in . i have also made the battle happen somewhat earlier than in all probability, it really did. the festival of the great dionysia, at which new plays were produced, was celebrated in march. we do not know precisely the date of arginusæ, but it is likely that it was later in the year. a similar correction must be made about the embassy of dionysius. it may have taken place when the play was really produced, but in dionysius was too busy with his war with carthage to think of such things. . i have ante-dated, this time by several years, the capture of poseidonia by the native italians. here again we have no record of the precise time; but it probably happened somewhat later in the century. . i do not know whether i am wrong in making alcibiades escape from his castle in thrace immediately after the battle Ægos potami. plutarch would give one rather to understand that he fled after the capture of athens. it is quite possible, however, that he recognized the defeat as fatal to athenian influence of the thracian coast, and that feeling his own position to be no longer tenable, he retired from it at once. . i have taken some liberties with the text of xenophon's narrative. the trial of the generals by their own soldiers, the athletic sports, and the entertainment described in my story are all taken from the _anabasis_, but they do not come so close together as i have found it convenient to put them. . it is a moot point among historians whether xenophon returned to athens after he had quitted the ten thousand. mr. grote thinks that he did; and his authority is perhaps sufficient to shelter such a humble person as myself. it has also been debated whether he was banished in or some years later. i am inclined to think that here i am accurate. . i need hardly say that the thracian national song is of my own invention. xenophon simply says that the thracian performers went off the stage singing the "sitalces." that this was a song celebrating the achievement of the king of that name (for which see a classical dictionary) cannot be doubted. but we know nothing more about it, and i have supplied the words. . it is not necessary to say that the "diary" of callias is an invention. to be quite candid i do not think it was at all likely that a young soldier would have kept one, or even been able to write it up daily. but i wanted to give some prominent incidents from xenophon's story, and had not space for the whole, while a mere epitome would have been tedious. . i must caution my readers against supposing my hero to be historical. there was a callias, son of hipponicus, at this time, a very different man. . i have taken the defence of socrates from plato's _apology_, not from xenophon. the former is immeasurably superior. index. Ægos potami, battle of, - . agis, . alcibiades. home, appearance, career in thrace, defense, - farewell to his men, - assassination, - . alien, - . anabasis, the, - . apaturia, the, . apollodorus, . argos, . arginusÆ, battle of, - . ariÆus, , , . aristides, . bisanthe, . calendar, . callicratidas, , - , , , . callixenus, . chersonesus, . chios, , . chirisophus, . cimon, . clearchus, , . cleon, . conon, , , . cos, . critias, , . crito, , - . cunaxa, battle of, - . cybele, . cyrus, , , , , . cyrus, the younger, , , . delium, . diomedon, - , . dionysius, , , - . dress, . ephors, . eupatrid, . euryptolemus, , , - . exile, . games. president, foot-races, , the pentathlon, leaping the bar, running, quoit throwing, - hurling the javelin, wrestling, , horse-race, . gordium, , . government. public guests, popular trials, - , - the bema, balloting, - the eleven, capital punishment, . hellespont, , . hermÆ, . hippocrates, . houses. arrangement, , servants, clocks, . hunting, , . lysander, , , , . marathon, , , . medical science, , , , . money, . myronides, . mitylene, , , . navy, , , . nicias, . notium, battle of, , . oenophyta, , . oligarchy, . omens, , . painting, . paratherÆa, the, . pausanias, . persians, , . pharnabazus, . phasis, river, . phaedo, , . phormion, . plato, . poseidonia, . potidÆa, . propontis, . proxenus, , . rhodes, . retreat of ten thousand, - murder of the generals, xenophon in command, , plan of march, first skirmish, cavalry organized, armenia, snowfall, banqueting in villages, taking a pass, the sea reached, at trapezus, return to greece, - . sacrifices, . sailing season, . samos, . samothrace, . seuthes, , - . siege of athens, - . smyrna, . social life. calls, , knocking, , at table, , food, libations, , , banquets, - , - rhapsodist, dancers, , , colonial society, hospitality, . socrates. conversations, - refusal to sanction illegal motion, alcibiades' tribute, - conduct during the siege, dionysius inquires about him, his trial, - his defense, - conversation in prison, - last day of life, - argument for immortality, death, - . spartans, . sybaris, , . syracuse, , , . tarsus, . ten generals, the the system, report of victory, , the trial commenced, , plots, - trial continued, - the verdict, punishment, . thasus, . theater, the the curtain, "the frogs," - aristophanes, old comedy and new, the audience, , arrangement, author as prompter, . themistocles, . theramenes, , , , . thirty tyrants, . thracians. intemperance, extravagance, . thrasybulus, , . tigris, river, . tissaphernes, , , . town hall, , . trapezus, . walls, the long, , . warfare. armor, , archers, cavalry, character of mercenaries, . women. in lucania, - at table, wine drinking, marriage, - dependence, - . xenophon. at the banquet, describes socrates, - explains the expedition against the great king, elected a general, reproof of a soldier, energy in the cold weather, , repartee with chirisophus, answers charges, - . book v. from the death of cimon, b. c. , to the death of pericles, in the third year of the peloponnesian war, b. c. . chapter i. thucydides chosen by the aristocratic party to oppose pericles.--his policy.--munificence of pericles.--sacred war.--battle of coronea.-- revolt of euboea and megara.--invasion and retreat of the peloponnesians.--reduction of euboea.--punishment of histiaea--a thirty years' truce concluded with the peloponnesians.--ostracism of thucydides. i. on the death of cimon (b. c. ) the aristocratic party in athens felt that the position of their antagonists and the temper of the times required a leader of abilities widely distinct from those which had characterized the son of miltiades. instead of a skilful and enterprising general, often absent from the city on dazzling but distant expeditions, it was necessary to raise up a chief who could contend for their enfeebled and disputed privileges at home, and meet the formidable pericles, with no unequal advantages of civil experience and oratorical talent, in the lists of the popular assembly, or in the stratagems of political intrigue. accordingly their choice fell neither on myronides nor tolmides, but on one who, though not highly celebrated for military exploits, was deemed superior to cimon, whether as a practical statesman or a popular orator. thucydides, their new champion, united with natural gifts whatever advantage might result from the memory of cimon; and his connexion with that distinguished warrior, to whom he was brother-in-law, served to keep together the various partisans of the faction, and retain to the eupatrids something of the respect and enthusiasm which the services of cimon could not fail to command, even among the democracy. the policy embraced by thucydides was perhaps the best which the state of affairs would permit; but it was one which was fraught with much danger. hitherto the eupatrids and the people, though ever in dispute, had not been absolutely and totally divided; the struggles of either faction being headed by nobles, scarcely permitted to the democracy the perilous advantage of the cry--that the people were on one side, and the nobles on the other. but thucydides, seeking to render his party as strong, as compact, and as united as possible, brought the main bulk of the eupatrids to act together in one body. the means by which he pursued and attained this object are not very clearly narrated; but it was probably by the formation of a political club--a species of social combination, which afterward became very common to all classes in athens. the first effect of this policy favoured the aristocracy, and the energy and union they displayed restored for a while the equilibrium of parties; but the aristocratic influence, thus made clear and open, and brought into avowed hostility with the popular cause, the city was rent in two, and the community were plainly invited to regard the nobles as their foes [ ]. pericles, thus more and more thrown upon the democracy, became identified with their interests, and he sought, no less by taste than policy, to prove to the populace that they had grown up into a wealthy and splendid nation, that could dispense with the bounty, the shows, and the exhibitions of individual nobles. he lavished the superfluous treasures of the state upon public festivals, stately processions, and theatrical pageants. as if desirous of elevating the commons to be themselves a nobility, all by which he appealed to their favour served to refine their taste and to inspire the meanest athenian with a sense of the athenian grandeur. it was said by his enemies, and the old tale has been credulously repeated, that his own private fortune not allowing him to vie with the wealthy nobles whom he opposed, it was to supply his deficiencies from the public stock that he directed some part of the national wealth to the encouragement of the national arts and the display of the national magnificence. but it is more than probable that it was rather from principle than personal ambition that pericles desired to discountenance and eclipse the interested bribes to public favour with which cimon and others had sought to corrupt the populace. nor was pericles without the means or the spirit to devote his private fortune to proper objects of generosity. "it was his wealth and his prudence," says plutarch, when, blaming the improvidence of anaxagoras, "that enabled him to relieve the distressed." what he spent in charity he might perhaps have spent more profitably in display, had he not conceived that charity was the province of the citizen, magnificence the privilege of the state. it was in perfect consonance with the philosophy that now began to spread throughout greece, and with which the mind of this great political artist was so deeply imbued, to consider that the graces ennobled the city they adorned, and that the glory of a state was intimately connected with the polish of the people. ii. while, at home, the divisions of the state were progressing to that point in which the struggle between the opposing leaders must finally terminate in the ordeal of the ostracism--abroad, new causes of hostility broke out between the athenians and the spartans. the sacred city of delphi formed a part of the phocian station; but, from a remote period, its citizens appear to have exercised the independent right of managing to affairs of the temple [ ], and to have elected their own superintendents of the oracle and the treasures. in delphi yet lingered the trace of the dorian institutions and the dorian blood, but the primitive valour and hardy virtues of the ancestral tribe had long since mouldered away. the promiscuous intercourse of strangers, the contaminating influence of unrelaxing imposture and priestcraft--above all, the wealth of the city, from which the natives drew subsistence, and even luxury, without labour [ ], contributed to enfeeble and corrupt the national character. unable to defend themselves by their own exertions against any enemy, the delphians relied on the passive protection afforded by the superstitious reverence of their neighbours, or on the firm alliance that existed between themselves and the great spartan representatives of their common dorian race. the athenian government could not but deem it desirable to wrest from the delphians the charge over the oracle and the temple, since that charge might at any time be rendered subservient to the spartan cause; and accordingly they appear to have connived at a bold attempt of the phocians, who were now their allies. these hardier neighbours of the sacred city claimed and forcibly seized the right of superintendence of the temple. the spartans, alarmed and aroused, despatched an armed force to delphi, and restored their former privileges to the citizens. they piously gave to their excursion the name of the sacred war. delphi formally renounced the phocian league, declared itself an independent state, and even defined the boundaries between its own and the phocian domains. sparta was rewarded for its aid by the privilege of precedence in consulting the oracle, and this decree the spartans inscribed on a brazen wolf in the sacred city. the athenians no longer now acted through others--they recognised all the advantage of securing to their friends and wresting from their foes the management of an oracle, on whose voice depended fortune in war and prosperity in peace. scarce had the spartans withdrawn, than an athenian force, headed by pericles, who is said to have been freed by anaxagoras from superstitious prejudices, entered the city, and restored the temple to the phocians. the same image which had recorded the privilege of the spartans now bore an inscription which awarded the right of precedence to the athenians. the good fortune of this expedition was soon reversed. iii. when the athenians, after the battle of oenophyta, had established in the boeotian cities democratic forms of government, the principal members of the defeated oligarchy, either from choice or by compulsion, betook themselves to exile. these malecontents, aided, no doubt, by partisans who did not share their banishment, now seized upon chaeronea, orchomenus, and some other boeotian towns. the athenians, who had valued themselves on restoring liberty to boeotia, and, for the first time since the persian war, had honoured with burial at the public expense those who fell under myronides, could not regard this attempt at counterrevolution with indifference. policy aided their love of liberty; for it must never be forgotten that the change from democratic to oligarchic government in the grecian states was the formal exchange of the athenian for the spartan alliance. yet pericles, who ever unwillingly resorted to war, and the most remarkable attribute of whose character was a profound and calculating caution, opposed the proposition of sending an armed force into boeotia. his objections were twofold--he considered the time unseasonable, and he was averse to hazard upon an issue not immediately important to athens the flower of her hoplites, or heavy-armed soldiery, of whom a thousand had offered their services in the enterprise. nevertheless, the counsel of tolmides, who was eager for the war, and flushed with past successes, prevailed. "if," said pericles, "you regard not my experience, wait, at least, for the advice of time, that best of counsellors." the saying was forgotten in the popular enthusiasm it opposed--it afterward attained the veneration of a prophecy. [ ] iv. aided by some allied troops, and especially by his thousand volunteers, tolmides swept into boeotia--reduced chaeronea--garrisoned the captured town, and was returning homeward, when, in the territory of coronea, he suddenly fell in with a hostile ambush [ ], composed of the exiled bands of orchomenus, of opuntian locrians, and the partisans of the oligarchies of euboea. battle ensued--the athenians received a signal and memorable defeat (b. c. ); many were made prisoners, many slaughtered: the pride and youth of the athenian hoplites were left on the field; the brave and wealthy clinias (father to the yet more renowned alcibiades), and tolmides himself, were slain. but the disaster of defeat was nothing in comparison with its consequences. to recover their prisoners, the athenian government were compelled to enter into a treaty with the hostile oligarchies and withdraw their forces from boeotia. on their departure, the old oligarchies everywhere replaced the friendly democracies, and the nearest neighbours of athens were again her foes. nor was this change confined to boeotia. in locris and phocis the popular party fell with the fortunes of coronea--the exiled oligarchies were re-established-- and when we next read of these states, they are the allies of sparta. at home, the results of the day of coronea were yet more important. by the slaughter of so many of the hoplites, the aristocratic party in athens were greatly weakened, while the neglected remonstrances and fears of pericles, now remembered, secured to him a respect and confidence which soon served to turn the balance against his competitor thucydides. v. the first defeat of the proud mistress of the grecian sea was a signal for the revolt of disaffected dependants. the isle of euboea, the pasturages of which were now necessary to the athenians, encouraged by the success that at coronea had attended the arms of the euboean exiles, shook off the athenian yoke (b. c. ). in the same year expired the five years truce with sparta, and that state forthwith prepared to avenge its humiliation at delphi. pericles seems once more to have been called into official power--he was not now supine in action. at the head of a sufficient force he crossed the channel, and landed in euboea. scarce had he gained the island, when he heard that megara had revolted--that the megarians, joined by partisans from sicyon, epidaurus, and corinth, had put to the sword the athenian garrison, save a few who had ensconced themselves in nisaea, and that an army of the peloponnesian confederates was preparing to march to attica. on receiving these tidings, pericles re-embarked his forces and returned home. soon appeared the peloponnesian forces, commanded by the young pleistoanax, king of sparta, who, being yet a minor, was placed under the guardianship of cleandridas; the lands by the western frontier of attica, some of the most fertile of that territory, were devastated, and the enemy penetrated to eleusis and thria. but not a blow was struck--they committed the aggression and departed. on their return to sparta, pleistoanax and cleandridas were accused of having been bribed to betray the honour or abandon the revenge of sparta. cleandridas fled the prosecution, and was condemned to death in his exile. pleistoanax also quitted the country, and took refuge in arcadia, in the sanctuary of mount lycaeum. the suspicions of the spartans appear to have been too well founded, and pericles, on passing his accounts that year, is stated to have put down ten talents [ ] as devoted to a certain use --an item which the assembly assented to in conscious and sagacious silence. this formidable enemy retired, pericles once more entered euboea, and reduced the isle (b. c. ). in chalcis he is said by plutarch to have expelled the opulent landowners, who, no doubt, formed the oligarchic chiefs of the revolt, and colonized histiaea with athenians, driving out at least the greater part of the native population [ ]. for the latter severity was given one of the strongest apologies that the stern justice of war can plead for its harshest sentences--the histiaeans had captured an athenian vessel and murdered the crew. the rest of the island was admitted to conditions, by which the amount of tribute was somewhat oppressively increased. [ ] vi. the inglorious result of the peloponnesian expedition into attica naturally tended to make the spartans desirous of peace upon honourable terms, while the remembrance of dangers, eluded rather than crushed, could not fail to dispose the athenian government to conciliate a foe from whom much was to be apprehended and little gained. negotiations were commenced and completed (b. c. ). the athenians surrendered some of the most valuable fruits of their victories in their hold on the peloponnesus. they gave up their claim on nisaea and pegae--they renounced the footing they had established in troezene--they abandoned alliance or interference with achaia, over which their influence had extended to a degree that might reasonably alarm the spartans, since they had obtained the power to raise troops in that province, and achaean auxiliaries had served under pericles at the siege of oeniadae [ ]. such were the conditions upon which a truce of thirty years was based [ ]. the articles were ostensibly unfavourable to athens. boeotia was gone--locris, phocis, an internal revolution (the result of coronea) had torn from their alliance. the citizens of delphi must have regained the command of their oracle, since henceforth its sacred voice was in favour of the spartans. megara was lost--and now all the holds on the peloponnesus were surrendered. these reverses, rapid and signal, might have taught the athenians how precarious is ever the military eminence of small states. but the treaty with sparta, if disadvantageous, was not dishonourable. it was founded upon one broad principle, without which, indeed, all peace would have been a mockery--viz., that the athenians should not interfere with the affairs of the peloponnesus. this principle acknowledged, the surrender of advantages or conquests that were incompatible with it was but a necessary detail. as pericles was at this time in office [ ], and as he had struggled against an armed interference with the boeotian towns, so it is probable that he followed out his own policy in surrendering all right to interfere with the peloponnesian states. only by peace with sparta could he accomplish his vast designs for the greatness of athens-- designs which rested not upon her land forces, but upon her confirming and consolidating her empire of the sea; and we shall shortly find, in our consideration of her revenues, additional reasons for approving a peace essential to her stability. vii. scarce was the truce effected ere the struggle between thucydides and pericles approached its crisis. the friends of the former never omitted an occasion to charge pericles with having too lavishly squandered the public funds upon the new buildings which adorned the city. this charge of extravagance, ever an accusation sure to be attentively received by a popular assembly, made a sensible impression. "if you think," said pericles to the great tribunal before which he urged his defence, "that i have expended too much, charge the sums to my account, not yours--but on this condition, let the edifices be inscribed with my name, not that of the athenian people." this mode of defence, though perhaps but an oratorical hyperbole [ ], conveyed a rebuke which the athenians were an audience calculated to answer but in one way--they dismissed the accusation, and applauded the extravagance. viii. accusations against public men, when unsuccessful, are the fairest stepping-stones in their career. thucydides failed against pericles. the death of tolmides--the defeat of coronea--the slaughter of the hoplites--weakened the aristocratic party; the democracy and the democratic administration seized the occasion for a decisive effort. thucydides was summoned to the ostracism, and his banishment freed pericles from his only rival for the supreme administration of the athenian empire. chapter ii. causes of the power of pericles.--judicial courts of the dependant allies transferred to athens.--sketch of the athenian revenues.-- public buildings the work of the people rather than of pericles.-- vices and greatness of athens had the same sources.--principle of payment characterizes the policy of the period.--it is the policy of civilization.--colonization, cleruchia. i. in the age of pericles (b. c. ) there is that which seems to excite, in order to disappoint, curiosity. we are fully impressed with the brilliant variety of his gifts--with the influence he exercised over his times. he stands in the midst of great and immortal names, at the close of a heroic, and yet in the sudden meridian of a civilized age. and scarcely does he recede from our gaze, ere all the evils which only his genius could keep aloof, gather and close around the city which it was the object of his life not less to adorn as for festival than to crown as for command. it is almost as if, with pericles, her very youth departed from athens. yet so scanty are our details and historical materials, that the life of this surprising man is rather illustrated by the general light of the times than by the blaze of his own genius. his military achievements are not dazzling. no relics, save a few bold expressions, remain of the eloquence which awed or soothed, excited or restrained, the most difficult audience in the world. it is partly by analyzing the works of his contemporaries--partly by noting the rise of the whole people-- and partly by bringing together and moulding into a whole the scattered masses of his ambitious and thoughtful policy, that we alone can gauge and measure the proportions of the master-spirit of the time. the age of pericles is the sole historian of pericles. this statesman was now at that period of life when public men are usually most esteemed--when, still in the vigour of manhood, they have acquired the dignity and experience of years, outlived the earlier prejudices and jealousies they excited, and see themselves surrounded by a new generation, among whom rivals must be less common than disciples and admirers. step by step, through a long and consistent career, he had ascended to his present eminence, so that his rise did not startle from its suddenness; while his birth, his services, and his genius presented a combination of claims to power that his enemies could not despise, and that justified the enthusiasm of his friends. his public character was unsullied; of the general belief in his integrity there is the highest evidence [ ]; and even the few slanders afterward raised against him--such as that of entering into one war to gratify the resentment of aspasia, and into another to divert attention from his financial accounts, are libels so unsupported by any credible authority, and so absurd in themselves, that they are but a proof how few were the points on which calumny could assail him. ii. the obvious mode to account for the moral power of a man in any particular time, is to consider his own character, and to ascertain how far it is suited to command the age in which he lived and the people whom he ruled. no athenian, perhaps, ever possessed so many qualities as pericles for obtaining wide and lasting influence over the various classes of his countrymen. by his attention to maritime affairs, he won the sailors, now the most difficult part of the population to humour or control; his encouragement to commerce secured the merchants and conciliated the alien settlers; while the stupendous works of art, everywhere carried on, necessarily obtained the favour of the mighty crowd of artificers and mechanics whom they served to employ. nor was it only to the practical interests, but to all the more refined, yet scarce less powerful sympathies of his countrymen, that his character appealed for support. philosophy, with all parties, all factions, was becoming an appetite and passion. pericles was rather the friend than the patron of philosophers. the increasing refinement of the athenians--the vast influx of wealth that poured into the treasury from the spoils of persia and the tributes of dependant cities, awoke the desire of art; and the graceful intellect of pericles at once indulged and directed the desire, by advancing every species of art to its perfection. the freedom of democracy--the cultivation of the drama (which is the oratory of poetry)--the rise of prose literature--created the necessity of popular eloquence--and with pericles the athenian eloquence was born. thus his power was derived from a hundred sources: whether from the grosser interests--the mental sympathies--the vanity--ambition--reason--or imagination of the people. and in examining the character of pericles, and noting its harmony with his age, the admiration we bestow on himself must be shared by his countrymen. he obtained a greater influence than pisistratus, but it rested solely on the free-will of the athenians-- it was unsupported by armed force--it was subject to the laws--it might any day be dissolved; and influence of this description is only obtained, in free states, by men who are in themselves the likeness and representative of the vast majority of the democracy they wield. even the aristocratic party that had so long opposed him appear, with the fall of thucydides, to have relaxed their hostilities. in fact, they had less to resent in pericles than in any previous leader of the democracy. he was not, like themistocles, a daring upstart, vying with, and eclipsing their pretensions. he was of their own order. his name was not rendered odious to them by party proscriptions or the memory of actual sufferings. he himself had recalled their idol cimon--and in the measures that had humbled the areopagus, so discreetly had he played his part, or so fortunately subordinate had been his co-operation, that the wrath of the aristocrats had fallen only on ephialtes. after the ostracism of thucydides, "he became," says plutarch [ ], "a new man--no longer so subservient to the multitude--and the government assumed an aristocratical, or rather monarchical, form." but these expressions in plutarch are not to be literally received. the laws remained equally democratic--the agora equally strong--pericles was equally subjected to the popular control; but having now acquired the confidence of the people, he was enabled more easily to direct them, or, as thucydides luminously observes, "not having obtained his authority unworthily, he was not compelled to flatter or to sooth the popular humours, but, when occasion required, he could even venture vehemently to contradict them." [ ] the cause which the historian assigns to the effect is one that deserves to be carefully noted by ambitious statesmen--because the authority of pericles was worthily acquired, the people often suffered it to be even unpopularly exercised. on the other hand, this far-seeing and prudent statesman was, no doubt, sufficiently aware of the dangers to which the commonwealth was exposed, if the discontents of the great aristocratic faction were not in some degree conciliated, to induce his wise and sober patriotism, if not actually to seek the favour of his opponents, at least cautiously to shun all idle attempts to revenge past hostilities or feed the sources of future irritation. he owed much to the singular moderation and evenness of his temper; and his debt to anaxagoras must have been indeed great, if the lessons of that preacher of those cardinal virtues of the intellect, serenity and order, had assisted to form the rarest of all unions--a genius the most fervid, with passions the best regulated. iii. it was about this time, too, in all probability, that pericles was enabled to consummate the policy he had always adopted with respect to the tributary allies. we have seen that the treasury had been removed from delos to athens; it was now resolved to make athens also the seat and centre of the judicial authority. the subject allies were compelled, if not on minor, at least on all important cases, to resort to athenian courts of law for justice [ ]. and thus athens became, as it were, the metropolis of the allies. a more profound and sagacious mode of quickly establishing her empire it was impossible for ingenuity to conceive; but as it was based upon an oppression that must have been daily and intolerably felt--that every affair of life must have called into irritating action, so, with the establishment of the empire was simultaneously planted an inevitable cause of its decay. for though power is rarely attained without injustice, the injustice, if continued, is the never-failing principle of its corruption. and, in order to endure, authority must hasten to divest itself of all the more odious attributes of conquest. iv. as a practical statesman, one principal point of view in which we must regard pericles is in his capacity of a financier. by english historians his policy and pretensions in this department have not been sufficiently considered; yet, undoubtedly, they made one of the most prominent features of his public character in the eyes of his countrymen. he is the first minister in athens who undertook the scientific management of the national revenues, and partly from his scrupulous integrity, partly from his careful wisdom, and partly from a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, the athenian revenues, even when the tribute was doubled, were never more prosperously administered. the first great source of the revenue was from the tributes of the confederate cities [ ]. these, rated at four hundred and sixty talents in the time of aristides, had increased to six hundred in the time of pericles; but there is no evidence to prove that the increased sum was unfairly raised, or that fresh exactions were levied, save in rare cases [ ], on the original subscribers to the league. the increase of a hundred and forty talents is to be accounted for partly by the quota of different confederacies acquired since the time of aristides, partly by the exemption from military or maritime service, voluntarily if unwisely purchased, during the administration of cimon, by the states themselves. so far as tribute was a sign of dependance and inferiority, the impost was a hardship; but for this they who paid it are to be blamed rather than those who received. its practical burden on each state, at this period, appears, in most cases, to have been incredibly light; and a very trifling degree of research will prove how absurdly exaggerated have been the invectives of ignorant or inconsiderate men, whether in ancient or modern times, on the extortions of the athenians, and the impoverishment of their allies. aristophanes [ ] attributes to the empire of athens a thousand tributary cities: the number is doubtless a poetical license; yet, when we remember the extent of territory which the league comprehended, and how crowded with cities were all the coasts and islands of greece, we should probably fall short of the number of tributary cities if we estimated it at six hundred; so that the tribute would not in the time of pericles average above a talent, or l. s. d. [ ] english money, for each city! even when in a time of urgent demand on the resources of the state [ ], cythera fell into the hands of the athenians [ ], the tribute of that island was assessed but at four talents. and we find, by inscriptions still extant, that some places were rated only at two thousand, and even one thousand drachmas. [ ] finally, if the assessment by aristides, of four hundred and sixty talents, was such as to give universal satisfaction from its equity and moderation, the additional hundred and forty talents in the time of pericles could not have been an excessive increase, when we consider how much the league had extended, how many states had exchanged the service for the tribute, and how considerable was the large diffusion of wealth throughout the greater part of greece, the continued influx of gold [ ], and the consequent fall in value of the precious metals. v. it was not, then, the amount of the tribute which made its hardship, nor can the athenian government be blamed for having continued, a claim voluntarily conceded to them. the original object of the tribute was the maintenance of a league against the barbarians --the athenians were constituted the heads of the league and the guardians of the tribute; some states refused service and offered money--their own offers were accepted; other states refused both--it was not more the interest than the duty of athens to maintain, even by arms, the condition of the league--so far is her policy justifiable. but she erred when she reduced allies to dependants--she erred when she transferred the treasury from the central delos to her own state-- she erred yet more when she appropriated a portion of these treasures to her own purposes. but these vices of athens are the vices of all eminent states, monarchic or republican--for they are the vices of the powerful. "it was," say the athenian ambassadors in thucydides, with honest candour and profound truth--"it was from the nature of the thing itself that we were at first compelled to advance our empire to what it is--chiefly through fear--next for honour--and, lastly, for interest; and then it seemed no longer safe for us to venture to let go the reins of government, for the revolters would have gone over to you" (viz., to the spartans) [ ]. thus does the universal lesson of history teach us that it is the tendency of power, in what hands soever it be placed, to widen its limits, to increase its vigour, in proportion as the counteracting force resigns the security for its administration, or the remedy for its abuse. vi. pericles had not scrupled, from the date of the transfer of the treasury to athens, to devote a considerable proportion of the general tribute to public buildings and sacred exhibitions--purposes purely athenian. but he did so openly--he sought no evasion or disguise--he maintained in the face of greece that the athenians were not responsible to the allies for these contributions; that it was the athenians who had resisted and defended the barbarians, while many of the confederate states had supplied neither ships nor soldiers; that athens was now the head of a mighty league; and that, to increase her glory, to cement her power, was a duty she owed no less to the allies than to herself. arguments to which armies, and not orators, could alone reply. [ ] the principal other sources whence the athenian revenue was derived, it may be desirable here to state as briefly and as clearly as the nature of the subject will allow. by those who would search more deeply, the long and elaborate statistics of boeckh must be carefully explored. those sources of revenue were-- st. rents from corporate estates--such as pastures, forests, rivers, salt-works, houses, theatres, etc., and mines, let for terms of years, or on heritable leases. dly. tolls, export and import duties, probably paid only by strangers, and amounting to two per cent., a market excise, and the twentieth part of all exports and imports levied in the dependant allied cities--the last a considerable item. dly. tithes, levied only on lands held in usufruct, as estates belonging to temples. thly. a protection tax [ ], paid by the settlers, or metoeci, common to most of the greek states, but peculiarly productive in athens from the number of strangers that her trade, her festivals, and her renown attracted. the policy of pericles could not fail to increase this source of revenue. thly. a slave tax of three obols per head. [ ] most of these taxes appear to have been farmed out. thly. judicial fees and fines. as we have seen that the allies in most important trials were compelled to seek justice in athens, this, in the time of pericles, was a profitable source of income. but it was one, the extent of which necessarily depended upon peace. fines were of many classes, but not, at least in this period, of very great value to the state. sometimes (as in all private accusations) the fine fell to the plaintiff, sometimes a considerable proportion enriched the treasury of the tutelary goddess. the task of assessing the fines was odious, and negligently performed by the authorities, while it was easy for those interested to render a false account of their property. lastly. the state received the aid of annual contributions, or what were termed liturgies, from individuals for particular services. the ordinary liturgies were, st. the choregia, or duty of furnishing the chorus for the plays--tragic, comic, and satirical--of remunerating the leader of the singers and musicians--of maintaining the latter while trained--of supplying the dresses, the golden crowns and masks, and, indeed, the general decorations and equipments of the theatre. he on whom this burdensome honour fell was called choregus; his name, and that of his tribe, was recorded on the tripod which commemorated the victory of the successful poet, whose performances were exhibited. [ ] dly. the gymnasiarchy, or charge of providing for the expense of the torch-race, celebrated in honour of the gods of fire, and some other sacred games. in later times the gymnasiarchy comprised the superintendence of the training schools, and the cost of ornamenting the arena. dly. the architheoria, or task of maintaining the embassy to sacred games and festivals. and, thly, the hestiasis, or feasting of the tribes, a costly obligation incurred by some wealthy member of each tribe for entertaining the whole of the tribe at public, but not very luxurious, banquets. this last expense did not often occur. the hestiasis was intended for sacred objects, connected with the rites of hospitality, and served to confirm the friendly intercourse between the members of the tribe. these three ordinary liturgies had all a religious character; they were compulsory on those possessed of property not less than three talents--they were discharged in turn by the tribes, except when volunteered by individuals. vii. the expenses incurred for the defence or wants of the state were not regular, but extraordinary liturgies--such as the trierarchy, or equipment of ships, which entailed also the obligation of personal service on those by whom the triremes were fitted out. personal service was indeed the characteristic of all liturgies, a property-tax, which was not yet invented, alone excepted; and this, though bearing the name, has not the features, of a liturgy. of the extraordinary liturgies, the trierarchy was the most important. it was of very early origin. boeckh observes [ ] that it was mentioned in the time of hippias. at the period of which we treat each vessel had one trierarch. the vessel was given to the trierarch, sometimes ready equipped; he also received the public money for certain expenses; others fell on himself [ ]. occasionally, but rarely, an ambitious or patriotic trierarch defrayed the whole cost; but in any case he rendered strict account of the expenses incurred. the cost of a whole trierarchy was not less than forty minas, nor more than a talent. viii. two liturgies could not be demanded simultaneously from any individual, nor was he liable to any one more often than every other year. he who served the trierarchies was exempted from all other contributions. orphans were exempted till the year after they had obtained their majority, and a similar exemption was, in a very few instances, the reward of eminent public services. the nine archons were also exempted from the trierarchies. ix. the moral defects of liturgies were the defects of a noble theory, which almost always terminates in practical abuses. their principle was that of making it an honour to contribute to the public splendour or the national wants. hence, in the earlier times, an emulation among the rich to purchase favour by a liberal, but often calculating and interested ostentation; hence, among the poor, actuated by an equal ambition, was created so great a necessity for riches as the means to power [ ], that the mode by which they were to be acquired was often overlooked. what the theory designed as the munificence of patriotism, became in practice but a showy engine of corruption; and men vied with each other in the choregia or the trierarchy, not so much for the sake of service done to the state, as in the hope of influence acquired over the people. i may also observe, that in a merely fiscal point of view, the principle of liturgies was radically wrong; that principle went to tax the few instead of the many; its operation was therefore not more unequal in its assessments than it was unproductive to the state in proportion to its burden on individuals. x. the various duties were farmed--a pernicious plan of finance common to most of the greek states. the farmers gave sureties, and punctuality was rigorously exacted from them, on penalty of imprisonment, the doubling of the debt, the confiscation of their properties, the compulsory hold upon their sureties. xi. such were the main sources of the athenian revenue. opportunities will occur to fill up the brief outline and amplify each detail. this sketch is now presented to the reader as comprising a knowledge necessary to a clear insight into the policy of pericles. a rapid glance over the preceding pages will suffice to show that it was on a rigid avoidance of all unnecessary war--above all, of distant and perilous enterprises, that the revenue of athens rested. her commercial duties--her tax on settlers--the harvest of judicial fees, obtained from the dependant allies--the chief profits from the mines-- all rested upon the maintenance of peace: even the foreign tribute, the most productive of the athenian resources, might fail at once, if the athenian arms should sustain a single reverse, as indeed it did after the fatal battle of aegospotamos [ ]. this it was which might have shown to the great finance minister that peace with the peloponnesus could scarce be too dearly purchased [ ]. the surrender of a few towns and fortresses was nothing in comparison with the arrest and paralysis of all the springs of her wealth, which would be the necessary result of a long war upon her own soil. for this reason pericles strenuously checked all the wild schemes of the athenians for extended empire. yet dazzled with the glories of cimon, some entertained the hopes of recovering egypt, some agitated the invasion of the persian coasts; the fair and fatal sicily already aroused the cupidity and ambition of others; and the vain enthusiasts of the agora even dreamed of making that island the base and centre of a new and vast dominion, including carthage on one hand and etruria on the other [ ]. such schemes it was the great object of pericles to oppose. he was not less ambitious for the greatness of athens than the most daring of these visionaries; but he better understood on what foundations it should be built. his objects were to strengthen the possessions already acquired, to confine the athenian energies within the frontiers of greece, and to curb, as might better be done by peace than war, the peloponnesian forces to their own rocky barriers. the means by which he sought to attain these objects were, st, by a maritime force; dly, by that inert and silent power which springs as it were from the moral dignity and renown of a nation; whatever, in this latter respect, could make athens illustrious, made athens formidable. xii. then rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics which seemed, as plutarch gracefully expresses it, endowed with the bloom of a perennial youth. still the houses of private citizens remained simple and unadorned; still were the streets narrow and irregular; and even centuries afterward, a stranger entering athens would not at first have recognised the claims of the mistress of grecian art. but to the homeliness of her common thoroughfares and private mansions, the magnificence of her public edifices now made a dazzling contrast. the acropolis, that towered above the homes and thoroughfares of men--a spot too sacred for human habitation--became, to use a proverbial phrase, "a city of the gods." the citizen was everywhere to be reminded of the majesty of the state--his patriotism was to be increased by the pride in her beauty--his taste to be elevated by the spectacle of her splendour. thus flocked to athens all who throughout greece were eminent in art. sculptors and architects vied with each other in adorning the young empress of the seas [ ]; then rose the masterpieces of phidias, of callicrates, of mnesicles [ ], which even, either in their broken remains, or in the feeble copies of imitators less inspired, still command so intense a wonder, and furnish models so immortal. and if, so to speak, their bones and relics excite our awe and envy, as testifying of a lovelier and grander race, which the deluge of time has swept away, what, in that day, must have been their brilliant effect--unmutilated in their fair proportions--fresh in all their lineaments and hues? for their beauty was not limited to the symmetry of arch and column, nor their materials confined to the marbles of pentelicus and paros. even the exterior of the temples glowed with the richest harmony of colours, and was decorated with the purest gold; an atmosphere peculiarly favourable both to the display and the preservation of art, permitted to external pediments and friezes all the minuteness of ornament--all the brilliancy of colours; such as in the interior of italian churches may yet be seen--vitiated, in the last, by a gaudy and barbarous taste. nor did the athenians spare any cost upon the works that were, like the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to be the monuments of a nation to distant ages, and to transmit the most irrefragable proof "that the power of ancient greece was not an idle legend." [ ] the whole democracy were animated with the passion of pericles; and when phidias recommended marble as a cheaper material than ivory for the great statue of minerva, it was for that reason that ivory was preferred by the unanimous voice of the assembly. thus, whether it were extravagance or magnificence, the blame in one case, the admiration in another, rests not more with the minister than the populace. it was, indeed, the great characteristic of those works, that they were entirely the creations of the people: without the people, pericles could not have built a temple or engaged a sculptor. the miracles of that day resulted from the enthusiasm of a population yet young--full of the first ardour for the beautiful--dedicating to the state, as to a mistress, the trophies, honourably won or the treasures injuriously extorted--and uniting the resources of a nation with the energy of an individual, because the toil, the cost, were borne by those who succeeded to the enjoyment and arrogated the glory. xiii. it was from two sources that athens derived her chief political vices; st, her empire of the seas and her exactions from her allies; dly, an unchecked, unmitigated democratic action, void of the two vents known in all modern commonwealths--the press, and a representative, instead of a popular, assembly. but from these sources she now drew all her greatness also, moral and intellectual. before the persian war, and even scarcely before the time of cimon, athens cannot be said to have eclipsed her neighbours in the arts and sciences. she became the centre and capital of the most polished communities of greece, and she drew into a focus all the grecian intellect; she obtained from her dependants the wealth to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate; and thus the odeon, and the parthenon, and the propylaea arose! during the same administration, the fortifications were completed, and a third wall, parallel [ ] and near to that uniting piraeus with athens, consummated the works of themistocles and cimon, and preserved the communication between the twofold city, even should the outer walls fall into the hands of an enemy. but honour and wealth alone would not have sufficed for the universal emulation, the universal devotion to all that could adorn or exalt the nation. it was the innovations of aristides and ephialtes that breathed into that abstract and cold formality, the state, the breath and vigour of a pervading people, and made the meanest citizen struggle for athens with that zeal with which an ambitious statesman struggles for himself [ ]. these two causes united reveal to us the true secret why athens obtained a pre-eminence in intellectual grandeur over the rest of greece. had corinth obtained the command of the seas and the treasury of delos--had corinth established abroad a power equally arbitrary and extensive, and at home a democracy equally broad and pure--corinth might have had her pericles and demosthenes, her phidias, her sophocles, her aristophanes, her plato--and posterity might not have allowed the claim of athens to be the hellas hellados, "the greece of greece." xiv. but the increase of wealth bounded not its effects to these magnificent works of art--they poured into and pervaded the whole domestic policy of athens. we must recollect, that as the greatness of the state was that of the democracy, so its treasures were the property of the free population. it was the people who were rich; and according to all the notions of political economy in that day, the people desired practically to enjoy their own opulence. thus was introduced the principal of payment for service, and thus was sanctioned and legalized the right of a common admission to spectacles, the principal cost of which was defrayed from common property. that such innovations would be the necessary and unavoidable result of an overflowing treasury in a state thus democratic is so obvious, that nothing can be more absurd than to lay the blame of the change upon pericles. he only yielded to, and regulated the irresistible current of the general wish. and we may also observe, that most of those innovations, which were ultimately injurious to athens, rested upon the acknowledged maxims of modern civilization; some were rather erroneous from details than principles; others, from the want of harmony between the new principles and the old constitution to which then were applied. each of the elements might be healthful--amalgamated, they produced a poison. xv. it is, for instance, an axiom in modern politics that judges should receive a salary [ ]. during the administration of pericles, this principle was applied to the dicasts in the popular courts of judicature. it seems probable that the vast accession of law business which ensued from the transfer of the courts in the allied states to the athenian tribunal was the cause of this enactment. lawsuits became so common, that it was impossible, without salaries, that the citizens could abandon their own business for that of others. payment was, therefore, both equitable and unavoidable, and, doubtless, it would have seemed to the athenians, as now to us, the best means, not only of securing the attention, but of strengthening the integrity, of the judges or the jurors. the principle of salaries was, therefore, right, but its results were evil, when applied to the peculiar constitution of the courts. the salary was small--the judges numerous, and mostly of the humblest class--the consequences i have before shown [ ]. had the salaries been high and the number of the judges small, the means of a good judicature would have been attained. but, then, according to the notions, not only of the athenians, but of all the hellenic democracies, the democracy itself, of which the popular courts were deemed the constitutional bulwark and the vital essence, would have been at an end. in this error, therefore, however fatal it might be, neither pericles nor the athenians, but the theories of the age, are to be blamed [ ]. it is also a maxim formerly acted upon in england, to which many political philosophers now incline, and which is yet adopted in the practice of a great and enlightened portion of the world, that the members of the legislative assembly should receive salaries. this principle was now applied in athens [ ]. but there the people themselves were the legislative assembly, and thus a principle, perhaps sound in itself, became vitiated to the absurdity of the people as sovereign paying the people as legislative. yet even this might have been necessary to the preservation of the constitution, as meetings became numerous and business complicated; for if the people had not been tempted and even driven to assemble in large masses, the business of the state would have been jobbed away by active minorities, and the life of a democracy been lost [ ]. the payment was first one obolus-- afterward increased to three. nor must we suppose, as the ignorance or effrontery of certain modern historians has strangely asserted, that in the new system of payments the people were munificent only to themselves. the senate was paid--the public advocates and orators were paid--so were the ambassadors, the inspectors of the youths in the trading schools, the nomothetae or law-commissioners, the physicians, the singers, even the poets; all the servants of the different officers received salaries. and now, as is the inevitable consequence of that civilization in a commercial society which multiplies and strongly demarcates the divisions of labour, the safety of the state no longer rested solely upon the unpurchased arms and hearts of its citizens--but not only were the athenians themselves who served as soldiers paid, but foreign mercenaries were engaged--a measure in consonance with the characteristic policy of pericles, which was especially frugal of the lives of the citizens. but peculiar to the athenians of all the grecian states was the humane and beautiful provision for the poor, commenced under solon or pisistratus. at this happy and brilliant period few were in need of it--war and disaster, while they increased the number of the destitute, widened the charity of the state. xvi. thus, then, that general system of payment which grew up under pericles, and produced many abuses under his successors, was, after all, but the necessary result of the increased civilization and opulence of the period. nor can we wonder that the humbler or the middle orders, who, from their common stock, lavished generosity upon genius [ ], and alone, of all contemporaneous states, gave relief to want--who maintained the children of all who died in war--who awarded remunerations for every service, should have deemed it no grasping exaction to require for their own attendance on offices forced on them by the constitution a compensation for the desertion of their private affairs, little exceeding that which was conferred upon the very paupers of the state. [ ] xvii. but there was another abuse which sprang out of the wealth of the people, and that love for spectacles and exhibitions which was natural to the lively ionic imagination, and could not but increase as leisure and refinement became boons extended to the bulk of the population--an abuse trifling in itself--fatal in the precedent it set. while the theatre was of wood, free admissions were found to produce too vast a concourse for the stability of the building; and once, indeed, the seats gave way. it was, therefore, long before the present period, deemed advisable to limit the number of the audience by a small payment of two obols for each seat; and this continued after a stately edifice of stone replaced the wooden temple of the earlier drama. but as riches flowed into the treasury, and as the drama became more and more the most splendid and popular of the national exhibitions, it seemed but just to return to the ancient mode of gratuitous admissions. it was found, however, convenient, partly, perhaps, for greater order and for the better allotment of the seats--partly, also, for the payment of several expenses which fell not on the state, but individuals--and partly, no doubt, to preserve the distinctions between the citizens and the strangers, to maintain the prices, but to allow to those whose names were enrolled in the book of the citizens the admittance money from the public treasury. this fund was called the theoricon. but the example once set, theorica were extended to other festivals besides those of the drama [ ], and finally, under the plausible and popular pretext of admitting the poorer classes to those national or religious festivals, from which, as forming the bulk of the nation, it was against the theory of the constitution to exclude them, paved the way to lavish distributions of the public money, which at once tended to exhaust the wealth of the state, and to render effeminate and frivolous the spirit of the people. but these abuses were not yet visible: on the contrary, under pericles, the results of the theoricon were highly favourable to the manners and genius of the people. art was thus rendered the universal right, and while refinement of taste became diffused, the patriotism of the citizens was increased by the consciousness that they were the common and legitimate arbiters of all which augmented the splendour and renown of athens. thus, in fact, the after evils that resulted from the more popular part of the internal policy of pericles, it was impossible to foresee; they originated not in a single statement, but in the very nature of civilization. and as in despotisms, a coarse and sensual luxury, once established, rots away the vigour and manhood of a conquering people, so in this intellectual republic it was the luxury of the intellect which gradually enervated the great spirit of the victor race of marathon and salamis, and called up generations of eloquent talkers and philosophical dreamers from the earlier age of active freemen, restless adventurers, and hardy warriors. the spirit of poetry, or the pampered indulgence of certain faculties to the prejudice of others, produced in a whole people what it never fails to produce in the individual: it unfitted them just as they grew up into a manhood exposed to severer struggles than their youth had undergone--for the stern and practical demands of life; and suffered the love of the beautiful to subjugate or soften away the common knowledge of the useful. genius itself became a disease, and poetry assisted towards the euthanasia of the athenians. xviii. as all the measures of pericles were directed towards consolidating the athenian empire, so under his administration was not omitted the politic expedient of colonization. of late years, states having become confirmed and tribes settled, the grecian migrations were far less frequent than of old; and one principal cause of colonization, in the violent feud of parties, and the expulsion of a considerable number of citizens, arose from the disasters of infant communities, and was no longer in force under the free but strong government of athens. as with the liberties fell the commerce of miletus and ionia, so also another principal source of the old colonization became comparatively languid and inert. but now, under the name of cleruchi [ ], a new description of colonists arose-- colonists by whom the mother country not only draughted off a redundant population, or rid herself of restless adventurers, but struck the roots of her empire in the various places that came under her control. in the classic as in the feudal age, conquest gave the right to the lands of the conquered country. thus had arisen, and thus still existed, upon the plundered lands of laconia, the commonwealth of sparta--thus were maintained the wealthy and luxurious nobles of thessaly--and thus, in fine, were created all the ancient dorian oligarchies. after the return of the heraclidae, this mode of consummating conquest fell into disuse, not from any moral conviction of its injustice, but because the wars between the various states rarely terminated in victories so complete as to permit the seizure of the land and the subjugation of the inhabitants. and it must be ever remembered, that the old grecian tribes made war to procure a settlement, and not to increase dominion. the smallness of their population rendered human life too valuable to risk its waste in the expeditions that characterized the ambition of the leaders of oriental hordes. but previous to the persian wars, the fertile meadows of euboea presented to the athenians a temptation it could scarcely be expected that victorious neighbours would have the abstinence to forego; and we have seen that they bestowed the lands of the hippobotae on athenian settlers. these colonists evacuated their possessions during the persian war: the hippobotae returned, and seem to have held quiet, but probably tributary, possession of their ancient estates, until after the recent retreat of the peloponnesians. pericles defeated and displaced them; their lands fell once more to athenian colonists; and the north of euboea was protected and garrisoned by the erection of oreus, a new town that supplanted the old histiaea. territories in scyros, lemnos, and imbros had been also bestowed on athenian settlers during the earlier successes of the athenian arms--and the precedent thus set, examples became more numerous, under the profound and systematic policy of pericles. this mode of colonization, besides the ordinary advantages of all colonization, proffered two peculiar to itself. in the first place, it supplied the deficiency of land, which was one of the main inconveniences of attica, and rewarded the meritorious or appeased the avaricious citizens, with estates which it did not impoverish the mother country to grant. dly. it secured the conquests of the state by planting garrisons which it cost little to maintain [ ]. thus were despatched by pericles a thousand men to the valuable possessions in the chersonese, two hundred and fifty to andros, five hundred to naxos, a thousand to thrace. at another period, the date of which is uncertain, but probably shortly subsequent to the truce with the peloponnesians, a large fleet, commanded by pericles, swept the euxine, in order to awe and impress the various states and nations along the adjacent coasts, whether greek or barbarian, with the display of the athenian power; and the city of sinope, being at that time divided with contentions for and against its tyrant timesilaus, the republican party applied to the head of the greek democracies for aid. lamachus, a warrior to whose gallant name, afterward distinguished in the peloponnesian war, aristophanes has accorded the equal honour of his ridicule and his praise, was intrusted with thirteen galleys and a competent force for the expulsion of the tyrant and his adherents. the object effected, the new government of sinope rewarded six hundred athenians with the freedom of the city and the estates of the defeated faction. while thus athens fixed her footing on remoter lands, gradually her grasp extended over the more near and necessary demesnes of euboea, until the lands of more than two thirds of that island were in the possession of athenians [ ]. at a later period, new opportunities gave rise to new cleruchiae. [ ] xix. besides these cleruchiae, in the second year of the supreme administration of pericles a colony, properly so called, was established in western italy--interesting alike from the great names of its early adventurers, the beauty of its site, and from the circumstance of its being, besides that at amphipolis, the only pure and legitimate colony [ ], in contradistinction to the cleruchiae, founded by athens, since her ancient migrations to ionia and the cyclades. two centuries before, some achaeans, mingled with troezenians, had established, in the fertile garden of magna graecia, the state of sybaris. placed between two rivers, the crathis and the sybaris--possessing extraordinary advantages of site and climate, this celebrated colony rose with unparalleled rapidity to eminence in war and luxury in peace. so great were its population and resources, that it is said by diodorus to have brought at one time three hundred thousand men into the field--an army which doubled that which all greece could assemble at plataea! the exaggeration is evident; but it still attests the belief of a populousness and power which must have rested upon no fabulous foundation. the state of sybaris had prospered for a time by the adoption of a principle which is ever apt to force civilization to premature development, and not unfrequently to end in the destruction of national character and internal stability--viz., it opened its arms to strangers of every tribe and class. thronged by mercantile adventurers, its trade, like that of agrigentum, doubtless derived its sources from the oil and wine which it poured into the harbours of africa and gaul. as with individuals, so with states, wealth easily obtained is prodigally spent, and the effeminate and voluptuous ostentation of sybaris passed into a proverb more enduring than her prosperity. her greatness, acquired by a tempered and active democracy, received a mortal blow by the usurpation of a tyrant named telys, who, in b. c., expelled five hundred of the principal citizens. croton received the exiles, a war broke out, and in the same year, or shortly afterward, the crotoniates, under milo, defeated the sybarites with prodigious slaughter, and the city was abandoned to pillage, and left desolate and ruined. those who survived fled to laos and scidrus. fifty-eight years afterward, aided by some thessalians, the exiled sybarites again sought possession of their former settlement, but were speedily expelled by the crotoniates. it was now that they applied to sparta and athens for assistance. the former state had neither population to spare, nor commerce to strengthen, nor ambition to gratify, and rejected the overtures of the sybarite envoys. but a different success awaited the exiles at athens. their proposition, timed in a period when it was acceptable to the athenian policy (b. c. ), was enforced by pericles. adventurers from all parts of greece, but invited especially from the peloponnesus, swelled the miscellaneous band: eminent among the rest were lysias, afterward so celebrated as a rhetorician [ ], and herodotus, the historian. as in the political code of greece the religious character of the people made a prevailing principle, so in colonization the deity of the parent state transplanted his worship with his votaries, and the relation between the new and the old country was expressed and perpetuated by the touching symbol of taking fire from the prytaneum of the native city. a renowned diviner, named lampon [ ], whose sacred pretensions did not preserve him from the ridicule of the comic poets [ ], accompanied the emigrants (b. c. ), and an oracle dictated the site of the new colony near the ancient city, and by the fountain of thurium. the sybarites, with the common vanity of men whose ancestors have been greater than themselves, increased their pretensions in proportion as they lost their power; they affected superiority over their companions, by whose swords alone they again existed as a people; claimed the exclusive monopoly of the principal offices of government, and the first choice of lands; and were finally cut off by the very allies whose aid they had sought, and whose resentment they provoked. new adventurers from greece replaced the sybarites, and the colonists of thurium, divided into ten tribes (four, the representatives of the united ionians, euboeans, islanders, and athenians; three of the peloponnesians; and three of the settlers from northern greece)--retained peaceable possession of their delightful territory, and harmonized their motley numbers by the adoption of the enlightened laws and tranquil institutions of charondas. such was the home of herodotus, the historian. chapter iii. revision of the census.--samian war.--sketch of the rise and progress of the athenian comedy to the time of aristophanes. i. in proportion as it had become matter of honourable pride and lucrative advantage to be a citizen of athens, it was natural that the laws defining and limiting the freedom of the city should increase in strictness. even before the time of themistocles, those only were considered legitimate [ ] who, on either side, derived parentage from athenian citizens. but though illegitimate, they were not therefore deprived of the rights of citizenship; nor had the stain upon his birth been a serious obstacle to the career of themistocles himself. under pericles, the law became more severe, and a decree was passed (apparently in the earlier period of his rising power), which excluded from the freedom of the city those whose parents were not both athenian. in the very year in which he attained the supreme administration of affairs, occasion for enforcing the law occurred: psammetichus, the pretender to the egyptian throne, sent a present of corn to the athenian people (b. c. ); the claimants for a share in the gift underwent the ordeal of scrutiny as to their titles to citizenship, and no less than five thousand persons were convicted of having fraudulently foisted themselves into rights which were now tantamount to property; they were disfranchised [ ]; and the whole list of the free citizens was reduced to little more than fourteen thousand. [ ] ii. while under this brilliant and energetic administration athens was daily more and more concentrating on herself the reluctant admiration and the growing fears of greece, her policy towards her dependant allies involved her in a war which ultimately gave, if not a legal, at least an acknowledged, title to the pretensions she assumed. hostilities between the new population of miletus and the oligarchic government of samos had been for some time carried on; the object of contention was the city of priene--united, apparently, with rival claims upon anaea, a town on the coast opposite samos. the milesians, unsuccessful in the war, applied to athens for assistance. as the samians were among the dependant allies, pericles, in the name of the athenian people, ordered them to refer to athens the decision of the dispute; on their refusal an expedition of forty galleys was conducted against them by pericles in person. a still more plausible colour than that of the right of dictation was given to this interference; for the prayer of the milesians was backed and sanctioned by many of the samians themselves, oppressed by the oligarchic government which presided over them. a ridiculous assertion was made by the libellers of the comic drama and the enemies of pericles, that the war was undertaken at the instigation of aspasia, with whom that minister had formed the closest connexion; but the expedition was the necessary and unavoidable result of the twofold policy by which the athenian government invariably directed its actions; st, to enforce the right of ascendency over its allies; dly, to replace oligarchic by democratic institutions. nor, on this occasion, could athens have remained neutral or supine without materially weakening her hold upon all the states she aspired at once to democratize and to govern. iii. the fleet arrived at samos--the oligarchic government was deposed--one hundred hostages (fifty men--fifty boys) from its partisans were taken and placed at lemnos, and a garrison was left to secure the new constitution of the island. some of the defeated faction took refuge on the asiatic continent--entered into an intrigue with the persian pissuthnes, satrap of sardis; and having, by continued correspondence with their friends at samos, secured connivance at their attempt, they landed by night at samos with a hired force of seven hundred soldiers, and succeeded in mastering the athenian garrison, and securing the greater part of the chiefs of the new administration; while, by a secret and well-contrived plot, they regained their hostages left at lemnos. they then openly proclaimed their independence--restored the oligarchy--and, as a formal proof of defiance, surrendered to pissuthnes the athenians they had captured. byzantium hastened to join the revolt. their alliance with pissuthnes procured the samians the promised aid of a phoenician fleet, and they now deemed themselves sufficiently strong to renew their hostilities with miletus. their plans were well laid, and their boldness made a considerable impression on the states hostile to athens. among the peloponnesian allies it was debated whether or not, despite the treaty, the samians should be assisted: opinions were divided, but corinth [ ], perhaps, turned the scale, by insisting on the right of every state to deal with its dependants. corinth had herself colonies over which she desired to preserve a dictatorial sway; and she was disposed to regard the samian revolution less as the gallantry of freemen than the enterprise of rebels. it was fortunate, too, perhaps, for athens, that the samian insurgents had sought their ally in the persian satrap; nor could the peloponnesian states at that time have decorously assisted the persian against the athenian arms. but short time for deliberation was left by a government which procured for the athenians the character to be not more quick to contrive than to execute--to be the only people who could simultaneously project and acquire--and who even considered a festival but as a day on which some necessary business could be accomplished [ ]. with a fleet of sixty sail, pericles made for samos; some of the vessels were stationed on the carian coast to watch the movements of the anticipated phoenician re-enforcement; others were despatched to collect aid from chios and lesbos. meanwhile, though thus reduced to forty-four sail, pericles, near a small island called tragia, engaged the samian fleet returning from miletus, consisting of seventy vessels, and gained a victory. then, re-enforced by forty galleys from athens, and twenty-five from lesbos and chios, he landed on the island, defeated the samians in a pitched battle, drove them into their city, invested it with a triple line of ramparts, and simultaneously blockaded the city by sea. the besieged were not, however, too discouraged to sally out; and, under melissus, who was at once a philosopher and a hero, they even obtained advantage in a seafight. but these efforts were sufficiently unimportant to permit pericles to draw off sixty of his vessels, and steer along the carian coast to meet the expected fleet of the phoenicians. the besieged did not suffer the opportunity thus afforded them to escape--they surprised the naval blockading force, destroyed the guard-ships, and joining battle with the rest of the fleet, obtained a decisive victory (b. c. ), which for fourteen days left them the mastery of the open sea, and enabled them to introduce supplies. iv. while lying in wait for the phoenician squadron, which did not, however, make its appearance, tidings of the samian success were brought to pericles. he hastened back and renewed the blockade--fresh forces were sent to his aid--from athens, forty-eight ships, under three generals, thucydides [ ], agnon, and phormio; followed by twenty more under tlepolemus and anticles, while chios and lesbos supplied an additional squadron of thirty. still the besieged were not disheartened; they ventured another engagement, which was but an ineffectual struggle, and then, shut up within their city, stood a siege of nine months. with all the small greek states it had ever been the policy of necessity to shun even victories attended with great loss. this policy was refined by pericles into a scientific system. in the present instance, he avoided all assaults which might weaken his forces, and preferred the loss of time to the loss of life. the tedious length of the blockade occasioned some murmurs among the lively and impatient forces he commanded; but he is said to have diverted the time by the holyday devices, which in the middle ages often so graced and softened the rugged aspect of war. the army was divided into eight parts, and by lot it was decided which one of the eight divisions should, for the time, encounter the fatigues of actual service; the remaining seven passed the day in sports and feasting [ ]. a concourse of women appear to have found their way to the encampment [ ], and a samian writer ascribes to their piety or their gratitude the subsequent erection of a temple to venus. the siege, too, gave occasion to pericles to make experiment of military engines, which, if invented before, probably now received mechanical improvement. although, in the earlier contest, mutual animosities had been so keen that the prisoners on either side had been contumeliously branded [ ], it was, perhaps, the festive and easy manner in which the siege was afterward carried on, that, mitigating the bitterness of prolonged hostilities, served to procure, at last, for the samians articles of capitulation more than usually mild. they embraced the conditions of demolishing their fortifications, delivering up their ships, and paying by instalments a portion towards the cost of the siege [ ]. byzantium, which, commanding the entrance of the euxine, was a most important possession to the athenians [ ], whether for ambition or for commerce, at the same time accepted, without resistance, the terms held out to it, and became once more subject to the athenian empire. v. on his return, pericles was received with an enthusiasm which attested the sense entertained of the value of his conquest. he pronounced upon those who had fallen in the war a funeral oration. [ ] when he descended from the rostrum, the women crowded round and showered fillets and chaplets on the eloquent victor. elpinice, the sister of cimon, alone shared not the general enthusiasm. "are these actions," she said to pericles, "worthy of chaplets and garlands? actions purchased by the loss of many gallant citizens--not won against the phoenician and the mede, like those of cimon, but by the ruin of a city united with ourselves in amity and origin." the ready minister replied to the invective of elpinice by a line from archilochus, which, in alluding to the age and coquetry of the lady, probably answered the oratorical purpose of securing the laugh on his own side. [ ] while these events confirmed the authority of athens and the athenian government, a power had grown up within the city that assumed a right, the grave assertion of which without the walls would have been deeply felt and bitterly resented--a power that sat in severe and derisive judgment upon athens herself, her laws, her liberties, her mighty generals, her learned statesmen, her poets, her sages, and her arrogant democracy--a power that has come down to foreign nations and distant ages as armed with irresistible weapons--which now is permitted to give testimony, not only against individuals, but nations themselves, but which, in that time, was not more effective in practical results than at this day a caricature in st. james's-street, or a squib in a weekly newspaper--a power which exposed to relentless ridicule, before the most susceptible and numerous tribunal, the loftiest names in rank, in wisdom, and in genius--and which could not have deprived a beggar of his obol or a scavenger of his office: the power of the comic muse. vi. we have seen that in the early village festivals, out of which grew the tragedy of phrynichus and aeschylus, there were, besides the dithyramb and the satyrs, the phallic processions, which diversified the ceremony by the lowest jests mingled with the wildest satire. as her tragedy had its origin in the dithyramb--as her satyric after-piece had its origin in the satyric buffooneries--so out of the phallic processions rose the comedy of greece (b. c. ) [ ]. susarion is asserted by some to have been a megarian by origin; and while the democracy of megara was yet in force, he appears to have roughly shaped the disorderly merriment of the procession into a rude farce, interspersed with the old choral songs. the close connexion between megara and athens soon served to communicate to the latter the improvements of susarion; and these improvements obtained for the megarian the title of inventer of comedy, with about the same justice as a similar degree of art conferred upon the later thespis the distinction of the origin of tragedy. the study of homer's epics had suggested its true province to tragedy; the study of the margites, attributed also to homer, seems to have defined and enlarged the domain of comedy. eleven years after phrynichus appeared, and just previous to the first effort of aeschylus (b. c. ), epicharmus, who appears to have been a native of cos [ ], produced at syracuse the earliest symmetrical and systematic form of comic dialogue and fable. all accounts prove him to have been a man of extraordinary genius, and of very thoughtful and accomplished mind. perhaps the loss of his works is not the least to be lamented of those priceless treasures which time has destroyed. so uncertain, after all, is the great tribunal of posterity, which is often as little to be relied upon as the caprice of the passing day! we have the worthless electra of euripides--we have lost all, save the titles and a few sententious fragments, of thirty-five comedies of epicharmus! yet if horace inform us rightly, that the poet of syracuse was the model of plautus, perhaps in the amphitryon we can trace the vein and genius of the father of true comedy; and the thoughts and the plot of the lost epicharmus may still exist, mutilated and disguised, in the humours of the greatest comic poet [ ] of modern europe. vii. it was chiefly from the rich stores of mythology that epicharmus drew his fables; but what was sublimity with the tragic poet, was burlesque with the comic. he parodied the august personages and venerable adventures of the gods of the greek pantheon. by a singular coincidence, like his contemporary aeschylus [ ], he was a pythagorean, and it is wonderful to observe how rapidly and how powerfully the influence of the mysterious samian operated on the most original intellects of the age. the familiar nature of the hellenic religion sanctioned, even in the unphilosophical age of homer, a treatment of celestial persons that to our modern notions would, at first glance, evince a disrespect for the religion itself. but wherever homage to "dead men" be admitted, we may, even in our own times, find that the most jocular legends are attached to names held in the most reverential awe. and he who has listened to an irish or an italian catholic's familiar stories of some favourite saint, may form an adequate notion of the manner in which a pious greek could jest upon bacchus to-day and sacrifice to bacchus to-morrow. with his mythological travesties the pythagorean mingled, apparently, many earnest maxims of morality [ ], and though not free, in the judgment of aristotle, from a vice of style usually common only to ages the most refined [ ]; he was yet proverbial, even in the most polished period of grecian letters, for the graces of his diction and the happy choice of his expressions. phormis, a contemporary of epicharmus, flourished also at syracuse, and though sometimes classed with epicharmus, and selecting his materials from the same source, his claims to reputation are immeasurably more equivocal. dinolochus continued the sicilian school, and was a contemporary of the first athenian comic writer. viii. hence it will be seen that the origin of comedy does not rest with the athenians; that megara, if the birthplace of susarion, may fairly claim whatever merit belongs to the first rude improvement, and that syracuse is entitled to the higher distinction of raising humour into art. so far is comedy the offspring of the dorians--not the dorians of a sullen oligarchy, with whom to vary an air of music was a crime--not the dorians of lacedaemon--but of megara and syracuse--of an energetic, though irregular democracy--of a splendid, though illegitimate monarchy. [ ] but the comedy of epicharmus was not altogether the old comedy of athens. the last, as bequeathed to us by aristophanes, has features which bear little family resemblance to the philosophical parodies of the pythagorean poet. it does not confine itself to mythological subjects--it avoids the sententious style--it does not preach, but ridicule philosophy--it plunges amid the great practical business of men--it breathes of the agora and the piraeus--it is not a laughing sage, but a bold, boisterous, gigantic demagogue, ever in the thickest mob of human interests, and wielding all the various humours of a democracy with a brilliant audacity, and that reckless ease which is the proof of its astonishing power. ix. chionides was the first athenian comic writer. we find him before the public three years after the battle of marathon (b. c. ), when the final defeat of hippias confirmed the stability of the republic; and when the improvements of aeschylus in tragedy served to communicate new attractions to the comic stage. magnes, a writer of great wit, and long popular, closely followed, and the titles of some of the plays of these writers confirm the belief that attic comedy, from its commencement, took other ground than that occupied by the mythological burlesques of epicharmus. so great was the impetus given to the new art, that a crowd of writers followed simultaneously, whose very names it is wearisome to mention. of these the most eminent were cratinus and crates. the earliest _recorded_ play of cratinus, though he must have exhibited many before [ ], appeared the year prior to the death of cimon (the archilochi, b. c. ). plutarch quotes some lines from this author, which allude to the liberality of cimon with something of that patron-loving spirit which was rather the characteristic of a roman than an athenian poet. though he himself, despite his age, was proverbially of no very abstemious or decorous habits, cratinus was unsparing in his attacks upon others, and wherever he found or suspected vice, he saw a subject worthy of his genius. he was admired to late posterity, and by roman critics, for the grace and even for the grandeur of his hardy verses; and quintilian couples him with eupolis and aristophanes as models for the formation of orators. crates appeared (b. c. ) two years before the first _recorded_ play of cratinus. he had previously been an actor, and performed the principal characters in the plays of cratinus. aristophanes bestows on him the rare honour of his praise, while he sarcastically reminds the athenian audience of the ill reception that so ingenious a poet often received at their hands. yet, despite the excellence of the earlier comic writers, they had hitherto at athens very sparingly adopted the artistical graces of epicharmus. crates, who did not write before the five years' truce with sparta, is said by aristotle not only to have been the first who abandoned the iambic form of comedy, but the first athenian who invented systematic fable or plot--a strong argument to show how little the athenian borrowed from the sicilian comedy, since, if the last had been its source of inspiration, the invented stories of epicharmus (by half a century the predecessor of crates) would naturally have been the most striking improvement to be imitated. the athenian comedy did not receive the same distinctions conferred upon tragedy. so obscure was its rise to its later eminence, that even aristotle could not determine when or by whom the various progressive improvements were made: and, regarded with jealous or indifferent eyes by the magistrature as an exhibition given by private competitors, nor calling for the protection of the state, which it often defied, it was long before its chorus was defrayed at the public cost. under cratinus and crates [ ], however, in the year of the samian war, the comic drama assumed a character either so personally scurrilous, or so politically dangerous, that a decree was passed interdicting its exhibitions (b. c. ). the law was repealed three years afterward (b. c. ) [ ]. viewing its temporary enforcement, and the date in which it was passed, it appears highly probable that the critical events of the samian expedition may have been the cause of the decree. at such a time the opposition of the comic writers might have been considered dangerous. with the increased stability of the state, the law was, perhaps, deemed no longer necessary. and from the recommencement of the comic drama, we may probably date both the improvements of crates and the special protection of the state; for when, for the first time, comedy was formally authorized by the law, it was natural that the law should recognise the privileges it claimed in common with its sister tragedy. there is no authority for supposing that pericles, whose calm temper and long novitiate in the stormy career of public life seem to have rendered him callous to public abuse, was the author of this decree. it is highly probable, indeed, that he was absent at the siege of samos [ ] when it was passed; but he was the object of such virulent attacks by the comic poets that we might consider them actuated by some personal feeling of revenge and spleen, were it not evident that cratinus at least (and probably crates, his disciple) was attached to the memory of cimon, and could not fail to be hostile to the principles and government of cimon's successor. so far at this period had comedy advanced; but, in the background, obscure and undreamed of, was one, yet in childhood, destined to raise the comic to the rank of the tragic muse; one who, perhaps, from his earliest youth, was incited by the noisy fame of his predecessors, and the desire of that glorious, but often perverted power, so palpable and so exultant, which rides the stormy waves of popular applause [ ]. about thirteen years after the brief prohibition of comedy appeared that wonderful genius, the elements and attributes of whose works it will be a pleasing, if arduous task, in due season, to analyze and define; matchless alike in delicacy and strength, in powers the most gigantic, in purpose the most daring--with the invention of shakspeare--the playfulness of rabelais--the malignity of swift--need i add the name of aristophanes? x. but while comedy had thus progressed to its first invidious dignity, that of proscription, far different was the reward that awaited the present representative and master of the tragic school. in the year that the muse of cratinus was silenced, sophocles was appointed one of the colleagues with pericles in the samian war. chapter iv. the tragedies of sophocles. i. it was in the very nature of the athenian drama, that, when once established, it should concentrate and absorb almost every variety of the poetical genius. the old lyrical poetry, never much cultivated in athens, ceased in a great measure when tragedy arose, or rather tragedy was the complete development, the new and perfected consummation of the dithyrambic ode. lyrical poetry transmigrated into the choral song, as the epic merged into the dialogue and plot, of the drama. thus, when we speak of athenian poetry, we speak of dramatic poetry--they were one and the same. as helvetius has so luminously shown [ ], genius ever turns towards that quarter in which fame shines brightest, and hence, in every age, there will be a sympathetic connexion between the taste of the public and the direction of the talent. now in athens, where audiences were numerous and readers few, every man who felt within himself the inspiration of the poet would necessarily desire to see his poetry put into action--assisted with all the pomp of spectacle and music, hallowed by the solemnity of a religious festival, and breathed by artists elaborately trained to heighten the eloquence of words into the reverent ear of assembled greece. hence the multitude of dramatic poets, hence the mighty fertility of each; hence the life and activity of this--the comparative torpor and barrenness of every other--species of poetry. to add to the pre-eminence of the art, the applauses of the many were sanctioned by the critical canons of the few. the drama was not only the most alluring form which the divine spirit could assume--but it was also deemed the loftiest and the purest; and when aristotle ranked [ ] the tragic higher than even the epic muse, he probably did but explain the reasons for a preference which the generality of critics were disposed to accord to her. [ ] ii. the career of the most majestic of the greek poets was eminently felicitous. his birth was noble, his fortune affluent; his natural gifts were the rarest which nature bestows on man, genius and beauty. all the care which the age permitted was lavished on his education. for his feet even the ordinary obstacles in the path of distinction were smoothed away. he entered life under auspices the most propitious and poetical. at the age of sixteen he headed the youths who performed the triumphant paean round the trophy of salamis. at twenty-five, when the bones of theseus were borne back to athens in the galley of the victorious cimon, he exhibited his first play, and won the prize from aeschylus. that haughty genius, whether indignant at the success of a younger rival, or at a trial for impiety before the areopagus, to which (though acquitted) he was subjected, or at the rapid ascendency of a popular party, that he seems to have scorned with the disdain at once of an eupatrid and a pythagorean, soon after retired from athens to the syracusan court; and though he thence sent some of his dramas to the athenian stage [ ], the absent veteran could not but excite less enthusiasm than the young aspirant, whose artful and polished genius was more in harmony with the reigning taste than the vast but rugged grandeur of aeschylus, who, perhaps from the impossibility tangibly and visibly to body forth his shadowy titans and obscure sublimity of design, does not appear to have obtained a popularity on the stage equal to his celebrity as a poet [ ]. for three-and-sixty years did sophocles continue to exhibit; twenty times he obtained the first prize, and he is said never to have been degraded to the third. the ordinary persecutions of envy itself seem to have spared this fortunate poet. although his moral character was far from pure [ ], and even in extreme old age he sought after the pleasures of his youth [ ], yet his excesses apparently met with a remarkable indulgence from his contemporaries. to him were known neither the mortifications of aeschylus nor the relentless mockery heaped upon euripides. on his fair name the terrible aristophanes himself affixes no brand [ ]. the sweetness of his genius extended indeed to his temper, and personal popularity assisted his public triumphs. nor does he appear to have keenly shared the party animosities of his day; his serenity, like that of goethe, has in it something of enviable rather than honourable indifference. he owed his first distinction to cimon, and he served afterward under pericles; on his entrance into life, he led the youths that circled the trophy of grecian freedom--and on the verge of death, we shall hereafter see him calmly assent to the surrender of athenian liberties. in short, aristophanes perhaps mingled more truth than usual with his wit, when even in the shades below he says of sophocles, "he was contented here--he's contented there." a disposition thus facile, united with an admirable genius, will, not unoften, effect a miracle, and reconcile prosperity with fame. [ ] at the age of fifty-seven, sophocles was appointed, as i before said [ ], to a command, as one of the ten generals in the samian war; but history is silent as to his military genius [ ]. in later life we shall again have occasion to refer to him, condemned as he was to illustrate (after a career of unprecedented brilliancy--nor ever subjected to the caprice of the common public) the melancholy moral inculcated by himself [ ], and so often obtruded upon us by the dramatists of his country, "never to deem a man happy till death itself denies the hazard of reverses." out of the vast, though not accurately known, number of the dramas of sophocles, seven remain. iii. a great error has been committed by those who class aeschylus and sophocles together as belonging to the same era, and refer both to the age of pericles, because each was living while pericles was in power. we may as well class dr. johnson and lord byron in the same age, because both lived in the reign of george iii. the athenian rivals were formed under the influences of very different generations; and if aeschylus lived through a considerable portion of the career of the younger sophocles, the accident of longevity by no means warrants us to consider then the children of the same age--the creatures of the same influences. aeschylus belonged to the race and the period from which emerged themistocles and aristides--sophocles to those which produced phidias and pericles. sophocles indeed, in the calmness of his disposition, and the symmetry and stateliness of his genius, might almost be entitled the pericles of poetry. and as the statesman was called the olympian, not from the headlong vehemence, but the serene majesty of his strength; so of sophocles also it may be said, that his power is visible in his repose, and his thunders roll from the depth of a clear sky. iv. the age of pericles is the age of art [ ]. it was not sophocles alone that was an artist in that time; he was but one of the many who, in every department, sought, in study and in science, the secrets of the wise or the beautiful. pericles and phidias were in their several paths of fame what sophocles was in his. but it was not the art of an emasculate or effeminate period--it grew out of the example of a previous generation of men astonishingly great. it was art still fresh from the wells of nature. art with a vast field yet unexplored, and in all its youthful vigour and maiden enthusiasm. there was, it is true, at a period a little later than that in which the genius of sophocles was formed, one class of students among whom a false taste and a spurious refinement were already visible--the class of rhetoricians and philosophical speculators. for, in fact, the art which belongs to the imagination is often purest in an early age; but that which appertains to the reason and intellect is slow before it attains mature strength and manly judgment, among these students was early trained and tutored the thoughtful mind of euripides; and hence that art which in sophocles was learned in more miscellaneous and active circles, and moulded by a more powerful imagination, in euripides often sickens us with the tricks of a pleader, the quibbles of a schoolman, or the dullness of a moralizing declaimer. but as, in the peculiar attributes and character of his writings, euripides somewhat forestalled his age--as his example had a very important influence upon his successors--as he did not exhibit till the fame of sophocles was already confirmed--and as his name is intimately associated with the later age of aristophanes and socrates--it may be more convenient to confine our critical examination at present to the tragedies of sophocles. although the three plays of the "oedipus tyrannus," the "oedipus at coloneus," and the "antigone," were composed and exhibited at very wide intervals of time, yet, from their connexion with each other, they may almost be said to form one poem. the "antigone," which concludes the story, was the one earliest written; and there are passages in either "oedipus" which seem composed to lead up, as it were, to the catastrophe of the "antigone," and form a harmonious link between the several dramas. these three plays constitute, on the whole, the greatest performance of sophocles, though in detached parts they are equalled by passages in the "ajax" and the "philoctetes." v. the "oedipus tyrannus" opens thus. an awful pestilence devastates thebes. oedipus, the king, is introduced to us, powerful and beloved; to him whose wisdom had placed him on the throne, look up the priest and the suppliants for a remedy even amid the terrors of the plague. oedipus informs them that he has despatched creon (the brother of his wife jocasta) to the pythian god to know by what expiatory deed the city might be delivered from its curse. scarce has he concluded, when creon himself enters, and announces "glad tidings" in the explicit answer of the oracle. the god has declared--that a pollution had been bred in the land, and must be expelled the city--that laius, the former king, had been murdered--and that his blood must be avenged. laius had left the city never to return; of his train but one man escaped to announce his death by assassins. oedipus instantly resolves to prosecute the inquiry into the murder, and orders the people to be summoned. the suppliants arise from the altar, and a solemn chorus of the senators of thebes (in one of the most splendid lyrics of sophocles) chant the terrors of the plague--"that unarmed mars"--and implore the protection of the divine averters of destruction. oedipus then, addressing the chorus, demands their aid to discover the murderer, whom he solemnly excommunicates, and dooms, deprived of aid and intercourse, to waste slowly out a miserable existence; nay, if the assassin should have sought refuge in the royal halls, there too shall the vengeance be wreaked and the curse fall. "for i," continued oedipus, "i, who the sceptre which he wielded wield; i, who have mounted to his marriage bed; i, in whose children (had he issue known) his would have claimed a common brotherhood; now that the evil fate bath fallen o'er him-- i am the heir of that dead king's revenge, not less than if these lips had hailed him 'father!'" a few more sentences introduce to us the old soothsayer tiresias--for whom, at the instigation of creon, oedipus had sent. the seer answers the adjuration of the king with a thrilling and ominous burst-- "wo--wo!--how fearful is the gift of wisdom, when to the wise it bears no blessing!--wo!" the haughty spirit of oedipus breaks forth at the gloomy and obscure warnings of the prophet. his remonstrances grow into threats. in his blindness he even accuses tiresias himself of the murder of laius--and out speaks the terrible diviner: "ay--is it so? abide then by thy curse and solemn edict--never from this day hold human commune with these men or me; lo, where thou standest--lo, the land's polluter!" a dialogue of great dramatic power ensues. oedipus accuses tiresias of abetting his kinsman, creon, by whom he had been persuaded to send for the soothsayer, in a plot against his throne--and the seer, who explains nothing and threatens all things, departs with a dim and fearful prophecy. after a song from the chorus, in which are imbodied the doubt, the trouble, the terror which the audience may begin to feel--and here it may be observed, that with sophocles the chorus always carries on, not the physical, but the moral, progress of the drama [ ]--creon enters, informed of the suspicion against himself which oedipus had expressed. oedipus, whose whole spirit is disturbed by the weird and dark threats of tiresias, repeats the accusation, but wildly and feebly. his vain worldly wisdom suggests to him that creon would scarcely have asked him to consult tiresias, nor tiresias have ventured on denunciations so tremendous, had not the two conspired against him: yet a mysterious awe invades him--he presses questions on creon relative to the murder of laius, and seems more anxious to acquit himself than accuse another. while the princes contend, the queen, jocasta, enters. she chides their quarrel, learns from oedipus that tiresias had accused him of the murder of the deceased king, and, to convince him of the falseness of prophetic lore, reveals to him, that long since it was predicted that laius should be murdered by his son joint offspring of jocasta and himself. yet, in order to frustrate the prophecy, the only son of laius had been exposed to perish upon solitary and untrodden mountains, while, in after years, laius himself had fallen, in a spot where three roads met, by the hand of a stranger; so that the prophecy had not come to pass. at this declaration terror seizes upon oedipus. he questions jocasta eagerly and rapidly--the place where the murder happened, the time in which it occurred, the age and personal appearance of laius--and when he learns all, his previous arrogant conviction of innocence deserts him; and as he utters a horrid exclamation, jocasta fixes her eyes upon him, and "shudders as she gazes." [ ] he inquires what train accompanied laius--learns that there were five persons; that but one escaped; that on his return to thebes, seeing oedipus on the throne, the surviver had besought the favour to retire from the city. oedipus orders this witness of the murder to be sent for, and then proceeds to relate his own history. he has been taught to believe that polybus of corinth and merope of doris were his parents. but once at a banquet he was charged with being a supposititious child; the insult galled him, and he went to delphi to consult the oracle. it was predicted to him that he should commit incest with his mother, and that his father should fall by his hand. appalled and horror-stricken, he resolves to fly the possible fulfilment of the prophecy, and return no more to corinth. in his flight by the triple road described by jocasta he meets an old man in a chariot, with a guide or herald, and other servitors. they attempt to thrust him from the road--a contest ensues--he slays the old man and his train. could this be laius? can it be to the marriage couch of the man he slew that he has ascended? no, his fears are too credulous! he clings to a straw; the herdsman who had escaped the slaughter of laius and his attendants may prove that it was _not_ the king whom he encountered. jocasta sustains this hope--she cannot believe a prophecy--for it had been foretold that laius should fall by the hand of his son, and that son had long since perished on the mountains. the queen and oedipus retire within their palace; the chorus resume their strains; after which, jocasta reappears on her way to the temple of apollo, to offer sacrifice and prayer. at this time a messenger arrives to announce to oedipus the death of polybus, and the wish of the corinthians to elect oedipus to the throne! at these tidings jocasta is overjoyed. "predictions of the gods, where are ye now? lest by the son's doomed hand the sire should fall, the son became a wanderer on the earth, lo, not the son, but nature, gives the blow!" oedipus, summoned to the messenger, learns the news of his supposed father's death! it is a dread and tragic thought, but the pious oedipus is glad that his father is no more, since he himself is thus saved from parricide; yet the other part of the prediction haunts him. his mother!--she yet lives. he reveals to the messenger the prophecy and his terror. to cheer him, the messenger now informs him that he is not the son of merope and polybus. a babe had been found in the entangled forest-dells of cithaeron by a herdsman and slave of laius --he had given the infant to another--that other, the messenger who now tells the tale. transferred to the care of polybus and merope, the babe became to them as a son, for they were childless. jocasta hears--stunned and speechless--till oedipus, yet unconscious of the horrors still to come, turns to demand of her if she knew the herdsman who had found the child. then she gasps wildly out-- "whom speaks he of? be silent--heed it not-- blot it out from thy memory!--it is evil! oedipus. it cannot be--the clew is here; and i will trace it through that labyrinth--my birth. jocasta. by all the gods i warn thee; for the sake of thine own life beware; it is enough for me to hear and madden!" oedipus (suspecting only that the pride of his queen revolts from the thought of her husband's birth being proved base and servile) replies, "nay, nay, cheer thee! were i through three descents threefold a slave, my shame would not touch thee. jocasta. i do implore thee, this once obey me--this once. oedipus i will not! to truth i grope my way. jocasta. and yet what love speaks in my voice! thine ignorance is thy bliss. oedipus. a bliss that tortures! jocasta. miserable man! oh couldst thou never learn the thing thou art! oedipus. will no one quicken this slow herdsman's steps the unquestioned birthright of a royal name let this proud queen possess! jocasta. wo! wo! thou wretch! wo! my last word!--words are no more for me!" with this jocasta rushes from the scene. still oedipus misconstrues her warning; he ascribes her fears to the royalty of her spirit. for himself, fortune was his mother, and had blessed him; nor could the accident of birth destroy his inheritance from nature. the chorus give way to their hopes! their wise, their glorious oedipus might have been born a theban! the herdsman enters: like tiresias, he is loath to speak. the fiery king extorts his secret. oedipus is the son of laius and jocasta--at his birth the terrible prophecies of the pythian induced his own mother to expose him on the mountains--the compassion of the herdsman saved him--saved him to become the bridegroom of his mother, the assassin of his sire. the astonishing art with which, from step to step, the audience and the victim are led to the climax of the discovery, is productive of an interest of pathos and of terror which is not equalled by the greatest masterpieces of the modern stage [ ], and possesses that species of anxious excitement which is wholly unparalleled in the ancient. the discovery is a true catastrophe--the physical denouement is but an adjunct to the moral one. jocasta, on quitting the scene, had passed straight to the bridal-chamber, and there, by the couch from which had sprung a double and accursed progeny, perished by her own hands. meanwhile, the predestined parricide, bursting into the chamber, beheld, as the last object on earth, the corpse of his wife and mother! once more oedipus reappears, barred for ever from the light of day. in the fury of his remorse, he "had smote the balls of his own eyes," and the wise baffler of the sphinx, oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the illustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. but amid all the horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks forth. blind, powerless, excommunicated, creon, whom oedipus accused of murder, has now become his judge and his master. the great spirit, crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the "wisest of mankind" implores but two favours--to be thrust from the land an exile, and once more to embrace his children. even in translation the exquisite tenderness of this passage cannot altogether fail of its effect. "for my fate, let it pass! my children, creon! my sons--nay, they the bitter wants of life may master--they are men?--my girls--my darlings-- why, never sat i at my household board without their blessed looks--our very bread we brake together; thou'lt be kind to them for my sake, creon--and (oh, latest prayer!) let me but touch them--feel them with these hands, and pour such sorrow as may speak farewell o'er ills that must be theirs! by thy pure line-- for thin is pure--do this, sweet prince. methinks i should not miss these eyes, could i but touch them. what shall i say to move thee? sobs! and do i, oh do i hear my sweet ones? hast thou sent, in mercy sent, my children to my arms? speak--speak--i do not dream! creon. they are thy children; i would not shut thee from the dear delight in the old time they gave thee. oedipus. blessings on thee for this one mercy mayst thou find above a kinder god than i have. ye--where are ye? my children--come!--nearer and nearer yet," etc. the pathos of this scene is continued to the end; and the very last words oedipus utters as his children cling to him, implore that they at least may not be torn away. it is in this concluding scene that the art of the play is consummated; the horrors of the catastrophe, which, if a last impression, would have left behind a too painful and gloomy feeling, are softened down by this beautiful resort to the tenderest and holiest sources of emotion. and the pathos is rendered doubly effective, not only from the immediate contrast of the terror that preceded it, but from the masterly skill with which all display of the softer features in the character of oedipus is reserved to the close. in the breaking up of the strong mind and the daring spirit, when empire, honour, name, are all annihilated, the heart is seen, as it were, surviving the wrecks around it, and clinging for support to the affections. vii. in the "oedipus at coloneus," the blind king is presented to us, after the lapse of years, a wanderer over the earth, unconsciously taking his refuge in the grove of the furies [ ]--"the awful goddesses, daughters of earth and darkness." his young daughter, antigone, one of the most lovely creations of poetry, is his companion and guide; he is afterward joined by his other daughter, ismene, whose weak and selfish character is drawn in strong contrast to the heroism and devotion of antigone. the ancient prophecies that foretold his woes had foretold also his release. his last shelter and resting-place were to be obtained from the dread deities, and a sign of thunder, or earthquake, or lightning was to announce his parting hour. learning the spot to which his steps had been guided, oedipus solemnly feels that his doom approaches: thus, at the very opening of the poem, he stands before us on the verge of a mysterious grave. the sufferings which have bowed the parricide to a premature old age [ ] have not crushed his spirit; the softness and self-humiliation which were the first results of his awful affliction are passed away. he is grown once more vehement and passionate, from the sense of wrong; remorse still visits him, but is alternated with the yet more human feeling of resentment at the unjust severity of his doom [ ]. his sons, who, "by a word," might have saved him from the expulsion, penury, and wanderings he has undergone, had deserted his cause--had looked with indifferent eyes on his awful woes--had joined with creon to expel him from the theban land. they are the goneril and regan of the classic lear, as antigone is the cordelia on whom he leans--a cordelia he has never thrust from him. "when," says oedipus, in stern bitterness of soul, "when my soul boiled within me--when 'to die' was all my prayer--and death was sweetness, yea, had they but stoned me like a dog, i'd blessed them; then no man rose against me--but when time brought its slow comfort--when my wounds were scarred-- all my griefs mellow'd, and remorse itself judged my self-penance mightier than my sins, thebes thrust me from her breast, and they, my sons, my blood, mine offspring, from their father shrunk: a word of theirs had saved me--one small word-- they said it not--and lo! the wandering beggar!" in the mean while, during the exile of oedipus, strife had broken out between the brothers: eteocles, here represented as the younger, drove out polynices, and seized the throne; polynices takes refuge at argos, where he prepares war against the usurper: an oracle declares that success shall be with that party which oedipus joins, and a mysterious blessing is pronounced on the land which contains his bones. thus, the possession of this wild tool of fate--raised up in age to a dread and ghastly consequence--becomes the argument of the play, as his death must become the catastrophe. it is the deep and fierce revenge of oedipus that makes the passion of the whole. according to a sublime conception, we see before us the physical oedipus in the lowest state of destitution and misery--in rags, blindness, beggary, utter and abject impotence. but in the moral, oedipus is all the majesty of a power still royal. the oracle has invested one, so fallen and so wretched in himself, with the power of a god--the power to confer victory on the cause he adopts, prosperity on the land that becomes his tomb. with all the revenge of age, all the grand malignity of hatred, he clings to this shadow and relic of a sceptre. creon, aware of the oracle, comes to recall him to thebes. the treacherous kinsman humbles himself before his victim--he is the suppliant of the beggar, who defies and spurns him. creon avenges himself by seizing on antigone and ismene. nothing can be more dramatically effective than the scene in which these last props of his age are torn from the desolate old man. they are ultimately restored to him by theseus, whose amiable and lofty character is painted with all the partial glow of colouring which an athenian poet would naturally lavish on the athenian alfred. we are next introduced to polynices. he, like creon, has sought oedipus with the selfish motive of recovering his throne by means of an ally to whom the oracle promises victory. but there is in polynices the appearance of a true penitence, and a mingled gentleness and majesty in his bearing which interests us in his fate despite his faults, and which were possibly intended by sophocles to give a new interest to the plot of the "antigone," composed and exhibited long before. oedipus is persuaded by the benevolence of theseus, and the sweet intercession of antigone, to admit his son. after a chant from the chorus on the ills of old age [ ], polynices enters. he is struck with the wasted and miserable appearance of the old man, and bitterly reproaches his own desertion. "but since," he says, with almost a christian sentiment-- "since o'er each deed, upon the olympian throne, mercy sits joint presider with great jove, let her, oh father, also take her stand within thy soul--and judge me! the past sins yet have their cure--ah, would they had recall! why are you voiceless? speak to me, my father? turn not away--will you not answer me?" etc. oedipus retains his silence in spite of the prayers of his beloved antigone, and polynices proceeds to narrate the wrongs he has undergone from eteocles, and, warming with a young warrior's ardour, paints the array that he has mustered on his behalf--promises to restore oedipus to his palace--and, alluding to the oracle, throws himself on his father's pardon. then, at last, outspeaks oedipus, and from reproach bursts into curses. "and now you weep; you wept not at these woes until you wept your own. but i--i weep not. these things are not for tears, but for endurance. my son is like his sire--a parricide! toil, exile, beggary--daily bread doled out from stranger hands--these are your gifts, my son! my nurses, guardians--they who share the want, or earn the bread, are daughters; call them not women, for they to me are men. go to! thou art not mine--i do disclaim such issue. behold, the eyes of the avenging god are o'er thee! but their ominous light delays to blast thee yet. march on--march on--to thebes! not--not for thee, the city and the throne; the earth shall first be reddened with thy blood-- thy blood and his, thy foe--thy brother! curses! not for the first time summoned to my wrongs-- curses! i call ye back, and make ye now allies with this old man! * * * * * * yea, curses shall possess thy seat and throne, if antique justice o'er the laws of earth reign with the thunder-god. march on to ruin! spurned and disowned--the basest of the base-- and with thee bear this burden: o'er thine head i pour a prophet's doom; nor throne nor home waits on the sharpness of the levelled spear: thy very land of refuge hath no welcome; thine eyes have looked their last on hollow argos. death by a brother's hand--dark fratricide, murdering thyself a brother--shall be thine. yea, while i curse thee, on the murky deep of the primeval hell i call! prepare these men their home, dread tartarus! goddesses, whose shrines are round me--ye avenging furies! and thou, oh lord of battle, who hast stirred hate in the souls of brethren, hear me--hear me!-- and now, 'tis past!--enough!--depart and tell the theban people, and thy fond allies, what blessings, from his refuge with the furies, the blind old oedipus awards his sons!" [ ] as is usual with sophocles, the terrific strength of these execrations is immediately followed by a soft and pathetic scene between antigone and her brother. though crushed at first by the paternal curse, the spirit of polynices so far recovers its native courage that he will not listen to the prayer of his sister to desist from the expedition to thebes, and to turn his armies back to argos. "what," he says, "lead back an army that could deem i trembled!" yet he feels the mournful persuasion that his death is doomed; and a glimpse of the plot of the "antigone" is opened upon us by his prayer to his sister, that if he perish, they should lay him with due honours in the tomb. the exquisite loveliness of antigone's character touches even polynices, and he departs, saying, "with the gods rests the balance of our fate; but thee, at least--oh never upon thee may evil fall! thou art too good for sorrow!" the chorus resume their strains, when suddenly thunder is heard, and oedipus hails the sign that heralds him to the shades. nothing can be conceived more appalling than this omen. it seems as if oedipus had been spared but to curse his children and to die. he summons theseus, tells him that his fate is at hand, and that without a guide he himself will point out the spot where he shall rest. never may that spot be told--that secret and solemn grave shall be the charm of the land and a defence against its foes. oedipus then turns round, and the instinct within guides him as he gropes along. his daughters and theseus follow the blind man, amazed and awed. "hither," he says, "hither--by this way come--for this way leads the unseen conductor of the dead [ ]--and she whom shadows call their queen! [ ] oh light, sweet light, rayless to me--mine once, and even now i feel thee palpable, round this worn form, clinging in last embrace--i go to shroud the waning life in the eternal hades!" thus the stage is left to the chorus, and the mysterious fate of oedipus is recited by the nuntius, in verses which longinus has not extolled too highly. oedipus had led the way to a cavern, well known in legendary lore as the spot where perithous and theseus had pledged their faith, by the brazen steps which make one of the entrances to the infernal realms; "between which place and the thorician stone-- the hollow thorn, and the sepulchral pile he sat him down." and when he had performed libations from the stream, and laved, and decked himself in the funeral robes, jove thundered beneath the earth, and the old man's daughters, aghast with horror, fell at his knees with sobs and groans. "then o'er them as they wept, his hands he clasped, and 'oh my children,' said he, 'from this day ye have no more a father--all of me withers away--the burden and the toil of mine old age fall on ye nevermore. sad travail have ye home for me, and yet let one thought breathe a balm when i am gone-- the thought that none upon the desolate world loved you as i did; and in death i leave a happier life to you!' thus movingly, with clinging arms and passionate sobs, the three wept out aloud, until the sorrow grew into a deadly hush--nor cry nor wail starts the drear silence of the solitude. then suddenly a bodiless voice is heard and fear came cold on all. they shook with awe, and horror, like a wind, stirred up their hair. again, the voice--again--'ho! oedipus, why linger we so long? come--hither--come.'" oedipus then solemnly consigns his children to theseus, dismisses them, and theseus alone is left with the old man. "so groaning we depart--and when once more we turned our eyes to gaze, behold, the place knew not the man! the king alone was there, holding his spread hands o'er averted brows as if to shut from out the quailing gaze the horrid aspect of some ghastly thing that nature durst not look on. so we paused until the king awakened from the terror, and to the mother earth, and high olympus, seat of the gods, he breathed awe--stricken prayer but, how the old man perished, save the king, mortal can ne'er divine; for bolt, nor levin, nor blasting tempest from the ocean borne, was heard or seen; but either was he rapt aloft by wings divine, or else the shades, whose darkness never looked upon the sun, yawned in grim mercy, and the rent abyss ingulf'd the wanderer from the living world." such, sublime in its wondrous power, its appalling mystery, its dim, religious terror, is the catastrophe of the "oedipus at coloneus." the lines that follow are devoted to the lamentations of the daughters, and appear wholly superfluous, unless we can consider that sophocles desired to indicate the connexion of the "oedipus" with the "antigone," by informing us that the daughters of oedipus are to be sent to thebes at the request of antigone herself, who hopes, in the tender courage of her nature, that she may perhaps prevent the predicted slaughter of her brothers. vii. coming now to the tragedy of "antigone," we find the prophecy of oedipus has been fulfilled--the brothers have fallen by the hand of each other--the argive army has been defeated--creon has obtained the tyranny, and interdicts, on the penalty of death, the burial of polynices, whose corpse remains guarded and unhonoured. antigone, mindful of her brother's request to her in their last interview, resolves to brave the edict, and perform those rites so indispensably sacred in the eyes of a greek. she communicates her resolution to her sister ismene, whose character, still feeble and commonplace, is a perpetual foil to the heroism of antigone. she acts upon her resolutions, baffles the vigilant guards, buries the corpse. creon, on learning that his edict has been secretly disobeyed, orders the remains to be disinterred, and in a second attempt antigone is discovered, brought before him, and condemned to death. haemon, the son of creon, had been affianced to antigone. on the news of her sentence he seeks creon, and after a violent scene between the two, which has neither the power nor the dignity common to sophocles, departs with vague menaces. a short but most exquisite invocation to love from the chorus succeeds, and in this, it may be observed, the chorus express much left not represented in the action--they serve to impress on the spectator all the irresistible effects of the passion which the modern artist would seek to represent in some moving scene between antigone and haemon. the heroine herself now passes across the stage on her way to her dreadful doom, which is that of living burial in "the cavern of a rock." she thus addresses the chorus-- "ye, of the land wherein my fathers dwelt, behold me journeying to my latest bourne! time hath no morrow for these eyes. black orcus, whose court hath room for all, leads my lone steps, e'en while i live, to shadows. not for me the nuptial blessing or the marriage hymn: acheron, receive thy bride! (chorus.) honoured and mourned nor struck by slow disease or violent hand, thy steps glide to the grave! self-judged, like freedom, [ ] thou, above mortals gifted, shalt descend all living to the shades. antigone. methinks i have heard-- so legends go--how phrygian niobe (poor stranger) on the heights of sipylus mournfully died. the hard rock, like the tendrils o' the ivy, clung and crept unto her heart-- her, nevermore, dissolving into showers, pale snows desert; and from her sorrowful eyes, as from unfailing founts adown the cliffs, fall the eternal dews. like her, the god lulls me to sleep, and into stone!" afterward she adds in her beautiful lament, "that she has one comfort --that she shall go to the grave dear to her parents and her brother." the grief of antigone is in perfect harmony with her character--it betrays no repentance, no weakness--it is but the natural sorrow, of youth and womanhood, going down to that grave which had so little of hope in the old greek religion. in an antigone on our stage we might have demanded more reference to her lover; but the grecian heroine names him not, and alludes rather to the loss of the woman's lot of wedlock than the loss of the individual bridegroom. but it is not for that reason that we are to conclude, with m. schlegel and others, that the greek women knew not the sentiment of love. such a notion, that has obtained an unaccountable belief, i shall hereafter show to be at variance with all the poetry of the greeks--with their drama itself-- with their modes of life--and with the very elements of that human nature, which is everywhere the same. but sophocles, in the character of antigone, personifies duty, not passion. it is to this, her leading individuality, that whatever might weaken the pure and statue-like effect of the creation is sacrificed. as she was to her father, so is she to her brother. the sorrows and calamities of her family have so endeared them to her heart that she has room for little else. "formed," as she exquisitely says of herself, "to love, not to hate," [ ] she lives but to devote affections the most sacred to sad and pious tasks, and the last fulfilled, she has done with earth. when antigone is borne away, an august personage is presented to us, whose very name to us, who usually read the oedipus tyrannus before the antigone, is the foreteller of omen and doom. as in the oedipus tyrannus, tiresias the soothsayer appears to announce all the terrors that ensue--so now, at the crowning desolation of that fated house, he, the solemn and mysterious surviver of such dark tragedies, is again brought upon the stage. the auguries have been evil--birds battle with each other in the air--the flame will not mount from the sacrificial victim--and the altars and hearths are full of birds and dogs, gathering to their feast on the corpse of polynices. the soothsayer enjoins creon not to war against the dead, and to accord the rites of burial to the prince's body. on the obstinate refusal of creon, tiresias utters prophetic maledictions and departs. creon, whose vehemence of temper is combined with a feeble character, and strongly contrasts the mighty spirit of oedipus, repents, and is persuaded by the chorus to release antigone from her living prison, as well as to revoke the edict which denies sepulture to polynices. he quits the stage for that purpose, and the chorus burst into one of their most picturesque odes, an invocation to bacchus, thus inadequately presented to the english reader. "oh thou, whom earth by many a title hails, son of the thunder-god, and wild delight of the wild theban maid! whether on far italia's shores obey'd, or where eleusis joins thy solemn rites with the great mother's [ ], in mysterious vales-- bacchus in bacchic thebes best known, thy thebes, who claims the thyads as her daughters; fast by the fields with warriors dragon-sown, and where ismenus rolls his rapid waters. it saw thee, the smoke, on the horned height--[ ] it saw thee, and broke with a leap into light; where roam corycian nymphs the glorious mountain, and all melodious flows the old castalian fountain vocal with echoes wildly glad, the nysian steeps with ivy clad, and shores with vineyards greenly blooming, proclaiming, steep to shore, that bacchus evermore is guardian of the race, where he holds his dwelling-place with her [ ], beneath the breath of the thunder's glowing death, in the glare of her glory consuming. oh now with healing steps along the slope of loved parnassus, or in gliding motion, o'er the far-sounding deep euboean ocean-- come! for we perish--come!--our lord and hope! leader of the stately choir of the great stars, whose very breath is light, who dost with hymns inspire voices, oh youngest god, that sound by night; come, with thy maenad throng, come with the maidens of thy naxian isle, who chant their lord bacchus--all the while maddening, with mystic dance, the solemn midnight long!" at the close of the chorus the nuntius enters to announce the catastrophe, and eurydice, the wife of creon, disturbed by rumours within her palace, is made an auditor of the narration. creon and his train, after burying polynices, repair to the cavern in which antigone had been immured. they hear loud wailings within "that unconsecrated chamber"--it is the voice of haemon. creon recoils--the attendants enter--within the cavern they behold antigone, who, in the horror of that deathlike solitude, had strangled herself with the zone of her robe; and there was her lover lying beside, his arms clasped around her waist. creon at length advances, perceives his son, and conjures him to come forth. "then, glaring on his father with wild eyes, the son stood dumb, and spat upon his face, and clutched the unnatural sword--the father fled, and, wroth, as with the arm that missed a parent, the wretched man drove home unto his breast the abhorrent steel; yet ever, while dim sense struggled within the fast-expiring soul-- feebler, and feebler still, his stiffening arms clung to that virgin form--and every gasp of his last breath with bloody dews distained the cold white cheek that was his pillow. so lies death embracing death!" [ ] in the midst of this description, by a fine stroke of art, euridice, the mother of haemon, abruptly and silently quits the stage [ ]. when next we hear of her, she has destroyed herself, with her last breath cursing her husband as the murderer of her child. the end of the play leaves creon the surviver. he himself does not perish, for he himself has never excited our sympathies [ ]. he is punished through his son and wife--they dead, our interest ceases in him, and to add his death to theirs and to that of antigone would be bathos. viii. in the tragedy of "electra," the character of the heroine stands out in the boldest contrast to the creation of the antigone; both are endowed with surpassing majesty and strength of nature--they are loftier than the daughters of men, their very loveliness is of an age when gods were no distant ancestors of kings--when, as in the early sculptors of pallas, or even of aphrodite, something of the severe and stern was deemed necessary to the realization of the divine; and the beautiful had not lost the colossal proportions of the sublime. but the strength and heroism of antigone is derived from love--love, sober, serene, august--but still love. electra, on the contrary, is supported and exalted above her sex by the might of her hatred. her father, "the king of men," foully murdered in his palace --herself compelled to consort with his assassins--to receive from their hands both charity and insult--the adulterous murderer on her father's throne, and lord of her father's marriage bed [ ]--her brother a wanderer and an outcast. such are the thoughts unceasingly before her!--her heart and soul have for years fed upon the bitterness of a resentment, at once impotent and intense, and nature itself has turned to gall. she sees not in clytemnestra a mother, but the murderess of a father. the doubt and the compunction of the modern hamlet are unknown to her more masculine spirit. she lives on but in the hope of her brother's return and of revenge. the play opens with the appearance of orestes, pylades, and an old attendant--arrived at break of day at the habitation of the pelopidae--"reeking with blood" --the seats of agamemnon. orestes, who had been saved in childhood by his sister from the designs of clytemnestra and aegisthus, has now returned in manhood. it is agreed that, in order to lull all suspicion in the royal adulterers, a false account of the death of orestes by an accident in the pythian games shall be given to clytemnestra; and orestes and pylades themselves are afterward to be introduced in the character of phocians, bearing the ashes of the supposed dead. meanwhile the two friends repair to the sepulchre of agamemnon to offer libations, etc. electra then appears, indulges her indignant lamentations at her lot, and consoles herself with the hope of her brother's speedy return. she is joined by her sister chrysothemis, who is bearing sepulchral offerings to the tomb of agamemnon; and in this interview sophocles, with extraordinary skill and deep knowledge of human nature, contrives to excite our admiration and sympathy for the vehement electra by contrasting her with the weak and selfish chrysothemis. her very bitterness against her mother is made to assume the guise of a solemn duty to her father. her unfeminine qualities rise into courage and magnanimity--she glories in the unkindness and persecution she meets with from clytemnestra and aegisthus--they are proofs of her reverence to the dead. woman as she is, she is yet the daughter of a king--she cannot submit to a usurper--"she will not, add cowardice to misery." chrysothemis informs electra that on the return of aegisthus it is resolved to consign her to a vault "where she may chant her woes unheard." electra learns the meditated sentence undismayed--she will not moderate her unwelcome wo--"she will not be a traitoress to those she loves." but a dream has appalled clytemnestra--agamemnon has appeared to her as in life. in the vision he seemed to her to fix his sceptre on the soil, whence it sprouted up into a tree that overshadowed the whole land. disquieted and conscience-stricken, she now sends chrysothemis with libations to appease the manes of the dead. electra adjures chrysothemis not to render such expiations to scatter them to the winds or on the dust--to let them not approach the resting-place of the murdered king. chrysothemis promises to obey the injunction, and departs. a violent and powerful scene between clytemnestra and electra ensues, when the attendant enters (as was agreed on) to announce the death of orestes. in this recital he portrays the ceremony of the pythian races in lines justly celebrated, and which, as an animated and faithful picture of an exhibition so renowned, the reader may be pleased to see, even in a feeble and cold translation. orestes had obtained five victories in the first day--in the second he starts with nine competitors in the chariot-race--an achaean, a spartan, two libyans--he himself with thessalian steeds--a sixth from aetolia, a magnesian, an enian, an athenian, and a boeotian complete the number. "they took their stand where the appointed judges had cast their lots, and ranged the rival cars; rang out the brazen trump! away they bound, cheer the hot steeds and shake the slackened reins as with a body the large space is filled with the huge clangour of the rattling cars: high whirl aloft the dust-clouds; blent together each presses each--and the lash rings--and loud snort the wild steeds, and from their fiery breath, along their manes and down the circling wheels, scatter the flaking foam. orestes still, ay, as he swept around the perilous pillar last in the course, wheel'd in the rushing axle, the left rein curbed--that on the dexter hand flung loose. so on erect the chariots rolled! sudden the aenian's fierce and headlong steeds broke from the bit--and, as the seventh time now the course was circled, on the libyan car dash'd their wild fronts: then order changed to ruin: car crashed on car--the wide crissaean plain was, sealike, strewn with wrecks: the athenian saw, slackened his speed, and, wheeling round the marge, unscathed and skilful, in the midmost space, left the wild tumult of that tossing storm. behind, orestes, hitherto the last, had yet kept back his coursers for the close; now one sole rival left--on, on he flew, and the sharp sound of the impelling scourge rang in the keen ears of the flying steeds. he nears--he reaches--they are side by side now one--the other--by a length the victor. the courses all are past--the wheels erect all safe--when as the hurrying coursers round the fatal pillar dash'd, the wretched boy slackened the left rein; on the column's edge crash'd the frail axle--headlong from the car, caught and all meshed within the reins he fell; and masterless, the mad steeds raged along! loud from that mighty multitude arose a shriek--a shout! but yesterday such deeds to-day such doom! now whirled upon the earth, now his limbs dash'd aloft, they dragged him--those wild horses--till all gory from the wheels released--and no man, not his nearest friends, could in that mangled corpse have traced orestes. they laid the body on the funeral pyre, and while we speak, the phocian strangers bear, in a small, brazen, melancholy urn, that handful of cold ashes to which all the grandeur of the beautiful hath shrunk. hither they bear him--in his father's land to find that heritage--a tomb!" it is much to be regretted that this passage, so fine in the original, is liable to one great objection--it has no interest as connected with the play, because the audience know that orestes is not dead; and though the description of the race retains its animation, the report of the catastrophe loses the terror of reality, and appears but a highly-coloured and elaborate falsehood. the reader will conceive the lamentations of electra and the fearful joy of clytemnestra at a narrative by which the one appears to lose a brother and a friend--the other a son and an avenging foe. chrysothemis joyfully returns to announce, that by the tomb of agamemnon she discovers a lock of hair; libations yet moisten the summit of the mound, and flowers of every hue are scattered over the grave. "these," she thinks, "are signs that orestes is returned." electra, informing her of the fatal news, proposes that they, women as they are, shall attempt the terrible revenge which their brother can no longer execute. when chrysothemis recoils and refuses, electra still nurses the fell design. the poet has more than once, and now again with judgment, made us sensible of the mature years of electra [ ]; she is no passionate, wavering, and inexperienced girl, but the eldest born of the house; the guardian of the childhood of its male heir; unwedded and unloving, no soft matron cares, no tender maiden affections, have unbent the nerves of her stern, fiery, and concentrated soul. year after year has rolled on to sharpen her hatred--to disgust her with the present--to root her to one bloody memory of the past--to sour and freeze up the gentle thoughts of womanhood--to unsex "and fill her from the crown to the toe, topful of direst cruelty--make thick her blood stop up the access and passage to remorse," [ ] and fit her for one crowning deed, for which alone the daughter of the king of men lives on. at length the pretended phocians enter, bearing the supposed ashes of orestes; the chief of the train addresses himself to electra, and this is the most dramatic and touching scene in the whole tragedy. when the urn containing, as she believes, the dust of her brother, is placed in the hands of electra, we can well overleap time and space, and see before us the great actor who brought the relics of his own son upon the stage, and shed no mimic sorrows [ ]--we can well picture the emotions that circle round the vast audience--pity itself being mingled with the consciousness to which the audience alone are admitted, that lamentation will soon be replaced by joy, and that the living orestes is before his sister. it is by a most subtle and delicate art that sophocles permits this struggle between present pain and anticipated pleasure, and carries on the passion of the spectators to wait breathlessly the moment when orestes shall be discovered. we now perceive why the poet at once, in the opening of the play, announced to us the existence and return of orestes--why he disdained the vulgar source of interest, the gross suspense we should have felt, if we had shared the ignorance of electra, and not been admitted to the secret we impatiently long to be communicated to her. in this scene, our superiority to electra, in the knowledge we possess, refines and softens our compassion, blending it with hope. and most beautifully here does sophocles remove far from us the thought of the hard hatred that hitherto animates the mourner--the strong, proud spirit is melted away--the woman and the sister alone appear. he whom she had loved more dearly than a mother--whom she had nursed, and saved, and prayed for, is "a nothing" in her hands; and the last rites it had not been hers to pay. he had been "by strangers honoured and by strangers mourned." all things had vanished with him--"vanished in a day"--"vanished as by a hurricane"--she is left with her foes alone. "admit me" (she cries), "to thy refuge--make room for me in thy home." in these lamentations, the cold, classic drama seems to warm into actual life. art, exquisite because invisible, unites us at once with imperishable nature--we are no longer delighted with poetry--we are weeping with truth. at length orestes reveals himself, and now the plot draws to its catastrophe. clytemnestra is alone in her house, preparing a caldron for the burial; electra and the chorus are on the stage; the son--the avenger, is within; suddenly the cries of clytemnestra are heard. again--again! orestes re-enters a parricide! [ ] he retires as aegisthus is seen approaching; and the adulterous usurper is now presented to us for the first and last time--the crowning victim of the sacrifice. he comes flushed with joy and triumph. he has heard that the dreaded orestes is no more. electra entertains him a few moments with words darkly and exultingly ambiguous. he orders the doors to be thrown open, that all argos and mycenae may see the remains of his sole rival for the throne. the scene opens. on the threshold (where, with the greeks, the corpse of the dead was usually set out to view) lies a body covered with a veil or pall. orestes (the supposed phocian) stands beside. "aegisthus. great jove! a grateful spectacle!--if thus may it be said unsinning; yet if she, the awful nemesis, be nigh and hear, i do recall the sentence! raise the pall. the dead was kindred to me, and shall know a kinsman's sorrow. orestes. lift thyself the pall; not mine, but thine, the office to survey that which lies mute beneath, and to salute, lovingly sad, the dead one. aegisthus. be it so-- it is well said. go thou and call the queen: is she within? orestes. look not around for her-- she is beside thee!" aegisthus lifts the pall, and beholds the body of clytemnestra! he knows his fate at once. he knows that orestes is before him. he attempts to speak. the fierce electra cuts him short, and orestes, with stern solemnity, conducts him from the stage to the spot on which aegisthus had slain agamemnon, so that the murderer might die by the son's hand in the place where the father fell. thus artistically is the catastrophe not lessened in effect, but heightened, by removing the deed of death from the scene--the poetical justice, in the calm and premeditated selection of the place of slaughter, elevates what on the modern stage would be but a spectacle of physical horror into the deeper terror and sublimer gloom of a moral awe; and vindictive murder, losing its aspect, is idealized and hallowed into religious sacrifice. ix. of the seven plays left to us, "the trachiniae" is usually considered the least imbued with the genius of sophocles; and schlegel has even ventured on the conjecture, singularly destitute of even plausible testimony, that sophocles himself may not be the author. the plot is soon told. the play is opened by deianira, the wife of hercules, who indulges in melancholy reflections on the misfortunes of her youth, and the continual absence of her husband, of whom no tidings have been heard for months. she soon learns from her son, hyllus, that hercules is said to be leading an expedition into euboea; and our interest is immediately excited by deianira's reply, which informs us that oracles had foretold that this was to be the crisis [ ] in the life of hercules--that he was now to enjoy rest from his labours, either in a peaceful home or in the grave; and she sends hyllus to join his father, share his enterprise and fate. the chorus touchingly paint the anxious love of deianira in the following lines: "thou, whom the starry-spangled night did lull into the sleep from which--her journey done her parting steps awake thee--beautiful fountain of flame, oh sun! say, on what seagirt strand, or inland shore (for earth is bared before thy solemn gaze), in orient asia, or where milder rays tremble on western waters, wandereth he whom bright alcmena bore? ah! as some bird within a lonely nest the desolate wife puts sleep away with tears; and ever ills to be haunting the absence with dim hosts of fears, fond fancy shapes from air dark prophets of the breast." in her answer to the virgin chorus, deianira weaves a beautiful picture of maiden youth as a contrast to the cares and anxieties of wedded life: "youth pastures in a valley of its own; the scorching sun, the rains and winds of heaven, mar not the calm--yet virgin of all care; but ever with sweet joys it buildeth up the airy halls of life." deianira afterward receives fresh news of hercules. she gives way to her joy. lichas, the herald, enters, and confides to her charge some maidens whom the hero had captured. deianira is struck with compassion for their lot, and with admiration of the noble bearing of one of them, iole. she is about to busy herself in preparation for their comfort, when she learns that iole is her rival--the beloved mistress of hercules. the jealousy evinced by deianira is beautifully soft and womanly [ ]. even in uttering a reproach on hercules, she says she cannot feel anger with him, yet how can she dwell in the same house with a younger and fairer rival; "she in whose years the flower that fades in mine opens the leaves of beauty." her affection, her desire to retain the love of the hero, suggests to her remembrance a gift she had once received from a centaur who had fallen by the shaft of hercules. the centaur had assured her that the blood from his wound, if preserved, would exercise the charm of a filter over the heart of hercules, and would ever recall and fix upon her his affection. she had preserved the supposed charm--she steeps with it a robe that she purposes to send to hercules as a gift; but deianira, in this fatal resolve, shows all the timidity and sweetness of her nature; she even questions if it be a crime to regain the heart of her husband; she consults the chorus, who advise the experiment (and here, it may be observed, that this is skilfully done, for it conveys the excuse of deianira, the chorus being, as it were, the representative of the audience). accordingly, she sends the garment by lichas. scarce has the herald gone, ere deianira is terrified by a strange phenomenon: a part of the wool with which the supposed filter had been applied to the garment was thrown into the sunlight, upon which it withered away--"crumbling like sawdust"--while on the spot where it fell a sort of venomous foam froths up. while relating this phenomenon to the chorus, her son, hyllus, returns [ ], and relates the agonies of his father under the poisoned garment: he had indued the robe on the occasion of solemn sacrifice, and all was rejoicing, when, "as from the sacred offering and the pile the flame broke forth," the poison began to work, the tunic clung to the limbs of the hero, glued as if by the artificer, and, in his agony and madness, hercules dashes lichas, who brought him the fatal gift, down the rock, and is now on his way home. on hearing these news and the reproaches of her son, deianira steals silently away, and destroys herself upon the bridal-bed. the remainder of the play is very feeble. hercules is represented in his anguish, which is but the mere raving of physical pain; and after enjoining his son to marry iole (the innocent cause of his own sufferings), and to place him yet living upon his funeral pyre, the play ends. the beauty of the "trachiniae" is in detached passages, in some exquisite bursts by the chorus, and in the character of deianira, whose artifice to regain the love of her consort, unhappily as it terminates, is redeemed by a meekness of nature, a delicacy of sentiment, and an anxious, earnest, unreproachful devotion of conjugal love, which might alone suffice to show the absurdity of modern declamations on the debasement of women, and the absence of pure and true love in that land from which sophocles drew his experience. x. the "ajax" is far superior to the "trachiniae." the subject is one that none but a greek poet could have thought of or a greek audience have admired. the master-passion of a greek was emulation-- the subject of the "ajax" is emulation defeated. he has lost to ulysses the prize of the arms of achilles, and the shame of being vanquished has deprived him of his senses. in the fury of madness he sallies from his tent at night--slaughters the flocks, in which his insanity sees the greeks, whose award has galled and humbled him--and supposes he has slain the atridae and captured ulysses. it is in this play that sophocles has, to a certain extent, attempted that most effective of all combinations in the hands of a master--the combination of the ludicrous and the terrible [ ]: as the chorus implies, "it is to laugh and to weep." but when the scene, opening, discovers ajax sitting amid the slaughtered victims-- when that haughty hero awakens from his delirium--when he is aware that he has exposed himself to the mockery and derision of his foes-- the effect is almost too painful even for tragedy. in contrast to ajax is the soothing and tender tecmessa. the women of sophocles are, indeed, gifted with an astonishing mixture of majesty and sweetness. after a very pathetic farewell with his young son, ajax affects to be reconciled to his lot, disguises the resolution he has formed, and by one of those artful transitions of emotion which at once vary and heighten interest on the stage, the chorus, before lamenting, bursts into a strain of congratulation and joy. the heavy affliction has passed away--ajax is restored. the nuntius arrives from the camp. calchas, the soothsayer, has besought teucer, the hero's brother, not to permit ajax to quit his tent that day, for on that day only minerva persecutes him; and if he survive it, he may yet be preserved and prosper. but ajax has already wandered away, none know whither. tecmessa hastens in search of him, and, by a very rare departure from the customs of the greek stage, the chorus follow. ajax appears again. his passions are now calm and concentrated, but they lead him on to death. he has been shamed, dishonoured--he has made himself a mockery to his foes. nobly to live or nobly to die is the sole choice of a brave man. it is characteristic of the greek temperament, that the personages of the greek poetry ever bid a last lingering and half-reluctant farewell to the sun. there is a magnificent fulness of life in those children of the beautiful west; the sun is to them as a familiar friend--the affliction or the terror of hades is in the thought that its fields are sunless. the orb which animated their temperate heaven, which ripened their fertile earth, in which they saw the type of eternal youth, of surpassing beauty, of incarnate poetry--human in its associations, and yet divine in its nature--is equally beloved and equally to be mourned by the maiden tenderness of antigone or the sullen majesty of ajax. in a chaldaean poem the hero would have bid farewell to the stars! it is thus that ajax concludes his celebrated soliloquy. "and thou that mak'st high heaven thy chariot-course, oh sun--when gazing on my father-land, draw back thy golden rein, and tell my woes to the old man, my father--and to her who nursed me at her bosom--my poor mother! there will be wailing through the echoing walls when--but away with thoughts like these!--the hour brings on the ripening deed. death, death, look on me! did i say death?--it was a waste of words; we shall be friends hereafter. 'tis the day, present and breathing round me, and the car of the sweet sun, that never shall again receive my greeting!--henceforth time is sunless, and day a thing that is not! beautiful light, my salamis--my country--and the floor of my dear household hearth--and thou, bright athens, thou--for thy sons and i were boys together-- fountains and rivers, and ye trojan plains, i loved ye as my fosterers--fare ye well! take in these words, the last earth hears from ajax-- all else unspoken, in a spectre land i'll whisper to the dead!" ajax perishes on his sword--but the interest of the play survives him. for with the greeks, burial rather than death made the great close of life. teucer is introduced to us; the protector of the hero's remains and his character, at once fierce and tender, is a sketch of extraordinary power. agamemnon, on the contrary--also not presented to us till after the death of ajax--is but a boisterous tyrant [ ]. finally, by the generous intercession of ulysses, who redeems his character from the unfavourable conception we formed of him at the commencement of the play, the funeral rites are accorded, and a didactic and solemn moral from the chorus concludes the whole. xi. the "philoctetes" has always been ranked by critics among the most elaborate and polished of the tragedies of sophocles. in some respects it deserves the eulogies bestowed on it. but one great fault in the conception will, i think, be apparent on the simple statement of the plot. philoctetes, the friend and armour-bearer of hercules, and the heir of that hero's unerring shafts and bow, had, while the grecian fleet anchored at chryse (a small isle in the aegaean), been bitten in the foot by a serpent; the pain of the wound was insufferable--the shrieks and groans of philoctetes disturbed the libations and sacrifices of the greeks. and ulysses and diomed, when the fleet proceeded, left him, while asleep, on the wild and rocky solitudes of lemnos. there, till the tenth year of the trojan siege, he dragged out an agonizing life. the soothsayer, helenus, then declared that troy could not fall till philoctetes appeared in the grecian camp with the arrows and bow of hercules. ulysses undertakes to effect this object, and, with neoptolemus (son of achilles), departs for lemnos. here the play opens. a wild and desolate shore--a cavern with two mouths (so that in winter there might be a double place to catch the sunshine, and in summer a twofold entrance for the breeze), and a little fountain of pure water, designate the abode of philoctetes. agreeably to his character, it is by deceit and stratagem that ulysses is to gain his object. neoptolemus is to dupe him whom he has never seen with professions of friendship and offers of services, and to snare away the consecrated weapons. neoptolemus--whose character is a sketch which shakspeare alone could have bodied out--has all the generous ardour and honesty of youth, but he has also its timid irresolution--its docile submission to the great--its fear of the censure of the world. he recoils from the base task proposed to him; he would prefer violence to fraud; yet he dreads lest, having undertaken the enterprise, his refusal to act should be considered treachery to his coadjutor. it is with a deep and melancholy wisdom that ulysses, who seems to comtemplate his struggles with compassionate and not displeased superiority, thus attempts to reconcile the young man: "son of a noble sire! i too, in youth, had thy plain speech and thine impatient arm: but a stern test is time! i have lived to see that among men the tools of power and empire are subtle words--not deeds." neoptolemus is overruled. ulysses withdraws, philoctetes appears. the delight of the lonely wretch on hearing his native language; on seeing the son of achilles--his description of his feelings when he first found himself abandoned in the desert--his relation of the hardships he has since undergone, are highly pathetic. he implores neoptolemus to bear him away, and when the youth consents, he bursts into an exclamation of joy, which, to the audience, in the secret of the perfidy to be practised on him, must have excited the most lively emotions. the characteristic excellence of sophocles is, that in his most majestic creations he always contrives to introduce the sweetest touches of humanity.--philoctetes will not even quit his miserable desert until he has returned to his cave to bid it farewell--to kiss the only shelter that did not deny a refuge to his woes. in the joy of his heart he thinks, poor dupe, that he has found faith in man--in youth. he trusts the arrows and the bow to the hand of neoptolemus. then, as he attempts to crawl along, the sharp agony of his wound completely overmasters him. he endeavours in vain to stifle his groans; the body conquers the mind. this seems to me, as i shall presently again observe, the blot of the play; it is a mere exhibition of physical pain. the torture exhausts, till insensibility or sleep comes over him. he lies down to rest, and the young man watches over him. the picture is striking. neoptolemus, at war with himself, does not seize the occasion. philoctetes wakes. he is ready to go on board; he implores and urges instant departure. neoptolemus recoils-- the suspicions of philoctetes are awakened; he thinks that this stranger, too, will abandon him. at length the young man, by a violent effort, speaks abruptly out, "thou must sail to troy--to the greeks--the atridae." "the greeks--the atridae!" the betrayers of philoctetes--those beyond pardon--those whom for ten years he has pursued with the curses of a wronged, and deserted, and solitary spirit. "give me back," he cries, "my bow and arrows." and when neoptolemus refuses, he pours forth a torrent of reproach. the son of the truth--telling achilles can withstand no longer. he is about to restore the weapons, when ulysses rushes on the stage and prevents him. at length, the sufferer is to be left--left once more alone in the desert. he cannot go with his betrayers--he cannot give glory and conquest to his inhuman foes; in the wrath of his indignant heart even the desert is sweeter than the grecian camp. and how is he to sustain himself without his shafts! famine adds a new horror to his dreary solitude, and the wild beasts may now pierce into his cavern: but their cruelty would be mercy! his contradictory and tempestuous emotions, as the sailors that compose the chorus are about to depart, are thus told. the chorus entreat him to accompany them. phil. begone. chor. it is a friendly bidding--we obey-- come, let us go. to ship, my comrades. phil. no-- no, do not go--by the great jove, who hears men's curses--do not go. chor. be calm. phil. sweet strangers! in mercy, leave me not. * * * * * * chor. but now you bade us! phil. ay--meet cause for chiding, that a poor desperate wretch, maddened with pain, should talk as madmen do! chor. come, then, with us. phil. never! oh--never! hear me--not if all the lightnings of the thunder-god were made allies with you, to blast me! perish troy, and all beleaguered round its walls--yea; all who had the heart to spurn a wounded wretch; but, but--nay--yes--one prayer, one boon accord me. chor. what wouldst thou have? phil. a sword, an axe, a something; so it can strike, no matter! chor. nay--for what? phil. what! for this hand to hew me off this head-- these limbs! to death, to solemn death, at last my spirit calls me. chor. why? phil. to seek my father. chor. on earth? phil. in hades. having thus worked us up to the utmost point of sympathy with the abandoned philoctetes, the poet now gradually sheds a gentler and holier light over the intense gloom to which we had been led. neoptolemus, touched with generous remorse, steals back to give the betrayed warrior his weapons--he is watched by the vigilant ulysses-- an angry altercation takes place between them. ulysses, finding he cannot intimidate, prudently avoids personal encounter with the son of achilles, and departs to apprize the host of the backsliding of his comrade.--a most beautiful scene, in which neoptolemus restores the weapons to philoctetes--a scene which must have commanded the most exquisite tears and the most rapturous applauses of the audience, ensues; and, finally, the god so useful to the ancient poets brings all things, contrary to the general rule of aristotle [ ], to a happy close. hercules appears and induces his former friend to accompany neoptolemus to the grecian camp, where his wound shall be healed.. the farewell of philoctetes to his cavern--to the nymphs of the meadows--to the roar of the ocean, whose spray the south wind dashed through his rude abode--to the lycian stream and the plain of lemnos--is left to linger on the ear like a solemn hymn, in which the little that is mournful only heightens the majestic sweetness of all that is musical. the dramatic art in the several scenes of this play sophocles has never excelled, and scarcely equalled. the contrast of character in ulysses and neoptolemus has in it a reality, a human strength and truth, that is more common to the modern than the ancient drama. but still the fault of the story is partly that the plot rests upon a base and ignoble fraud, and principally that our pity is appealed to by the coarse sympathy with physical pain: the rags that covered the sores, the tainted corruption of the ulcers, are brought to bear, not so much on the mind as on the nerves; and when the hero is represented as shrinking with corporeal agony--the blood oozing from his foot, the livid sweat rolling down the brow--we sicken and turn away from the spectacle; we have no longer that pleasure in our own pain which ought to be the characteristic of true tragedy. it is idle to vindicate this error by any dissimilarity between ancient and modern dramatic art. as nature, so art, always has some universal and permanent laws. longinus rightly considers pathos a part of the sublime, for pity ought to elevate us; but there is nothing to elevate us in the noisome wounds, even of a mythical hero; our human nature is too much forced back into itself--and a proof that in this the ancient art did not differ from the modern, is in the exceeding rarity with which bodily pain is made the instrument of compassion with the greek tragedians. the philoctetes and the hercules are among the exceptions that prove the rule. [ ] xii. another drawback to our admiration of the philoctetes is in the comparison it involuntarily courts with the prometheus of aeschylus. both are examples of fortitude under suffering--of the mind's conflict with its fate. in either play a dreary waste, a savage solitude, constitute the scene. but the towering sublimity of the prometheus dwarfs into littleness every image of hero or demigod with which we contrast it. what are the chorus of mariners, and the astute ulysses, and the boyish generosity of neoptolemus--what is the lonely cave on the shores of lemnos--what the high-hearted old warrior, with his torturing wound and his sacred bow--what are all these to the vast titan, whom the fiends chain to the rock beneath which roll the rivers of hell, for whom the daughters of ocean are ministers, to whose primeval birth the gods of olympus are the upstarts of a day, whose soul is the treasure-house of a secret which threatens the realm of heaven, and for whose unimaginable doom earth reels to its base, all the might of divinity is put forth, and hades itself trembles as it receives its indomitable and awful guest! yet, as i have before intimated, it is the very grandeur of aeschylus that must have made his poems less attractive on the stage than those of the humane and flexible sophocles. no visible representation can body forth his thoughts--they overpower the imagination, but they do not come home to our household and familiar feelings. in the contrast between the "philoctetes" and the "prometheus" is condensed the contrast between aeschylus and sophocles. they are both poets of the highest conceivable order; but the one seems almost above appeal to our affections--his tempestuous gloom appals the imagination, the vivid glare of his thoughts pierces the innermost recesses of the intellect, but it is only by accident that he strikes upon the heart. the other, in his grandest flights, remembers that men make his audience, and seems to feel as if art lost the breath of its life when aspiring beyond the atmosphere of human intellect and human passions. the difference between the creations of aeschylus and sophocles is like the difference between the satan of milton and the macbeth of shakspeare. aeschylus is equally artful with sophocles--it is the criticism of ignorance that has said otherwise. but there is this wide distinction--aeschylus is artful as a dramatist to be read, sophocles as a dramatist to be acted. if we get rid of actors, and stage, and audience, aeschylus will thrill and move us no less than sophocles, through a more intellectual if less passionate medium. a poem may be dramatic, yet not theatrical--may have all the effects of the drama in perusal, but by not sufficiently enlisting the skill of the actor--nay, by soaring beyond the highest reach of histrionic capacities, may lose those effects in representation. the storm in "lear" is a highly dramatic agency when our imagination is left free to conjure up the angry elements, "bid the winds blow the earth into the sea, or swell the curled waters." but a storm on the stage, instead of exceeding, so poorly mimics the reality, that it can never realize the effect which the poet designs, and with which the reader is impressed. so is it with supernatural and fanciful creations, especially of the more delicate and subtle kind. the ariel of the "tempest," the fairies of the "midsummer night's dream," and the oceanides of the "prometheus," are not to be represented by human shapes. we cannot say that they are not dramatic, but they are not theatrical. we can sympathize with the poet, but not with the actor. for the same reason, in a lesser degree, all creations, even of human character, that very highly task the imagination, that lift the reader wholly out of actual experience, and above the common earth, are comparatively feeble when reduced to visible forms. the most metaphysical plays of shakspeare are the least popular in representation. thus the very genius of aeschylus, that kindles us in the closet, must often have militated against him on the stage. but in sophocles all--even the divinities themselves-- are touched with humanity; they are not too subtle or too lofty to be submitted to mortal gaze. we feel at once that on the stage sophocles ought to have won the prize from aeschylus; and, as a proof of this, if we look at the plays of each, we see that scarcely any of the great characters of aeschylus could have called into sufficient exercise the powers of an actor. prometheus on his rock, never changing even his position, never absent from the scene, is denied all the relief, the play and mobility, that an actor needs. his earthly representative could be but a grand reciter. in the "persians," not only the theatrical, but the dramatic effect is wanting--it is splendid poetry put into various mouths, but there is no collision of passions, no surprise, no incident, no plot, no rapid dialogue in which words are but the types of emotions. in the "suppliants" garrick could have made nothing of pelasgus. in the "seven before thebes" there are not above twenty or thirty lines in the part of eteocles in which the art of the actor could greatly assist the genius of the poet. in the' trilogy of the "agamemnon," the "choephori," and the "orestes," written in advanced years, we may trace the contagious innovation of sophocles; but still, even in these tragedies, there is no part so effective in representation as those afforded by the great characters of sophocles. in the first play the hypocrisy and power of clytemnestra would, it is true, have partially required and elicited the talents of the player; but agamemnon himself is but a thing of pageant, and the splendid bursts of cassandra might have been effectively uttered by a very inferior histrionic artist. in the second play, in the scene between orestes and his mother, and in the gathering madness of orestes, the art of the poet would unquestionably task to the uttermost the skill of the performer. but in the last play (the furies), perhaps the sublimest poem of the three, which opens so grandly with the parricide at the sanctuary, and the furies sleeping around him, there is not one scene from the beginning to the end in which an eminent actor could exhibit his genius. but when we come to the plays of sophocles, we feel that a new era in the drama is created; we feel that the artist poet has called into full existence the artist actor. his theatrical effects [ ] are tangible, actual--could be represented to-morrow in paris--in london-- everywhere. we find, therefore, that with sophocles has passed down to posterity the name of the great actor [ ] in his principal plays. and i think the english reader, even in the general analysis and occasional translations with which i have ventured to fill so many pages, will perceive that all the exertions of subtle, delicate, and passionate power, even in a modern actor, would be absolutely requisite to do justice to the characters of oedipus at coloneus, antigone, electra, and philoctetes. this, then, was the distinction between aeschylus and sophocles--both were artists, as genius always must be, but the art of the latter adapts itself better to representation. and this distinction in art was not caused merely by precedence in time. had aeschylus followed sophocles, it would equally have existed--it was the natural consequence of the distinctions in their genius--the one more sublime, the other more impassioned--the one exalting the imagination, the other appealing to the heart. aeschylus is the michael angelo of the drama, sophocles the raffaele. xiii. thus have i presented to the general reader the outline of all the tragedies of sophocles. in the great length at which i have entered in this, not the least difficult, part of my general task, i have widely innovated on the plan pursued by the writers of grecian history. for this innovation i offer no excuse. it is her poetry at the period we now examine, as her philosophy in a later time, that makes the individuality of athens. in sophocles we behold the age of pericles. the wars of that brilliant day were as pastimes to the mighty carnage of oriental or northern battle. the reduction of a single town, which, in our time, that has no sophocles and no pericles, a captain of artillery would demolish in a week, was the proudest exploit of the olympian of the agora; a little while, and one defeat wrests the diadem of the seas from the brows of "the violet queen;" scanty indeed the ruins that attest the glories of "the propylaea, the parthenon, the porticoes, and the docks," to which the eloquent orator appealed as the "indestructible possessions" of athens; along the desolate site of the once tumultuous agora the peasant drives his oxen--the champion deity [ ] of phidias, whose spectral apparition daunted the barbarian alaric [ ], and the gleam of whose spear gladdened the mariner beneath the heights of sunium, has vanished from the acropolis; but, happily, the age of pericles has its stamp and effigy in an art more imperishable than that of war--in materials more durable than those of bronze and marble, of ivory and gold. in the majestic harmony, the symmetrical grace of sophocles, we survey the true portraiture of the genius of the times, and the old man of coloneus still celebrates the name of athens in a sweeter song than that of the nightingale [ ], and melodies that have survived the muses of cephisus [ ]. sophocles was allegorically the prophet when he declared that in the grave of oedipus was to be found the sacred guardian and the everlasting defence of the city of theseus. footnotes. [ ] "cum consuetudine ad imperii cupiditatem trahi videretur."--nepos in vit. milt., cap. . [ ] corn. nepos in vit. milt., cap. . [ ] nepos. in vit. milt., cap. . [ ] herod., lib. vi., cap. cxxxvi. [ ] nepos says the fine was estimated at the cost of the navy he had conducted to paros; but boeckh rightly observes, that it is an ignorant assertion of that author that the fine was intended for a compensation, being the usual mode of assessing the offence. the case is simply this--miltiades was accused--whether justly or unjustly no matter--it was clearly as impossible not to receive the accusation and to try the cause, as it would be for an english court of justice to refuse to admit a criminal action against lord grey or the duke of wellington. was miltiades guilty or not? this we cannot tell. we know that he was tried according to the law, and that the athenians thought him guilty, for they condemned him. so far this is not ingratitude--it is the course of law. a man is tried and found guilty--if past services and renown were to save the great from punishment when convicted of a state offence, society would perhaps be disorganized, and certainly a free state would cease to exist. the question therefore shrinks to this--was it or was it not ungrateful in the people to relax the penalty of death, legally incurred, and commute it to a heavy fine? i fear we shall find few instances of greater clemency in monarchies, however mild. miltiades unhappily died. but nature slew him, not the athenian people. and it cannot be said with greater justice of the athenians, than of a people no less illustrious, and who are now their judges, that it was their custom "de tuer en amiral pour encourager les autres." [ ] the taste of a people, which is to art what public opinion is to legislation, is formed, like public opinion, by habitual social intercourse and collision. the more men are brought together to converse and discuss, the more the principles of a general national taste will become both diffused and refined. less to their climate, to their scenery, to their own beauty of form, than to their social habits and preference of the public to the domestic life, did the athenians, and the grecian republics generally, owe that wonderful susceptibility to the beautiful and harmonious, which distinguishes them above all nations ancient or modern. solitude may exalt the genius of a man, but communion alone can refine the taste of a people. [ ] it seems probable that the principal bacchic festival was originally held at the time of the vintage--condita post frumenta. but from the earliest known period in attica, all the triple dionysia were celebrated during the winter and the spring. [ ] egyptian, according to herodotus, who asserts, that melampus first introduced the phallic symbol among the greeks, though he never sufficiently explained its mysterious significations, which various sages since his time had, however, satisfactorily interpreted. it is just to the greeks to add, that this importation, with the other rites of bacchus, was considered at utter variance with their usual habits and manners. [ ] herodotus asserts that arion first named, invented, and taught the dithyramb at corinth; but, as bentley triumphantly observes, athenaeus has preserved to us the very verses of archilochus, his predecessor by a century, in which the song of the dithyramb is named. [ ] in these remarks upon the origin of the drama, it would belong less to history than to scholastic dissertation, to enter into all the disputed and disputable points. i do not, therefore, pause with every step to discuss the questions contested by antiquarians--such as, whether the word "tragedy," in its primitive and homely sense, together with the prize of the goat, was or was not known in attica prior to thespis (it seems to me that the least successful part of bentley's immortal work is that which attempts to enforce the latter proposition); still less do i think a grave answer due to those who, in direct opposition to authorities headed by the grave and searching aristotle, contend that the exhibitions of thespis were of a serious and elevated character. the historian must himself weigh the evidences on which he builds his conclusions; and come to those conclusions, especially in disputes which bring to unimportant and detached inquiries the most costly expenditure of learning, without fatiguing the reader with a repetition of all the arguments which he accepts or rejects. for those who incline to go more deeply into subjects connected with the early athenian drama, works by english and german authors, too celebrated to enumerate, will be found in abundance. but even the most careless general reader will do well to delight himself with that dissertation of bentley on phalaris, so familiar to students, and which, despite some few intemperate and bold assumptions, will always remain one of the most colossal monuments of argument and erudition. [ ] aeschylus was a pythagorean. "veniat aeschylus, sed etiam pythagoreus."--cic. tusc. dis., b. ii., . [ ] out of fifty plays, thirty-two were satyrical.--suidas in prat. [ ] the tetralogy was the name given to the fourfold exhibition of the three tragedies, or trilogy, and the satyric drama. [ ] yet in aeschylus there are sometimes more than two speaking actors on the stage,--as at one time in the choephori, clytemnestra, orestes, electra (to say nothing of pylades, who is silent), and again in the same play, orestes, pylades, and clytemnestra, also in the eumenides, apollo, minerva, orestes. it is truly observed, however, that these plays were written after sophocles had introduced the third actor. [the orestean tetralogy was exhibited b. c. , only two years before the death of aeschylus, and ten years after sophocles had gained his first prize.] any number of mutes might be admitted, not only as guards, etc., but even as more important personages. thus, in the prometheus, the very opening of the play exhibits to us the demons of strength and force, the god vulcan, and prometheus himself; but the dialogue is confined to strength and vulcan. [ ] the celebrated temple of bacchus; built after the wooden theatre had given way beneath the multitude assembled to witness a contest between pratinas and aeschylus. [ ] st. the rural dionysia, held in the country districts throughout attica about the beginning of january. d. the lenaean, or anthesterial, dionysia, in the end of february and beginning of march, in which principally occurred the comic contests; and the grand dionysis of the city, referred to in the text. afterward dramatic performances were exhibited also, in august, during the panathenaea. [ ] that is, when three actors became admitted on the stage. [ ] for it is sufficiently clear that women were admitted to the tragic performances, though the arguments against their presence in comic plays preponderate. this admitted, the manners of the greeks may be sufficient to prove that, as in the arena of the roman games, they were divided from the men; as, indeed, is indirectly intimated in a passage of the gorgias of plato. [ ] schlegel says truly and eloquently of the chorus--"that it was the idealized spectator"--"reverberating to the actual spectator a musical and lyrical expression of his own emotions." [ ] in this speech he enumerates, among other benefits, that of numbers, "the prince of wise inventions"--one of the passages in which aeschylus is supposed to betray his pythagorean doctrines. [ ] it is greatly disputed whether io was represented on the stage as transformed into the actual shape of a heifer, or merely accursed with a visionary phrensy, in which she believes in the transformation. it is with great reluctance that i own it seems to me not possible to explain away certain expressions without supposing that io appeared on the stage at least partially transformed. [ ] vit. aesch. [ ] it is the orthodox custom of translators to render the dialogue of the greek plays in blank verse; but in this instance the whole animation and rapidity of the original would be utterly lost in the stiff construction and protracted rhythm of that metre. [ ] viz., the meadows around asopus. [ ] to make the sense of this detached passage more complete, and conclude the intelligence which the queen means to convey, the concluding line in the text is borrowed from the next speech of clytemnestra--following immediately after a brief and exclamatory interruption of the chorus. [ ] i. e. menelaus, made by grief like the ghost of his former self. [ ] the words in italics attempt to convey paraphrastically a new construction of a sentence which has puzzled the commentators, and met with many and contradictory interpretations. the original literally is--"i pity the last the most." now, at first it is difficult to conjecture why those whose adversity is over, "blotted out with the moistened sponge," should be the most deserving of compassion. but it seems to me that cassandra applies the sentiments to herself--she pities those whose career of grief is over, because it is her own lot which she commiserates, and by reference to which she individualizes a general reflection. [ ] perhaps his mere diction would find a less feeble resemblance in passages of shelley, especially in the prometheus of that poet, than in any other poetry existent. but his diction alone. his power is in concentration--the quality of shelley is diffuseness. the interest excited by aeschylus, even to those who can no longer sympathize with the ancient associations, is startling, terrible, and intense--that excited by shelley is lukewarm and tedious. the intellectuality of shelley destroyed, that of aeschylus only increased, his command over the passions. [ ] in the comedy of "the frogs," aristophanes makes it the boast of aeschylus, that he never drew a single woman influenced by love. spanheim is surprised that aristophanes should ascribe such a boast to the author of the "agamemnon." but the love of clytemnestra for aegisthus is never drawn--never delineated. it is merely suggested and hinted at--a sentiment lying dark and concealed behind the motives to the murder of agamemnon ostensibly brought forward, viz., revenge for the sacrifice of iphigenia, and jealousy of cassandra. [ ] in plays lost to us. [ ] i reject the traditions which make aristides and themistocles rivals as boys, because chronology itself refutes them. aristides must have been of mature age at the battle of marathon, if he was the friend and follower of clisthenes, one of the ten generals in the action, and archon in the following year. but both plutarch and justin assure us that themistocles was very young at the battle of marathon, and this assurance is corroborated by other facts connected with his biography. he died at the age of sixty-five, but he lived to see the siege of cyprus by cimon. this happened b. c. . if, then, we refer his death to that year, he was born b. c., and therefore was about twenty-four at the battle of marathon. [ ] plut. in vit. them. heraclides et idomeneus ap. athen., lib. . [ ] see dodwell's "tour through greece," gell's "itinerary." [ ] "called by some laurion oros, or mount laurion." gell's itinerary. [ ] boeckh's dissert. on the silver mines of laurium. [ ] boeckh's dissert. on the silver mines of laurium. [ ] on this point, see boeckh. dissert. on the silver mines of laurion, in reference to the account of diodorus. [ ] if we except the death of his brother, in the cambyses of ctesias, we find none of the crimes of the cambyses of herodotus--and even that fratricide loses its harsher aspect in the account of ctesias, and cambyses is represented as betrayed into the crime by a sincere belief in his brother's treason. [ ] the account of this conspiracy in ctesias seems more improbable than that afforded to us by herodotus. but in both the most extraordinary features of the plot are the same, viz., the striking likeness between the impostor and the dead prince, and the complete success which, for a time, attended the fraud. in both narrations, too, we can perceive, behind the main personages ostensibly brought forward, the outline of a profound device of the magi to win back from the persian conquerors, and to secure to a mede, the empire of the east. [ ] herodotus says it was resolved that the king could only marry into the family of one of the conspirators; but darius married two daughters and one grand-daughter of cyrus. it is more consonant with eastern manners to suppose that it was arranged that the king should give his own daughters in marriage to members of these six houses. it would have been scarcely possible to claim the monopoly of the royal seraglio, whether its tenants were wives or concubines, and in all probability the king's choice was only limited (nor that very rigidly) to the family of cyrus, and the numerous and privileged race of the achaemenids. [ ] besides the regular subsidies, we gather from herodotus, i. c. , that the general population was obliged to find subsistence for the king and his armies. babylon raised a supply for four months, the resources of that satrapy being adequate to a third part of asia. [ ] that comparatively small and frontier part of india known to darius. [ ] forming a revenue of more than , l. sterling.--heeren's persians, chap. ii. [ ] such are the expressions of herodotus. his testimony is corroborated by the anecdotes in his own history, and, indeed, by all other ancient authorities. [ ] dinon. (apud athen., lib. xiii.) observes, that the persian queen tolerated the multitude of concubines common to the royal seraglio, because they worshipped her, like a divinity. [ ] see, in addition to more familiar authorities, the curious remarks and anecdotes relative to the luxury of the persian kings, in the citations from dinon, heraclides, agathocles, and chares of mitylene, scattered throughout athenaeus, lib. xii., xiii., xiv.; but especially lib. xii. [ ] strabo, lib. xv, herod., lib. i., c. cxxxi., etc. [ ] among innumerable instances of the disdain of human life contracted after their conquest by those very persians who, in their mountain obscurity, would neither permit their sovereign to put any one to death for a single offence, nor the master of a household to exercise undue severity to a member of his family (herod., lib. i., c. cxxxvii.), is one recorded by herodotus, and in the main corroborated by justin. darius is at the siege of babylon; zopyrus, one of the seven conspirators against the magian, maims himself and enters babylon as a deserter, having previously concerted with darius that a thousand men, whose loss he could best spare, should be sent one day to the gate of semiramis, and two thousand, another day, to the gates of ninus, and four thousand, a third day, to the chaldaean gates. all these detachments zopyrus, at the head of the babylonians, deliberately butchered. the confidence of the babylonians thus obtained, zopyrus was enabled to betray the city to the king. this cold-blooded and treacherous immolation of seven thousand subjects was considered by the humane darius and the persians generally a proof of the most illustrious virtue in zopyrus, who received for it the reward of the satrapy of babylon. the narrative is so circumstantial as to bear internal evidence of its general truth. in fact, a persian would care no more for the lives of seven thousand medes than a spartan would care for the lives of suspected helots. [ ] herodot., lib. i., c. cxxxiv. the pasargadae, whom the ancient writers evidently and often confound with the whole persian population, retained the old education and severe discipline for their youth, long after the old virtues had died away. (see strabo, xv., herod., lib. i., and the rhetorical romance of xenophon.) but laws and customs, from which the animating spirit of national opinion and sentiment has passed, are but the cenotaphs of dead forms embalmed in vain. [ ] ctesias, . [ ] herod., lib vii., c. xi. [ ] juvenal, richardson, etc. the preparations at mount athos commenced three years before xerxes arrived at sardis. (compare herod., l. vii. , with , .) [ ] differently computed; according to montfaucon, the sum total may be estimated at thirty-two millions of louis d'ors. [ ] it must be confessed that the tears of xerxes were a little misplaced. he wept that men could not live a hundred years, at the very moment when he meditated destroying a tolerable portion of them as soon as he possibly could.--senec. de brev. vit., c. . [ ] common also to the ancient germans. [ ] for this reason--whoever died, whether by disease or battle, had his place immediately supplied. thus their number was invariably the same. [ ] diod. sic. [ ] see note [ ]. [ ] her., lib. vii., c. . [ ] mueller on the greek congress. [ ] mueller on the greek congress. [ ] anaxandrides, king of sparta, and father of cleomenes and leonidas, had married his niece: she was barren. the ephors persuaded him to take another wife; he did so, and by the second wife. cleomenes was born. almost at the same time, the first wife, hitherto barren, proved with child. and as she continued the conjugal connexion, in process of time three sons were born; of these leonidas was the second. but cleomenes, though the offspring of the second wife, came into the world before the children by the first wife and therefore had the prior right to the throne. [ ] it is impossible by any calculations to render this amount more credible to modern skepticism. it is extremely likely that herodotus is mistaken in his calculation; but who shall correct him? [ ] the cissii, or cissians, inhabited the then fertile province of susiana, in which was situated the capital of susa. they resembled the persians in dress and manners. [ ] so herodotus (lib. vii., c. ); but, as it was summer, the noise was probably made rather by the boughs that obstructed the path of the barbarians, than by leaves on the ground. [ ] diod. sic., xi., viii. [ ] justin, ii., ix. [ ] another spartan, who had been sent into thessaly, and was therefore absent from the slaughter of thermopylae, destroyed himself. [ ] the cross was the usual punishment in persia for offences against the king's majesty or rights. perhaps, therefore, xerxes, by the outrage, only desired to signify that he considered the spartan as a rebel. [ ] "thus fought the greeks at thermopylae," are the simple expressions of herodotus, lib. vii., c. . [ ] thus the command of the athenian forces was at one time likely to fall upon epicydes, a man whose superior eloquence had gained an ascendency with the people, which was neither due to his integrity nor to his military skill. themistocles is said to have bribed him to forego his pretensions. themistocles could be as severe as crafty when occasion demanded: he put to death an interpreter who accompanied the persian envoys, probably to the congress at the isthmus [plutarch implies that these envoys came to athens, but xerxes sent none to that city.], for debasing the language of free greeks to express the demands of the barbarian enemy. [ ] plutarch rejects this story, very circumstantially told by herodotus, without adducing a single satisfactory argument for the rejection. the skepticism of plutarch is more frivolous even than his credulity. [ ] demost., philip. . see also aeschines contra ctesiphon. [ ] i have said that it might be doubted whether the death of leonidas was as serviceable to greece as his life might have been; its immediate consequences were certainly discouraging. if his valour was an example, his defeat was a warning. [ ] there were [three hundred, for the sake of round numbers--but one of the three hundred--perhaps two--survived the general massacre.] three hundred spartans and four hundred thespians; supposing that (as it has been asserted) the eighty warriors of mycenae also remained with leonidas, and that one hundred, or a fourth of the thebans fell ere their submission was received, this makes a total of eight hundred and eighty. if we take now what at plataea was the actual ratio of the helots as compared with the spartans, i. e, seven to one, we shall add two thousand one hundred helots, which make two thousand nine hundred and ninety; to which must be added such of the greeks as fell in the attacks prior to the slaughter of thermopylae; so that, in order to make out the total of the slain given by herodotus, more than eleven hundred must have perished before the last action, in which leonidas fell. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] ibid. [ ] it is differently stated; by aeschylus and nepos at three hundred, by thucydides at four hundred. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] here we see additional reason for admiring the sagacity of themistocles. [ ] her., lib. viii., c. . [ ] the tutor of his children, sicinnus, who had experience of the eastern manners, and spoke the persian language. [ ] the number of the persian galleys, at the lowest computation, was a thousand [nepos, herodotus, and isocrates compute the total at about twelve hundred; the estimate of one thousand is taken from a dubious and disputed passage in aeschylus, which may be so construed as to signify one thousand, including two hundred and seven vessels, or besides two hundred and seven vessels; viz., twelve hundred and seven in all, which is the precise number given by herodotus. ctesias says there were more than one thousand.]; that of the greeks, as we have seen, three hundred and eighty. but the persians were infinitely more numerously manned, having on board of each vessel thirty men-at-arms, in addition to the usual number of two hundred. plutarch seems to state the whole number in each athenian vessel to be fourteen heavy armed and four bowmen. but this would make the whole athenian force only three thousand two hundred and forty men, including the bowmen, who were probably not athenian citizens. it must therefore be supposed, with mr. thirlwall, that the eighteen men thus specified were an addition to the ordinary company. [ ] aeschylus. persae. . [ ] the persian admiral at salamis is asserted by ctesias to have been onaphas, father-in-law to xerxes. according to herodotus, it was ariabignes, the king's brother, who seems the same as artabazanes, with whom he had disputed the throne.--comp. herod., lib. vii., c. , and lib. viii., c. . [ ] plut in vit. them. [ ] plut. in vit. them. the ariamenes of plutarch is the ariabignes of herodotus. [ ] mr. mitford, neglecting to observe this error of xerxes, especially noted by herodotus, merely observes--"according to herodotus, though in this instance we may have difficulty to give him entire credit, xerxes, from the shore where he sat, saw, admired, and applauded the exploit." from this passage one would suppose that xerxes knew it was a friend who had been attacked, and then, indeed, we could not have credited the account; but if he and those about him supposed it, as herodotus states, a foe, what is there incredible? this is one instance in ten thousand more important ones, of mr. mitford's habit of arguing upon one sentence by omitting those that follow and precede it. [ ] diod., lib xi., c. . herod., lib. viii., c. . nepos, et plut, in vit. them. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] ibid. these anecdotes have the stamp of authenticity. [ ] herod., lib. viii., c. . see wesseling's comment on timodemus. plutarch tells the same anecdote, but makes the baffled rebuker of themistocles a citizen of seriphus, an island in which, according to aelian, the frogs never croaked; the men seem to have made up for the silence of the frogs! [ ] see fast. hell., vol. ii., page . [ ] plut. in vit. arist. [ ] ibid. [ ] the custom of lapidation was common to the earlier ages; it had a kind of sanction, too, in particular offences; and no crime could be considered by a brave and inflamed people equal to that of advice against their honour and their liberties. [ ] see herod., lib. ix., c. . also mr. clinton on the kings of sparta. fast. hell., vol. ii., p. . [ ] see herod., lib, vi., c. . after the burial of a spartan king, ten days were devoted to mourning; nor was any public business transacted in that interval. [ ] "according to aristides' decree," says plutarch, "the athenian envoys were aristides, xanthippus, myronides, and cimon." [ ] herodotus speaks of the devastation and ruin as complete. but how many ages did the monuments of pisistratus survive the ravage of the persian sword! [ ] plut. in vit. arist. [ ] this, among a thousand anecdotes, proves how salutary and inevitable was the popular distrust of the aristocracy. when we read of the process of bribing the principal men, and of the conspiracy entered into by others, we must treat with contempt those accusations of the jealousy of the grecian people towards their superiors which form the staple declamations of commonplace historians. [ ] gargaphia is one mile and a half from the town of plataea. gell's itin. . [ ] plut. in vit. arist. [ ] a strange fall from the ancient splendour of mycenae, to furnish only four hundred men, conjointly with tiryns, to the cause of greece! [ ] her., lib. ix., c. . [ ] plutarch in vit. arist. [ ] this account, by herodotus, of the contrast between the spartan and the athenian leaders, which is amply supported elsewhere, is, as i have before hinted, a proof of the little effect upon spartan emulation produced by the martyrdom of leonidas. undoubtedly the spartans were more terrified by the slaughter of thermopylae than fired by the desire of revenge. [ ] "here seem to be several islands, formed by a sluggish stream in a flat meadow. (oeroe?) must have been of that description.-- "gell's itin, . [ ] herod., lib. ix., c. . [ ] plut. in vit. arist. [ ] sir w. gell's itin. of greece. [ ] herod. lib. ix., c. . [ ] the tegeans had already seized the tent of mardonius, possessing themselves especially of a curious brazen manger, from which the persian's horse was fed, and afterward dedicated to the alean minerva. [ ] i adopt the reading of valcknaer, "tous hippeas." the spartan knights, in number three hundred, had nothing to do with the cavalry, but fought on foot or on horseback, as required. (dionys. hal., xi., .) they formed the royal bodyguard. [ ] mr. mitford attributes his absence from the scene to some jealousy of the honours he received at sparta, and the vain glory with which he bore them. but the vague observations in the authors he refers to by no means bear out this conjecture, nor does it seem probable that the jealousy was either general or keen enough to effect so severe a loss to the public cause. menaced with grave and imminent peril, it was not while the athenians were still in the camp that they would have conceived all the petty envies of the forum. the jealousies themistocles excited were of much later date. it is probable that at this period he was intrusted with the very important charge of watching over and keeping together that considerable but scattered part of the athenian population which was not engaged either at mycale or plataea. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., c. . [ ] ibid., lib. i., c. . [ ] diod. sic., lib. xi.; thucyd., lib. i., c. . [ ] ap. plut. in vit. them. [ ] diodorus (lib. xi.) tells us that the spartan ambassadors, indulging in threatening and violent language at perceiving the walls so far advanced, were arrested by the athenians, who declared they would only release them on receiving hack safe and uninjured their own ambassadors. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., c. . [ ] ibid., lib. i., c. . [ ] schol. ad thucyd., lib. i., c. . see clinton, fasti hell., vol. i., introduction, p. and . mr. thirlwall, vol. ii., p. , disputes the date for the archonship of themistocles given by mr. clinton and confirmed by the scholiast on thucydides. he adopts (page ) the date which m. boeckh founds upon philochorus, viz., b. c. . but the themistocles who was archon in that year is evidently another person from the themistocles of salamis; for in that hero was about twenty-one, an age at which the bastard of neocles might be driving courtesans in a chariot (as is recorded in athenaeus), but was certainly not archon of athens. as for m. boeckh's proposed emendation, quoted so respectfully by mr. thirlwall, by which we are to read hybrilidon for kebridos, it is an assumption so purely fanciful as to require no argument for refusing it belief. mr. clinton's date for the archonship of the great themistocles is the one most supported by internal evidence-- st, by the blanks of the years - in the list of archons; dly, by the age, the position, and repute of themistocles in b. c. , two years after the ostracism of his rival aristides. if it were reduced to a mere contest of probabilities between mr. clinton on one side and mr. boeckh and mr. thirlwall on the other, which is the more likely, that themistocles should have been chief archon of athens at twenty-one or at thirty-three--before the battle of marathon or after his triumph over aristides? in fact, a schoolboy knows that at twenty-one (and themistocles was certainly not older in ) no athenian could have been archon. in all probability kebridos is the right reading in philochorus, and furnishes us with the name of the archon in b. c. or , which years have hitherto been chronological blanks, so far as the athenian archons are concerned. [ ] pausan., lib. i., c. . [ ] diod., lib. xi. [ ] diod., lib. xi. [ ] diod., lib. xi. the reader will perceive that i do not agree with mr. thirlwall and some other scholars, for whose general opinion i have the highest respect, in rejecting altogether, and with contempt, the account of diodorus as to the precautions of themistocles. it seems to me highly probable that the main features of the story are presented to us faithfully; st, that it was not deemed expedient to detail to the popular assembly all the objects and motives of the proposed construction of the new port; and, dly, that themistocles did not neglect to send ambassadors to sparta, though certainly not with the intention of dealing more frankly with the spartans than he had done with the athenians. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] aristot. pol., lib. ii. aristotle deems the speculations of the philosophical architect worthy of a severe and searching criticism. [ ] of all the temples, those of minerva and jupiter were the most remarkable in the time of pausanias. there were then two market-places. see pausanias, lib. i., c. i. [ ] yet at this time the amphictyonic council was so feeble that, had the spartans succeeded, they would have made but a hollow acquisition of authority; unless, indeed, with the project of gaining a majority of votes, they united another for reforming or reinvigorating the institution. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., c. . [ ] heeren, pol. hist. of greece. [ ] corn. nep. in vit. paus. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., c. . [ ] plut. in vit. arist. [ ] ibid. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] plut. in vit. cimon. before this period, cimon, though rising into celebrity, could scarcely have been an adequate rival to themistocles. [ ] corn. nep. in vit. cim. [ ] according to diodorus, cimon early in life made a very wealthy marriage; themistocles recommended him to a rich father-in-law, in a witticism, which, with a slight variation, plutarch has also recorded, though he does not give its application to cimon. [ ] corn. nep. in vit. cim. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] ibid., lib. i. plut. in vit. cim. diod. sic., lib. xi. [ ] see clinton, fast. hell., vol. ii., p. , in comment upon bentley. [ ] athenaeus, lib. xii. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] plut. in vit. aristid. [ ] about twenty-three english acres. this was by no means a despicable estate in the confined soil of attica. [ ] aristot. apud plat. vit. cim. [ ] produced equally by the anti-popular party on popular pretexts. it was under the sanction of mr. pitt that the prostitution of charity to the able-bodied was effected in england. [ ] plut. in vit. cim. [ ] his father's brother, cleomenes, died raving mad, as we have already seen. there was therefore insanity in the family. [ ] plut. in vit. cim. pausanias, lib. iii., c. . [ ] pausarias, lib. iii., c. . [ ] phigalea, according to pausanias. [ ] plut. in vit. cim. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] plato, leg. vi. [ ] nep. in vit. paus. [ ] pausanias observes that his renowned namesake was the only suppliant taking refuge at the sanctuary of minerva chalcioecus who did not obtain the divine protection, and this because he could never purify himself of the murder of cleonice. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., . [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., . [ ] mr. mitford, while doubting the fact, attempts, with his usual disingenuousness, to raise upon the very fact that he doubts, reproaches against the horrors of democratical despotism. a strange practice for an historian to allow the premises to be false, and then to argue upon them as true! [ ] the brief letter to artaxerxes, given by thucydides (lib i., ), is as evidently the composition of thucydides himself as is the celebrated oration which he puts into the mouth of pericles. each has the hard, rigid, and grasping style so peculiar to the historian, and to which no other greek writer bears the slightest resemblance. but the matter may be more genuine than the diction. [ ] at the time of his arrival in asia, xerxes seems to have been still living. but he appeared at susa during the short interval between the death of xerxes and the formal accession of his son, when, by a sanguinary revolution, yet to be narrated, artabanus was raised to the head of the persian empire: ere the year expired artaxerxes was on the throne. [ ] i relate this latter account of the death of themistocles, not only because thucydides (though preferring the former) does not disdain to cite it, but also because it is evident, from the speech of nicias, in the knights of aristophanes, i. , , that in the time of pericles it was popularly believed by the athenians that themistocles died by poison; and from motives that rendered allusion to his death a popular claptrap. it is also clear that the death of themistocles appears to have reconciled him at once to the athenians. the previous suspicions of his fidelity to greece do not seem to have been kept alive even by the virulence of party; and it is natural to suppose that it must have been some act of his own, real or imagined, which tended to disprove the plausible accusations against him, and revive the general enthusiasm in his favour. what could that act have been but the last of his life, which, in the lines of aristophanes referred to above, is cited as the ideal of a glorious death! but if he died by poison, the draught was not bullock's blood--the deadly nature of which was one of the vulgar fables of the ancients. in some parts of the continent it is, in this day, even used as medicine. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] diod., lib. xi. [ ] plut. in vit. cim. [ ] diod. (lib. xi.) reckons the number of prisoners at twenty thousand! these exaggerations sink glory into burlesque. [ ] the cyaneae. plin. vi., c. . herod. iv., c. , etc. etc. [ ] thucyd., lib.., . [ ] plut. in vit. cim. [ ] for the siege of thasos lasted three years; in the second year we find cimon marching to the relief of the spartans; in fact, the siege of thasos was not of sufficient importance to justify cimon in a very prolonged absence from athens. [ ] plut. in vit. cim. [ ] plut. in vit. cim. [ ] those historians who presume upon the slovenly sentences of plutarch, that pericles made "an instrument" of ephialtes in assaults on the areopagus, seem strangely to mistake both the character of pericles, which was dictatorial, not crafty, and the position of ephialtes, who at that time was the leader of his party, and far more influential than pericles himself. plato (ap. plut. in vit. peric.) rightly considers ephialtes the true overthrower of the areopagus; and although pericles assisted him (aristot., l. ii., c. ), it was against ephialtes as the chief, not "the instrument," that the wrath of the aristocracy was directed. [ ] see demosth. adv. aristocr., p. . ed. reisk. herman ap. heidelb. jahrb., , no. . forckhammer de areopago, etc. against boeckh. i cannot agree with those who attach so much importance to aeschylus, in the tragedy of "the furies," as an authority in favour of the opinion that the innovations of ephialtes deprived the areopagus of jurisdiction in cases of homicide. it is true that the play turns upon the origin of the tribunal--it is true that it celebrates its immemorial right of adjudication of murder, and that minerva declares this court of judges shall remain for ever. but would this prophecy be risked at the very time when this court was about to be abolished? in the same speech of minerva, far more direct allusion is made to the police of the court in the fear and reverence due to it; and strong exhortations follow, not to venerate anarchy or tyranny, or banish "all fear from the city," which apply much more forcibly to the council than to the court of the areopagus. [ ] that the areopagus did, prior to the decree of ephialtes, possess a power over the finances, appears from a passage in aristotle (ap. plut. in vit. them.), in which it is said that, in the expedition to salamis, the areopagus awarded to each man eight drachmae. [ ] plutarch attributes his ostracism to the resentment of the athenians on his return from ithome; but this is erroneous. he was not ostracised till two years after his return. [ ] mikaeas epilabomenoi prophaseos.--plut. in vit. cim. . [ ] neither aristotle (polit., lib. v., c. ), nor justin, nor ctesias nor moderns speak of the assassin as kinsman to xerxes. in plutarch (vit. them.) he is artabanus the chiliarch. [ ] ctesias, ; diod, ; justin, lib. iii., c. . according to aristotle, artabanus, as captain of the king's guard, received an order to make away with darius, neglected the command, and murdered xerxes from fears for his own safety. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., . the three towns of doris were, according to thucydides, baeum, cytenium, and erineus. the scholiast on pindar (pyth. i., ) speaks of six towns. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] thucydides, in mentioning these operations of the athenians, and the consequent fears of the spartans, proves to what a length hostilities had gone, though war was not openly declared. [ ] diod. sic.. lib. xi. [ ] thucyd., lib, i. [ ] diod., lib. xi. [ ] certain german historians, mueller among others, have built enormous conclusions upon the smallest data, when they suppose cimon was implicated in this conspiracy. meirs (historia juris de bonis damnatis, p. , note ) is singularly unsuccessful in connecting the supposed fine of fifty talents incurred by cimon with the civil commotions of this period. in fact, that cimon was ever fined at all is very improbable; the supposition rests upon most equivocal ground: if adopted, it is more likely, perhaps, that the fine was inflicted after his return from thasos, when he was accused of neglecting the honour of the athenian arms, and being seduced by macedonian gold (a charge precisely of a nature for which a fine would have been incurred). but the whole tale of this imaginary fine, founded upon a sentence in demosthenes, who, like many orators, was by no means minutely accurate in historical facts, is possibly nothing more than a confused repetition of the old story of the fine of fifty talents (the same amount) imposed upon miltiades, and really paid by cimon. this is doubly, and, indeed, indisputably clear, if we accept becker's reading of parion for patrion in the sentence of demosthenes referred to. [ ] if we can attach any credit to the oration on peace ascribed to andocides, cimon was residing on his patrimonial estates in the chersonese at the time of his recall. as athens retained its right to the sovereignty of this colony, and as it was a most important position as respected the recent athenian conquests under cimon himself, the assertion, if true, will show that cimon's ostracism was attended with no undue persecution. had the government seriously suspected him of any guilty connivance with the oligarchic conspirators, it could scarcely have permitted him to remain in a colony, the localities of which were peculiarly favourable to any treasonable designs he might have formed. [ ] in the recall of cimon, plutarch tells us, some historians asserted that it was arranged between the two parties that the administration of the state should be divided; that cimon should be invested with the foreign command of cyprus, and pericles remain the head of the domestic government. but it was not until the sixth year after his recall (viz., in the archonship of euthydemus, see diodorus xii.) that cimon went to cyprus; and before that event pericles himself was absent on foreign expeditions. [ ] plutarch, by a confusion of dates, blends this short armistice with the five years' truce some time afterward concluded. mitford and others have followed him in his error. that the recall of cimon was followed by no peace, not only with the spartans, but the peloponnesians generally, is evident from the incursions of tolmides presently to be related. [ ] diod lib. xi. [ ] see mueller's dorians, and the authorities he quotes. vol. i., b. i. [ ] for so i interpret diodorus. [ ] diod. sic., lib. xi. [ ] there was a democratic party in thessaly always favourable to athens. see thucyd., iv., c. . [ ] now lepanto. [ ] paus., lib. ii., c. . [ ] plut. in vit. peric. [ ] thucyd., lib. i., . [ ] diod., lib. xi. plut. in vit. cim. heeren, manual of ancient history; but mr. mitford and mr. thirlwall properly reject this spurious treaty. [ ] plut. in cim. [ ] the clouds. [ ] isoc. areop., . [ ] idomen. ap. athen., lib. xii. [ ] thucyd., lib. ii., ; isoc. areopag., e. xx., p. . [ ] if we believe with plutarch that wives accompanied their husbands to the house of aspasia (and it was certainly a popular charge against pericles that aspasia served to corrupt the athenian matrons), they could not have been so jealously confined as writers, judging from passages in the greek writers that describe not what women were, but what women ought to be, desire us to imagine. and it may be also observed, that the popular anecdotes represent elpinice as a female intriguante, busying herself in politics, and mediating between cimon and pericles; anecdotes, whether or not they be strictly faithful, that at least tend to illustrate the state of society. [ ] as i propose, in a subsequent part of this work, to enter at considerable length into the social life and habits of the athenians, i shall have full opportunity for a more detailed account of these singular heroines of alciphron and the later comedians. [ ] it was about five years after the death of cimon that pericles obtained that supreme power which resembled a tyranny, but was only the expression and concentration of the democratic will. [ ] theophrast. ap. plut. in vit. per. [ ] justin, lib. iii., c. . [ ] for the transfer itself there were excuses yet more plausible than that assigned by justin. first, in the year following the breach between the spartans and athenians (b. c. ), probably the same year in which the transfer was effected, the athenians were again at war with the great king in egypt; and there was therefore a show of justice in the argument noticed by boeckh (though in the source whence he derives it the argument applies to the earlier time of aristides), that the transfer provided a place of greater security against the barbarians. secondly, delos itself was already and had long been under athenian influence. pisistratus had made a purification of the island [herod., lib. i., c. ], delian soothsayers had predicted to athens the sovereignty of the seas [semius delius, ap. athen., viii.], and the athenians seem to have arrogated a right of interference with the temple. the transfer was probably, therefore, in appearance, little more than a transfer from a place under the power of athens to athens itself. thirdly, it seems that when the question was first agitated, during the life of aristides, it was at the desire of one of the allies themselves (the samians). [plut. in vit. aristid. boeckh (vol. i., , translation) has no warrant for supposing that pericles influenced the samians in the expression of this wish, because plutarch refers the story to the time of aristides, during whose life pericles possessed no influence in public affairs.] [ ] the assertion of diodorus (lib. xii., ), that to pericles was confided the superintendence and management of the treasure, is corroborated by the anecdotes in plutarch and elsewhere, which represent pericles as the principal administrator of the funds. [ ] the political nature and bias of the heliaea is apparent in the very oath, preserved in demost. con. tim., p. , ed. reiske. in this the heliast is sworn never to vote for the establishment of tyranny or oligarchy in athens, and never to listen to any proposition tending to destroy the democratic constitution. that is, a man entered upon a judicial tribunal by taking a political oath! [ ] these courts have been likened to modern juries; but they were very little bound by the forms and precedents which shackled the latter. what a jury, even nowadays, a jury of only twelve persons, would be if left entirely to impulse and party feeling, any lawyer will readily conceive. how much more capricious, uncertain, and prejudiced a jury of five hundred, and, in some instances, of one thousand or fifteen hundred! [by the junction of two or more divisions, as in cases of eisangelia. poll. viii., and ; also tittman.] [ ] "designed by our ancestors," says aristotle (pol., lib. viii, c. ) not, as many now consider it, merely for delight, but for discipline that so the mind might be taught not only how honourably to pursue business, but how creditably to enjoy leisure; for such enjoyment is, after all, the end of business and the boundary of active life. [ ] see aristot. (pol., lib. viii., c. .) [ ] an anecdote in gellius, lib. xv., c. , refers the date of the disuse of this instrument to the age of pericles and during the boyhood of alcibiades. [ ] drawing was subsequently studied as a branch of education essential to many of the common occupations of life. [ ] suid. [ ] hecataeus was also of miletus. [ ] pausan., ii., c. : cic. de orat., ii., c. ; aulus gellius, xv., c. . [ ] fast. hell., vol. i. [ ] a brilliant writer in the edinburgh review (mr. macauley) would account for the use of dialogue in herodotus by the childish simplicity common to an early and artless age--as the boor always unconsciously resorts to the dramatic form of narration, and relates his story by a series of "says he's" and "says i's." but does not mr. macauley, in common with many others, insist far too much on the artlessness of the age and the unstudied simplicity of the writer? though history itself was young, art was already at its zenith. it was the age of sophocles, phidias, and pericles. it was from the athenians, in their most polished period, that herodotus received the most rapturous applause. do not all accounts of herodotus, as a writer, assure us that he spent the greater part of a long life in composing, polishing, and perfecting his history; and is it not more in conformity with the characteristic spirit of the times, and the masterly effects which herodotus produces, to conclude, that what we suppose to be artlessness was, in reality, the premeditated elaboration of art? [ ] esther iii., ; viii., : ezra vi., . [ ] herod., vii., . [ ] about twenty-nine years younger.--fast. hell., vol. ii., p. . [ ] cic. acad. quaest., , abbe de canaye, mem. de l'acad. d'l* *crip., tom. x. etc. (*illegible letters) [ ] diog. laert., cap. ., cic. acad. quaest. , etc. [ ] arist. metap. diog. laert. cic. quaest. . etc. [ ] it must ever remain a disputable matter how far the ionian pythagoras was influenced by affection for dorian policy and customs, and how far he designed to create a state upon the old dorian model. on the one hand, it is certain that he paid especial attention to the rites and institutions most connected with the dorian deity, apollo-- that, according to his followers, it was from that god that he derived his birth, a fiction that might be interpreted into a dorian origin; he selected croton as his residence, because it was under the protection of "his household god;" his doctrines are said to have been delivered in the dorian dialect; and much of his educational discipline, much of his political system, bear an evident affinity to the old cretan and spartan institutions. but, on the other hand, it is probable, that pythagoras favoured the god of delphi, partly from the close connexion which many of his symbols bore to the metaphysical speculations the philosopher had learned to cultivate in the schools of oriental mysticism, and partly from the fact that apollo was the patron of the medical art, in which pythagoras was an eminent professor. and in studying the institutions of crete and sparta, he might rather have designed to strengthen by examples the system he had already adopted, than have taken from those dorian cities the primitive and guiding notions of the constitution he afterward established. and in this pythagoras might have resembled most reformers, not only of his own, but of all ages, who desire to go back to the earliest principles of the past as the sources of experience to the future. in the dorian institutions was preserved the original character of the hellenic nation; and pythagoras, perhaps, valued or consulted them less because they were dorian than because they were ancient. it seems, however, pretty clear, that in the character of his laws he sought to conform to the spirit and mode of legislation already familiar in italy, since charondas and zaleucus, who flourished before him, are ranked by diodorus and others among his disciples. [ ] livy dates it in the reign of servius tullus. [ ] strabo. [ ] iamblichus, c. viii., ix. see also plato de repub., lib. x. [ ] that the achaean governments were democracies appears sufficiently evident; nor is this at variance with the remark of xenophon, that timocracies were "according to the laws of the achaeans;" since timocracies were but modified democracies. [ ] the pythagoreans assembled at the house of milo, the wrestler, who was an eminent general, and the most illustrious of the disciples were stoned to death, the house being fired. lapidation was essentially the capital punishment of mobs--the mode of inflicting death that invariably stamps the offender as an enemy to the populace. [ ] arist. metaph., i., . [ ] diog. laert., viii., . [ ] plut. in vit. them. the sophists were not, therefore, as is commonly asserted, the first who brought philosophy to bear upon politics. [ ] see, for evidence of the great gifts and real philosophy of anaxagoras, brucker de sect. ion., xix. [ ] arist. eth. eu., i., . [ ] archelaus began to teach during the interval between the first and second visit of anaxagoras. see fast. hell., vol. ii., b. c. . [ ] see the evidence of this in the clouds of aristophanes. [ ] plut. in vit. per. [ ] see thucyd., lib. v., c. , in which the articles of peace state that the temple and fane of delphi should be independent, and that the citizens should settle their own taxes, receive their own revenues, and manage their own affairs as a sovereign nation (autoteleis kai autodikois [consult on these words arnold's thucydides, vol. ii., p. , note ]), according to the ancient laws of their country. [ ] mueller's dorians, vol. ii., p. . athen., iv. [ ] a short change of administration, perhaps, accompanied the defeat of pericles in the debate on the boeotian expedition. he was evidently in power, since he had managed the public funds during the opposition of thucydides; but when beaten, as we should say, "on the boeotian question," the victorious party probably came into office. [ ] an ambush, according to diodorus, lib. xii. [ ] twenty talents, according to the scholiast of aristophanes. suidas states the amount variously at fifteen and fifty. [ ] who fled into macedonia.--theopomp. ap. strab. the number of athenian colonists was one thousand, according to diodorus--two thousand, according to theopompus. [ ] aristoph. nub., . [ ] thucyd., i., . [ ] ibid., i., . [ ] as is evident, among other proofs, from the story before narrated, of his passing his accounts to the athenians with the item of ten talents employed as secret service money. [ ] the propylaea alone (not then built) cost two thousand and twelve talents (harpocrat. in propylaia tauta), and some temples cost a thousand talents each. [plut. in vit. per.] if the speech of pericles referred to such works as these, the offer to transfer the account to his own charge was indeed but a figure of eloquence. but, possibly, the accusation to which this offer was intended as a reply was applicable only to some individual edifice or some of the minor works, the cost of which his fortune might have defrayed. we can scarcely indeed suppose, that if the affected generosity were but a bombastic flourish, it could have excited any feeling but laughter among an audience so acute. [ ] the testimony of thucydides (lib. ii., c. ) alone suffices to destroy all the ridiculous imputations against the honesty of pericles which arose from the malice of contemporaries, and are yet perpetuated only by such writers as cannot weigh authorities. thucydides does not only call him incorrupt, but "clearly or notoriously honest." [chraematon te diaphanos adorotatos.] plutarch and isocrates serve to corroborate this testimony. [ ] plut. in vit. per. [ ] thucyd., lib. ii., c. . [ ] "the model of this regulation, by which athens obtained the most extensive influence, and an almost absolute dominion over the allies, was possibly found in other grecian states which had subject confederates, such as thebes, elis, and argos. but on account of the remoteness of many countries, it is impossible that every trifle could have been brought before the court at athens; we must therefore suppose that each subject state had an inferior jurisdiction of its own, and that the supreme jurisdiction alone belonged to athens. can it, indeed, be supposed that persons would have travelled from rhodes or byzantium, for the sake of a lawsuit of fifty or a hundred drachmas? in private suits a sum of money was probably fixed, above which the inferior court of the allies had no jurisdiction, while cases relating to higher sums were referred to athens. there can be no doubt that public and penal causes were to a great extent decided in athens, and the few definite statements which are extant refer to lawsuits of this nature."--boeckh, pol. econ. of athens, vol. ii., p. , , translation. [ ] in calculating the amount of the treasure when transferred to athens, boeckh (pol. econ. of athens, vol. i., p. , translation) is greatly misled by an error of dates. he assumes that the fund had only existed ten years when brought to athens: whereas it had existed about seventeen, viz., from b. c. to b. c. , or rather b. c. . and this would give about the amount affirmed by diodorus, xii., p. (viz., nearly talents), though he afterward raises it to , . but a large portion of it must have been consumed in war before the transfer. still boeckh rates the total of the sum transferred far too low, when he says it cannot have exceeded talents. it more probably doubled that sum. [ ] such as euboea, see p. . [ ] vesp. aristoph. . [ ] knight's prolegomena to homer; see also boeckh (translation), vol. i., p. . [ ] viz., b. c. ; ol. . [ ] thucyd., iv., . [ ] see chandler's inscript. [ ] in the time of alcibiades the tribute was raised to one thousand three hundred talents, and even this must have been most unequally assessed, if it were really the pecuniary hardship the allies insisted upon and complained of. but the resistance made to imposts upon matters of feeling or principle in our own country, as, at this day, in the case of church-rates, may show the real nature of the grievance. it was not the amount paid, but partly the degradation of paying it, and partly, perhaps, resentment in many places at some unfair assessment. discontent exaggerates every burden, and a feather is as heavy as a mountain when laid on unwilling shoulders. when the new arrangement was made by alcibiades or the later demagogues, andocides asserts that some of the allies left their native countries and emigrated to thurii. but how many englishmen have emigrated to america from objections to a peculiar law or a peculiar impost, which state policy still vindicates, or state necessity still maintains! the irish catholic peasant, in reality, would not, perhaps, be much better off, in a pecuniary point of view, if the tithes were transferred to the rental of the landlord, yet irish catholics have emigrated in hundreds from the oppression, real or imaginary, of protestant tithe-owners. whether in ancient times or modern, it is not the amount of taxation that makes the grievance. people will pay a pound for what they like, and grudge a farthing for what they hate. i have myself known men quit england because of the stamp duty on newspapers! [ ] thucyd., lib. i., c. ; bloomfield's translation. [ ] a sentiment thus implied by the athenian ambassadors: "we are not the first who began the custom which has ever been an established one, that the weaker should be kept under by the stronger." the athenians had, however, an excuse more powerful than that of the ancient rob roys. it was the general opinion of the time that the revolt of dependant allies might be fairly punished by one that could punish them--(so the corinthians take care to observe). and it does not appear that the athenian empire at this period was more harsh than that of other states to their dependants. the athenian ambassadors (thucyd., i., ) not only quote the far more galling oppressions the ionians and the isles had undergone from the mede, but hint that the spartans had been found much harder masters than the athenians. [ ] only twelve drachma each yearly: the total, therefore, is calculated by the inestimable learning of boeckh not to have exceeded twenty-one talents. [ ] total estimated at thirty-three talents. [ ] the state itself contributed largely to the plays, and the lessee of the theatre was also bound to provide for several expenses, in consideration of which he received the entrance money. [ ] on the authority of pseud. arist. oecon., - . [ ] in the expedition against sicily the state supplied the vessel and paid the crew. the trierarchs equipped the ship and gave voluntary contributions besides.--thucyd., vi., . [ ] liturgies, with most of the athenian laws that seemed to harass the rich personally, enhanced their station and authority politically. it is clear that wherever wealth is made most obviously available to the state, there it will be most universally respected. thus is it ever in commercial countries. in carthage of old, where, according to aristotle, wealth was considered virtue, and in england at this day, where wealth, if not virtue, is certainly respectability. [ ] and so well aware of the uncertain and artificial tenure of the athenian power were the greek statesmen, that we find it among the arguments with which the corinthian some time after supported the peloponnesian war, "that the athenians, if they lost one sea-fight, would be utterly subdued;"--nor, even without such a mischance, could the flames of a war be kindled, but what the obvious expedient [thucyd., lib. i., c. . as the corinthians indeed suggested, thucyd., lib. i., c. ] of the enemy would be to excite the athenian allies to revolt, and the stoppage or diminution of the tribute would be the necessary consequence. [ ] if the courts of law among the allies were not removed to athens till after the truce with peloponnesus, and indeed till after the ostracism of thucydides, the rival of pericles, the value of the judicial fees did not, of course, make one of the considerations for peace; but there would then have been the mightier consideration of the design of that transfer which peace only could effect. [ ] plut. in vit. per. [ ] "as a vain woman decked out with jewels," was the sarcastic reproach of the allies.--plut. in vit. per. [ ] the propylaea was built under the direction of mnesicles. it was begun b. c., in the archonship of euthymenes, three years after the samian war, and completed in five years. harpocrat. in propylaia tauta. [ ] plut. in vit. per. [ ] see arnold's thucydides, ii., , note . [ ] "their bodies, too, they employ for the state as if they were any one's else but their own; but with minds completely their own, they are ever ready to render it service."--thucyd., i., , bloomfield's translation. [ ] with us, juries as well as judges are paid, and, in ordinary cases, at as low a rate as the athenian dicasts (the different value of money being considered), viz., common jurymen one shilling for each trial, and, in the sheriffs' court, fourpence. what was so pernicious in athens is perfectly harmless in england; it was the large member of the dicasts which made the mischief, and not the system of payment itself, as unreflecting writers have so often asserted. [ ] see book iv., chapter v. vii. of this volume. [ ] at first the payment of the dicasts was one obolus.--(aristoph. nubes, .) afterward, under cleon, it seems to have been increased to three; it is doubtful whether it was in the interval ever two obols. constant mistakes are made between the pay, and even the constitution, of the ecclesiasts and the dicasts. but the reader must carefully remember that the former were the popular legislators, the latter, the popular judges or jurors--their functions were a mixture of both. [ ] misthos ekklaesiastikos--the pay of the ecclesiasts, or popular assembly. [ ] we know not how far the paying of the ecclesiasts was the work of pericles: if it were, it must have been at, or after, the time we now enter upon, as, according to aristophanes (eccles., ), the people were not paid during the power of myronides, who flourished, and must have fallen with thucydides, the defeated rival of pericles. [ ] the athenians could extend their munificence even to foreigners, as their splendid gift, said to have been conferred on herodotus, and the sum of ten thousand drachmas, which isocrates declares them to have bestowed on pindar. [isoc. de antidosi.] [ ] the pay of the dicast and the ecclesiast was, as we have just seen, first one, then three obols; and the money paid to the infirm was never less than one, nor more than two obols a day. the common sailors, in time of peace, received four obols a day. neither an ecclesiast nor a dicast was, therefore, paid so much as a common sailor. [ ] such as the panathenaea and hieromeniae. [ ] from klaeroi, lots. the estates and settlements of a cleruchia were divided among a certain number of citizens by lot. [ ] the state only provided the settlers with arms, and defrayed the expenses of their journey. see boeckh, pol. econ. of athens, vol. ii., p. (translation). [ ] andoc. orat. de pace. [ ] these institutions differed, therefore, from colonies principally in this: the mother country retained a firm hold over the cleruchi--could recall them or reclaim their possessions, as a penalty of revolt: the cleruchi retained all the rights, and were subject to most of the conditions, of citizens. [except, for instance, the liturgies.] lands were given without the necessity of quitting athens--departure thence was voluntary, although it was the ordinary choice. but whether the cleruchi remained at home or repaired to their settlement, they were equally attached to athenian interests. from their small number, and the enforced and unpopular nature of their tenure, their property, unlike that of ordinary colonists, depended on the power and safety of the parent state: they were not so much transplanted shoots as extended branches of one tree, taking their very life from the same stem. in modern times, ireland suggests a parallel to the old cleruchiae--in the gift of lands to english adventurers--in the long and intimate connexion which subsisted between the manners, habits, and political feeling of the english settlers and the parent state--in the separation between the settlers and the natives; and in the temporary power and subsequent feebleness which resulted to the home government from the adoption of a system which garrisoned the land, but exasperated the inhabitants. [ ] nor were even these composed solely of athenians, but of mixed and various races. the colony to amphipolis (b. c. ) is the first recorded colony of the athenians after the great ionic migrations. [ ] in the year in which the colony of thurium or thurii was founded, the age of lysias was fifteen, that of herodotus forty-one. [ ] plut. in vit. per. schol. aristoph. av., . [ ] viz., callias, lysippus, and cratinus. see athenaeus, lib. viii., p. . the worthy man seems to have had the amiable infirmities of a bon vivant. [ ] plut. in vit. them. [ ] historians, following the received text in plutarch, have retailed the incredible story that the rejected claimants were sold for slaves; but when we consider the extraordinary agitation it must have caused to carry such a sentence against so many persons, amounting to a fourth part of the free population--when we remember the numerous connexions, extending throughout at least four times their own number, which five thousand persons living long undisturbed and unsuspected as free citizens must have formed, it is impossible to conceive that such rigour could even have been attempted without creating revolution, sedition, or formidable resistance. yet this measure, most important if attended with such results--most miraculous if not--is passed over in total silence by thucydides and by every other competent authority. a luminous emendation by mr. clinton (fast. hell., vol. ii., second edition, p. and , note p) restores the proper meaning. instead of heprataesan, he proposes apaelathaesan--the authorities from lysias quoted by mr. clinton (p. ) seem to decide the matter. "these five thousand disfranchised citizens, in b. c. , partly supplied the colony to thurium in the following year, and partly contributed to augment the number of the metoeci." [ ] fourteen thousand two hundred and forty, according to philochorus. by the term "free citizens" is to be understood those male athenians above twenty--that is, those entitled to vote in the public assembly. according to mr. clinton's computation, the women and children being added, the fourteen thousand two hundred and forty will amount to about fifty-eight thousand six hundred and forty, as the total of the free population. [ ] thucyd., i., c. . [ ] see the speech of the corinthians.--thucyd., lib. i., . [ ] who was this thucydides? the rival of pericles had been exiled less than ten years before [in fact, about four years ago; viz., b. c. ]; and it is difficult to suppose that he could have been recalled before the expiration of he sentence, and appointed to command, at the very period when the power and influence of pericles were at their height. thucydides, the historian, was about thirty-one, an age at which so high a command would scarcely, at that period, have been bestowed upon any citizen, even in athens, where men mixed in public affairs earlier than in other hellenic states [thucydides himself (lib. v., ) speaks of alcibiades as a mere youth (at least one who would have been so considered in any other state), at a time when he could not have been much less, and was probably rather more than thirty]; besides, had thucydides been present, would he have given us no more ample details of an event so important? there were several who bore this name. the scholiast on aristophanes (acharn., v., ) says there were four, whom he distinguishes thus-- st, the historian; d, the gargettian; d, the thessalian; th, the son of melesias. the scholiast on the vespae (v., ) enumerates the same, and calls them all athenians. the son of melesias is usually supposed the opponent of pericles--he is so called by androtion. theopompus, however, says that it was the son of pantanus. marcellinus (in vit. thucyd., p. xi.) speaks of many of the name, and also selects four for special notice. st, the historian; d, the son of melesias; d, a pharsalian; th, a poet of the ward of acherdus, mentioned by androtion, and called the son of ariston. two of this name, the historian and the son of melesias, are well known to us; but, for the reasons i have mentioned, it is more probable that one of the others was general in the samian war. a third thucydides (the thessalian or pharsalian) is mentioned by the historian himself (viii., ). i take the gargettian (perhaps the son of pantanus named by theopompus) to have been the commander in the expedition. [ ] plut. in vit. per. [ ] alexis ap. ath., lib. xiii. [ ] at this period the athenians made war with a forbearance not common in later ages. when timotheus besieged samos, he maintained his armament solely on the hostile country, while a siege of nine months cost athens so considerable a sum. [ ] plut. in vit. per. the contribution levied on the samians was two hundred talents, proportioned, according to diodorus, to the full cost of the expedition. but as boeckh (pol. econ. of athens, vol. i., p. , trans.) well observes, "this was a very lenient reckoning; a nine months' siege by land and sea, in which one hundred and ninety-nine triremes [boeckh states the number of triremes at one hundred and ninety-nine, but, in fact, there were two hundred and fifteen vessels employed, since we ought not to omit the sixteen stationed on the carian coast, or despatched to lesbos and chios for supplies] were employed, or, at any rate, a large part of this number, for a considerable time, must evidently have caused a greater expense, and the statement, therefore, of isocrates and nepos, that twelve hundred talents were expended on it, appears to be by no means exaggerated." [ ] it was on byzantium that they depended for the corn they imported from the shores of the euxine. [ ] the practice of funeral orations was probably of very ancient origin among the greeks: but the law which ordained them at athens is referred by the scholiast on thucydides (lib. ii., ) to solon; while diodorus, on the other hand, informs us it was not passed till after the battle of plataea. it appears most probable that it was a usage of the heroic times, which became obsolete while the little feuds among the greek states remained trivial and unimportant; but, after the persian invasion, it was solemnly revived, from the magnitude of the wars which greece had undergone, and the dignity and holiness of the cause in which the defenders of their country had fallen. [ ] ouk an muraisi graus eous aegeitheo. this seems the only natural interpretation of the line, in which, from not having the context, we lose whatever wit the sentence may have possessed--and witty we must suppose it was, since plutarch evidently thinks it a capital joke. in corroboration of this interpretation of an allusion which has a little perplexed the commentators, we may observe, that ten years before, pericles had judged a sarcasm upon the age of elpinice the best way to silence her importunities. the anecdote is twice told by plutarch, in vit. cim., c. , and in vit. per., c. . [ ] aristot., poet. iv. [ ] "as he was removed from cos in infancy, the name of his adopted country prevailed over that of the country of his birth, and epicharmus is called of syracuse, though born at cos, as apollonius is called the rhodian, though born at alexandria."--fast. hell., vol. ii., introduction. [ ] moliere. [ ] laertius, viii. for it is evident that epicharmus the philosopher was no other than epicharmus the philosophical poet--the delight of plato, who was himself half a pythagorean.--see bentley, diss. phal., p. ; laertius, viii., ; fynes clinton, fast. hell., vol. ii., introduction, p. (note g). [ ] a few of his plays were apparently not mythological, but they were only exceptions from the general rule, and might have been written after the less refining comedies of magnes at athens. [ ] a love of false antithesis. [ ] in syracuse, however, the republic existed when epicharmus first exhibited his comedies. his genius was therefore formed by a republic, though afterward fostered by a tyranny. [ ] for crates acted in the plays of cratinus before he turned author. (see above.) now the first play of crates dates two years before the first recorded play (the archilochi) of cratinus; consequently cratinus must have been celebrated long previous to the exhibition of the archilochi--indeed, his earlier plays appear, according to aristophanes, to have been the most successful, until the old gentleman, by a last vigorous effort, beat the favourite play of aristophanes himself. [ ] that the magistrature did not at first authorize comedy seems a proof that it was not at the commencement considered, like tragedy, of a religious character. and, indeed, though modern critics constantly urge upon us its connexion with religion, i doubt whether at any time the populace thought more of its holier attributes and associations than the neapolitans of to-day are impressed with the sanctity of the carnival when they are throwing sugarplums at each other. [ ] in the interval, however, the poets seem to have sought to elude the law, since the names of two plays (the satyroi and the koleophoroi) are recorded during this period--plays which probably approached comedy without answering to its legal definition. it might be that the difficulty rigidly to enforce the law against the spirit of the times and the inclination of the people was one of the causes that led to the repeal of the prohibition. [ ] since that siege lasted nine months of the year in which the decree was made. [ ] aristophanes thus vigorously describes the applauses that attended the earlier productions of cratinus. i quote from the masterly translation of mr. mitchell. "who cratinus may forget, or the storm of whim and wit, which shook theatres under his guiding; when panegyric's song poured her flood of praise along, who but he on the top wave was riding?" * * * * * * * "his step was as the tread of a flood that leaves its bed, and his march it was rude desolation," etc. mitchell's aristoph., the knights, p. . the man who wrote thus must have felt betimes--when, as a boy, he first heard the roar of the audience--what it is to rule the humours of eighteen thousand spectators! [ ] de l'esprit, passim. [ ] de poet., c. . [ ] the oracle that awarded to socrates the superlative degree of wisdom, gave to sophocles the positive, and to euripides the comparative degree, sophos sophoclaes; sophoteros d'euripoeaes; 'andron de panton sokrataes sophotatos. sophocles is wise--euripides wiser--but wisest of all men is socrates. [ ] the oresteia. [ ] for out of seventy plays by aeschylus only thirteen were successful; he had exhibited fifteen years before he obtained his first prize; and the very law passed in honour of his memory, that a chorus should be permitted to any poet who chose to re-exhibit his dramas, seems to indicate that a little encouragement of such exhibition was requisite. this is still more evident if we believe, with quintilian, that the poets who exhibited were permitted to correct and polish up the dramas, to meet the modern taste, and play the cibber to the athenian shakspeare. [ ] athenaeus, lib. xiii., p. , . [ ] he is reported, indeed, to have said that he rejoiced in the old age which delivered him from a severe and importunate taskmaster. --athen., lib. , p. . but the poet, nevertheless, appears to have retained his amorous propensities, at least, to the last.--see athenaeus, lib. , p. . [ ] he does indeed charge sophocles with avarice, but he atones for it very handsomely in the "frogs." [ ] m. schlegel is pleased to indulge in one of his most declamatory rhapsodies upon the life, "so dear to the gods," of this "pious and holy poet." but sophocles, in private life, was a profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not absolutely a renegade. it was, perhaps, the very laxity of his principles which made him thought so agreeable a fellow. at least, such is no uncommon cause of personal popularity nowadays. people lose much of their anger and envy of genius when it throws them down a bundle or two of human foibles by which they can climb up to its level. [ ] it is said, indeed, that the appointment was the reward of a successful tragedy; it was more likely due to his birth, fortune, and personal popularity. [ ] it seems, however, that pericles thought very meanly of his warlike capacities.--see athenaeus, lib. , p. . [ ] oedip. tyr., , etc. [ ] when sophocles (athenaeus, i., p. ) said that aeschylus composed befittingly, but without knowing it, his saying evinced the study his compositions had cost himself. [ ] "the chorus should be considered as one of the persons in the drama, should be a part of the whole, and a sharer in the action, not as in euripides, but as in sophocles."--aristot. de poet., twining's translation. but even in sophocles, at least in such of his plays as are left to us, the chorus rarely, if ever, is a sharer in the outward and positive action of the piece; it rather carries on and expresses the progress of the emotions that spring out of the action. [ ] --akno toi pros s' aposkopois' anax.--oedip. tyr., . this line shows how much of emotion the actor could express in spite of the mask. [ ] "of all discoveries, the best is that which arises from the action itself, and in which a striking effect is produced by probable incidents. such is that in the oedipus of sophocles."--aristot. de poet., twining's translation. [ ] but the spot consecrated to those deities which men "tremble to name," presents all the features of outward loveliness that contrast and refine, as it were, the metaphysical terror of the associations. and the beautiful description of coloneus itself, which is the passage that sophocles is said to have read to his judges, before whom he was accused of dotage, seems to paint a home more fit for the graces than the furies. the chorus inform the stranger that he has come to "the white coloneus;" "where ever and aye, through the greenest vale gush the wailing notes of the nightingale from her home where the dark-hued ivy weaves with the grove of the god a night of leaves; and the vines blossom out from the lonely glade, and the suns of the summer are dim in the shade, and the storms of the winter have never a breeze, that can shiver a leaf from the charmed trees; for there, oh ever there, with that fair mountain throng, who his sweet nurses were, [the nymphs of nisa] wild bacchus holds his court, the conscious woods among! daintily, ever there, crown of the mighty goddesses of old, clustering narcissus with his glorious hues springs from his bath of heaven's delicious dews, and the gay crocus sheds his rays of gold. and wandering there for ever the fountains are at play, and cephisus feeds his river from their sweet urns, day by day. the river knows no dearth; adown the vale the lapsing waters glide, and the pure rain of that pellucid tide calls the rife beauty from the heart of earth. while by the banks the muses' choral train are duly heard--and there, love checks her golden rein." [ ] geronta dorthoun, phlauron, os neos pesae. oedip. col., . thus, though his daughter had only grown up from childhood to early womanhood, oedipus has passed from youth to age since the date of the oedipus tyrannus. [ ] see his self-justification, - . [ ] as each poet had but three actors allowed him, the song of the chorus probably gave time for the representative of theseus to change his dress, and reappear as polynices. [ ] the imagery in the last two lines has been amplified from the original in order to bring before the reader what the representation would have brought before the spectator. [ ] mercury. [ ] proserpine. [ ] autonamos.--antig., . [ ] ou toi synechthein, alla symphilein ephun. antig., . [ ] ceres. [ ] hyper dilophon petras--viz., parnassus. the bacchanalian light on the double crest of parnassus, which announced the god, is a favourite allusion with the greek poets. [ ] his mother, semele. [ ] aristotle finds fault with the incident of the son attempting to strike his father, as being shocking, yet not tragic--that is, the violent action is episodical, since it is not carried into effect; yet, if we might connect the plot of the "antigone" with the former plays of either "oedipus," there is something of retribution in the attempted parricide when we remember the hypocritical and cruel severity of creon to the involuntary parricide of oedipus. the whole description of the son in that living tomb, glaring on his father with his drawn sword, the dead form of his betrothed, with the subsequent picture of the lovers joined in death, constitutes one of the most masterly combinations of pathos and terror in ancient or modern poetry. [ ] this is not the only passage in which sophocles expresses feminine wo by silence. in the trachiniae, deianira vanishes in the same dumb abruptness when she hears from her son the effect of the centaur's gift upon her husband. [ ] according to that most profound maxim of aristotle, that in tragedy a very bad man should never be selected as the object of chastisement, since his fate is not calculated to excite our sympathies. [ ] electra, i. - . [ ] when (line ) clytemnestra reproaches electra for using insulting epithets to a mother--and "electra, too, at such a time of life"--i am surprised that some of the critics should deem it doubtful whether clytemnestra meant to allude to her being too young or too mature for such unfilial vehemence. not only does the age of orestes, so much the junior to electra, prove the latter signification to be the indisputable one, but the very words of electra herself to her younger sister, chrysothemis, when she tells her that she is "growing old, unwedded." estos'onde tou chronou alektra gaearskousan anumegaia te. brunck has a judicious note on electra's age, line . [ ] macbeth, act i., scene . [ ] see note [ ]. [ ] sophocles skilfully avoids treading the ground consecrated to aeschylus. he does not bring the murder before us with the struggles and resolve of orestes. [ ] this is very characteristic of sophocles; he is especially fond of employing what may be called "a crisis in life" as a source of immediate interest to the audience. so in the "oedipus at coloneus," oedipus no sooner finds he is in the grove of the furies than he knows his hour is approaching; so, also, in the "ajax," the nuncius announces from the soothsayer, that if ajax can survive the one day which makes the crisis of his life, the anger of the goddess will cease. this characteristic of the peculiar style of sophocles might be considered as one of the proofs (were any wanting) of the authenticity of the "trachiniae." [ ] m. schlegel rather wantonly accuses deianira of "levity"--all her motives, on the contrary, are pure and high, though tender and affectionate. [ ] observe the violation of the unity which sophocles, the most artistical of all the greek tragedians, does not hesitate to commit whenever he thinks it necessary. hyllus, at the beginning of the play, went to cenaeum; he has been already there and back--viz., a distance from mount oeta to a promontory in euboea, during the time about seven hundred and thirty lines have taken up in recital! nor is this all: just before the last chorus--only about one hundred lines back--lichas set out to cenaeum; and yet sufficient time is supposed to have elapsed for him to have arrived there--been present at a sacrifice--been killed by hercules--and after all this, for hyllus, who tells the tale, to have performed the journey back to trachin. [ ] even ulysses, the successful rival of ajax, exhibits a reluctance to face the madman which is not without humour. [ ] potter says, in common with some other authorities, that "we may be assured that the political enmity of the athenians to the spartans and argives was the cause of this odious representation of menelaus and agamemnon." but the athenians had, at that time, no political enmity with the argives, who were notoriously jealous of the spartans; and as for the spartans, agamemnon and menelaus were not their heroes and countrymen. on the contrary, it was the thrones of menelaus and agamemnon which the spartans overthrew. the royal brothers were probably sacrificed by the poet, not the patriot. the dramatic effects required that they should be made the foils to the manly fervour of teucer and the calm magnanimity of ulysses. [ ] that the catastrophe should be unhappy! aristot., poet., xiii. in the same chapter aristotle properly places in the second rank of fable those tragedies which attempt the trite and puerile moral of punishing the bad and rewarding the good. [ ] when aristophanes (in the character of aeschylus) ridicules euripides for the vulgarity of deriving pathos from the rags, etc., of his heroes, he ought not to have omitted all censure of the rags and sores of the favourite hero of sophocles. and if the telephus of the first is represented as a beggar, so also is the oedipus at coloneus of the latter. euripides has great faults, but he has been unfairly treated both by ancient and modern hypercriticism. [ ] the single effects, not the plots. [ ] "polus, celebrated," says gellius, "throughout all greece, a scientific actor of the noblest tragedies." gellius relates of him an anecdote, that when acting the electra of sophocles, in that scene where she is represented with the urn supposed to contain her brother's remains, he brought on the stage the urn and the relics of his own son, so that his lamentations were those of real emotion. poles acted the hero in the plays of oedipus tyrannus and oedipus at coloneus.--arrian. ap. stob., xcvii., . the actors were no less important personages on the ancient than they are on the modern stage. aristotle laments that good poets were betrayed into episodes, or unnecessarily prolonging and adorning parts not wanted in the plot, so as to suit the rival performers.--arist. de poet., ix. precisely what is complained of in the present day. the attic performers were the best in greece--all the other states were anxious to engage them, but they were liable to severe penalties if they were absent at the time of the athenian festivals. (plut. in alex.) they were very highly remunerated. polus could earn no less than a talent in two days (plut. in rhet. vit.), a much larger sum (considering the relative values of money) than any english actor could now obtain for a proportionate period of service. though in the time of aristotle actors as a body were not highly respectable, there was nothing highly derogatory in the profession itself. the high birth of sophocles and aeschylus did not prevent their performing in their own plays. actors often took a prominent part in public affairs; and aristodemus, the player, was sent ambassador to king philip. so great, indeed, was the importance attached to this actor, that the state took on itself to send ambassadors in his behalf to all the cities in which he had engagements.--aeschin. de fals. legat., p. - , ed. reiske. [ ] the minerva promachus. hae megalae athaena. [ ] zosimus, v., p. . [ ] oedip. colon., , etc. [ ] oedip. colon., . ******************************************************************* this ebook was one of project gutenberg's early files produced at a time when proofing methods and tools were not well developed. there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed as ebook (# ) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ ******************************************************************* title: a day in old athens author: william stearns davis release date: december, [ebook # ] [yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [this file was first posted on march , ] edition: language: english character set encoding: iso - (latin- ) *** a day in old athens by william stearns davis professor of ancient history in the university of minnesota preface this little book tries to describe what an intelligent person would see and hear in ancient athens, if by some legerdemain he were translated to the fourth century b.c. and conducted about the city under competent guidance. rare happenings have been omitted and sometimes, to avoid long explanations, probable matters have been stated as if they were ascertained facts; but these instances are few, and it is hoped no reader will be led into serious error. the year b.c. has been selected for the hypothetical time of this visit, not because of any special virtue in that date, but because athens was then architecturally almost perfect, her civic and her social life seemed at their best, the democratic constitution held its vigor, and there were few outward signs of the general decadence which was to set in after the triumph of macedon. i have endeavored to state no facts and to make no allusions, that will not be fairly obvious to a reader who has merely an elementary knowledge of greek annals, such information, for instance, as may be gained through a good secondary school history of ancient times. this naturally has led to comments and descriptions which more advanced students may find superfluous. the writer has been under a heavy debt to the numerous and excellent works on greek "private antiquities" and "public life" written in english, french, or german, as well as to the various great classical encyclopædias and dictionaries, and to many treatises and monographs upon the topography of athens and upon the numerous phases of attic culture. it is proper to say, however, that the material from such secondary sources has been merely supplementary to a careful examination of the ancient greek writers, with the objects of this book kept especially in view. a sojourn in modern athens, also, has given me an impression of the influence of the attic landscape upon the conditions of old athenian life, an impression that i have tried to convey in this small volume. i am deeply grateful to my sister, mrs. fannie davis gifford, for helpful criticism of this book while in manuscript; to my wife, for preparing the drawings from greek vase-paintings which appear as illustrations; and to my friend and colleague, professor charles a. savage, for a kind and careful reading of the proofs. thanks also are due to henry holt and company for permission to quote material from their edition of von falke's "greece and rome." w. s. d. university of minnesota, minneapolis, minnesota. may, . contents. page maps, plans, and illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii chapter i. the physical setting of athens. section . the importance of athens in greek history . . . . . . . . . . . . why the social life of athens is so significant . . . . . . . . . the small size and sterility of attica . . . . . . . . . . . . . the physical beauty of attica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the mountains of attica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the sunlight in attica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the topography of the city of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b.c.--the year of the visit to athens . . . . . . . . . . . chapter ii. the first sights in athens. . the morning crowds bound for athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the gate and the street scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the streets and house fronts of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . the simplicity of athenian life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter iii. the agora and its denizens. . the buildings around the agora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the life in the agora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the booths and shops in the agora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the flower and the fish vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the morning visitors to the agora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the leisured class in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . familiar types around the agora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the barber shops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter iv. the athenian house and its furnishings. . following an athenian gentleman homeward . . . . . . . . . . . . the type and uses of a greek house . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the plan of a greek house . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . modifications in the typical plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . rents and house values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the simple yet elegant furnishings of an athenian house . . . . chapter v. the women of athens. . how athenian marriages are arranged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lack of sentiment in marriages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . athenian marriage rites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the mental horizon of athenian women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the honor paid womanhood in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the sphere of action of athenian women . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter vi. athenian costume. . the general nature of greek dress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the masculine chiton, himation, and chlamys . . . . . . . . . . . the dress of the women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . footwear and head coverings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the beauty of the greek dress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . greek toilet frivolities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter vii. the slaves. . slavery an integral part of greek life . . . . . . . . . . . . . the slave trade in greece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the treatment of slaves in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cruel and kind masters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the "city slaves" of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter viii. the children. . the desirability of children in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . the exposure of infants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the celebration of a birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . life and games of young children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . playing in the streets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the first stories and lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the training of athenian girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter ix. the schoolboys of athens. . the athenians generally literate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . character building the aim of athenian education . . . . . . . . the schoolboy's pedagogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an athenian school . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the school curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the study of the poets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the greeks do not study foreign languages . . . . . . . . . . . . the study of "music" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the moral character of greek music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the teaching of gymnastics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the habits and ambitions of schoolboys . . . . . . . . . . . . . the "ephebi" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter x. the physicians of athens. . the beginnings of greek medical science . . . . . . . . . . . . . healing shrines and their methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an athenian physician's office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the physician's oath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the skill of greek physicians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . quacks and charlatans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xi. the funerals. . an athenian's will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the preliminaries of a funeral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lamenting the dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the funeral procession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the funeral pyre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . honors to the memory of the dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the beautiful funeral monuments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xii. trade, manufactures, and banking. . the commercial importance of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the manufacturing activities of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . the commerce of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the adventurous merchant skippers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . athenian money-changers and bankers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a large banking establishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . drawbacks to the banking business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the pottery of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . athenian pottery an expression of the greek sense of beauty . . chapter xiii. the armed forces of athens. . military life at athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the organization of the athenian army . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the hoplites and the light troops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the cavalry and the peltasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the panoply of the hoplites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the weapons of a hoplite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . infantry maneuvers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the preliminaries of a greek battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . joining the battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the climax and end of the battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the burial truce and the trophy after the battle . . . . . . . . the siege of fortified towns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the introduction of new tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xiv. the peiræus and the shipping. . the "long walls" down to the harbor town . . . . . . . . . . . . munychia and the havens of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the glorious view from the hill of munychia . . . . . . . . . . . the town of peiræus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the merchant shipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the three war harbors and the ship houses . . . . . . . . . . . . the great naval arsenal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an athenian trierarch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the evolution of the trireme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the hull of a trireme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the rowers' benches of a trireme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the cabins, rigging, and ram of a trireme . . . . . . . . . . . . the officers and crew of a trireme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a trireme at sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the tactics of a naval battle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the naval strength of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xv. an athenian court trial. . the frequency of litigation in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . prosecutions in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the preliminaries to a trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the athenian jury courts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the juryman's oath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . opening the trial. the plaintiff's speech . . . . . . . . . . . the defendant's speech. demonstrations by the jury . . . . . . . the first verdict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the second and final verdict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the merits and defects of the athenian courts . . . . . . . . . . the usual punishments in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the heavy penalty of exile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the death penalty of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xvi. the ecclesia of athens. . the rule of democracy in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . aristocracy and wealth. their status and burdens . . . . . . . . athenian society truly democratic up to a certain point . . . . . the voting population of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . meeting times of the ecclesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the pnyx (assembly place) at athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the preliminaries of the meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . debating a proposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . voting at the pnyx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the ecclesia as an educational instrument . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xvii. the afternoon at the gymnasia . the gymnasia. places of general resort . . . . . . . . . . . . . the road to the academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the social atmosphere and human types at the academy . . . . . . philosophers and cultivated men at the gymnasia . . . . . . . . . the beautiful youths at the academy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the greek worship of manly beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the detestation of old age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the greeks unite moral and physical beauty . . . . . . . . . . . the usual gymnastic sports and their objects . . . . . . . . . . professional athletes: the pancration . . . . . . . . . . . . . leaping contests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . quoit hurling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . casting the javelin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . wrestling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . foot races . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the pentathlon: the honors paid to great athletes . . . . . . chapter xviii. athenian cookery and the symposium . greek meal times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . society desired at meals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the staple articles of food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . greek vintages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vegetable dishes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . meat and fish dishes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . inviting guests to a dinner party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . preparing for the dinner: the sicilian cook . . . . . . . . . . the coming of the guests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the dinner proper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . beginning the symposium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the symposiarch and his duties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conversation at the symposium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . games and entertainments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . going home from the feast: midnight revelers . . . . . . . . . chapter xix. country life around athens. . the importance of his farm to an athenian . . . . . . . . . . . . the country by the ilissus: the greeks and natural beauty . . . plato's description of the walk by the ilissus . . . . . . . . . the athenian love of country life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . some features of the attic country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an attic farmstead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . plowing, reaping, and threshing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . grinding at the mill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the olive orchards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the vineyards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cattle, sheep, and goats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the gardens and the shrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xx. the temples and gods of athens. . certain factors in athenian religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . what constitutes "piety" in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the average athenians idea of the gods . . . . . . . . . . . . . most greeks without belief in immortality . . . . . . . . . . . . the multitude of images of the gods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . greek superstition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . consulting omens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the great oracles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . greek sacrifices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the route to the acropolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the acropolis of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the use of color upon athenian architecture and sculptures . . . the chief buildings on the acropolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the parthenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a sacrifice on the acropolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the interior of the parthenon and the great image of athena . . . greek prayers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . chapter xxi. the great festival of athens. . the frequent festivals in athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the eleusinia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the holy procession to eleusis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the mysteries of eleusis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the greater dionysia and the drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the theater of dionysus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the production of a play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the great panathenaic procession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the view from the temple of wingless victory . . . . . . . . . index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . maps, plans, and illustrations. . athenian acropolis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece page . sketch map of attica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sketch map of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . peasant going to market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . at the street fountain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a wayside herm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a carpenter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . conjectural plan for the house of a wealthy athenian . . . . . . . spinning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the maternal slipper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . athenian funeral monument . . . . . . . . . . . . . facing page . at the smithy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hoplite in armor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the town of peiræus and the harbors of athens . . . . . . . . . . fishermen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an athenian trireme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the race in armor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . itinerant piper with his dog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . women pounding meal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . gathering the olive harvest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . rural sacrifice to a wooden statue of dionysus . . . . . . . . . . sketch map of the acropolis of athens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sacrificing a pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . athena parthenos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . comic actors dressed as ostriches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . actor in costume as a fury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a day in old athens chapter i. the physical setting of athens. . the importance of athens in greek history.--to three ancient nations the men of the twentieth century owe an incalculable debt. to the jews we owe most of our notions of religion; to the romans we owe traditions and examples in law, administration, and the general management of human affairs which still keep their influence and value; and finally, to the greeks we owe nearly all our ideas as to the fundamentals of art, literature, and philosophy, in fact, of almost the whole of our intellectual life. these greeks, however, our histories promptly teach us, did not form a single unified nation. they lived in many "city-states" of more or less importance, and some of the largest of these contributed very little directly to our civilization. sparta, for example, has left us some noble lessons in simple living and devoted patriotism, but hardly a single great poet, and certainly never a philosopher or sculptor. when we examine closely, we see that the civilized life of greece, during the centuries when she was accomplishing the most, was peculiarly centered at athens. without athens, greek history would lose three quarters of its significance, and modern life and thought would become infinitely the poorer. . why the social life of athens is so significant.--because, then, the contributions of athens to our own life are so important, because they touch (as a greek would say) upon almost every side of "the true, the beautiful, and the good," it is obvious that the outward conditions under which this athenian genius developed deserve our respectful attention. for assuredly such personages as sophocles, plato, and phidias were not isolated creatures, who developed their genius apart from, or in spite of, the life about them, but rather were the ripe products of a society, which in its excellences and weaknesses presents some of the most interesting pictures and examples in the world. to understand the athenian civilization and genius it is not enough to know the outward history of the times, the wars, the laws, and the lawmakers. we must see athens as the average man saw it and lived in it from day to day, and then perhaps we can partially understand how it was that during the brief but wonderful era of athenian freedom and prosperity[*], athens was able to produce so many men of commanding genius as to win for her a place in the history of civilization which she can never lose. [*]that era may be assumed to begin with the battle of marathon ( b.c.), and it certainly ended in b.c., when athens passed decisively under the power of macedonia; although since the battle of chæroneia ( b.c.) she had done little more than keep her liberty on sufferance. . the small size and sterility of attica.--attica was a very small country according to modern notions, and athens the only large city therein. the land barely covered some square miles, with square miles more, if one includes the dependent island of salamis. it was thus far smaller than the smallest of our american "states" (rhode island = square miles), and was not so large as many american counties. it was really a triangle of rocky, hill-scarred land thrust out into the Ægean sea, as if it were a sort of continuation of the more level district of bœotia. yet small as it was, the hills inclosing it to the west, the seas pressing it form the northeast and south, gave it a unity and isolation all its own. attica was not an island; but it could be invaded only by sea, or by forcing the resistance which could be offered at the steep mountain passes towards bœotia or megara. attica was thus distinctly separated from the rest of greece. legends told how, when the half-savage dorians had forced themselves southward over the mainland, they had never penetrated into attica; and the athenians later prided themselves upon being no colonists from afar, but upon being "earth-sprung,"--natives of the soil which they and their twenty-times grandfathers had held before them. this triangle of attica had its peculiar shortcomings and virtues. it was for the most part stony and unfertile. only a shallow layer of good soil covered a part of its hard foundation rock, which often in turn lay bare on the surface. the athenian farmer had a sturdy struggle to win a scanty crop, and about the only products he could ever raise in abundance for export were olives (which seemed to thrive on scanty soil and scanty rainfall) and honey, the work of the mountain bees. . the physical beauty of attica.--yet attica had advantages which more than counterbalanced this grudging of fertility. all greece, to be sure, was favored by the natural beauty of its atmosphere, seas, and mountains, but attica was perhaps the most favored portion of all, around her coasts, rocky often and broken by pebbly beaches and little craggy peninsulas, surged the deep blue Ægean, the most glorious expanse of ocean in the world. far away spread the azure water[*],--often foam-crested and sometimes alive with the dolphins leaping at their play,--reaching towards a shimmering sky line where rose "the isles of greece," masses of green foliage, or else of tawny rock, scattered afar, to adapt the words of homer, "like shields laid on the face of the glancing deep." [*]the peculiar blueness of the water near attica is probably caused by the clear rocky bottom of the sea, as well as by the intensity of the sunlight. above the sea spread the noble arch of the heavens,--the atmosphere often dazzlingly bright, and carrying its glamour and sparkle almost into the hearts of men. the athenians were proud of the air about their land. their poets gladly sung its praises, as, for example, euripides[*], when he tells how his fellow countrymen enjoy being-- ever through air clear shining brightly as on wings uplifted, pacing lightly. [*]medea: . . the mountains of attica.--the third great element, besides the sea and the atmosphere of athens, was the mountains. one after another the bold hills reared themselves, cutting short all the plainlands and making the farmsteads often a matter of slopes and terraces. against the radiant heavens these mountains stood out boldly, clearly; revealing all the little gashes and seams left from that long-forgotten day when they were flung forth from the bowels of the earth. none of these mountains was very high: hymettus, the greatest, was only about feet; but rising as they often did from a close proximity to the sea, and not from a dwarfing table-land, even the lower hills uplifted themselves with proud majesty. these hills were of innumerable tints according to their rocks, the hue of the neighboring sea, and the hour of the day. in spring they would be clothed in verdant green, which would vanish before the summer heats, leaving them rosy brown or gray. but whatever the fundamental tone, it was always brilliant; for the athenians lived in a land where blue sky, blue sea, and the massive rock blent together into such a galaxy of shifting color, that, in comparison, the lighting of almost any northern or western landscape would seem feeble and tame. the athenians absorbed natural beauty with their native air. . the sunlight in athens.--the athenian loved sunshine, and helios the sun god was gracious to his prayers. in the athens of to-day it is reckoned that the year averages days in which the sun is not concealed by clouds one instant; and days more when the sun is not hidden more than half an hour[*]. ancient athens was surely not more cloudy. nevertheless, despite this constant sunshine and a southern latitude, athens was stricken relatively seldom with semitropical heat. the sea was a good friend, bringing tempering breezes. in the short winter there might be a little frost, a little snow, and a fair supply of rain. for the rest of the year, one golden day was wont to succeed another, with the sun and the sea breeze in ever friendly rivalry. [*]the reason for these many clear days is probably because when the moist west and southwest winds come in contact with the dry, heated air of the attic plain, they are at once volatilized and dispersed, not condensed (as in northern lands); therefore the day resolves itself into brilliant sunshine. the climate saved the athenians from being obliged to wage a stern warfare with nature as did the northern peoples. their life and civilization could be one developed essentially "in the open air"; while, on the other hand, the bracing sea breeze saved them from that enervating lethargy which has ruined so many southern folk. the scanty soil forced them to struggle hard to win a living; unless they yielded to the constant beckoning of the ocean, and sought food, adventure, wealth, and a great empire across the seas. . the topography of the city of athens.--so much for the land of attica in general; but what of the setting of the city of athens itself? the city lay in a plain, somewhat in the south central part of attica, and about four miles back from the sea. a number of mountains came together to form an irregular rectangle with the saronic gulf upon the south. to the east of athens stretched the long gnarled ridge of hymettus, the wildest and grayest mountain in attica, the home of bees and goatherds, and (if there be faith in pious legend) of innumerable nymphs and satyrs. to the west ran the lower, browner mountains, Ægaleos, across which a road (the "sacred way") wound through an easy pass towards eleusis, the only sizable town in attica, outside of athens and its harbors. to the rear of the plain rose a noble pyramid, less jagged than hymettus, more lordly than Ægaleos; its summits were fretted with a white which turned to clear rose color under the sunset. this was pentelicus, from the veins whereof came the lustrous marble for the master sculptor. closer at hand, nearer the center of the plain, rose a small and very isolated hill,--lycabettus, whose peaked summit looked down upon the roofs of athens. and last, but never least, about one mile southwest of lycabettus, upreared a natural monument of much greater frame,--not a hill, but a colossal rock. its shape was that of an irregular oval; it was about feet long, feet wide, and its level summit stood feet above the plain. this steep, tawny rock, flung by the titans, one might dream, into the midst of the attic plain, formed one of the most famous sites in the world, for it was the acropolis of athens. its full significance, however, must be explained later. from the acropolis and a few lesser hills close by, the land sloped gently down towards the harbors and the saronic bay. these were the great features of the outward setting of athens. one might add to them the long belt of dark green olive groves winding down the westward side of the plain, where the cephisus (which along among attic rivulets did not run dry in summer) ran down to the sea. there was also a shorter olive belt west of the city, where the weaker ilissus crept, before it lost itself amid the thirsty fields. sea, rock, and sky, then, joined together around athens as around almost no other city in the world. the landscape itself was adjusted to the eye with marvelous harmony. the colors and contours formed one glorious model for the sculptor and the painter, one perpetual inspiration for the poet. even if athens had never been the seat of a famous race, she would have won fame as being situated in one of the most beautiful localities in the world. rightly, therefore, did its dwellers boast of their city as the "violet-crowned" (iostephanos). . b.c.--the year of the visit to athens.--this city let us visit in the days of its greatest outward glory. we may select the year b.c. at that time athens had recovered from the ravages of the peloponnesian war, while the macedonian peril had not as yet become menacing. the great public buildings were nearly all completed. no signs of material decadence were visible, and if athens no longer possessed the wide naval empire of the days of pericles, her fleets and her armies were still formidable. the harbors were full of commerce; the philosophers were teaching their pupils in the groves and porticoes; the democratic constitution was entirely intact. with intelligent vision we will enter the city and look about us. chapter ii. the first sights in athens. . the morning crowds bound for athens.--it is very early in the morning. the sun has just pushed above the long ridge of hymettus, sending a slanting red bar of light across the attic plain, and touching the opposite slopes of Ægaleos with livid fire. already, however, life is stirring outside the city. long since, little market boats have rowed across the narrow strait from salamis, bringing the island farmer's produce, and other farmers from the plain and the mountain slopes have started for market. in the ruddy light the marble temples on the lofty acropolis rising ahead of these hurrying rustics are standing out clearly; the spear and helmet of the great brazen statue of the athena promachos are flashing from the noble citadel, as a kind of day beacon, beckoning onward toward the city. from the peiræus, the harbor town, a confused him of mariners lading and unlading vessels is even now rising, but we cannot turn ourselves thither. our route is to follow the farmers bound for market. the most direct road from the peiræus to athens is hidden indeed, for it leads between the towering ramparts of the "long walls," two mighty barriers which run parallel almost four miles from the inland city to the harbor, giving a guarded passage in wartime and making athens safe against starvation from any land blockade; but there is an outside road leading also to athens from the western farmsteads, and this we can conveniently follow. upon this route the crowd which one meets is certainly not aristocratic, but it is none the less athenian. here goes a drover, clad in skins, his legs wound with woolen bands in lieu of stockings; before him and his wolf-like dog shambles a flock of black sheep or less manageable goats, bleating and baaing as they are propelled toward market. after him there may come an unkempt, long-bearded farmer flogging on a pack ass or a mule attached to a clumsy cart with solid wheels, and laden with all kinds of market produce. the roadway, be it said, is not good, and all carters have their troubles; therefore, there is a deal of gesticulating and profane invocation of hermes and all other gods of traffic; for, early as it is, the market place is already filling, and every delay promises a loss. there are still other companions bound toward the city: countrymen bearing cages of poultry; others engaged in the uncertain calling of driving pigs; swarthy oriental sailors, with rings in their ears, bearing bales of phœnician goods from the peiræus; respectable country gentlemen, walking gravely in their best white mantles and striving to avoid the mud and contamination; and perhaps also a small company of soldiers, just back from foreign service, passes, clattering shields and spear staves. . the gate and the street scenes.--the crowds grow denser as everybody approaches the frequented "peiræus gate," for nearly all of attica which lies within easy reach of athens has business in the market place every morning. on passing the gate a fairly straight way leads through the city to the market, but progress for the multitude becomes slow. if it is one of the main thoroughfares, it is now very likely to be almost blocked with people. there are few late risers at athens; the council of five hundred[*], the huge jury courts, and the public assembly (if it has met to-day[+]) are appointed to gather at sunrise. the plays in the theater, which, however, are given only on certain festivals, begin likewise at sunrise. the philosophers say that "the man who would accomplish great things must be up while yet it is dark." athenians, therefore, are always awake and stirring at an hour when men of later ages and more cold and foggy climes will be painfully yawning ere getting out of bed. [*]the "boule," the great standing committee of the athenian people to aid the magistrates in the government. [+]in which case, of course, the regular courts and the council would hardly meet. the market place attracts the great masses, but by no means all; hither and thither bevies of sturdy slave girls, carrying graceful pitchers on their heads, are hurrying towards the fountains which gush cool water at most of the street corners. theirs is a highly necessary task, for few or no houses have their own water supply; and around each fountain one can see half a dozen by no means slatternly maidens, splashing and flirting the water one at another, while they wait their turn with the pitchers, and laugh and exchange banter with the passing farmers' lads. many in the street crowds are rosy-cheeked schoolboys, walking decorously, if they are lads of good breeding, and blushing modestly when they are greeted by their fathers' acquaintances. they do not loiter on the way. close behind, carrying their writing tablets, follow the faithful 'pedagogues,' the body-servants appointed to conduct them to school, give them informal instruction, and, if need be, correct their faults in no painless manner. besides the water maids and the schoolboys, from the innumerable house doors now opening the respective masters are stepping forth--followed by one, two, or several serving varlets, as many as their wealth affords. all these join in the crowd entering from the country. "athenian democracy" always implies a goodly amount of hustling and pushing. no wonder the ways are a busy sight! . the streets and house fronts of athens.--progress is slower near the market place because of the extreme narrowness of the streets. they are only fifteen feet wide or even less,--intolerable alleys a later age would call them,--and dirty to boot. sometimes they are muddy, more often extremely dusty. worse still, they are contaminated by great accumulations of filth; for the city is without an efficient sewer system or regular scavengers. even as the crowd elbows along, a house door will frequently open, an ill-favored slave boy show his head, and with the yell, "out of the way!" slap a bucket of dirty water into the street. there are many things to offend the nose as well as the eyes of men of a later race. it is fortunate indeed that the athenians are otherwise a healthy folk, or they would seem liable to perpetual pestilence; even so, great plagues have in past years harried the city[*]. [*]the most fearful thereof was the great plague of b.c. (during the peloponnesian war), which nearly ruined athens. the first entrance to athens will thus bring to a stranger, full of the city's fame and expectant of meeting objects of beauty at every turn, almost instant disappointment. the narrow, dirty, ill-paved streets are also very crooked. one can readily be lost in a labyrinth of filthy little lanes the moment one quits the few main thoroughfares. high over head, to be sure, the red crags of the acropolis may be towering, crowned with the red, gold, and white tinted marble of the temples, but all around seems only monotonous squalor. the houses seem one continuous series of blank walls; mostly of one, occasionally of two stories, and with flat roofs. these walls are usually spread over with some dirty gray or perhaps yellow stucco. for most houses, the only break in the street walls are the simple doors, all jealously barred and admitting no glance within. there are usually no street windows, if the house is only one story high. if it has two stories, a few narrow slits above the way may hint that here are the apartments for the slaves or women. there are no street numbers. there are often no street names. "so-and-so lives in such-and-such a quarter, near the temple of heracles;" that will enable you to find a householder, after a few tactful questions from the neighbors; and after all, athens is a relatively small city[*] (as great cities are reckoned), very closely built, and her regular denizens do not feel the need of a directory. [*]every guess at the population of athens rests on mere conjecture; yet, using the scanty data which we possess, it seems possible that the population of all attica at the height of its prosperity was about , free persons (including the metics--resident foreigners without citizenship); and a rather smaller number of slaves--say , or less. of this total of some , , probably something under one half resided in the city of athens during times of peace, the rest in the outlying farms and villages. athens may be imagined as a city of about , --possibly a trifle more. during serious wars there would be of course a general removal into the city. so the crowd elbows its way onward: now thinning, now gaining, but the main stream always working towards the market place. . the simplicity of athenian life.--it is clear we are entering a city where nine tenths of what the twentieth century will consider the "essential conveniences" of life are entirely lacking; where men are trying to be civilized--or, as the greeks would say, to lay hold upon "the true, the beautiful, and the good," without even the absolute minimum of those things which people of a later age will believe separate a "civilized man" from a "barbarian." the gulf between old athens and, for instance, new chicago is greater than is readily supposed[*]. it is easy enough to say that the athenians lacked such things as railways, telephones, gas, grapefruit, and cocktails. all such matters we realize were not known by our fathers and grandfathers, and we are not yet so removed from them that we cannot transport ourselves in imagination back to the world of say a.d.; but the athenians are far behind even our grandfathers. when we investigate, we will find conditions like these--houses absolutely without plumbing, beds without sheets, rooms as hot or as cold as the outer air, only far more drafty. we must cross rivers without bridges; we must fasten our clothes (or rather our "two pieces of cloth") with two pins instead of with a row of buttons; we must wear sandals without stockings (or go barefoot); must warm ourselves over a pot of ashes; judge plays or lawsuits on a cold winter morning sitting in the open air; we must study poetry with very little aid from books, geography without real maps, and politics without newspapers; and lastly, "we must learn how to be civilized without being comfortable!"[+] [*]see the very significant comment on the physical limitations of the old athenian life in zimmern's "the greek commonwealth," p. . [+]zimmern, ibid. or, to reverse the case: we must understand that an athenian would have pronounced our boasted "civilization" hopelessly artificial, and our life so dependent on outward material props and factors as to be scarcely worth the living. he would declare himself well able to live happily under conditions where the average american or englishman would be cold, semi-starved, and miserable. he would declare that his woe or happiness was retained far more under his own control than we retain ours, and that we are worthy of contemptuous pity rather than of admiration, because we have refined our civilization to such a point that the least accident, e.g. the suspension of rail traffic for a few days, can reduce a modern city to acute wretchedness. probably neither the twentieth century in its pride, nor the fourth century b.c. in its contempt, would have all the truth upon its side.[*] the difference in viewpoint, however, must still stand. preëminently athens may be called the "city of the simple life." bearing this fact in mind, we may follow the multitude and enter the marketplace; or, to use the name that stamps it as a peculiarly greek institution,--the agora. [*]the mere matter of climate would of course have to come in as a serious factor. the athenian would have found his life becoming infinitely more complex along the material side when he tried to live like a "kalos-k'agathos"--i.e. a "noble and good man," or a "gentleman,"--in a land where the thermometer might sink to ° below zero fahrenheit (or even lower) from time to time during the winter. chapter iii. the agora and its denizens. . the buildings around the agora.--full market time![*] the great plaza of the agora is buzzing with life. the contrast between the dingy, dirty streets and this magnificent public plaza is startling. the athenians manifestly care little for merely private display, rather they frown upon it; their wealth, patriotism, and best artistic energy seem all lavished upon their civic establishments and buildings. [*]between nine and twelve a.m. the agora is a square of spacious dimensions, planted here and there with graceful bay trees. its greatest length runs north and south. ignoring for the time the teeming noisy swarms of humanity, let our eyes be directed merely upon the encircling buildings. the place is almost completely enclosed by them, although not all are of equal elegance or pretension. some are temples of more or less size, like the temple of the "paternal apollo" near the southwestern angle; or the "metroön," the fane of cybele "the great mother of the gods," upon the south. others are governmental buildings; somewhat behind the metroön rise the imposing pillars of the council house, where the five hundred are deliberating on the policy of athens; and hard by that is the tholos, the "round house," with a peaked, umbrella-shaped roof, beneath which the sacred public hearth fire is ever kept burning, and where the presiding committee of the council[*] and certain high officials take their meals, and a good deal of state business is transacted. the majority of these buildings upon the agora, however, are covered promenades, porticoes, or stoæ. [*]this select committee was known technically as the "prytanes." the stoæ are combinations of rain shelters, shops, picture galleries, and public offices. turn under the pillars of the "royal stoa" upon the west, and you are among the whispering, nudging, intent crowd of listeners, pushing against the barriers of a low court. long rows of jurors are sitting on their benches; the "king archon" is on the president's stand, and some poor wight is being arraigned on a charge of "impiety"[*]; while on the walls behind stand graved and ancient laws of draco and solon. [*]the so-called "king archon" had special cognizance of most cases involving religious questions; and his court was in this stoa. cross the square, and on the opposite side is one of the most magnificent of the porticoes, the "painted porch" ("stoa poikilë"), a long covered walk, a delightful refuge alike from sun and rain. almost the entire length of the inner walls (for it has columns only on the side of the agora) is covered with vivid frescoes. here polygnotus and other master painters have spread out the whole legendary story of the capture of troy and of the defeat of the amazons; likewise the more historical tale of the battle of marathon. yet another promenade, the "stoa of zeus," is sacred to zeus, giver of freedom. the walls are not frescoed, but hung with the shields of valiant athenian warriors. in the open spaces of the plaza itself are various alters, e.g. to the "twelve gods," and innumerable statues of local worthies, as of harmodius and aristogeiton, the tyrant-slayers; while across the center, cutting the market place from east to west, runs a line of stone posts, each surmounted with a rude bearded head of hermes, the trader's god; and each with its base plastered many times over with all kinds of official and private placards and notices. . the life in the agora.--so much for the physical setting of the agora: of far greater interest surely are the people. the whole square is abounding with noisy activity. if an athenian has no actual business to transact, he will at least go to the agora to get the morning news. two turns under the "painted porch" will tell him the last rumor as to the foreign policy of thebes; whether it is true that old king agesilaus has died at sparta; whether corn is likely to be high, owning to a failure of crops in the euxine (black sea) region; whether the "great king" of persia is prospering in his campaign against egypt. the crowd is mostly clad in white, though often the cloaks of the humbler visitors are dirty, but there is a sprinkling of gay colors,--blue, orange, and pink. everybody is talking at once in melodious attic; everybody (since they are all true children of the south) is gesticulating at once. to the babel of human voices is added the wheezing whistle of donkeys, the squealing of pigs, the cackle of poultry. besides, from many of the little factories and workshops on or near the agora a great din is rising. the clamor is prodigious. criers are stalking up and down the square, one bawling out that andocides has lost a valuable ring and will pay well to recover it; another the pheidon has a desirable horse that he will sell cheap. one must stand still for some moments and let eye and ear accustom themselves to such utter confusion. . the booths and shops in the agora.--at length out of the chaos there seems to emerge a certain order. the major part of the square is covered with little booths of boards and wicker work, very frail and able to be folded up, probably every night. there are little lanes winding amid these booths; and each manner of huckster has its own especial "circle" or section of the market. "go to the wine," "to the fish," "to the myrtles" (i.e. the flowers), are common directions for finding difficult parts of the agora. trade is mostly on a small scale,--the stock of each vendor is distinctly limited in its range, and athens is without "department stores." behind each low counter, laden with its wares, stands the proprietor, who keeps up a din from leathern lungs: "buy my oil!" "buy charcoal!" "buy sausage!" etc., until he is temporarily silenced while dealing with a customer. in one "circle" may be found onions and garlic (a favorite food of the poor); a little further on are the dealers in wine, fruit, and garden produce. lentils and peas can be had either raw, or cooked and ready to eat on the spot. an important center is the bread market. the huge cylindrical loaves are handed out by shrewd old women with proverbially long tongues. whosoever upsets one of their delicately balanced piles of loaves is certain of an artistic tongue lashing. elsewhere there is a pottery market, a clothes market, and, nearer the edge of the agora, are "circles," where objects of real value are sold, like jewelry, chariots, good furniture. in certain sections, too, may be seen strong-voiced individuals, with little trays swung by straps before them, pacing to and fro, and calling out, not foods, but medicines, infallible cure-alls for every human distemper. many are the unwary fools who patronize them. . the flower and the fish vendors.--two circles attract especial attention, the myrtles and the fish. flowers and foliage, especially when made up into garlands, are absolutely indispensable to the average greek. has he a great family festival, e.g. the birth of a son, then every guest should wear a crown of olives; is it a wedding, then one of flowers.[*] oak-leaves do the honors for zeus; laurel for apollo; myrtle for aphrodite (and is not the love-goddess the favorite?). to have a social gathering without garlands, in short, is impossible. the flower girls of athens are beautiful, impudent, and not at all prudish. around their booths press bold-tongued youths, and not too discreet sires; and the girls can call everybody familiarly by name. very possibly along with the sale of the garlands they make arrangements (if the banquet is to be of the less respectable kind) to be present in the evening themselves, perhaps in the capacity of flute girls. [*]the greeks lacked many of our common flowers. their ordinary flowers were white violets, narcissus, lilies, crocuses, blue hyacinths, and roses ("the flower of zeus"). the usual garland was made of myrtle or ivy and then entwined with various flowers. more reputable, though not less noisy, is the fish market. athenians boast themselves of being no hearty "meat eaters" like their bœotian neighbors, but of preferring the more delicate fish. no dinner party is successful without a seasonable course of fish. the arrival of a fresh cargo from the harbor is announced by the clanging of a bell, which is likely to leave all the other booths deserted, while a crowd elbows around the fishmonger. he above all others commands the greatest flow of billingsgate, and is especially notorious for his arrogant treatment of his customers, and for exacting the uttermost farthing. the "fish" and the "myrtles" can be sure of a brisk trade on days when all the other booth keepers around the agora stand idle. all this trade, of course, cannot find room in the booths of the open agora. many hucksters sit on their haunches on the level ground with their few wares spread before them. many more have little stands between the pillars of the stoæ; and upon the various streets that converge on the market there is a fringe of shops, but these are usually of the more substantial sort. here are the barbers' shops, the physicians' offices (if the good leech is more than an itinerant quack), and all sorts of little factories, such as smithies, where the cutler's apprentices in the rear of the shop forge the knives which the proprietor sells over the counter, the slave repositories, and finally wine establishments of no high repute, where wine may not merely be bought by the skin (as in the main agora), but by the potful to be drunk on the premises. . the morning visitors to the agora.--the first tour of inspection completed, several facts become clear to the visitor. one is the extraordinarily large proportion of men among the moving multitudes. except for the bread women and the flower girls, hardly one female is to be found among the sellers. among the purchasers there is not a single reputable lady. no athenian gentlewoman dreams of frequenting the agora. even a poor man's wife prefers to let her spouse do the family marketing. as for the "men folk," the average gentleman will go daily indeed to the agora, but if he is really pretentious, it will be merely to gossip and to meet his friends; a trusted servant will attend to the regular purchasing. only when an important dinner party is on hand will the master take pains to order for himself. if he does purchase in person, he will never carry anything himself. the slaves can attend to that; and only the slaveless (the poorest of all) must take away their modest rations of boiled lentils, peas, beans, onions, and garlic, usually in baskets, though yonder now is a soldier who is bearing off a measure of boiled peas inside his helmet. another thing is striking. the average poor athenian seems to have no purse. or rather he uses the purse provided by nature. at every booth one can see unkempt buyers solemnly taking their small change from their mouths.[*] happy the people that has not learned the twentieth century wisdom concerning microbes! for most athenians seem marvelously healthy. [*]a wealthier purchaser would, of course, have his own pouch, or more probably one carried for him by a slave. still one other fact is brought home constantly. "fixed prices" are absolutely unknown. the slightest transaction involves a war of bargaining. wits are matched against wits, and only after a vast deal of wind do buyer and seller reach a fair compromise. all this makes retail trade in the agora an excellent school for public affairs or litigation. . the leisured class in athens.--evidently athens, more than many later-day cities, draws clear lines between the workers and the "gentlemen of leisure." there is no distinction of dress between the numerous slaves and the humbler free workers and traders; but there is obvious distinction between the artisan of bent shoulders who shambles out of yonder pungent tannery, with his scant garments girded around him, and the graceful gentleman of easy gestures and flowing drapery who moves towards the tholos. there is great political democracy in athens, but not so much social democracy. "leisure," i.e. exemption from every kind of sordid, money-getting, hard work, is counted the true essential for a respectable existence, and to live on the effort of others and to devote oneself to public service or to letters and philosophy is the open satisfaction or the private longing of every athenian. a great proportion of these, therefore, who frequent the agora are not here on practical business, unless they have official duties at the government offices.[*] but in no city of any age has the gracious art of doing nothing been brought to such perfection. the athenians are an intensely gregarious people. everybody knows everybody else. says an orator, "it is impossible for a man to be either a rascal or an honest man in this city without your all knowing it." few men walk long alone; if they do keep their own company, they are frowned on as "misanthropes." the morning visit to the agora "to tell or to hear some new thing"[+] will be followed by equally delightful idling and conversation later in the day at the gymnasia, and later still, probably, at the dinner-party. easy and unconventional are the personal greetings. a little shaking out of the mantle, an indescribable flourish with the hands. a free greek will despise himself for "bowing," even to the great king. to clasp hands implies exchanging a pledge, something for more than mere salutation. "chaire, aristomenes!" "chaire, cleandros!" such is the usual greeting, using an expressive word which can mean equally well "hail!" and "farewell!" [*]to serve the state in any official capacity (usually without any salary attached to the office) would give the highest satisfaction to any greek. the desire for participation in public affairs might be described as a mania. [+]acts of the apostles, : . . familiar types around the agora.--these animated, eager-faced men whose mantles fall in statuesque folds prefer obviously to walk under the painted porch, or the blue roof of heaven, while they evolve their philosophies, mature their political schemes, or organize the material for their orations and dramas, rather than to bend over desks within close offices. around the athenian agora, a true type of this preference, and busy with this delightful idleness, half a century earlier could have been seen a droll figure with "indescribable nose, bald head, round body, eyes rolling and twinkling with good humor," scantily clad,--an incorrigible do-nothing, windbag, and hanger-on, a later century might assert,--yet history has given to him the name of socrates. not all athenians, of course, make such justifiable use of their idleness. there are plenty of young men parading around in long trailing robes, their hair oiled and curled most effeminately, their fingers glittering with jewels,--"ring-loaded, curly-locked coxcombs," aristophanes, the comic poet, has called them,--and they are here only for silly display. also there are many of their elders who have no philosophy or wit to justify their continuous talking; nevertheless, all considered, it must be admitted that the athenian makes a use of their dearly loved "leisure," which men of a more pragmatic race will do well to consider as the fair equivalent of much frantic zeal for "business." athenian "leisure" has already given the world pericles, thucydides, Æschylus, sophocles, euripides, socrates, and plato, not to name such artists as phidias, whose profession cannot exempt them from a certain manual occupation. . the barber shops.--this habit of genteel idleness naturally develops various peculiar institutions. for example, the barber shops are almost club rooms. few hellenes at this time shave their beards[*], but to go with unkempt whiskers and with too long hair is most disgraceful. the barber shops, booths, or little rooms let into the street walls of the houses, are therefore much frequented. the good tonsors have all the usual arts. they can dye gray hair brown or black; they can wave or curl their patrons' locks (and an artificially curled head is no disgrace to a man). especially, they keep a good supply of strong perfumes; for many people will want a little scent on their hair each morning, even if they wish no other attention. but it is not an imposition to a barber to enter his shop, yet never move towards his low stool before the shining steel mirror. anybody is welcome to hang around indefinitely, listening to the proprietor's endless flow of talk. he will pride himself on knowing every possible bit of news or rumor: had the council resolved on a new fleet-building program? had the tyrant of syracuse's "four" the best chance in the chariot race in the next olympic games? the garrulity of barbers is already proverbial. [*] alexander the great ( - b.c.) required his soldiers to be shaved (as giving less grasp for the enemy!), and the habit then spread generally through the whole hellenic world. "how shall i cut your hair, sir?" once asked the court tonsure of king archeläus of macedon. "in silence," came the grim answer. but the proprietor will not do all the talking. everybody in the little room will join. wits will sharpen against wits; and if the company is of a grave and respectable sort, the conversation will grow brisk upon plato's theory of the "reality of ideas," upon euripides's interpretation of the relations of god to man, or upon the spiritual symbolism of scopas's bas-reliefs at halicarnassus. the barber shops by the agora then are essential portions of athenian social life. later we shall see them supplemented by the gymnasia;--but the agora has detained us long enough. the din and crowds are lessening. people are beginning to stream homeward. it lacks a little of noon according to the "time-staff" (gnomon), a simple sun dial which stands near one of the porticoes, and we will now follow some athenian gentleman towards his dwelling. chapter iv. the athenian house and its furnishings. . following an athenian gentleman homeward.--leaving the agora and reëntering the streets the second impression of the residence districts becomes more favorable. there are a few bay trees planted from block to block; and ever and anon the monotonous house walls recede, giving space to display some temple, like the fane of hephæstos[*] near the market place, its columns and pediment flashing not merely with white marble, but with the green, scarlet, and gold wherewith the greeks did not hesitate to decorate their statuary. [*]wrongly called the "theseum" in modern athens. at street corners and opposite important mansions a hermes-bust like those in the plaza rises, and a very few houses have a couple of pillars at their entrances and some outward suggestion of hidden elegance. we observe that almost the entire crowd leaving the agora goes on foot. to ride about in a chariot is a sign of undemocratic presumption; while only women or sick men will consent to be borne in a litter. we will select a sprucely dressed gentleman who has just been anointed in a barber's shop and accompany him to his home. he is neither one of the decidedly rich, otherwise his establishment would be exceptional, not typical, nor is he of course one of the hard-working poor. followed by perhaps two clean and capable serving lads, he wends his way down several of the narrow lanes that lie under the northern brow of the acropolis[*]. before a plain solid house door he halts and cries, "pai! pai!" ["boy! boy!"]. there is a rattle of bolts and bars. a low-visaged foreign-born porter, whose business it is to show a surly front to all unwelcome visitors, opens and gives a kind of salaam to his master; while the porter's huge dog jumps up barking and pawing joyously. [*]this would be a properly respectable quarter of the city, but we do not know of any really "aristocratic residence district" in athens. as we enter behind him (carefully advancing with right foot foremost, for it is bad luck to tread a threshold with the left) we notice above the lintel some such inscription as "let no evil enter here!" or "to the good genius," then a few steps through a narrow passage bring us into the aula, the central court, the indispensable feature of every typical greek house. . the type and use of a greek house.--all domestic architecture, later investigators will discover, falls into two great categories--of the northern house and the southern house. the northern house begins with a single large room, "the great hall," then lesser rooms are added to it. it gets its light from windows in the outer walls, and it is covered by a single steep roof. the southern (greek and oriental) house is a building inclosing a rectangular court. the rooms, many or few, get their light from this court, while they are quite shut off from the world outside. all in all, for warm climates this style of house is far more airy, cool, comfortable than the other. the wide open court becomes the living room of the house save in very inclement weather. socrates is reported to have uttered what was probably the average sensible view about a good house.[*] the good house, he thought, should be cool in summer, and warm in winter, convenient for the accommodation of the family and its possessions. the central rooms should therefore be lofty and should open upon the south, yet for protection in summer there should be good projecting eaves (over the court) and again the rooms on the northern exposure should be made lower. all this is mere sense, but really the average male athenian does not care a great deal about his dwelling. he spends surprisingly little money beautifying it. unless he is sick, he will probably be at home only for sleeping and eating. the agora, the public assembly, the jury courts, the gymnasium, the great religious festivals consume his entire day. "i never spend my time indoors," says xenophon's model athenian, "my wife is well able to run the household by herself."[+] such being the case, even wealthy men have very simple establishments, although it is at length complained (e.g. by demosthenes) that people are now building more luxurious houses, and are not content with the plain yet sufficient dwellings of the great age of pericles.[@] [*]in xenophon's "memorabilia," iii. , §§ , . [+]xenophon, "economics," vii. . [@]very probably in such outlying greek cities as syracuse, taras (tarentum), etc., more elegant houses could be found than any at this time in athens. . the plan of a greek house.--the plan of a greek house naturally varies infinitely according to the size of the land plot, the size of the owner's family, his own taste, and wealth. it will usually be rectangular, with the narrower side toward the street; but this is not invariable. in the larger houses there will be two courts (aulæ), one behind the other, and each with its own circuit of dependent chambers. the court first entered will be the andronitis (the court of the men), and may be even large enough to afford a considerable promenade for exercise. around the whole of the open space run lines of simple columns, and above the opening swings an awning if the day is very hot. in the very center rises a small stone alter with a statue of zeus the protector (zeus herkeïos), where the father of the family will from time to time offer sacrifice, acting as the priest for the household. probably already on the alter there has been laid a fresh garland; if not, the newcomers from the agora have now fetched one. +---------------------+ | | | garden | | | +----+-----------+----+ conjectural plan for the house | y | d | y | of a wealthy athenian. | | | | +--+=+-----=-----+=+--+ a = alter of zeus herkelos. | | | | b = alter of hestia. |y = o o o o = y| c = entrance hall. | | o o | | d = kitchen. +--+ gynaeconitis +--+ t = thalmos. | | o o | | t' = anti-thalmos. |y = o o o o = y| x = rooms for the men. | | | | y = rooms for the women. +--+=+-----=-+---+=+--+ | | |b o| | | t | +---+ t' | | | andron | | +----+ +----+ | x | | x | +--+=+----' '----+=+--+ |x = o o o o = x| +--+ o a o +--+ |x = o o o = x| +--+ andronitis +--+ |x = o o o o = x| +--+=+-=-+ +-=-+=+--+ | | | | | | | x | x | c | x | x | | | | | | | +----+---+===+---+----+ the andronitis is the true living room of the house: here the master will receive his visitors, here the male slaves will work, and the women also busy themselves (promptly retiring, however, on the appearance of masculine strangers). the decoration is very plain: the walls are neatly tinted with some kind of wash; the floor is of simple plaster, or, in a humbler house, common earth pounded hard. under the colonnade at all four sides open the various chambers, possibly twelve in all. they really are cells or compartments rather than rooms, small and usually lighted only by their doors. some are used for storerooms, some for sleeping closets for the male slaves and for the grown-up sons of the house, if there are any. dark, ill ventilated, and most scantily furnished, it is no wonder that the average athenian loves the agora better than his chamber. the front section of the house is now open to us, but it is time to penetrate farther. directly behind the open court is a sizable chamber forming a passage to the inner house. this chamber is the andron, the dining hall and probably the most pretentious room in the house. here the guests will gather for the dinner party, and here in one corner smokes the family hearth, once the real fire for the whole household cooking, but now merely a symbol of the domestic worship. it is simply a little round alter sacred to hestia, the hearth goddess,[*] and on its duly rekindled flame little "meat offerings and drink offerings" are cast at every meal, humble or elaborate. [*]who corresponds to the roman goddess vesta. in the rear wall of the andron facing the andronitis is a solid door. we are privileged guests indeed if we pass it. only the father, sons, or near male kinsmen of the family are allowed to go inside, for it leads into the gynæconitis, the hall of the women. to thrust oneself into the gynæconitis of even a fairly intimate friend is a studied insult at athens, and sure to be resented by bodily chastisement, social ostracism, and a ruinous legal prosecution. the gynæconitis is in short the athenian's holy of holies. their women are forbidden to participate in so much of public life that their own peculiar world is especially reserved to them. to invade this world is not bad breeding; it is social sacrilege. in the present house, the home of a well-to-do family, the gynæconitis forms a second pillared court with adjacent rooms of substantially the same size and shape as the andronitis. one of the rooms in the very rear is proclaimed by the clatter of pots and pans and the odor of a frying turbot to be the kitchen; others are obviously the sleeping closets of the slave women. on the side nearest to the front of the house, but opening itself upon this inner court, is at least one bed chamber of superior size. this is the thalamos, the great bedroom of the master and mistress, and here are kept all the most costly furnishings and ornaments in the house. if there are grown-up unmarried daughters, they have another such bedroom (anti-thalamos) that is much larger than the cells of the slave girls. another special room is set apart for the working of wool, although this chief occupation of the female part of the household is likely to be carried on in the open inner court itself, if the weather is fine. here, around a little flower bed, slave girls are probably spinning and embroidering, young children playing or quarreling, and a tame quail is hopping about and watching for a crumb. there are in fact a great many people in a relatively small space; everything is busy, chattering, noisy, and confusing to an intruding stranger. . modifications in the typical plan.--these are the essential features of an athenian house. if the establishment is a very pretentious one, there may be a small garden in the rear carefully hedged against intruders by a lofty wall.[*] more probably the small size of the house lot would force simplifications in the scheme already stated. in a house one degree less costly, the gynæconitis would be reduced to a mere series of rooms shut off in the rear. in more simple houses still there would be no interior section of the house at all. the women of the family would be provided for by a staircase rising from the main hall to a second story, and here a number of upper chambers would give the needful seclusion.[+] of course as one goes down the social scale, the houses grow simpler and simpler. small shops are set into the street wall at either side of the entrance door, and on entering one finds himself in a very limited and utterly dingy court with a few dirty compartments opening thence, which it would be absurd to dignify by the name of "rooms." again one ceases to wonder that the male athenians are not "home folk" and are glad to leave their houses to the less fortunate women! [*]such a luxury would not be common in city houses; land would be too valuable. [+]houses of more than two stories seem to have been unknown in athens. the city lacked the towering rookeries of tenements (insulæ) which were characteristic of rome; sometimes, however, a house seems to have been shared between several families. . rents and house values.--most native athenians own their houses. houses indeed can be rented, usually by the foreign traders and visitors who swam into the city; and at certain busy seasons one can hire "lodgings" for a brief sojourn. rents are not unreasonable, % or / % of the value of the house being counted a fair annual return. but the average citizen is also a householder, because forsooth houses are very cheap. the main cost is probably for the land. the chief material used in building, sun-dried brick, is very unsubstantial,[*] and needs frequent repairs, but is not expensive. demosthenes the orator speaks of a "little house" (doubtless of the kind last described) worth only seven minuæ [about $ . ( ) or $ , . ( )], and this is not the absolute minimum. a very rich banker has had one worth minuæ [about $ , . ( ) or $ , . ( )], and probably this is close to the maximum. the rent question is not therefore one of the pressing problems at athens. [*]this material was so friable and poor that the greek burglar was known as a "wall-digger." it did not pay him to pick a lock; it was simpler for him to quarry his way through the wall with a pickax. . the simple yet elegant furnishings of an athenian home.--these houses, even owned by the lordly rich, are surprisingly simple in their furnishings. the accumulation of heavy furniture, wall decorations, and bric-a-brac which will characterize the dwellings of a later age, would be utterly offensive to an athenian--contradicting all his ideas of harmony and "moderation." the athenian house lacks of course bookcases and framed pictures. it probably too lacks any genuine closets. beds, couches, chairs (usually backless), stools, footstools, and small portable tables,--these alone seem in evidence. in place of bureaus, dressers and cupboards, there are huge chests, heavy and carved, in which most of the household gear can be locked away. in truth, the whole style of greek household life expresses that simplicity on which we have already commented. oriental carpets are indeed met with, but they are often used as wall draperies or couch covers rather than upon the floors. greek costume (see p. ) is so simple that there is small need for elaborate chests of drawers, and a line of pegs upon the wall cares for most of the family wardrobe. all this is true; yet what furniture one finds is fashioned with commendable grace. there is a marked absence of heavy and unhealthful upholstery; but the simple bed (four posts sustaining a springless cushion stuffed with feathers or wool) has its woodwork adorned with carving which is a true mean betwixt the too plain and the too ornate; and the whole bed is given an elegant effect by the magnificently embroidered scarlet tapestry which overspreads it. the lines of the legs of the low wooden tables which are used at the dinner parties will be a lesson (if we have time to study them) upon just proportion and the value of subtle curves. moreover, the different household vessels, the stone and bronze lamps, the various table dishes, even the common pottery put to the humblest uses, all have a beauty, a chaste elegance, a saving touch of deft ornamentation, which transforms them out of "kitchen ware" into works of art. those black water pots covered with red-clay figures which the serving maids are bearing so carelessly into the scullery at the screaming summons of the cook will be some day perchance the pride of a museum, and teach a later age that costly material and aristocratic uses are not needful to make an article supremely beautiful. of course the well-to-do athenian is proud to possess certain "valuables." he will have a few silver cups elegantly chased, and at least one diner's couch in the andron will be made of rare imported wood, and be inlaid with gilt or silver. on festival days the house will be hung with brilliant and elaborately wrought tapestries which will suddenly emerge from the great chests. also, despite frowns and criticisms, the custom is growing of decorating one's walls with bright-lined frescoes after the manner of the agora colonnades. in the course of a few generations the homes of the wealthier greeks will come to resemble those of the romans, such as a later age has resurrected at pompeii. chapter v. the women of athens. . how athenian marriages are arranged.--over this typical athenian home reigns the wife of the master. public opinion frowns upon celibacy, and there are relatively few unmarried men in athens. an athenian girl is brought up with the distinct expectation of matrimony.[*] opportunities for a romance almost never will come her way; but it is the business of her parents to find her a suitable husband. if they are kindly people of good breeding, their choice is not likely to be a very bad one. if they have difficulties, they can engage a professional "matchmaker," a shrewd old woman who, for a fee, will hunt out an eligible young man. marriage is contracted primarily that there may be legitimate children to keep up the state and to perpetuate the family. that the girl should have any will of her own in the matter is almost never thought of. very probably she has never seen "him," save when they both were marching in a public religious procession, or at some rare family gathering (a marriage or a funeral) when there were outside guests. besides she will be "given away" when only about fifteen, and probably has formed no intelligent opinion or even prejudices on the subject. [*]the vile custom of exposing unwelcome female babies probably created a certain preponderance of males in attica, and made it relatively easy to marry off a desirable young girl. if a young man (who will marry at about thirty) is independent in life, the negotiations will be with him directly. if he is still dependent on the paternal allowance, the two sets of parents will usually arrange matters themselves, and demand only the formal consent of the prospective bridegroom. he will probably accept promptly this bride whom his father has selected; if not, he risks a stormy encounter with his parents, and will finally capitulate. he has perhaps never seen "her," and can only hope things are for the best; and after all she is so young that his friends tell him that he can train her to be very useful and obedient if he will only take pains. the parents, or, failing them, the guardians, adjust the dowry--the lump sum which the bride will bring with her towards the new establishment.[*] many maxims enjoin "marry only your equal in fortune." the poor man who weds an heiress will not be really his own master; the dread of losing the big dowry will keep him in perpetual bondage to her whims. [*]the dowry was a great protection to the bride. if her husband divorced her (as by law he might), the dowry must be repaid to her guardians with per cent. interest. . lack of sentiment in marriages.--sometimes marriages are arranged in which any sentiment is obviously prohibited. a father can betroth his daughter by will to some kinsman, who is to take her over as his bride when he takes over the property. a husband can bequeath his wife to some friend who is likely to treat her and the orphan children with kindness. such affairs occur every day. do the athenian women revolt at these seemingly degrading conditions, wherein they are handed around like slaves, or even cattle?--according to the tragic poets they do. sophocles (in the "tereus") makes them lament, "we women are nothing;--happy indeed is our childhood, for then we are thoughtless; but when we attain maidenhood, lo! we are driven away from our homes, sold as merchandise, and compelled to marry and say 'all's well.'" euripides is even more bitter in his "medea":-- surely of creatures that have life and wit, we women are of all things wretchedest, who first must needs, as buys the highest bidder, thus buy a husband, and our body's master.[*/ [*]way's translation. . athenian marriage rites.--however, thus runs public custom. at about fifteen the girl must leave her mother's fostering care and enter the house of the stranger. the wedding is, of course, a great ceremony; and here, if nowhere else, athenian women can surely prepare, flutter, and ordain to their heart's content. after the somewhat stiff and formal betrothal before witnesses (necessary to give legal effect to the marriage), the actual wedding will probably take place,--perhaps in a few days, perhaps with a longer wait till the favorite marriage month gamelion [january].[*] then on a lucky night of the full moon the bride, having, no doubt tearfully, dedicated to artemis her childish toys, will be decked in her finest and will come down, all veiled, into her father's torchlit aula, swarming now with guests. here will be at last that strange master of her fate, the bridegroom and his best man (paranymphos). her father will offer sacrifice (probably a lamb), and after the sacrifice everybody will feast on the flesh of the victim; and also share a large flat cake of pounded sesame seeds roasted and mixed with honey. as the evening advances the wedding car will be outside the door. the mother hands the bride over to the groom, who leads her to the chariot, and he and the groomsman sit down, one on either side, while with torches and song the friends to with the car in jovial procession to the house of the young husband. [*]this winter month was sacred to hera, the marriage guardian. "ho, hymen! ho, hymen! hymenæous! io!" so rings the refrain of the marriage song; and all the doorways and street corners are crowded with onlookers to shout fair wishes and good-natured raillery. at the groom's house there is a volley of confetti to greet the happy pair. the bride stops before the threshold to eat a quince.[*] there is another feast,--possibly riotous fun and hard drinking. at last the bride is led, still veiled, to the perfumed and flower-hung marriage chamber. the doors close behind the married pair. their friends sing a merry rollicking catch outside, the epithalamium. the great day has ended. the athenian girl has experienced the chief transition of her life. [*]the symbol of fertility. . the mental horizon of athenian women.--despite the suggestions in the poets, probably the normal athenian woman is neither degraded nor miserable. if she is a girl of good ancestry and the usual bringing up, she has never expected any other conditions than these. she knows that her parents care for her and have tried to secure for her a husband who will be her guardian and solace when they are gone. xenophon's ideal young husband, ischomachus, says he married his wife at the age of fifteen.[*] she had been "trained to see and to hear as little as possible"; but her mother had taught her to have a sound control of her appetite and of all kinds of self-indulgence, to take wool and to make a dress of it, and to manage the slave maids in their spinning tasks. she was at first desperately afraid of her husband, and it was some time before he had "tamed" her sufficiently to discuss their household problems freely. then ischomachus made her join with him in a prayer to the gods that "he might teach and she might learn all that could conduce to their joint happiness"; after which they took admirable counsel together, and her tactful and experienced husband (probably more than twice her age) trained her into a model housewife. [*]see xenophon's "the economist," vii ff. the more pertinent passages are quoted in w. s. davis's "readings in ancient history," vol. i, pp. - . . the honor paid womanhood in athens.--obviously from a young woman with a limited intellectual horizon the athenian gentleman can expect no mental companionship; but it is impossible that he can live in the world as a keenly intelligent being, and not come to realize the enormous value of the "woman spirit" as it affects all things good. hera, artemis, aphrodite, above all pallas-athena,--city-warder of athens,--who are they all but idealizations of that peculiar genius which wife, mother, and daughter show forth every day in their homes? an athenian never allows his wife to visit the agora. she cannot indeed go outside the house without his express permission, and only then attended by one or two serving maids; public opinion will likewise frown upon the man who allowed his wife to appear in public too freely[*]; nevertheless there are compensations. within her home the athenian woman is within her kingdom. her husband will respect her, because he will respect himself. brutal and harsh he may possibly be, but that is because he is also brutal and harsh in his outside dealings. in extreme cases an outraged wife can sue for divorce before the archon. and very probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the athenian woman is contented with her lot: partly because she knows of nothing better; partly because she has nothing concrete whereof to complain. [*]hypereides, the orator, says, "the woman who goes out of her own home ought to be of such an age that when men meet her, the question is not 'who is her husband?' but 'whose mother is she?'" pericles, in the great funeral oration put in his mouth by thucydides, says that the best women are those who are talked of for good or ill the very least. doubtless it is because an athenian house is a "little oasis of domesticity," tenderly guarded from all insult,--a miniature world whose joys and sorrows are not to be shared by the outer universe,--that the athenian treats the private affairs of his family as something seldom to be shared, even with an intimate friend. of individual women we hear and see little in athens, but of noble womanhood a great deal. by a hundred tokens, delightful vase paintings, noble monuments, poetic myths, tribute is paid to the self-mastery, the self-forgetfulness, the courage, the gentleness "of the wives and mothers who have made athens the beacon of hellas"; and there is one witness better than all the rest. along the "street of tombs," by the gate of the city, runs the long row of stelæ (funeral monuments), inimitable and chaste memorials to the beloved dead; and here we meet, many times over, the portrayal of a sorrow too deep for common lament, the sorrow for the lovely and gracious figures who have passed into the great mystery. along the street of the tombs the wives and mothers of athens are honored not less than the wealthy, the warriors, or the statesmen. . the sphere of action of athenian women.--assuredly the athenian house mother cannot match her husband in discussing philosophy or foreign politics, but she has her own home problems and confronts them well. a dozen or twenty servants must be kept busy. from her, all the young children must get their first education, and the girls probably everything they are taught until they are married. even if she does not meet many men, she will strive valiantly to keep the good opinion of her husband. if she has shapely feet and hands (whereupon great stress is laid in hellas), she will do her utmost to display them to the greatest advantage[*]; and she has, naturally, plenty of other vanities (see § ). her husband has turned over to her the entire management of the household. this means that if he is an easy-going man, she soon understands his home business far better than he does himself, and really has him quite at her mercy. between caring for her husband's wants, nursing the sick slaves, acting as arbitress in their inevitable disputes, keeping a constant watch upon the storeroom, and finally in attending to the manufacture of nearly all the family clothing, she is not likely to rust in busy idleness, or sit complaining of her lot. at the many great public festivals she is always at least an onlooker and often she marches proudly in the magnificent processions. she is allowed to attend the tragedies in the theater.[+] probably, too, the family will own a country farm, and spend a part of the year thereon. here she will be allowed a delightful freedom of movement, impossible in the closely built city. all in all, then, she will complain of too much enforced activity rather than of too much idleness. [*]the custom of wearing sandals instead of shoes of course aided the developing of beautiful feet. [+]not the comedies--they were too broad for refined women. but the fact that athenian ladies seem to have been allowed to attend the tragedies is a tribute to their intellectual capacities. only an acute and intelligent mind can follow Æschylus, sophocles, and euripides. nevertheless our judgment upon the athenian women is mainly one of regret. even if not discontented with their lot, they are not realizing the full possibilities which providence has placed within the reach of womanhood, much less the womanhood of the mothers of the warriors, poets, orators, and other immortals of athens. one great side of civilization which the city of athens might develop and realize is left unrealized. this civilization of athens is too masculine; it is therefore one sided, and in so far it does not realize that ideal "harmony" which is the average athenian's boast. chapter vi. athenian costume. . the general nature of greek dress.--in every age the important kingdom of dress has been reserved for the peculiar sovereignty of woman. this is true in athens, though not perhaps to the extent of later ages. still an athenian lady will take an interest in "purple and fine linen" far exceeding that of her husband, and where is there a more fitting place than this in which to answer for an athenian, the ever important question "wherewithal shall i be clothed"? once again the athenian climate comes in as a factor, this time in the problem of wardrobe. two general styles of garment have divided the allegiance of the world,--the clothes that are put on and the clothes that are wrapped around. the former style, with its jackets, trousers, and leggings, is not absolutely unknown to the athenians,--their old enemies, the persians, wear these[*]; but such clumsy, inelegant garments are despised and ridiculed as fit only for the "barbarians" who use them. they are not merely absurdly homely; they cannot even be thrown off promptly in an emergency, leaving the glorious human form free to put forth any noble effort. the athenians wear the wrapped style of garments, which are, in final analysis, one or two large square pieces of cloth flung skillfully around the body and secured by a few well-placed pins. this costume is infinitely adjustable; it can be expanded into flowing draperies or contracted into an easy working dress by a few artful twitches. it can be nicely adjusted to meet the inevitable sense of "beauty" bred in the bone of every athenian. true, on the cold days of midwinter the wearers will go about shivering; but cold days are the exception, warm days the rule, in genial attica.[+] [*]the persians no doubt learned to use this style of garment during their life on the cold, windy steppes of upper asia, before they won their empire in the more genial south. [+]the whole civilization of athens was, of course, based on a climate in which artificial heat would be very little needed. a pot of glowing charcoal might be used to remove the chill of a room in the very coldest weather. probably an athenian would have regarded a climate in which furnace heat was demanded nearly eight months in the year as wholly unfit for civilized man. this simplicity of costume has produced certain important results. there are practically no tailors in athens, only cloth merchants, bleachers, and dyers. again fashions (at least in the cut of the garments) seldom change. a cloak that was made in the days of alcibiades (say b.c.) can be worn with perfect propriety to-day ( b.c.) if merely it has escaped without severe use or moth holes. it may be more usual this year to wear one's garments a little higher or a little more trailing than formerly; but that is simply a matter for a shifting of the pins or of the girdle. as a result, the athenian seldom troubles about his "spring" or "winter" suit. his simple woolen garments wear a very long time; and they have often been slowly and laboriously spun and woven by his wife and her slave girls. of course even a poor man will try to have a few changes of raiment,--something solid and coarse for every day, something of finer wool and gayer color for public and private festivals. the rich man will have a far larger wardrobe, and will pride himself on not being frequently seen in the same dress; yet even his outfit will seem very meager to the dandies of a later age. . the masculine chiton, himation, and chlamya.--the essential garments of an athenian man are only two--the chiton and the himation. the chiton may be briefly described as an oblong of woolen cloth large enough to wrap around the body somewhat closely, from the neck down to just above the knees. the side left open is fastened by fibulæ--elegantly wrought pins perhaps of silver or gold; in the closed side there is a slit for the arm. there is a girdle, and, if one wishes, the skirt of the chiton may be pulled up through it, and allowed to hang down in front, giving the effect of a blouse. the man of prompt action, the soldier, traveler, worker, is "well girded,"--his chiton is drawn high, but the deliberate old gentleman who parades the agora, discussing poetry or statecraft, has his chiton falling almost to a trailing length. only occasionally short sleeves were added to this very simple garment; they are considered effeminate, and are not esteemed. if one's arms get cold, one can protect them by pulling up the skirt, and wrapping the arms in the blouse thus created. an athenian gentleman when he is in the house wears nothing but his chiton; it is even proper for him to be seen wearing nothing else upon the streets, but then more usually he will add an outer cloak,--his himation. the himation is even simpler than the chiton. it is merely a generous oblong woolen shawl. there are innumerable ways of arranging it according to the impulse of the moment; but usually it has to be worn without pins, and that involves wrapping it rather tightly around the body, and keeping one of the hands confined to hold the cloak in place. that is no drawback, however, to a genteel wearer. it proclaims to the world that he does not have to work, wearing his hands for a living; therefore he can keep them politely idle.[*] the adjustment of the himation is a work of great art. a rich man will often have a special slave whose business it is to arrange the hang and the folds before his master moves forth in public; and woe to the careless fellow if the effect fails to display due elegance and dignity! [*]workingmen often wore no himation, and had a kind of chiton (an exömis) which was especially arranged to leave them with free use of their arms. there is a third garment sometimes worn by athenians. young men who wish to appear very active, and genuine travelers, also wear a chlamys, a kind of circular mantle or cape which swings jauntily over their shoulders, and will give good protection in foul weather. there are almost no other masculine garments. no shirts (unless the chiton be one), no underwear. in their costume, as in so many things else, the athenians exemplify their oft-praised virtue of simplicity. . the dress of the women.--the dress of the women is like that of the men, but differs, of course, in complexity. they also have a chiton,[*] which is more elaborately made, especially in the arrangement of the blouse; and probably there is involved a certain amount of real sewing[+]; not merely of pinning. [*]this robe was sometimes known by the homeric name of peplos. [+]probably with almost all greek garments the main use of the needle was in the embroidery merely, or in the darning of holes and rents. it was by no means an essential in the real manufacture. greater care is needed in the adjustment of the "zone" (girdle), and half sleeves are the rule with women, while full sleeves are not unknown. a greek lady again cannot imitate her husband, and appear in public in her chiton only. a himation, deftly adjusted, is absolutely indispensable whenever she shows herself outside the house. these feminine garments are all, as a rule, more elaborately embroidered, more adorned with fringes and tassels, than those of the men. in arranging her dress the athenian lady is not bound by the rigid precepts of fashion. every separate toilette is an opportunity for a thousand little niceties and coquetries which she understands exceedingly well. if there is the least excuse for an expedition outside the house, her ladyship's bevy of serving maids will have a serious time of it. while their mistress cools herself with a huge peacock-feather fan, one maid is busy over her hair; a second holds the round metallic mirror before her; a third stands ready to extend the jewel box whence she can select finger rings, earrings, gold armlets, chains for her neck and hair, as well as the indispensable brooches whereon the stability of the whole costume depends. when she rises to have her himation draped around her, the directions she gives reveal her whole bent and character. a dignified and modest matron will have it folded loosely around her entire person, covering both arms and hands, and even drawing it over her head, leaving eyes and nose barely visible. younger ladies will draw it close around the body so as to show the fine lines of their waists and shoulders. and in the summer heat the himation (for the less prudish) will become a light shawl floating loose and free over the shoulders, or only a kind of veil drawn so as to now conceal, now reveal, the face. children wear miniature imitations of the dress of their elders. boys are taught to toughen their bodies by refraining from thick garments in cold weather. in hot weather they can frequently be seen playing about with very little clothing at all! . footwear and head coverings.--upon his feet the athenian frequently wears nothing. he goes about his home barefoot; and not seldom he enjoys the delight of running across the open greensward with his unsandaled feet pressing the springing ground; but normally when he walks abroad, he will wear sandals, a simple solid pair of open soles tied to his feet by leather thongs passing between the toes. for hard country walking and for hunting there is something like a high leather boot,[*] though doubtless these are counted uncomfortable for ordinary wear. as for the sandals, simple as they are, the attic touch of elegance is often upon them. upon the thongs of the sandals there is usually worked a choice pattern, in some brilliant color or even gilt. [*]actors, too, wore a leather boot with high soles to give them extra height--the cothurnus. the athenians need head coverings even less than footgear. most of them have thick hair; baldness is an uncommon affliction; everybody is trained to walk under the full glare of helios with little discomfort. of course certain trades require hats, e.g. sailors who can be almost identified by their rimless felt caps. genteel travelers will wear wide-brimmed hats; but the ladies, as a rule, have no headgear besides their tastefully arranged hair, although they will partly atone for the lack, by having a maid walk just behind them with a gorgeously variegated parasol. . the beauty of the greek dress.--greek costume, then, is something fully sharing in the national characteristics of harmony, simplicity, individuality. it is easy to see how admirably this style of dress is adapted to furnish over ready models and inspiration for the sculptor.[*] unconventional in its arrangement, it is also unconventional in its color. a masculine crowd is not one unmitigated swarm of black and dark grays or browns, as with the multitude of a later age. on the contrary, white is counted as theoretically the most becoming color on any common occasion for either sex;[+] and on festival days even grave and elderly men will appear with chitons worked with brilliant embroidery along the borders, and with splendid himatia of some single clear hue--violet, red, purple, blue, or yellow. as for the costume of the groom at a wedding, it is far indeed from the "conventional black" of more degenerate days. he may well wear a purple-edged white chiton of fine milesian wool, a brilliant scarlet himation, sandals with blue thongs and clasps of gold, and a chaplet of myrtle and violets. his intended bride is led out to him in even more dazzling array. her white sandal-thongs are embroidered with emeralds, rubies, and pearls. around her neck is a necklace of gold richly set,--and she has magnificent golden armlets and pearl eardrops. her hair is fragrant with oriental nard, and is bound by a purple fillet and a chaplet of roses. her ungloved fingers shine with jewels and rings. her main costume is of a delicate saffron, and over it all, like a cloud, floats the silvery tissue of the nuptial veil. [*]"the chiton became the mirror of the body," said the late writer achilles tatius. [+]no doubt farmers and artisans either wore garments of a non-committal brown, or, more probably, let their originally white costume get utterly dirty. . greek toilet frivolities.--from the standpoint of inherent fitness and beauty, this athenian costume is the noblest ever seen by the world. naturally there are ill-advised creatures who do not share the good taste of their fellows, or who try to deceive the world and themselves as to the ravages of that arch-enemy of the hellene,--old age. athenian women especially (though the men are not without their follies) are sometimes fond of rouge, false hair, and the like. auburn hair is especially admired, and many fine dames bleach their tresses in a caustic wash to obtain it. the styles of feminine hair dressing seem to change from decade to decade much more than the arrangements of the garments. now it is plaited and crimped hair that is in vogue, now the more beautiful "psyche-knots"; yet even in their worst moods the athenian women exhibit a sweet reasonableness. they have not yet fallen into the clutches of the parisian hairdresser. the poets, of course, ridicule the foibles of the fair sex.[*] says one:-- the golden hair nikylla wears is hers, who would have thought it? she swears 'tis hers, and true she swears for i know where she bought it! and again:-- you give your cheeks a rosy stain, with washes dye your hair; but paint and washes both are vain to give a youthful air. an art so fruitless then forsake, which, though you much excel in, you never can contrive to make old hecuba young helen. [*]translated in falke's "greece and rome" (english translation, p. ). these quotations probably date from a time considerably later than the hypothetical period of this sketch; but they are perfectly proper to apply to conditions in b.c. but enough of such scandals! all the best opinion--masculine and feminine--frowns on these follies. let us think of the simple, dignified, and æsthetically noble costume of the athenians as not the least of their examples to another age. chapter vii. the slaves. . slavery an integral part of greek life.--an athenian lady cares for everything in her house,--for the food supplies, for the clothing, yet probably her greatest task is to manage the heterogeneous multitude of slaves which swarm in every wealthy or even well-to-do mansion.[*] [*]the athenians never had the absurd armies of house slaves which characterized imperial rome; still the numbers of their domestic servants were, from a modern standpoint, extremely large. slaves are everywhere: not merely are they the domestic servants, but they are the hands in the factories, they run innumerable little shops, they unload the ships, they work the mines, they cultivate the farms. possibly there are more able-bodied male slaves in attica than male free men, although this point is very uncertain. their number is the harder to reckon because they are not required to wear any distinctive dress, and you cannot tell at a glance whether a man is a mere piece of property, or a poor but very proud and important member of the "sovereign demos [people] of athens." no prominent greek thinker seems to contest the righteousness and desirability of slavery. it is one of the usual, nay, inevitable, things pertaining to a civilized state. aristotle the philosopher puts the current view of the case very clearly. "the lower sort of mankind are by nature slaves, and it is better for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both by their bodies minister to the needs of life." the intelligent, enlightened, progressive athenians are naturally the "masters"; the stupid, ignorant, sluggish minded barbarians are the "inferiors." is it not a plain decree of heaven that the athenians are made to rule, the barbarians to serve?--no one thinks the subject worth serious argument. of course the slave cannot be treated quite as one would treat an ox. aristotle takes pains to point out the desirability of holding out to your "chattel" the hope of freedom, if only to make him work better; and the great philosopher in his last testament gives freedom to five of his thirteen slaves. then again it is recognized as clearly against public sentiment to hold fellow greeks in bondage. it is indeed done. whole towns get taken in war, and those of the inhabitants who are not slaughtered are sold into slavery.[*] again, exposed children, whose parents have repudiated them, get into the hands of speculators, who raise them "for market." there is also a good deal of kidnapping in the less civilized parts of greece like Ætolia. still the proportion of genuinely greek slaves is small. the great majority of them are "barbarians," men born beyond the pale of hellenic civilization. [*]for example, the survivors, after the capture of melos, in the peloponesian war. . the slave trade in greece.--there are two great sources of slave supply: the asia minor region (lydia and phrygia, with syria in the background), and the black sea region, especially the northern shores, known as scythia. it is known to innumerable heartless "traders" that human flesh commands a very high price in athens or other greek cities. every little war or raid that vexes those barbarous countries so incessantly is followed by the sale of the unhappy captives to speculators who ship them on, stage by stage, to athens. perhaps there is no war; the supply is kept up then by deliberately kidnapping on a large scale, or by piracy.[*] in any case the arrival of a chain gang of fettered wretches at the peiræus is an everyday sight. some of these creatures are submissive and tame (perhaps they understand some craft or trade); these can be sold at once for a high price. others are still doltish and stubborn. they are good for only the rudest kind of labor, unless they are kept and trained at heavy expense. these brutish creatures are frequently sold off to the mines, to be worked to death by the contractors as promptly and brutally as one wears out a machine; or else they become public galley slaves, when their fate is practically the same. but we need not follow such horrors. [*]a small but fairly constant supply of slaves would come from the seizure of the persons and families of bankrupt debtors, whose creditors, especially in the orient, might sell them into bondage. the remainder are likely to be purchased either for use upon the farm, the factory, or in the home. there is a regular "circle" at or near the agora for traffic in them. they are often sold at auction. the price of course varies with the good looks, age,[*] or dexterity of the article, or the abundance of supply. "slaves will be high" in a year when there has been little warfare and raiding in asia minor. "some slaves," says xenophon, "are well worth two minæ [$ . ( ) or $ . ( )] and others barely half a mina [$ . ( ) or $ . ( )]; some sell up to five minæ [$ . ( ) or $ , . ( )] and even for ten [$ . ( ) or $ , . ( )]. nicias, the son of nicaretus, is said to have given a talent [over $ , . ( ) or $ , . ( )] for an overseer in the mines."[+] the father of demosthenes owned a considerable factory. he had thirty-two sword cutters worth about five minæ each, and twenty couch-makers (evidently less skilled) worth together minæ [about $ . ( ) or $ , . ( )]. a girl who is handsome and a clever flute player, who will be readily hired for supper parties, may well command a very high price indeed, say even minæ [about $ . ( ) or $ , . ( )]. [*]there was probably next to no market for old women; old men in broken health would also be worthless. boys and maids that were the right age for teaching a profitable trade would fetch the most. [+]xenophon, "memorabilia," ii. , § . . the treatment of slaves in athens.--once purchased, what is the condition of the average slave? if he is put in a factory, he probably has to work long hours on meager rations. he is lodged in a kind of kennel; his only respite is on the great religious holidays. he cannot contract valid marriage or enjoy any of the normal conditions of family life. still his evil state is partially tempered by the fact that he has to work in constant association with free workmen, and he seems to be treated with a moderate amount of consideration and good camaraderie. on the whole he will have much less to complain of (if he is honest and industrious) than his successors in imperial rome. in the household, conditions are on the whole better. every athenian citizen tries to have at least one slave, who, we must grant, may be a starving drudge of all work. the average gentleman perhaps counts ten to twenty as sufficient for his needs. we know of households of fifty. there must usually be a steward, a butler in charge of the storeroom or cellar, a marketing slave, a porter, a baker, a cook,[*] a nurse, perhaps several lady's maids, the indispensable attendant for the master's walks (a graceful, well-favored boy, if possible), the pedagogue for the children, and in really rich families, a groom, and a mule boy. it is the business of the mistress to see that all these creatures are kept busy and reasonably contented. if a slave is reconciled to his lot, honest, cheerful, industrious, his condition is not miserable. athenian slaves are allowed a surprising amount of liberty, so most visitors to the city complain. a slave may be flogged most cruelly, but he cannot be put to death at the mere whim of his master. he cannot enter the gymnasium, or the public assembly; but he can visit the temples. as a humble member of the family he has a small part usually in the family sacrifices. but in any case he is subject to one grievous hardship: when his testimony is required in court he must be "put to the question" by torture. on the other hand, if his master has wronged him intolerably, he can take sanctuary at the temple of theseus, and claim the privilege of being sold to some new owner. a slave, too, has still another grievance which may be no less galling because it is sentimental. his name (given him arbitrarily perhaps by his master) is of a peculiar category, which at once brands him as a bondsman: geta, manes, dromon, sosias, xanthias, pyrrhias,--such names would be repudiated as an insult by a citizen. [*]who, however, could not be trusted to cook a formal dinner. for such purpose an expert must be hired. . cruel and kind masters.--slavery in athens, as everywhere else, is largely dependent upon the character of the master; and most athenian masters would not regard crude brutality as consistent with that love of elegance, harmony, and genteel deliberation which characterizes a well-born citizen. there do not lack masters who have the whip continually in their hands, who add to the raw stripes fetters and branding, and who make their slaves unceasingly miserable; but such masters are the exception, and public opinion does not praise them. between the best athenians and their slaves there is a genial, friendly relation, and the master will put up with a good deal of real impertinence, knowing that behind this forwardness there is an honest zeal for his interests. nevertheless the slave system of athens is not commendable. it puts a stigma upon the glory of honest manual labor. it instills domineering, despotic habits into the owners, cringing subservience into the owned. even if a slave becomes freed, he does not become an athenian citizen; he is only a "metic," a resident foreigner, and his old master, or some other athenian, must be his patron and representative in every kind of legal business. it is a notorious fact that the mere state of slavery robs the victim of his self-respect and manhood. nevertheless nobody dreams of abolishing slavery as an institution, and the athenians, comparing themselves with other communities, pride themselves on the extreme humanity of their slave system. . the "city slaves" of athens.--a large number of nominal "slaves" in athens differ from any of the creatures we have described. the community, no less than an individual, can own slaves just as it can own warships and temples. athens owns "city slaves" (demosioi) of several varieties. the clerks in the treasury office, and the checking officers at the public assemblies are slaves; so too are the less reputable public executioners and torturers; in the city mint there is another corps of slave workers, busy coining "athena's owls"--the silver drachmas and four-drachma pieces. but chiefest of all, the city owns its public police force. the "scythians" they are called from their usual land of origin, or the "bowmen," from their special weapon, which incidentally makes a convenient cudgel in a street brawl. there are of them, always at the disposal of the city magistrates. they patrol the town at night, arrest evil-doers, sustain law and order in the agora, and especially enforce decorum, if the public assemblies or the jury courts become tumultuous. they have a special cantonment on the hill of areopagus near the acropolis. "slaves" they are of course in name, and under a kind of military discipline; but they are highly privileged slaves. the security of the city may depend upon their loyal zeal. in times of war they are auxiliaries. life in this police force cannot therefore be burdensome, and their position is envied by all the factory workers and the house servants. chapter viii. the children. . the desirability of children in athens.--besides the oversight of the slaves the athenian matron has naturally the care of the children. a childless home is one of the greatest of calamities. it means a solitary old age, and still worse, the dying out of the family and the worship of the family gods. there is just enough of the old superstitious "ancestor worship" left in athens to make one shudder at the idea of leaving the "deified ancestor" without any descendants to keep up the simple sacrifices to their memory. besides, public opinion condemns the childless home as not contributing to the perpetuation of the city. how corinth, thebes, or sparta will rejoice, if it is plain that athens is destroying herself by race suicide! so at least one son will be very welcome. his advent is a day of happiness for the father, of still greater satisfaction for the young mother. . the exposure of infants.--how many more children are welcome depends on circumstances. children are expensive luxuries. they must be properly educated and even the boys must be left a fair fortune.[*] the girls must always have good dowries, or they cannot "marry according to their station." public opinion, as well as the law, allows a father (at least if he has one or two children already) to exercise a privilege, which later ages will pronounce one of the foulest blots on greek civilization. after the birth of a child there is an anxious day or two for the poor young mother and the faithful nurses.--will he 'nourish' it? are there boys enough already? is the disappointment over the birth of a daughter too keen? does he dread the curtailment in family luxuries necessary to save up for an allowance or dowry for the little stranger? or does the child promise to be puny, sickly, or even deformed? if any of these arguments carry adverse weight, there is no appeal against the father's decision. he has until the fifth day after the birth to decide. in the interval he can utter the fatal words, "expose it!" the helpless creature is then put in a rude cradle, or more often merely in a shallow pot and placed near some public place; e.g. the corner of the agora, or near a gymnasium, or the entrance to a temple. here it will soon die of mere hunger and neglect unless rescued. if the reasons for exposure are evident physical defects, no one will touch it. death is certain. if, however, it seems healthy and well formed, it is likely to be taken up and cared for. not out of pure compassion, however. the harpies who raise slaves and especially slave girls, for no honest purposes, are prompt to pounce upon any promising looking infant. they will rear it as a speculation; if it is a girl, they will teach it to sing, dance, play. the race of light women in athens is thus really recruited from the very best families. the fact is well known, but it is constantly winked at. aristophanes, the comic poet, speaks of this exposure of children as a common feature of athenian life. socrates declares his hearers are vexed when he robs them of pet ideas, "like women who have had their children taken from them." there is little or nothing for men of a later day to say of this custom save condemnation.[+] [*]the idea of giving a lad a "schooling" and then turning him loose to earn his own living in the world was contrary to all athenian theory and practice. [+]about the only boon gained by this foul usage was the fact that, thanks to it, the number of physically unfit persons in athens was probably pretty small, for no one would think of bringing up a child which, in its first babyhood, promised to be a cripple. . the celebration of a birth.--but assuredly in a majority of cases, the coming of a child is more than welcome. if a girl, tufts of wool are hung before the door of the happy home; if a boy, there is set out an olive branch. five days after the birth, the nurse takes the baby, wrapped almost to suffocation in swaddling bands, to the family hearth in the "andron," around which she runs several times, followed doubtless, in merry, frolicking procession, by most of the rest of the family. the child is now under the care of the family gods. there is considerable eating and drinking. exposure now is no longer possible. a great load is off the mind of the mother. but on the "tenth day" comes the real celebration and the feast. this is the "name day." all of the kinsmen are present. the house is full of incense and garlands. the cook is in action in the kitchen. everybody brings simple gifts, along with abundant wishes of good luck. there is a sacrifice, and during the ensuing feast comes the naming of the child. athenian names are very short and simple.[*] a boy has often his father's name, but more usually his grandfather's, as, e.g., themistocles, the son of neocles, the son of themistocles: the father's name being usually added in place of a surname. in this way certain names will become a kind of family property, and sorrowful is the day when there is no eligible son to bear them! the child is now a recognized member of the community. his father has accepted him as a legitimate son, one of his prospective heirs, entitled in due time to all the rights of an athenian citizen. [*]owing to this simplicity and the relatively small number of athenian names, a directory of the city would have been a perplexing affair. . life and games of young children.--the first seven years of a greek boy's life are spent with his nurses and his mother. up to that time his father takes only unofficial interest in his welfare. once past the first perilous "five days," an athenian baby has no grounds to complain of his treatment. great pains are taken to keep him warm and well nourished. a wealthy family will go to some trouble to get him a skilful nurse, those from sparta being in special demand, as knowing the best how to rear healthy infants. he has all manner of toys, and aristotle the philosopher commends their frequent donation; otherwise, he says, children will be always "breaking things in the house." babies have rattles. as they grow older they have dolls of painted clay or wax, sometimes with movable hands and feet, and also toy dishes, tables, wagons, and animals. lively boys have whipping toys, balls, hoops, and swings. there is no lack of pet dogs, nor of all sorts of games on the blind man's bluff and "tag" order.[*] athenian children are, as a class, very active and noisy. plato speaks feelingly of their perpetual "roaring." as they grow larger, they begin to escape more and more from the narrow quarters of the courts of the house, and play in the streets. [*]it is not always easy to get the exact details of such ancient games, for the "rules" have seldom come down to us; but generally speaking, the games of greek children seem extremely like those of the twentieth century. . playing in the streets.--narrow, dirty, and dusty as the streets seem, children, even of good families, are allowed to play in them. after a rain one can see boys floating toy boats of leather in every mud puddle, or industriously making mud pies. in warm weather the favorite if cruel sport is to catch a beetle, tie a string to its legs, let it fly off, then twitch it back again. leapfrog, hide-and-seek, etc., are in violent progress down every alley. the streets are not all ideal playgrounds. despite genteel ideas of dignity and moderation, there is a great deal of foul talk and brawling among the passers, and athenian children have receptive eyes and ears. yet on the other hand, there is a notable regard and reverence for childhood. with all its frequent callousness and inhumanity, greek sentiment abhors any brutality to young children. herodotus the historian tells of the falling of a roof, whereby one hundred and twenty school children perished, as being a frightful calamity,[*] although recounting cold-blooded massacres of thousands of adults with never a qualm; and herodotus is a very good spokesman for average greek opinion. [*]herodotus, vi. . . the first stories and lessons.--athens has no kindergartens. the first teaching which children will receive is in the form of fables and goblin tales from their mothers and nurses,--usually with the object of frightening them into "being good,"--tales of the spectral lamiæ, or of the horrid witch mormo who will catch nasty children; or of empusa, a similar creature, who lurks in shadows and dark rooms; or of the kabaloi, wild spirits in the woods. then come the immortal fables of Æsop with their obvious application towards right conduct. athenian mothers and teachers have no two theories as to the wisdom of corporeal punishment. the rod is never spared to the spoiling of the child, although during the first years the slipper is sufficient. greek children soon have a healthy fear of their nurses; but they often learn to love them, and funeral monuments will survive to perpetuate their grateful memory. . the training of athenian girls.--until about seven years old brothers and sisters grow up in the gynæconitis together. then the boys are sent to school. the girls will continue about the house until the time of their marriage. it is only in the rarest of cases that the parents feel it needful to hire any kind of tutor for them. what the average girl knows is simply what her mother can teach her. perhaps a certain number of athenian women (of good family, too) are downright illiterate; but this is not very often the case. a normal girl will learn to read and write, with her mother for school mistress.[*] very probably she will be taught to dance, and sometimes to play on some instrument, although this last is not quite a proper accomplishment for young women of good family. hardly any one dreams of giving a woman any systematic intellectual training.[+] much more important it is that she should know how to weave, spin, embroider, dominate the cook, and superintend the details of a dinner party. she will have hardly time to learn these matters thoroughly before she is "given a husband," and her childhood days are forever over (see § ). [*]there has come down to us a charming greek terra-cotta (it is true, not from athens) showing a girl seated on her mother's knee, and learning from a roll which she holds. [+]plato suggested in his "republic" (v. f.) that women should receive the same educational opportunities as the men. this was a proposition for utopia and never struck any answering chord. meantime her brother has been started upon a course of education which, both in what it contains and in what it omits, is one of the most interesting and significant features of athenian life. chapter ix. the schoolboys of athens. . athenians generally literate.--education is not compulsory by law in athens, but the father who fails to give his son at least a modicum of education falls under a public contempt, which involves no slight penalty. practically all athenians are at least literate. in aristophanes's famous comedy, "the knights," a boorish "sausage-seller" is introduced, who, for the purposes of the play, must be one of the very scum of society, and he is made to cry, "only consider now my education! i can but barely read, just in a kind of way."[*] evidently if illiterates are not very rare in athens, the fellow should have been made out utterly ignorant. "he can neither swim[+] nor say his letters," is a common phrase for describing an absolute idiot. when a boy has reached the age of seven, the time for feminine rule is over; henceforth his floggings, and they will be many, are to come from firm male hands. [*]aristophanes, "knights", ii. - . [+]swimming was an exceedingly common accomplishment among the greeks, naturally enough, so much of their life being spent upon or near the sea. . character building the aim of athenian education.--the true education is of course begun long before the age of seven. character not book-learning, is the main object of athenian education, i.e. to make the boy self-contained, modest, alert, patriotic, a true friend, a dignified gentleman, able to appreciate and participate in all that is true, harmonius and beautiful in life. to that end his body must be trained, not apart from, but along with his mind. plato makes his character protagoras remark, "as soon as a child understands what is said to him, the nurse, the mother, the pedagogue, and the father vie in their efforts to make him good, by showing him in all that he does that 'this is right,' and 'that is wrong'; 'this is pretty,' and 'that is ugly'; so that he may learn what to follow and what to shun. if he obeys willingly--why, excellent. if not, then try by threats and blows to correct him, as men straighten a warped and crooked sapling." also after he is fairly in school "the teacher is enjoined to pay more attention to his morals and conduct than to his progress in reading and music." . the schoolboy's pedagogue.--it is a great day for an athenian boy when he is given a pedagogue. this slave (perhaps purchased especially for the purpose) is not his teacher, but he ought to be more than ordinarily honest, kindly, and well informed. his prime business is to accompany the young master everywhere out-of-doors, especially to the school and to the gymnasium; to carry his books and writing tablets; to give informal help upon his lessons; to keep him out of every kind of mischief; to teach him social good manners; to answer the thousand questions a healthy boy is sure to ask; and finally, in emergencies, if the schoolmaster or his father is not at hand, to administer a needful whipping. a really capable pedagogue can mean everything to a boy; but it is asking too much that a purchased slave should be an ideal companion.[*] probably many pedagogues are responsible for their charges' idleness or downright depravity. it is a dubious system at the best. [*]no doubt frequently the pedagogue would be an old family servant of good morals, loyalty, and zeal. in that case the relation might be delightful. the assigning of the pedagogue is simultaneous with the beginning of school days; and the athenians are not open to the charge of letting their children waste their time during possible study hours. as early as solon's day (about b.c.) a law had to be passed forbidding schools to open before daybreak, or to be kept open after dusk. this was in the interest not of good eyesight, but of good morals. evidently schools had been keeping even longer than through the daylight. in any case, at gray dawn every yawning schoolboy is off, urged on by his pedagogue, and his tasks will continue with very little interruption through the entire day. it is therefore with reason that the athenian lads rejoice in the very numerous religious holidays. . an athenian school.--leaving the worthy citizen's home, where we have lingered long chatting on many of the topics the house and its denizens suggest, we will turn again to the streets to seek the school where one of the young sons of the family has been duly conducted (possibly, one may say, driven) by his pedagogue. we have not far to go. athenian schools have to be numerous, because they are small. to teach children of the poorer classes it is enough to have a modest room and a few stools; an unrented shop will answer. but we will go to a more pretentious establishment. there is an anteroom by the entrance way where the pedagogues can sit and doze or exchange gossip while their respective charges are kept busy in the larger room within. the latter place, however, is not particularly commodious. on the bare wall hang book-rolls, lyres, drinking vessels, baskets for books, and perhaps some simple geometric instruments. the pupils sit on rude, low benches, each lad with his boxwood tablet covered with wax[*] upon his lap, and presumably busy, scratching letters with his stylus. the master sits on a high chair, surveying the scene. he cultivates a grim and awful aspect, for he is under no delusion that "his pupils love him." "he sits aloft," we are told, "like a juryman, with an expression of implacable wrath, before which the pupil must tremble and cringe."[+] [*]this wax tablet was practically a slate. the letters written could be erased with the blunt upper end of the metallic stylus, and the whole surface of the tablet could be made smooth again by a judicious heating. [+]the quotation is from the late writer libanius, but it is perfectly true for classic athens. athenian schoolboys have at least their full share of idleness, as well as of animal spirits. there is soon a loud whisper from one corner. instantly the ruling tyrant rises. "antiphon! i have heard you. come forward!" if antiphon is wise, he will advance promptly and submit as cheerfully as possible to a sound caning; if folly possesses him, he will hesitate. at a nod from the master two older boys, who serve as monitors, will seize him with grim chuckles. he will then be fortunate if he escapes being tied to a post and flogged until his back is one mass of welts, and his very life seems in danger. it will be useless for him to complain to his parents. a good schoolmaster is supposed to flog frequently to earn his pay; if he is sparing with the rod or lash, he is probably lacking in energy. boys will be boys, and there is only one remedy for juvenile shortcomings. this diversion, of course, with its attendant howling, interrupts the course of the school, but presently matters again become normal. the scholars are so few that probably there is only one teacher, and instruction is decidedly "individual," although poetry and singing are very likely taught "in concert." . the school curriculum.--as to the subjects studied, the athenian curriculum is well fixed and limited: letters, music, and gymnastics. every lad must have a certain amount of all of these. they gymnastics will be taught later in the day by a special teacher at a "wrestling school." the "music" may also be taught separately. the main effort with a young boy is surely to teach him to read and write. and here must be recalled the relative infrequency of complete books in classic athens.[*] to read public placards, inscriptions of laws, occasional epistles, commercial documents, etc., is probably, for many athenians, reading enough. the great poets he will learn by ear rather than by eye; and he may go through a long and respected life and never be compelled to read a really sizable volume from end to end. so the teaching of reading is along very simple lines. it is perhaps simultaneous with the learning of writing. the twenty-four letters are learned by sheer power of memory; then the master sets lines upon the tablets to be copied. as soon as possible the boy is put to learning and writing down passages from the great poets. progress in mere literacy is very rapid. there is no waste of time on history, geography, or physical science; and between the concentration on a singly main subject and the impetus given by the master's rod the athenian schoolboy soon becomes adept with his letters. possibly a little arithmetic is taught him, but only a little. in later life, if he does not become a trader or banker, he will not be ashamed to reckon simple sums upon his fingers or by means of pebbles; although if his father is ambitious to have him become a philosopher, he may have him taught something of geometry. once more we see the total absence of "vocational studies" in this athenian education. the whole effort is to develop a fair, noble, free, and lofty character, not to earn a living. to set a boy to study with an eye to learning some profitable trade is counted illiberal to the last degree. it is for this reason that practical arithmetic is discouraged, yet a little knowledge of the art of outline drawing is allowed; for though no gentleman intends to train his son to be a great artist, the study will enable him to appreciate good sculpture and painting. above all the schoolmaster, who, despite his brutal austerity, ought to be a clear-sighted and inspiring teacher, must lose no opportunity to instill moral lessons, and develop the best powers of his charges. theoginis, the old poet of megara, states the case well:-- to rear a child is easy; but to teach morals and manners is beyond our reach. to make the foolish wise, the wicked good, that science never yet understood. . the study of the poets.--it is for the developing of the best moral and mental qualities in the lads that they are compelled to memorize long passages of the great poets of hellas. theoginis, with his pithy admonitions cast in semi-proverb form, the worldly wisdom of hesiod, and of phocylides are therefore duly flogged into every attic schoolboy.[*] but the great text-book dwarfing all others, is homer,--"the bible of the greeks," as later ages will call it. even in the small school we visit, several of the pupils can repeat five or six long episodes from both the "iliad" and the "odyssey," and there is one older boy present (an extraordinary, but by no means an unprecedented case) who can repeat both of the long epics word for word.[+] clearly the absence of many books has then its compensations. the average athenian lad has what seems to be a simply marvelous memory. [*]phocylides, whose gnomic poetry is now preserved to us only in scant fragments, was an ionian, born about b.c. his verses were in great acceptance in the schools. [+]for such an attainment see xenophon's "symposium," : . and what an admirable text-book and "second reader" the homeric poems are! what characters to imitate: the high-minded, passionate, yet withal loyal and lovable achilles who would rather fight gloriously before troy (though death in the campaign is certain) than live a long life in ignoble ease at home at phthia; or oysseus, the "hero of many devices," who endures a thousand ills and surmounts them all; who lets not even the goddess calypso seduce him from his love to his "sage penelope"; who is ever ready with a clever tale, a plausible lie, and, when the need comes, a mighty deed of manly valor. the boys will all go home to-night with firm resolves to suffer all things rather than leave a comrade unavenged, as achilles was tempted to do and nobly refused, and to fight bravely, four against forty, as odysseus and his comrades did, when at the call of duty and honor they cleared the house of the dastard suitors. true, philosophers like plato complain: "homer gives to lads very undignified and unworthy ideas of the gods"; and men of a later age will assert: "homer has altogether too little to say about the cardinal virtues of truthfulness and honesty."[*] but making all allowances the "iliad" and "odyssey" are still the two grandest secular text-books the world will ever know. the lads are definitely the better for them. [*]the virtue of unflinching honesty was undoubtedly the thing least cultivated by the greek education. successful prevarication, e.g. in the case of odysseus, was put at altogether too high a premium. it is to be feared that the average athenian schoolboy was only partially truthful. the tale of "george washington and the cherry tree" would never have found favor in athens. the great virginian would have been blamed for failing to concoct a clever lie. three years, according to plato, are needed to learn the rudiments of reading and writing before the boys are fairly launched upon this study of the poets. for several years more they will spend most of their mornings standing respectfully before their master, while he from his chair reads to them from the roll of one author or another,--the pupils repeating the lines, time and again, until they have learned them, while the master interrupts to explain every nice point in mythology, in real or alleged history, or a moot question in ethics. . the greeks do not study foreign languages.--as the boys grow older the scope of their study naturally increases; but in one particular their curriculum will seem strangely limited. the study of foreign languages has no place in a greek course of study. that any gentleman should learn say persian, or egyptian (unless he intended to devote himself to distant travel), seems far more unprofitable than, in a later age, the study of say patagonian or papuan will appear.[*] down at the peiræus there are a few shipmasters, perhaps, who can talk egyptian, phœnecian, or babylonish. they need the knowledge for their trade, but even they will disclaim any cultural value for their accomplishment. the euphonious, expressive, marvelously delicate tongue of hellas sums up for the athenian almost all that is valuable in the world's intellectual and literary life. what has the outer, the "barbarian," world to give him?--nothing, many will say, but some gold darics which will corrupt his statesmen, and some spices, carpets, and similar luxuries which good hellenes can well do without. the athenian lad will never need to crucify the flesh upon latin, french, and german, or an equivalent for his own greek. therein perhaps he may be heavily the loser, save that his own mother tongue is so intricate and full of subtle possibilities that to learn to make the full use thereof is truly a matter for lifelong education. [*]this fact did not prevent the greeks from having a considerable respect for the traditions and lore of, e.g., the egyptians, and from borrowing a good many non-greek usages and inventions; but all this could take place without feeling the least necessity for studying foreign languages. . the study of "music."--but the athenian has a substitute for this omission of foreign language study: music. this is something more comprehensive than "the art of combining tones in a manner to please the ear" [webster]. it is practically the study of whatever will develop the noble powers of the emotions, as contrasted to the mere intellect.[*] indeed everything which comes within the ample provinces of the nine muses, even sober history, might be included in the term. however, for special purposes, the study of "music" may be considered as centering around playing instruments and singing. the teacher very likely resides in a house apart from the master of the school of letters. aristophanes gives this picture of the good old customs for the teaching of music. "the boys from the same section of the town have to march thinly clad and draw up in good order--though the snow be thick as meal--to the house of the harp master. there he will teach them [some famous tune] raising a mighty melody. if any one acts silly or turns any quavers, he gets a good hard thrashing for 'banishing the muses!'"[+] [*]aristotle ["politics," v. (or viii.) ] says that the literary education is to train the mind; while music, though of no practical use, "provides a noble and liberal employment of leisure." [+]aristophanes's "the clouds". the whole passage is cited in davis's "readings in ancient history," vol. i, pp. - . learning to sing is probably the most important item, for every boy and man ought to be able to bear his part in the great chorals which are a notable element in most religious festivals; besides, a knowledge of singing is a great aid to appreciating lyric poetry, or the choruses in tragedy, and in learning to declaim. to learn to sing elaborate solo pieces is seldom necessary,--it is not quite genteel in grown-up persons, for it savors a little too much of the professional. so it is also with instrumental music. the greeks lack the piano, the organ, the elaborate brass instruments of a later day. their flutes and harps, although very sweet, might seem thin to a twentieth-century critic. but one can gain considerable volume by the great number of instruments, and nearly everybody in athens can pick at the lyre after a fashion. the common type of harp is the lyre, and it has enough possibilities for the average boy. the more elaborate cithera is usually reserved for professionals.[*] an athenian lad is expected to be able to accompany his song upon his own lyre and to play in concert with his fellows. [*]for the details of these harp types of instruments see dictionary of antiquities. the other instrument in common use is the flute. at its simplest, this is a mere shepherd's pipe. anybody can make one with a knife and some rushes. then come elaborations; two pipes are fitted together into one wooden mouthpiece. now, we really have an instrument with possibilities. but it is not in such favor in the schools as the lyre. you cannot blow day after day upon the flute and not distort your cheeks permanently. again the gentleman's son will avoid "professionalism." there are amateur flute players moving in the best society, but the more fastidious frown upon the instrument, save for hired performers. . the moral character of greek music.--whether it is singing, harp playing, or flute playing, a most careful watch is kept upon the character of the music taught the lads. the master who lets his pupils learn many soft, dulcet, languishing airs will find his charges' parents extremely angry, even to depriving him of their patronage. very soft music, in "lydian modes," is counted effeminate, fit only for the women's quarters and likely to do boys no good. the riotous type also, of the "ionic mode," is fit only for drinking songs and is even more under the ban.[*] what is especially in favor is the stern, strenuous dorian mode. this will make boys hardy, manly, and brave. very elaborate music with trills and quavers is in any case frowned upon. it simply delights the trained ear, and has no reaction upon the character; and of what value is a musical presentation unless it leaves the hearers and performer better, worthier men? let the average athenian possess the opportunity, and he will infallibly stamp with disapproval a great part of both the popular and the classical music of the later ages.[+] [*]the "phrygian mode" from which the "ionic" was derived was still more demoralizing; it was counted "orgiastic," and proper only in certain excited religious rhapsodies. [+]we have extremely few greek melodies preserved to us and these few are not attractive to the modern ear. all that can fairly be said is that the hellenes were obvious such æsthetic, harmoniously minded people that it is impossible their music should have failed in nobility, beauty, and true melody. . the teaching of gymnastics.--the visits to the reading school and to the harp master have consumed a large part of the day; but towards afternoon the pedagogues will conduct their charges to the third of the schoolboys' tyrants: the gymnastic teacher. nor do his parents count this the least important of the three. must not their sons be as physically "beautiful" (to use the common phrase in athens) as possible, and must they not some day, as good citizens, play their brave part in war? the palæstras (literally "wrestling grounds") are near the outskirts of the city, where land is cheap and a good-sized open space can be secured. here the lads are given careful instruction under the constant eye of an expert in running, wrestling, boxing, jumping, discus hurling, and javelin casting. they are not expected to become professional athletes, but their parents will be vexed if they do not develop a healthy tan all over their naked bodies,[*] and if they do not learn at least moderate proficiency in the sports and a certain amount of familiarity with elementary military maneuvers. of course boys of marked physical ability will be encouraged to think of training for the various great "games" which culminate at olympia, although enlightened opinion is against the promoting of professional athletics; and certain extreme philosophers question the wisdom of any extensive physical culture at all, "for (say they) is not the human mind the real thing worth developing?"[+] [*]to have a pale, untanned skin was "womanish" and unworthy of a free athenian citizen. [+]the details of the boys' athletic games, being much of a kind with those followed by adults at the regular public gymnasia, are here omitted. see chap. xvii. weary at length and ready for a hearty meal and sleep, the boys are conducted homeward by their pedagogues. as they grow older the lads with ambitious parents will be given a more varied education. some will be put under such teachers of the new rhetoric and oratory, now in vogue, as the famous socrates, and be taught to play the orator as an aid to inducing their fellow citizens to bestow political advancement. certain will be allowed to become pupils of plato, who has been teaching his philosophy out at the groves of the academy, or to join some of his rivals in theoretical wisdom. into these fields, however, we cannot follow them. . the habits and ambitions of schoolboys.--it is a clear fact, that by the age say of thirteen, the athenian education has had a marked effect upon the average schoolboy. instead of being "the most ferocious of animals," as plato, speaking of his untutored state describes him, he is now "the most amiable and divine of living beings." the well-trained lad goes now to school with his eyes cast upon the ground, his hands and arms wrapped in his chiton, making way dutifully for all his elders. if he is addressed by an older man, he stands modestly, looking downward and blushing in a manner worthy of a girl. he has been taught to avoid the agora, and if he must pass it, never to linger. the world is full of evil and ugly things, but he is taught to hear and see as little of them as possible. when men talk of his healthy color, increasing beauty, and admire the graceful curves of his form at the wrestling school, he must not grow proud. he is being taught to learn relatively little from books, but a great deal from hearing the conversation of grave and well-informed men. as he grows older his father will take him to all kinds of public gatherings and teach him the working details of the "democratic government" of athens. he becomes intensely proud of his city. it is at length his chief thought, almost his entire life. a very large part of the loyalty which an educated man of a later age will divide between his home, his church, his college, his town, and his nation, the athenian lad will sum up in two words,--"my polis"; i.e. the city of athens. his home is largely a place for eating and sleeping; his school is not a great institution, it is simply a kind of disagreeable though necessary learning shop; his church is the religion of his ancestors, and this religion is warp and woof of the government, as much a part thereof as the law courts or the fighting fleet; his town and his nation are alike the sovran city-state of athens. whether he feels keenly a wider loyalty to hellas at large, as against the great king of persia, for instance, will depend upon circumstances. in a real crisis, as at salamis,--yes. in ordinary circumstances when there is a hot feud with sparta,--no. . the "ephebi."--the athenian education then is admirably adapted to make the average lad a useful and worthy citizen, and to make him modest, alert, robust, manly, and a just lover of the beautiful, both in conduct and in art. it does not, however, develop his individual bent very strongly; and it certainly gives him a mean view of the dignity of labor. he will either become a leisurely gentleman, whose only proper self-expression will come in warfare, politics, or philosophy; or--if he be poor--he will at least envy and try to imitate the leisure class. by eighteen the young athenian's days of study will usually come to a close. at that age he will be given a simple festival by his father and be formally enrolled in his paternal deme.[*] his hair, which has hitherto grown down toward his shoulders, will be clipped short. he will allow his beard to grow. at the temple of aglaurus he will (with the other youths of his age) take solemn oath of loyalty to athens and her laws. for the next year he will serve as a military guard at the peiræus, and receive a certain training in soldiering. the next year the state will present him with a new shield and spear, and he will have a taste of the rougher garrison duty at one of the frontier forts towards bœtia or megara.[+] then he is mustered out. he is an ephebus no longer, but a full-fledged citizen, and all the vicissitudes of athenian life are before him. [*]one of the hundred or more petty townships or precincts into which attica was divided. [+]these two years which the ephebi of athens had to serve under arms have been aptly likened to the military service now required of young men in european countries. chapter x. the physicians of athens. . the beginnings of greek medical science.--as we move about the city we cannot but be impressed by the high average of fine physiques and handsome faces. your typical greek is fair in color and has very regular features. the youths do not mature rapidly, but thanks to the gymnasia and the regular lives, they develop not merely admirable, but healthy, bodies. the proportion of hale and hearty old men is great; and probably the number of invalids is considerably smaller than in later times and in more artificially reared communities.[*] nevertheless, the athenians are certainly mortal, and subject to bodily ills, and the physician is no unimportant member of society, although his exact status is much less clearly determined than it will be in subsequent ages. [*]a slight but significant witness to the general healthiness of the greeks is found in the very rare mention in their literature of such a common ill as toothache. greek medicine and surgery, as it appears in homer, is simply a certain amount of practical knowledge gained by rough experience, largely supplemented by primitive superstition. it was quite as important to know the proper prayers and charms wherewith to approach "apollo the healer," as to understand the kind of herb poultice which would keep wounds from festering. homer speaks of asclepius; however, in early days he was not a god, but simply a skilful leach. then as we approach historic times the physician's art becomes more regular. asclepius is elevated into a separate and important deity, although it is not till b.c. that his worship is formally introduced into athens. long ere that time, however, medicine and surgery had won a real place among the practical sciences. the sick man stands at least a tolerable chance of rational treatment, and of not being murdered by wizards and fanatical exorcists. . healing shrines and their methods.--there exist in athens and in other greek cities real sanataria[*]; these are temples devoted to the healing gods (usually asclepius, but sometimes apollo, aphrodite, and hera). here the patient is expected to sleep over night in the temple, and the god visits him in a dream, and reveals a course of treatment which will lead to recovery. probably there is a good deal of sham and imposture about the process. the canny priests know more than they care to tell about how the patient is worked into an excitable, imaginative state; and of the very human means employed to produce a satisfactory and informing dream.[+] nevertheless it is a great deal to convince the patient that he is sure of recovery, and that nobody less than a god has dictated the remedies. the value of mental therapeutics is keenly appreciated. attached to the temple are skilled physicians to "interpret" the dream, and opportunities for prolonged residence with treatment by baths, purgation, dieting, mineral waters, sea baths, all kinds of mild gymnastics, etc. entering upon one of these temple treatments is, in short anything but surrendering oneself to unmitigated quackery. probably a large proportion of the former patients have recovered; and they have testified their gratitude by hanging around the shrine little votive tablets,[$] usually pictures of the diseased parts now happily healed, or, for internal maladies, a written statement of the nature of the disease. this is naturally very encouraging to later patients: they gain confidence knowing that many cases similar to their own have been thus cured. [*]the most famous was at epidaurus, where the asclepius cult seems to have been especially localized. [+]the "healing sleep" employed at these temples is described, in a kind of blasphemous parody, in aristophanes's "plutus." (significant passages are quoted in davis's "readings in ancient history," vol. i, pp. - .) [$]somewhat as in the various catholic pilgrimage shrines (e.g. lourdes) to-day. these visits to the healing temples are, however, expensive: not everybody has entire faith in them; for many lesser ills also they are wholly unnecessary. let us look, then, at the regular physicians. . an athenian physician's office.--there are salaried public medical officers in athens, and something like a public dispensary where free treatment is given citizens in simple cases; but the average man seems to prefer his own doctor.[*] we may enter the office of menon, a "regular private practitioner," and look about us. the office itself is a mere open shop in the front of a house near the agora; and, like a barber's shop is something of a general lounging place. in the rear one or two young disciples (doctors in embryo) and a couple of slaves are pounding up drugs in mortars. there are numbers of bags of dried herbs and little glass flasks hanging on the walls. near the entrance is a statue of asclepius the healer, and also of the great human founder of the real medical science among the greeks--hippocrates. [*]we know comparatively little of these public physicians; probably they were mainly concerned with the health of the army and naval force, the prevention of epidemics, etc. menon himself is just preparing to go out on his professional calls. he is a handsome man in the prime of his life, and takes great pains with his personal appearance. his himation is carefully draped. his finger rings have excellent cameos. his beard has been neatly trimmed, and he has just bathed and scented himself with delicate assyrian nard. he will gladly tell you that he is in no wise a fop, but that it is absolutely necessary to produce a pleasant personal impression upon his fastidious, irritable patients. menon himself claims to have been a personal pupil of the great hippocrates,[*] and about every other reputable greek physician will make the same claim. he has studied more or less in a temple of asclepius, and perhaps has been a member of the medical staff thereto attached. he has also become a member of the hippocratic brotherhood, a semi-secret organization, associated with the asclepius cult, and cheerfully cherishing the dignity of the profession and the secret arts of the guild. [*]who was still alive, an extremely old man. he died in thessaly in b.c., at an alleged age of years. . the physician's oath.--the oath which all this brotherhood has sworn is noble and notable. here are some of the main provisions:-- "i swear by apollo the physician, and asclepius and hygeia; a [lady health] and panaceia [lady all-cure] to honor as my parents the master who taught me this art, and to admit to my own instruction only his sons, my own sons, and those who have been duly inscribed as pupils, and who have taken the medical oath, and no others. i will prescribe such treatment as may be for the benefit of my patients, according to my best power and judgment, and preserve them from anything hurtful or mischievous. i will never, even if asked, administer poison, nor advise its use. i will never give a criminal draught to a woman. i will maintain the purity and integrity of my art. wherever i go, i will abstain from all mischief or corruption, or any immodest action. if ever i hear any secret i will not divulge it. if i keep this oath, may the gods give me success in life and in my art. if i break this oath, may all the reverse fall upon me."[*] [*]for the unabridged translation of this oath, see smith's "dictionary of antiquities" (revised edition), vol. ii, p. . . the skill of greek physicians.--menon's skill as a physician and surgeon is considerable. true, he has only a very insufficient conception of anatomy. his theoretical knowledge is warped, but he is a shrewd judge of human nature and his practical knowledge is not contemptible. in his private pharmacy his assistants have compounded a great quantity of drugs which he knows how to administer with much discernment. he has had considerable experience in dealing with wounds and sprains, such as are common in the wars or in the athletic games. he understands that dame nature is a great healer, who is to be assisted rather than coerced; and he dislikes resorting to violent remedies, such as bleedings and strong emetics. ordinary fevers and the like he can attack with success. he has no modern anæsthetics or opium, but has a very insufficient substitute in mandragora. he can treat simple diseases of the eye; and he knows how to put gold filling into teeth. his surgical instruments, however, are altogether too primitive. he is personally cleanly; but he has not the least idea of antiseptics; the result is that obscure internal diseases, calling for grave operations, are likely to baffle him. he will refuse to operate, or if he does operate the chances are against the patient.[*] in other words, his medical skill is far in advance of his surgery. [*]seemingly a really serious operation was usually turned over by the local physician to a traveling surgeon, who could promptly disappear from the neighborhood if things went badly. menon naturally busies himself among the best families of athens, and commands a very good income. he counts it part of his equipment to be able to persuade his patients, by all the rules of logic and rhetoric, to submit to disagreeable treatment; and for that end has taken lessons in informal oratory from isocrates or one of his associates. some of menon's competitors (feeling themselves less eloquent) have actually a paid rhetorician whom they can take to the bedside of a stubborn invalid, to induce him by irrefutable arguments to endure an amputation.[*] [*]plato tells how gorgias, the famous rhetorician, was sometimes thus hired. a truly greek artifice--this substitution of oratory for chloroform! no such honor of course is paid to the intellects of the poorer fry, who swarm in at menon's surgery. those who cannot pay to have him bandage them himself, perforce put up with the secondary skill and wisdom of the "disciples." the drug-mixing slaves are expected to salve and physic the patients of their own class; but there seems to be a law against allowing them to attempt the treatment of free-born men. . quacks and charlatans.--unluckily not everybody is wise enough to put up with the presumably honest efforts of menon's underlings. there appears to be no law against anybody who wishes to pose as a physician, and to sell his inexperience and his quack nostrums. vendors of every sort of cure-all abound, as well as creatures who work on the superstitions and pretend to cure by charms and hocus-pocus. in the market there is such a swarm of these charlatans of healing that they bring the whole medical profession into contempt. certain people go so far as to distrust the efficacy of any part of the lore of asclepius. says one poet tartly:-- the surgeon menedemos, as men say, touched as he passed a zeus of marble white; neither the marble nor his zeus-ship might avail the god--they buried him to-day. and again even to dream of the quacks is dangerous:-- diophantes, sleeping, saw hermas the physician: diophantes never woke from that fatal vision.[*] [*]both of these quotations probably date from later than b.c., but they are perfectly in keeping with the general opinion of greek quackery. all in all, despite menon's good intentions and not despicable skill, it is fortunate the gods have made "good health" one of their commonest gifts to the athenians. constant exercise in the gymnasia, occasional service in the army, the absence of cramping and unhealthful office work, and a climate which puts out-of-door existence at a premium, secure for them a general good health that compensates for most of the lack of a scientific medicine. chapter xi. the funerals. . an athenian's will.--all menon's patient's are to-day set out upon the road to recovery. hipponax, his rival, has been less fortunate. a wealthy and elderly patient, lycophron, died the day before yesterday. as the latter felt his end approaching, he did what most athenians may put off until close to the inevitable hour--he made his will, and called in his friends to witness it; and one must hope there can be no doubt about the validity, the signets attached, etc., for otherwise the heirs may find themselves in a pretty lawsuit. the will begins in this fashion: "the testament of lyophron the marathonian.[*] may all be well:--but if i do not recover from this sickness, thus do i bestow my estate." then in perfectly cold-blooded fashion he proceeds to give his young wife and the guardianship of his infant daughter to stobiades, a bachelor friend who will probably marry the widow within two months or less of the funeral. lycophron gives also specific directions about his tomb; he gives legacies of money or jewelry to various old associates; he mentions certain favorite slaves to receive freedom, and as specifically orders certain others (victims of his displeasure) to be kept in bondage. lastly three reliable friends are names as executors. [*]in all athenian legal documents, it was necessary to give the deme of the interested party or parties. . the preliminaries of a funeral.--an elaborate funeral is the last perquisite of every athenian. even if lycophron had been a poor man he would now receive obsequies seemingly far out of proportion to his estate and income. it is even usual in greek states to have laws restraining the amount which may be spent upon funerals,--otherwise great sums may be literally "burned up" upon the funeral pyres. when now the tidings go out that lycophron's nearest relative has "closed his mouth," after he has breathed his last, all his male kinsfolk and all other persons who hope to be remembered in the will promptly appear in the agora in black himatia[*] and hasten to the barber shops to have their heads shaved. the widow might shave her hair likewise, with all her slave maids, did not her husband, just ere his death, positively forbid such disfigurements. the women of the family take the body in charge the minute the physician has declared that all is over. the customary obol is put in the mouth of the corpse,[+] and the body is carefully washed in perfumed water, clothed in festal white; then woolen fillets are wound around the head, and over these a crown of vine leaves. so arrayed, the body is ready to be laid out on a couch in the front courtyard of the house, with the face turned toward the door so as to seem to greet everybody who enters. in front of the house there stands a tall earthen vase of water, wherewith the visitors may give themselves a purifying sprinkling, after quitting the polluting presence of a dead body. [*]in the important city of argos, however, white was the proper funeral color. [+]this was not originally (as later asserted) a fee to charon the ferryman to hades, but simply a "minimum precautionary sum, for the dead man's use" (dr. jane harrison), placed in the mouth, where a greek usually kept his small change. . lamenting of the dead.--around this funeral bed the relatives and friends keep a gloomy vigil. the athenians after all are southern born, and when excited seem highly emotional people. there are stern laws dating from solon's day against the worst excesses, but what now occurs seems violent enough. the widow is beating her breast, tearing her hair, gashing her cheeks with her finger nails. lycophron's elderly sister has ashes sprinkled upon her gray head and ever and anon utters piteous wails. the slave women in the background keep up a hideous moaning. the men present do not think it undignified to utter loud lamentation and to shed frequent tears. least commendable of all (from a modern standpoint) are the hired dirge singers, who maintain a most melancholy chant, all the time beating their breasts, and giving a perfect imitation of frantic grief. this has probably continued day and night, the mourners perhaps taking turns by relays. all in all it is well that greek custom enjoins the actual funeral, at least, on the second day following the death.[*] the "shade" of the deceased is not supposed to find rest in the nether world until after the proper obsequies.[+] to let a corpse lie several days without final disposition will bring down on any family severe reproach. in fact, on few points are the greeks more sensitive than on this subject of prompt burial or cremation. after a land battle the victors are bound never to push their vengeance so far as to refuse a "burial truce" to the vanquished; and it is a doubly unlucky admiral who lets his crews get drowned in a sea fight, without due effort to recover the corpses afterward and to give them proper disposition on land. [*]it must be remembered that the greeks had no skilled embalmers at their service, and that they lived in a decidedly warm climate. [+]see the well-known case of the wandering shade of patrocius demanding the proper obsequies from achilles (iliad, xxiii. ). . the funeral procession.--the day after the "laying-out" comes the actual funeral. normally it is held as early as possible in the morning, before the rising of the sun. perhaps while on the way to the agora we have passed, well outside the city, such a mournful procession. the youngest and stoutest of the male relatives carry the litter: although if lycophron's relatives had desired a really extravagant display they might have employed a mule car. ahead of the bier march the screaming flute players, earning their fees by no melodious din. then comes the litter itself with the corpse arrayed magnificently for the finalities, a honey cake set in the hands,[*] a flask of oil placed under the head. after this come streaming the relatives in irregular procession: the widow and the chief heir (her prospective second husband!) walking closest, and trying to appear as demonstrative as possible: nor (merely because the company is noisy and not stoical in its manner) need we deny that there is abundant genuine grief. all sorts of male acquaintances of the deceased bring up the rear, since it is good form to proclaim to wide athens that lycophon had hosts of friends.[+] [*]the original idea of the honey cake was simply that it was a friendly present to the infernal gods; later came the conceit that it was a sop to fling to the dog cerberus, who guarded the entrance to hades. [+]women, unless they were over sixty years of age, were not allowed to join in funeral processions unless they were first cousins, or closer kin, of the deceased. . the funeral pyre.--so the procession moves through the still gloomy streets of the city,--doubtless needing torch bearers as well as flute players,--and out through some gate, until the line halts in an open field, or better, in a quiet and convenient garden. here the great funeral pyre of choice dry fagots, intermixed with aromatic cedar, has been heaped. the bier is laid thereon. there are no strictly religious ceremonies. the company stands in a respectful circle, while the nearest male kinsman tosses a pine link upon the oil-soaked wood. a mighty blaze leaps up to heaven, sending its ruddy brightness against the sky now palely flushed with the bursting dawn. the flutists play in softer measures. as the fire rages a few of the relatives toss upon it pots of rare unguents; and while the flames die down, thrice the company shout their farewells, calling their departed friend by name--"lycophron! lycophron! lycophron!" so fierce is the flame it soon sinks into ashes. as soon as these are cool enough for safety (a process hastened by pouring on water or wine) the charred bones of the deceased are tenderly gathered up to be placed in a stately urn. the company, less formally now, returns to athens, and that night there will probably be a great funeral feast at the house of the nearest relative, everybody eating and drinking to capacity "to do lycophron full honor"; for it is he who is imagined as being now for the last time the host. . honors to the memory of the dead.--religion seems to have very little place in the athenian funeral: there are no priests present, no prayers, no religious hymns. but the dead man is now conceived as being, in a very humble and intangible way, a deity himself: his good will is worth propitiating; his memory is not to be forgotten. on the third, ninth, and thirtieth days after the funeral there are simple religious ceremonies with offerings of garlands, fruits, libations and the like, at the new tomb; and later at certain times in the year these will be repeated. the more enlightened will of course consider these merely graceful remembrances of a former friend; but there is a good deal of primitive ancestor worship even in civilized athens. burning is the usual method for the greeks to dispose of their dead, but the burial of unburned bodies is not unknown to them. probably, however, the rocky soil and the limited land space around athens make regular cemeteries less convenient than elsewhere: still it would have been nothing exceptional if lycophron had ordered in his will that he be put in a handsome pottery coffin to be placed in a burial ground pertaining to his family. . the beautiful funeral monuments.--if the noisy funeral customs permitted to the athenians may repel a later day observer, there can be only praise for the athenian tombs, or rather the funeral monuments (stëlæ) which might be set over the urns or ashes or the actual coffins. nearly every athenian family has a private field which it uses for sepulchral purposes: but running outside of the city, near the itonian gate along the road to the peiræus, the space to either side of the highway has been especially appropriated for this purpose. waling hither along this "street of the tombs" we can make a careful survey of some of the most touching memorials of athenian life. the period of hot, violent grief seems now over; the mourners have settled down in their dumb sense of loss. this spirit of calm, noble resignation is what is expressed upon these monuments. all is chaste, dignified, simple. there are no labored eulogies of the deceased; no frantic expressions of sorrow; no hint (let it be also said) of any hope of reunions in the hereafter. sometimes there is simply a plain marble slab or pillar marked with the name of the deceased; and with even the more elaborate monuments the effort often is to concentrate, into one simple scene, the best and worthiest that was connected with the dear departed. here is the noble mother seated in quiet dignity extending her hand in farewell to her sad but steadfast husband, while her children linger wonderingly by; here is the athlete, the young man in his pride, depicted not in the moment of weakness and death, but scraping his glorious form with his strigil, after some victorious contest in the games; here is the mounted warrior, slain before corinth whilst battling for his country, represented in the moment of overthrowing beneath his flying charger some despairing foe. we are made to feel that these athenians were fair and beautiful in their lives, and that in their deaths they were not unworthy. and we marvel, and admire these monuments the more when we realize that they are not the work of master sculptors but of ordinary paid craftsmen. we turn away praising the city that could produce such noble sculpture and call it mere handicraft, and praising also the calm poise of soul, uncomforted by revealed religion, which could make these monuments common expressions of the bitterest, deepest, most vital emotions which can ever come to men.[*] [*]as von falke (greece and rome, p. ) well says of these monuments, "no skeleton, no scythe, no hour-glass is in them to bring a shudder to the beholder. as they [the departed] were in life, mother and daughter, husband and wife, parents and children, here they are represented together, sitting or standing, clasping each other's hands and looking at one another with love and sympathy as if it were their customary affectionate intercourse. what the stone perpetuates is the love and happiness they enjoyed together, while yet they rejoiced in life and the light of day." chapter xii. trade, manufactures, and banking. . the commercial importance of athens.--while the funeral mourners are wending their slow way homeward we have time to examine certain phases of athenian life at which we have previously glanced, then ignored. certain it is, most "noble and good" gentlemen delight to be considered persons of polite uncommercial leisure; equally certain it is that a good income is about as desirable in athens as anywhere else, and many a stately "eupatrid," who seems to spend his whole time in dignified walks, discoursing on politics or philosophy, is really keenly interested in trades, factories, or farms, of which his less nobly born stewards have the active management. indeed one of the prime reasons for athenian greatness is the fact that athens is the richest and greatest commercial city of continental hellas, with only corinth as a formidable rival.[*] [*]syracuse in distant sicily was possibly superior to athens in commerce and economic prosperity, although incomparably behind her in the empire of the arts and literature. to understand the full extent of athenian commercial prosperity we must visit the peiræus, yet in the main city itself will be found almost enough examples of the chief kinds of economic activity. . the manufacturing activities of athens.--attica is the seat of much manufacturing. go to the suburbs: everywhere is the rank odor of the tanneries; down at the harbors are innumerable ship carpenters and sail and tackle makers, busy in the shipyards; from almost every part of the city comes the clang of hammer and anvil where hardware of all kinds is being wrought in the smithies; and finally the potter makers are so numerous as to require special mention hereafter. but no list of all the manufacturing activities is here possible; enough that practically every known industry is represented in athens, and the "industrial" class is large.[*] a very large proportion of the industrial laborers are slaves, but by no means all. a good many are real athenian citizens; a still larger proportion are "metics" (resident foreigners without political rights). the competition of slave labor, however, tends to keep wages very low. an unskilled laborer will have to be content with his obols ( cents [ ] or $ . [ ]) per day; but a trained workman will demand a drachma ( cents [ ] or $ . [ ]) or even more. there are no labor unions or trade guilds. a son usually, though not invariably, follows his father's profession. each industry and line of work tends to have its own little street or alley, preferably leading off the agora. "the street of the marble workers," the "street of the box makers," and notably the "street of the potters" contain nearly all the workshops of a given kind. probably you can find no others in the city. prices are regulated by custom and competition; in case any master artisan is suspected of "enhancing" the price of a needful commodity, or his shady business methods seem dangerous to the public, there is no hesitation in invoking an old law or passing a new one in the assembly to bring him to account. [*]for a very suggestive list of the numerous kinds of greek industries (practically all of which would be represented in athens) see h. j. edwards, in whibley's "companion to greek studies," p. . manufacturers are theoretically under a social ban, and indeed yonder petty shoemaker, who, with his two apprentices, first makes up his cheap sandals, then sells them over the low counter before his own ship, is very far from being a "leisurely" member of the "noble and the good." but he who, like the late lycophron, owns a furniture factory employing night threescore slaves, can be sure of lying down on his couch at a dinner party among the very best; for, as in twentieth century england, even manufacture and "trade," if on a sufficiently large scale, cover a multitude of social sins.[*] [*]plato, probably echoing thoughtful greek opinion, considered it bad for manufacturers to be either too wealthy or too poor; thus a potter getting too rich will neglect his art, and grow idle; if, however, he cannot afford proper tools, he will manufacture inferior wares, and his sons will be even worse workmen then he. such comment obviously comes from a society where most industrial life is on a small scale. . the commerce of athens.--part of athenian wealth comes from the busy factories, great and small, which seem everywhere; still more riches come in by the great commerce which will be found centered at the peiræus. here is the spacious deigma, a kind of exchange-house where ship masters can lay out samples of their wares on display, and sell to the important wholesalers, who will transmit to the petty shopkeepers and the "ultimate consumer."[*] [*]of course a very large proportion of greek manufactures wares were never exported, but were sold direct by the manufacturer to the consumer himself. this had various disadvantages; but there was this large gain: only one profit was necessary to be added to the mere cost of production. this aided to make greece (from a modern standpoint) a paradise of low prices. there are certain articles of which various districts make a specialty, and which athens is constantly importing: bœtia sends chariots; thessaly, easy chairs; chios and miletos, bedding; and miletos, especially, very fine woolens. greece in general looks to syria and arabia for the much-esteemed spices and perfumes; to egypt for papyri for the book rolls; to babylonia for carpets. to discuss the whole problem of athenian commerce would require a book in itself; but certain main facts stand out clearly. one is that attica herself has extremely few natural products to export--only her olive oil, her hymettus honey, and her magnificent marbles--dazzling white from pentelicos, gray from hymettus, blue or black from eleusis. again we soon notice the great part which grain plays in athenian commerce. attica raises such a small proportion of the necessary breadstuffs, and so serious is the crisis created by any shortage, that all kinds of measures are employed to compel a steady flow of grain from the black sea ports into the peiræus. here is a law which domsthenes quotes to us:-- "it shall not be lawful for any athenian or any metic in attica, or any person under their control [i.e. slave or freedman] to lend out money on a ship which is not commissioned to bring grain to athens." a second law, even more drastic, forbids any such person to transport grain to any harbor but the peiræus. the penalties for evading these laws are terrific. at set intervals also the public assembly (ecclesia) is in duty bound to consider the whole state of the grain trade: while the dealers in grain who seem to be cornering the market, and forcing up the price of bread, are liable to prompt and disastrous prosecution. . the adventurous merchant skippers.--foreign trade at athens is fairly well systematized, but it still partakes of the nature of an adventure. the name for "skipper" (nauklëros) is often used interchangeably for "merchant." nearly all commerce is by sea, for land routes are usually slow, unsafe, and inconvenient[*]; the average foreign trader is also a shipowner, probably too the actual working captain. he has no special commodity, but will handle everything which promises a profit. a war is breaking out in paphlagonia. away he sails thither with a cargo of good athenian shields, swords, and lances. he loads up in that barbarous but fertile country with grain; but leaves enough room in his hold for some hundred skins of choice wine which he takes aboard at chios. the grain and wine are disembarked at the piræus. hardly are they ashore ere rumor tells him that salt herring[+] are abundant and especially cheap at corcyra; and off he goes for a return cargo thereof, just lingering long enough to get on a lading of athenian olive oil. [*]naturally there was a safe land route from athens across the isthmus to corinth and thence to sparta or towards ellis; again, there would be fair roads into bœtia. [+]salt fish were a very usual and important article of greek commerce. . athenian money-changers and bankers.--an important factor in the commerce of athens is the "money-changer." there is no one fixed standard of coinage for greece, let alone the barbarian world. athens strikes its money on a standard which has very wide acceptance, but corinth has another standard, and a great deal of business is also transacted in persian gold darics. the result is that at the peiræus and near the agora are a number of little "tables" where alert individuals, with strong boxes beside them, are ready to sell foreign coins to would-be travelers, or exchange darics for attic drachmæ, against a pretty favorable commission. this was the beginning of the athenian banker; but from being a mere exchanger he has often passed far beyond, to become a real master of credit and capital. there are several of these highly important gentlemen who now have a business and fortune equal to that of the famous pasion, who died in b.c. while the firm of pasion and company was at its height, the proprietor derived a net income of at least minæ (over $ , [ ] or $ , . [ ]) per year from his banking; and more than half as much extra from a shield factory.[*] [*]these sums seem absurdly small for a great money magnate, but the very high purchasing power of money in athens must be borne in mind. we know a good deal about pasion and his business from the speeches which deosthenes composed in the litigation which arose over his estate. . a large banking establishment.--enter now the "tables" of nicanor. the owner is a metic; perhaps he claims to come from rhodes, but the shrewd cast of his eyes and the dark hue of his skin gives a suggestion of the syrian about him. in his open office a dozen young half-naked clerks are seated on low chairs--each with his tablet spread out upon his knees laboriously computing long sums.[*] the proprietor himself acts as the cashier. he has not neglected the exchange of foreign moneys; but that is a mere incidental. his first visitor this morning presents a kind of letter of credit from a correspondent in syracuse calling for one hundred drachmæ. "your voucher?" asks nicanor. the stranger produces the half of a coin broken in two across the middle. the proprietor draws a similar half coin from a chest. the parts match exactly, and the money is paid on the spot. the next comer is an old acquaintance, a man of wealth and reputation; he is followed by two slaves bearing a heavy talent of coined silver which he wishes the banker to place for him on an advantageous loan, against a due commission. the third visitor is a well-born but fast and idle young man who is squandering his patrimony on flute girls and chariot horses. he wishes an advance of ten minæ, and it is given him--against the mortgage of a house, at the ruinous interest of per cent, for such prodigals are perfectly fair play. another visitor is a careful and competent ship merchant who is fitting for a voyage to crete, and who requires a loan to buy his return cargo. ordinary interest, well secured, is per cent, but a sea voyage, even at the calmest season, is counted extra hazardous. the skipper must pay per cent at least. a poor tradesman also appears to raise a trifle by pawning two silver cups; and an unlucky farmer, who cannot meet his loan, persuades the banker to extend the time "just until the next moon"[+]--of course at an unmerciful compounding of interest. [*]without the arabic system of numerals, elaborate bookkeeping surely presented a sober face to the greeks. their method of numeration was very much like that with the so-called roman numerals. [+]"watching the moon," i.e. the end of the month when the debts became due, appears to have been the melancholy recreation of many athenian debtors. see aristophanes's "clouds," i. . . drawbacks to the banking business.--nicanor has no paper money to handle, no stocks, no bonds,--and the line between legitimate interest and scandalous usury is by no means clearly drawn. there is at least one good excuse for demanding high interest. it is notoriously hard to collect bad debts. many and many a clever debtor has persuaded an athenian jury that all taking of interest is somewhat immoral, and the banker has lost at least his interest, sometimes too his principal. so long as this is the case, a banker's career has its drawbacks; and demosthenes in a recent speech has commended the choice by pasion's son of a factory worth minæ per year, instead of his father's banking business worth nominally . the former was so much more secure than an income depending on "other people's money!" finally it must be said that while nicanor and pasion have been honorable and justly esteemed men, many of their colleagues have been rogues. many a "table" has been closed very suddenly, when its owner absconded, or collapsed in bankruptcy, and the unlucky depositors and creditors have been left penniless, during the "rearrangement of the tables," as the euphemism goes. . the potter of athens.--there is one other form of economic activity in athens which deserves our especial notice, different as it is from the bankers' tables,--the manufacture of earthen vases. a long time might be spent investigating the subject; here there is room only for a hasty glance. for more than two hundred years attica has been supplying the world with a pottery which is in some respects superior to any that has gone before, and also (all things considered) to any that will follow, through night two and a half millenniums. the articles are primarily tall vases and urns, some for mere ornament or for religious purposes,--some for very humble household utility; however, besides the regular vases there is a great variety of dishes, plates, pitchers, bowls, and cups all of the same general pattern,--a smooth, black glaze[*] covered with figures in the delicate red of the unglazed clay. at first the figures had been in black and the background in red, but by about b.c. the superiority of the black backgrounds had been fully realized and the process perfected. for a long time athens had a monopoly of this beautiful earthenware, but now in b.c. there are creditable manufactories in other cities, and especially in the greek towns of southern italy. the athenian industry is, however, still considerable; in fifty places up and down the city, but particularly in the busy quarter of the ceramicus, the potters' wheels are whirling, and the glazers are adding the elegant patterns. [*]sometimes this glaze tended to a rich olive green or deep brown. . athenian pottery an expression of the greek sense of beauty.--athens is proud of her traditions of naval and military glory; of the commerce of the peiræus; of her free laws and constitution; of her sculptured temples, her poets, her rhetoricians and philosophers. almost equally well might she be proud of her vases. they are not made--let us bear clearly in mind--by avowed artists, servants of the muses and of the beautiful; they are the regular commercial products of work-a-day craftsmen. but what craftsmen! in the first place, they have given to every vase and dish a marvelous individuality. there seems to be absolutely no duplication of patterns.[*] again, since these vases are made for greeks, they must--no matter how humble and commonplace their use--be made beautiful--elegantly shaped, well glazed, and well painted: otherwise, no matter how cheap, they will never find a market. [*]it is asserted that of the many thousands of extant greek vases that crowd the shelves of modern museums, there are nowhere two patterns exactly alike. the process of manufacture is simple, yet it needs a masterly touch. after the potter has finished his work at the wheel and while the clay is still soft, the decorator makes his rough design with a blunt-pointed stylus. a line of black glaze is painted around each figure. then the black background is freely filled in, and the details within the figure are added. a surprisingly small number of deft lines are needed to bring out the whole picture.[*] sometimes the glaze is thinned out to a pale brown, to help in the drawing of the interior contours. when the design is completed, we have an amount of life and expression which with the best potters is little short of startling. the subjects treated are infinite, as many as are the possible phases of greek life. scenes in the home and on the farm; the boys and their masters at school; the warriors, the merchants, the priests sacrificing, the young gallants serenading a sweet-heart; all the tales, in short of poet-lore and mythology,--time would fail to list one tenth of them. fairly we can assert that were all the books and formal inscriptions about the athenians to be blotted out, these vase paintings almost photographs one might say, of athenian daily life, would give us back a very wide knowledge of the habits of the men in the city of athena. [*]in this respect the greek vase paintings can compete with the best work in the japanese prints. the potters are justly proud of their work; often they do not hesitate to add their signatures, and in this way later ages can name the "craftsmen" who have transmitted to them these objects of abiding beauty. the designers also are accommodating enough to add descriptive legends of the scenes which they depict,--achilles, hercules, theseus, and all the other heroes are carefully named, usually with the words written above or beside them. the pottery of athens, then, is truly athenian; that is to say, it is genuinely elegant, ornamental, simple, and distinctive. the best of these great vases and mixing bowls are works of art no less than the sculptures of phidias upon the parthenon. chapter xiii. the armed forces of athens. . military life at athens.--hitherto we have seen almost nothing save the peaceful civic side of athenian life, but it is a cardinal error to suppose that art, philosophy, farming, manufacturing, commerce, and bloodless home politics sum up the whole of the activities of attica. athens is no longer the great imperial state she was in the days of pericles, but she is still one of the greatest military powers in greece,[*] and on her present armed strength rests a large share of her prestige and prosperity. her fleet, which is still her particular boast, must of course be seen at the peiræus; but as we go about the streets of the main city we notice many men, who apparently had recently entered their house doors as plain, harmless citizens, now emerging, clad in all the warrior's bravery, and hastening towards one of the gates. evidently a review is to be held of part of the citizen army of athens. if we wish, we can follow and learn much of the greek system of warfare in general and of the athenian army in particular. [*]of course the greatest military power of greece had been sparta until b.c., when the battle of leuctra made thebes temporarily "the first land power." even at the present day, when there is plenty of complaint that athenians are not willing to imitate the sturdy campaigning of their fathers, the citizens seem always at war, or getting ready for it. every citizen, physically fit, is liable to military service from his eighteenth to his sixtieth year. to make efficient soldiers is really the main end of the constant physical exercise. if a young man takes pride in his hard and fit body, if he flings spears at the stadium, and learns to race in full armor, if he goes on long marches in the hot sun, if he sleeps on the open hillside, or lies on a bed of rushes watching the moon rise over the sea,--it is all to prepare himself for a worthy part in the "big day" when athens will confront some old or new enemy on the battlefield. a great deal of the conversation among the younger men is surely not about platonic ideals, demosthenes's last political speech, nor the best fighting cocks; it is about spears, shield-straps, camping ground, rations, ambuscades, or the problems of naval warfare. it is alleged with some show of justice that by this time athenians are so enamored with the pleasures of peaceful life that they prefer to pay money for mercenary troops rather than serve themselves on distant expeditions; and certain it is that there are plenty of arcadians, thracians, and others, from the nations which supply the bulk of the mercenaries, always in athenian pay in the outlying garrisons. still the old military tradition and organization for the citizens is kept up, and half a generation later, when the freedom of athens is blasted before philip the macedonian at chæroneia, it will be shown that if the athenian militia does not know how to conquer, it at least knows how to die. so we gladly follow to the review, and gather our information. . the organization of the athenian army.--after a young "ephebus" has finished his two years of service in the garrisons he returns home subject to call at the hour of need. when there is necessity to make up an army, enough men are summoned to meet the required number and no more. thus for a small force only the eligibles between say twenty and twenty-four years of age would be summoned; but in a crisis all the citizens are levied up to the very graybeards. the levy is conducted by the ten "strategi" (at once 'generals,' 'admirals,' and 'war ministers') who control the whole armed power of athens. the recruits summoned have to come with three days' rations to the rendezvous, usually to the lyceum wrestling ground just outside the city. in case of a general levy the old men are expected to form merely a home guard for the walls; the young men must be ready for hard service over seas. the organization of the athenian army is very simple; each of the ten attic tribes sends its own special battalion or "taxis," which is large or small according to the total size of the levy.[*] these "taxeis" are subdivided into companies or "lochoi," of about an average of men each. the "taxeis" are each under a tribal-colonel ("taxiarch"), and each company under its captain ("locharch"). the ten strategi theoretically command the whole army together, but since bitter experience teaches that ten generals are usually nine too many, a special decree of the people often entrusts the supreme command of a force to one commander, or at most to not over three. the other strategi must conduct other expeditions, or busy themselves with their multifarious home duties. [*]thus if men were called out, the average "taxis" would be strong, but if , then . . the hoplites and the light troops.--the unit of the athenian citizen army, like practically all greek armies, is the heavy armed infantry soldier, the hoplite. an army of "three thousand men" is often an army of so many hoplites, unless there is specific statement to the contrary. but really it is of six thousand men, to be entirely accurate: for along with every hoplite goes an attendant, a "light-armed man," either a poor citizen who cannot afford a regular suit of armor,[*] or possibly a trusted slave. these "light-armed men" carry the hoplites' shields until the battle, and most of the baggage. they have javelins, and sometimes slings and bows. they act as skirmishers before the actual battle: and while the hoplites are in the real death-grip they harass the foe as they can, and guard the camp. when the fight is done they do their best to cover the retreat, or slaughter the flying foe if their own hoplites are victorious. [*]the hoplite's panoply (see description later) was sufficiently expensive to imply that its owner was at least a man in tolerable circumstances. . the cavalry and the peltasts.--there are certain divisions of the army besides the hoplites and this somewhat ineffective light infantry. there is a cavalry corps of . wealthy young athenians are proud to volunteer therein; it is a sign of wealth to be able to provide your war horse. the cavalry too is given the place of honor in the great religious processions; and there is plenty of chance for exciting scouting service on the campaign. again, the cavalry service has something to commend it in that it is accounted much safer than the infantry![*] the cavalry is, however, a rather feeble fighting instrument. greek riders have no saddles and no stirrups. they are merely mounted on thin horse pads, and it is very hard to grip the horse with the knees tightly enough to keep from being upset ignominiously while wielding the spear. the best use for the cavalry perhaps is for the riders to take a sheaf of javelins, ride up and discharge them at the foe as skirmishers, then fall back behind the hoplites; though after the battle the horsemen will have plenty to do in the retreat or the pursuit. [*]greeks could seldom have been brought to imitate the reckless medieval cavaliers. the example of leonidas at thermopylæ was more commended than imitated. outside of sparta at least, few greeks would have hesitated to flee from a battlefield, when the day (despite their proper exertions) had been wholly lost. the athenians have of course the scythian police archers to send into any battle near athens; they can also hire mercenary archers from crete, but the greek bows are relatively feeble, only three or four feet long--by no means equal to the terrible yew bows which will win glory for england in the middle ages. there has also come into vogue, especially since the peloponnesian war, an improved kind of light-javelin-men,--the "peltasts,"--with small shields, and light armor, but with extra long lances. in recent warfare this type of soldier, carefully trained and agile, has been known to defeat bodies of the old-style over-encumbered hoplites.[*] nevertheless, most veteran soldiers still believe that the heavy infantryman is everything, and the backbone of nearly every greek army is still surely the hoplite. he will continue to be the regular fighting unit until the improved "phalanx," and the "companion cavalry" of philip and alexander of macedon teach the captains of the world new lessons. [*]especially the athenian general iphicrates was able to cut to pieces a "mora" (brigade) of spartan hoplites, in b.c., by skillful use of a force of peltasts. . the panoply of the hoplite.--we have passed out one of the gates and are very likely in a convenient open space south and east of the city stretching away toward the ever visible slopes of gray hymettus. here is a suitable parade ground. the citizen soldiers are slipping on their helmets and tightening up their cuirasses. trumpets blow from time to time to give orders to "fall in" among the respective "lochoi" and "taxeis." there is plenty of time to study the arms and armor of the hoplites during these preliminaries. a very brief glance at the average infantryman's defensive weapons tells us that to be able to march, maneuver, and fight efficiently in this armor implies that the athenian soldier is a well-trained athlete. the whole panoply weighs many pounds.[*] the prime parts in the armor are the helmet, the cuirass, the greaves, and the shield. every able-bodied citizen of moderate means has this outfit hanging in his andronitis, and can don it at brief notice. the helmet is normally of bronze; it is cut away enough in front to leave the face visible, but sometimes a cautious individual will insist on having movable plates (which can be turned up and down) to protect the cheeks.[+] across the top there runs a firm metal ridge to catch any hard down-right blow, and set into the ridge is a tall nodding crest either of horsehair or of bright feathers--in either case the joy and glory of the wearer. [*]possibly fifty or more--we have no correct means for an exact estimate. [a note from brett: looking at web sites where reconstruction of the armor has been done and estimates made (ca. ) there seems to be a consistent top end of pounds. scholarly circles (e.g. rudolph storch of the university of maryland) seem to lock the estimate more tightly, with the consensus saying that a fully armored hoplite carried between and pounds. most of this weight seems to be in the cuirass, which in some cases was linen and weighed only - pounds (the actual thickness is unknown, so the broad range of weight estimate covers the minimum to maximum reasonable thickness). for reference, a modern ( ) soldier is generally limited to pounds of gear when fighting and pounds when marching.] [+]the "corinthian" type of helmets came more closely over the face, and the cheek protectors were not movable; these helmets were much like the closed helms of the medieval knights. the spartans, in their contempt for danger, wore plain pointed steel caps which gave relatively little protection. buckled around the soldier's body is the cuirass. it comprises a breastplate and a back piece of bronze, joined by thongs, or by straps with a buckle. the metal comes down to the hips. below it hangs a thick fringe of stout strips of leather strengthened with bright metallic studs, and reaching halfway to the knees. from this point to the knees the legs are bare, but next come the greaves, thin pliable plates of bronze fitted to the shape of the leg, and opening at the back. they have to be slipped on, and then are fastened at the knees and ankle with leathern straps. but the warrior's main protection is his shield. with a strong, large shield you can fight passing well without any regular body armor; while with the best outfit of the latter you are highly vulnerable without your shield. to know how to swing your shield so as to catch every possible blow, to know how to push and lunge with it against an enemy, to know how to knock a man down with it, if needs be, that is a good part of the soldier's education. the shield is sometimes round, but more often oval. it is about four feet by the longest diameter. it is made of several layers of heavy bull's hide, firmly corded and riveted together, and has a good metal rim and metal boss in the center. on the inside are two handles so that it can be conveniently wielded on the left arm.[*] these shields are brilliantly painted, and although the greeks have no heraldic devices, there are all manner of badges and distinguishing marks in vogue. thus all theban shields are blazoned with a club; sicyonian shields are marked with the initial "sigma" (s), and we note that the athenian shields are all marked alpha (a).[+] [*]earlier greek shields seem to have been very large and correspondingly heavy. these had only a single handle; and to aid in shifting them they were swung on straps passed over the left shoulder. [+]this last is a matter of safe inference rather than of positive information. . the weapons of a hoplite.--the hoplites have donned their armor. now they assume their offensive weapons. every man has a lance and a sword. the lance is a stout weapon with a solid wooden butt, about six feet long in all. it is really too heavy to use as a javelin. it is most effective as a pike thrust fairly into a foeman's face, or past his shield into a weak spot in his cuirass. the sword is usually kept as a reserve weapon in case the lance gets broken. it is not over inches in length, making rather a huge double-edged vicious knife than a saber; but it is terrible for cut and thrust work at very close quarters. simple as these weapons are, they are fearful instruments of slaughter in well-trained hands, and the average greek has spent a considerable part of his life in being taught how to use them. . infantry maneuvers.--the final trumpets have blown, and the troops fall into their places. each tribal "taxis" lines up its "lochoi." the greeks have no flags nor standards. there is a great deal of shouting by the subaltern officers, and running up and down the ranks. presently everything is in formal array. the hoplites stand in close order, each man about two feet from the next,[*] leaving no gaps between each division from end to end of the lines. the men are set in eight long ranks. this is the normal "phalanx"[+] order. only those in front can actually lunge and strike at the enemy. the men in the rear will add to the battering force of the charge, and crowding in closely, wedge themselves promptly to the front, when any of the first rank goes down. [*]the object would be to give each man just enough distance to let him make fair use of his lance, and yet have his shield overlap that of his neighbor. [+]the "phalanx" is sometimes spoken of as a macedonian invention, but philip and alexander simply improved upon an old greek military formation. it is an imposing sight when the strategos in charge of the maneuvers, a stately man in a red chlamys, gives the final word "march!" loud pipes begin screaming. the long lines of red, blue, and orange plumes nod fiercely together. the sun strikes fire out of thousands of brandished lance tips. the phalanx goes swinging away over the dusty parade ground, the subalterns up and down the files muttering angrily to each inapt recruit to "keep your distance:" or "don't advance your shield." the commandant duly orders the "half turn:" "left" or "right turn:" "formation by squares," and finally the critical "change front to rear." if this last maneuver is successfully accomplished, the strategos will compliment the drill sergeants; for it is notoriously difficult to turn a ponderous phalanx around and yet make it keep good order. the drilling goes on until the welcome order comes, "ground arms!" and every perspiring soldier lets his heavy shield slip from his arm upon the ground. . the preliminaries of a greek battle.--later in the day, if these are happy times of peace, the whole phalanx, so bristling and formidable, will have resolved itself into its harmless units of honest citizens all streaming home for dinner. our curiosity of course asks how does this army act upon the campaign; what, in other words, is a typical greek battle? this is not hard to describe. greek battles, until lately, have been fought according to set formulæ in which there is little room for original generalship, though much for ordinary circumspection and personal valor. a battle consists in the charging together of two phalanxes of hoplites of about equal numbers. if one army greatly overmatches the other, the weaker side will probably retire without risking a contest. with a common purpose, therefore, the respective generals will select a broad stretch of level ground for the struggle, since stony, hilly, or uneven ground will never do for the maneuvering of hoplites. the two armies, after having duly come in sight of one another, and exchanged defiances by derisive shouts, catcalls, and trumpetings, will probably each pitch its camp (protected by simple fortifications) and perhaps wait over night, that the men may be well rested and have a good dinner and breakfast. the soldiers will be duly heartened up by being told of any lucky omens of late,--how three black crows were seen on the right, and a flash of lightning on the left; and the seers and diviners with the army will, at the general's orders, repeat any hopeful oracles they can remember or fabricate, e.g. predicting ruin for thebes, or victory for athens. in the morning the soldiers have breakfast, then the lines are carefully arrayed a little beyond bowshot from the enemy, who are preparing themselves in similar fashion. every man has his arms in order, his spear point and sword just from the whetstone, and every buckle made fast. the general (probably in sight of all the men) will cause the seers to kill a chicken, and examine its entrails. "the omens are good; the color is favorable; the gods are with us!"[*] he announces; and then, since he is a greek among greeks, he delivers in loud voice an harangue to as many as can hear him, setting forth the patriotic issues at stake in the battle, the call of the fatherland to its sons, the glory of brave valor, the shame of cowardice, probably ending with some practical directions about "never edging to the right!" and exhorting his men to raise as loud a war-cry as possible, both to encourage themselves and to demoralize the enemy. [*]it may be suspected that it was very seldom the omens were allowed to be unfavorable when the general was really resolved on battle. . joining the battle.--the troops answer with a cheer then join in full chorus in the "pæan--" a fierce rousing charging-song that makes every faint-heart's blood leap faster. another pæan bellowed from the hostile ranks indicates that similar preliminaries have been disposed of there. the moment the fierce chorus ends, the general (who probably is at the post of danger and honor--the right wing) nods to his corps of pipers. the shrill flutes cut the air. the whole phalanx starts forward like one man, and the enemy seem springing to meet it. the tossing color, the flashing arms and armor, make it a sight for men and gods. if the enemy has a powerful archery force, as had the persians at marathon, then the phalanx is allowed to advance on the run,--for at all costs one must get through the terrible zone of the arrow fire and come to grips; but if their bowmen are weak, the hoplites will be restrained,--it is better not to risk getting the phalanx disorganized. running or marching the troops will emit a terrible roaring: either the slow deep "a! la! la! la!" or something quicker, "eluleu!" "eluleu!" and the flutes will blow all the while to give the time for the marching. closer at hand the two armies will fairly spring into unfriendly embrace. the generals have each measured his enemy's line and extended his own to match it.[*] with files of about equal depth, and well-trained men on both sides, the first stage of the death grapple is likely to be a most fearful yet indecisive pushing: the men of the front ranks pressing against each other, shield to shield, glaring out of their helmets like wild beasts against the foeman three feet away, and lunging with their lances at any opening between the hostile shields or above them. the comrades behind wedge in the front ranks closer and closer. men are crushed to death, probably without a wound, just by this hellish impact. the shouts and yells emitted are deafening. there is an unearthly clashing of steel weapons on bronze armor. every now and then a shrill, sharp cry tells where a soldier has been stabbed, and has gone down in the press, probably trampled to death instantly. in this way the two writhing, thrusting phalanxes continue to push on one another at sheer deadlock, until a cool observer might well wonder whether the battle would not end simply with mutual extermination. [*]any sudden attempt to extend your line beyond the foe's, so as to outflank him, would probably have produced so much confusion in your own phalanx as to promise certain disaster. of course for an inferior force to accept battle by thinning its line, to be able by extending to meet the long lines of the enemy, would involve the greatest risk of being broken through at the center. the best remedy for inferior numbers was manifestly to decline a decisive battle. . the climax and end of the battle.--boot look away now from the center, towards the two wings. what the generals of both contending armies have feared and warned against has come to pass. every hoplite is admirably covered by his great shield on his left side; but his right is unprotected. it is almost impossible to resist the impulse to take a step toward the right to get under the cover of a comrade's shield. and he in turn has been edging to the right likewise. the whole army ahs in fact done so, and likewise the whole phalanx of the enemy. so after a quarter of an hour of brisk fighting, the two hosts, which began by joining with lines exactly facing each other, have each edged along so much that each overlaps the other on the right wing, thus: +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ what will happen now is easy to predict with assurance up to a certain point. the overlapping right wings will each promptly turn the left flank of their enemies, and falling upon the foe front and rear catch them almost helpless. the hoplite is an admirable soldier when standing shoulder to shoulder with his comrades facing his foe; but once beset in the rear he is so wedged in by the press that it is next to impossible for him to turn and fight effectively. either he will be massacred as he stands or the panic will spread betimes, and simultaneously both left wings will break formation and hurry off the field in little better than flight. now will come the real test of discipline and deliberate valor. both centers are holding stoutly. everything rests on the respective victorious right wings. either they will foolishly forget that there is still fighting elsewhere on the field, and with ill-timed huzzaing pursue the men they have just routed, make for their camp to plunder it, or worse still, disperse to spoil the slain; or, if they can heed their general's entreaties, keep their ranks, and wheeling around come charging down on the rear of the enemy's center. if one right wing does this, while the hostile right wing has rushed off in heedless pursuit, the battle is infallibly won by the men who have kept their heads; but if both right wings turn back, then the real death grapple comes when these two sets of victors in the first phase of the contest clash together in a decisive grapple. by this time the original phalanx formations, so orderly, and beautiful, have become utterly shattered. the field is covered by little squares or knots of striking, cursing, raging men--clashing furiously together. if there are any effective reserves, now is the time to fling them into the scale. the hitherto timorous light troops and armor bearers rush up to do what they can. individual bravery and valor count now to the uttermost. little by little the contest turns against one side or the other. the crucial moment comes. the losing party begins to fear itself about to be surrounded. vain are the last exhortations of the officers to rally them. "every man for himself!" rings the cry; and with one mad impulse the defeated hoplites rush off the field in a rout. since they have been at close grip with their enemies, and now must turn their ill-protected backs to the pursuing spears, the massacre of the defeated side is sometimes great. yet not so great as might be imagined. once fairly beaten, you must strip off helmet and cuirass, cast away shield and spear, and run like a hare. you have lightened yourself now decidedly. but your foe must keep his ponderous arms, otherwise he cannot master you, if he overtakes you. therefore the vanquished can soon distance the victors unless the latter have an unusually efficient cavalry and javelin force. however, the victors are likely to enter the camp of the vanquished, and to celebrate duly that night dividing the plunder. . the burial truce and the trophy after the battle.--a few hours after the battle, while the victors are getting breath and refreshing themselves, a shamefaced herald, bearing his sacred wand of office, presents himself. he is from the defeated army, and comes to ask a burial truce. this is the formal confession of defeat for which the victors have been waiting. it would be gross impiety to refuse the request; and perhaps the first watch of the nigh is spent by detachments of both sides in burying or burning the dead. the fates of prisoners may be various. they may be sold as slaves. if the captors are pitiless and vindictive, it is not contrary to the laws of war to put the prisoners to death in cold blood; but by the fourth century b.c. greeks are becoming relatively humane. most prisoners will presently be released against a reasonable ransom paid by their relatives. the final stage of the battle is the trophy: the visible sign on the battlefield that here such-and-such a side was victorious. the limbs are lopped off a tree, and some armor captured from the foe is hung upon it. after indecisive battles sometimes both sides set up trophies; in that case a second battle is likely to settle the question. then when the victors have recovered from their own happy demoralization, they march into the enemy's country; by burning all the farmsteads, driving off the cattle, filling up the wells, girdling the olive and fruit trees, they reduce the defeated side (that has fled to its fortified town) to desperation. if they have any prisoners, they threaten to put them to death. the result, of course, is frequently a treaty of peace in favor of the victors. . the siege of fortified towns.--if, however, one party cannot be induced to risk an open battle; or if, despite a defeat, it allows the enemy to ravage the fields, and yet persists in defending the walls of its town,--the war is likely to be tedious and indecisive. it is notorious that greeks dislike hard sieges. the soldiers are the fellow townsmen of the generals. if the latter order an assault with scaling ladders and it is repulsed with bloody loss, the generals risk a prosecution when they get home for "casting away the lives of their fellow citizens."[*] in short, fifty men behind a stout wall and "able to throw anything" are in a position to defy an army. [*]in siege warfare oriental kings had a great advantage over greek commanders. the former could sacrifice as many of their "slaves" as they pleased, in desperate assaults. the latter had always to bear in mind their accountability at home for any desperate and costly attack. the one really sure means of taking a town is to build a counter wall around it and starve it out,--a slow and very expensive, thought not bloody process. only when something very great is at stake will a greek city-state attempt this.[*] there is always another chance, however. almost every greek town has a discontented faction within its walls, and many a time there will be a traitor who will betray a gate to the enemy; and then the siege will be suddenly ended in one murderous night. [*]as in the siege of potidea ( - b.c.), when if athens had failed to take the place, her hold upon her whole empire would have been jeopardized. . the introduction of new tactics.--greek battles are thus very simple things as a rule. it is the general who, accepting the typical conditions as he finds them, and avoiding any gross and obvious blunders, can put his men in a state of perfect fitness, physical and moral, that is likely to win the day. of late there has come indeed a spirit of innovation. at leuctra ( b.c.) epaminodas the theban defeated the spartans by the unheard-of device of massing a part of his hoplites fifty deep (instead of the orthodox eight or twelve) and crushing the spartan right wing by the sheer weight of his charge, before the rest of the line came into action at all. if the experiment had not succeeded, epaminondas would probably have been denounced by his own countrymen as a traitor, and by the enemy as a fool, for varying from the time-honored long, "even line" phalanx; and the average general will still prefer to keep to the old methods; then if anything happens, he at least will not be blamed for any undue rashness. only in macedon, king philip ii (who is just about to come to the throne) will not hesitate to study the new battle tactics of epaminondas, and to improve upon them. the athenians will tell us that their citizen hoplites are a match for any soldiers in greece, except until lately the spartans, and now (since leuctra) possibly the thebans. but corinthians, argives, sicyonians, they can confront more readily. they will also add, quite properly, that the army of athens is in the main for home defense. she does not claim to be a preëminently military state. the glory of athens has been the mastery of the sea. our next excursion must surely be to the peiræus. chapter xiv. the peiræus and the shipping. . the "long walls" down to the harbor town.--it is some five miles from the city to the peiræus, and the most direct route this time lies down the long avenue laid between the long walls, and running almost directly southwest.[*] the ground is quite level. if we could catch glimpses beyond the walls, we would see fields, seared brown perhaps by the summer sun, and here and there a bright-kerchiefed woman gleaning among the wheat stubble. the two walls start from athens close together and run parallel for some distance, then they gradually diverge so as to embrace within their open angle a large part of the circumference of the peiræus. this open space is built up with all kinds of shops, factories, and houses, usually of the less aristocratic kind. in fact, all the noxious sights and odors to be found in athens seem tenfold multiplied as we approach the peiræus. [*]these were the walls whereof a considerable section was thrown down by lysander after the surrender of athens [ b.c.]. the demolition was done to the "music of flute girls," and was fondly thought by the victors to mean the permanent crippling of athens, and therefore "the first day of the liberty of greece." in b.c., by one of the ironies of history, conon, an athenian admiral, but in the service of the king of persia, who was then at war with sparta, appeared in the peiræus, and with persian men and money rebuilt the walls amid the rejoicings of the athenians. the straight highroad is swarming with traffic: clumsy wagons are bringing down marble from the mountains; other wains are headed toward athens with lumber and bales of foreign wares. countless donkeys laden with panniers are being flogged along. a great deal of the carrying is done by half-naked sweating porters; for, after all, slave-flesh is almost as cheap as beast-flesh. so by degrees the two walls open away from us: before us now expands the humming port town; we catch the sniff of the salt brine, and see the tangle of spars of the multifarious shipping. right ahead, however, dominating the whole scene, is a craggy height,--the hill of munychia, crowned with strong fortifications, and with houses rising terrace above terrace upon its slopes. at the very summit glitters in its white marble and color work the temple of artemis munychia, the guardian goddess of the port town and its citadel.[*] [*]this fortress of munychia, rather than the acropolis in athens was the real citadel of attica. it dominated the all-important harbors on which the very life of the state depended. . munychia and the havens of athens.--making our way up a steep lane upon the northwestern slope, we pass within the fortifications, the most formidable near athens. a band of young ephebi of the garrison eye us as we enter; but we seem neither spartans nor thebans and are not molested. from a convenient crag near the temple, the whole scheme of the harbors of athens is spread out before us, two hundred and eighty odd feet below. behind us is the familiar plain of athens with the city, the acropolis, and the guardian mountains. directly west lies the expanse of roof of the main harbor town, and then beyond is the smooth blue expanse of the "port of the peiræus," the main mercantile harbor of athens. running straight down from munychia, southwest, the land tapers off into a rocky promontory, entirely girt with strong fortifications. in this stretch of land are two deep round indentations. cups of bright water they seem, communicating with the outer sea only by narrow entrances which are dominated by stout castles. "zea" is the name of the more remote; the "haven" of "munychia" is that which seems opening almost at our feet. these both are full of the naval shipping, whereof more hereafter. to the eastward, and stretching down the coast, is a long sandy beach whereon the blue ripples are crumbling between the black fishing boats drawn up upon the strand. this is phaleron, the old harbor of athens before themistocles fortified the "peiræus"--merely an open roadstead in fact, but still very handy for small craft, which can be hauled up promptly to escape the tempest. . the glorious view from the hill of munychia.--these are the chief points in the harbors; but the view from munychia is most extensive. almost everything in sight has its legend or its story in sober history. ten miles away to the southward rise the red rocky hills of Ægina, athens' old island enemy; and the tawny headlands of the argolic coasts are visible yet farther across he horizon. again as we follow the purplish ridge of mount Ægaleos as it runs down the attic coast to westward, we come to a headland then to a belt of azure water, about a mile wide, then the reddish hills of an irregular island. every idler on the citadel can tell us all the story. on that headland on a certain fateful morning sat xerxes, lord of the persians, with his sword-hands and mighty men about him and his ships before him, to look down on the naval spectacle and see how his slaves would fight. the island beyond is "holy salamis," and in this narrow strip of water has been the battle which saved the life of hellas. every position in the contest seems clearly in sight, even the insignificant islet of psytteleia, where aristeides had landed his men after the battle, and massacred the persions stationed there "to cut off the greeks who tried to escape." the water is indescribably blue, matching the azure of the sky. ships of all kinds under sails or oars are moving lightly over the havens and the open saronic bay. it is matchless spectacle--albeit very peaceful. we now descend to the peiræus proper and examine the merchant shipping and wharves, leaving the navy yards and the fighting triremes till later. . the town of peiræus.--the peiræus has all the life of the athenian agora many times multiplied. everywhere there is work and bustle. aristophanes has long since described the impression it makes on strangers,[*]--sailors clamoring for pay, rations being served out, figureheads being burnished, men trafficking for corn, for onions, for leeks, for figs,--"wreaths, anchovies, flute girls, blackened eyes, the hammering of oars from the dock yards, the fitting of rowlocks, boatswains' pipes, fifes, and whistling." there is such confusion one can hardly analyze one's surroundings. however, we soon discover the peiræus has certain advantages over athens itself. the streets are much wider and are quite straight,[+] crossing at right angles, unlike the crooked alleys of old athens which seem nothing but built-up cow trails. down at the water front of the main harbor ("the peiræus" harbor to distinguish it from zea and munychia) we find about one third, nearest the entrance passage and called the cantharus, reserved for the use of the war navy. this section is the famous "emporium," which is such a repository of foreign wares that isocrates boasts that here one can easily buy all those things which it is extremely hard to purchase anywhere else in hellas. along the shore run five great stoas or colonnades, all used by the traders for different purposes;--among them are the long stoa (makra' stoa'), the "deigma" (see section ) used as a sample house by the wholesalers, and the great corn exchange built by pericles. close down near the wharves stands also a handsome and frequented temple, that of athena euploia (athena, giver of good voyages), to whom many a shipman offers prayer ere hoisting sail, and many another comes to pay grateful vows after surviving a storm.[&] time fails us for mentioning all the considerable temples farther back in the town. the peiræus in short is a semi-independent community; with its shrines, its agoras, its theaters, its court rooms, and other public buildings. the population contains a very high percentage of metics, and downright barbarians,--indeed, long-bearded babylonians, clean bronze egyptians, grinning ethiopians, never awaken the least comment, they are so familiar. [*]"acharn." ff. [+]pericles employed the famous architect hippodamus to lay out the peiræus. it seems to have been arranged much like many of the newer american cities. [&]there seems to have been still another precinct, sacred to "zeus and athena the preservers," where it was very proper to offer thanksgivings after a safe voyage. . the merchant shipping.--we can now cast more particular eyes upon the shipping. every possible type is represented. the fishing craft just now pulling in with loads of shining tunnies caught near Ægina are of course merely broad open boats, with only a single dirty orange sail swinging in the lagging breeze. such vessels indeed depend most of the time upon their long oars. also just now there goes across the glassy surface of the harbor a slim graceful rowing craft, pulling eight swiftly plying oars to a side. she is a "lembus:" probably the private cutter of the commandant of the port. generally speaking, however, we soon find that all the larger greek ships are divided into two categories, the "long ships" and the "round ships." the former depend mainly on oars and are for war; the latter trust chiefly to sail power and are for cargo. the craft in the merchant haven are of course nearly all of this last description. greeks are clever sailors. they never feel really happy at a great distance from the sea which so penetrates their little country; nevertheless, they have not made all the progress in navigation which, considering the natural ingenuity of the race, might well be expected. the prime difficulty is that greek ships very seldom have comfortable cabins. the men expect to sleep on shore every night possible. only in a great emergency, or when crossing an exceptionally wide gulf or channel,[*] can a captain expect the average crew to forego the privilege of a warm supper and bivouac upon the strand. this means (since safe anchorages are by no means everywhere) the ships must be so shallow and light they can often be hauled up upon the beach. even with a pretty large crew, therefore, the limit to a manageable ship is soon reached; and during the whole of the winter season all long-distance voyaging has to be suspended; while, even in summer, nine sailors out of ten hug close to the land, despite the fact that often the distance of a voyage is thereby doubled. [*]for example, the trip from crete to cyrene--which would be demanded first, before coasting along to egypt. however, the ships at peiræus, if not large in size, are numerous enough. some are simply big open boats with details elaborated. they have a small forecastle and poop built over, but the cargo in the hold is exposed to all wind and weather. the propulsion comes from a single unwieldy square sail swinging on a long yard the whole length of the vessel. other ships are more completely decked, and depend on two square sails in the place of one. a few, however, are real "deep sea" vessels--completely decked, with two or even three masts; with cabins of tolerable size, and forward and aft curious projections, like turrets,--the use whereof is by no means obvious, but we soon gather that pirates still abound on the distant seas, and that these turrets are useful when it comes to repelling boarders. the very biggest of these craft run up to gross tons (later day register),[*] although with these ponderous defense-works they seem considerably larger. the average of the ships, however, will reckon only to tons or even smaller. it is really a mistake, any garrulous sailor will tell us, to build merchant ships much bigger. it is impossible to make sailing vessels of the greek model and rig sail very close to the wind; and in every contrary breeze or calm, recourse must be had to the huge oars pile up along the gunwales. obviously it is weary work propelling a large ship with oars unless you have a huge and expensive crew,--far better then to keep to the smaller vessels. [*]the greeks reckoned their ships by their capacity in talents (= about lbs.), e.g. a ship of talents, of , or (among the largest) , . . the three war harbors and the ship house.--many other points about these "round ships" interest us; but such matters they share with the men-of-war, and our inspection has now brought us to the navy yard. there are strictly three separate navy yards, one at each of the harbors of munychia, zea, and cantharus, for the naval strength of athens is so great that it is impossible to concentrate the entire fleet at one harbor. each of these establishments is protected by having two strong battlements or breakwaters built out, nearly closing the respective harbor entrances. at the end of each breakwater is a tower with parapets for archers, and capstans for dragging a huge chain across the harbor mouth, thus effectively sealing the entrance to any foe.[*] the zea haven has really the greatest warship capacity, but the cantharus is a good type for the three.[+] as we approach it from the merchant haven, we see the shelving shore closely lined with curious structures which do not easily explain themselves. there are a vast number of dirty, shelving roofs, slightly tilted upward towards the land side, and set at right angles to the water's edge. they are each about feet long, some feet wide, about feet high, and are set up side by side with no passage between. on close inspection we discover these are ship houses. under each of the roofs is accommodated the long slim hull of a trireme, kept safe from sea and weather until the time of need, when a few minutes' work at a tackle and capstan will send it down into harbor, ready to tow beside a wharf for outfitting. [*]ancient harbors were much harder to defend than modern ones, because there was no long-range artillery to prevent an enemy from thrusting into an open haven among defenseless shipping. [+]zea had accommodation for triremes, munychia, , and the cantharus, . . the great naval arsenal.--the ship houses are not the only large structures at the navy yard. here is also the great naval arsenal, a huge roofed structure open at the sides and entirely exposed to public inspection. here between the lines of supporting columns can be seen stacked up the staple requisites for the ships,--great ropes, sail boxes, anchors, oars, etc. everybody in athens is welcome to enter and assure himself that the fleet can be outfitted at a minute's notice[*]; and at all times crews of half-naked, weather-beaten sailors are rushing hither and yon, carrying or removing supplies to and from the wharves where their ships are lying. [*]this arsenal was replaced a little later than the hypothetical time of this narrative by one designed by the famous architect, philo. it was extremely elegant as well as commodious, with handsome columns, tiled roofs, etc. in b.c., however, the arsenal seems to have been a strictly utilitarian structure. . an athenian triearch.--among this unaristocratic crowd we observe a dignified old gentleman with an immaculate himation and a long polished cane. obsequious clerks and sailing masters are hanging about him for his orders; it is easy to see that he is a trierarch--one of the wealthiest citizens on whom it fell, in turn, at set intervals, to provide the less essential parts of a trireme's outfit, and at least part of the pay for the crew for one year, and to be generally responsible for the efficiency and upkeep of the vessel.[*] this is a year of peace, and the patriotic pressure to spend as much on your warship as possible is not so great as sometimes; still eustatius, the magnate in question, knows that he will be bitterly criticized (nay, perhaps prosecuted in the courts) if he does not do "the generous thing." he is therefore ordering an extra handsome figurehead; promising a bonus to the rowing master if he can get his hands to row in better rhythm than the ordinary crew; and directing that wine of superior quality be sent aboard for the men.[+] it will be an anxious year in any case for eustathius. he has ill wishers who will watch carefully to see if the vessel fails to make a creditable record for herself during the year, and whether she is returned to the ship house or to the next trierarch in a state of good repair. if the craft does not then appear seaworthy, her last outfitter may be called upon to rebuild her completely, a matter which will eat up something like a talent. public service therefore does not provide beds of roses for the rich men of athens. [*]just how much of the rigging and what fraction of the pay of the crew the government provided is by no means clear from our evidence. it is certain that a public-spirited and lavish trierarch could almost ruin himself (unless very wealthy) during the year he was responsible for the vessel. [+]according to various passages in demosthenes, the cost of a trierachy for a year varied between minæ (say $ [ or $ , . in ]) and a talent (about $ [ or $ , in ]), very large sums for athenians. the question of the amount of time spent in active service in foreign waters would of course do much to determine the outlay. eustathius goes away towards one of the wharves, where his trireme, the "invincible," is moored with her crew aboard her. let us examine a typical athenian warship. . the evolution of the trireme.--the genesis of the trireme was the old penteconter ("fifty-oar ship") which, in its prime features, was simply a long, narrow, open hull, with slightly raised prow and stern cabins, pulling twenty-five oars to a side. there are a few penteconters still in existence, though the great naval powers have long since scorned them. it was a good while before the battle of salamis that the greek sea warriors began to feel the need of larger warships. it was impossible to continue the simple scheme of the penteconter. to get more oars all on one tier you must make a longer boat, but you could not increase the beam, for, if you did, the whole craft would get so heavy that it would not row rapidly; and the penteconter was already so long in relation to its beam as to be somewhat unsafe. a device was needed to get more oars into the water without increasing the length over much. the result was the bireme (two-banker) which was speedily replaced by the still more efficient trireme (three-banker), the standard battleship of all the greek navies.[*] [*]by the end of the fourth century b.c., vessels with four and five banks of oars (quadriremes and quinqueremes) had become the regular fighting ships, but they differed probably only in size, not in principle, from the trireme. . the hull of a trireme.--the "invincible" has a hull of fir strengthened by a solid oak keel, very essential if she is to be hauled up frequently. her hull is painted black, but there is abundance of scarlet, bright blue, and gilding upon her prow, stern, and upper works. the slim hull itself is about feet long, feet wide, and rides the harbor so lightly as to show it draws very little water; for the warship, even more perhaps than the merchantman, is built on the theory that her crew must drag her up upon the beach almost every night. while we study the vessel we are soon told that, although triremes have been in general use since, say, b.c., nevertheless the ships that fought at salamis were decidedly simpler affairs than those of three generations later. in those old "aphract" vessels the upper tier of rowers had to sit exposed on their benches with no real protection from the enemy's darts; but in the new "cataphract" ships like the "invincible" there is a stout solid bulwark built up to shield the oarsmen from hostile sight and missiles alike. all this makes the ships of demosthene's day much handsomer, taller affairs than their predecessors which themistocles commanded; nevertheless the old and the new triremes have most essentials in common. the day is far off when a battleship twenty years old will be called "hopelessly obsolete" by the naval critics.[*] [*]there is some reason for believing that an athenian trireme was kept in service for many years, with only incidental repairs, and then could still be counted as fit to take her place in the line of battle. the upper deck of the trireme is about eleven feet above the harbor waves, but the lowest oar holes are raised barely three feet. into the intervening space the whole complicated rowing apparatus has to be crammed with a good deal of ingenuity. running along two thirds of the length of the hull nearly the whole interior of the vessel is filled with a series of seats and foot rests rising in sets of three. each man has a bench and a kind of stool beneath him, and sits close to a porthole. the feet of the lowest rower are near the level of the water line; swinging two feet above him and only a little behind him is his comrade of the second tier; higher and behind in turn is he of the third.[*] running down the center of the ship on either side of these complicated benches is a broad, central gangway, just under the upper deck. here the supernumeraries will take refuge from the darts in battle, and here the regular rowers will have to do most of their eating, resting, and sleeping when they are not actually on the benches or on shore. [*]the exact system by which these oar benches were arranged, the crew taught to swing together (despite the inequalities in the length of their oars), and several other like problems connected with the trireme, have received no satisfactory solution by modern investigators. [note from brett: between and john morrison and john coates oversaw a reproduction of a trireme which has an excellent study of bench arrangements and several other problems connected with the trireme were likely solved.] . the rowers' benches of a trireme.--with her full complement of rowers the benches of the "invincible" fairly swarm with life. there are rowers to the upper tier (thranites), for the middle tier (zygites), and for the lower (thalamites), each man with his own individual oar. the trhanites with the longest oars (full feet inches) have the hardest pull and the largest pay, but not one of the oarsmen holds a sinecure. in ordinary cruising, to be sure, the trireme will make use of her sails, to help out a single bank of oars which must be kept going almost all the time. even then it is weary work to break your back for a couple of hours taking your turn on the benches. but in battle the trireme almost never uses sails. she becomes a vast, many-footed monster, flying over the foam; and the pace of the three oar banks, swinging together, becomes maddening. behind their bulwarks the rowers can see little of what is passing. everything is dependent upon their rowing together in absolute rhythm come what may, and giving instant obedience to orders. the trireme is in one sense like a latter-day steamer in her methods of propulsion; but the driving force is straining, panting humans, not insensate water vapor and steel. . the cabins, rigging, and ram of a trireme.--forward and aft of the rowers' benches and the great central gangway are the fore and stern cabins. they furnish something akin to tolerable accommodations for the officers and a favored fraction of the crew. above the forecastle rises a carved proudly curing prow, and just abaft it are high bulwarks to guard the javelin men when at close quarters with the foe. there is also on either side of the prow a huge red or orange "eye" painted around the hawse holes for the anchors. above the stern cabin is the narrow deck reserved for the pilot, the "governor" of the ship, who will control the whole trireme with a touch now on one, now on the other, of the huge steering paddles which swing at the sides near the stern. within the stern cabin itself is the little altar, sacred to the god or goddess to whom the vessel is dedicated, and on which incense will be burned before starting on a long cruise and before going into battle. two masts rise above the deck, a tall mainmast nearly amidships, and a much smaller mast well forward. on each of these a square sail (red, orange, blue, or even, with gala ships, purple) will be swung from a long yard, while the vessel is cruising; but it is useless to set sails in battle. one could never turn the ship quickly enough to complete the maneuvers. the sails and yards will ordinarily be sent ashore as the first measure when the admiral signals "clear ship for action." we have now examined all of the "invincible" except for her main weapon,--her beak; for the trireme is really herself one tremendous missile to be flung by the well-trained rowers at the ill-starred foe. projecting well in front of the prow and close to the water line are three heavy metal spurs serrated one above the other, somewhat thus[*]: |_______ |=======\ |====|___ |========\ =====|______ /=============\ / / */ let this fang once crush against a foeman's broadside, and his timbers are crushed in like eggshells. [*]probably at salamis and in the earlier athenian army the ram had been composed of a single long, tapering beak. . the officers and crew of a trireme.--so much for the "invincible" herself, but obviously she is a helpless thing without an efficient crew. the life of an oarsman is far from luxurious, but the pay seems to be enough to induce a goodly number of thetes (the poorest class of the athenian citizens) to accept service, and the rest can be supplied by hired metics or any kind of foreign nondescript who can be brought into discipline. the rowers are of course the real heart and soul of the trireme; but they are useless without proper training. indeed it was the superior discipline of the athenian crews which in the days of themistocles and pericles gave athens the supremacy of the seas. the nominal, and sometimes actual, commander of the trireme is her trierarch; but obviously a cultivated old gentleman like eustathius is no man to manage the ship in a sea fight. he will name some deputy, perhaps a stout young friend or a son, for the real naval work. even he may not possess great experience. the real commander of the "invincible" is the "governor" (kybernates), a gnarled old seaman, who has spent all his life upon the water. nominally his main duty is to act as pilot, but actually he is in charge of the whole ship; and in battle the trierarch (if aboard) will be very glad to obey all his "suggestions." next to the "governor" there is the proireus, another experienced sailor who will have especial charge of the forecastle in battle. next in turn are two "oar-masters" (toixarchoi), who are each responsible for the discipline and working of one of the long rowers' benches; and following in grade, though highly important, are the keleustËs, and the triËraulËs, who, by voice and by flute respectively, will give the time and if needs be encouragement to the rowers. these are all the regular officers, but naturally for handling the sails and anchors some common sailors are desirable. the "invincible" carries of these. she also has marines (epibatŒ), men trained to fight in hoplite's armor and to repel boarders. the persian ships at salamis carried such warriors, and often various greek admirals have crowded their decks with these heavy marines; but the true athenian sea warrior disdains them. given a good helmsman and well-trained rowers, and you can sink your opponent with your ram, while he is clumsily trying to board you. expert opinion considers the epibatŒ somewhat superfluous, and their use in most naval battles as disgracefully unscientific. . a trireme at sea.--a trireme, then is an heroic fighting instrument. she goes into battle prepared literally to do or die. if her side is once crushed, she fills with water instantly, and the enemy will be too busy and too inhumane to do anything but cheer lustily when they see the water covered with struggling wretches. but the trireme is also a most disagreeable craft before and after the battle. her light draft sets her tossing on a very mild sea. in the hot southern climate, with very little ventilation beneath the upper deck, with nigh two hundred panting, naked human beings wedged in together below so closely that there is scarce room for one more, the heat, the smells, the drudgery, are dreadful. no wonder the crew demanded that the trierarch and governor "make shore for the night," or that they weary of the incessant grating of the heavy oars upon the thole-pins. thus the "invincible" will seem to any squeamish voyager, but not so to the distant spectator. for him a trireme is a most marvelous and magnificent sight. a sister ship, the "danaë,"[*] is just entering the peiræus from lemnos (an isle still under the athenian sovereignty). her upper works have been all brightened for the home-coming. long, brilliant streams trail from her sail yards and poop. the flute player is blowing his loudest. the marines stand on the forecastle in glittering armor. a great column of foam is spouting from her bow.[+] her oars, eighty-seven to the side, pumiced white and hurling out the spray, are leaping back and forth in perfect unison. the whole vessel seems a thing of springing, ardent life. it is, indeed, a sight to stir the blood. no later sailing ship in her panoply of canvas, no steam battleship with her grim turrets and smoking funnels can ever match the spectacle of a trireme moving in her rhythm and glory. [*]the greek ships seem to have been named either for mythological characters, or for desirable qualities and virtues. [+]at her best a trireme seems to have been capable of making to knots per hour. . the tactics of a naval battle.--imagination can now picture a greek naval battle, fifty, a hundred, two hundred, or more of these splendid battleships flying in two hostile lines to the charge.[*] round and round they will sail, each pilot watching the moment when an unlucky maneuver by the foe will leave a chance for an attack; and then will come the sudden swinging of the helm, the frantic "pull hard!" to the oarsmen, the rending crash and shock as the ram tears open the opponents side, to be followed by almost instant tragedy. if the direct attack on the foe's broadside fails, there is another maneuver. run down upon your enemy as if striking bow to bow; the instant before contact let your aim swerve--a little. then call to your men to draw in their oars like lightning while the enemy are still working theirs. if your oarsmen can do the trick in time, you can now ride down the whole of the foemen's exposed oar bank, while saving your own. he is left crippled and helpless, like a huge centipede with all the legs on one side stripped away. you can now back off deliberately, run out your oars, an in cold blood charge his exposed flank. if he does not now surrender, his people are dead men. excellent to describe! not always so excellent in performance. everything depends on the perfect discipline and handiness of your crew. [*]a more detailed picture of an ancient naval battle and its tactics can be found in the author's historical novel, "a victor of salamis" (chap. xxix). . the naval strength of athens.--the strength of athens is still upon the sea. despite her defeats in the peloponnesian war she has again the first navy in hellas. all in all she can send out triremes and since each trireme represents a crew of over men, this means that athens can dispose of over , souls in her navy, whereof, however, only a minor fraction are athenian citizens. athens is quite right in thus laying stress upon her sea power. her long walls and the peiræus make her practically an island. even after chæroneia, philip of macedon will be obliged to give her honorable terms,--she has still her great navy. only after the defeat of her fleet at amorgos in b.c. will she have to know all the pangs of vassalage to macedon. chapter xv. an athenian court trial. . the frequency of litigation in athens.--the visit to the peiræus and the study of the shipping have not been too long to prevent a brief visit to one of the most characteristic scenes of athenian life--a law court. athens is notorious for the fondness which her citizens display for litigation. in fact it is a somewhat rare and exceptionally peaceable, harmless, and insignificant citizen who is not plaintiff or defendant in some kind of action every few years or so. says aristophanes, "the cicada [grasshopper] sings for only a month, but the people of athens are buzzing with lawsuits and trials their whole life long." in the jury courts the contentious, tonguey man can spread himself and defame his enemies to his heart's content; and it must be admitted that in a city like athens, where everybody seems to know everybody else's business almost every citizen is likely to have a number both of warm friends and of bitter enemies. athenians do not have merely "cold acquaintances," or "business rivals," as will men of the twentieth century. they make no pretenses to "christian charity." they freely call an obnoxious individual their "personal foe" (echthros), and if they can defeat, humiliate, and ruin him, they bless the gods. the usual outlet for such ill-feeling is a fierce and perhaps mutually destructive lawsuit. then too, despite athenian notions of what constitutes a gentleman, many citizens are people of utterly penurious, niggardly habits. frequently enough the fellow who can discuss all socrates's theories with you is quarreling with his neighbor over the loan of salt or a lamp wick or some meal for sacrifice.[*] if one of the customary "club-dinners"[+] is held at his house, he will be caught secreting some of the vinegar, lamp oil, or lentils. if he has borrowed something, say some barley, take care; when he returns it, he will measure it out in a vessel with the bottom dented inward. a little ill feeling, a petty grievance carefully cultivated,--the end in due time will be a lawsuit, costly far out of proportion to the originating cause. [*]persons of this kidney are delineated to us as typical characters by theophrastus. [+]the nearest modern equivalent is a "basket lunch." . prosecutions in athens.--athens does not draw a sharp line between public and private litigation. there is no "state" or "district attorney" to prosecute for the offenses against public order. any full citizen can prosecute anybody else upon such a criminal charge as murder, no less than for a civil matter like breach of contract. all this leads to the growth of a mischievous clan--the sycophants. these harpies are professional accusers who will prosecute almost any rich individual upon whom they think they can fasten some technical offense. their gains are from two quarters. if they convict the defendant, about half of the fine or property taken will go to the informer. but very likely there will be no trial. the victim (either consciously guilty, or innocent but anxious to avoid the risk) will pay a huge blackmail at the first threat of prosecution, and the case is hushed up. it is true there are very heavy penalties for trumped-up cases, for unwarranted threat of legal proceedings, for perjured evidence; still the abuse of the sycophants exists, and a great many of the lawsuits originate with this uncanny tribe. . the preliminaries to a trial.--there are official arbitrators to settle petty cases, but it is too often that one or both parties declare "the dicasts must settle it," and the lawsuit has to take its way. athenian legal methods are simple. theoretically there are no professional lawyers, and every man must look out for himself. the first business is to file your complaint with one of the magistrates (usually one of nine archons), and then with two witnesses give formal summons to your opponent, the defendant, to appear on a set day in court. if he has defaulted, the case is usually ended then in your favor. this hearing before the magistrate is in any event an important part of the trial. here each side proffers the laws it cites to sustain its claims, and brings its witnesses, who can be more or less cross-examined. all the pertinent testimony is now written down, and the tablets sealed up by the magistrate. at the final trial this evidence will be merely read to the jury, the witness in each instance standing up before the court and admitting when duly asked, "this is my testimony on the case." free men testify under oath, but a slave's oath is counted worthless. the slaves may be the only important witnesses to a given act, but under only one condition can they testify. with the consent of their master they may testify under torture. it is a critical moment at this hearing when a litigant who is confident of his case proudly announces, "i challenge my enemy to put my slaves under torture"; or the other, attacking first, cries out, "i demand that my enemy submit his slaves to torture." theoretically the challenged party might refuse, practically a refusal is highly dangerous. "if his slaves didn't know something bad, why were they kept silent?" the jury will ask. so the rack is brought forth. the wretched menials are stretched upon it. one must hope that often the whole process involves more show of cruelty than actual brutality. what now the slaves gasp out between their twists and howls is duly taken down as "important evidence," and goes into the record.[*] [*]athenian opinion was on the whole in favor of receiving as valid testimony the evidence extorted thus from slaves by mere animal fear. antiphon the orator speaks of how truth may be wrung from slaves by torture; "by which they are compelled to speak the truth though they must die for it afterward [at the hands of the master they have incriminated], for the present necessity is to each stronger than the future." this has been well called one of the few cases of extreme stupidity on the part of the athenians. . the athenian jury courts.--a convenient interval has elapsed since one of these preliminary hearings. to-day has been set for the actual trial before a member of the archons in the "green" court. ariston, a wealthy olive farmer, is suing lamachus, an exporter of the peiræus, for failing to account for the proceeds of a cargo of olives lately shipped to naxos. to follow the trial in its entirety we should have been at the courthouse at first dawn. then we would have seen the jurymen come grumbling in, some from the suburbs, attended by link boys. these jurors represent a large fraction of the whole athenian people. there are about six thousand in all. pretty nearly every citizen above thirty years of age can give in his name as desiring jury duty; but naturally it is the elderly and the indolent who must prefer the service. one thousand of the six act as mere substitutes; the rest serve as often as the working of a complicated system of drawing by lot assigns them to sit as jurors on a particular case. it is well there are five thousand always thus available, for athenian juries are very large; , , , are numbers heard of, and sometimes even greater.[*] the more important the case, the larger the jury; but "ariston v. lamachus" is only a commonplace affair; jurors are quite enough. even with that "small court," the audience which the pleaders now have to address will seem huge to any latter-day lawyer who is accustomed to his "twelve men in a box"; and needless to say, quite different methods must be used in dealing with such a company. [*]the odd unit was no doubt added to prevent a tie. each "dicast" (to use the proper name) has a boxwood tablet to show at the entrance as his voucher to the scythian police-archers on duty; he has also a special staff of the color of the paint on the door of the court room.[*] the chamber itself is not especially elegant; a long line of hard benches rising in tiers for the dicasts, and facing these a kind of pulpit for the presiding magistrates, with a little platform for orators, a small alter for the preliminary sacrifice, and a few stools for attendants and witnesses complete the simple furnishings. there are open spaces for spectators, though no seats; but there will be no lack of an audience today, for the rumor has gone around, "hypereides has written ariston's argument." the chance to hear a speech prepared by that famous oration-monger is enough to bring every dicast out early, and to summon a swarm of loiterers up from the not distant agora. [*]each court room had is distinguishing color. there were about ten regular court rooms, besides some for special tribunals; e.g. the areopagus for the trial of homicides. . the juryman's oath.--the dicasts are assumed to approach their duty with all due solemnity. they have sworn to vote according to the laws of athens, never to vote for a repudiation of debts, nor to restore political exiles, nor to receive bribes for their votes, nor take bribes in another's behalf, nor let anybody even tempt them with such proffers. they are to hear both sides impartially and vote strictly according to the merits of the case: and the oath winds up awfully--"thus do i invoke zeus, poseidon, and demeter to smite with destruction me and my house if i violate any of these obligations, but if i keep them i pray for many blessings."[*] [*]we have not the exact text of all the dicasts' oath, but we can reproduce it fairly completely from demosthenes's "oration against timocrates." . opening the trial. the plaintiff's speech.--the oath is admirable, but the dicasts are not in a wholly juridical state of mind. just before the short sacrifice needful to commence proceedings, takes place, old zenosthenes on the second row nudges his neighbor: "i don't like the looks of that lamachus. i shall vote against him." "and i--my wife knows his wife, and--" the archon rises. the crier bids, "silence!" the proceedings begin: but all through the hearing there is whispering and nudging along the jurors' benches. the litigants are quite aware of the situation and are trying their best to win some advantage therefrom. ariston is the first to speak. he has taken great pains with the folds of his himation and the trim of his beard this morning. he must be thoroughly genteel, but avoid all appearances of being a dandy. in theory every man has to plead his own case in athens, but not every man is an equally good orator. if a litigant is very inept, he can simply say a few words, then step aside with "my friend so-and-so will continue my argument"; and a readier talker will take his place.[*] ariston, however, is a fairly clever speaker. having what he conceives a good case, he has obtained the indirect services of hypereides, one of the first of the younger orators of athens. hyperedies has written a speech which he thinks is suitable to the occasion, ariston has memorized it, and delivers it with considerable gusto. he has solid evidence, as is proved from time to time when he stops to call, "let the clerk read the testimony of this or that." there often is a certain hum of approbation from the dicasts when he makes his points. he continues bravely, therefore, ever and anon casting an eye upon the clepsydra near at hand, a huge water-clock which, something like an hour glass, marks off the time allotted him. some of his arguments seem to have nothing to do with the alleged embezzlement. he vilifies his opponent: calls lamachus's mother coarse names, intimates that as a boy he had no decent schooling, charges him with cowardice in the recent mantinea campaign in which he served, hints that he has quarreled with his relatives. on the other hand, ariston grandiloquently praises himself as well born, well educated, an honorable soldier and citizen, a man any athenian would be glad to consider a friend. it is very plain all these personalia delight the jury.[+] when ariston's "water has run out" and he concludes his speech, there is a loud murmur of applause running along the benches of the dicasts. [*]these "friends," however, were never regularly professional advocates; it would have been ruinous to let the jury get the impression that an orator was being directly hired to speak to them. [+]for the depths of personal insult into which greek litigants could descend there is no better instance than demosthenes's (otherwise magnificent) "oration on the crown," wherein he castigates his foe Æschines. . the defendant's speech. demonstrations by the jury.--it is now lamachus's turn. he also has employed a professional speech-writer ("logographos") of fame, isæus, to prepare his defense. but almost at the outset he is in difficulties. very likely he has a bad case to begin with. he makes it worse by a shrill, unpleasant voice and ungainly gestures. very soon many dicasts are tittering and whispering jibes to their companions. as his harangue proceeds, the presiding archon (who has really very little control of the dicasts) is obliged "to remind the gentlemen of the jury that the have taken solemn oath to hear both sides of the question." lamachus fights doggedly on. having put in all his real arguments, he takes refuge also in blackguarding his opponent. did ariston get his wealth honestly? was not his father a rascally grain dealer who starved the people? yet there is still more impatience among the dicasts. lamachus now uses his last weapon. upon the pleader's stand clamber his five young children clad in black mourning garments. they all weep together, and when not wiping their eyes, hold out their hands like religious suppliants, toward the dicasts.[*] [*]for such an appeal to an athenian dicastery, see aristophanes's "wasps." the pertinent passages are quoted in "readings in ancient history," vol. i, p. - . "ah! gentlemen of the jury," whines their father, "if you are moved by the voices of your lambs at home, pity these here. acquit me for their sakes. do not find against me and plunge these innocent darlings into want and misery, by impoverishing their father." appeals like this have swayed more than one jury during the last year, but the fates are all against lamachus. from a back bench comes a dreaded shout that is instantly caught up by the front tiers also: "kataba! kataba!--go down! go down!" lamachus hesitates. if he obeys, he loses all the rest of his defense. if he continues now, he enrages many of the dicasts, who will be absolutely sure to find against him. the presiding archon vainly rises, and tries to say something about "fair play." useless. the uproar continues. like a flock of scared doves lamachus and all his five children flee incontinently from the tribune, amid ironical cheers and laughter. . the first verdict.--there is silence at length. "the dicasts will proceed to vote," announces the court crier. the huge urns (one of bronze, one of wood) with narrow mouths are passed among the benches. each juror has two round bronze disks, one solid, one with a hole bored in the middle. the solid acquit, the pierced ones convict. a juror drops the ballot he wishes to count into the bronze urn; the other goes into the wooden urn. the bronze urn is carried to the archon, and there is an uneasy hush while the ballots are counted by the court officers. as expected, more than dicasts vote that ariston is entitled to damages against lamachus as an embezzler. . the second and final verdict.--ariston is smiling; his friends are congratulating him, but the trial is by no means over. if lamachus had been found guilty of something for which the law provided an absolute fixed penalty, this second part of the proceedings would be omitted. but here, although the jury has said some damage or penalty or penalties are due, it has still to fix the amount. ariston has now to propose to the dicasts a sum which he thinks is adequate to avenge his wrongs and losses; lamachus can propose a smaller sum and try to persuade the court that it is entirely proper. each side must act warily. athenian jurors are fickle folk. the very men who have just howled down lamachus may, in a spasm of repentance, vote for absurdly low damages. again, lamachus must not propose anything obviously inadequate, otherwise the jurors who have just voted against him may feel insulted, and accept ariston's estimate.[*] ariston therefore says that he deserves at least a talent. lamachus rejoins that half a talent is more than ample, even conceding arison's alleged wrongs. the arguments this time are shorter and more to the point. then comes the second balloting. a second time a majority (smaller this time, but enough) is in favor of ariston. the better cause has conquered; and there is at least this advantage to the athenian legal system, there will be no appeal nor tedious technicalities before a "higher court." the verdict of the dicastery is final. [*]undoubtedly socrates would have escaped with his life, if (after his original condemnation) he had proposed a real penalty to the jury, instead of an absurdly small fine. the only alternative for the dicasts was to accept the proposition of his opponents,--in his case, death. . the merits and defects of the athenian courts.--no doubt injustice is sometimes done. sometimes it is the honest man who hears the dreaded "kataba!" sometimes the weeping children have their intended effect. sometimes it is the arguments about "my opponent's scoundrelly ancestry" which win the verdict. at the same time, your athenian dicast is a remarkably shrewd and acute individual. he can distinguish between specious rhetoric and a real argument. he is probably honestly anxious to do justice. in the ordinary case where his personal interests or prejudices do not come into play, the decision is likely to match with justice quite as often perhaps as in the intricate court system of a great republic many centuries after the passing of athens. certain features of some athenian trials have not explained themselves in the example just witnessed. to prevent frivolous or blackmailing litigation it is provided that, if the plaintiff in a suit gets less than one fifth of the ballots in his favor (thus clearly showing he had no respectable case), he is liable to a heavy fine or, in default thereof, exile. again, we have not waited for the actual closing scene--the dicasts each giving up his colored staff as a kind of voucher to the court officers, and in return getting his three obols ( cents) daily jury fee, which each man claps promptly in his cheek, and then goes off home to try the case afresh at the family supper. . the usual punishments in athens.--trials involving murder or manslaughter come before the special court of areopagus, and cannot well be discussed here, but most other criminal cases are tried before the dicasts in much the same way as a civil trial. when the law does not have a set penalty, the jury virtually has to sentence the defendant after convicting him, choosing between one of two proposed penalties. greek courts can inflict death, exile, fines, but almost never imprisonment. there is no "penitentiary" or "workhouse" in athens; and the only use for a jail is to confine accused persons whom it is impossible to release on bail before their trial. the athens city jail ("the house," as it is familiarly called--"oikema") is a very simple affair, one open building, carelessly guarded and free to visitors all through the daylight. the inmates have to be kept in heavy fetters, otherwise they would be sure to take flight; and indeed escapes from custody are somewhat common. . the heavy penalty of exile.--an athenian will regard locking a criminal up for a term of years as a very foolish and expensive proceeding. if he has nothing wherewith to pay a round fine, why, simply send him into exile. this penalty is direful indeed to a greek. the exile has often no protector, no standing in the courts of the foreign city, no government to avenge any outrage upon him. he can be insulted, starved, stripped, nay, murdered, often with impunity. worse still, he is cut off from his friends with whom all his life is tied up; he is severed from the guardian gods of his childhood,--"the city," the city of his birth, hopes, longings, exists no more for him. if he dies abroad, he is not sure of a decent funeral pyre; and meanwhile his children may be hungering at home. so long as the athenians have this tremendous penalty of exile at their disposal, they do not feel the need of penitentiaries. . the death penalty at athens.--there are also the stocks and whipping posts for meting out summary justice to irresponsible offenders. when the death penalty is imposed (and the matter often lies in the discretion of the dicasts), the criminal, if of servile or barbarian blood, may be put to death in some hideous manner and his corpse tossed into the barathron, a vile pit on the northwest side of athens, there to be dishonored by the kites and crows. the execution of athenian citizens, however, is extremely humane. the condemned is given a cup of poisonous hemlock juice and allowed to drink it while sitting comfortably among his friends in the prison. little by little his body grows numb; presently he becomes senseless, and all is over without any pain.[*] the friends of the victim are then at liberty to give his body a suitable burial. [*]no one can read the story of the death of socrates in the prison, as told by plato in the "phædo," without feeling (aside from the noble philosophical setting) how much more humane were such executions by hemlock than is the modern gallows or electric chair. an athenian trial usually lasts all day, and perhaps we have been able to witness only the end of it. it may well happen, however, that we cannot attend a dicastery at all. this day may be one which is devoted to a meeting of the public assembly, and duty summons the jurors, not in the court room, but to the pnyx. this is no loss to us, however. we welcome the chance to behold the athenian ecclesia in action. chapter xvi. the ecclesia of athens. . the rule of democracy in athens.--the ecclesia, or public assembly, of athens is something more than the chief governmental organ in the state. it is the great leveling engine which makes athens a true democracy, despite the great differences in wealth between her inhabitants, and the marked social pretensions of "the noble and the good"--the educated classes. at this time athens is profoundly wedded to her democratic constitution. founded by solon and clisthenes, developed by themistocles and pericles, it was temporarily overthrown at the end of the peloponnesian war; but the evil rule then of the "thirty tyrants" has proved a better lesson on the evils of oligarchic rule than a thousand rhetoricians' declamations upon the advantages of the "rule of the many" as against the "rule of the few." attica now acknowledges only one lord--king demos--"king everybody"--and until the coming of bondage to macedon there will be no serious danger of an aristocratic reaction. . aristocracy and wealth. their status and burdens.--true, there are old noble families in athens,--like the alcmæonidæ whereof pericles sprang, and the eumolpidæ who supply the priests to demeter, the earth mother. but these great houses have long since ceased to claim anything but social preëminence. even then one must take pains not to assume airs, or the next time one is litigant before the dicastery, the insinuation of "an undemocratic, oligarchic manner of life" will win very many adverse votes among the jury. nobility and wealth are only allowed to assert themselves in athens when justified by an extraordinary amount of public service and public generosity. xenophon in his "memorabilia" makes socrates tell critobuls, a wealthy and self-important individual, that he is really so hampered by his high position as to be decidedly poor. "you are obliged," says socrates, "to offer numerous and magnificent sacrifices; you have to receive and entertain sumptuously a great many strangers, and to feast [your fellow] citizens. you have to pay heavy contributions towards the public service, keeping horses and furnishing choruses in peace times and in war bearing the expense of maintaining triremes and paying the special war taxes; and if you fail to do all this, they will punish you with as much severity as if you were caught stealing their money." . athenian society truly democratic up to a certain point.--wealth, then, means one perpetual round of public services and obligations, sweetened perhaps with a little empty praise, an inscription, an honorary crown, or best of all, an honorary statue "to the public benefactor" as the chief reward. on the other hand one may be poor and be a thoroughly self-respecting, nay, prominent citizen. socrates had an absurdly small invested fortune and the gods knew that he did little enough in the way of profitable labor.[*] he had to support his wife and three children upon this income. he wore no chiton. his himation was always an old one, unchanged from summer to winter. he seems to have possessed only one pair of good sandals all his life. his rations were bread and water, save when he was invited out. yet this man was welcome in the "very best society." alcibiades, leader of the fast, rich set, and many more of the gilded youth of athens dogged his heels. one meets not the slightest evidence that his poverty ever prevented him from carrying his philosophic message home to the wealthy and the noble. there is no snobbishness, then, in this athenian society. provided a man is not pursuing a base mechanic art or an ignoble trade, provided he has a real message to convey,--whether in literature, philosophy, or statecraft,--there are no questions "who was your father?" or "what is your income?"[+] athens will hear him and accept his best. for this open-mindedness--almost unique in ancient communities--one must thank king demos and his mouthpiece, the ecclesia. [*]socrates's regular income from invested property seems to have been only about $ per year. it is to be hoped his wife, xanthippe, had a little property of her own! [+]possibly the son of a man whose parents notoriously had been slaves in athens would have found many doors closed to him. athenians are intensely proud of their democracy. in Æschylus's "persians," atossa, the barbarian queen, asks concerning the athenians:-- "who is the lord and shepherd of their flock?" very prompt is the answer:-- "they are not slaves, they bow to no man's rule." again in euripides's "supplicants" there is this boast touching athens:-- "no will of one holdeth this land: it is a city and free. the whole folk year by year, in parity of service is our king." . the voting population of athens.--nevertheless when we ask about this "whole folk," and who the voters are, we soon discover that athens is very far from being a pure democracy. the multitudes of slaves are of course without votes, and so is the numerous class of the important, cultivated, and often wealthy metics. to get athenian citizenship is notoriously hard. for a stranger (say a metic who had done some conspicuous public service) to be given the franchise, a special vote must be passed by the ecclesia itself; even then the new citizen may be prosecuted as undeserving before a dicastery, and disfranchised. again, only children both of whose parents are free athenian citizens can themselves be enrolled on the carefully guarded lists in the deme books. the status of a child, one of whose parents is a metic, is little better than a bastard.[*] [*]of course women were entirely excluded from the ecclesia, as from all other forms of public life. the question of "woman's rights" had been agitated just enough to produce comedies like aristophanes's "parliament of women," and philosophical theories such as appear in plato's "republic." under these circumstances the whole number of voters is very much less than at a later day will appear in american communities of like population. before the peloponneisan war, when the power of athens was at its highest point, there were not less than , full citizens and possibly as many as , . but those days of imperial power are now ended. at present athens has about , citizens, or a few more. it is impossible, however, to gather all these in any single meeting. a great number are farmers living in the remote villages of attica; many city dwellers also will be too busy to think the -obol ( -cent [ or $ . ]) fee for attendance worth their while.[*] six thousand seems to be a good number for ordinary occasions and no doubt much business can be dispatched with less, although this is the legal quorum set for most really vital matters. of course a great crisis, e.g. a declaration of war, will bring out nearly every voter whose farm is not too distant. [*]payment for attendance at the pnyx seems to have been introduced about b.c. the original payment was probably only one obol, and then from time to time increased. it was a sign of the relative decay of political interest in athens when it became needful thus to reward the commonalty for attendance at the assembly. . meeting time of the ecclesia.--four times in every prytany[*] the ecclesia must be convened for ordinary business, and oftener if public occasion requires. five days' notice has to be given of each regular meeting, and along with the notice a placard announcing the proposals which are to come up has to be posted in the agora. but if there is a sudden crisis, formalities can be thrown to the winds; a sudden bawling of the heralds in the streets, a great smoky column caused by burning the traders' flimsy booths in the agora,--these are valid notices of an extraordinary meeting to confront an immediate danger. [*]"a prytany" was one tenth of a year, say or days, during which time the representatives of one of the ten athenian tribes then serving as members of the council of (each tribe taking its turn) held the presidency of the council and acted as a special executive committee of the government. there were thus at least meetings of the ecclesia each year, as well as the extraordinary meetings. if this has been a morning when the ecclesia has been in session, nothing unusual has occurred at first in the busy agora, except that the jury courts are hardly in action, and a bright flag is whipping the air from the tall flagpole by the pnyx (the assembly place). then suddenly there is a shouting through the agora. the clamor of traffic around the popular flower stalls ceases; everybody who is not a slave or metic (and these would form a large fraction of the crowd of marketers) begins to edge down toward one end of the agora. presently a gang of scythian police-archers comes in sight. they have a long rope sprinkled with red chalk wherewith they are "netting" the agora. the chalk will leave an infallible mark on the mantle of every tardy citizen, and he who is thus marked as late at the meeting will lose his fee for attendance, if not subject himself to a fine. so there is a general rush away from the agora and down one of the various avenues leading to the pnyx. . the pnyx (assembly place) at athens.--the pnyx is an open space of ground due west from the acropolis. it originally sloped gently away towards the northeast, but a massive retaining wall had been built around it, in an irregular semicircle, and the space within filled with solidly packed earth sloping inwards, making a kind of open air auditorium. it is a huge place, feet long, and feet at the widest. the earthen slope is entirely devoid of seats; everybody casts himself down sprawling or on his haunches, perhaps with an old himation under him. directly before the sitters runs a long ledge hewn out of the rock, forming, as it were, the "stage" side of the theater. here the rock has been cut away, so as to leave a sizable stone pulpit standing forth, with a small flight of steps on each side. this is the "bema," the orator's stand, whence speak the "demagogues,"[*] the molders of athenian public opinion. in front of the bema there is a small portable altar for the indispensable sacrifices. in the rear of the bema are a few planks laid upon the rock. here will sit the fifty "pryantes" in charge of the meeting. there is a handsome chair for the presiding officer upon the bema itself. these are all the furnishings of the structure wherein athens makes peace and war, and orders her whole civil and foreign policy. the hellenic azure is the only roof above her sovran law makers. to the right, as the orators stand on the bema, they can point toward the acropolis and its glittering temples; to the left towards the peiræus, and the blue sea with the inevitable memories of glorious salamis. surely it will be easy to fire all hearts with patriotism! [*]a "demagogue" (=people-leader) might well be a great statesman, and not necessarily a cheap and noisy politician. . the preliminaries of the meeting.--into this space the voters swarm by hundreds--all the citizens of athens, from twenty years and upward, sufficiently interested to come. at each crude entrance stands a crops of watchful lexiarchs and their clerks, checking off those present and turning back interlopers. as the entering crowds begin to thin, the entrance ways are presently closed by wicker hurdles. the flag fluttering on high is struck. the ecclesia is ready for action. much earlier than this, the farmers and fishmen from the hill towns or from salamis have been in their places, grumbling at the slowness of the officials. people sit down where they can; little groups and clans together, wedged in closely, chattering up to the last minute, watching every proceeding with eyes as keen as cats'. all the gossip left over from the agora is disposed of ere the prytanes--proverbially late--scramble into their seats of honor. the police-archers move up and down, enforcing a kind of order. amid a growing hush a suckling pig is solemnly slaughtered by some religious functionary at the altar, and the dead victim carried around the circuit of the pnyx as a symbolic purification of the audience. "come inside the purified circuit," enjoins a loud herald to the little groups upon the edge.[*] [*]aristophanes's "acharnians" (ll. ff.) gives a valuable picture of this and other proceedings at the pnyx, but one should never forget the poet's exaggerations for comedy purposes, nor his deliberate omission of matters likely to be mere tedious detail to his audience. then comes a prayer invoking the gods' favor upon the athenians, their allies, and this present meeting in particular, winding up (the herald counts this among the chief parts of his duty) with a tremendous curse on any wretch who should deceive the folk with evil counsel. after this the real secular business can begin. nothing can be submitted to the ecclesia which has not been previously considered and matured by the council of . the question to be proposed is now read by the heralds as a "pro-bouleuma"--a suggested ordinance by the council. vast as is the audience, the acoustic properties of the pnyx are excellent, and all public officers and orators are trained to harangue multitudes in the open air, so that the thousands get every word of the proposition. . debating a proposition.--"resolved by the boule, the tribe leontis holding the prytany, and heraclides being clerk, upon the motion of timon the son of timon the eleusinian,[*] that"--and then in formal language it is proposed to increase the garrison of the allied city of byzantium by hired arcadian mercenaries, since the king of thrace is threatening that city, and its continued possession is absolutely essential to the free import of grain into attica. [*]this seems to have been the regular form for beginning a "probouleuma" although nearly all our information comes from the texts of proposals after they have been made formal decrees by the sovran demos. there is a hush of expectancy; a craning of necks. "who wishes to speak?" calls the herald. after a decent pause timon, the mover of the measure, comes forward. he is a fairly well-known character and commands a respectable faction among the demos. there is some little clapping, mixed with jeering, as he mounts the bema. the president of the prytanes--as evidence that he has now the right to harangue--hands him a myrtle wreath which he promptly claps on his head, and launches into his argument. full speedily he has convinced at least a large share of the audience that it was sheer destruction to leave byzantium without an efficient garrison. grain would soon be at famine prices if the town were taken, etc., etc. the only marvel is that the merciful gods have averted the disaster so long in the face of such neglect.--why had the board of strategi, responsible in such matters, neglected this obvious duty? [cheers intermixed with catcalls.] this was not the way the men who won marathon had dealt with dangers, nor later worthies like nicias or thrasybulus. [more cheers and catcalls.] he winds up with a splendid invocation to earth, sky, and justice to bear witness that all this advice is given solely with a view to the weal of athens. "he had isocrates teach him how to launch that peroration," mutters a crabbed old citizen behind his peak-trimmed beard, as timon descends amid mingled applause and derision. "very likely; iphicrates is ready to answer him," replies a fellow. "who wishes to speak?" the herald demands again. from a place directly before the bema a well-known figure, the elderly general, iphicrates, is rising. at a nod from the president, he mounts the bema and assumes the myrtle. he has not timon's smooth tones nor oratorical manner. he is a man of action and war, and no tool of the agora coteries. a salvo of applause greets him. very pithily he observes that byzantium will be safe enough if the city will only be loyal to the athenian alliance. athens needs all her garrisons nearer home. timon surely knows the state of the treasury. is he going to propose a special tax upon his fellow countrymen to pay for those mercenaries? [loud laughter and derisive howls directed at timon.] athens needs to keep her strength for real dangers; and those are serious enough, but not at byzantium. at the next meeting he and the other strategi will recommend--etc., etc. when iphicrates quits the bema there is little left of timon's fine "earth, sky and justice." . voting at the pnyx.--but other orators follow on both sides. once timon, egged on by many supporters, tries to gain the bema a second time, but is told by the president that one cannot speak twice on the same subject. once the derision and shouting becomes so violent that the president has to announce, "unless there is silence i must adjourn the meeting." finally, after an unsuccessful effort to amend the proposal, by reducing the garrison at byzantium to , the movers of the measure realize that the votes will probably be against them. they try to break up the meeting. "i hear thunder!" "i feel rain!" they begin shouting, and such ill omens, if really in evidence, would be enough to force an adjournment; but the sky is delightfully clear. the president simply shrugs his shoulders; and now the pnyx is fairly rocking with the yell, "a vote! a vote!" the president rises. taking the vote in the ecclesia is a very simple matter when it is a plain question of "yes" or "no" on a proposition.[*] [*]when an individual had to be voted for, then ballots were used. "all who favor the 'probouleuma' of timon will raise the right hand!" a respectable but very decided minority shows itself. "those who oppose." the adverse majority is large. the morning is quite spent. there is a great tumult. men are rising, putting on their himatia, ridiculing timon; while the herald at a nod from the president declares the ecclesia adjourned. . the ecclesia as an educational instrument.--timon and his friends retire crestfallen to discuss the fortunes of war. they are not utterly discouraged, however. the ecclesia is a fickle creature. what it withholds to-day it may grant to-morrow. iphicrates, whose words have carried such weight now, may soon be howled down and driven from the bema much as was the unfortunate litigant in the jury court. still, with all its faults, the ecclesia is the great school for the adults of athens. all are on terms of perfect equality. king demos is not the least respecter of wealth or family. sophistries are usually penetrated in a twinkling by some coarse expletive from a remote corner of the pnyx. every citizen understands the main issues of the public business. he is part of the actual working government, not once per year (or less often) at the ballot box, but at least forty times annually; and dolt he would be, did he not learn at least all the superficialities of statecraft. he may make grievous errors. he may be misled by mob prejudice or mob enthusiasm; but he is not likely to persist in a policy of crass blundering very long. king demos may indeed rule a fallible human monarchy, but it is thanks to him, and to his high court held at the pnyx, that athens owes at least half of that sharpness of wit and intelligence which is her boast. chapter xvii. the afternoon at the gymnasia. . the gymnasia. places of general resort.--the market is thinning after a busy day; the swarms of farmer-hucksters with their weary asses are trudging homeward; the schoolrooms are emptying; the dicasteries or the ecclesia, as the case may be, have adjourned. even the slave artisans in the factories are allowed to slacken work. the sun, a ball of glowing fire, is slowly sinking to westward over the slopes of Ægaleos; the rock of the acropolis is glowing as if in flame; intense purple tints are creeping over all the landscape. the day is waning, and all athenians who can possibly find leisure are heading towards the suburbs for a walk, a talk, and refreshment of soul and body at the several gymnasia. besides various establishments and small "wrestling schools" for the boys, there are three great public gymnasia at athens,--the lyceum to the east of the town; the cynosarges[*] to the southward; and last, but at all least, the academy. this is the handsomest, the most famous, the most characteristic. we shall do well to visit it. [*]the cynosarges was the only one of these freely opened to such athenians as had non-athenian mothers. the other two were reserved for the strictly "full citizens." . the road to the academy.--we go out toward the northwest of the city, plunging soon into a labyrinth of garden walls, fragrant with the fruit and blossoms within, wander amid dark olive groves where the solemn leaves of the sacred trees are talking sweetly; and presently mount a knoll by some suburban farm buildings, then look back to find that slight as is the elevation, here is a view of marvelous beauty across the city, the acropolis, and the guardian mountains. from the rustling ivy coverts come the melodious notes of birds. we are glad to learn that this is the suburb of colonus, the home of sophocles the tragedian, and here is the very spot made famous in the renowned chorus of his "Œdipous at colonus." it is too early, of course, to enjoy the nightingale which the poet asserts sings often amid the branches, but the scene is one of marvelous charm. we are not come, however, to admire colonus. the numerous strollers indicate our direction. turning a little to the south, we see, embowered amid the olive groves which line the unseen stream of the cephissos, a wall, and once beyond it find ourselves in a kind of spacious park combined with an athletic establishment. this is the academy,--founded by hipparchus, son of peisistratus the tyrant, but given its real embellishments and beauty by cimon, the son of militiades the victor of marathon. . the academy.--the academy is worthy of the visit. the park itself is covered with olive trees and more graceful plane trees. the grass beneath us is soft and delightful to the bare foot (and nearly everybody, we observe, has taken off his sandals). there are marble and bronze statues skillfully distributed amid the shrubbery--shy nymphs, peeping fauns, bold satyrs. yonder is a spouting fountain surmounted by a noble poseidon with his trident; above the next fountain rides the ocean car of amphitrite. presently we come to a series of low buildings. entering, we find them laid out in a quadrangle with porticoes on every side, somewhat like the promenades around the agora. inside the promenades open a series of ample rooms for the use of professional athletes during stormy weather, and for the inevitable bathing and anointing with oil which will follow all exercise. this great square court formed by the "gymnasium" proper is swarming with interesting humanity, but we pass it hastily in order to depart by an exit on the inner side and discover a second more conventionally laid out park. here to right and to left are short stretches of soft sand divided into convenient sections for wrestling, for quoit hurling, for javelin casting, and for jumping; but a loud shout and cheering soon draw us onward. at the end of this park we find the stadium; a great oval track, feet (a "stadium") for the half circuit, with benches and all the paraphernalia for a foot race. the first contest have just ended. the races are standing, panting after their exertions, but their friends are talking vehemently. out in the sand, near the statue of hermes (the patron god of gymnasia) is a dignified and self-conscious looking man in a purple edged chiton--the gymnasiarch, the official manager of the academy. while he waits to organize a second race we can study the visitors and habitués of the gymnasium. . the social atmosphere and human types at the academy.--what the pnyx is to the political life of athens, this the academy and the other great gymnasia are to its social and intellectual as well as its physical life. here in daily intercourse, whether in friendly contest of speed or brawn, or in the more valuable contest of wits, the youth of athens complete their education after escaping from the rod of the schoolmaster. here they have daily lessons on the mottoes, which (did such a thing exist) should be blazoned on the coat of arms of greece, as the summing up of all hellenic wisdom:-- "know thyself," and again:-- "be moderate." precept, example, and experience teach these truths at the gymnasia of athens. indeed, on days when the ecclesia is not in session, when no war is raging, and they are not busy with a lawsuit, many athenians will spend almost the whole day at the academy. for whatever are your interests, here you are likely to find something to engross you. it must be confessed that not everybody at the academy comes here for physical or mental improvement. we see a little group squatting and gesticulating earnestly under an old olive tree--they are obviously busy, not with philosophic theory, but with dice. again, two young men pass us presenting a curious spectacle. they are handsomely dressed and over handsomely scented, but each carries carefully under each arm a small cock; and from time to time they are halted by fiends who admire the birds. clearly these worthies' main interests are in cockfighting; and they are giving their favorites "air and exercise" before the deadly battle, on which there is much betting, a the supper party that night. also the shouting and rumbling from a distance tells of the chariot course, where the sons of the more wealthy or pretentious families are lessening their patrimonies by training a "two" or a "four" to contend at the isthmian games or at olympia. . philosophers and cultivated men at the gymnasia.--all these things are true, and athens makes full display here of the usual crop of knaves or fools. nevertheless this element is in the minority. here a little earlier or a little later than our visit (for just now he is in sicily) one could see plato himself--walking under the shade trees and expounding to a little trailing host of eager-eyed disciples the fundamental theories of his ideal commonwealth. here are scores of serious bearded faces, and heads sprinkled with gray, moving to and fro in small groups, discussing in melodious attic the philosophy, the poetry, the oration, which has been partly considered in the agora this morning, and which will be further discussed at the symposium to-night. everything is entirely informal. even white-haired gentlemen do not hesitate to cast off chiton and himation and spring around nimbly upon the sands, to "try their distance" with the quoits, or show the young men that they have not forgotten accuracy with the javelin, or even, against men of their own age, to test their sinews in a mild wrestling bout. it is undignified for an old man to attempt feats beyond his advanced years. no one expects any great proficiency from most of those present. it is enough to attempt gracefully, and to laugh merrily if you do not succeed. everywhere there is the greatest good nature, and even frolicking, but very little of the really boisterous. . the beautiful youths at the academy.--yet the majority of the visitors to the academy have an interest that is not entirely summed up in proper athletics, or in the baser sports, or in philosophy. every now and then a little whisper runs among the groups of strollers or athlete "there he goes!--a new one! how beautiful!"--and there is a general turning of heads. a youth goes by, his body quite stripped, and delicately bronzed by constant exposure to the sun. his limbs are graceful, but vigorous and straight, his chest is magnificently curved. he lifts his head modestly, yet with a proud and easy carriage. his hair is dark blonde; his profile very "greek"--nose and forehead joining in unbroken straight line. a little crowd is following him; a more favored comrade, a stalwart, bearded man, walks at his side. no need of questioning now whence the sculptors of athens get their inspiration. this happy youth, just out of the schoolroom, and now to be enrolled as an armed ephebus, will be the model soon for some immortal bronze or marble. fortunate is he, if his humility is not ruined by all the admiration and flattery; if he can remember the injunctions touching "modesty," which master and father have repeated so long; if he can remember the precept that true beauty of body can go only with true beauty of soul. now at least is his day of hidden or conscious pride. all athens is commending him. he is the reigning toast, like the "belle" of a later age. not the groundlings only, but the poets, rhetoricians, philosophers, will gaze after him, seek an introduction, compliment him delicately, give themselves the pleasure of making him blush deliciously, and go back to their august problems unconsciously stimulated and refreshed by this vision of "the godlike."[*] [*]for pertinent commentary on the effect of meeting a beautiful youth upon very grave men, see, e.g., plato's "charmides" (esp. a) and "lysis" (esp. d). or better still in xenophon's "symposium" (i. ), where we hear of the beautiful youth autolycus, "even as a bright light at night draws every eye, so by his beauty drew on him the gaze of all the company [at the banquet]. not a man was present who did not feel his emotions stirred by the sight of him." . the greek worship of manly beauty.--the greek worship of the beautiful masculine form is something which the later world will never understand. in this worship there is too often a coarseness, a sensual dross, over which a veil is wisely cast. but the great fact of this worship remains: to the vast majority of greeks "beauty" does not imply a delicate maid clad in snowy drapery; it implies a perfectly shaped, bronzed, and developed youth, standing forth in his undraped manhood for some hard athletic battle. the ideal possess the national life, and effects the entire greek civilization. not beauty in innocent weakness, but beauty in resourceful strength--before this beauty men bow down.[*] [*]plato ("republic," p. ) gives the view of enlightened greek opinion when he states "there can be no fairer spectacle than that of a man who combines the possession of moral beauty in his soul, with outward beauty of body, corresponding and harmonizing with the former, because the same great pattern enters into both." it is this masculine type of beauty, whether summed up in a physical form or translated by imagery into the realm of the spirit, that isocrates (a very good mouthpieces for average enlightened opinion) praises in language which strains even his facile rhetoric. "[beauty] is the first of all things in majesty, honor, and divineness. nothing devoid of beauty is prized; the admiration of virtue itself comes to this, that of all manifestations of life, virtue is the most beautiful. the supremacy of beauty over all things can be seen in our own disposition toward it, and toward them. other things we merely seek to attain as we need them, but beautiful things inspire us with love, love which is as much stronger than wish as its object is better. to the beautiful alone, as to the gods, we are never tired of doing homage; delighting to be their slaves rather than to be the rulers of others." could we put to all the heterogeneous crowd in the wide gymnasium the question, "what things do you desire most?" the answer "to be physically beautiful" (not "handsome" merely, but "beautiful") would come among the first wishes. there is a little song, very popular and very greek. it tells most of the story. the best of gifts to mortal man is health; the next the bloom of beauty's matchless flower; the third is blameless and unfraudful wealth; the fourth with friends to spend youths' joyous hour.[*] [*]translation by milman. the exact date of this greek poem is uncertain, but its spirit is entirely true to that of athens in the time of this sketch. health and physical beauty thus go before wealth and the passions of friendship,--a true greek estimate! . the detestation of old age.--again, we are quick to learn that this "beauty" is the beauty of youth. it is useless to talk to an athenian of a "beautiful old age." old age is an evil to be borne with dignity, with resignation if needs be, to be fought against by every kind of bodily exercise; but to take satisfaction in it?--impossible. it means a diminishing of those keen powers of physical and intellectual enjoyment which are so much to every normal athenian. it means becoming feeble, and worse than feeble, ridiculous. the physician's art has not advanced so far as to prevent the frequent loss of sight and hearing in even moderate age. no hope of a future renewal of noble youth in a happier world gilds the just man's sunset. old age must, like the untimely passing of loved ones, be endured in becoming silence, as one of the fixed inevitables; but it is gloomy work to pretend to find it cheerful. only the young can find life truly happy. euripides in "the mad heracles" speaks for all his race:-- tell me not of the asian tyrant, or of palaces plenished with gold; for such bliss i am not an aspirant, if youth i might only behold:-- youth that maketh prosperity higher, and ever adversity lighter.[*] [*]mahaffy, translator. another very characteristic lament for the passing of youth is left us by the early elegiac poet mimnermus. . the greeks unite moral and physical beauty.--but here at the academy, this spirit of beautiful youth, and the "joy of life," is everywhere dominant. all around us are the beautiful bodies of young men engaged in every kind of graceful exercise. when we question, we are told that current belief is that in a great majority of instances there is a development and a symmetry of mind corresponding to the glory of the body. it is contrary to all the prevalent notions of the reign of "divine harmony" to have it otherwise. the gods abhor all gross contradictions! even now men will argue over a strange breach of this rule;--why did heaven suffer socrates to have so beautiful a soul set in so ugly a body?--inscrutable are the ways of zeus! however, we have generalized and wandered enough. the academy is a place of superabounding activities. let us try to comprehend some of them. . the usual gymnastic sports and their objects.--despite all the training in polite conversation which young men are supposed to receive at the gymnasium, the object of the latter is after all to form places of athletic exercise. the athenians are without most of these elaborate field games such as later ages will call "baseball" and "football"; although, once learned, they could surely excel in these prodigiously. they have a simple "catch" with balls, but it hardly rises above the level of a children's pastime. the reasons for these omissions are probably, first, because so much time is devoted to the "palæstra" exercises; secondly, because military training eats up about all the time not needed for pure gymnastics. the "palæstra" exercises, taught first at the boys' training establishments and later continued at the great gymnasia, are nearly all of the nature of latter-day "field sports." they do not depend on the costly apparatus of the twentieth century athletic halls; and they accomplish their ends with extremely simple means. the aim of the instructor is really twofold--to give his pupils a body fit and apt for war (and we have seen that to be a citizen usually implies being a hoplite), and to develop a body beautiful to the eye and efficient for civil life. the naturally beautiful youth can be made more beautiful; the naturally homely youth can be made at least passable under the care of a skilful gymnastic teacher. . professional athletes: the pancration.--athletics, then, are a means to an end and should not be tainted with professionalism. true, as we wander about the academy we see heavy and over brawny individuals whose "beauty" consists in flattened noses, mutilated ears, and mouths lacking many teeth, and who are taking their way to the remote quarter where boxing is permitted. here they will wind hard bull's hide thongs around their hands and wrists, and pummel one another brutally, often indeed (if in a set contest) to the very risk of life. these men are obviously professional athletes who, after appearing with some success at the "nemea," are in training for the impending "pythia" at delphi. a large crowd of youths of the less select kind follows and cheers them; but the better public opinion frowns on them. they are denounced by the philosophers. their lives no less than their bodies "are not beautiful"--i.e. they offend against the spirit of harmony inherent in every greek. still less are they in genteel favor when, the preliminary boxing round being finished, they put off their boxing thongs and join in the fierce "pancration," a not unskillful combination of boxing with wrestling, in which it is not suffered to strike with the knotted fist, but in which, nevertheless, a terrible blow can be given with the bent fingers. kicking, hitting, catching, tripping, they strive together mid the "euge! euge!--bravo! bravo!" of their admirers until one is beaten down hopelessly upon the sand, and the contest ends without harm. had it been a real pancration, however, it would have been desperate business, for it is quite permissible to twist an opponent's wrist, and even to break his fingers, to make him give up the contest. therefore it is not surprising that the pancration, even more than boxing, is usually reserved for professional athletes. . leaping contests.--but near at hand is a more pleasing contest. youths of the ephebus age are practicing leaping. they have no springboard, no leaping pole, but only a pair of curved metal dumb-bells to aid them. one after another their lithe brown bodies, shining with the fresh olive oil, come forward on a lightning run up the little mound of earth, then fly gracefully out across the soft sands. there is much shouting and good-natured rivalry. as each lad leaps, an eager attendant marks his distance with a line drawn by the pickaxe. the lines gradually extend ever farther from the mound. the rivalry is keen. finally, there is one leap that far exceeds the rest.[*] a merry crowd swarms around the blushing victor. a grave middle-aged man takes the ivy crown from his head, and puts it upon the happy youth. "your father will take joy in you," he says as the knot breaks up. [*]if the data of the ancients are to be believed, the greeks achieved records in leaping far beyond those of any modern athletes, but it is impossible to rely on data of this kind. . quoit hurling.--close by the leapers is another stretch of yellow sand reserved for the quoit throwers. the contestants here are slightly older,--stalwart young men who seem, as they fling the heavy bronze discus, to be reaching out eagerly into the fullness of life and fortune before them. very graceful are the attitudes. here it was the sculptor miron saw his "discobolus" which he immortalized and gave to all the later world; "stooping down to take aim, his body turned in the direction of the hand which holds the quoit, one knee slightly bent as though he meant to vary the posture and to rise with the throw."[*] the caster, however, does not make his attempt standing. he takes a short run, and then the whole of his splendid body seems to spring together with the cast. [*]the quotation is from lucian (roman imperial period). . casting the javelin.--the range of the quoit hurlers in turn seems very great, but we cannot delay to await the issue. still elsewhere in the academy they are hurling the javelin. here is a real martial exercise, and patriotism as well as natural athletic spirit urges young men to excel. the long light lances are being whirled at a distant target with remarkable accuracy; and well they may, for every contestant has the vision of some hour when he may stand on the poop of a trireme and hear the dread call, "all hands repel boarders," or need all his darts to break up the rush of a pursuing band of hoplites. . wrestling.--the real crowds, however, are around the wrestlers and the racers. wrestling in its less brutal form is in great favor. it brings into play all the muscles of a man; it tests his resources both of mind and body finely. it is excellent for a youth and it fights away old age. the greek language is full of words and allusions taken from the wrestler's art. the palæstras for the boys are called "the wrestling school" par excellence. it is no wonder that now the ring on the sands is a dense one and constantly growing. two skilful amateurs will wrestle. one--a speedy rumor tells us--is, earlier and later in the day, a rising comic poet; the other is not infrequently heard on the bema. just at present, however, they have forgotten anapests and oratory. a crowd of cheering, jesting friends thrusts them on. forth they stand, two handsome, powerful men, well oiled for suppleness, but also sprinkled with fine sand to make it possible to get a fair grip in the contest. for a moment they wag their sharp black beards at each other defiantly, and poise and edge around. then the poet, more daring, rushes in, and instantly the two have grappled--each clutching the other's left wrist in his right hand. the struggle that follows is hot and even, until a lucky thrust from the orator's foot lands the poet in a sprawling heap; whence he rises with a ferocious grin and renews the contest. the second time they both fall together. "a tie!" calls the long-gowned friend who acts as umpire, with an officious flourish of his cane. the third time the poet catches the orator trickily under the thigh, and fairly tears him to the ground; but at the fourth meeting the orator slips his arm in decisive grip about his opponent's wrist and with a might wrench upsets him. "two casts out of three, and victory!" everybody laughs good-naturedly. the poet and the orator go away arm in arm to the bathing house, there to have another good oiling and rubbing down by their slaves, after removing the heavily caked sand from their skin with the stirgils. of course, had it been a real contest in the "greater games," the outcome might have been more serious for the rules allow one to twist a wrist, to thrust an arm or foot into the foeman's belly, or (when things are desperate) to dash your forehead--bull fashion--against your opponent's brow, in the hope that his skull will prove weaker than yours. . foot races.--the continued noise from the stadium indicates that the races are still running; and we find time to go thither. the simple running match, a straight-away dash of feet, seems to have been the original contest at the olympic games ere these were developed into a famous and complicated festival; and the runner still is counted among the favorites of greek athletics. as we sit upon the convenient benches around the academy stadium we see at once that the track is far from being a hard, well-rolled "cinder path"; on the contrary, it is of soft sand into which the naked foot sinks if planted too firmly, and upon it the most adept "hard-track" runner would at first pant and flounder helplessly. the greeks have several kinds of foot races, but none that are very short. the shortest is the simple "stadium" ( feet), a straight hard dash down one side of the long oval; then there is the "double course" ("diaulos") down one side and back; the "horse race"--twice clear around ( feet); and lastly the hard-testing "long course" ("dolichos") which may very in length according to arrangement,--seven, twelve, twenty, or even twenty-four stadia, we are told; and it is the last (about three miles) that is one of the most difficult contests at olympia. at this moment a part of four hale and hearty men still in the young prime are about to compete in the "double race." they come forward all rubbed with the glistening oil, and crouch at the starting point behind the red cord held by two attendants. the gymnasiarch stands watchfully by, swinging his cane to smite painfully whoever, in over eagerness, breaks away before the signal. all is ready; at his nod the rope falls. the four fly away together, pressing their elbows close to their sides, and going over the soft sands with long rhythmic leaps, rather than with the usual rapid running motion. a fierce race it is, amid much exhortation from friends and shouting. at length, as so often--when speeding back towards the stretched cord,--the rearmost runner suddenly gathers amazing speed, and, flying with prodigious leaps ahead of his rivals, is easily the victor. his friends are at once about him, and we hear the busy tongues advising, "you must surely race at the pythia; the olympia; etc." this simple race over, a second quickly follows: five heavy, powerful men this time, but they are to run in full hoplite's armor--the ponderous shield, helmet, cuirass, and greaves. this is the exacting "armor race" ("hoplitodromos"), and safe only for experienced soldiers or professional athletes.[*] indeed, the greeks take all their foot races seriously, and there are plenty of instances when the victor has sped up to the goal, and then dropped dead before the applauding stadium. there are no stop watches in the academy; we do not know the records of the present or of more famous runners; yet one may be certain that the "time" made, considering the very soft sand, has been exceedingly fast. [*]it was training in races like these which enabled the athenians at marathon to "charge the persians on the run" (miltiades' orders), all armored though they were, and so get quickly through the terrible zone of the persian arrow fire. . the pentathlon: the honors paid to great athletes.--we have now seen average specimens of all the usual athletic sports of the greeks. any good authority will tell us, however, that a truly capable athlete will not try to specialize so much in any one kind of contest that he cannot do justice to the others. as an all around well-trained man he will try to excel in the "pentathlon," the "five contests." herein he will successfully join in running, javelin casting, quoit throwing, leaping, and wrestling.[*] as the contest proceeds the weaker athletes will be eliminated; only the two fittest will be left for the final trial of strength and skill. fortunate indeed is "he who overcometh" in the pentathlon. it is the crown of athletic victories, involving, as it does, no scanty prowess both of body and mind. the victor in the pentathlon at one of the great pan-hellenic games (olympian, pythian, isthmian, or nemean) or even in the local attic contest at the panathenæa is a marked man around athens or any other greek city. poets celebrate him; youths dog his heels and try to imitate him; his kinsfolk take on airs; very likely he is rewarded as a public benefactor by the government. but there is abundant honor for one who has triumphed in any of the great contests; and even as we go out we see people pointing to a bent old man and saying, "yes; he won the quoit hurling at the nema when ithycles was archon."[+] [*]the exact order of these contests, and the rules of elimination as the games proceeded, are uncertain--perhaps they varied with time and place. [+]this would make it b.c. the athenians dated their years by the name of their "first archon" ("archon eponymos"). ...the academy is already thinning. the beautiful youths and their admiring "lovers" have gone homeward. the last race has been run. we must hasten if we would not be late to some select symposium. the birds are more melodious than ever around colonus; the red and golden glow upon the acropolis is beginning to fade; the night is sowing the stars; and through the light air of a glorious evening we speed back to the city. chapter xviii. athenian cookery and the symposium. . greek meal times.--the streets are becoming empty. the agora has been deserted for hours. as the warm balmy night closes over the city the house doors are shut fast, to open only for the returning master or his guests, bidden to dinner. soon the ways will be almost silent, to be disturbed, after a proper interval, by the dinner guests returning homeward. save for these, the streets will seem those of a city of the dead: patrolled at rare intervals by the scythian archers, and also ranged now and then by cutpurses watching for an unwary stroller, or miscreant roisterers trolling lewd songs, and pounding on honest men's doors as they wander from tavern to tavern in search of the lowest possible pleasures. we have said very little of eating or drinking during our visit in athens, for, truth to tell, the citizens try to get through the day with about as little interruption for food and drink as possible. but now, when warehouse and gymnasium alike are left to darkness, all athens will break its day of comparative fasting. roughly speaking, the greeks anticipate the latter-day "continental" habits in their meal hours. the custom of germans and of many americans in having the heartiest meal at noonday would never appeal to them. the hearty meal is at night, and no one dreams of doing any serious work after it. when it is finished, there may be pleasant discourse or varied amusements, but never real business; and even if there are guests, the average dinner party breaks up early. early to bed and early to rise, would be a maxim indorsed by the athenians. promptly upon rising, our good citizen has devoured a few morsels of bread sopped in undiluted wine; that has been to him what "coffee and rolls" will be to the frenchmen,--enough to carry him through the morning business, until near to noon he will demand something more satisfying. he then visits home long enough to partake of a substantial déjeuner ("ariston," first breakfast = "akratisma"). he has one or two hot dishes--one may suspect usually warmed over from last night's dinner--and partakes of some more wine. this "ariston" will be about all he will require until the chief meal of the day--the regular dinner ("deïpnon") which would follow sunset. . society desired at meals.--the athenians are a gregarious sociable folk. often enough the citizen must dine alone at home with "only" his wife and children for company, but if possible he will invite friends (or get himself invited out). any sort of an occasion is enough to excuse a dinner-party,--a birthday of some friend, some kind of family happiness, a victory in the games, the return from, or the departure upon, a journey:--all these will answer; or indeed a mere love of good fellowship. there are innumerable little eating clubs; the members go by rotation to their respective houses. each member contributes either some money or has his slave bring a hamper of provisions. in the find weather picnic parties down upon the shore are common.[*] "anything to bring friends together"--in the morning the agora, in the afternoon the gymnasium, in the evening they symposium--that seems to be the rule of athenian life. [*]such excursions were so usual that the literal expression "let us banquet at the shore" ([note from brett: the greek letters are written out here as there is no way to portray them properly] sigma eta mu epsilon rho omicron nu [next word] alpha kappa tau alpha sigma omega mu epsilon nu [here is a rough transliteration into english letters "sêmeron aktasômen"]) came often to mean simply "let us have a good time." however, the athenians seldom gather to eat for the mere sake of animal gorging. they have progressed since the greeks of the homeric age. odysseus[*] is made to say to alcinoüs that there is nothing more delightful than sitting at a table covered with bread, meat, and wine, and listening to a bard's song; and both homeric poems show plenty of gross devouring and guzzling. there is not much of this in athens, although bœotians are still reproached with being voracious, swinish "flesh eaters," and the greeks of south italy and sicily are considered as devoted to their fare, though of more refined table habits. athenians of the better class pride themselves on their light diet and moderation of appetite, and their neighbors make considerable fun of them for their failure to serve satisfying meals. certain it is that the typical athenian would regard a twentieth century "table d'hôte" course dinner as heavy and unrefined, if ever it dragged its slow length before him. [*]"odyssey," ix. - . . the staple articles of food.--however, the athenians have honest appetites, and due means of silencing them. the diet of a poor man is indeed simple in the extreme. according to aristophanes his meal consists of a cake, bristling with bran for the sake of economy, along with an onion and a dish of sow thistles, or of mushrooms, or some other such wretched vegetables; and probably, in fact, that is about all three fourths of the population of attica will get on ordinary working days, always with the addition of a certain indispensable supply of oil and wine. bread, oil, and wine, in short, are the three fundamentals of greek diet. with them alone man can live very healthfully and happily; without them elaborate vegetable and meat dishes are poor substitutes. like latter-day frenchmen or italians with their huge loaves or macaroni, bread in one form or another is literally the stuff of life to the greek. he makes it of wheat, barley, rye, millet, or spelt, but preferably of the two named first. the barley meal is kneaded (not baked) and eaten raw or half raw as a sort of porridge. of wheat loaves there are innumerable shapes on sale in the agora,--slender rolls, convenient loaves, and also huge loaves needing two or three bushels of flour, exceeding even those made in a later day in normandy. at every meal the amount of bread or porridge consumed is enormous; there is really little else at all substantial. persian visitors to the greeks complain that they are in danger of rising from the table hungry. but along with the inevitable bread goes the inevitable olive oil. no latter-day article will exactly correspond to it. first of all it takes the place of butter as the proper condiment to prevent the bread from being tasteless.[*] it enters into every dish. the most versatile cook will be lost without it. again, at the gymnasium we have seen its great importance to the athletes and bathers. it is therefore the hellenic substitute for soap. lastly, it fills the lamps which swing over very dining board. it takes the place of electricity, gas, or petroleum. no wonder athens is proud of her olive trees. if she has to import her grain, she has a surplus for export of one of the three great essentials of grecian life. [*]there was extremely little cow's butter in greece. herodotus (iv. ) found it necessary to explain the process of "cow-cheese-making" among the scythians. the third inevitable article of diet is wine. no one has dreamed of questioning its vast desirability under almost all circumstances. even drunkenness is not always improper. it may be highly fitting, as putting one in a "divine frenzy," partaking of the nature of the gods. musæus the semi-mythical poet is made out to teach that the reward of virtue will be something like perpetual intoxication in the next world. Æschines the orator will, ere long, taunt his opponent demosthenes in public with being a "water drinker"; and socrates on many occasions has given proof that he possessed a very hard head. yet naturally the athenian has too acute a sense of things fit and dignified, too noble a perception of the natural harmony, to commend drunkenness on any but rare occasions. wine is rather valued as imparting a happy moderate glow, making the thoughts come faster, and the tongue more witty. wine raises the spirits of youth, and makes old age forget its gray hairs. it chases away thoughts of the dread hereafter, when one will lose consciousness of the beautiful sun, and perhaps wander a "strengthless shade" through the dreary underworld. there is a song attributed to anacreon, and nearly everybody in athens approves the sentiment:-- thirsty earth drinks up the rain, trees from earth drink that again; ocean drinks the air, the sun drinks the sea, and him, the moon. any reason, canst thou think, i should thirst, while all these drink?[*] [*]translation from von falke's "greece and rome." . greek vintages.--all greeks, however, drink their wine so diluted with water that it takes a decided quantity to produce a "reaction." the average drinker takes three parts water to two of wine. if he is a little reckless the ratio is four of water to three of wine; equal parts "make men mad" as the poet says, and are probably reserved for very wild dinner parties. as for drinking pure wine no one dreams of the thing--it is a practice fit for barbarians. there is good reason, however, for this plentiful use of water. in the original state greek wines were very strong, perhaps almost as alcoholic as whisky, and the athenians have no scotch climate to excuse the use of such stimulants.[*] [*]there was a wide difference of opinion as to the proper amount of dilution. odysseus ("odyssey," ix. ) mixed his fabulously strong wine from maron in thrace with twenty times its bulk of water. hesiod abstemiously commended three parts of water to one of wine. zaleucus, the lawgiver of italian locri, established the death penalty for drinking unmixed wine save by physicians' orders ("athenæus," x. ). no wine served in athens, however, will appeal to a later-day connoisseur. it is all mixed with resin, which perhaps makes it more wholesome, but to enjoy it then becomes an acquired taste. there are any number of choice vintages, and you will be told that the local attic wine is not very desirable, although of course it is the cheapest. black wine is the strongest and sweetest; white wine is the weakest; rich golden is the driest and most wholesome. the rocky isles and headlands of the Ægean seem to produce the best vintage--thasos, cos, lesbos, rhodes, all boast their grapes; but the best wine beyond a doubt is from chios.[*] it will fetch a mina ($ [ or $ . ]) the "metreta," i.e. nearly cents [ or $ . ] per quart. at the same time you can buy a "metreta" of common attic wine for four drachmae ( cents [ or $ . ]), or say two cents [ or cents ] per quart. the latter--when one considers the dilution--is surely cheap enough for the most humble. [*]naturally certain foreign vintages had a demand, just because they were foreign. wine was imported from egypt and from various parts of italy. it was sometimes mixed with sea water for export, or was made aromatic with various herbs and berries. it was ordinarily preserved in great earthen jars sealed with pitch. . vegetable dishes.--provided with bread, oil, and wine, no athenian will long go hungry; but naturally these are not a whole feast. as season and purse may afford they will be supplanted by such vegetables as beans (a staple article), peas, garlic, onions, radishes, turnips, and asparagus; also with an abundance of fruits,--besides figs (almost a fourth indispensable at most meals), apples, quinces, peaches, pears, plums, cherries, blackberries, the various familiar nuts, and of course a plenty of grapes and olives. the range of selection is in fact decidedly wide: only the twentieth century visitor will miss the potato, the lemon, and the orange; and when he pries into the mysteries of the kitchen a great fact at once stares him in the face. the greek must dress his dishes without the aid of sugar. as a substitute there is an abundant use of the delicious hymettus honey,--"fragrant with the bees,"--but it is by no means so full of possibilities as the white powder of later days. also the greek cook is usually without fresh cow's milk, and most goat's milk probably takes its way to cheese. no morning milk carts rattle over the stones of athens. . meat and fish dishes.--turning to the meat dishes, we at once learn that while there is a fair amount of farm poultry, geese, hares, doves, partridges, etc., on sale in the market, there is extremely little fresh beef or even mutton, pork, and goat's flesh. it is quite expensive, and counted too hearty for refined diners. the average poor man in fact hardly tastes flesh except after one of the great public festivals; then after the sacrifice of the "hecatomb" of oxen, there will probably be a distribution of roast meat to all the worshipers, and the honest citizen will take home to his wife an uncommon luxury--a piece of roast beef. but the place of beef and pork is largely usurped by most excellent fish. the waters of the Ægean abound with fish. the import of salt fish (for the use of the poor) from the propontis and euxine is a great part of attic commerce. a large part of the business at the agora centers around the fresh fish stalls, and we have seen how extortionate and insolent were the fishmongers. sole, tunny, mackerel, young shark, mullet, turbot, carp, halibut, are to be had, but the choicest regular delicacies are the great copaic eels from bœotia; these, "roasted on the coals and wrapped in beet leaves," are a dish fit for the great king. lucky is the host who has them for his dinner party. oysters and mussels too are in demand, and there is a considerable sale of snails, "the poor man's salad," even as in present-day france. clearly, then, if one is not captious or gluttonous, there should be no lack of good eating in athens, despite the reputation of the city for abstemiousness. let us pry therefore into the symposium of some good citizen who is dispensing hospitality to-night. . inviting guests to a dinner party.-- who loves thee, him summon to they board; far off be he who hates. this familiar sentiment of hesiod, one prodicus, a well-to-do gentleman, had in mind when he went to the agora this morning to arrange for a dinner party in honor of his friend hermogenes, who was just departing on a diplomatic mission to the satrap of mysia. while walking along the painted porch and the other colonnades he had no difficulty in seeing most of the group he intended to invite, and if they did not turn to greet him, he would halt them by sending his slave boy to run and twitch at their mantles, after which the invitation was given verbally. prodicus, however, deliberately makes arrangements for one or two more than those he has bidden. it will be entirely proper for his guests to bring friends of their own if they wish; and very likely some intimate whom he has been unable to find will invite himself without any bidding. at the agora prodicus has had much to do. his house is a fairly large and well-furnished one, his slaves numerous and handy, but he has not the cook or the equipment for a really elaborate symposium. at a certain quarter on the great square he finds a contractor who will supply all the extra appointments for a handsome dinner party--tables, extra lamps, etc. then he puts his slave boy to bawling out: "who wants an engagement to cook a dinner?" this promptly brings forward a sleek, well-dressed fellow whose dialect declares that he is from sicily, and who asserts he is an expert professional cook. prodicus engages him and has a conference with him on the profound question of "whether the tunnies or the mullets are better to-day, or will there be fresh eels?" this point and similar minor matters settled, prodicus makes liberal purchases at the fish and vegetable stalls, and his slaves bear his trophies homeward. . preparing for the dinner. the sicilian cook.--all that afternoon the home of prodicus is in an uproar. the score of slaves show a frantic energy. the aula is cleaned and scrubbed: the serving girls are busy handing festoons of leaves and weaving chaplets. the master's wife--who does not dream of actually sharing in the banquet--is nevertheless as active and helpful as possible; but especially she is busy trying to keep the peace between the old house servants and the imported cook. this sicilian is a notable character. to him cookery is not a handicraft: it is the triumph, the quintessence of all science and philosophy. he talks a strange professional jargon, and asserts that he is himself learned in astronomy--for that teaches the best seasons, e.g. for mackerel and haddock; in geometry,--that he might know how a boiler or gridiron should be set to the best advantage; in medicine, that he might prepare the most wholesome dishes. in any case he is a perfect tyrant around the kitchen, grumbling about the utensils, cuffing the spit-boy, and ever bidding him bring more charcoal for the fire and to blow the bellows faster.[*] [*]the greeks seem to have cooked over a rather simple open fireplace with a wood or charcoal fire. they had an array of cooking utensils, however, according to all our evidence, elaborate enough to gladden a very exacting modern chef. by the time evening is at hand prodicus and his house are in perfect readiness. the bustle is ended; and the master stands by the entrance way, clad in his best and with a fresh myrtle wreath, ready to greet his guests. no ladies will be among these. had there been any women invited to the banquet, they would surely be creatures of no very honest sort; and hardly fit, under any circumstances, to darken the door of a respectable citizen. the mistress and her maids are "behind the scenes." there may be a woman among the hired entertainers provided, but for a refined athenian lady to appear at an ordinary symposium is almost unthinkable.[*] [*]in marriage parties and other strictly family affairs women were allowed to take part; and we have an amusing fragment of menander as to how, on such rare occasions, they monopolized the conversation. . the coming of the guests.--as each guest comes, he is seen to be elegantly dressed, and to wear now, if at no other time, a handsome pair of sandals.[*] he has also taken pains to bathe and to perfume himself. as soon as each person arrives his sandals are removed in the vestibule by the slaves and his feet are bathed. no guest comes alone, however: every one has his own body servant with him, who will look after his footgear and himation during the dinner, and give a certain help with the serving. the house therefore becomes full of people, and will be the scene of remarkable animation during the next few hours. [*]socrates, by way of exception to his custom, put on some fine sandals when he was invited to a banquet. prodicus is not disappointed in expecting some extra visitors. his guest of honor, hermogenes, has brought along two, whom the host greets with the polite lie: "just in time for dinner. put off your other business. i was looking for you in the agora and could not find you."[*] also there thrusts in a half genteel, half rascally fellow, one palladas, who spends all his evenings at dinner parties, being willing to be the common butt and jest of the company (having indeed something of the ability of a comic actor about him) in return for a share of the good things on the table. these "parasites" are regular characters in athens, and no symposium is really complete without them, although often their fooleries cease to be amusing.[+] [*]it is with such a white fib that the host agathon salutes aristodemus, socrates's companion in plato's "symposium." [+]of these "parasites" or "flies" (as owing to their migratory habits they were sometimes called), countless stories were told, whereof the following is a sample: there was once a law in athens that not over thirty guests were to be admitted to a marriage feast, and an officer was obliged to count all the guests and exclude the superfluous. a "fly" thrust in on one occasion, and the officer said: "friend, you must retire. i find one more here than the law allows." "dear fellow," quoth the "fly," "you are utterly mistaken, as you will find, if you kindly count again--only beginning with me." . the dinner proper.--the greeks have not anticipated the romans in their custom of making the standard dinner party nine persons on three couches,--three guests on each. prodicus has about a dozen guests, two on a couch. they "lie down" more or less side by side upon the cushioned divans, with their right arms resting on brightly striped pillows and the left arms free for eating. the slaves bring basis of water to wash their hands, and then beside each couch is set a small table, already garnished with the first course, and after the casting of a few bits of food upon the family hearth fire,--the conventional "sacrifice" to the house gods,--the dinner begins. despite the elaborate preparations of the sicilian cook, prodicus offers his guests only two courses. the first consists of the substantial dishes--the fish, the vegetables, the meat (if there is any). soups are not unknown, and had they been served might have been eaten with spoons; but athens like all the world is innocent of forks, and fingers take their place. each guest has a large piece of soft bread on which he wipes his fingers from time to time and presently casts it upon the floor.[*] when this first course is finished, the tables are all taken out to be reset, water is again poured over the hands of the guests, and garlands of flowers are passed. the use of garlands is universal, and among the guests, old white headed and bearded sosthenes will find nothing more undignified in putting himself beneath a huge wreath of lilies than an elderly gentleman of a later day will find in donning the "conventional" dress suit. the conversation,--which was very scattering at first,--becomes more animated. a little wine is now passed about. then back come the tables with the second course--fruits, and various sweetmeats and confectionary with honey as the staple flavoring. before this disappears a goblet of unmixed wine is passed about, and everybody takes a sip: "to the good genius," they say as the cup goes round. [*]napkins were not used in greece before roman days. . beginning the symposium.--prodicus at length gives a nod to the chief of his corps of servers. "bring in the wine!" he orders. the slaves promptly whisk out the tables and replace them with others still smaller, on which they set all kinds of gracefully shaped beakers and drinking bowls. more wreaths are distributed, also little bottles of delicate ointment. while the guests are praising prodicus's nard, the servants have brought in three huge "mixing bowls" ("craters") for the wines which are to furnish the main potation. so far we have witnessed not a symposium, but merely a dinner; and many a proper party has broken up when the last of the dessert has disappeared; but, after all, the drinking bout is the real crown of the feast. it is not so much the wine as the things that go with the wine that are so delightful. as to what these desirable condiments are, opinions differ. plato (who is by no means too much of a philosopher to be a real man of the world) says in his "protagoras" that mere conversation is "the" thing at a symposium. "when the company are real gentlemen and men of education, you will see no flute girls nor dancing girls nor harp girls; they will have no nonsense or games, but will be content with one another's conversation."[*] but this ideal, though commended, is not always followed in decidedly intellectual circles. zenophon[+] shows us a select party wherein socrates participated, in which the host has been fain to hire in a professional syracusian entertainer with two assistants, a boy and a girl, who bring their performance to a climax by a very suggestive dumb-show play of the story of bacchus and ariadne. prodicus's friends, being solid, somewhat pragmatic men--neither young sports nor philosophers--steer a middle course. there is a flute girl present, because to have a good symposium without some music is almost unimaginable; but she is discreetly kept in the background. [*]plato again says ("politicus," b), "to intelligent persons, a living being is more truly delineated by language and discourse than by any painting or work of art." [+]in his "symposium"--which is far less perfect as literature than plato's, but probably corresponds more to the average instance. . the symposiarch and his duties.--"let's cast for our symposiarch!" is prodicus's next order, and each guest in turn rattles the dice box. tyche (lady fortune) gives the presidency of the feast to eunapius, a bright-eyed, middle-aged man with a keen sense of humor, but a correct sense of good breeding. he assumes command of the symposium; takes the ordering of the servants out of prodicus's hands, and orders the wine to be mixed in the craters with proper dilution. he then rises and pours out a libation from each bowl "to the olympian gods," "to the heroes," and "to zeus the saviour," and casts a little incense upon the altar. the guests all sing a "pæan," not a warrior's charging song this time, but a short hymn in praise of the wine-god, some lilting catch like alcæus's in mighty flagons hither bring the deep red blood of many a vine, that we may largely quaff and sing the praises of the god of wine. . conversation at the symposium.--after this the symposium will proceed according to certain general rules which it is eunaius's duty to enforce; but in the main a "program" is something to be avoided. everybody must feel himself acting spontaneously and freely. he must try to take his part in the conversation and neither speak too seldom nor too little. it is not "good form" for two guests to converse privately among themselves, nor for anybody to dwell on unpleasant or controversial topics. aristophanes has laid down after his way the proper kind of things to talk about.[*] "[such as]'how ephudion fought a fine pancratium with ascondas though old and gray headed, but showing great form and muscle.' this is the talk usual among refined people [or again] 'some manly act of your youth; for example, how you chased a boar or a hare, or won a torch race by some bold device.' [then when fairly settled at the feast] straighten your knees and throw yourself in a graceful and easy manner upon the couch. then make some observations upon the beauty of the appointments, look up at the ceiling and praise the tapestry of the room." [*] "wasps," - . as the wine goes around, tongues loosen more and more. everybody gesticulates in delightful southern gestures, but does not lose his inherent courtesy. the anecdotes told are often very egoistic. the first personal pronoun is used extremely often, and "i" becomes the hero of a great many exploits. the athenian, in short, is an adept at praising himself with affected modesty, and his companions listen good-humoredly, and retaliate by praising themselves. . games and entertainments.--by the time the craters are one third emptied the general conversation is beginning to be broken up. it is time for various standard diversions. eunapius therefore begins by enjoining on each guest in turn to sing a verse in which a certain letter must not appear, and in event of failure to pay some ludicrous forfeit. thus the bald man is ordered to begin to comb his hair; the lame man (halt since the mantinea campaign), to stand up and dance to the flute player, etc. there are all kinds of guessing of riddles--often very ingenious as become the possessors of "attic salt." another diversion is to compare every guest present to some mythical monster, a process which infallibly ends by getting the "parasite" likened to cerberus, the hydra, or some such dragon, amid the laughter of all the rest. at some point in the amusement the company is sure to get to singing songs:--"scolia"--drinking songs indeed, but often of a serious moral or poetic character, whereof the oft-quoted song in praise of harmodius and aristogeiton the tyrant-slayers is a good example.[*] no "gentleman" will profess to be a public singer, but to have a deep, well-trained voice, and to be able to take one's part in the symposium choruses is highly desirable, and some of the singing at proicus's banquet is worth hearing. [*]given in "readings in ancient history," vol. i, p. , and in many other volumes. before the evening is over various games will be ordered in, especially the "cottabus," which is in great vogue. on the top of a high stand, something like a candelabrum, is balanced rather delicately a little saucer of brass. the players stand at a considerable distance with cups of wine. the game is to toss a small quantity of wine into the balanced saucer so smartly as to make the brass give out a clear ringing sound, and to tilt upon its side.[+] much shouting, merriment, and a little wagering ensues. while most of the company prefer the cottabus, two, who profess to be experts, call for a gaming board and soon are deep in the "game of towns"--very like to latter-day "checkers," played with a board divided into numerous squares. each contestant has thirty colored stones, and the effort is to surround your opponent's stones and capture them. some of the company, however, regard this as too profound, and after trying their skill at the cottabus betake themselves to the never failing chances of dice. yet these games are never suffered (in refined dinner parties) to banish the conversation. that after all is the center, although it is not good form to talk over learnedly of statecraft, military tactics, or philosophy. if such are discussed, it must be with playful abandon, and a disclaimer of being serious; and even very grave and gray men remember anacreon's preference for the praise of "the glorious gifts of the muses and of aphrodite" rather than solid discussions of "conquest and war." [+]this was the simplest form of the cottabus game; there were numerous elaborations, but our accounts of them are by no means clear. . going home from the feast: midnight revellers.--at length the oil lamps have begun to burn dim. the tired slaves are yawning. their masters, despite prodicus's intentions of having a very proper symposium, have all drunk enough to get unstable and silly. eunapius gives the signal. all rise, and join in the final libation to hermes. "shoes and himation, boy," each says to his slave, and with thanks to their host they all fare homeward. such will be the ending to an extremely decorous feast. with gay young bloods present, however, it might have degenerated into an orgy; the flute girl (or several of them) would have contributed over much to the "freedom"; and when the last deep crater had been emptied, the whole company would have rushed madly into the street, and gone whirling away through the darkness,--harps and flutes sounding, boisterous songs pealing, red torches tossing. revellers in this mood would be ready for anything. perhaps they would end in some low tavern at the peiræus to sleep off their liquor; perhaps their leader would find some other symposium in progress, and after loud knockings, force his way into the house, even as did the mad alcibiades, who (once more to recall plato) thrust his way into agathon's feast, staggering, leaning on a flute girl, and shouting, "where's agathon!" such an inroad would be of course the signal for more and ever more hard drinking. the wild invaders might make themselves completely at home, and dictate all the proceedings: the end would be even as at agathon's banquet, where everybody but socrates became completely drunken, and lay prone on the couches or the floor. one hopes that the honest prodicus has no such climax to his symposium. ...at length the streets grow quiet. citizens sober or drunken are now asleep: only the vigilant scythian archers patrol the ways till the cocks proclaim the first gray of dawn. chapter xix. country life around athens . importance of his farm to an athenian.--we have followed the doings of a typical athenian during his ordinary activities around the city, but for the average gentleman an excursion outside the town is indispensable at least every two or three days, and perhaps every day. he must visit his farm; for his wealth and income are probably tied up there, rather than in any unaristocratic commercial and manufacturing enterprises. homer's "royal" heroes are not ashamed to be skilful at following the plow[*]: and no athenian feels that he is contaminating himself by "trade" when he supervises the breeding of sheep or the raising of onions. we will therefore follow in the tracks of certain well-to-do citizens, when we turn toward the itonian gate sometime during the morning, while the agora is still in a busy hum, even if thus we are curtailing our hypothetical visits to the peiræus or to the bankers. [*]see odysseus's boasts, "odyssey," xviii. et passim. the gentility of farming is emphasized by a hundred precepts from hesiod. . the country by the ilissus: the greeks and natural beauty.--our companions are on horseback (a token of tolerable wealth in athens), but the beasts amble along not too rapidly for nimble grooms to run behind, each ready to aid his respective master. once outside the gate the regular road swings down to the south towards phalerum; we, however, are in no great haste and desire to see as much as possible. the farms we are seeking lie well north of the city, but we can make a delightful circuit by skirting the city walls with the eastern shadow of the acropolis behind us, and going at first northeast, along the groves and leafy avenues which line the thin stream of the ilissus,[*] the second "river" of athens. [*]the ilissus, unlike its sturdier rival, the cephisus, ran dry during the summer heats; but there was enough water along its bed to create a dense vegetation. before us through the trees came tantalizing glimpses of the open country running away towards shaggy gray hymettus. left to itself the land would be mostly arid and seared brown by the summer sun; but everywhere the friendly work of man is visible. one can count the little green oblong patches, stretching even up the mountain side, marked with gleaming white farm buildings or sometimes with little temples and chapels sacred to the rural gods. once or twice also we notice a plot of land which seems one tangled waste of trees and shrubbery. this is a sacred "temenos," an inviolate grove, set apart to some god; and within the fences of the compound no mortal dare set foot under pain of direful sacrilege and pollution. following a kind of bridle path, however, we are soon amid the groves of olive and other trees, while the horses plod their slow way beside the brook. not a few citizens going or coming from athens meet us, for this is really one of the parks and breathing spaces of the closely built city. the athenians and greeks in general live in a land of such natural beauty that they take this loveliness as a matter of course. very seldom do their poets indulge in deliberate descriptions of "beautiful landscapes"; but none the less the fair things of nature have penetrated deeply into their souls. the constant allusions in homer and the other masters of song to the great storm waves, the deep shades of the forest, the crystal books, the pleasant rest for wanderers under the shade trees, the plains bright with spring flowers, the ivy twining above a grave, the lamenting nightingale, the chirping cicada, tell their own story; men seldom describe at length what is become warp and woof of their inmost lives. the mere fact that the greeks dwell constantly in such a beautiful land, and have learned to love it so intensely, makes frequent and set descriptions thereto seem trivial. . plato's description of the walk by the ilissus.--nevertheless occasionally this inborn love of the glorious outer world must find its expression, and it is of these very groves along he ilissus that we have one of the few "nature pieces" in athenian literature. as the plodding steeds take their way let us recall our plato--his "phœdrus," written probably not many years before this our visit. socrates is walking with phædrus outside the walls, and urges the latter: "let us go to the ilissus and sit down in some quiet spot." "i am fortunate," answers phædrus, "in not having my sandals on, and, as you never have any, we may go along the brook and cool our feet. this is the easiest way, and at midday is anything but unpleasant." he adds that they will go on to the tallest plane tree in the distance, "where are shade and gentle breezes, and grass whereon we may either sit or lie.... the little stream is delightfully clear and bright. i can fancy there might well be maidens playing near [according to the local myth of boreas's rape of orithyia]." and so at last they come to the place, when socrates says: "yes indeed, a fair and shady resting place it is, full of summer sounds and scents. there is the lofty and spreading plane tree, and the agnus castus, high and clustering in the fullest blossom and the greatest fragrance, and the stream which flows beneath the plane tree is deliciously cool to the feet. judging by the ornaments and images [set] about, this must be a spot sacred to achelous and the nymphs; moreover there is a sweet breeze and the grasshoppers are chirruping; and the greatest charm of all is the grass like a pillow, gently sloping to the head."[*] [*]jewett, translator; slightly altered. . the athenian love of country life.--so the two friends had sat them down to delve in delightful profundities; but following the bridle path, the little brook and its groves end for us all too soon. we are in the open country around athens, and the fierce rays of helios beat strongly on our heads. we are outside the city, but by no means far from human life. farm succeeds farm, for the land around athens has a goodly population to maintain, and there is a round price for vegetables in the agora. truth to tell, the average athenian, though he pretends to love the market, the pnyx, the dicasteries, and the gymnasia, has a shrewd hankering for the soil, and does not care to spend more time in athens then necessary. aristophanes is full of the contrasts between "country life" and "city life" and almost always with the advantage given the former. says his strepsiades (in "the clouds"), "a country life for me--dirty, untrimmed, lolling around at ease, and just abounding in bees and sheep and oil cake." his diceæpolis ("acharnians") voices clearly the independence of the farmer: "how i long for peace.[*] i'm disgusted with the city; and yearn for my own farm which never bawled out [as in the markets] 'buy my coals' or 'buy my vinegar' or 'oil,' or knew the word 'buy,' but just of itself produced everything." and his trygæus (in "the peace") states the case better yet: "ah! how eager i am to get back into the fields, and break up my little farm with the mattock again...[for i remember] what kind of a life we had there; and those cakes of dried fruits, and the figs, and the myrtles, and the sweet new wine, and the violet bed next to the well, and the olives we so long for!" [*]i.e. the end of the peloponnesian war, which compelled the farming population to remove inside the walls. there is another reason why the athenians rejoice in the country. the dusty streets are at best a poor playground for the children, the inner court of the house is only a respectable prison for the wife. in the country the lads can enjoy themselves; the wife and the daughters can roam about freely with delightful absence of convention. there will be no happier day in the year than when the master says, "let us set out for the farm." . some features of the attic country.--postponing our examination of athenian farmsteads and farming methods until we reach some friendly estate, various things strike us as we go along the road. one is the skilful system of irrigation,--the numerous watercourses drawn especially from the cephisus, whereby the agriculturists make use of every possible scrap of moisture for the fields, groves, and vineyards. another is the occasional olive tree we see standing, gnarled and venerable, but carefully fenced about; or even (not infrequently) we see fences only with but a dead and utterly worthless stump within. do not speak lightly of these "stumps," however. they are none the less "moriai"--sacred olive trees of athena, and carefully tended by public wardens.[*] contractors are allowed to take the fruit of the olive trees under carefully regulated conditions; but no one is allowed to remove the stumps, much less hew down a living tree. an offender is tried for "impiety" before the high court of the areopagus, and his fate is pretty surely death, for the country people, at least, regard their sacred trees with a fanatical devotion which it would take long to explain to a stranger. [*]athenians loved to dwell on the "divine gift" of the olive. thus euripides sang ("troades," ):-- in salamis, filled with the foaming of billows and murmur of bees, old telamon stayed from his roaming long ago, on a throne of the seas, looking out on the hills olive laden, enchanted, where first from the earth the gray-gleaming fruit of the maiden athena had birth. --murray, translator. the hero telamon was reputed an uncle of achilles and one of the early kings of salami. also upon the way one is pretty sure to meet a wandering beggar--a shrewd-eyed, bewhiskered fellow. he carries, not a barrel organ and monkey, but a blinking tame crow perched on his shoulder, and at every farmstead he halts to whine his nasal ditty and ask his dole. good people, a handful of barley bestow on the child of apollo, the sleek sable crow; or a trifle of whet, o kind friends, give;-- or a wee loaf of bread that the crow may live. it is counted good luck by the housewife to have a chance to feed a "holy crow," and the owner's pickings are goodly. by the time we have left the beggar behind us we are at the farm whither our excursion has been tending. . an attic farmstead.--we are to inspect the landed estate of hybrias, the son of xanthippus. it lies north of athens on the slopes of anchesmus, one of the lesser hills which roll away toward the marble-crowned summits of pentelicus. part of the farm lands lie on the level ground watered by the irrigation ditches; part upon the hillsides, and here the slopes have been terraced in a most skilful fashion in order to make the most of every possible inch of ground, and also to prevent any of the precious soil from being washed down by the torrents of february and march. the owner is a wealthy man, and has an extensive establishment; the farm buildings--once whitewashed, but now for the most part somewhat dirty--wander away over a large area. there are wide courts, deep in manure, surrounded by barns; there are sties, haymows, carefully closed granaries, an olive press, a grain mill, all kinds of stables and folds, likewise a huge irregularly shaped house wherein are lodged the numerous slaves and the hired help. the general design of this house is the same as of a city house--the rooms opening upon an inner court, but naturally its dimensions are ampler, with the ampler land space. just now the courtyard is a noisy and animated sight. the master has this moment ridden in, upon one of his periodic visits from athens; the farm overseer has run out to meet him and report, and half a dozen long, lean hunting dogs--darter, roarer, tracker, active, and more[*]--are dancing and yelping, in the hope that their owner will order a hare hunt. the overseer is pouring forth his usual burden of woe about the inefficient help and the lack of rain, and hybrias is complaining of the small spring crop--"zeus send us something better this summer!" while these worthies are adjusting their troubles we may look around the farm. [*]for an exhaustive list of names for greek dogs, see xenophon's curious "essay on hunting," ch. vii, § . . plowing, reaping, and threshing.--thrice a year the athenian farmer plows, unless he wisely determines to let his field lie fallow for the nonce; and the summer plowing on hybrias's estate is now in progress. up and down a wide field the ox team is going.[*] the plow is an extremely primitive affair--mainly of wood, although over the sharpened point which forms the plowshare a plate of iron has been fitted. such a plow requires very skilful handling to cut a good furrow, and the driver of the team has no sinecure. [*]mules were sometimes used for drawing the plow, but horses, it would seem, never. in a field near by, the hinds are reaping a crop of wheat which was late in ripening.[*] the workers are bending with semicircular sickles over their hot task; yet they form a merry, noisy crowd, full of homely "harvest songs," nominally in honor of demeter, the earth mother, but ranging upon every conceivable rustic topic. some laborers are cutting the grain, others, walking behind, are binding into sheaves and piling into clumsy ox wains. here and there a sheaf is standing, and we are told that this is left "for luck," as an offering to the rural field spirit; for your farm hand is full of superstitions. also amid the workers a youth is passing with a goodly jar of cheap wine, to which the harvesters make free to run from time to time for refreshment. close by the field is the threshing floor. more laborers--not a few bustling country lasses among them--are spreading out the sheaves with wooden forks, a little at a time, in thin layers over this circular space, which is paved with little cobblestones. more oxen and a patient mule are being driven over it--around and around--until every kernel is trodden out by their hoofs. later will come the tossing and the winnowing; and, when the grain has been thoroughly cleaned, it will be stored in great earthen jars for the purpose of sale or against the winter. . grinding at the mill.--nearer the farmhouses there rises a dull grinding noise. it is the mill preparing the flour for the daily baking, for seldom--at least in the country--will a greek grind flour long in advance of the time of use. there the round upper millstone is being revolved upon an iron pivot against its lower mate and turned by a long wooden handle. two nearly naked slave boys are turning this wearily--far pleasanter they consider the work of the harvesters, and very likely this task is set them as a punishment. as the mill revolves a slave girl pours the grain into a hole in the center of the upper millstone. as the hot, slow work goes on, the two toilers chant together a snatch from an old mill song, and we catch the monotonous strain:-- grind, mill, grind, for pittacus did grind-- who was king over great mytilene. it will be a long time before there is enough flour for the day. the slaves can at least rejoice that they live on a large farm. if hybrias owned a smaller estate, they would probably be pounding up the grain with mortar and pestle--more weary yet. . the olive orchards.--we, at least, can leave them to their work, and escape to the shade of the orchards and the vineyards. like every athenian farmer, hybrias has an olive orchard. the olives are sturdy trees. they will grow in any tolerable soil and thrive upon the mountain slopes up to as far as feet above sea level. they are not large trees, and their trunks are often grotesquely gnarled, but there is always a certain fascination about the wonderful shimmer of their leaves, which flash from gray to silver-white in a sunny wind. hybrias has wisely planted his olives at wide intervals, and in the space between the ground has been plowed up for grain. olives need little care. their harvest comes late in the autumn, after all the other crops are out of the way. they are among the most profitable products of the farm, and the owner will not mind the poor wheat harvest "if only the olives do well."[*] [*]the great drawback to olive culture was the great length of time required to mature the trees--sixteen years. the destruction of the trees, e.g. in war by a ravaging invader, was an infinitely greater calamity than the burning of the standing grain or even of the farmhouses. probably it was the ruin of their olive trees which the athenians mourned most during the ravaging of attica in the peloponnesian war. . the vineyards.--the fig orchard forms another great part of the farm, but more interesting to strangers are the vineyards. some of the grapes are growing over pointed stakes set all along the upland terraces; a portion of the vineyards, however, is on level ground. here a most picturesque method has been used for training the vines. tall and graceful trees have been set out--elm, maple, oak, poplar. the lower limbs of the trees have been cut away and up their trunks and around their upper branches now swing the vines in magnificent festoons. the growing vines have sprung from tree to tree. the warm breeze has set the rich clusters--already turning purple or golden--swaying above our heads. the air is filled with brightness, greenery, and fragrance. the effect of this "vineyard grove" is magical. . cattle, sheep, and goats.--there is also room in the orchards for apples, pears, and quinces, but there is nothing distinctive about their culture. if we are interested in cattle, however, we can spend a long time at the barns, or be guided out to the upland pasture where hybrias's flocks and herds are grazing. horses are a luxury. they are almost never used in farm work, and for riding and cavalry service it is best to import a good courser from thessaly; no attempt, therefore, is made to breed them here. but despite the small demand for beef and butter a good many cattle are raised; for oxen are needed for the plowing and carting, oxhides have a steady sale, and there is a regular call for beehives for the hecatombs at the great public sacrifices. sheep are in greater acceptance. their wool is of large importance to a land which knows comparatively little of cotton. they can live on scanty pasturage where an ox would starve. still more in favor are goats their coarse hair has a thousand uses. their flesh and cheese are among the most staple articles in the agora. sure-footed and adventurous, they scale the side of the most unpromising crags in search of herbage and can sometimes be seen perching, almost like birds, in what seem utterly inaccessible eyries. thanks to them the barren highlands of attica are turned to good account,--and between goat raising and bee culture an income can sometimes be extracted from the very summits of the mountains. as for the numerous swine, it is enough to say that they range under hybrias's oak forest and fatten on acorns, although their swineherd, wrapped in a filthy sheepskin, is a far more loutish and ignoble fellow than the "divine eumæus" glorified in the "odyssey." . the gardens and the shrine.--did we wish to linger, we could be shown the barnyard with its noisy retinue of hens, pheasants, guinea fowl, and pigeons; and we would be asked to admire the geese, cooped up and being gorged for fattening, or the stately peacocks preening their splendors. we would also hear sage disquisitions from the "oldest inhabitants" on the merits of fertilizers, especially on the uses of mixing seaweed with manure, also we would be told of the almost equally important process of burying a toad in a sealed jar in the midst of a field to save the corn from the crows and the field mice. hybrias laughs at such superstitions--"but what can you say to the rustics?" hybrias himself will display with more refined pride the gardens used by his wife and children when they come out from athens,--a fountain feeding a delightful rivulet; myrtles, roses, and pomegranate trees shedding their perfumes, which are mingled with the odors from the beds of hyacinths, violets, and asphodel. in the center of the gardens rises a chaste little shrine with a marble image and an altar, always covered with flowers or fruit by the mistress and her women. "to artemis," reads the inscription, and one is sure that the virgin goddess takes more pleasure in this fragrant temple than in many loftier fanes.[*] [*]for the description of a very beautiful and elaborate country estate, with a temple thereon to artemis, see xenophon's "anabasis," bk. v. . we are glad to add here our wreaths ere turning away from this wholesome, verdant country seat, and again taking our road to athens. chapter xx. the temples and gods of athens. . certain factors in athenian religion.--we have seen the athenians in their business and in their pleasure, at their courts, their assemblies, their military musters, and on their peaceful farms; yet one great side of athenian life has been almost ignored--the religious side. a "day in athens" spent without taking account of the gods of the city and their temples would be a day spent with almost half-closed eyes.[*] [*]no attempt is made in this discussion to enumerate the various gods and demigods of the conventional mythology, their regular attributes, etc. it is assumed the average history or manual of mythology gives sufficient information. it is far easier to learn how the athenians arrange their houses than how the average man among them adjusts his attitude toward the gods. while any searching examination of the fundamentals of greek cultus and religion is here impossible, two or three facts must, nevertheless, be kept in mind, if we are to understand even the outward side of this greek religion which is everywhere in evidence about us. first of all we observe that the greek religion is a religion of purely natural growth. no prophet has initiated it, or claimed a new revelation to supplement the older views. it has come from primitive times without a visible break even down to the athens of plato. this explains at once why so many time-honored stories of the olympic deities are very gross, and why the gods seem to give countenance to moral views which the best public opinion has long since called scandalous and criminal. the religion of athens, in other words, may justly claim to be judged by its best, not by its worst; by the morality of socrates, not of homer. secondly, this religion is not a church, nor a belief, but is part of the government. every athenian is born into accepting the fact that athena polias is the divine warder of the city, as much as he is born into accepting the fact that it is his duty to obey the strategi in battle. to repudiate the gods of athens, e.g. in favor of those of egypt, is as much iniquity as to join forces against the athenians if they are at war with egypt;--the thing is sheer treason, and almost unthinkable. for countless generations the athenians have worshipped the "ancestral gods." they are proud of them, familiar with them; the gods have participated in all the prosperity of the city. athena is as much a part of attica as gray hymettus or white-crowned pentelicus; and the very fact that comedians, like aristophanes, make good-natured fun of the divinities indicates that "they are members of the family." thirdly, notice that this religion is one mainly of outward reverence and ceremony. there is no "athenian church"; nobody has drawn up an "attic creed"--"i believe in athena, the city warder, and in demeter, the earth mother, and in zeus, the king of heaven, etc." give outward reverence, participate in the great public sacrifices, be careful in all the minutiæ of private worship, refrain from obvious blasphemies--you are then a sufficiently pious man. what you believe is of very little consequence. even if you privately believe there are no gods at all, it harms no one, provided your outward conduct is pious and moral. . what constitutes "piety" in athens.--of course there have been some famous prosecutions for "impiety." socrates was the most conspicuous victim; but socrates was a notable worshipper of the gods, and certainly all the charges of his being an "atheist" broke down. what he was actually attacked with was "corrupting the youth of athens," i.e. giving the young men such warped ideas of their private and public duties that they ceased to be moral and useful citizens. but even socrates was convicted only with difficulty[*]; a generation has passed since his death. were he on trial at present, a majority of the jury would probably be with him. [*]it might be added that if socrates had adopted a really worldly wise line of defense, he would probably have been acquitted, or subjected merely to a mild pecuniary penalty. the religion of athens is something very elastic, and really every man makes his own creed for himself, or--for paganism is almost never dogmatic--accepts the outward cultus with everybody else, and speculates at his leisure on the nature of the deity. the great bulk of the uneducated are naturally content to accept the old stories and superstitions with unthinking credulity. it is enough to know that one must pray to zeus for rain, and to hermes for luck in a slippery business bargain. there are a few philosophers who, along with perfectly correct outward observance, teach privately that the old olympian system is a snare and folly. they pass around the daring word which xenophanes uttered as early as the sixth century b.c.:-- one god there is, greatest of gods and mortals, not like to man is he in mind or in body. all of him sees, all of him thinks, and all of him harkens. this, of course, is obvious pantheism, but it is easy to cover up all kinds of pale monotheism or pantheism under vague reference to the omnipotence of "zeus." . the average athenian's idea of the gods.--the average intelligent citizen probably has views midway between the stupid rabble and the daring philosophers. to him the gods of greece stand out in full divinity, honored and worshipped because they are protectors of the good, avengers of the evil, and guardians of the moral law. they punish crime and reward virtue, though the punishment may tarry long. they demand a pure heart and a holy mind of all that approach them, and woe to him who wantonly defies their eternal laws. this is the morality taught by the master tragedians, Æschylus and sophocles, and accepted by the best public opinion at athens; for the insidious doubts cast by euripides upon the reality of any divine scheme of governance have never struck home. the scandalous stories about the domestic broils on olympus, in which homer indulges, only awaken good-natured banter. it is no longer proper--as in homeric days--to pride oneself on one's cleverness in perjury and common falsehood. athenians do not have twentieth century notions about the wickedness of lying, but certain it is the gods do not approve thereof. in short, most of the better class of athenians are genuinely "religious"; nevertheless they have too many things in this human world to interest them to spend overmuch time in adjusting their personal concepts of the deity to any system of theology. . most greeks without belief in immortality.--yet one thing we must add. this greek religious morality is built up without any clear belief in a future life. never has the average hellene been able to form a satisfactory conception of the soul's existence, save dwelling within a mortal body and under the glorious light of belovèd helios. to homer the after life in hades was merely the perpetuation of the shadows of departed humanity, "strengthless shades" who live on the gloomy plains of asphodel, feeding upon dear memories, and incapable of keen emotions or any real mental or physical progress or action. only a few great sinners like tantalus, doomed to eternal torture, or favored being like menelaus, predestined to the "blessed isles," are ordained to any real immortality. as the centuries advanced, and the possibilities of this terrestrial world grew ever keener, the hope of any future state became ever more vague. the fear of a gloomy shadow life in hades for the most part disappeared, but that was only to confirm the belief that death ends all things. where'er his course man tends, inevitable death impends, and for the worst and for the best, is strewn the same dark couch of rest.[*] [*]milman, translator. so run the lines of a poet whose name is forgotten, but who spoke well the thought of his countrymen. true there has been a contradiction of this gloomy theory. the "orphic mysteries," those secret religious rites which have gained such a hold in many parts of greece, including athens, probably hold out an earnest promise to the "initiates" of a blessed state for them hereafter. the doctrine of a real elysium for the good and a realm of torment for the evil has been expounded by many sages. pindar, the great bard of thebes, has set forth the doctrine in a glowing ode.[*] socrates, if we may trust the report plato gives of him, has spent his last hours ere drinking the hemlock, in adducing cogent, philosophic reasons for the immortality of the soul. all this is true,--and it is also true that these ideas have made no impression upon the general greek consciousness. they are accepted half-heartedly by a relatively few exceptional thinkers. men go through life and face death with no real expectation of future reward or punishment, or of reunion with the dear departed. if the gods are angry, you escape them at the grave; if the gods are friendly, all they can give is wealth, health, honor, a hale old age, and prosperity for your children. the instant after death the righteous man and the robber are equal. this fundamental deduction from the greek religion must usually, therefore, be made--it is a religion for this world only. let us see what are its usual outward operations. [*]quoted in "readings in ancient history," vol. i, pp. - , and in many works in greek literature. . the multitude of images of the gods.--gods are everywhere in athens. you cannot take the briefest walk without being reminded that the world is full of deities. there is a "herm"[*] by the main door of every house, as well as a row of them across the agora. at many of the street crossings there are little shrines to hecate; or statues of apollo agyieus, the street guardian; or else a bay tree stands there, a graceful reminder of this same god, to which it is sacred. in every house there is the small alter whereon garlands and fruit offerings are daily laid to zeus herkeios, and another altar to hestia. on one or both of these altars a little food and a little wine are cast at every meal. all public meetings or court sessions open with sacrifice; in short, to attempt any semi-important public or private act without inviting the friendly attention of the deity is unthinkable. to a well-bred athenian this is second instinct; he considers it as inevitable as the common courtesies of speech among gentlemen. plato sums up the current opinion well, "all men who have any decency, in the attempting of matters great or small, always invoke divine aid."[+] [*]a stone post about shoulder high, surmounted by a bearded head. contrary to modern impression, the average greek did not conceive of hermes as a beautiful youth. he was a grave, bearded man. the youthful aspect came through the manipulation of the hermes myths by the master sculptors--e.g. praxiteles. [+]timæus, p. c. . greek superstition.--in many cases, naturally, piety runs off into crass superstition. the gods, everybody knows, frequently make known future events by various signs. he who can understand these signs will be able to adjust his life accordingly and enjoy great prosperity. most educated men take a sensible view of "omens," and do not let them influence their conduct absurdly. some, however, act otherwise. there is, for instance, laches, one of the greatest at prodicus's feast. he lives in a realm of mingled hopes and fears, although he is wealthy and well-educated.[*] he is all the time worried about dreams, and paying out money to the sharp and wily "seer" (who counts him his best client) for "interpretations." if a weasel crosses his path he will not walk onward until somebody else has gone before him, or until he has thrown three stones across the road. he is all the time worrying about the significance of sudden noises, meteors, thunder; especially he is disturbed when he sees birds flying in groups or towards unlucky quarters of the heavens.[+] laches, however, is not merely religious--although he is always asking "which god shall i invoke now?" or "what are the omens for the success of this enterprise?" his own associates mock him as being superstitious, and say they never trouble themselves about omens save in real emergencies. still it is "bad luck" for any of them to stumble over a threshold, to meet a hare suddenly, or especially to find a snake (the companion of the dead) hidden in the house. [*]see theophratus's character, "the superstitious man." [+]the birds of clearest omen were the great birds of prey--hawks, "apollo's swift messengers," and eagles, "the birds of zeus." it was a good omen if the birds flew from left to right, a bad omen if in the reverse direction. . consulting omens.--laches's friends, however, all regularly consult the omens when they have any important enterprise on hand--a voyage, a large business venture, a marriage treaty, etc. there are several ways, not expensive; the interpreters are not priests, only low-born fellows as a rule, whose fees are trifling. you can find out about the future by casting meal upon the altar fire and noticing how it is burned, by watching how chickens pick up consecrated grain,[*] by observing how the sacrificial smoke curls upward, etc. the best way, however, is to examine the entrails of the victim after a sacrifice. here everything depends on the shape, size, etc., of the various organs, especially of the liver, bladder, spleen, and lungs, and really expert judgment by an experienced and high-priced seer is desirable. the man who is assured by a reliable seer, "the livers are large and in fine color," will go on his trading voyage with a confident heart. [*]a very convenient way,--for it was a good sign if the chickens ate eagerly and one could always get a fair omen by keeping the fowls hungry a few hours ere "putting the question"! . the great oracles.--assuredly there is a better way still to read the future; at least so greeks of earlier ages have believed. go to one of the great oracles, whereof that of apollo at delphi is the supreme, but not the unique, example. ask your question in set form from the attendant priests, not failing to offer an elaborate sacrifice and to bestow all the "gifts" (golden tripods, mixing bowls, shields, etc.) your means will allow. then (at delphi) wait silent and awe-stricken while the lady pythia, habited as a young girl, takes her seat on a tripod over a deep cleft in the rock, whence issues an intoxicating vapor. she inhales the gas, sways to and fro in an ecstasy, and now, duly "inspired," answers in a somewhat wild manner the queries which the priest will put in behalf of the supplicants. her incoherent words are very hard to understand, but the priest duly "interprets" them, i.e. gives them to the suppliant in the form of hexameter verses. sometimes the meaning of these verses is perfectly clear. very often they are truly "delphic," with a most dubious meaning--as in that oft-quoted instance, when the pythia told crœsus if he went to war with cyrus, "he would destroy a mighty monarchy," and lo, he destroyed his own! besides delphi, there are numerous lesser oracles, each with its distinctive method of "revelation." but there is none, at least of consequence, within attica, while a journey to delphi is a serious and highly expensive undertaking. and as a matter of fact delphi has partially lost credit in athens. in the great persian war delphi unpatriotically "medized"--gave oracles friendly to xerxes and utterly discouraging to the patriot cause. then after this conviction of false prophesy, the oracle fell, for most of the time, into the hands of sparta, and was obviously very willing to "reveal" things only in the lacedæmonian interest. hellenes generally and the spartans in particular have still much esteem for the utterances of the pythia, but athenians are not now very partial to her. soon will come the seizure of delphi by the phœnicians and the still further discrediting of this once great oracle. . greek sacrifices.--the two chief elements of greek worship, however, are not consideration of the future, but sacrificial and prayer. sacrifices in their simple form, as we have seen, take place continually, before every routine act. they become more formal when the proposed action is really important, or when the suppliant wishes to give thanks for some boon, or, at rarer intervals, to desire purification from some offense. there is no need of a priest for the simpler sacrifices. the father of the family can pour out the libation, can burn the food upon the altar, can utter the prayer for all his house; but in the greater sacrifices a priest is desirable, not as a sacred intermediary betwixt god and man, but as an expert to advise the worshipper what are the competent rites, and to keep him from ignorantly angering heaven by unhappy words and actions.[*] [*]there were almost no hereditary priesthoods in attica (outside the emolpidæ connected with the mystical cult of eleusis). almost anybody of good character could qualify as a priest with due training, and there was little of the sacrosanct about the usual priestly office. let us witness a sacrifice of this more formal kind, and while doing so we can tread upon the spot we have seemed in a manner to shun during our wanderings through athens, the famous and holy acropolis. . the route to the acropolis.--phormion, son of cresphontes, has been to arcadia, and won the pentathlon in some athletic contests held at mantinea. although not equal to a triumph in the "four great panhellenic contests," it was a most notable victory. before setting out he vowed a sheep to athena the virgin if he conquered. the goddess was kind, and phormion is very grateful. while the multitudes are streaming out to the gymnasia, the young athlete, brawny and handsome, surrounded by an admiring coterie of friends and kinsmen, sets out for the acropolis. phormion's home is in the "ceramicus," the so-called "potters' quarter." his walk takes him a little to the west of the agora, and close to the elegant temple of hephæstos,[*] but past this and many other fanes he hastens. it was not the fire god which gave him fair glory at mantinea. he goes onward until he is forced to make a detour to the left, at the craggy, rough hill of areopagus which rises before him. here, if time did not press, he might have tarried to pay respectful reverence before a deep fissure cleft in the side of the rock. in front of this fissure stands a little altar. all phormion's company look away as they pass the spot, and they mutter together "be propitious, o eumenides!" (literally, well-minded ones). for like true greeks they delight to call foul things with fair and propitious names; and that awful fissure and altar are sacred to the erinyes (furies), the horrible maidens, the trackers of guilt, the avengers of murder; and above their cave, on these rude rocks, sits the august court of the aeropagus when it meets as a "tribunal of blood" to try cases of homicide. [*]this temple, now called the "theseum," is the only well preserved ancient temple in modern athens. phormion's party quicken their steps and quit this spot of ill omen. then their sight is gladdened. the whole glorious acropolis stands out before them. . the acropolis of athens.--almost every greek city has its own formidable citadel, its own "acropolis,"--for "citadel" is really all this word conveys. corinth boasts of its "acro-corinthus," thebes of its "cadmeia,"--but the acropolis is in athens. the later world will care little for any other, and the later world will be right. the athenian stronghold has long ceased to be a fortress, though still it rises steep and strong. it is now one vast temple compound, covered with magnificent buildings. whether considered as merely a natural rock commanding a marvelous view, or as a consecrated museum of sculpture and architecture, it deserves its immortality. we raise our eyes to the rock as we approach it. the acropolis dominates the plain of athens. all the city seems to adjust itself to the base of its holy citadel. it lifts itself as tawny limestone rock rising about feet above the adjacent level of the town.[*] in form it is an irregular oval with its axis west and east. it is about feet long and feet at its greatest breadth. on every side but the west the precipice falls away sheer and defiant, rendering a feeble garrison able to battle with myriads.[+] to the westward, however, the gradual slope makes a natural pathway always possible, and human art has long since shaped this with convenient steps. nestling in against the precipice are various sanctuaries and caves; e.g. on the northwestern side, high up on the slope beneath the precipice, open the uncanny grottoes of apollo and of pan. on the southern side, close under the very shadow of the citadel, is the temple of asclepius, and, more to the southeast, the great open theater of dionysus has been scooped out of the rock, a place fit to contain an audience of some , .[&] [*]it is nearly feet above the level of the sea. [+]recall the defense which the acropolis was able to make against xerxes's horde, when the garrison was small and probably ill organized, and had only a wooden barricade to eke out the natural defenses. [&]the stone seats of this theater do not seem to have been built till about b.c. up to that time the surface of the ground sloping back to the acropolis seems simply to have been smoothed off, and probably covered with temporary wooden seats on the days of the great dramatic festivals. so much for the bare "bones" of the acropolis; but now under the dazzling sunshine how it glitters with indescribable splendor! before us as we ascend a whole succession of buildings seem lifting themselves, not singly, not in hopeless confusion, but grouped admirably together by a kind of wizardry, so that the harmony is perfect,--each visible, brilliant column and pinnacle, not merely flashing its own beauty, but suggesting another greater beauty just behind. . the use of color upon athenian architecture and sculptures.--while we look upward at this group of temples and their wealth of sculptures, let us state now something we have noticed during all our walks around athens, but have hitherto left without comment. every temple and statue in athens is not left in its bare white marble, as later ages will conceive is demanded by "greek architecture" and statuary, but is decked in brilliant color--"painted," if you will use an almost unfriendly word. the columns and gables and ceilings of the buildings are all painted. blue, red, green, and gold blaze on all the members and ornaments. the backgrounds of the pediments, metopes, and frieze are tinted some uniform color on which the sculptured figures in relief stand out clearly. the figures themselves are tinted or painted, at least on the hair, lips, and eyes. flesh-colored warriors are fighting upon a bright red background. the armor and horse trappings on the sculptures are in actual bronze. the result is an effect indescribably vivid. blues and reds predominate: the flush of light and color from the still more brilliant heavens above adds to the effect. shall we call it garish? we have learned to know the taste of athenians too well to doubt their judgment in matters of pure beauty. and they are right. under an athenian sky temples and statues demand a wealth of color which in a somber clime would seem intolerable. the brilliant lines of the acropolis buildings are the just answer of the athenian to the brilliancy of helios. . the chief buildings on the acropolis.--and now to ascend the acropolis. we leave the discussion of the details of the temples and the sculpture to the architects and archæologists. the whole plateau of the rock is covered with religious buildings, altars, and statues. we pass through the propylæa, the worthy rival of the parthenon behind, a magnificent portal, with six splendid doric columns facing us; and as we go through them, to right and to left open out equally magnificent columned porticoes.[*] as we emerge from the propylæa the whole vision of the sacred plateau bursts upon us simultaneously. we can notice only the most important of the buildings. at the southwestern point of the acropolis on the angle of rock which juts out beyond the propylæa is the graceful little temple of the "wingless victory," built in the ionic style. the view commanded by its bastion will become famous throughout the world. behind this, nearer the southern side, stands the less important temple of artemis braurönia. nearer the center and directly before the entrance rises a colossal brazen statue--"monstrous," many might call its twenty-six feet of height, save that a master among masters has cast the spell of his genius over it. this is the famous athena promachos,[+] wrought by phidias out of the spoils of marathon. the warrior goddess stands in full armor and rests upon her mighty lance. the gilded lance tip gleams so dazzlingly we may well believe the tale that sailors use it for a first landmark as they sail up the coast from cape sunium. [*]that to the north was the larger and contained a kind of picture gallery. [+]athena foremost in battle. looking again upon the complex of buildings we single out another on the northern side: an irregularly shaped temple, or rather several temples joined together, the erechtheum, wherein is the sanctuary of athena polias (the revered "city warden"), the ancient wooden statue, grotesque, beloved, most sacred of all the holy images in athens. and here on the southern side of this building is the famous caryatid porch; the "porch of the maidens," which will be admired as long as athens has a name. but our eyes refuse to linger long on any of these things. behind the statue of the promachos, a little to the southern side of the plateau, stands the parthenon--the queen jewel upon the crown of athens. . the parthenon.--let others analyze its sculptures and explain the technical reasons why ictinus and callicrates, the architects, and phidias, the sculptor, created here the supreme masterpiece for the artistic world. we can state only the superficialities. it is a noble building by mere size; feet measure its side, feet its front. forty-six majestic doric columns surround it; they average thirty-four feet in height, and six feet three inches at the base. all these facts, however, do not give the soul of the parthenon. walk around it slowly, tenderly, lovingly. study the elaborate stories told by the pediments,--on the east front the birth of athena, on the west the strife of athena and poseidon for the possession of athens. trace down the innumerable lesser sculptures on the "metopes" under the cornice,--showing the battles of the giants, centaurs, amazons, and of the greeks before troy; finally follow around, on the whole inner circuit of the body of the temple, the frieze,[*] showing in bas-relief the panathenaic procession, with the beauty, nobility, and youth of athens marching in glad festival; comprehend that these sculptures will never be surpassed in the twenty-four succeeding centuries; that here are supreme examples for the artists of all time,--and then, in the face of this final creation, we can realize that the parthenon will justify its claim to immortality. [*]this, of course, is on the outside wall of the "cells," but inside the surrounding colonnade. one thing more. there are hardly any straight lines in the parthenon. to the eye, the members and the steps of the substructure may seem perfectly level; but the measuring rod betrays marvelously subtle curves. as nature abhors right angles in her creations of beauty, so have these greeks. rigidity, unnaturalness, have been banished. the parthenon stands, not merely embellished with inimitable sculptures, but perfectly adjusted to the natural world surrounding.[*] [*]it was an inability to discover and execute these concealed curves which give certain of the modern imitations of the parthenon their unpleasant impressions of harness and rigidity. we have seen only the exterior of the parthenon. we must wait now ere visiting the interior, for phormion is beginning his sacrifice. . a sacrifice on the acropolis.--across the sacred plateau advances the little party. as it goes under the propylæa a couple of idle temple watchers[*] give its members a friendly nod. the acropolis rock itself seems deserted, save for a few worshippers and a party of admiring achæan visitors who are being shown the glories of the parthenon.[+] there seems to be a perfect labyrinth of statues of gods, heroes, and departed worthies, and almost as many altars, great and small, placed in every direction. phormion leads his friends onward till they come near to the wide stone platform somewhat in the rear of the parthenon. here is the "great altar" of athena, whereon the "hecatombs" will be sacrificed, even a hundred oxen or more,[&] at some of the major public festivals; and close beside it stands also a small and simple altar sacred to athena parthenos, athena the virgin. suitable attendants have been in readiness since dawn waiting for worshippers. one of phormion's party leads behind him a bleating white lamb "without blemish."[$] it is a short matter now to bring the firewood and the other necessaries. the sacrifice takes place without delay. [*]the most important function of these watchers seems to have been to prevent dogs from entering the acropolis. probably they were inefficient old men favored with sinecure offices. [+]the acropolis seems to have become a great "show place" for visitors to athens soon after the completion of the famous temples. [&]we know by an inscription of oxen being needed for a single athenian festival. [$]this was a very proper creature to sacrifice to a great olympian deity like athena. goats were not suitable for her, although desirable for most of the other gods. it was unlawful to sacrifice swine to aphrodite. when propitiating the gods of the underworld,--hades, persephone, etc.,--a black victim was in order. poor people could sacrifice doves, cocks, and other birds. first a busy "temple sweeper" goes over the ground around the altar with a broom; then the regular priest, a dignified gray-headed man with a long ungirt purple chiton, and a heavy olive garland, comes forward bearing a basin of holy water. this basin is duly passed to the whole company as it stands in a ring, and each in turn dips his hand and sprinkles his face and clothes with the lustral water. meantime the attendant has placed another wreath around the head of the lamb. the priest raises his hand. "let there be silence," he commands (lest any unlucky word be spoken); and in a stillness broken only by the auspicious twittering of the sparrows amid the parthenon gables, he takes barley corns from a basket, an sprinkles them on the altar and over the lamb. with his sacred knife he cuts a lock of hair from the victims head and casts it on the fire. promptly now the helper comes forward to complete the sacrifice. phormion and his friends are a little anxious. will the lamb take fright, hang back, and have to be dragged to its unwilling death? the clever attendant has cared for that. a sweet truss of dried clover is lying just under the altar. the lamb starts forward, bleating joyously. as it bows its head[*] as if consenting to its fate the priest stabs it dexterously in the neck with his keen blade. the helper claps a bowl under the neck to catch the spurting blood. a flute player in readiness, but hitherto silent, suddenly strikes up a keen blast to drown the dying moans of the animal. hardly has the lamb ceased to struggle before the priest and the helper have begun to cut it up then and there. certain bits of the fat and small pieces from each limb are laid upon the altar, and promptly consumed. these are the goddess's peculiar portion, and the credulous at least believe that she, though unseen, is present to eat thereof; certainly the sniff of the burning meat is grateful to her divine nostrils. the priest and the helpers are busy taking off the hide and securing the best joint--these are their "fees" for professional services. all the rest will be duly gathered up by phormion's body servant and borne home,--for phormion will give a fine feast on "sacred mutton" that night.[+] [*]if a larger animal--an ox--failed to bow its head auspiciously, the omen could be rectified by suddenly splashing a little water in the ears. [+]as already suggested (section ) a sacrifice (public, or, if on a large scale, private) was about the only occasion on which athenians tasted beef, pork, or mutton. meantime, while the goddess's portion burns, phormion approaches the altar, bearing a shallow cup of unmixed wine, and flings it upon the flame. "be propitious, o lady," he cries, "and receive this my drink offering."[*] [*]the original intention of this libation at the sacrifice was very clearly to provide the gods with wine to "wash down" their meat. the sacrifice is now completed. the priest assures phormion that the entrails of the victim foretokened every possible favor in future athletic contests--and this, and his insinuating smile, win him a silver drachma to supplement his share of the lamb. phormion readjusts the chaplet upon his own head, and turns towards the parthenon. after the sacrifice will come the prayer. . the interior of the parthenon and the great image of athena.--the whole acropolis is the home of athena. the other gods harbored thereon are only her inferior guests. upon the acropolis the dread goddess displays her many aspects. in the erechtheum we worship her as athena polias, the ancient guardian of the hearths and homes of the city. in the giant promachus, we see her the leader in war,--the awful queen who went with her fosterlings to the deadly grappling at marathon and at salamis; in the little temple of "wingless victory"[*] we see her as athena the victorious, triumphant over barbarian and hellenic foe; but in the parthenon we adore in her purest conception--the virgin queen, now chaste and clam, her battles over, the pure, high incarnations of all "the beautiful and the good" that may possess spirit and mind,--the sovran intellect, in short, purged of all carnal, earthy passion. it is meet that such a goddess should inhabit such a dwelling as the parthenon.[+] [*]the term "wingless victory" (nikë apteros) has reference to a special type and aspect of athena, not to the goddess nikë (victory) pure and simple. [+]there was still another aspect in which athena was worshipped on the acropolis. she had a sacred place ("temenos"), though without a temple, sacred to her as athena erganë--athena protectress of the arts. phormion passes under the eastern porch, and does not forget (despite the purification before the sacrifice) to dip the whisk broom, lying by the door, in the brazen laver of holy water and again to sprinkle himself. he passes out of the dazzling sunlight into a chamber that seems at first to be lost in a vast, impenetrable gloom. he pauses and gazes upward; above him, as little by little his eyes get their adjustment, a faint pearly light seems streaming downward. it is coming through the translucent marble slabs of the roof of the great temple.[*] then out of the gloom gleam shapes, objects,--a face. he catches the glitter of great jewels and of massy gold, as parts of the rich garments and armor of some vast image. he distinguishes at length a statue,--the form of a woman, nearly forty feet in height. her left wrist rests upon a mighty shield; her right hand holds a winged "victory," itself of nigh human size. upon her breast is the awful ægis, the especial breastplate of the high gods. around the foot of her shield coils a serpent. upon her head is a might helmet. and all the time that these things are becoming manifest, evermore clearly one beholds the majestic face,--sweetness without weakness, intellectuality without coldness, strength mingled justly with compassion. this is the athena parthenos, the handiwork of phidias.[+] [*]this seems to be the most reasonable way to assume that the "cella" of the parthenon was lighted, in view of the danger, in case of open skylights, of damage to the holy image by wind and rain. [+]of this statue no doubt there could be said what dion chrysostomos said of the equally famous "zeus" erected by phidias at olympia. "the man most depressed with woes, forgot his ills whilst gazing on this statue, so much light and beauty had phidias infused within it." besides the descriptions in the ancient writers we get a clear idea of the general type of the athena parthenos from recently discovered statuettes, especially the "varvakeion" model ( / inches high). this last is cold and lifeless as a work of art, but fairly accurate as to details. [note from brett: in , this remains the best statue ever found representing athena parthenos and a detailed analysis of the effect of the original statue on the populous can be found at http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/cc /lapatin.htm. the statuette itself is currently in the athens museum.] we will not heap up description. what boots it to tell that the arms and vesture of this "chryselephantine" statue are of pure gold; that the flesh portions are of gleaming ivory; that phidias has wrought the whole so nobly together that this material, too sumptuous for common artists, becomes under his assembling the perfect substance for the manifestation of deity? ...awestruck by the vision, though often he has seen it, phormion stands long in reverent silence. then at length, casting a pinch of incense upon the brazier, constantly smoking before the statue, he utters his simple prayer. . greek prayers.--greek prayers are usually very pragmatic. "who," asks cicero, who can speak for both greeks and romans in this particular, "ever thanked the gods that he was a good man? men are thankful for riches, honor, safety.... we beg of the sovran god [only] what makes us safe, sound, rich and prosperous."[*] phormion is simply a very average, healthy, handsome young athenian. while he prays he stretches his hands on high, as is fitting to a deity of olympus.[+] his petition runs much as follows:-- "athena, queen of the Ægis, by whatever name thou lovest best,[&] give ear. "inasmuch as thou dids't heed my vow, and grant me fair glory at mantinea, bear witness i have been not ungrateful. i have offered to thee a white sheep, spotless and undefiled. and now i have it in my mind to attempt the pentathlon at the next isthmia at corinth. grant me victory even in that; and not one sheep but five, all as good as this to-day, shall smoke upon thine altar. grant also unto me, my kinsmen and all my friends, health, riches and fair renown." [*]cicero, "de nat. deor," ii. . [+]in praying to a deity of the lower world the hands would be held down. a greek almost never knelt, even in prayer. he would have counted it degrading. [&]this formula would be put in, lest some favorite epithet of the divinity be omitted. a pagan prayer surely; and there is a still more pagan epilogue. phormion has an enemy, who is not forgotten. "and oh! gracious, sovran athena, blast my enemy xenon, who strove to trip me foully in the foot race. may his wife be childless or bear him only monsters; may his whole house perish; may all his wealth take flight; may his friends forsake him; may war soon cut him off, or may he die amid impoverished, dishonored old age. if this my sacrifice has found favor in thy sight, may all these evils come upon him unceasingly. and so will i adore the and sacrifice unto thee all my life."[*] [*]often a curse would become a real substitute for a prayer; e.g. at athens, against a rascally and traitorous general, a solemn public curse would be pronounced at evening by all the priests and priestesses of the city, each shaking in the air a red cloth in token of the bloody death to which the offender was devoted. the curse then is a most proper part of a greek prayer! phormion is not conscious of blasphemy. he merely follows invariable custom. it is useless to expect "christian sentiments" in the fourth century b.c., yet perhaps an age should be judged not by its average, but by its best. athenians can utter nobler prayers than those of the type of phormion. xenophon makes his model young householder ishomenus pray nobly "that i may enjoy health and strength of body, the respect of my fellow citizens, honorable safety in times of war, and wealth honestly increased."[*] [*]xenophon, "the economist," xi, p. . there is a simple little prayer also which seems to be a favorite with the farmers. its honest directness carries its own message. "rain, rain, dear zeus, upon the fields of the athenians and the plains."[*] [*]it was quoted later to us by the emperor marcus aurelius, who adds, "in truth, we ought not to pray at all, or we ought to pray in this simple and noble fashion." higher still ascends the prayer of socrates, when he begs for "the good" merely, leaving it to the wise gods to determine what "the good" for him may be; and in one prayer, which plato puts in socrates's mouth, almost all the best of greek ideals and morality seems uttered. it is spoken not on the acropolis, but beside the ilissus at the close of the delightful walk and chat related in the "phœdrus." "beloved pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me the beauty of the inward soul, and may the outward and the inward man be joined in perfect harmony. may i reckon the wise to be wealthy, and may i have such a quantity of gold as none but the temperate can carry. anything more?--that prayer, i think, is enough for me." phormion and his party are descending to the city to spend the evening in honest mirth and feasting, but we are fain to linger, watching the slow course of the shadows as they stretch across the attic hills. sea, sky, plain, mountains, and city are all before us, but we will not spend words upon them now. only for the buildings, wrought by pericles and his might peers, we will speak out our admiration. we will gladly confirm the words plutarch shall some day say of them, "unimpaired by time, their appearance retains the fragrance of freshness, as though they had been inspired by an eternally blooming life and a never aging soul."[*] [*]plutarch wrote this probably after a.d., when the parthenon had stood for about five and half centuries. chapter xxi. the great festivals of athens. . the frequent festivals at athens.--surely our "day in athens" has been spent from morn till night several times over, so much there is to see and tell. yet he would be remiss who left the city of athena before witnessing at least several of the great public festivals which are the city's noble pride. there are a prodigious number of religions festivals in athens.[*] they take the place of the later "christian sabbath" and probably create a somewhat equal number of rest days during the year, although at more irregular intervals. they are far from being "scotch sundays,"[+] however. on them the semi-riotous "joy of life" which is part of the greek nature finds its fullest, ofttimes its wildest, expression. they are days of merriment, athletic sports, great civic spectacles, chorals, public dances.[&] to complete our picture of athens we must tarry for a swift cursory glance upon at least three of these fête days of the city of pericles, sophocles, and phidias. [*]in gulick ("life of the ancient greeks," pp. - ) there is a valuable list of attic festivals. the athenians had over thirty important religious festivals, several of them, e.g., the thesmorphoria (celebrated by the women in honor of demeter), extending over a number of days. [+][note from brett: a "scotch sunday" refers to the practice of the sabbath day in scotland. during the sabbath day (at the time of the author of this work) in scotland no activity goes on except for church. there is no travel, no telecommunication, no cooking, not allowed to read the newspaper, etc. a "scotch sunday" therefore, represents a day of religious austerity.] [&]it is needless to point out that to the greeks, as to many other ancient peoples,--for example, the hebrews,--dancing often had a religious significance and might be a regular part of the worship of the gods. . the eleusinia.--our first festival is the eleusinia, the festival of the eleusinian mysteries. it is september, the " th of boëdromiön," the athenians will say. four days have been spent by the "initiates" and the "candidates" in symbolic sacrifices and purifications.[*] on one of these days the arch priest, the "hierophant," has preached a manner of sermon at the painted porch in the agora setting forth the awfulness and spiritual efficacy of these mysteries, sacred to demeter the earth mother, to her daughter persephone, and also to the young iacchus, one of the many incarnations of dionysus, and who is always associated at elusis with the divine "mother and daughter." the great cry has gone forth to the initiates--"to the sea, ye mystæ!" and the whole vast multitude has gone down to bathe in the purifying brine. [*]not all athenians were among the "initiated," but it does not seem to have been hard to be admitted to the oaths and examination which gave one participation in the mysteries. about all a candidate had to prove was blameless character. women could be initiated as well as men. now on this fifth day comes the sacred procession from athens across the mountain pass to eleusis. the participates, by thousands, of both sexes and of all ages, are drawn up in the agora ere starting. the hierophant, the "torchbearer," the "sacred herald," and the other priests wear long flowing raiment and high mitres like orientals. they also, as well as the company, wear myrtle and ivy chaplets and bear ears of corn and reapers' sickles. the holy image of iacchus is borne in a car, the high priests marching beside it; and forth with pealing shout and chant they go,--down the ceramicus, through the dipylon gate, and over the hill to eleusis, twelve miles away. . the holy procession to eleusis.--very sacred is the procession, but not silent and reverential. it is an hour when the untamed animal spirits of the greeks, who after all are a young race and who are gripped fast by natural instinct, seem uncurbed. loud rings the "orgiastic" cry, "iacchë! iacchë! evoë!" there are wild shouts, dances, jests, songs,[*] postures. as the marchers pass the several sanctuaries along the road there are halts for symbolic sacrifices. so the multitude slowly mounts the long heights of mount Ægaleos, until--close to the temple of aphrodite near the summit of the pass--the view opens of the broad blue bay of eleusis, shut in by the isle of salamis, while to the northward are seen the green thrasian plain, with the white houses of eleusis town[+] near the center, and the long line of outer hills stretching away to megara and bœotia. [*]we do not possess the official chant of the mystæ used on their march to eleusia. very possibly it was of a swift riotous nature like the bacchinals' song in euripides "bacchinals" (well translated by way or by murray). [+]this was about the only considerable town in attica outside of athens. the evening shadows are falling, while the peaceful army sweeps over the mountain wall and into eleusis. every marcher produces a torch, and bears it blazing aloft as he nears his destination. seen in the dark from eleusis, the long procession of innumerable torches must convey an effect most magical. . the mysteries of eleusis.--what follows at eleusis? the "mysteries" are "mysteries" still; we cannot claim initiation and reveal them. there seem to be manifold sacrifices of a symbolic significance, the tasting of sacred "portions" of food and drink--a dim foreshadowing of the christian sacrament of the eucharist; especially in the great hall of the temple of the mystæ in eleusis there take place a manner of symbolic spectacles, dramas perhaps one may call them, revealing the origins of iacchus, the mystical union of persephone and zeus, and the final joy of demeter. this certainly we can say of these ceremonies. they seem to have afforded to spiritually minded men a sense of remission of personal sin which the regular religion could never give; they seem also to have conveyed a fair hope of immortality, such as most greeks doubted. sophocles tells thus the story: "thrice blessed are they who behold these mystical rites, ere passing to hades' realm. they alone have life there. for the rest all things below are evil."[*] and in face of imminent death, perhaps in hours of shipwreck, men are wont to ask one another, "have you been initiated at eleusis?" [*]sophocles, "frag." . . the greater dionysia and the drama.--again we are in athens in the springtime: "the eleventh of elapheboliön" [march]. it is the third day of the greater dionysia. the city has been in high festival; all the booths in the agora hum with redoubled life; strangers have flocked in from outlying pars of hellas to trade, admire, and recreate; under pretext of honoring the wine god, inordinate quantities of wine are drunk with less than the prudent mixture of water. there is boisterous frolicking, singing, and jesting everywhere. it is early blossom time. all whom you meet wear huge flower crowns, and pelt you with the fragrant petals of spring.[*] [*]pindar ("frag." ) says thus of the joy and beauty of this fête: "[lo!] this festival is due when the chamber of the red-robed hours is opened and odorous plants wake to the fragrant spring. then we scatter on undying earth the violet, like lovely tresses, and twine roses in our hair; then sound the voice of song, the flute keeps time, and dancing choirs resound the praise of semele." so for two days the city has made merry, and now on the third, very early, "to the theater" is the word on every lip. magistrates in their purple robes of office, ambassadors from foreign states, the priests and religious dignitaries, are all going to the front seats of honor. ladies of gentle family, carefully veiled but eager and fluttering, are going with their maids, if the productions of the day are to be tragedies not comedies.[*] all the citizens are going, rich and poor, for here again we meet "athenian democracy"; and the judgment and interest of the tatter-clad fishermen seeking the general "two-obol" seats may be almost as correct and keen as that of the lordly alcmænoid in his gala himation. [*]it seems probable (on our uncertain information) that athenian ladies attended the moral and proper tragedies. it was impossible for them to attend the often very coarse comedies. possibly at the tragedies they sat in a special and decently secluded part of the theater. . the theater of dionysus.--early dawn it is when the crowds pour through the barriers around the theater of dionysus upon the southern slope of the acropolis. they sit (full , or more) wedged close together upon rough wooden benches set upon the hill slopes.[*] at the foot of their wide semicircle is a circular space of ground, beaten hard, and ringed by a low stone barrier. it is some ninety feet in diameter. this is the "orchestra," the "dancing place," wherein the chorus may disport itself and execute its elaborate figures. behind the orchestra stretches a kind of tent or booth, the "skenë." within this the actors may retire to change their costumes, and the side nearest to the audience is provided with a very simple scene,--some kind of elementary scenery panted to represent the front of a temple or palace, or the rocks, or the open country. this is nearly the entire setting.[+] if there are any slight changes of this screen, they must be made in the sight of the entire audience. the athenian theater has the blue dome of heaven above it, the red acropolis rock behind it. beyond the "skenë" one can look far away to the country and the hills. the keen attic imagination will take the place of the thousand arts of the later stage-setter. sophocles and his rivals, even as shakespeare in elizabeth's england, can sound the very depths and scale the loftiest heights of human passion, with only a simulacrum of the scenery, properties, and mechanical artifices which will trick out a very mean twentieth century theater. [*]these benches (before the stone theater was built in b.c.) may be imagined as set up much like the "bleachers" at a modern baseball park. we know that ancient audiences wedged in very close. [+]i think it is fairly certain that the classical attic theater was without any stage, and that the actors appeared on the same level as the chorus. as to the extreme simplicity of all the scenery and properties there is not the least doubt. . the production of a play.--the crowds are hushed and expectant. the herald, ere the play begins, proclaims the award of a golden crown to some civic benefactor: a moment of ineffable joy to the recipient; for when is a true greek happier than when held up for public glorification? then comes the summons to the first competing poet. "lead on your chorus."[*] the intellectual feast of the dionysia has begun. [*]in the fourth century b.c. when the creation of original tragedies was in decline, a considerable part of the dionysia productions seem to have been devoted to the works of the earlier masters, Æschylus, sophocles, and euripides. to analyze the attic drama is the task of the philosopher and the literary expert. we observe only the superficialities. there are never more than three speaking actors before the audience at once. they wear huge masques, shaped to fit their parts. the wide mouthpieces make the trained elocution carry to the most remote parts of the theater. the actors wear long trailing robes and are mounted on high shoes to give them sufficient stature before the distant audience. when a new part is needed in the play, an actor retires to the booth, and soon comes forth with a changed masque and costume--an entirely new character. in such a costume and masque, play of feature and easy gesture is impossible; but the actors carry themselves with a stately dignity and recite their often ponderous lines with a grace which redeems them from all bombast. an essential part of the play is the chorus; indeed the chorus was once the main feature of the drama, the actors insignificant innovations. with fifteen members for the tragedy, twenty-four for the comedy,[*] old men of thebes, trojan dames, athenian charcoal burners, as the case may demand--they sympathize with the hard-pressed hero, sing lusty choral odes, and occupy the time with song and dance while the actors are changing costume. [*]in the "middle" and "later" comedy, so called, the chorus entirely disappears. the actors do everything. the audience follows all the philosophic reasoning of the tragedies, the often subtle wit of the comedies, with that same shrewd alertness displayed at the jury courts of the pnyx. "authis! authis!" (again! again!) is the frequent shout, if approving. date stones and pebbles as well as hootings are the reward of silly lines or bad acting. at noon there is an interlude to snatch a hasty luncheon (perhaps without leaving one's seat). only when the evening shadows are falling does the chorus of the last play approach the altar in the center of the orchestra for the final sacrifice. a whole round of tragedies have been given.[*] the five public judges announce their decision: an ivy wreath to the victorious poet; to his "choregus" (the rich man who has provided his chorus and who shares his glory) the right to set up a monumnet in honor of the victory. home goes the multitude,--to quarrel over the result, to praise or blame the acting, to analyze the remarkable acuteness the poet's handling of religious, ethical, or social questions. [*]comedies, although given at this dionysia, were more especially favored at the lenæa, an earlier winter festival. the theater, like the dicasteries and the pnyx, is one of the great public schools of athens. . the great panathenaic procession.--then for the last time let us visit athens, at the fête which in its major form comes only once in four years. it is the th of metageitniön (august), and the eighth day of the greater panathenæa, the most notable of all athenian festivals. by it is celebrated the union of all attica by theseus, as one happy united country under the benign sway of might athena,--an ever fortunate union, which saved the land from the sorrowful feuds of hostile hamlets such as have plagued so many hellenic countries. on the earlier days of the feast there have been musical contests and gymnastic games much after the manner of the olympic games, although the contestants have been drawn from attica only. there has been a public recital of homer. before a great audience probably at the pnyx or the theater a rhapsodist of noble presence--clad in purple and with a golden crown--has made the trojan war live again, as with his well-trained voice he held the multitude spellbound by the music of the stately hexameters. now we are at the eighth day. all athens will march in its glory to the acropolis, to bear to the shrine of athena the sacred "peplos"--a robe specially woven by the noble women of athens to adorn the image of the guardian goddess.[*] the houses have opened; the wives, maids, and mothers of gentle family have come forth to march in the procession, all elegantly wreathed and clad in their best, bearing the sacred vessels and other proper offerings. the daughter of the "metics," the resident foreigners, go as attendants of honor with them. the young men and the old, the priests, the civil magistrates, the generals, all have their places. proudest of all are the wealthy and high-born youths of the cavalry, who now dash to and fro in their clattering pride. the procession is formed in the outer ceramicus. amid cheers, chants, chorals, and incense smoke it sweeps through the agora, and slowly mounts the acropolis. center of all the marchers is the glittering peplos, raised like a sail upon a wheeled barge of state--"the ship of athena." upon the acropolis, while the old peplos is piously withdrawn from the image and the new one substituted, there is a prodigious sacrifice. a might flame roars heavenward from the "great altar"; while enough bullocks[+] and kine[&] have been slaughtered to enable every citizen--however poor--to bear away a goodly mess of roasted meat that night. [*]not that this robe was for the revered ancient and wooden image of athena polias, not for the far less venerable statue of athena parthenos. [+][note from brett: a bullock is a young, possibly castrated, bull.] [&][note from brett: kine is the archaic plural form of "cow."] . the view from the temple of wingless victory.--we will not wait for the feasting but rather will take our way to the temple of wingless victory, looking forth to the west of the acropolis rock. so many things we see which we would fain print on the memory. behind us we have just left the glittering parthenon, and the less august but hardly less beautiful erechtheum, with its "porch of the maidens." to our right is the wide expanse of the roofs of the city and beyond the dark olive groves of colonus, and the slopes of Ægaleos. in the near foreground, are the red crags of areopagus and the gray hill of the pnyx. but the eye will wander farther. it is led away across the plainland to the bay of phaleron, the castellated hill of munychia, the thin stretch of blue water and the brown island seen across it--salamis and its strait of the victory. across the sparkling vista of the sea rise the headlands of Ægina and of lesser isles; farther yet rise the lordly peaks of argolis. or we can look to the southward. our gaze rounds down the mountainous attic coast full thirty miles to where sunium thrusts out its haughty cape into the Ægean and points the way across the island-studded sea. evening is creeping on. behind us sounds the great pæan, the solemn chant to athena, bestower of good to men. as the sun goes down over the distant argolic hills his rays spread a clear pathway of gold across the waters. islands, seas, mountains far and near, are touched now with shifting hues,--saffron, violet, and rose,--beryl, topaz, sapphire, amethyst. there will never be another landscape like unto this in all the world. gladly we sum up our thoughts in the cry of a son of athens, aristophanes, master of song, who loved her with that love which the land of athena can ever inspire in all its children, whether its own by adoption or by birth:-- "oh, thou, our athens! violet-crowned, brilliant, most enviable of cities!" ******************************************************************* this ebook was one of project gutenberg's early files produced at a time when proofing methods and tools were not well developed. there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed as ebook (# ) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ ******************************************************************* book iv. from the end of the persian invasion to the death of cimon. b. c. --b. c. . 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 [ ]. 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 [ ]. 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 [ ]. 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 [ ] 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 [ ], 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. [ ] 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." [ ] 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. [ ] 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 [ ], and had already in that year planned the construction of a harbour in the ancient deme of piraeus [ ], 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. [ ] 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 [ ] 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 [ ]. 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. [ ] 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 [ ], was the first author who, without any knowledge of practical affairs, wrote upon the theory of government. temples [ ], 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. [ ] 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 [ ], 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 [ ]. the capture of byzantium brought the spartan regent into contact with many captured and noble persians [ ], 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 [ ]. 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 [ ]. 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. [ ] 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 [ ]; 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. ) 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 [ ]. 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." [ ] 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. [ ] in early youth, like themistocles, his conduct had been wild and dissolute [ ]; 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 [ ], 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. ), 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 [ ]. 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 [ ], 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. ). xxi. it is about the period of cimon's conquest of eion and scyros (b. c. ) 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 [ ]; 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?" [ ] 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 [ ] 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. ). 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 [ ] 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 [ ]--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 [ ] 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." [ ] iii. in the mean while the new ascendency of athens was already endangered. the carystians in the neighbouring isle of euboea openly defied her fleet, and many of the confederate states, seeing themselves delivered from all immediate dread of another invasion of the medes, began to cease contributions both to the athenian navy and the common treasury. for a danger not imminent, service became burdensome and taxation odious. and already some well-founded jealousy of the ambition of athens increased the reluctance to augment her power. naxos was the first island that revolted from the conditions of the league, and thither cimon, having reduced the carystians, led a fleet numerous and well equipped. whatever the secret views of cimon for the aggrandizement of his country, he could not but feel himself impelled by his own genius and the popular expectation not lightly to forego that empire of the sea, rendered to athens by the profound policy of themistocles and the fortunate prudence of aristides; and every motive of grecian, as well as athenian, policy justified the subjugation of the revolters--an evident truth in the science of state policy, but one somewhat hastily lost sight of by those historians who, in the subsequent and unlooked-for results, forgot the necessity of the earlier enterprise. greece had voluntarily intrusted to athens the maritime command of the confederate states. to her, greece must consequently look for no diminution of the national resources committed to her charge; to her, that the conditions of the league were fulfilled, and the common safety of greece ensured. commander of the forces, she was answerable for the deserters. nor, although persia at present remained tranquil and inert, could the confederates be considered safe from her revenge. no compact of peace had been procured. the more than suspected intrigues of xerxes with pausanias were sufficient proofs that the great king did not yet despair of the conquest of greece. and the peril previously incurred in the want of union among the several states was a solemn warning not to lose the advantages of that league, so tardily and so laboriously cemented. without great dishonour and without great imprudence, athens could not forego the control with which she had been invested; if it were hers to provide the means, it was hers to punish the defaulters; and her duty to greece thus decorously and justly sustained her ambition for herself. iv. and now it is necessary to return to the fortunes of pausanias, involving in their fall the ruin of one of far loftier virtues and more unequivocal renown. the recall of pausanias, the fine inflicted upon him, his narrow escape from a heavier sentence, did not suffice to draw him, intoxicated as he was with his hopes and passions, from his bold and perilous intrigues. it is not improbable that his mind was already tainted with a certain insanity [ ]. and it is a curious physiological fact, that the unnatural constraints of sparta, when acting on strong passions and fervent imaginations, seem, not unoften, to have produced a species of madness. an anecdote is recorded [ ], which, though romantic, is not perhaps wholly fabulous, and which invests with an interest yet more dramatic the fate of the conqueror of plataea. at byzantium, runs the story, he became passionately enamoured of a young virgin named cleonice. awed by his power and his sternness, the parents yielded her to his will. the modesty of the maiden made her stipulate that the room might be in total darkness when she stole to his embraces. but unhappily, on entering, she stumbled against the light, and the spartan, asleep at the time, imagined, in the confusion of his sudden waking, that the noise was occasioned by one of his numerous enemies seeking his chamber with the intent to assassinate him. seizing the persian cimeter [ ] that lay beside him, he plunged it in the breast of the intruder, and the object of his passion fell dead at his feet. "from that hour," says the biographer, "he could rest no more!" a spectre haunted his nights--the voice of the murdered girl proclaimed doom to his ear. it is added, and, if we extend our belief further, we must attribute the apparition to the skill of the priests, that, still tortured by the ghost of cleonice, he applied to those celebrated necromancers who, at heraclea [ ], summoned by gloomy spells the manes of the dead, and by their aid invoked the spirit he sought to appease. the shade of cleonice appeared and told him, "that soon after his return to sparta he would be delivered from all his troubles." [ ] such was the legend repeated, as plutarch tells us, by many historians; the deed itself was probable, and conscience, even without necromancy, might supply the spectre. v. whether or not this story have any foundation in fact, the conduct of pausanias seems at least to have partaken of that inconsiderate recklessness which, in the ancient superstition, preceded the vengeance of the gods. after his trial he had returned to byzantium, without the consent of the spartan government. driven thence by the resentment of the athenians [ ], he repaired, not to sparta, but to colonae, in asia minor, and in the vicinity of the ancient troy; and there he renewed his negotiations with the persian king. acquainted with his designs, the vigilant ephors despatched to him a herald with the famous scytale. this was an instrument peculiar to the spartans. to every general or admiral, a long black staff was entrusted; the magistrates kept another exactly similar. when they had any communication to make, they wrote it on a roll of parchment, applied it to their own staff, fold upon fold--then cutting it off, dismissed it to the chief. the characters were so written that they were confused and unintelligible until fastened to the stick, and thus could only be construed by the person for whose eye they were intended, and to whose care the staff was confided. the communication pausanias now received was indeed stern and laconic. "stay," it said, "behind the herald, and war is proclaimed against you by the spartans." on receiving this solemn order, even the imperious spirit of pausanias did not venture to disobey. like venice, whose harsh, tortuous, but energetic policy her oligarchy in so many respects resembled, sparta possessed a moral and mysterious power over the fiercest of her sons. his fate held him in her grasp, and, confident of acquittal, instead of flying to persia, the regent hurried to his doom, assured that by the help of gold he could baffle any accusation. his expectations were so far well-founded, that, although, despite his rank as regent of the kingdom and guardian of the king, he was thrown into prison by the ephors, he succeeded, by his intrigues and influence, in procuring his enlargement: and boldly challenging his accusers, he offered to submit to trial. the government, however, was slow to act. the proud caution of the spartans was ever loath to bring scandal on their home by public proceedings against any freeborn citizen--how much more against the uncle of their monarch and the hero of their armies! his power, his talents, his imperious character awed alike private enmity and public distrust. but his haughty disdain of their rigid laws, and his continued affectation of the barbarian pomp, kept the government vigilant; and though released from prison, the stern ephors were his sentinels. the restless and discontented mind of the expectant son-in-law of xerxes could not relinquish its daring schemes. and the regent of sparta entered into a conspiracy, on which it were much to be desired that our information were more diffuse. vi. perhaps no class of men in ancient times excite a more painful and profound interest than the helots of sparta. though, as we have before seen, we must reject all rhetorical exaggerations of the savage cruelty to which they were subjected, we know, at least, that their servitude was the hardest imposed by any of the grecian states upon their slaves [ ], and that the iron soldiery of sparta were exposed to constant and imminent peril from their revolts--a proof that the curse of their bondage had passed beyond the degree which subdues the spirit to that which arouses, and that neither the habit of years, nor the swords of the fiercest warriors, nor the spies of the keenest government of greece had been able utterly to extirpate from human hearts that law of nature which, when injury passes an allotted, yet rarely visible, extreme, converts suffering to resistance. scattered in large numbers throughout the rugged territories of laconia--separated from the presence, but not the watch, of their master, these singular serfs never abandoned the hope of liberty. often pressed into battle to aid their masters, they acquired the courage to oppose them. fierce, sullen, and vindictive, they were as droves of wild cattle, left to range at will, till wanted for the burden or the knife--not difficult to butcher, but impossible to tame. we have seen that a considerable number of these helots had fought as light-armed troops at plataea; and the common danger and the common glory had united the slaves of the army with the chief. entering into somewhat of the desperate and revengeful ambition that, under a similar constitution, animated marino faliero, pausanias sought, by means of the enslaved multitude, to deliver himself from the thraldom of the oligarchy which held prince and slave alike in subjection. he tampered with the helots, and secretly promised them the rights and liberties of citizens of sparta, if they would co-operate with his projects and revolt at his command. slaves are never without traitors; and the ephors learned the premeditated revolution from helots themselves. still, slow and wary, those subtle and haughty magistrates suspended the blow--it was not without the fullest proof that a royal spartan was to be condemned on the word of helots: they continued their vigilance--they obtained the proof they required. vii. argilius, a spartan, with whom pausanias had once formed the vicious connexion common to the doric tribes, and who was deep in his confidence, was intrusted by the regent with letters to artabazus. argilius called to mind that none intrusted with a similar mission had ever returned. he broke open the seals and read what his fears foreboded, that, on his arrival at the satrap's court, the silence of the messenger was to be purchased by his death. he carried the packet to the ephors. that dark and plotting council were resolved yet more entirely to entangle their guilty victim, and out of his own mouth to extract his secret; they therefore ordered argilius to take refuge as a suppliant in the sanctuary of the temple of neptune on mount taenarus. within the sacred confines was contrived a cell, which, by a double partition, admitted some of the ephors, who, there concealed, might witness all that passed. intelligence was soon brought to pausanias that, instead of proceeding to artabazus, his confidant had taken refuge as a suppliant in the temple of neptune. alarmed and anxious, the regent hastened to the sanctuary. argilius informed him that he had read the letters, and reproached him bitterly with his treason to himself. pausanias, confounded and overcome by the perils which surrounded him, confessed his guilt, spoke unreservedly of the contents of the letter, implored the pardon of argilius, and promised him safety and wealth if he would leave the sanctuary and proceed on the mission. the ephors, from their hiding-place, heard all. on the departure of pausanias from the sanctuary, his doom was fixed. but, among the more public causes of the previous delay of justice, we must include the friendship of some of the ephors, which pausanias had won or purchased. it was the moment fixed for his arrest. pausanias, in the streets, was alone and on foot. he beheld the ephors approaching him. a signal from one warned him of his danger. he turned--he fled. the temple of minerva chalcioecus at hand proffered a sanctuary--he gained the sacred confines, and entered a small house hard by the temple. the ephors--the officers--the crowd pursued; they surrounded the refuge, from which it was impious to drag the criminal. resolved on his death, they removed the roof--blocked up the entrances (and if we may credit the anecdote, that violating human was characteristic of spartan nature, his mother, a crone of great age [ ], suggested the means of punishment, by placing, with her own hand, a stone at the threshold)--and, setting a guard around, left the conqueror of mardonius to die of famine. when he was at his last gasp, unwilling to profane the sanctuary by his actual death, they bore him out into the open air, which he only breathed to expire [ ]. his corpse, which some of the fiercer spartans at first intended to cast in the place of burial for malefactors, was afterward buried in the neighbourhood of the temple. and thus ended the glory and the crimes--the grasping ambition and the luxurious ostentation-- of the bold spartan who first scorned and then imitated the effeminacies of the persian he subdued. viii. amid the documents of which the ephors possessed themselves after the death of pausanias was a correspondence with themistocles, then residing in the rival and inimical state of argos. yet vindictive against that hero, the spartan government despatched ambassadors to athens, accusing him of a share in the conspiracy of pausanias with the medes. it seems that themistocles did not disavow a correspondence with pausanias, nor affect an absolute ignorance of his schemes; but he firmly denied by letter, his only mode of defence, all approval and all participation of the latter. nor is there any proof, nor any just ground of suspicion, that he was a party to the betrayal of greece. it was consistent, indeed, with his astute character, to plot, to manoeuvre, to intrigue, but for great and not paltry ends. by possessing himself of the secret, he possessed himself of the power of pausanias; and that intelligence might perhaps have enabled him to frustrate the spartan's treason in the hour of actual danger to greece. it is possible that, so far as sparta alone was concerned, the athenian felt little repugnance to any revolution or any peril confined to a state whose councils it had been the object of his life to baffle, and whose power it was the manifest interest of his native city to impair. he might have looked with complacency on the intrigues which the regent was carrying on against the spartan government, and which threatened to shake that doric constitution to its centre. but nothing, either in the witness of history or in the character or conduct of a man profoundly patriotic, even in his vices, favours the notion that he connived at the schemes which implicated, with the grecian, the athenian welfare. pausanias, far less able, was probably his tool. by an insight into his projects, themistocles might have calculated on the restoration of his own power. to weaken the spartan influence was to weaken his own enemies at athens; to break up the spartan constitution was to leave athens herself without a rival. and if, from the revolt of the helots, pausanias should proceed to an active league with the persians, themistocles knew enough of athens and of greece to foresee that it was to the victor of salamis and the founder of the grecian navy that all eyes would be directed. such seem the most probable views which would have been opened to the exile by the communications of pausanias. if so, they were necessarily too subtle for the crowd to penetrate or understand. the athenians heard only the accusations of the spartans; they saw only the treason of pausanias; they learned only that themistocles had been the correspondent of the traitor. already suspicious of a genius whose deep and intricate wiles they were seldom able to fathom, and trembling at the seeming danger they had escaped, it was natural enough that the athenians should accede to the demands of the ambassadors. an athenian, joined with a lacedaemonian troop, was ordered to seize themistocles wherever he should be found. apprized of his danger, he hastily quitted the peloponnesus and took refuge at corcyra. fear of the vengeance at once of athens and of sparta induced the corcyreans to deny the shelter he sought, but they honourably transported him to the opposite continent. his route was discovered--his pursuers pressed upon him. he had entered the country of admetus, king of the molossians, from whose resentment he had everything to dread. for he had persuaded the athenians to reject the alliance once sought by that monarch, and admetus had vowed vengeance. thus situated, the fugitive formed a resolution which a great mind only could have conceived, and which presents to us one of the most touching pictures in ancient history. he repaired to the palace of admetus himself. the prince was absent. he addressed his consort, and, advised by her, took the young child of the royal pair in his hand, and sat down at the hearth--"themistocles the suppliant!" [ ] on the return of the prince he told his name, and bade him not wreak his vengeance on an exile. "to condemn me now," he said, "would be to take advantage of distress. honour dictates revenge only among equals upon equal terms. true that i opposed you once, but on a matter not of life, but of business or of interest. now surrender me to my persecutors, and you deprive me of the last refuge of life itself." ix. admetus, much affected, bade him rise, and assured him of protection. the pursuers arrived; but, faithful to the guest who had sought his hearth, after a form peculiarly solemn among the molossians, admetus refused to give him up, and despatched him, guarded, to the sea-town of pydna, over an arduous and difficult mountain-road. the sea-town gained, he took ship, disguised and unknown to all the passengers, in a trading vessel bound to ionia. a storm arose--the vessel was driven from its course, and impelled right towards the athenian fleet, that then under cimon, his bitterest foe, lay before the isle of naxos (b. c. ). prompt and bold in his expedients, themistocles took aside the master of the vessel--discovered himself; threatened, if betrayed, to inform against the master as one bribed to favour his escape; promised, if preserved, everlasting gratitude; and urged that the preservation was possible, if no one during the voyage were permitted, on any pretext, to quit the vessel. the master of the vessel was won--kept out at sea a day and a night to windward of the fleet, and landed themistocles in safety at ephesus. in the mean while the friends of themistocles had not been inactive in athens. on the supposed discovery of his treason, such of his property as could fall into the hands of the government was, as usual in such offences, confiscated to the public use; the amount was variously estimated at eighty and a hundred talents [ ]. but the greater part of his wealth--some from athens, some from argos--was secretly conveyed to him at ephesus [ ]. one faithful friend procured the escape of his wife and children from athens to the court of admetus, for which offence of affection, a single historian, stesimbrotus (whose statement even the credulous plutarch questions, and proves to be contradictory with another assertion of the same author), has recorded that he was condemned to death by cimon. it is not upon such dubious chronicles that we can suffer so great a stain on the character of a man singularly humane. [ ] x. as we have now for ever lost sight of themistocles on the stage of athenian politics, the present is the most fitting opportunity to conclude the history of his wild and adventurous career. persecuted by the spartans, abandoned by his countrymen, excluded from the whole of greece, no refuge remained to the man who had crushed the power of persia, save the persian court. the generous and high-spirited policy that characterized the oriental despotism towards its foes proffered him not only a safe, but a magnificent asylum. the persian monarchs were ever ready to welcome the exiles of greece, and to conciliate those whom they had failed to conquer. it was the fate of themistocles to be saved by the enemies of his country. he had no alternative. the very accusation of connivance with the medes drove him into their arms. under guidance of a persian, themistocles traversed the asiatic continent; and ere he reached susa, contrived to have a letter, that might prepare the way for him, delivered at the persian court. his letter ran somewhat thus, if we may suppose that thucydides preserved the import, though he undoubtedly fashioned the style. [ ] "i, themistocles, who of all the greeks have inflicted the severest wounds upon your race, so long as i was called by fate to resist the invasion of the persians, now come to you." (he then urged, on the other hand, the services he had rendered to xerxes in his messages after salamis, relative to the breaking of the bridges, assuming a credit to which he was by no means entitled--and insisted that his generosity demanded a return.) "able" (he proceeded) "to perform great services--persecuted by the greeks for my friendship for you--i am near at hand. grant me only a year's respite, that i may then apprize you in person of the object of my journey hither." the bold and confident tone of themistocles struck the imagination of the young king (artaxerxes), and he returned a favourable reply. themistocles consumed the year in the perfect acquisition of the language, and the customs and manners of the country. he then sought and obtained an audience. [ ] able to converse with fluency, and without the medium of an interpreter, his natural abilities found their level. he rose to instant favour. never before had a stranger been so honoured. he was admitted an easy access to the royal person--instructed in the learning of the magi--and when he quitted the court it was to take possession of the government of three cities--myus, celebrated for its provisions; lampsacus, for its vineyards; and magnesia, for the richness of the soil; so that, according to the spirit and phraseology of oriental taxation, it was not unaptly said that they were awarded to him for meat, wine, and bread. xi. thus affluent and thus honoured, themistocles passed at magnesia the remainder of his days--the time and method of his death uncertain; whether cut off by natural disease, or, as is otherwise related [ ], by a fate than which fiction itself could have invented none more suited to the consummation of his romantic and great career. it is said that when afterward egypt revolted, and that revolt was aided by the athenians; when the grecian navy sailed as far as cilicia and cyprus; and cimon upheld, without a rival, the new sovereignty of the seas; when artaxerxes resolved to oppose the growing power of a state which, from the defensive, had risen to the offending, power; themistocles received a mandate to realize the vague promises he had given, and to commence his operations against greece (b. c. ). then (if with plutarch we accept this version of his fate), neither resentment against the people he had deemed ungrateful, nor his present pomp, nor the fear of life, could induce the lord of magnesia to dishonour his past achievements [ ], and demolish his immortal trophies. anxious only to die worthily--since to live as became him was no longer possible--he solemnly sacrificed to the gods--took leave of his friends, and finished his days by poison. his monument long existed in the forum of magnesia; but his bones are said by his own desire to have been borne back privately to attica, and have rested in the beloved land that exiled him from her bosom. and this his last request seems touchingly to prove his loyalty to athens, and to proclaim his pardon of her persecution. certain it is, at least, that however honoured in persia, he never perpetrated one act against greece; and that, if sullied by the suspicion of others, his fame was untarnished by himself. he died, according to plutarch, in his sixty-fifth year, leaving many children, and transmitting his name to a long posterity, who received from his memory the honours they could not have acquired for themselves. xii. the character of themistocles has already in these pages unfolded itself--profound, yet tortuous in policy--vast in conception --subtle, patient, yet prompt in action; affable in manner, but boastful, ostentatious, and disdaining to conceal his consciousness of merit; not brilliant in accomplishment, yet master not more of the greek wiles than the attic wit; sufficiently eloquent, but greater in deeds than words, and penetrating, by an almost preternatural insight, at once the characters of men and the sequences of events. incomparably the greatest of his own times, and certainly not surpassed by those who came after him. pisistratus, cimon, pericles, aristides himself, were of noble and privileged birth. themistocles was the first, and, except demosthenes, the greatest of those who rose from the ranks of the people, and he drew the people upward in his rise. his fame was the creation of his genius only. "what other man" (to paraphrase the unusual eloquence of diodorus) "could in the same time have placed greece at the head of nations, athens at the head of greece, himself at the head of athens?--in the most illustrious age the most illustrious man. conducting to war the citizens of a state in ruins, he defeated all the arms of asia. he alone had the power to unite the most discordant materials, and to render danger itself salutary to his designs. not more remarkable in war than peace--in the one he saved the liberties of greece, in the other he created the eminence of athens." after him, the light of the heroic age seems to glimmer and to fade, and even pericles himself appears dwarfed and artificial beside that masculine and colossal intellect which broke into fragments the might of persia, and baffled with a vigorous ease the gloomy sagacity of sparta. the statue of themistocles, existent six hundred years after his decease, exhibited to his countrymen an aspect as heroical as his deeds. [ ] we return to cimon chapter iii. reduction of naxos.--actions off cyprus.--manners of cimon.-- improvements in athens.--colony at the nine ways.--siege of thasos.-- earthquake in sparta.--revolt of helots, occupation of ithome, and third messenian war.--rise and character of pericles.--prosecution and acquittal of cimon.--the athenians assist the spartans at ithome.-- thasos surrenders.--breach between the athenians and spartans.-- constitutional innovations at athens.--ostracism of cimon. i. at the time in which naxos refused the stipulated subsidies, and was, in consequence, besieged by cimon, that island was one of the most wealthy and populous of the confederate states. for some time the naxians gallantly resisted the besiegers; but, at length reduced, they were subjected to heavier conditions than those previously imposed upon them. no conqueror contents himself with acquiring the objects, sometimes frivolous and often just, with which he commences hostilities. war inflames the passions, and success the ambition. cimon, at first anxious to secure the grecian, was now led on to desire the increase of the athenian power. the athenian fleet had subdued naxos, and naxos was rendered subject to athens. this was the first of the free states which the growing republic submitted to her yoke [ ]. the precedent once set, as occasion tempted, the rest shared a similar fate. ii. the reduction of naxos was but the commencement of the victories of cimon. in asia minor there were many grecian cities in which the persian ascendency had never yet been shaken. along the carian coast cimon conducted his armament, and the terror it inspired sufficed to engage all the cities, originally greek, to revolt from persia; those garrisoned by persians he besieged and reduced. victorious in caria, he passed with equal success into lycia [ ], augmenting his fleet and forces as he swept along. but the persians, not inactive, had now assembled a considerable force in pamphylia, and lay encamped on the banks of the eurymedon (b. c. ), whose waters, sufficiently wide, received their fleet. the expected re-enforcement of eighty phoenician vessels from cyprus induced the persians to delay [ ] actual hostilities. but cimon, resolved to forestall the anticipated junction, sailed up the river, and soon forced the barbarian fleet, already much more numerous than his own, into active engagement. the persians but feebly supported the attack; driven up the river, the crews deserted the ships, and hastened to join the army arrayed along the coast. of the ships thus deserted, some were destroyed; and two hundred triremes, taken by cimon, yet more augmented his armament. but the persians, now advanced to the verge of the shore, presented a long and formidable array, and cimon, with some anxiety, saw the danger he incurred in landing troops already much harassed by the late action, while a considerable proportion of the hostile forces, far more numerous, were fresh and unfatigued. the spirit of the men, and their elation at the late victory, bore down the fears of the general; yet warm from the late action, he debarked his heavy-armed infantry, and with loud shouts the athenians rushed upon the foe. the contest was fierce--the slaughter great. many of the noblest athenians fell in the action. victory at length declared in favour of cimon; the persians were put to flight, and the greeks remained masters of the battle and the booty--the last considerable. thus, on the same day, the athenians were victorious on both elements--an unprecedented glory, which led the rhetorical plutarch to declare--that plataea and salamis were outshone. posterity, more discerning, estimates glory not by the greatness of the victory alone, but the justice of the cause. and even a skirmish won by men struggling for liberty on their own shores is more honoured than the proudest battle in which the conquerors are actuated by the desire of vengeance or the lust of enterprise. iii. to the trophies of this double victory were soon added those of a third, obtained over the eighty vessels of the phoenicians off the coast of cyprus. these signal achievements spread the terror of the athenian arms on remote as on grecian shores. without adopting the exaggerated accounts of injudicious authors as to the number of ships and prisoners [ ], it seems certain, at least, that the amount of the booty was sufficient, in some degree, to create in athens a moral revolution--swelling to a vast extent the fortunes of individuals, and augmenting the general taste for pomp, for luxury, and for splendour, which soon afterward rendered athens the most magnificent of the grecian states. the navy of persia thus broken, her armies routed, the scene of action transferred to her own dominions, all designs against greece were laid aside. retreating, as it were, more to the centre of her vast domains, she left the asiatic outskirts to the solitude, rather of exhaustion than of peace. "no troops," boasted the later rhetoricians, "came within a day's journey, on horseback, of the grecian seas." from the chelidonian isles on the pamphylian coast, to those [ ] twin rocks at the entrance of the euxine, between which the sea, chafed by their rugged base, roars unappeasably through its mists of foam, no persian galley was descried. whether this was the cause of defeat or of acknowledged articles of peace, has been disputed. but, as will be seen hereafter, of the latter all historical evidence is wanting. in a subsequent expedition, cimon, sailing from athens with a small force, wrested the thracian chersonese from the persians--an exploit which restored to him his own patrimony. iv. cimon was now at the height of his fame and popularity. his share of the booty, and the recovery of the chersonese, rendered him by far the wealthiest citizen of athens; and he continued to use his wealth to cement his power. his intercourse with other nations, his familiarity with the oriental polish and magnificence, served to elevate his manners from their early rudeness, and to give splendour to his tastes. if he had spent his youth among the wild soldiers of miltiades, the leisure of his maturer years was cultivated by an intercourse with sages and poets. his passion for the sex, which even in its excesses tends to refine and to soften, made his only vice. he was the friend of every genius and every art; and, the link between the lavish ostentation of themistocles and the intellectual grace of pericles, he conducted, as it were, the insensible transition from the age of warlike glory to that of civil pre-eminence. he may be said to have contributed greatly to diffuse that atmosphere of poetry and of pleasure which even the meanest of the free athenians afterward delighted to respire. he led the citizens more and more from the recesses of private life; and carried out that social policy commenced by pisistratus, according to which all individual habits became merged into one animated, complex, and excited public. thus, himself gay and convivial, addicted to company, wine, and women, he encouraged shows and spectacles, and invested them with new magnificence; he embellished the city with public buildings, and was the first to erect at athens those long colonnades--beneath the shade of which, sheltered from the western suns, that graceful people were accustomed to assemble and converse. the agora, that universal home of the citizens, was planted by him with the oriental planes; and the groves of academe, the immortal haunt of plato, were his work. that celebrated garden, associated with the grateful and bright remembrances of all which poetry can lend to wisdom, was, before the time of cimon, a waste and uncultivated spot. it was his hand that intersected it with walks and alleys, and that poured through its green retreats the ornamental waters so refreshing in those climes, and not common in the dry attic soil, which now meandered in living streams, and now sparkled into fountains. besides these works to embellish, he formed others to fortify the city. he completed the citadel, hitherto unguarded on the south side; and it was from the barbarian spoils deposited in the treasury that the expenses of founding the long walls, afterward completed, were defrayed. v. in his conduct towards the allies, the natural urbanity of cimon served to conceal a policy deep-laid and grasping. the other athenian generals were stern and punctilious in their demands on the confederates; they required the allotted number of men, and, in default of the supply, increased the rigour of their exactions. not so cimon--from those whom the ordinary avocations of a peaceful life rendered averse to active service, he willingly accepted a pecuniary substitute, equivalent to the value of those ships or soldiers they should have furnished. these sums, devoted indeed to the general service, were yet appropriated to the uses of the athenian navy; thus the states, hitherto warlike, were artfully suffered to lapse into peaceful and luxurious pursuits; and the confederates became at once, under the most lenient pretexts, enfeebled and impoverished by the very means which strengthened the martial spirit and increased the fiscal resources of the athenians. the tributaries found too late, when they ventured at revolt, that they had parted with the facilities of resistance. [ ] in the mean while it was the object of cimon to sustain the naval ardour and discipline of the athenians; while the oar and the sword fell into disuse with the confederates, he kept the greater part of the citizens in constant rotation at maritime exercise or enterprise-- until experience and increasing power with one, indolence and gradual subjection with the other, destroying the ancient equality in arms, made the athenians masters and their confederates subjects. [ ] vi. according to the wise policy of the ancients, the athenians never neglected a suitable opportunity to colonize; thus extending their dominion while they draughted off the excess of their population, as well as the more enterprising spirits whom adventure tempted or poverty aroused. the conquest of eion had opened to the athenians a new prospect of aggrandizement, of which they were now prepared to seize the advantages. not far from eion, and on the banks of the strymon, was a place called the nine ways, afterward amphipolis, and which, from its locality and maritime conveniences, seemed especially calculated for the site of a new city. thither ten thousand persons, some confederates, some athenians, had been sent to establish a colony. the views of the athenians were not, however, in this enterprise, bounded to its mere legitimate advantages. about the same time they carried on a dispute with the thasians relative to certain mines and places of trade on the opposite coasts of thrace. the dispute was one of considerable nicety. the athenians, having conquered eion and the adjacent territory, claimed the possession by right of conquest. the thasians, on the other hand, had anciently possessed some of the mines and the monopoly of the commerce; they had joined in the confederacy; and, asserting that the conquest had been made, if by athenian arms, for the federal good, they demanded that the ancient privileges should revert to them. the athenian government was not disposed to surrender a claim which proffered to avarice the temptation of mines of gold. the thasians renounced the confederacy, and thus gave to the athenians the very pretext for hostilities which the weaker state should never permit to the more strong. while the colony proceeded to its destination, part of the athenian fleet, under cimon, sailed to thasos--gained a victory by sea--landed on the island--and besieged the city. meanwhile the new colonizers had become masters of the nine ways, having dislodged the edonian thracians, its previous habitants. but hostility following hostility, the colonists were eventually utterly routed and cut off in a pitched battle at drabescus (b. c. ), in edonia, by the united forces of all the neighbouring thracians. vii. the siege of thasos still continued, and the besieged took the precaution to send to sparta for assistance. that sullen state had long viewed with indignation the power of athens; her younger warriors clamoured against the inert indifference with which a city, for ages so inferior to sparta, had been suffered to gain the ascendency over greece. in vain had themistocles been removed; the inexhaustible genius of the people had created a second themistocles in cimon. the lacedaemonians, glad of a pretext for quarrel, courteously received the thasian ambassadors, and promised to distract the athenian forces by an irruption into attica. they were actively prepared in concerting measures for this invasion, when sudden and complicated afflictions, now to be related, forced them to abandon their designs, and confine their attention to themselves. viii. an earthquake, unprecedented in its violence, occurred in sparta. in many places throughout laconia the rocky soil was rent asunder. from mount taygetus, which overhung the city, and on which the women of lacedaemon were wont to hold their bacchanalian orgies, huge fragments rolled into the suburbs. the greater portion of the city was absolutely overthrown; and it is said, probably with exaggeration, that only five houses wholly escaped the shock. this terrible calamity did not cease suddenly as it came; its concussions were repeated; it buried alike men and treasure: could we credit diodorus, no less than twenty thousand persons perished in the shock. thus depopulated, empoverished, and distressed, the enemies whom the cruelty of sparta nursed within her bosom resolved to seize the moment to execute their vengeance and consummate her destruction. under pausanias we have seen before that the helots were already ripe for revolt. the death of that fierce conspirator checked, but did not crush, their designs of freedom. now was the moment, when sparta lay in ruins--now was the moment to realize their dreams. from field to field, from village to village, the news of the earthquake became the watchword of revolt. up rose the helots (b. c. )--they armed themselves, they poured on--a wild, and gathering, and relentless multitude, resolved to slay by the wrath of man all whom that of nature had yet spared. the earthquake that levelled sparta rent her chains; nor did the shock create one chasm so dark and wide as that between the master and the slave. it is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history--that city in ruins--the earth still trembling--the grim and dauntless soldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the multitude sensible, not of danger, but of wrong, and rising, not to succour, but to revenge: all that should have disarmed a feebler enmity, giving fire to theirs; the dreadest calamity their blessing--dismay their hope it was as if the great mother herself had summoned her children to vindicate the long-abused, the all inalienable heritage derived from her; and the stir of the angry elements was but the announcement of an armed and solemn union between nature and the oppressed. ix. fortunately for sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen. after the confusion and horror of the earthquake, and while the people, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects, archidamus, who, four years before, had succeeded to the throne of lacedaemon, ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. that wonderful superiority of man over matter which habit and discipline can effect, and which was ever so visible among the spartans, constituted their safety at that hour. forsaking the care of their property, the spartans seized their arms, flocked around their king, and drew up in disciplined array. in her most imminent crisis, sparta was thus saved. the helots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intent only to plunder and to slay; they expected to find scattered and affrighted foes--they found a formidable army; their tyrants were still their lords. they saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselves over the country--exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon, joined with the messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancient reminiscences of heroic struggles, they seized that same ithome which their hereditary aristodemus had before occupied with unforgotten valour. this they fortified; and, occupying also the neighbouring lands, declared open war upon their lords. as the messenians were the more worthy enemy, so the general insurrection is known by the name of the third messenian war. x. while these events occurred in sparta, cimon, intrusting to others the continued siege of thasos, had returned to athens [ ]. he found his popularity already shaken, and his power endangered. the democratic party had of late regained the influence it had lost on the exile of themistocles. pericles, son of xanthippus (the accuser of miltiades), had, during the last six years, insensibly risen into reputation: the house of miltiades was fated to bow before the race of xanthippus, and hereditary opposition ended in the old hereditary results. born of one of the loftiest families of athens, distinguished by the fame as the fortunes of his father, who had been linked with aristides in command of the athenian fleet, and in whose name had been achieved the victory of mycale, the young pericles found betimes an easy opening to his brilliant genius and his high ambition. he had nothing to contend against but his own advantages. the beauty of his countenance, the sweetness of his voice, and the blandness of his address, reminded the oldest citizens of pisistratus; and this resemblance is said to have excited against him a popular jealousy which he found it difficult to surmount. his youth was passed alternately in the camp and in the schools. he is the first of the great statesmen of his country who appears to have prepared himself for action by study; anaxagoras, pythoclides, and damon were his tutors, and he was early eminent in all the lettered accomplishments of his time. by degrees, accustoming the people to his appearance in public life, he became remarkable for an elaborate and impassioned eloquence, hitherto unknown. with his intellectual and meditative temperament all was science; his ardour in action regulated by long forethought, his very words by deliberate preparation. till his time, oratory, in its proper sense, as a study and an art, was uncultivated in athens. pisistratus is said to have been naturally eloquent, and the vigorous mind of themistocles imparted at once persuasion and force to his counsels. but pericles, aware of all the advantages to be gained by words, embellished words with every artifice that his imagination could suggest. his speeches were often written compositions, and the novel dazzle of their diction, and that consecutive logic which preparation alone can impart to language, became irresistible to a people that had itself become a pericles. universal civilization, universal poetry, had rendered the audience susceptible and fastidious; they could appreciate the ornate and philosophical harangues of pericles; and, the first to mirror to themselves the intellectual improvements they had made, the first to represent the grace and enlightenment, as themistocles had been the first to represent the daring and enterprise, of his time, the son of xanthippus began already to eclipse that very cimon whose qualities prepared the way for him. xi. we must not suppose, that in the contests between the aristocratic and popular parties, the aristocracy were always on one side. such a division is never to be seen in free constitutions. there is always a sufficient party of the nobles whom conviction, ambition, or hereditary predilections will place at the head of the popular movement; and it is by members of the privileged order that the order itself is weakened. athens in this respect, therefore, resembled england, and as now in the latter state, so then at athens, it was often the proudest, the wealthiest, the most high-born of the aristocrats that gave dignity and success to the progress of democratic opinion. there, too, the vehemence of party frequently rendered politics an hereditary heirloom; intermarriages kept together men of similar factions; and the memory of those who had been the martyrs or the heroes of a cause mingled with the creed of their descendants. thus, it was as natural that one of the race of that clisthenes who had expelled the pisistratides, and popularized the constitution, should embrace the more liberal side, as that a russell should follow out in one age the principles for which his ancestor perished in another. so do our forefathers become sponsors for ourselves. the mother of pericles was the descendant of clisthenes; and though xanthippus himself was of the same party as aristides, we may doubt, by his prosecution of miltiades as well as by his connexion with the alcmaeonids, whether he ever cordially co-operated with the views and the ambition of cimon. however this be, his brilliant son cast himself at once into the arms of the more popular faction, and opposed with all his energy the aristocratic predilections of cimon. not yet, however, able to assume the lead to which he aspired (for it had now become a matter of time as well as intellect to rise), he ranged himself under ephialtes, a personage of whom history gives us too scanty details, although he enjoyed considerable influence, increased by his avowed jealousy of the spartans and his own unimpeachable integrity. xii. it is noticeable, that men who become the leaders of the public, less by the spur of passion than by previous study and conscious talent--men whom thought and letters prepare for enterprise--are rarely eager to advance themselves too soon. making politics a science, they are even fastidiously alive to the qualities and the experience demanded for great success; their very self-esteem renders them seemingly modest; they rely upon time and upon occasion; and, pushed forward rather by circumstance than their own exertions, it is long before their ambition and their resources are fully developed. despite all his advantages, the rise of pericles was gradual. on the return of cimon the popular party deemed itself sufficiently strong to manifest its opposition. the expedition to thasos had not been attended with results so glorious as to satisfy a people pampered by a series of triumphs. cimon was deemed culpable for not having taken advantage of the access into macedonia, and added that country to the athenian empire. he was even suspected and accused of receiving bribes from alexander, the king of macedon. pericles [ ] is said to have taken at first an active part in this prosecution; but when the cause came on, whether moved by the instances of cimon's sister, or made aware of the injustice of the accusation, he conducted himself favourably towards the accused. cimon himself treated the charges with a calm disdain; the result was worthy of athens and himself. he was honourably acquitted. xiii. scarce was this impeachment over, when a spartan ambassador arrived at athens to implore her assistance against the helots; the request produced a vehement discussion. ephialtes strongly opposed the proposition to assist a city, sometimes openly, always heartily, inimical to athens. "much better," he contended, "to suffer her pride to be humbled, and her powers of mischief to be impaired." ever supporting and supported by the lacedaemonian party, whether at home or abroad, cimon, on the other hand, maintained the necessity of marching to the relief of sparta. "do not," he said, almost sublimely--and his words are reported to have produced a considerable impression on that susceptible assembly-- "do not suffer greece to be mutilated, nor deprive athens of her companion!" the more generous and magnanimous counsel prevailed with a generous and magnanimous people; and cimon was sent to the aid of sparta at the head of a sufficient force. it may be observed, as a sign of the political morality of the time, that the wrongs of the helots appear to have been forgotten. but such is the curse of slavery, that it unfits its victims to be free, except by preparations and degrees. and civilization, humanity, and social order are often enlisted on the wrong side, in behalf of the oppressors, from the license and barbarity natural to the victories of the oppressed. a conflict between the negroes and the planters in modern times may not be unanalogous to that of the helots and spartans; and it is often a fatal necessity to extirpate the very men we have maddened, by our own cruelties, to the savageness of beasts. it would appear that, during the revolt of the helots and messenians, which lasted ten years, the athenians, under cimon, marched twice [ ] to the aid of the spartans. in the first (b. c. ) they probably drove the scattered insurgents into the city of ithome; in the second (b. c. ) they besieged the city. in the interval thasos surrendered (b. c. ); the inhabitants were compelled to level their walls, to give up their shipping, to pay the arrear of tribute, to defray the impost punctually in future, and to resign all claims on the continent and the mines. xiv. thus did the athenians establish their footing on the thracian continent, and obtain the possession of the golden mines, which they mistook for wealth. in the second expedition of the athenians, the long-cherished jealousy between themselves and the spartans could no longer be smothered. the former were applied to especially from their skill in sieges, and their very science galled perhaps the pride of the martial spartans. while, as the true art of war was still so little understood, that even the athenians were unable to carry the town by assault, and compelled to submit to the tedious operations of a blockade, there was ample leisure for those feuds which the uncongenial habits and long rivalry of the nations necessarily produced. proud of their dorian name, the spartans looked on the ionic race of athens as aliens. severe in their oligarchic discipline, they regarded the athenian demus as innovators; and, in the valour itself of their allies, they detected a daring and restless energy which, if serviceable now, might easily be rendered dangerous hereafter. they even suspected the athenians of tampering with the helots--led, it may be, to that distrust by the contrast, which they were likely to misinterpret, between their own severity and the athenian mildness towards the servile part of their several populations, and also by the existence of a powerful party at athens, which had opposed the assistance cimon afforded. with their usual tranquil and wary policy, the spartan government attempted to conceal their real fears, and simply alleging they had no further need of their assistance, dismissed the athenians. but that people, constitutionally irritable, perceiving that, despite this hollow pretext, the other allies, including the obnoxious aeginetans, were retained, received their dismissal as an insult. thinking justly that they had merited a nobler confidence from the spartans, they gave way to their first resentment, and disregarding the league existing yet between themselves and sparta against the mede--the form of which had survived the spirit--they entered into an alliance with the argives, hereditary enemies of sparta, and in that alliance the aleuads of thessaly were included. xv. the obtaining of these decrees by the popular party was the prelude to the fall of cimon. the talents of that great man were far more eminent in war than peace; and despite his real or affected liberality of demeanour, he wanted either the faculty to suit the time, or the art to conceal his deficiencies. raised to eminence by spartan favour, he had ever too boldly and too imprudently espoused the spartan cause. at first, when the athenians obtained their naval ascendency--and it was necessary to conciliate sparta--the partiality with which cimon was regarded by that state was his recommendation; now when, no longer to be conciliated, sparta was to be dreaded and opposed, it became his ruin. it had long been his custom to laud the spartans at the expense of the athenians, and to hold out their manners as an example to the admiration of his countrymen. it was a favourite mode of reproof with him--"the spartans would not have done this." it was even remembered against him that he had called his son lacedaemonius. these predilections had of late rankled in the popular mind; and now, when the athenian force had been contumeliously dismissed, it was impossible to forget that cimon had obtained the decree of the relief, and that the mortification which resulted from it was the effect of his counsels. public spirit ran high against the spartans, and at the head of the spartan faction in athens stood cimon. xvi. but at this time, other events, still more intimately connected with the athenian politics, conspired to weaken the authority of this able general. those constitutional reforms, which are in reality revolutions under a milder name, were now sweeping away the last wrecks of whatever of the old aristocratic system was still left to the athenian commonwealth. we have seen that the democratic party had increased in power by the decree of aristides, which opened all offices to all ranks. this, as yet, was productive less of actual than of moral effects. the liberal opinions possessed by a part of the aristocracy, and the legitimate influence which in all countries belongs to property and high descent (greatest, indeed, where the countries are most free)--secured, as a general rule, the principal situations in the state to rank and wealth. but the moral effect of the decree was to elevate the lower classes with a sense of their own power and dignity, and every victory achieved over a foreign foe gave new authority to the people whose voices elected the leader--whose right arms won the battle. the constitution previous to solon was an oligarchy of birth. solon rendered it an aristocracy of property. clisthenes widened its basis from property to population; as we have already seen, it was, in all probability, clisthenes also who weakened the more illicit and oppressive influences of wealth, by establishing the ballot or secret suffrage instead of the open voting, which was common in the time of solon. it is the necessary constitution of society, that when one class obtains power, the ancient checks to that power require remodelling. the areopagus was designed by solon as the aristocratic balance to the popular assembly. but in all states in which the people and the aristocracy are represented, the great blow to the aristocratic senate is given, less by altering its own constitution than by infusing new elements of democracy into the popular assembly. the old boundaries are swept away, not by the levelling of the bank, but by the swelling of the torrent. the checks upon democracy ought to be so far concealed as to be placed in the representation of the democracy itself; for checks upon its progress from without are but as fortresses to be stormed; and what, when latent, was the influence of a friend, when apparent, is the resistance of a foe. the areopagus, the constitutional bulwark of the aristocratic party of athens, became more and more invidious to the people. and now, when cimon resisted every innovation on that assembly, he only ensured his own destruction, while he expedited the policy he denounced. ephialtes directed all the force of the popular opinion against this venerable senate; and at length, though not openly assisted by pericles [ ], who took no prominent part in the contention, that influential statesman succeeded in crippling its functions and limiting its authority. xvii. i do not propose to plunge the reader into the voluminous and unprofitable controversy on the exact nature of the innovations of ephialtes which has agitated the students of germany. it appears to me most probable that the areopagus retained the right of adjudging cases of homicide [ ], and little besides of its ancient constitutional authority, that it lost altogether its most dangerous power in the indefinite police it had formerly exercised over the habits and morals of the people, that any control of the finances was wisely transferred to the popular senate [ ], that its irresponsible character was abolished, and it was henceforth rendered accountable to the people. such alterations were not made without exciting the deep indignation of the aristocratic faction. in all state reforms a great and comprehensive mind does not so much consider whether each reform is just, as what will be the ultimate ascendency given to particular principles. cimon preferred to all constitutions a limited aristocracy, and his practical experience regarded every measure in its general tendency towards or against the system which he honestly advocated. xviii. the struggle between the contending parties and principles had commenced before cimon's expedition to ithome; the mortification connected with that event, in weakening cimon, weakened the aristocracy itself. still his fall was not immediate [ ], nor did it take place as a single and isolated event, but as one of the necessary consequences of the great political change effected by ephialtes. all circumstances, however, conspired to place the son of miltiades in a situation which justified the suspicion and jealousy of the athenians. of all the enemies, how powerful soever, that athens could provoke, none were so dangerous as lacedaemon. dark, wily, and implacable, the rugged queen of the peloponnesus reared her youth in no other accomplishments than those of stratagem and slaughter. her enmity against athens was no longer smothered. athens had everything to fear, not less from her influence than her armies. it was not, indeed, so much from the unsheathed sword as from the secret councils of sparta that danger was to be apprehended. it cannot be too often remembered, that among a great portion of the athenian aristocracy, the spartan government maintained a considerable and sympathetic intelligence. that government ever sought to adapt and mould all popular constitutions to her own oligarchic model; and where she could not openly invade, she secretly sought to undermine, the liberties of her neighbours. thus, in addition to all fear from an enemy in the field, the athenian democracy were constantly excited to suspicion against a spy within the city: always struggling with an aristocratic party, which aimed at regaining the power it had lost, there was just reason to apprehend that that party would seize any occasion to encroach upon the popular institutions; every feud with sparta consequently seemed to the athenian people, nor without cause, to subject to intrigue and conspiracy their civil freedom; and (as always happens with foreign interference, whether latent or avowed) exasperated whatever jealousies already existed against those for whose political interests the interference was exerted. bearing this in mind, we shall see no cause to wonder at the vehement opposition to which cimon was now subjected. we are driven ourselves to search deeply into the causes which led to his prosecution, as to that of other eminent men in athens, from want of clear and precise historical details. plutarch, to whom, in this instance, we are compelled chiefly to resort, is a most equivocal authority. like most biographers, his care is to exalt his hero, though at the expense of that hero's countrymen; and though an amiable writer, nor without some semi-philosophical views in morals, his mind was singularly deficient in grasp and in comprehension. he never penetrates the subtle causes of effects. he surveys the past, sometimes as a scholar, sometimes as a taleteller, sometimes even as a poet, but never as a statesman. thus, we learn from him little of the true reasons for the ostracism, either of aristides, of themistocles, or of cimon--points now intricate, but which might then, alas! have been easily cleared up by a profound inquirer, to the acquittal alike of themselves and of their judges. to the natural deficiencies of plutarch we must add his party predilections. he was opposed to democratic opinions--and that objection, slight in itself, or it might be urged against many of the best historians and the wisest thinkers, is rendered weighty in that he was unable to see, that in all human constitutions perfection is impossible, that we must take the evil with the good, and that what he imputes to one form of government is equally attributable to another. for in what monarchy, what oligarchy, have not great men been misunderstood, and great merits exposed to envy! thus, in the life of cimon, plutarch says that it was "on a slight pretext" [ ] that that leader of the spartan party in athens was subjected to the ostracism. we have seen enough to convince us that, whatever the pretext, the reasons, at least, were grave and solid-- that they were nothing short of cimon's unvarying ardour for, and constant association with, the principles and the government of that state most inimical to athens, and the suspicious policy of which was, in all times--at that time especially--fraught with danger to her power, her peace, and her institutions. could we penetrate farther into the politics of the period, we might justify the athenians yet more. without calling into question the integrity and the patriotism of cimon, without supposing that he would have entered into any intrigue against the athenian independence of foreign powers--a supposition his subsequent conduct effectually refutes--he might, as a sincere and warm partisan of the nobles, and a resolute opposer of the popular party, have sought to restore at home the aristocratic balance of power, by whatever means his great rank, and influence, and connexion with the lacedaemonian party could afford him. we are told, at least, that he not only opposed all the advances of the more liberal party--that he not only stood resolutely by the interests and dignities of the areopagus, which had ceased to harmonize with the more modern institutions, but that he expressly sought to restore certain prerogatives which that assembly had formally lost during his foreign expeditions, and that he earnestly endeavoured to bring back the whole constitution to the more aristocratic government established by clisthenes. it is one thing to preserve, it is another to restore. a people may be deluded under popular pretexts out of the rights they have newly acquired, but they never submit to be openly despoiled of them. nor can we call that ingratitude which is but the refusal to surrender to the merits of an individual the acquisitions of a nation. all things considered, then, i believe, that if ever ostracism was justifiable, it was so in the case of cimon--nay, it was perhaps absolutely essential to the preservation of the constitution. his very honesty made him resolute in his attempts against that constitution. his talents, his rank, his fame, his services, only rendered those attempts more dangerous. xix. could the reader be induced to view, with an examination equally dispassionate, the several ostracisms of aristides and themistocles, he might see equal causes of justification, both in the motives and in the results. the first was absolutely necessary for the defeat of the aristocratic party, and the removal of restrictions on those energies which instantly found the most glorious vents for action; the second was justified by a similar necessity that produced similar effects. to impartial eyes a people may be vindicated without traducing those whom a people are driven to oppose. in such august and complicated trials the accuser and defendant may be both innocent. chapter iv. war between megara and corinth.--megara and pegae garrisoned by athenians.--review of affairs at the persian court.--accession of artaxerxes.--revolt of egypt under inarus.--athenian expedition to assist inarus.--aegina besieged.--the corinthians defeated.--spartan conspiracy with the athenian oligarchy.--battle of tanagra.--campaign and successes of myronides.--plot of the oligarchy against the republic.--recall of cimon.--long walls completed.--aegina reduced.-- expedition under tolmides.--ithome surrenders.--the insurgents are settled at naupactus.--disastrous termination of the egyptian expedition.--the athenians march into thessaly to restore orestes the tagus.--campaign under pericles.--truce of five years with the peloponnesians.--cimon sets sail for cyprus.--pretended treaty of peace with persia.--death of cimon. i. cimon, summoned to the ostracism, was sentenced to its appointed term of banishment--ten years. by his removal, the situation of pericles became suddenly more prominent and marked, and he mingled with greater confidence and boldness in public affairs. the vigour of the new administration was soon manifest. megara had hitherto been faithful to the lacedaemonian alliance--a dispute relative to the settlement of frontiers broke out between that state and corinth. although the corinthian government, liberal and enlightened, was often opposed to the spartan oligarchy, it was still essential to the interest of both those peloponnesian states to maintain a firm general alliance, and to keep the peloponnesian confederacy as a counterbalance to the restless ambition of the new head of the ionian league. sparta could not, therefore, have been slow in preferring the alliance of corinth to that of megara. on the other hand, megara, now possessed of a democratic constitution, had long since abandoned the dorian character and habits. the situation of its territories, the nature of its institutions, alike pointed to athens as its legitimate ally. thus, when the war broke out between megara and corinth, on the side of the latter appeared sparta, while megara naturally sought the assistance of athens. the athenian government eagerly availed itself of the occasion to increase the power which athens was now rapidly extending over greece. if we cast our eyes along the map of greece, we shall perceive that the occupation of megara proffered peculiar advantages. it became at once a strong and formidable fortress against any incursions from the peloponnesus, while its seaports of nisaea and pegae opened new fields, both of ambition and of commerce, alike on the saronic and the gulf of corinth. the athenians seized willingly on the alliance thus offered to them, and the megarians had the weakness to yield both megara and pegae to athenian garrisons, while the athenians fortified their position by long walls that united megara with its harbour at nisaea. ii. a new and more vast enterprise contributed towards the stability of the government by draining off its bolder spirits, and diverting the popular attention from domestic to foreign affairs. it is necessary to pass before us, in brief review, the vicissitudes of the persian court. in republican greece, the history of the people marches side by side with the biography of great men. in despotic persia, all history dies away in the dark recesses and sanguinary murthers of a palace governed by eunuchs and defended but by slaves. in the year b. c. the reign of the unfortunate xerxes drew to its close. on his return to susa, after the disastrous results of the persian invasion, he had surrendered himself to the indolent luxury of a palace. an able and daring traitor, named artabanus [ ], but who seems to have been a different personage from that artabanus whose sagacity had vainly sought to save the armies of xerxes from the expedition to greece, entered into a conspiracy against the feeble monarch. by the connivance of a eunuch, he penetrated at night the chamber of the king--and the gloomy destinies of xerxes were consummated by assassination. artabanus sought to throw the guilt upon darius, the eldest son of the murdered king; and artaxerxes, the younger brother, seems to have connived at a charge which might render himself the lawful heir to the throne. darius accordingly perished by the same fate as his father. the extreme youth of artaxerxes had induced artabanus to believe that but a slender and insecure life now stood between himself and the throne; but the young prince was already master of the royal art of dissimulation: he watched his opportunity-- and by a counter-revolution artabanus was sacrificed to the manes of his victims. [ ] thus artaxerxes obtained the undisturbed possession of the persian throne (b. c. ). the new monarch appears to have derived from nature a stronger intellect than his father. but the abuses, so rapid and rank of growth in eastern despotisms, which now ate away the strength of the persian monarchy, were already, perhaps, past the possibility of reform. the enormous extent of the ill-regulated empire tempted the ambition of chiefs who might have plausibly hoped, that as the persian masters had now degenerated to the effeminacy of the assyrians they had supplanted, so the enterprise of a second cyrus might be crowned by a similar success. egypt had been rather overrun by xerxes than subdued--and the spirit of its ancient people waited only the occasion of revolt. a libyan prince, of the name of inarus, whose territories bordered egypt, entered that country (b. c. ), and was hailed by the greater part of the population as a deliverer. the recent murder of xerxes--the weakness of a new reign, commenced in so sanguinary a manner, appeared to favour their desire of independence; and the african adventurer beheld himself at the head of a considerable force. having already secured foreign subsidiaries, inarus was anxious yet more to strengthen himself abroad; and more than one ambassador was despatched to athens, soliciting her assistance, and proffering, in return, a share in the government for whose establishment her arms were solicited: a singular fatality, that the petty colony which, if we believe tradition, had so many centuries ago settled in the then obscure corners of attica, should now be chosen the main auxiliary of the parent state in her vital struggles for national independence. iii. in acceding to the propositions of inarus, pericles yielded to considerations wholly contrary to his after policy, which made it a principal object to confine the energies of athens within the limits of greece. it is probable that that penetrating and scientific statesman (if indeed he had yet attained to a position which enabled him to follow out his own conceptions) saw that every new government must dazzle either by great enterprises abroad or great changes at home--and that he preferred the former. there are few sacrifices that a wary minister, newly-established, from whom high hopes are entertained, and who can justify the destruction of a rival party only by the splendour of its successor--will not hazard rather than incur the contempt which follows disappointment. he will do something that is dangerous rather than do nothing that is brilliant. neither the hatred nor the fear of persia was at an end in athens; and to carry war into the heart of her empire was a proposition eagerly hailed. the more democratic and turbulent portion of the populace, viz., the seamen, had already been disposed of in an expedition of two hundred triremes against cyprus. but the distant and magnificent enterprise of egypt--the hope of new empire--the lust of undiscovered treasures--were more alluring than the reduction of cyprus. that island was abandoned, and the fleet, composed both of athenian and confederate ships, sailed up the nile. masters of that river, the athenians advanced to memphis, the capital of lower egypt. they stormed and took two of the divisions of that city; the third, called the white castle (occupied by the medes, the persians, and such of the egyptians as had not joined the revolt), resisted their assault. iv. while thus occupied in egypt, the athenian arms were equally employed in greece. the whole forces of the commonwealth were in demand--war on every side. the alliance with megara not only created an enemy in corinth, but the peloponnesian confederacy became involved with the attic: lacedaemon herself, yet inert, but menacing; while the neighbouring aegina, intent and jealous, prepared for hostilities soon manifest. the athenians forestalled the attack--made a descent on haliae, in argolis--were met by the corinthians and epidaurians, and the result of battle was the victory of the latter. this defeat the athenians speedily retrieved at sea. off cecryphalea, in the saronic gulf, they attacked and utterly routed the peloponnesian fleet. and now aegina openly declared war and joined the hostile league. an important battle was fought by these two maritime powers with the confederates of either side. the athenians were victorious--took seventy ships-- and, pushing the advantage they had obtained, landed in aegina and besieged her city. three hundred heavy-armed peloponnesians were despatched to the relief of aegina; while the corinthians invaded the megarian territory, seized the passes of geranea, and advanced to megara with their allies. never was occasion more propitious. so large a force in egypt, so large a force at aegina--how was it possible for the athenians to march to the aid of megara? they appeared limited to the choice either to abandon megara or to raise the siege of aegina: so reasoned the peloponnesians. but the advantage of a constitution widely popular is, that the whole community become soldiers in time of need. myronides, an athenian of great military genius, not unassisted by pericles, whose splendid qualities now daily developed themselves, was well adapted to give direction to the enthusiasm of the people. not a man was called from aegina. the whole regular force disposed of, there yet remained at athens those too aged and those too young for the ordinary service. under myronides, boys and old men marched at once to the assistance of their megarian ally. a battle ensued; both sides retiring, neither considered itself defeated. but the corinthians retreating to corinth, the athenians erected a trophy on the field. the corinthian government received its troops with reproaches, and, after an interval of twelve days, the latter returned to the scene of contest, and asserting their claim to the victory, erected a trophy of their own. during the work the athenians sallied from megara, where they had ensconced themselves, attacked and put to flight the corinthians; and a considerable portion of the enemy turning into ground belonging to a private individual, became entangled in a large pit or ditch, from which was but one outlet, viz., that by which they had entered. at this passage the athenians stationed their heavy-armed troops, while the light-armed soldiers surrounded the ditch, and with the missiles of darts and stones put the enemy to death. the rest (being the greater part) of the corinthian forces effected a safe but dishonourable retreat. v. this victory effected and megara secured--although aegina still held out, and although the fate of the egyptian expedition was still unknown--the wonderful activity of the government commenced what even in times of tranquillity would have been a great and arduous achievement. to unite their city with its seaports, they set to work at the erection of the long walls, which extended from athens both to phalerus and piraeus. under cimon, preparations already had been made for the undertaking, and the spoils of persia now provided the means for the defence of athens. meanwhile, the spartans still continued at the siege of ithome. we must not imagine that all the helots had joined in the revolt. this, indeed, would be almost to suppose the utter disorganization of the spartan state. the most luxurious subjects of a despotism were never more utterly impotent in procuring for themselves the necessaries of life, than were the hardy and abstemious freemen of the dorian sparta. it was dishonour for a spartan to till the land--to exercise a trade. he had all the prejudices against any calling but that of arms which characterized a noble of the middle ages. as is ever the case in the rebellion of slaves, the rise was not universal; a sufficient number of these wretched dependants remained passive and inert to satisfy the ordinary wants of their masters, and to assist in the rebuilding of the town. still the spartans were greatly enfeebled, crippled, and embarrassed by the loss of the rest: and the siege of ithome sufficed to absorb their attention, and to make them regard without open hostilities, if with secret enmity, the operations of the athenians. the spartan alliance formally dissolved --megara, with its command of the peloponnesus seized--the doric city of corinth humbled and defeated--aegina blockaded; all these--the athenian proceedings--the spartans bore without any formal declaration of war. vi. and now, in the eighth year of the messenian war, piety succeeded where pride and revenge had failed, and the spartans permitted other objects to divide their attention with the siege of ithome. it was one of the finest characteristics of that singular people, their veneration for antiquity. for the little, rocky, and obscure territory of doris, whence tradition derived their origin, they felt the affection and reverence of sons. a quarrel arising between the people of this state and the neighbouring phocians, the latter invaded doris, and captured one of its three towns [ ]. the lacedaemonians marched at once to the assistance of their reputed father-land, with an army of no less than fifteen hundred heavy-armed spartans and ten thousand of their peloponnesian allies [ ], under the command of nicomedes, son of cleombrotus, and guardian of their king pleistoanax, still a minor. they forced the phocians to abandon the town they had taken; and having effectually protected doris by a treaty of peace between the two nations, prepared to return home. but in this they were much perplexed; the pass of geranea was now occupied by the athenians: megara, too, and pegae were in their hands. should they pass by sea through the gulf of crissa, an athenian squadron already occupied that passage. either way they were intercepted [ ]. under all circumstances, they resolved to halt a while in boeotia, and watch an opportunity to effect their return. but with these ostensible motives for that sojourn assigned by thucydides, there was another more deep and latent. we have had constant occasion to remark how singularly it was the spartan policy to plot against the constitution of free states, and how well-founded was the athenian jealousy of the secret interference of the grecian venice. halting now in boeotia, nicomedes entered into a clandestine communication with certain of the oligarchic party in athens, the object of the latter being the overthrow of the existent popular constitution. with this object was certainly linked the recall of cimon, though there is no reason to believe that great general a party in the treason. this conspiracy was one main reason of the halt in boeotia. another was, probably, the conception of a great and politic design, glanced at only by historians, but which, if successful, would have ranked among the masterpieces of spartan statesmanship. this design was--while athens was to be weakened by internal divisions, and her national spirit effectually curbed by the creation of an oligarchy, the tool of sparta--to erect a new rival to athens in the boeotian thebes. it is true that this project was not, according to diodorus, openly apparent until after the battle of tanagra. but such a scheme required preparation; and the sojourn of nicomedes in boeotia afforded him the occasion to foresee its possibility and prepare his plans. since the persian invasion, thebes had lost her importance, not only throughout greece, but throughout boeotia, her dependant territory. many of the states refused to regard her as their capital, and the theban government desired to regain its power. promises to make war upon athens rendered the theban power auxiliary to sparta: the more thebes was strengthened, the more athens was endangered: and sparta, ever averse to quitting the peloponnesus, would thus erect a barrier to the athenian arms on the very frontiers of attica. vii. while such were the designs and schemes of nicomedes, the conspiracy of the aristocratic party could not be so secret in athens but what some rumour, some suspicion, broke abroad. the people became alarmed and incensed. they resolved to anticipate the war; and, judging nicomedes cut off from retreat, and embarrassed and confined in his position, they marched against him with a thousand argives, with a band of thessalian horse, and some other allied troops drawn principally from ionia, which, united to the whole force of the armed population within their walls, amounted, in all, to fourteen thousand men. viii. it is recorded by plutarch, that during their march cimon appeared, and sought permission to join the army. this was refused by the senate of five hundred, to whom the petition was referred, not from any injurious suspicion of cimon, but from a natural fear that his presence, instead of inspiring confidence, would create confusion; and that it might be plausibly represented that he sought less to resist the spartans than to introduce them into athens--a proof how strong was the impression against him, and how extensive had been the spartan intrigues. cimon retired, beseeching his friends to vindicate themselves from the aspersions cast upon them. placing the armour of cimon--a species of holy standard--in their ranks, a hundred of the warmest supporters among his tribe advanced to battle conscious of the trust committed to their charge. ix. in the territory of tanagra a severe engagement took place. on that day pericles himself fought in the thickest part of the battle (b. c. ); exposing himself to every danger, as if anxious that the loss of cimon should not be missed. the battle was long, obstinate, and even: when in the midst of it, the thessalian cavalry suddenly deserted to the spartans. despite this treachery, the athenians, well supported by the argives, long maintained their ground with advantage. but when night separated the armies [ ], victory remained with the spartans and their allies. [ ] the athenians were not, however, much disheartened by defeat, nor did the spartans profit by their advantage. anxious only for escape, nicomedes conducted his forces homeward, passed through megara, destroying the fruit-trees on his march; and, gaining the pass of geranea, which the athenians had deserted to join the camp at tanagra, arrived at lacedaemon. meanwhile the thebans took advantage of the victory to extend their authority, agreeably to the project conceived with sparta. thebes now attempted the reduction of all the cities of boeotia. some submitted, others opposed. x. aware of the necessity of immediate measures against a neighbour, brave, persevering, and ambitious, the athenian government lost no time in recruiting its broken forces. under myronides, an army, collected from the allies and dependant states, was convened to assemble upon a certain day. many failed the appointment, and the general was urged to delay his march till their arrival. "it is not the part of a general," said myronides, sternly, "to await the pleasure of his soldiers! by delay i read an omen of the desire of the loiterers to avoid the enemy. better rely upon a few faithful than on many disaffected." with a force comparatively small, myronides commenced his march, entered boeotia sixty-two days only after the battle of tanagra, and, engaging the boeotians at oenophyta, obtained a complete and splendid victory (b. c. ). this battle, though diodorus could find no details of the action, was reckoned by athens among the most glorious she had ever achieved; preferred by the vain greeks even to those of marathon and plataea, inasmuch as greek was opposed to greek, and not to the barbarians. those who fell on the athenian side were first honoured by public burial in the ceramichus--"as men," says plato, "who fought against grecians for the liberties of greece." myronides followed up his victory by levelling the walls of tanagra. all boeotia, except thebes herself, was brought into the athenian alliance--as democracies in the different towns, replacing the oligarchical governments, gave the moral blow to the spartan ascendency. thus, in effect, the consequences of the battle almost deserved the eulogies bestowed upon the victory. those consequences were to revolutionize nearly all the states in boeotia; and, by calling up a democracy in each state, athens at once changed enemies into allies. from boeotia, myronides marched to phocis, and, pursuing the same policy, rooted out the oligarchies, and established popular governments. the locrians of opus gave a hundred of their wealthiest citizens as hostages. returned to athens, myronides was received with public rejoicings [ ], and thus closed a short but brilliant campaign, which had not only conquered enemies, but had established everywhere garrisons of friends. xi. although the banishment of cimon had appeared to complete the triumph of the popular party in athens, his opinions were not banished also. athens, like all free states, was ever agitated by the feud of parties, at once its danger and its strength. parties in athens were, however, utterly unlike many of those that rent the peace of the italian republics; nor are they rightly understood in the vague declamations of barthelemi or mitford; they were not only parties of names and men--they were also parties of principles--the parties of restriction and of advance. and thus the triumph of either was invariably followed by the triumph of the principle it espoused. nobler than the bloody contests of mere faction, we do not see in athens the long and sweeping proscriptions, the atrocious massacres that attended the party-strifes of ancient rome or of modern italy. the ostracism, or the fine, of some obnoxious and eminent partisans, usually contented the wrath of the victorious politicians. and in the advance of a cause the people found the main vent for their passions. i trust, however, that i shall not be accused of prejudice when i state as a fact, that the popular party in athens seems to have been much more moderate and less unprincipled even in its excesses than its antagonists. we never see it, like the pisistratidae, leagued with the persian, nor with isagoras, betraying athens to the spartan. what the oligarchic faction did when triumphant, we see hereafter in the establishment of the thirty tyrants. and compared with their offences, the ostracism of aristides, or the fine and banishment of cimon, lose all their colours of wrong. xii. the discontented advocates for an oligarchy, who had intrigued with nicomedes, had been foiled in their object, partly by the conduct of cimon in disavowing all connexion with them, partly by the retreat of nicomedes himself. still their spirit was too fierce to suffer them to forego their schemes without a struggle, and after the battle of tanagra they broke out into open conspiracy against the republic. the details of this treason are lost to us; it is one of the darkest passages of athenian history. from scattered and solitary references we can learn, however, that for a time it threatened the democracy with ruin. [ ] the victory of the spartans at tanagra gave strength to the spartan party in athens; it also inspired with fear many of the people; it was evidently desirable rather to effect a peace with sparta than to hazard a war. who so likely to effect that peace as the banished cimon? now was the time to press for his recall. either at this period, or shortly afterward, ephialtes, his most vehement enemy, was barbarously murdered--according to aristotle, a victim to the hatred of the nobles. xiii. pericles had always conducted his opposition to cimon with great dexterity and art; and indeed the aristocratic leaders of contending parties are rarely so hostile to each other as their subordinate followers suppose. in the present strife for the recall of his rival, amid all the intrigues and conspiracies, the open violence and the secret machination, which threatened not only the duration of the government, but the very existence of the republic, pericles met the danger by proposing himself the repeal of cimon's sentence. plutarch, with a childish sentimentality common to him when he means to be singularly effective, bursts into an exclamation upon the generosity of this step, and the candour and moderation of those times, when resentments could be so easily laid aside. but the profound and passionless mind of pericles was above all the weakness of a melodramatic generosity. and it cannot be doubted that this measure was a compromise between the government and the more moderate and virtuous of the aristocratic party. perhaps it was the most advantageous compromise pericles was enabled to effect; for by concession with respect to individuals, we can often prevent concession as to things. the recall [ ] of the great leader of the anti-popular faction may have been deemed equivalent to the surrender of many popular rights. and had we a deeper insight into the intrigues of that day and the details of the oligarchic conspiracy, i suspect we should find that, by recalling cimon, pericles saved the constitution. [ ] xiv. the first and most popular benefit anticipated from the recall of the son of miltiades in a reconciliation between sparta and athens, was not immediately realized further than by an armistice of four months. [ ] about this time the long walls of the piraeus were completed (b. c. ), and shortly afterward aegina yielded to the arms of the athenians (b. c. ), upon terms which subjected the citizens of that gallant and adventurous isle (whose achievements and commerce seem no less a miracle than the greatness of athens when we survey the limits of their narrow and rocky domain) to the rival they had long so fearlessly, nor fruitlessly braved. the aeginetans surrendered their shipping, demolished their walls, and consented to the payment of an annual tribute. and so was fulfilled the proverbial command of pericles, that aegina ought not to remain the eyesore of athens. xv. aegina reduced, the athenian fleet of fifty galleys, manned by four thousand men [ ], under the command of tolmides, circumnavigated the peloponnesus--the armistice of four months had expired--and, landing in laconia, tolmides burnt gythium, a dock of the lacedaemonians; took chalcis, a town belonging to corinth, and, debarking at sicyon, engaged and defeated the sicyonians. thence proceeding to cephallenia, he mastered the cities of that isle; and descending at naupactus, on the corinthian gulf, wrested it from the ozolian locrians. in the same year with this expedition, and in the tenth year of the siege (b. c. ), ithome surrendered to lacedaemon. the long and gallant resistance of that town, the precipitous site of which nature herself had fortified, is one of the most memorable and glorious events in the grecian history; and we cannot but regret that the imperfect morality of those days, which saw glory in the valour of freemen, rebellion only in that of slaves, should have left us but frigid and scanty accounts of so obstinate a siege. to posterity neither the cause nor the achievements of marathon or plataea, seem the one more holy, the other more heroic, than this long defiance of messenians and helots against the prowess of sparta and the aid of her allies. the reader will rejoice to learn that it was on no dishonourable terms that the city at last surrendered. life and free permission to depart was granted to the besieged, and recorded by a pillar erected on the banks of the alpheus [ ]. but such of the helots as had been taken in battle or in the neighbouring territory were again reduced to slavery--the ringleaders so apprehended alone executed. [ ] the gallant defenders of ithome having conditioned to quit for ever the peloponnesus, tolmides invested them with the possession of his new conquest of naupactus. there, under a democratic government, protected by the power of athens, they regained their ancient freedom, and preserved their hereditary name of messenians--long distinguished from their neighbours by their peculiar dialect. xvi. while thus, near at home, the athenians had extended their conquests and cemented their power, the adventurers they had despatched to the nile were maintaining their strange settlement with more obstinacy than success. at first, the athenians and their ally, the libyan inarus, had indeed, as we have seen, obtained no inconsiderable advantage. anxious to detach the athenians from the egyptian revolt, artaxerxes had despatched an ambassador to sparta, in order to prevail upon that state to make an excursion into attica, and so compel the athenians to withdraw their troops from egypt. the liability of the spartan government to corrupt temptation was not unknown to a court which had received the spartan fugitives; and the ambassador was charged with large treasures to bribe those whom he could not otherwise convince. nevertheless, the negotiation failed; the government could not be induced to the alliance with the persian king. there was indeed a certain spirit of honour inherent in that haughty nation which, if not incompatible with cunning and intrigue, held at least in profound disdain an alliance with the barbarian, for whatsoever ends. but, in fact, the spartans were then entirely absorbed in the reduction of ithome, and the war in arcady; and it would, further, have been the height of impolicy in that state, if meditating any designs against athens, to assist in the recall of an army which it was its very interest to maintain employed in distant and perilous expeditions. the ambassador had the satisfaction indeed of wasting some of his money, but to no purpose; and he returned without success to asia. artaxerxes then saw the necessity of arousing himself to those active exertions which the feebleness of an exhausted despotism rendered the final, not the first resort. under megabyzus an immense army was collected; traversing syria and phoenicia, it arrived in egypt, engaged the egyptian forces in a pitched battle, and obtained a complete victory. thence marching to memphis, it drove the greeks from their siege of the white castle, till then continued, and shut them up in prosopitis, an island in the nile, around which their ships lay anchored. megabyzus ordered the channel to be drained by dikes, and the vessels, the main force of the athenians, were left stranded. terrified by this dexterous manoeuvre, as well as by the success of the persians, the egyptians renounced all further resistance; and the athenians were deprived at once of their vessels and their allies. [ ] xvii. nothing daunted, and inspired by their disdain no less than by their valour, the athenians were yet to the barbarian what the norman knights were afterward to the greeks. they burnt their vessels that they might be as useless to the enemy as to themselves, and, exhorting each other not to dim the glory of their past exploits, shut up still in the small town of byblus situated in the isle of prosopitis, resolved to defend themselves to the last. the blockade endured a year and a half, such was the singular ignorance of the art of sieges in that time. at length, when the channel was drained, as i have related, the persians marched across the dry bed, and carried the place by a land assault. so ended this wild and romantic expedition. the greater part of the athenians perished; a few, however, either forced their way by arms, or, as diodorus more probably relates, were permitted by treaty to retire, out of the egyptian territory. taking the route of libya, they arrived at cyrene, and finally reached athens. inarus, the author of the revolt, was betrayed, and perished on the cross, and the whole of egypt once more succumbed to the persian yoke, save only that portion called the marshy or fenny parts (under the dominion of a prince named amyrtaeus), protected by the nature of the soil and the proverbial valour of the inhabitants. meanwhile a squadron of fifty vessels, despatched by athens to the aid of their countrymen, entered the mendesian mouth of the nile too late to prevent the taking of byblus. here they were surprised and defeated by the persian troops and a phoenician fleet (b. c. ), and few survived a slaughter which put the last seal on the disastrous results of the egyptian expedition. at home the athenians continued, however, their military operations. thessaly, like the rest of greece, had long shaken off the forms of kingly government, but the spirit of monarchy still survived in a country where the few were opulent and the multitude enslaved. the thessalian republics, united by an assembly of deputies from the various towns, elected for their head a species of protector--who appears to have possessed many of the characteristics of the podesta of the italian states. his nominal station was that of military command--a station which, in all save the most perfect constitutions, comprehends also civil authority. the name of tagus was given to this dangerous chief, and his power and attributes so nearly resembled those of a monarch, that even thucydides confers on a tagus the title of king. orestes, one of these princes, had been driven from his country by a civil revolution. he fled to athens, and besought her assistance to effect his restoration. that the athenians should exert themselves in favour of a man whose rank so nearly resembled the odious dignity of a monarch, appears a little extraordinary. but as the tagus was often the favourite of the commonalty and the foe of the aristocratic party, it is possible that, in restoring orestes, the athenians might have seen a new occasion to further the policy so triumphantly adopted in boeotia and phocis--to expel a hostile oligarchy and establish a friendly democracy [ ]. whatever their views, they decided to yield to the exile the assistance he demanded, and under myronides an army in the following year accompanied orestes into thessaly. they were aided by the boeotians and phocians. myronides marched to pharsalus, a thessalian city, and mastered the surrounding country; but the obstinate resistance of the city promising a more protracted blockade than it was deemed advisable to await, the athenians raised the siege without effecting the object of the expedition. xviii. the possession of pegae and the new colony of naupactus [ ] induced the desire of extending the athenian conquests on the neighbouring coasts, and the government were naturally anxious to repair the military honours of athens--lessened in egypt, and certainly not increased in thessaly. with a thousand athenian soldiers, pericles himself set out for pegae. thence the fleet, there anchored, made a descent on sicyon; pericles defeated the sicyonians in a pitched battle, and besieged the city; but, after some fruitless assaults, learning that the spartans were coming to the relief of the besieged, he quitted the city, and, re-enforced by some achaeans, sailed to the opposite side of the continent, crossed over the corinthian bay, besieged the town of oeniadae in acarnania (b. c. ) (the inhabitants of which pausanias [ ] styles the hereditary enemies of the athenians), ravaged the neighbouring country, and bore away no inconsiderable spoils. although he reduced no city, the successes of pericles were signal enough to render the campaign triumphant [ ]; and it gratified the national pride and resentment to have insulted the cities and wasted the lands of the peloponnesus. these successes were sufficient to render a peace with sparta and her allies advisable for the latter, while they were not sufficiently decided to tempt the athenians to prolong irregular and fruitless hostilities. three years were consumed without further aggressions on either side, and probably in negotiations for peace. at the end of that time, the influence and intervention of cimon obtained a truce of five years between the athenians and the peloponnesians. xix. the truce with the peloponnesians (b. c. ) removed the main obstacle to those more bright and extensive prospects of enterprise and ambition which the defeat of the persians had opened to the athenians. in that restless and unpausing energy, which is the characteristic of an intellectual republic, there seems, as it were, a kind of destiny: a power impossible to resist urges the state from action to action, from progress to progress, with a rapidity dangerous while it dazzles; resembling in this the career of individuals impelled onward, first to obtain, and thence to preserve, power, and who cannot struggle against the fate which necessitates them to soar, until, by the moral gravitation of human things, the point which has no beyond is attained; and the next effort to rise is but the prelude of their fall. in such states time indeed moves with gigantic strides; years concentrate what would be the epochs of centuries in the march of less popular institutions. the planet of their fortunes rolls with an equal speed through the cycle of internal civilization as of foreign glory. the condition of their brilliant life is the absence of repose. the accelerated circulation of the blood beautifies but consumes, and action itself, exhausting the stores of youth by its very vigour, becomes a mortal but divine disease. xx. when athens rose to the ascendency of greece, it was necessary to the preservation of that sudden and splendid dignity that she should sustain the naval renown by which it had been mainly acquired. there is but one way to sustain reputation, viz., to increase it and the memory of past glories becomes dim unless it be constantly refreshed by new. it must also be borne in mind that the maritime habits of the people had called a new class into existence in the councils of the state. the seamen, the most democratic part of the population, were now to be conciliated and consulted: it was requisite to keep them in action, for they were turbulent--in employment, for they were poor: and thus the domestic policy and the foreign interests of athens alike conspired to necessitate the prosecution of maritime enterprise. xxi. no longer harassed and impeded by fears of an enemy in the peloponnesus, the lively imagination of the people readily turned to more dazzling and profitable warfare. the island of cyprus had (we have seen) before attracted the ambition of the mistress of the aegaean. its possession was highly advantageous, whether for military or commercial designs, and once subjected, the fleet of the athenians might readily retain the dominion. divided into nine petty states, governed, not by republican, but by monarchical institutions, the forces of the island were distracted, and the whole proffered an easy as well as glorious conquest; while the attempt took the plausible shape of deliverance, inasmuch as persia, despite the former successes of cimon, still arrogated the supremacy over the island, and the war was, in fact, less against cyprus than against persia. cimon, who ever affected great and brilliant enterprises, and whose main policy it was to keep the athenians from the dangerous borders of the peloponnesus, hastened to cement the truce he had formed with the states of that district, by directing the spirit of enterprise to the conquest of cyprus. invested with the command of two hundred galleys, he set sail for that island (b. c. ) [ ]. but designs more vast were associated with this enterprise. the objects of the late egyptian expedition still tempted, and sixty vessels of the fleet were despatched to egypt to the assistance of amyrtaeus, who, yet unconquered, in the marshy regions, sustained the revolt against the persian king. artabazus commanded the persian forces, and with a fleet of three hundred vessels he ranged himself in sight of cyprus. cimon, however, landing on the island, succeeded in capturing many of its principal towns. humbled and defeated, it was not the policy of persia to continue hostilities with an enemy from whom it had so much to fear and so little to gain. it is not, therefore, altogether an improbable account of the later authorities, that ambassadors with proposals of peace were formally despatched to athens. but we must reject as a pure fable the assertions that a treaty was finally agreed upon, by which it was decreed, on the one hand, that the independence of the asiatic greek towns should be acknowledged, and that the persian generals should not advance within three days' march of the grecian seas; nor should a persian vessel sail within the limit of phaselis and the cyanean rocks; while, on the other hand, the athenians were bound not to enter the territories of artaxerxes [ ]. no such arrangement was known to thucydides; no reference is ever made to such a treaty in subsequent transactions with persia. a document, professing to be a copy of this treaty, was long extant; but it was undoubtedly the offspring of a weak credulity or an ingenious invention. but while negotiations, if ever actually commenced, were yet pending, cimon was occupied in the siege of citium, where famine conspired with the obstinacy of the besieged to protract the success of his arms. it is recorded among the popular legends of the day that cimon [ ] sent a secret mission to the oracle of jupiter ammon. "return," was the response to the messengers; "cimon is with me!" the messengers did return to find the son of miltiades was no more. he expired during the blockade of citium (b. c. ). by his orders his death was concealed, the siege raised, and, still under the magic of cimon's name, the athenians engaging the phoenicians and cilicians off the cyprian salamis, obtained signal victories both by land and sea. thence, joined by the squadron despatched to egypt, which, if it did not share, did not retrieve, the misfortunes of the previous expedition, they returned home. the remains of cimon were interred in athens, and the splendid monument consecrated to his name was visible in the time of plutarch. chapter v. change of manners in athens.--begun under the pisistratidae.--effects of the persian war, and the intimate connexion with ionia.--the hetaerae.--the political eminence lately acquired by athens.--the transfer of the treasury from delos to athens.--latent dangers and evils.--first, the artificial greatness of athens not supported by natural strength.--secondly, her pernicious reliance on tribute.-- thirdly, deterioration of national spirit commenced by cimon in the use of bribes and public tables.--fourthly, defects in popular courts of law.--progress of general education.--history.--its ionian origin. --early historians.--acusilaus.--cadmus.--eugeon.--hellanicus.-- pherecides.--xanthus.--view of the life and writings of herodotus.-- progress of philosophy since thales.--philosophers of the ionian and eleatic schools.--pythagoras.--his philosophical tenets and political influence.--effect of these philosophers on athens.--school of political philosophy continued in athens from the time of solon.-- anaxagoras.--archelaus.--philosophy not a thing apart from the ordinary life of the athenians. i. before we pass to the administration of pericles--a period so brilliant in the history not more of athens than of art--it may not be unseasonable to take a brief survey of the progress which the athenians had already made in civilization and power (b. c. ). the comedians and the rhetoricians, when at a later period they boldly represented to the democracy, in a mixture of satire and of truth, the more displeasing features of the popular character, delighted to draw a contrast between the new times and the old. the generation of men whom marathon and salamis had immortalized were, according to these praisers of the past, of nobler manners and more majestic virtues than their degenerate descendants. "then," exclaimed isocrates, "our young men did not waste their days in the gambling-house, nor with music-girls, nor in the assemblies, in which whole days are now consumed then did they shun the agora, or, if they passed through its haunts, it was with modest and timorous forbearance--then, to contradict an elder was a greater offence than nowadays to offend a parent--then, not even a servant of honest repute would have been seen to eat or drink within a tavern!" "in the good old times," says the citizen of aristophanes [ ], "our youths breasted the snow without a mantle-- their music was masculine and martial--their gymnastic exercises decorous and chaste. thus were trained the heroes of marathon!" in such happy days we are informed that mendicancy and even want were unknown. [ ] it is scarcely necessary to observe, that we must accept these comparisons between one age and another with considerable caution and qualification. we are too much accustomed to such declamations in our own time not to recognise an ordinary trick of satirists and declaimers. as long as a people can bear patiently to hear their own errors and follies scornfully proclaimed, they have not become altogether degenerate or corrupt. yet still, making every allowance for rhetorical or poetic exaggeration, it is not more evident than natural that the luxury of civilization--the fervour of unbridled competition, in pleasure as in toil--were attended with many changes of manners and life favourable to art and intellect, but hostile to the stern hardihood of a former age. ii. but the change was commenced, not under a democracy, but under a tyranny--it was consummated, not by the vices, but the virtues of the nation. it began with the pisistratidae [ ], who first introduced into athens the desire of pleasure and the habits of ostentation, that refine before they enervate; and that luxury which, as in athenaeus it is well and profoundly said, is often the concomitant of freedom, "as soft couches took their name from hercules"--made its rapid progress with the result of the persian war. the plunder of plataea, the luxuries of byzantium, were not limited in their effect to the wild pausanias. the decay of old and the rise of new families tended to give a stimulus to the emulation of wealth--since it is by wealth that new families seek to eclipse the old. and even the destruction of private houses, in the ravages of mardonius, served to quicken the career of art. in rebuilding their mansions, the nobles naturally availed themselves of the treasures and the appliances of the gorgeous enemy they had vanquished and despoiled. few ever rebuild their houses on as plain a scale as the old ones. in the city itself the residences of the great remained plain and simple; they were mostly built of plaster and unburnt brick, and we are told that the houses of cimon and pericles were scarcely distinguishable from those of the other citizens. but in their villas in attica, in which the athenians took a passionate delight, they exhibited their taste and displayed their wealth [ ]. and the lucrative victories of cimon, backed by his own example of ostentation, gave to a vast number of families, hitherto obscure, at once the power to gratify luxury and the desire to parade refinement. nor was the eastern example more productive of emulation than the ionian. the persian war, and the league which followed it, brought athens into the closest intercourse with her graceful but voluptuous colonies. miletus fell, but the manners of miletus survived her liberties. that city was renowned for the peculiar grace and intellectual influence of its women; and it is evident that there must have been a gradual change of domestic habits and the formation of a new class of female society in athens before aspasia could have summoned around her the power, and the wisdom, and the wit of athens--before an accomplished mistress could have been even suspected of urging the politic pericles into war--and, above all, before an athenian audience could have assented in delight to that mighty innovation on their masculine drama--which is visible in the passionate heroines and the sentimental pathos of euripides. but this change was probably not apparent in the athenian matrons themselves, who remained for the most part in primitive seclusion; and though, i think, it will be shown hereafter that modern writers have greatly exaggerated both the want of mental culture and the degree of domestic confinement to which the athenian women [ ] were subjected, yet it is certain, at least, that they did not share the social freedom or partake the intellectual accomplishments of their lords. it was the new class of "female friends" or "hetaerae," a phrase ill translated by the name of "courtesans" (from whom they were indubitably but not to our notions very intelligibly, distinguished), that exhibited the rarest union of female blandishment and masculine culture. "the wife for our house and honour," implies demosthenes, "the hetaera for our solace and delight." these extraordinary women, all foreigners, and mostly ionian, made the main phenomenon of athenian society. they were the only women with whom an enlightened greek could converse as equal to himself in education. while the law denied them civil rights, usage lavished upon them at once admiration and respect. by stealth, as it were, and in defiance of legislation, they introduced into the ambitious and restless circles of athens many of the effects, pernicious or beneficial, which result from the influence of educated women upon the manners and pursuits of men. [ ] iii. the alteration of social habits was not then sudden and startling (such is never the case in the progress of national manners), but, commencing with the graces of a polished tyranny, ripened with the results of glorious but too profitable victories. perhaps the time in which the state of transition was most favourably visible was just prior to the death of cimon. it was not then so much the over-refinement of a new and feebler generation, as the polish and elegance which wealth, art, and emulation necessarily imparted to the same brave warriors who exchanged posts with the spartans at plataea, and sent out their children and old men to fight and conquer with myronides. iv. a rapid glance over the events of the few years commemorated in the last book of this history will suffice to show the eminence which athens had attained over the other states of greece. she was the head of the ionian league--the mistress of the grecian seas; with sparta, the sole rival that could cope with her armies and arrest her ambition, she had obtained a peace; corinth was humbled, aegina ruined, megara had shrunk into her dependency and garrison. the states of boeotia had received their very constitution from the hands of an athenian general--the democracies planted by athens served to make liberty itself subservient to her will, and involved in her safety. she had remedied the sterility of her own soil by securing the rich pastures of the neighbouring euboea. she had added the gold of thasos to the silver of laurion, and established a footing in thessaly which was at once a fortress against the asiatic arms and a mart for asiatic commerce. the fairest lands of the opposite coast-- the most powerful islands of the grecian seas--contributed to her treasury, or were almost legally subjected to her revenge. her navy was rapidly increasing in skill, in number, and renown; at home, the recall of cimon had conciliated domestic contentions, and the death of cimon dispirited for a while the foes to the established constitution. in all greece, myronides was perhaps the ablest general--pericles (now rapidly rising to the sole administration of affairs [ ]) was undoubtedly the most highly educated, cautious, and commanding statesman. but a single act of successful daring had, more than all else, contributed to the athenian power. even in the lifetime of aristides it had been proposed to transfer the common treasury from delos to athens [ ]. the motion failed--perhaps through the virtuous opposition of aristides himself. but when at the siege of ithome the feud between the athenians and spartans broke out, the fairest pretext and the most favourable occasion conspired in favour of a measure so seductive to the national ambition. under pretence of saving the treasury from the hazard of falling a prey to the spartan rapacity or need,--it was at once removed to athens (b. c. or ) [ ]; and while the enfeebled power of sparta, fully engrossed by the messenian war, forbade all resistance to the transfer from that the most formidable quarter, the conquests of naxos and the recent reduction of thasos seem to have intimidated the spirit, and for a time even to have silenced the reproaches, of the tributary states themselves. thus, in actual possession of the tribute of her allies, athens acquired a new right to its collection and its management; and while she devoted some of the treasures to the maintenance of her strength, she began early to uphold the prerogative of appropriating a part to the enhancement of her splendour. [ ] as this most important measure occurred at the very period when the power of cimon was weakened by the humiliating circumstances that attended his expedition to ithome, and by the vigorous and popular measures of the opposition, so there seems every reason to believe that it was principally advised and effected by pericles, who appears shortly afterward presiding over the administration of the finances. [ ] though the athenian commerce had greatly increased, it was still principally confined to the thracian coasts and the black sea. the desire of enterprises, too vast for a state whose power reverses might suddenly destroy, was not yet indulged to excess; nor had the turbulent spirits of the piraeus yet poured in upon the various barriers of the social state and the political constitution, the rashness of sailors and the avarice of merchants. agriculture, to which all classes in athens were addicted, raised a healthful counteraction to the impetus given to trade. nor was it till some years afterward, when pericles gathered all the citizens into the town, and left no safety-valve to the ferment and vices of the agora, that the athenian aristocracy gradually lost all patriotism and manhood, and an energetic democracy was corrupted into a vehement though educated mob. the spirit of faction, it is true, ran high, but a third party, headed by myronides and tolmides, checked the excesses of either extreme. v. thus, at home and abroad, time and fortune, the concurrence of events, and the happy accident of great men, not only maintained the present eminence of athens, but promised, to ordinary foresight, a long duration of her glory and her power. to deeper observers, the picture might have presented dim but prophetic shadows. it was clear that the command athens had obtained was utterly disproportioned to her natural resources--that her greatness was altogether artificial, and rested partly upon moral rather than physical causes, and partly upon the fears and the weakness of her neighbours. a steril soil, a limited territory, a scanty population--all these--the drawbacks and disadvantages of nature--the wonderful energy and confident daring of a free state might conceal in prosperity; but the first calamity could not fail to expose them to jealous and hostile eyes. the empire delegated to the athenians they must naturally desire to retain and to increase; and there was every reason to forbode that their ambition would soon exceed their capacities to sustain it. as the state became accustomed to its power, it would learn to abuse it. increasing civilization, luxury, and art, brought with them new expenses, and athens had already been permitted to indulge with impunity the dangerous passion of exacting tribute from her neighbours. dependance upon other resources than those of the native population has ever been a main cause of the destruction of despotisms, and it cannot fail, sooner or later, to be equally pernicious to the republics that trust to it. the resources of taxation, confined to freemen and natives, are almost incalculable; the resources of tribute, wrung from foreigners and dependants, are sternly limited and terribly precarious--they rot away the true spirit of industry in the people that demand the impost--they implant ineradicable hatred in the states that concede it. vi. two other causes of great deterioration to the national spirit were also at work in athens. one, as i have before hinted, was the policy commenced by cimon, of winning the populace by the bribes and exhibitions of individual wealth. the wise pisistratus had invented penalties--cimon offered encouragement--to idleness. when the poor are once accustomed to believe they have a right to the generosity of the rich, the first deadly inroad is made upon the energies of independence and the sanctity of property. a yet more pernicious evil in the social state of the athenians was radical in their constitution--it was their courts of justice. proceeding upon a theory that must have seemed specious and plausible to an inexperienced and infant republic, solon had laid it down as a principle of his code, that as all men were interested in the preservation of law, so all men might exert the privilege of the plaintiff and accuser. as society grew more complicated, the door was thus opened to every species of vexatious charge and frivolous litigation. the common informer became a most harassing and powerful personage, and made one of a fruitful and crowded profession; and in the very capital of liberty there existed the worst species of espionage. but justice was not thereby facilitated. the informer was regarded with universal hatred and contempt; and it is easy to perceive, from the writings of the great comic poet, that the sympathies of the athenian audience were as those of the english public at this day, enlisted against the man who brought the inquisition of the law to the hearth of his neighbour. vii. solon committed a yet more fatal and incurable error when he carried the democratic principle into judicial tribunals. he evidently considered that the very strength and life of his constitution rested in the heliaea--a court the numbers and nature of which have been already described. perhaps, at a time when the old oligarchy was yet so formidable, it might have been difficult to secure justice to the poorer classes while the judges were selected from the wealthier. but justice to all classes became a yet more capricious uncertainty when a court of law resembled a popular hustings. [ ] if we intrust a wide political suffrage to the people, the people at least hold no trust for others than themselves and their posterity-- they are not responsible to the public, for they are the public. but in law, where there are two parties concerned, the plaintiff and defendant, the judge should not only be incorruptible, but strictly responsible. in athens the people became the judge; and, in offences punishable by fine, were the very party interested in procuring condemnation; the numbers of the jury prevented all responsibility, excused all abuses, and made them susceptible of the same shameless excesses that characterize self-elected corporations--from which appeal is idle, and over which public opinion exercises no control. these numerous, ignorant, and passionate assemblies were liable at all times to the heats of party, to the eloquence of individuals--to the whims and caprices, the prejudices, the impatience, and the turbulence which must ever be the characteristics of a multitude orally addressed. it was evident, also, that from service in such a court, the wealthy, the eminent, and the learned, with other occupation or amusement, would soon seek to absent themselves. and the final blow to the integrity and respectability of the popular judicature was given at a later period by pericles, when he instituted a salary, just sufficient to tempt the poor and to be disdained by the affluent, to every dicast or juryman in the ten ordinary courts [ ]. legal science became not the profession of the erudite and the laborious few, but the livelihood of the ignorant and idle multitude. the canvassing--the cajoling--the bribery--that resulted from this, the most vicious institution of the athenian democracy--are but too evident and melancholy tokens of the imperfection of human wisdom. life, property, and character were at the hazard of a popular election. these evils must have been long in progressive operation; but perhaps they were scarcely visible till the fatal innovation of pericles, and the flagrant excesses that ensued allowed the people themselves to listen to the branding and terrible satire upon the popular judicature, which is still preserved to us in the comedy of aristophanes. at the same time, certain critics and historians have widely and grossly erred in supposing that these courts of "the sovereign multitude" were partial to the poor and hostile to the rich. all testimony proves that the fact was lamentably the reverse. the defendant was accustomed to engage the persons of rank or influence whom he might number as his friends, to appear in court on his behalf. and property was employed to procure at the bar of justice the suffrages it could command at a political election. the greatest vice of the democratic heliaea was, that by a fine the wealthy could purchase pardon--by interest the great could soften law. but the chances were against the poor man. to him litigation was indeed cheap, but justice dear. he had much the same inequality to struggle against in a suit with a powerful antagonist, that he would have had in contesting with him for an office in the administration. in all trials resting on the voice of popular assemblies, it ever has been and ever will be found, that, caeteris paribus, the aristocrat will defeat the plebeian. viii. meanwhile the progress of general education had been great and remarkable. music [ ], from the earliest time, was an essential part of instruction; and it had now become so common an acquirement, that aristotle [ ] observes, that at the close of the persian war there was scarcely a single freeborn athenian unacquainted with the flute. the use of this instrument was afterward discontinued, and indeed proscribed in the education of freemen, from the notion that it was not an instrument capable of music sufficiently elevated and intellectual [ ]; yet it was only succeeded by melodies more effeminate and luxurious. and aristophanes enumerates the change from the old national airs and measures among the worst symptoms of athenian degeneracy. besides the musician, the tutor of the gymnasium and the grammarian still made the nominal limit of scholastic instruction. [ ] but life itself had now become a school. the passion for public intercourse and disputation, which the gardens and the agora, and exciting events, and free institutions, and the rise of philosophy, and a serene and lovely climate, made the prevalent characteristic of the matured athenian, began to stir within the young. and in the mean while the tardy invention of prose literature worked its natural revolution in intellectual pursuits. ix. it has been before observed, that in greece, as elsewhere, the first successor of the poet was the philosopher, and that the oral lecturer preceded the prose writer. with written prose history commenced. having found a mode of transmitting that species of knowledge which could not, like rhythmical tales or sententious problems, be accurately preserved by the memory alone, it was natural that a present age should desire to record and transmit the past-- chtaema es aei--an everlasting heirloom to the future. to a semi-barbarous nation history is little more than poetry. the subjects to which it would be naturally devoted are the legends of religion--the deeds of ancestral demigods--the triumphs of successful war. in recording these themes of national interest, the poet is the first historian. as philosophy--or rather the spirit of conjecture, which is the primitive and creative breath of philosophy--becomes prevalent, the old credulity directs the new research to the investigation of subjects which the poets have not sufficiently explained, but which, from their remote and religious antiquity, are mysteriously attractive to a reverent and inquisitive population, with whom long descent is yet the most flattering proof of superiority. thus genealogies, and accounts of the origin of states and deities, made the first subjects of history, and inspired the argive acusilaus [ ], and, as far as we can plausibly conjecture, the milesian cadmus. x. the dorians--a people who never desired to disturb tradition, unwilling carefully to investigate, precisely because they superstitiously venerated, the past, little inquisitive as to the manners or the chronicles of alien tribes, satisfied, in a word, with themselves, and incurious as to others--were not a race to whom history became a want. ionia--the subtle, the innovating, the anxious, and the restless--nurse of the arts, which the mother country ultimately reared, boasts in cadmus the milesian the first writer of history and of prose [ ]; samos, the birthplace of pythagoras, produced eugeon, placed by dionysius at the head of the early historians; and mitylene claimed hellanicus, who seems to have formed a more ambitious design than his predecessors. he wrote a history of the ancient kings of the earth, and an account of the founders of the most celebrated cities in each kingdom [ ]. during the early and crude attempts of these and other writers, stern events contributed to rear from tedious research and fruitless conjecture the true genius of history; for it is as a people begin to struggle for rights, to comprehend political relations, to contend with neighbours abroad, and to wrestle with obnoxious institutions at home, that they desire to secure the sanction of antiquity, to trace back to some illustrious origin the rights they demand, and to stimulate hourly exertions by a reference to departed fame. then do mythologies, and genealogies, and geographical definitions, and the traditions that concern kings and heroes, ripen into chronicles that commemorate the convulsions or the progress of a nation. during the stormy period which saw the invasion of xerxes (b. c. ), when everything that could shed lustre upon the past incited to present struggles, flourished pherecydes. he is sometimes called of leria, which seems his birthplace--sometimes of athens, where he resided thirty years, and to which state his history refers. although his work was principally mythological, it opened the way to sound historical composition, inasmuch as it included references to later times--to existent struggles--the descent of miltiades--the scythian expedition of darius. subsequently, xanthus, a lydian, composed a work on his own country (b. c. ), of which some extracts remain, and from which herodotus did not disdain to borrow. xi. it was nearly a century after the invention of prose and of historical composition, and with the guides and examples of, many writers not uncelebrated in their day before his emulation, that herodotus first made known to the grecian public, and, according to all probable evidence, at the olympic games, a portion of that work which drew forth the tears of thucydides, and furnishes the imperishable model of picturesque and faithful narrative. this happened in a brilliant period of athenian history; it was in the same year as the battle of oenophyta, when athens gave laws and constitutions to boeotia, and the recall of cimon established for herself both liberty and order. the youth of herodotus was passed while the glory of the persian war yet lingered over greece, and while with the ascendency of athens commenced a new era of civilization. his genius drew the vital breath from an atmosphere of poetry. the desire of wild adventure still existed, and the romantic expedition of the athenians into egypt had served to strengthen the connexion between the greeks and that imposing and interesting land. the rise of the greek drama with aeschylus probably contributed to give effect, colour, and vigour to the style of herodotus. and something almost of the art of the contemporaneous sophocles may be traced in the easy skill of his narratives, and the magic yet tranquil energy of his descriptions. xii. though dorian by ancient descent, it was at halicarnassus, in caria, a city of asia minor, that herodotus was born; nor does his style, nor do his views, indicate that he derived from the origin of his family any of the dorian peculiarities. his parents were distinguished alike by birth and fortune. early in life those internal commotions, to which all the grecian towns were subjected, and which crushed for a time the liberties of his native city, drove him from halicarnassus: and, suffering from tyranny, he became inspired by that enthusiasm for freedom which burns throughout his immortal work. during his exile he travelled through greece, thrace, and macedonia--through scythia, asia, and egypt. thus he collected the materials of his work, which is, in fact, a book of travels narrated historically. if we do not reject the story that he read a portion of his work at the olympian games, when thucydides, one of his listeners, was yet a boy, and if we suppose the latter to have been about fifteen, this anecdote is calculated [ ] to bear the date of olym. , b. c. , when herodotus was twenty-eight. the chief residence of herodotus was at samos, until a revolution broke out in halicarnassus. the people conspired against their tyrant lygdamis. herodotus repaired to his native city, took a prominent part in the conspiracy, and finally succeeded in restoring the popular government. he was not, however, long left to enjoy the liberties he had assisted to acquire for his fellow-citizens: some intrigue of the counter-party drove him a second time into exile. repairing to athens, he read the continuation of his history at the festival of the panathenaea (b. c. ). it was received with the most rapturous applause; and we are told that the people solemnly conferred upon the man who had immortalized their achievements against the mede the gift of ten talents. the disposition of this remarkable man, like that of all travellers, inclined to enterprise and adventure. his early wanderings, his later vicissitudes, seem to have confirmed a temperament originally restless and inquisitive. accordingly, in his forty-first year, he joined the athenian emigrators that in the south of italy established a colony at thurium (b. c. ). viii. at thurium herodotus apparently passed the remainder of his life, though whether his tomb was built there or in athens is a matter of dispute. these particulars of his life, not uninteresting in themselves, tend greatly to illustrate the character of his writings. their charm consists in the earnestness of a man who describes countries as an eyewitness, and events as one accustomed to participate in them. the life, the raciness, the vigour of an adventurer and a wanderer glow in every page. he has none of the refining disquisitions that are born of the closet. he paints history rather than descants on it; he throws the colourings of a mind, unconsciously poetic, over all he describes. now a soldier--now a priest--now a patriot--he is always a poet, if rarely a philosopher. he narrates like a witness, unlike thucydides, who sums up like a judge. no writer ever made so beautiful an application of superstitions to truths. his very credulities have a philosophy of their own; and modern historians have acted unwisely in disdaining the occasional repetition even of his fables. for if his truths record the events, his fables paint the manners and the opinions of the time; and the last fill up the history, of which events are only the skeleton. to account for his frequent use of dialogue and his dramatic effects of narrative, we must remember the tribunal to which the work of herodotus was subjected. every author, unconsciously to himself, consults the tastes of those he addresses. no small coterie of scholars, no scrupulous and critical inquirers, made the ordeal herodotus underwent. his chronicles were not dissertations to be coldly pondered over and skeptically conned: they were read aloud at solemn festivals to listening thousands; they were to arrest the curiosity--to amuse the impatience--to stir the wonder of a lively and motley crowd. thus the historian imbibed naturally the spirit of the taleteller. and he was driven to embellish his history with the romantic legend--the awful superstition--the gossip anecdote--which yet characterize the stories of the popular and oral fictionist, in the bazars of the mussulman, or on the seasands of sicily. still it has been rightly said that a judicious reader is not easily led astray by herodotus in important particulars. his descriptions of localities, of manners and customs, are singularly correct; and modern travellers can yet trace the vestiges of his fidelity. as the historian, therefore, was in some measure an orator, so his skill was to be manifest in the arts which keep alive the attention of an audience. hence herodotus continually aims at the picturesque; he gives us the very words of his actors, and narrates the secrets of impenetrable palaces with as much simplicity and earnestness as if he had been placed behind the arras. [ ] that it was impossible for the wandering halicarnassian to know what gyges said to candaules, or artabanus to xerxes, has, perhaps, been too confidently asserted. heeren reminds us, that both by jewish and grecian writers there is frequent mention of the scribes or secretaries who constantly attended the person of the persian monarch --on occasion of festivals [ ], of public reviews [ ], and even in the tumult of battle; and, with the idolatrous respect in which despotism was held, noted down the words that fell from the royal lip. the ingenious german then proceeds to show that this custom was common to all the asiatic nations. thus were formed the chronicles or archives of the persians; and by reference to these minute and detailed documents, herodotus was enabled to record conversations and anecdotes, and preserve to us the memoirs of a court. and though this conjecture must be received with caution, and, to many passages unconnected with persia or the east, cannot be applied, it is sufficiently plausible, in some very important parts of the history, not to be altogether dismissed with contempt. but it is for another reason that i have occasionally admitted the dialogues of herodotus, as well as the superstitious anecdotes current at the day. the truth of history consists not only in the relation of events, but in preserving the character of the people, and depicting the manners of the time. facts, if too nakedly told, may be very different from truths, in the impression they convey; and the spirit of grecian history is lost if we do not feel the greeks themselves constantly before us. thus when, as in herodotus, the agents of events converse, every word reported may not have been spoken; but what we lose in accuracy of details we more than gain by the fidelity of the whole. we acquire a lively and accurate impression of the general character--of the thoughts, and the manners, and the men of the age and the land. it is so also with legends, sparingly used, and of which the nature is discernible from fact by the most superficial gaze; we more sensibly feel that it was the greeks who were engaged at marathon when we read of the dream of hippias or the apparition of theseus. finally, an historian of greece will, almost without an effort, convey to the reader a sense of the mighty change, from an age of poetical heroes to an age of practical statesmen, if we suffer herodotus to be his model in the narrative of the persian war, and allow the more profound and less imaginative thucydides to colour the pictures of the peloponnesian. xiv. the period now entered upon is also remarkable for the fertile and rapid development of one branch of intellectual cultivation in which the greeks were pre-eminently illustrious. in history, rome was the rival of greece; in philosophy, rome was never more than her credulous and reverend scholar. we have seen the dawn of philosophy with thales; miletus, his birthplace, bore his immediate successors. anaximander, his younger contemporary [ ], is said, with pherecydes, to have been the first philosopher who availed himself of the invention of writing. his services have not been sufficiently appreciated--like those of most men who form the first steps in the progress between the originator and the perfector. he seems boldly to have differed from his master, thales, in the very root of his system. he rejected the original element of water or humidity, and supposed the great primary essence and origin of creation to be in that everything or nothing which he called the infinite, and which we might perhaps render as "the chaos;" [ ] that of this vast element, the parts are changed--the whole immutable, and all things arise from and return unto that universal source [ ]. he pursued his researches into physics, and attempted to account for the thunder, the lightning, and the winds. his conjectures are usually shrewd and keen; and sometimes, as in his assertion, "that the moon shone in light borrowed from the sun," may deserve a higher praise. both anaximander and pherecydes concurred in the principles of their doctrines, but the latter seems to have more distinctly asserted the immortality of the soul. [ ] anaximenes, also of miletus, was the friend and follower of anaximander (b. c. ). he seems, however, to have deserted the abstract philosophical dogmas of his tutor, and to have resumed the analogical system commenced by thales--like that philosopher, he founded axioms upon observations, bold and acute, but partial and contracted. he maintained that air was the primitive element. in this theory he united the zeus, or ether, of pherecydes, and the infinite of anaximander, for he held the air to be god in itself, and infinite in its nature. xv. while these wild but ingenious speculators conducted the career of that philosophy called the ionian, to the later time of the serene and lofty spiritualism of anaxagoras, two new schools arose, both founded by ionians, but distinguished by separate names--the eleatic and the italic. the first was founded by xenophanes of colophon, in elea, a town in western italy. migrating to an alien shore, colonization seems to have produced in philosophy the same results which it produced in politics: it emancipated the reason from all previous prejudice and prescriptive shackles. xenophanes was the first thinker who openly assailed the popular faith (b. c. ). he divested the great deity of the human attributes which human vanity, assimilating god to man, had bestowed upon him. the divinity of xenophanes is that of modern philosophy--eternal, unalterable, and alone: graven images cannot represent his form. his attributes are-- all hearing, all sight, and all thought. to the eleatic school, founded by xenophanes, belong parmenides, melissus the samian, zeno, and heraclitus of ephesus. all these were thinkers remarkable for courage and subtlety. the main metaphysical doctrines of this school approach, in many respects, to those that have been familiar to modern speculators. their predecessors argued, as the basis of their system, from experience of the outward world, and the evidence of the senses; the eleatic school, on the contrary, commenced their system from the reality of ideas, and thence argued on the reality of external objects; experience with them was but a show and an appearance; knowledge was not in things without, but in the mind; they were the founders of idealism. with respect to the deity, they imagined the whole universe filled with it--god was all in all. such, though each philosopher varied the system in detail, were the main metaphysical dogmas of the eleatic school. its masters were high-wrought, subtle, and religious thinkers; but their doctrines were based upon a theory that necessarily led to parodox and mysticism; and finally conduced to the most dangerous of all the ancient sects--that of the sophists. we may here observe, that the spirit of poetry long continued to breathe in the forms of philosophy. even anaximander, and his immediate followers in the ionic school, while writing in prose, appear, from a few fragments left to us, to have had much recourse to poetical expression, and often convey a dogma by an image; while, in the eleatic school, xenophanes and parmenides adopted the form itself of verse, as the medium for communicating their theories; and zeno, perhaps from the new example of the drama, first introduced into philosophical dispute that fashion of dialogue which afterward gave to the sternest and loftiest thought the animation and life of dramatic pictures. xvi. but even before the eleatic school arose, the most remarkable and ambitious of all the earlier reasoners, the arch uniter of actual politics with enthusiastic reveries--the hero of a thousand legends--a demigod in his ends and an impostor in his means--pythagoras of samos --conceived and partially executed the vast design of establishing a speculative wisdom and an occult religion as the keystone of political institutions. so mysterious is everything relating to pythagoras, so mingled with the grossest fables and the wildest superstitions, that he seems scarcely to belong to the age of history, or to the advanced and practical ionia. the date of his birth--his very parentage, are matters of dispute and doubt. accounts concur in considering his father not a native of samos; and it seems a probable supposition that he was of lemnian or pelasgic origin. pythagoras travelled early into egypt and the east, and the system most plausibly ascribed to him betrays something of oriental mystery and priestcraft in its peculiar doctrines, and much more of those alien elements in its pervading and general spirit. the notion of uniting a state with religion is especially eastern, and essentially anti-hellenic. returning to samos, he is said to have found the able polycrates in the tyranny of the government, and to have quitted his birthplace in disgust. if, then, he had already conceived his political designs, it is clear that they could never have been executed under a jealous and acute tyrant; for, in the first place, radical innovations are never so effectually opposed as in governments concentrated in the hands of a single man; and, secondly, the very pith and core of the system of pythagoras consisted in the establishment of an oligarchic aristocracy--a constitution most hated and most persecuted by the grecian tyrants. the philosopher migrated into italy. he had already, in all probability, made himself renowned in greece. for it was then a distinction to have travelled into egypt, the seat of mysterious and venerated learning; and philosophy, like other novelties, appears to have passed into fashion even with the multitude. not only all the traditions respecting this extraordinary man, but the certain fact of the mighty effect that, in his single person, he afterward wrought in italy, prove him also to have possessed that nameless art of making a personal impression upon mankind, and creating individual enthusiasm, which is necessary to those who obtain a moral command, and are the founders of sects and institutions. it is so much in conformity with the manners of the time and the objects of pythagoras to believe that he diligently explored the ancient, religions and political systems of greece, from which he had long been a stranger, that we cannot reject the traditions (however disfigured with fable) that he visited delos, and affected to receive instructions from the pious ministrants of delphi. [ ] at olympia, where he could not fail to be received with curiosity and distinction, the future lawgiver is said to have assumed the title of philosopher, the first who claimed the name. for the rest, we must yield our faith to all probable accounts, both of his own earnest preparations for his design, and of the high repute he acquired in greece, that may tend to lessen the miracle of the success that awaited him in the cities of the west. xvii. pythagoras (b. c. - ) arrived in italy during the reign of tarquinius superbus, according to the testimony of cicero and aulus gellius [ ], and fixed his residence in croton, a city in the bay of tarentum, colonized by greeks of the achaean tribe [ ]. if we may lend a partial credit to the extravagant fables of later disciples, endeavouring to extract from florid superaddition some original germe of simple truth, it would seem that he first appeared in the character of a teacher of youth [ ]; and, as was not unusual in those times, soon rose from the preceptor to the legislator. dissensions in the city favoured his objects. the senate (consisting of a thousand members, doubtless of a different race from the body of the people; the first the posterity of the settlers, the last the native population) availed itself of the arrival and influence of an eloquent and renowned philosopher. he lent himself to the consolidation of aristocracies, and was equally inimical to democracy and tyranny. but his policy was that of no vulgar ambition; he refused, at least for a time, ostensible power and office, and was contented with instituting an organized and formidable society--not wholly dissimilar to that mighty order founded by loyola in times comparatively recent. the disciples admitted into this society underwent examination and probation; it was through degrees that they passed into its higher honours, and were admitted into its deepest secrets. religion made the basis of the fraternity--but religion connected with human ends of advancement and power. he selected the three hundred who, at croton, formed his order, from the noblest families, and they were professedly reared to know themselves, that so they might be fitted to command the world. it was not long before this society, of which pythagoras was the head, appears to have supplanted the ancient senate and obtained the legislative administration. in this institution, pythagoras stands alone--no other founder of greek philosophy resembles him. by all accounts, he also differed from the other sages of his time in his estimate of the importance of women. he is said to have lectured to and taught them. his wife was herself a philosopher, and fifteen disciples of the softer sex rank among the prominent ornaments of his school. an order based upon so profound a knowledge of all that can fascinate or cheat mankind, could not fail to secure a temporary power. his influence was unbounded in croton--it extended to other italian cities--it amended or overturned political constitutions; and had pythagoras possessed a more coarse and personal ambition, he might, perhaps, have founded a mighty dynasty, and enriched our social annals with the results of a new experiment. but his was the ambition, not of a hero, but a sage. he wished rather to establish a system than to exalt himself; his immediate followers saw not all the consequences that might be derived from the fraternity he founded: and the political designs of his gorgeous and august philosophy, only for a while successful, left behind them but the mummeries of an impotent freemasonry and the enthusiastic ceremonies of half-witted ascetics. xviii. it was when this power, so mystic and so revolutionary, had, by the means of branch societies, established itself throughout a considerable portion of italy, that a general feeling of alarm and suspicion broke out against the sage and his sectarians. the anti-pythagorean risings, according to porphyry, were sufficiently numerous and active to be remembered for long generations afterward. many of the sage's friends are said to have perished, and it is doubtful whether pythagoras himself fell a victim to the rage of his enemies, or died a fugitive among his disciples at metapontum. nor was it until nearly the whole of lower italy was torn by convulsions, and greece herself drawn into the contest, as pacificator and arbiter, that the ferment was allayed--the pythagorean institutions were abolished, and the timocratic democracies [ ] of the achaeans rose upon the ruins of those intellectual but ungenial oligarchies. xix. pythagoras committed a fatal error when, in his attempt to revolutionize society, he had recourse to aristocracies for his agents. revolutions, especially those influenced by religion, can never be worked out but by popular emotions. it was from this error of judgment that he enlisted the people against him--for, by the account of neanthes, related by porphyry [ ], and, indeed, from all other testimony, it is clearly evident that to popular, not party commotion, his fall must be ascribed. it is no less clear that, after his death, while his philosophical sect remained, his political code crumbled away. the only seeds sown by philosophers, which spring up into great states, are those that, whether for good or evil, are planted in the hearts of the many. xx. the purely intellectual additions made by pythagoras to human wisdom seem to have been vast and permanent. by probable testimony, he added largely to mathematical science; and his discoveries in arithmetic, astronomy, music, and geometry, constitute an era in the history of the mind. his metaphysical and moral speculations are not to be separated from the additions or corruptions of his disciples. but we must at least suppose that pythagoras established the main proposition of the occult properties of numbers, which were held to be the principles of all things. according to this theory, unity is the abstract principle of all perfection, and the ten elementary numbers contain the elements of the perfect system of nature. by numbers the origin and the substance of all things could be explained [ ]. numbers make the mystery of earth and heaven--of the gods themselves. and this part of his system, which long continued to fool mankind, was a sort of monstrous junction between arithmetic and magic--the most certain of sciences with the most fantastic of chimeras. the pythagoreans supposed the sun, or central fire, to be the seat of jupiter and the principle of life. the stars were divine. men, and even animals, were held to have within them a portion of the celestial nature. the soul, emanating from the celestial fire [ ]--can combine with any form of matter, and is compelled to pass through various bodies. adopting the egyptian doctrine of transmigration, the pythagoreans coupled it with the notion of future punishment or reward. much of the doctrinal morality of pythagoras is admirable; but it is vitiated by the ceremonial quackery connected with it. humanity to all things--gentleness--friendship--love--and, above all the rest, self-command--form the principal recommendations of his mild and patriarchal ethics. but, perhaps, from his desire to establish a political fraternity--perhaps from his doubt of the capacity of mankind to embrace truth unadorned, enamoured only of her own beauty-- these doctrines were united with an austere and frivolous ascetism. and virtue was but to be attained by graduating through the secret and rigid ceremonies of academical imposture. his disciples soon pushed the dogmas of their master into an extravagance at once dangerous and grotesque; and what the sage designed but for symbols of a truth were cultivated to the prejudice of the truth itself. the influence of pythagoras became corrupt and pernicious in proportion as the original tenets became more and more adulterated or obscure, and served, in succeeding ages, to invest with the sanctity of a great name the most visionary chimeras and the most mischievous wanderings of perverted speculation. but, looking to the man himself--his discoveries--his designs--his genius--his marvellous accomplishments--we cannot but consider him as one of the most astonishing persons the world ever produced; and, if in part a mountebank and an impostor, no one, perhaps, ever deluded others with motives more pure--from an ambition more disinterested and benevolent. xxi. upon the athenians the effect of these various philosophers was already marked and influential. from the time of solon there had existed in athens a kind of school of political philosophy [ ]. but it was not a school of refining dogmas or systematic ethics; it was too much connected with daily and practical life to foster to any great extent the abstract contemplations and recondite theories of metaphysical discoveries. mnesiphilus, the most eminent of these immediate successors of solon, was the instructor of themistocles, the very antipodes of rhetoricians and refiners. but now a new age of philosophy was at hand. already the eleatic sages, zeno and parmenides, had travelled to athens, and there proclaimed their doctrines, and zeno numbered among his listeners and disciples the youthful pericles. but a far more sensible influence was exercised by anaxagoras of the ionian school. for thirty years, viz., from b. c. to b. c. , during that eventful and stirring period intervening between the battle of thermopylae and the commencement of the five years' truce with sparta, followed by the death of cimon (b. c. ), this eminent and most accomplished reasoner resided in athens [ ]. his doctrines were those most cherished by pericles, who ranked the philosopher among his intimate friends. after an absence of some years, he again returned to athens; and we shall then find him subjected to a prosecution in which religious prejudice was stimulated by party feud. more addicted to physics than to metaphysical research, he alarmed the national superstition by explaining on physical principles the formation even of the celestial bodies. according to him, the sun itself--that centre of divine perfection with the pythagoreans--was ejected from the earth and heated into fire by rapid motion. he maintained that the proper study of man was the contemplation of nature and the heavens [ ]: and he refined the author of the universe into an intellectual principle (nous), which went to the root of the material causes mostly favoured by his predecessors and contemporaries. he admitted the existence of matter, but intelligence was the animating and prevailing principle, creating symmetry from chaos, imposing limit and law on all things, and inspiring life, and sensation, and perception. his predecessors in the ionian school, who left the universe full of gods, had not openly attacked the popular mythology. but the assertion of one intelligence, and the reduction of all else to material and physical causes, could not but have breathed a spirit wholly inimical to the numerous and active deities of hellenic worship. party feeling against his friend and patron pericles ultimately drew the general suspicion into a focus; and anaxagoras was compelled to quit athens, and passed the remainder of his days at lampsacus. but his influence survived his exile. his pupil archelaus was the first _native athenian_ who taught philosophy at athens (b. c. ), and from him we date the foundation of those brilliant and imperishable schools which secured to athens an intellectual empire long after her political independence had died away [ ]. archelaus himself (as was the usual custom of the earlier sages) departed widely from the tenets of his master. he supposed that two discordant principles, fire and water, had, by their operation, drawn all things from chaos into order, and his metaphysics were those of unalloyed materialism. at this period, too, or a little later, began slowly to arise in athens the sect of the sophists, concerning whom so much has been written and so little is known. but as the effects of their lessons were not for some time widely apparent, it will be more in the order of this history to defer to a later era an examination of the doctrines of that perverted but not wholly pernicious school. xxii. enough has been now said to convey to the reader a general notion of the prodigious rise which, in the most serene of intellectual departments, had been made in greece, from the appearance of solon to the lectures of archelaus, who was the master of socrates. with the athenians philosophy was not a thing apart from the occupations of life and the events of history--it was not the monopoly of a few studious minds, but was cultivated as a fashion by the young and the well-born, the statesman, the poet, the man of pleasure, the votary of ambition [ ]. it was inseparably interwoven with their manners, their pursuits, their glory, their decay. the history of athens includes in itself the history of the human mind. science and art--erudition and genius--all conspired--no less than the trophies of miltiades, the ambition of alcibiades--the jealousy of sparta--to the causes of the rise and fall of athens. and even that satire on themselves, to which, in the immortal lampoons of aristophanes, the athenian populace listened, exhibits a people whom, whatever their errors, the world never can see again--with whom philosophy was a pastime--with whom the agora itself was an academe--whose coarsest exhibitions of buffoonery and caricature sparkle with a wit, or expand into a poetry, which attest the cultivation of the audience no less than the genius of the author; a people, in a word, whom the stagirite unconsciously individualized when he laid down a general proposition, which nowhere else can be received as a truism--that the common people are the most exquisite judges of whatever in art is graceful, harmonious, or sublime. ******************************************************************* this ebook was one of project gutenberg's early files produced at a time when proofing methods and tools were not well developed. there is an improved edition of this title which may be viewed as ebook (# ) at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ ******************************************************************* the olynthiacs and the philippics of demosthenes _literally translated, with notes_ by charles rann kennedy the orations of demosthenes. * * * * * the first olynthiac. the argument. olynthus was a city in macedonia, at the head of the toronaic gulf, and north of the peninsula of pallene. it was colonized by a people from chalcis in euboea, and commanded a large district called chalcidice, in which there were thirty-two cities. over all this tract the sway of olynthus was considerable, and she had waged wars anciently with athens and sparta, and been formidable to philip's predecessors on the throne of macedon. soon after philip's accession, the olynthians had disputes with him, which were at first accommodated, and he gratified them by the cession of anthemus. they then joined him in a war against athens, and he gave up to them potidaea, which had yielded to their united arms. after the lapse of some years, during which philip had greatly increased his power, and acquired considerable influence in thessaly and thrace, the olynthians became alarmed, and began to think him too dangerous a neighbor. the immediate cause of rupture was an attack which he made on one of the chalcidian towns. an embassy was instantly sent to athens, to negotiate an alliance. philip, considering this as an infraction of their treaty with him, declared war against them, and invaded their territory. a second embassy was sent to athens, pressing for assistance. the question was debated in the popular assembly. demades, an orator of considerable ability, but profligate character, opposed the alliance. many speakers were heard; and at length demosthenes rose to support the prayer of the embassy, delivering one of those clear and forcible speeches, which seldom failed to make a strong impression on his audience. the alliance was accepted, and succors voted. the orator here delicately touches on the law of eubulus, which had made it capital to propose that the theoric fund should be applied to military service. this fund was in fact the surplus revenue of the civil administration, which by the ancient law was appropriated to the defense of the commonwealth; but it had by various means been diverted from that purpose, and expended in largesses to the people, to enable them to attend the theatre, and other public shows and amusements. the law of eubulus perpetuated this abuse. (see my article _theorica_ in the archaeological dictionary.) demosthenes, seeing the necessity of a war supply, hints that this absurd law ought to be abolished, but does not openly propose it. there has been much difference of opinion among the learned as to the order of the three olynthiac orations; nor is it certain, whether they were spoken on the occasion of one embassy, or several embassies. the curious may consult bishop thirlwall's appendix to the fifth volume of his grecian history, and jacobs' introduction to his translation. i have followed the common order, as adopted by bekker, whose edition of demosthenes is the text of this translation; and indeed my opinion is, on the whole, in favor of preserving the common order, though the plan of this work prevents my entering into controversy on the question. to enable the reader more fully to understand the following orations, i have in an appendix to this volume given a brief account of olynthus, showing its position with reference to macedonia, and the importance of its acquisition to philip. the historical abstract prefixed to this volume is intended chiefly to assist the reader in reference to dates. such occurrences only are noticed as may be useful to illustrate demosthenes. i believe, men of athens, you would give much to know, what is the true policy to be adopted in the present matter of inquiry. this being the case, you should be willing to hear with attention these who offer you their counsel. besides that you will have the benefit of all preconsidered advice, i esteem it part of your good fortune, that many fit suggestions will occur to some speakers at the moment, so that from them all you may easily choose what is profitable. the present juncture, athenians, all but proclaims aloud, that you must yourselves take these affairs in hand, if you care for their success. i know not how we seem disposed in the matter. [footnote: this is a cautious way of hinting at the general reluctance to adopt a vigorous policy. and the reader will observe the use of the first person, whereby the orator includes himself in the same insinuation.] my own opinion is, vote succor immediately, and make the speediest preparations for sending it off from athens, that you may not incur the same mishap as before; send also embassadors, to announce this, and watch the proceedings. for the danger is, that this man, being unscrupulous and clever at turning events to account, making concessions when it suits him, threatening at other times, (his threats may well be believed,) slandering us and urging our absence against us, may convert and wrest to his use some of our main resources. though, strange to say, athenians, the very cause of philip's strength is a circumstance favorable to you. [footnote: after alarming the people by showing the strength of their adversary, he turns off skillfully to a topic of encouragement.] his having it in his sole power to publish or conceal his designs, his being at the same time general, sovereign, paymaster, and every where accompanying his army, is a great advantage for quick and timely operations in war; but, for a peace with the olynthians, which he would gladly make, it has a contrary effect. for it is plain to the olynthians, that now they are fighting, not for glory or a slice of territory, but to save their country from destruction and servitude. they know how he treated those amphipolitans who surrendered to him their city, and those pydneans who gave him admittance. [footnote: amphipolis was a city at the head of the strymonic gulf, in that part of macedonia which approaches western thrace. it had been built formerly by an athenian colony, and was taken by the spartan general brasidas in the peloponnesian war. ever since athens regained her character of an imperial state, she had desired to recover amphipolis, which was important for its maritime position, its exportation of iron, and especially from the vicinity of the forests near the strymon, which afforded an inexhaustible supply of ship-timber. but she had never been able to accomplish that object. philip, who at that time possessed no maritime town of importance, was for obvious reasons anxious to win amphipolis for himself; and he got possession of it partly by force of arms, partly by the treachery of certain amphipolitans who were attached to his interest. it seems the athenians had been amused by a promise of philip to give up the town to them. the non-performance of this compact led to their first long war with him. immediately after the capture of amphipolis, philip marched against pydna, and was admitted into the town.] and generally, i believe, a despotic power is mistrusted by free states, especially if their dominions are adjoining. all this being known to you, athenians, all else of importance considered, i say, you must take heart and spirit, and apply yourselves more than ever to the war, contributing promptly, serving personally, leaving nothing undone. no plea or pretense is left you for declining your duty. what you were all so clamorous about, that the olynthians should be pressed into a war with philip, has of itself come to pass, [footnote: compare virgil, aen. ix. . turne, quod optanti divum promittere nemo auderet, volvenda dies en attulit ultro.] and in a way most advantageous to you. for, had they undertaken the war at your instance, they might have been slippery allies, with minds but half resolved perhaps: but since they hate him on a quarrel of their own, their enmity is like to endure on account of their fears and their wrongs. you must not then, athenians, forego this lucky opportunity, nor commit the error which you have often done heretofore. for example, when we returned from succoring the euboeans, and hierax and stratocles of amphipolis came to this platform, [footnote: the hustings from which the speakers addressed the people. it was cut to the height of ten feet out of the rock which formed the boundary wall of the assembly; and was ascended by a flight of steps.] urging us to sail and receive possession of their city, if we had shown the same zeal for ourselves as for the safety of euboea, you would have held amphipolis then and been rid of all the troubles that ensued. again, when news came that pydna, [footnote: potidaea was in the peninsula of pallene, near olynthus, and was therefore given by philip to the olynthians, as mentioned in the argument. methone and pydna are on the macedonian coast approaching thessaly. pagasae is a thessalian town in the magnesian district. it was the sea-port of pherae, capital of the tyrant lycophron, against whom philip was invited to assist the thessalians. philip overcame lycophron, and restored republican government at pherae; but pagasae he garrisoned himself, and also magnesia, a coast-town in the same district.] potidaea, methone, pagasae, and the other places (not to waste time in enumerating them) were besieged, had we to any one of these in the first instance carried prompt and reasonable succor, we should have found philip far more tractable and humble now. but, by always neglecting the present, and imagining the future would shift for itself, we, o men of athens, have exalted philip, and made him greater than any king of macedon ever was. here then is come a crisis, this of olynthus, self-offered to the state, inferior to none of the former. and methinks, men of athens, any man fairly estimating what the gods have done for us, notwithstanding many untoward circumstances, might with reason be grateful to them. our numerous losses in war may justly be charged to our own negligence; but that they happened not long ago, and that an alliance, to counterbalance them, is open to our acceptance, i must regard as manifestations of divine favor. it is much the same as in money matters. if a man keep what he gets, he is thankful to fortune; if he lose it by imprudence, he loses withal his memory of the obligation. so in political affairs, they who misuse their opportunities forget even the good which the gods send them; for every prior event is judged commonly by the last result. wherefore, athenians, we must be exceedingly careful of our future measures, that by amendment therein we may efface the shame of the past. should we abandon these men [footnote: here he points to the olynthian embassadors.] too, and philip reduce olynthus, let any one tell me, what is to prevent him marching where he pleases? does any one of you, athenians, compute or consider the means, by which philip, originally weak, has become great? having first taken amphipolis, then pydna, potidaea next, methone afterward, he invaded thessaly. having ordered matters at pherae, pagasae, magnesia, every where exactly as he pleased, he departed for thrace; where, after displacing some kings and establishing others, he fell sick; again recovering, he lapsed not into indolence, but instantly attacked the olynthians. i omit his expeditions to illyria and paeonia, that against arymbas, [footnote: arymbas was a king of the molossians in epirus, and uncle of olympias, philip's wife.] and some others. why, it may be said, do you mention all this now? that you, athenians, may feel and understand both the folly of continually abandoning one thing after another, and the activity which forms part of philip's habit and existence, which makes it impossible for him to rest content with his achievements. if it be his principle, ever to do more than he has done, and yours, to apply yourselves vigorously to nothing, see what the end promises to be. heavens! which of you is so simple as not to know, that the war yonder will soon be here, if we are careless? and should this happen, i fear, o athenians, that as men who thoughtlessly borrow on large interest, after a brief accommodation, lose their estate, so will it be with us; found to have paid dear for our idleness and self-indulgence, we shall be reduced to many hard and unpleasant shifts, and struggle for the salvation of our country. to censure, i may be told, is easy for any man; to show what measures the case requires, is the part of a counselor. i am not ignorant, athenians, that frequently, when any disappointment happens, you are angry, not with the parties in fault, but with the last speakers on the subject; yet never, with a view to self-protection, would i suppress what i deem for your interest. i say then, you must give a two-fold assistance here; first, save the olynthians their towns, [footnote: the chalcidian towns. see the argument. philip commenced his aggressions upon the olynthians by reducing several of these.] and send out troops for that purpose; secondly, annoy the enemy's country with ships and other troops; omit either of these courses, and i doubt the expedition will be fruitless. for should he, suffering your incursion, reduce olynthus, he will easily march to the defense of his kingdom; or, should you only throw succor into olynthus, and he, seeing things out of danger at home, keep up a close and vigilant blockade, he must in time prevail over the besieged. your assistance therefore must be effective, and two-fold. such are the operations i advise. as to a supply of money: you have money, athenians; you have a larger military fund than any people; and you receive it just as you please. if ye will assign this to your troops, ye need no further supply; otherwise ye need a further, or rather ye have none at all. how then? some man may exclaim: do you move that this be a military fund? verily, not i. [footnote: there is some studied obscurity in this passage, owing to the necessity under which the speaker lay of avoiding the penalty of the law and a little quiet satire on his countrymen, who seemed desirous of eating their pudding and having it too. the logic of the argument runs thus--my opinion is, that we ought to have a military fund, and that no man should receive public money, without performing public service. however, as you prefer taking the public money to pay for your places at the festivals, i will not break the law by moving to apply that money to another purpose. only you gain nothing by it; for, as the troops must be paid, there must be an extraordinary contribution, or property tax, to meet the exigency of the case.] my opinion indeed is, that there should be soldiers raised, and a military fund, and one and the same regulation for receiving and performing what is due; only you just without trouble take your allowance for the festivals. it remains then, i imagine, that all must contribute, if much be wanted, much, if little, little. money must be had; without it nothing proper can be done. other persons propose other ways and means. choose which ye think expedient; and put hands to the work, while it is yet time. it may be well to consider and calculate how philip's affairs now stand. they are not, as they appear, or as an inattentive observer might pronounce, in very good trim, or in the most favorable position. he would never have commenced this war, had he imagined he must fight. he expected to carry every thing on the first advance, and has been mistaken. this disappointment is one thing that troubles and dispirits him; another is, the state of thessaly. [footnote: philip's influence in thessaly was of material assistance to him in his ambitious projects. it was acquired in this way. the power established by jason of pherae, who raised himself to a sort of royal authority under the title of tagus, had devolved upon lycophron. his sway extended more or less over the whole of thessaly; but was, if not generally unpopular, at least unacceptable to the great families in the northern towns, among whom the aleuadae of larissa held a prominent place. they invoked philip's aid, while lycophron was assisted by the phocian onomarchus. after various success, onomarchus was defeated and slain, and lycophron expelled from pherae. this established philip's influence, and led to his being afterward called in to terminate the sacred war. how far the assertions of demosthenes, respecting the discontent of the thessalians, are true, can not exactly be told. they are confirmed, however, in some degree by the fact, that at the close of the sacred war philip restored to them magnesia. a new attempt by the regnant family caused philip again to be invited, and thessaly became virtually a province of macedonia. among other advantages therefrom was the aid of a numerous cavalry, for which thessaly was famous.] that people were always, you know, treacherous to all men; and just as they ever have been, they are to philip. they have resolved to demand the restitution of pagasae, and have prevented his fortifying magnesia; and i was told, they would no longer allow him to take the revenue of their harbors and markets, which they say should be applied to the public business of thessaly, not received by philip. now, if he be deprived of this fund, his means will be much straitened for paying his mercenaries. and surely we must suppose, that paeonians and illyrians, and all such people, would rather be free and independent than under subjection; for they are unused to obedience, and the man is a tyrant. so report says, and i can well believe it; for undeserved success leads weak-minded men into folly; and thus it appears often, that to maintain prosperity is harder than to acquire it. therefore must you, athenians, looking on his difficulty as your opportunity, assist cheerfully in the war, sending embassies where required, taking arms yourselves, exciting all other people; for if philip got such an opportunity against us, and there was a war on our frontier, how eagerly think ye he would attack you! then are you not ashamed, that the very damage which you would suffer, if he had the power, you dare not seize the moment to inflict on him? and let not this escape you, athenians, that you have now the choice, whether you shall fight there, or he in your country. if olynthus hold out, you will fight there and distress his dominions, enjoying your own home in peace. if philip take that city, who shall then prevent his marching here? thebans? i wish it be not too harsh to say, they will be ready to join in the invasion. phocians? who can not defend their own country without your assistance. or some other ally? but, good sir, he will not desire! strange indeed, if, what he is thought fool-hardy for prating now, this he would not accomplish if he might. as to the vast difference between a war here or there, i fancy there needs no argument. if you were obliged to be out yourselves for thirty days only, and take the necessaries for camp-service from the land, (i mean, without an enemy therein,) your agricultural population would sustain, i believe, greater damage than what the whole expense of the late war [footnote: the amphipolitan war, said to have cost fifteen hundred talents.] amounted to. but if a war should come, what damage must be expected? there is the insult too, and the disgrace of the thing, worse than any damage to right-thinking men. on all these accounts, then, we must unite to lend our succor, and drive off the war yonder; the rich, that, spending a little for the abundance which they happily possess, they may enjoy the residue in security; the young, [footnote: strictly, _those of the military age_, which was from eighteen years to sixty. youths between eighteen and twenty were liable only to serve in attica, and were chiefly employed to garrison the walls. afterward they were compellable to perform any military service, under the penalty of losing their privileges as citizens. the expression in the text, it will be seen, is not rendered with full accuracy; as those of the military age can only be called _young_ by comparison. but a short and apt antithesis was needed. sometimes i have "the service-able" or "the able-bodied." jacobs: _die waffenfahigen junglinge_, and elsewhere, _die rustige_.] that, gaining military experience in philip's territory, they may become redoubtable champions to preserve their own; the orators, that they may pass a good account [footnote: every man, who is required to justify the acts for which he is responsible, may be said to be "called to account." but demosthenes spoke with peculiar reference to those accounts, which men in official situations at athens were required to render at the close of their administration.] of their statesmanship; for on the result of measures will depend your judgment of their conduct. may it for every cause be prosperous. the second olynthiac. the argument. the athenians had voted an alliance with the olynthians, and resolved to send succors. but the sending of them was delayed, partly by the contrivance of the opposite faction, partly from the reluctance of the people themselves to engage in a war with philip. demosthenes stimulates them to exertion, and encourages them, by showing that philip's power is not so great as it appears. on many occasions, men of athens, one may see the kindness of the gods to this country manifested, but most signally, i think, on the present. that here are men prepared for a war with philip, possessed of a neighboring territory and some power, and (what is most important) so fixed in their hostility, as to regard any accommodation with him as insecure, and even ruinous to their country; this really appears like an extraordinary act of divine beneficence. it must then be our care, athenians, that we are not more unkind to ourselves than circumstances have been; as it would be a foul, a most foul reproach, to have abandoned not only cities and places that once belonged to us, but also the allies and advantages provided by fortune. to dilate, athenians, on philip's power, and by such discourse to incite you to your duty, i think improper: and why? because all that may be said on that score involves matter of glory for him, and misconduct on our part. the more he has transcended his repute, [footnote: jacobs otherwise: uber sein verdienst gelungen.] the more is he universally admired; you, as you have used your advantages unworthily, have incurred the greater disgrace. this topic, then, i shall pass over. indeed, athenians, a correct observer will find the source of his greatness here, [footnote: in this assembly, by the contrivance of venal orators, or through the supineness of the people. in the first philippic there is a more pointed allusion to the practices of philip's adherents, who are charged with sending him secret intelligence of what passed at home. such men as aristodemus, neoptolemus, perhaps demades and others are referred to. aeschines had not yet begun to be a friend of philip.] and not in himself. but of measures, for which philip's partisans deserve his gratitude and your vengeance, i see no occasion to speak now. other things are open to me, which it concerns you all to know, and which must, on a due examination, athenians, reflect great disgrace on philip. to these will i address myself. to call him perjured and treacherous, without showing what he has done, might justly be termed idle abuse. but to go through all his actions and convict him in detail, will take, as it happens, but a short time, and is expedient, i think, for two reasons: first, that his baseness may appear in its true light; secondly, that they, whose terror imagines philip to be invincible, may see he has run through all the artifices by which he rose to greatness, and his career is just come to an end. i myself, men of athens, should most assuredly have regarded philip as an object of fear and admiration, had i seen him exalted by honorable conduct; but observing and considering i find, that in the beginning, when certain persons drove away the olynthians who desired a conference with us, he gained over our simplicity by engaging to surrender amphipolis, and to execute the secret article [footnote: a secret intrigue was carried on between philip and the athenians, by which he engaged to put amphipolis in their hands, but on the understanding that they would deliver up pydna to him. demosthenes only mentions the former part of the arrangement, the latter not being honorable to his countrymen.] once so famous; afterward he got the friendship of the olynthians, by taking potidaea from you, wronging you his former allies, and delivering it to them; and lastly now the thessalians, by promising to surrender magnesia, and undertake the phocian war on their behalf. in short, none who have dealt with him has he not deceived. he has risen by conciliating and cajoling the weakness of every people in turn who knew him not. as, therefore, by such means he rose, when every people imagined he would advance their interest, so ought he by the same means to be pulled down again, when the selfish aim of his whole policy is exposed. to this crisis, o athenians, are philip's affairs come; or let any man stand forward and prove to me, or rather to you, that my assertions, are false, or that men whom philip has once overreached will trust him hereafter, or that the thessalians who have been degraded into servitude would not gladly become free. but if any among you, though agreeing in these statements, thinks that philip will maintain his power by having occupied forts and havens and the like, this is a mistake. true, when a confederacy subsists by good-will, and all parties to the war have a common interest, men are willing to co-operate and bear hardships and persevere. but when one has grown strong, like philip, by rapacity and artifice, on the first pretext, the slightest reverse, all is overturned and broken up. [footnote: the original [greek: _anechaitise_] is "shakes off," or "throws off," as a horse does his rider, when he rears and tosses up his neck. it will be observed that demosthenes is very high-flown in his language here, passing from one metaphor to another. leland translates these words, "overthrows him, and all his greatness is dashed at once to the ground." francis: "hath already shaken off the yoke and dissolved their alliance." wilson: "turneth all things upside down and layeth it flat in the end." auger, better: _suffisent pour l' ebranler et la dissoudre_. jacobs: _reicht alles umzusturzen, und aufzulosen_. pabst, very nearly the same.] impossible is it,--impossible, athenians,--to acquire a solid power by injustice and perjury and falsehood. such things last for once, or for a short period; maybe, they blossom fairly with hope; [footnote: so in henry viii. act iii. sc. . such is the state of man: to-day he puts forth the tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, and wears his blushing honors thick upon him.] but in time they are discovered and drop away. [footnote: like the leaves of a flower; pursuing the last metaphor. so says moore, in _the last rose of summer_: "the gems drop away." jacobs: _fallt sie von selbst zusammen_. pabst: _sturet in sich selbst zusammen_.] as a house, a ship, or the like, ought to have the lower parts firmest, so in human conduct, i ween, the principle and foundation should be just and true. but this is not so in philip's conduct. i say, then, we should at once aid the olynthians, (the best and quickest way that can be suggested will please me most,) and send an embassy to the thessalians, to inform some of our measures, and to stir up the rest; for they have now resolved to demand pagasae, and remonstrate about magnesia. but look to this, athenians, that our envoys shall not only make speeches, but have some real proof that we have gone forth as becomes our country, and are engaged in action. all speech without action appears vain and idle, but especially that of our commonwealth; as the more we are thought to excel therein, the more is our speaking distrusted by all. you must show yourselves greatly reformed, greatly changed, contributing, serving personally, acting promptly, before any one will pay attention to you. and if ye will perform these duties properly and becomingly, athenians, not only will it appear that philip's alliances are weak and precarious, but the poor state of his native empire and power will be revealed. to speak roundly, the macedonian power and empire is very well as a help, as it was for you in timotheus' time against the olynthians; likewise for them against potidaea the conjunction was important; and lately it aided the thessalians in their broils and troubles against the regnant house: and the accession of any power, however small, is undoubtedly useful. but the macedonian is feeble of itself, and full of defects. the very operations which seem to constitute philip's greatness, his wars and his expeditions, have made it more insecure than it was originally. think not, athenians, that philip and his subjects have the same likings. he desires glory, makes that his passion, is ready for any consequence of adventure and peril, preferring to a life of safety the honor of achieving what no macedonian king ever did before. they have no share in the glorious result; ever harassed by these excursions up and down, they suffer and toil incessantly, allowed no leisure for their employments or private concerns, unable even to dispose of their hard earnings, the markets of the country being closed on account of the war. by this then may easily be seen, how the macedonians in general are disposed to philip. his mercenaries and guards, indeed, have the reputation of admirable and well-trained soldiers, but, as i heard from one who had been in the country, a man incapable of falsehood, they are no better than others. for if there be any among them experienced in battles and campaigns, philip is jealous of such men and drives them away, he says, wishing to keep the glory of all actions to himself; his jealousy (among other failings) being excessive. or if any man be generally good and virtuous, unable to bear philip's daily intemperances, drunkenness, and indecencies, [footnote: the original signifies a certain lascivious dance, which formed a part of riotous festivities. we gather from history that the orator's description here is not wholly untrue, though exaggerated. thirlwall thus writes of philip: "there seem to have been two features in his character which, in another station, or under different circumstances, might have gone near to lower him to an ordinary person, but which were so controlled by his fortune as to contribute not a little to his success. he appears to have been by his temperament prone to almost every kind of sensual pleasure; but as his life was too busy to allow him often to indulge his bias, his occasional excesses wore the air of an amiable condescension. so his natural humor would perhaps have led him too often to forget his dignity in his intercourse with his inferiors; but to philip, the great king, the conqueror, the restless politician, these intervals of relaxation occurred so rarely, that they might strengthen his influence with the vulgar, and could never expose him to contempt." it has been observed, that philips partiality for drinking and dancing, his drollery, and a dash of scurrility in his character, endeared him especially to the thessalians. see jacobs' note on this passage.] he is pushed aside and accounted as nobody. the rest about him are brigands and parasites, and men of that character, who will get drunk and perform dances which i scruple to name before you. my information is undoubtedly true; for persons whom all scouted here as worse rascals than mountebanks, callias the town-slave and the like of him, antic-jesters, [footnote: [greek: _mimous geloion_], players of drolls, mimes, or farces. our ancient word _droll_ signifies, like [greek: _mimos_], both the actor and the thing acted.] and composers of ribald songs to lampoon their companions, such persons philip caresses and keeps about him. small matters these may be thought, athenians, but to the wise they are strong indications of his character and wrong-headedness. success perhaps throws a shade over them now; prosperity is a famous hider of such blemishes; but, on any miscarriage, they will be fully exposed. and this (trust me, athenians) will appear in no long time, if the gods so will and you determine. for as in the human body, a man in health feels not partial ailments, but, when illness occurs, all are in motion, whether it be a rupture or a sprain or any thing else unsound; so with states and monarchs, while they wage eternal war, their weaknesses are undiscerned by most men, but the tug of a frontier war betrays all. if any of you think philip a formidable opponent, because they see he is fortunate, such reasoning is prudent, athenians. fortune has indeed a great preponderance--nay, is every thing, in human affairs. not but that, if i had the choice, i should prefer our fortune to philip's, would you but moderately perform your duty. for i see you have many more claims to the divine favor than he has. but we sit doing nothing; and a man idle himself can not require even his friends to act for him, much less the gods. no wonder then that he, marching and toiling in person, present on all occasions, neglecting no time or season, prevails over us delaying and voting and inquiring. i marvel not at that; the contrary would have been marvelous, if we doing none of the duties of war had beaten one doing all. but this surprises me, that formerly, athenians, you resisted the lacedaemonians for the rights of greece, and rejecting many opportunities of selfish gain, to secure the rights of others, expended your property in contributions, and bore the brunt of the battle; yet now you are both to serve, slow to contribute, in defense of your own possessions, and, though you have often saved the other nations of greece collectively and individually, under your own losses you sit still. this surprises me, and one thing more, athenians; that not one of you can reckon, how long your war with philip has lasted, and what you have been doing while the time has passed. you surely know, that while you have been delaying, expecting others to act, accusing, trying one another, expecting again, doing much the same as ye do now, all the time has passed away. then are ye so senseless, athenians, as to imagine, that the same measures, which have brought the country from a prosperous to a poor condition, will bring it from a poor to a prosperous? unreasonable were this and unnatural; for all things are easier kept than gotten. the war now has left us nothing to keep; we have all to get, and the work must be done by ourselves. i say then, you must contribute money, serve in person with alacrity, accuse no one, till you have gained your objects; then, judging from facts, honor the deserving, punish offenders; let there be no pretenses or defaults on your own part for you can not harshly scrutinize the conduct of others, unless you have done what is right yourselves. why, think you, do all the generals [footnote: a system of employing mercenary troops sprang up at the close of the peloponnesian war, when there were numerous grecian bands accustomed to warfare and seeking employment. such troops were eagerly sought for by the persian satraps and their king, by such men as jason of pherae, dionysius of syracuse, or philomelus of phocis. athens, which had partially employed mercenaries before, began to make use of them on a large scale, while her citizens preferred staying at home, to attend to commerce, politics, and idle amusements. the ill effects however were soon apparent. athenian generals, ill supplied with money, and having little control over their followers, were tempted or obliged to engage in enterprises unconnected with, and often adverse to, the interests of their country. sometimes the general, as well as the troops, was an alien, and could be very little depended on. such a person was charidemus, a native of oreus in euboea, who commenced his career as captain of a pirate vessel. he was often in the service of athens, but did her more harm than good. see my article _mercenarii_, arch. dict.] whom you commission avoid this war, and seek wars of their own? (for of the generals too must a little truth be told.) because here the prizes of the war are yours; for example, if amphipolis be taken, you will immediately recover it; the commanders have all the risk and no reward. but in the other case the risks are less, and the gains belong to the commanders and soldiers; lampsacus, [footnote: chares, the athenian general, was said to have received these asiatic cities from artabazus, the persian satrap, in return for the service he had performed. probably it was some authority or privileges in those cities, not the actual dominion, that was conferred upon him. sigeum, which is near the mouth of the hellespont, and was a convenient situation for his adventures, was the ordinary residence of chares.] sigeum, the vessels which they plunder. so they proceed to secure their several interests: you, when you look at the bad state of your affairs, bring the generals to trial; but when they get a hearing and plead these necessities, you dismiss them. the result is that, while you are quarreling and divided, some holding one opinion, some another, the commonwealth goes wrong. formerly, athenians, you had boards [footnote: this refers to the institution of the [greek: _summoriai_], or boards for management of the property-tax at athens, as to which see appendix iv. the argument of demosthenes is as follows--the three hundred wealthier citizens, who were associated by law for purposes of taxation, had become a clique for political purposes, with an orator at their head, (he intentionally uses the term [greek: _haegemon_], _chairman of the board_,) to conduct the business of the assembly, while they stood to shout and applaud his speeches. the general, who held a judicial court to decide disputes about the property-tax, and who in matters of state ought to be independent, was subservient to the orator, who defended him in the popular assembly.] for taxes; now you have boards for politics. there is an orator presiding on either side, a general under him, and three hundred men to shout; the rest of you are attached to the one party or the other. this you must leave off; be yourselves again; establish a general liberty of speech, deliberation, and action. if some are appointed to command as with royal authority, some to be ship-captains, tax-payers, soldiers by compulsion, others only to vote against them, and help in nothing besides, no duty will be seasonably performed; the aggrieved parties will still fail you, and you will have to punish them instead of your enemies. i say, in short; you must all fairly contribute, according to each man's ability; take your turns of service till you have all been afield; give every speaker a hearing, and adopt the best counsel, not what this or that person advises. if ye act thus, not only will ye praise the speaker at the moment, but yourselves afterward, when the condition of the country is improved. the third olynthiac. the argument. the athenians had dispatched succors to olynthus, and received, as libanius says, some favorable intelligence; more probably, however, some vague rumors, which led them to imagine the danger was for the time averted. they began, very prematurely, as the result showed, to be confident of success, and talked of punishing philip for his presumption. in this they were encouraged by certain foolish orators, who sought to flatter the national prejudices. demosthenes in this oration strives to check the arrogance of the people; reminds them of the necessity of defensive rather than offensive measures, and especially of the importance of preserving their allies. he again adverts (and this time more boldly) to the law of eubulus, which he intimates ought to be repealed; and he exhorts the athenians generally to make strenuous exertions against philip, not the same ideas, men of athens, are presented to me, when i look at our condition and when at the speeches which are delivered. the speeches, i find, are about punishing philip; but our condition is come to this, that we must mind we are not first damaged ourselves. therefore, it seems to me, these orators commit the simple error of not laying before you the true subject of debate. that once we might safely have held our own and punished philip too, i know well enough; both have been possible in my own time, not very long ago. but now, i am persuaded, it is sufficient in the first instance to effect the preservation of our allies. when this has been secured, one may look out for revenge on philip; but before we lay the foundation right, i deem it idle to talk about the end. the present crisis, o athenians, requires, if any ever did, much thought and counsel. not that i am puzzled, what advice to give in the matter; i am only doubtful, in what way, athenians, to address you thereupon. for i have been taught both by hearsay and experience, that most of your advantages have escaped you, from unwillingness to do your duty, not from ignorance. i request you, if i speak my mind, to be patient, and consider only, whether i speak the truth, and with a view to future amendment. you see to what wretched plight we are reduced by some men haranguing for popularity. i think it necessary, however, first to recall to your memory a few past events. you remember, athenians, when news came three or four years ago, that philip was in thrace beieging heraeum. [footnote: a fortress on the propontis,(now sea of marmora,) near perinthus. this was a post of importance to the athenians, who received large supplies of corn from that district.] it was then the fifth month, [footnote: corresponding nearly to our november. the attic year began in july, and contained twelve lunar months, of alternately and days. the greeks attempted to make the lunar and solar courses coincide by cycles of years, but fell into great confusion. see _calendarium_ in arch. dict.] and after much discussion and tumult in the assembly you resolved to launch forty galleys, that every citizen under forty-five [footnote: this large proportion of the serviceable citizens, [greek: _ton en haelikia_], shows the alarm at athens. philip's illness seems to have put a stop to his progress in thrace at this period. immediately on his recovery he began his aggression against olynthus. see the chronological abstract prefixed to this volume.] should embark, and a tax be raised of sixty talents. that year passed; the first, second, third month arrived; in that month, reluctantly, after the mysteries, [footnote: the eleusinian mysteries, in honor of ceres and proserpine, called the mysteries from their peculiar sanctity.] you dispatched charidemus with ten empty ships and five talents in money; for as philip was reported to be sick or dead, (both rumors came.) you thought there was no longer any occasion for succors, and discontinued the armament. but that was the very occasion; if we had then sent our succors quickly, as we resolved, philip would not have been saved to trouble us now. those events can not be altered. but here is the crisis of another war, the cause why i mentioned the past, that you may not repeat your error. how shall we deal with it, men of athens? if you lend not the utmost possible aid, see how you will have manoeuvred every thing for philip's benefit. there were the olynthians, possessed of some power; and matters stood thus: philip distrusted them, and they philip. we negotiated for peace with them; this hampered (as it were) and annoyed philip, that a great city, reconciled to us, should be watching opportunities against him. we thought it necessary by all means to make that people his enemies; and lo, what erewhile you clamored for, has somehow or other been accomplished. then what remains, athenians, but to assist them vigorously and promptly? i know not. for besides the disgrace that would fall upon us, if we sacrificed any of our interests, i am alarmed for the consequences, seeing how the thebans are affected toward us, the phocian treasury exhausted, nothing to prevent philip, when he has subdued what lies before him, from turning to matters here. whoever postpones until then the performance of his duty, wishes to see the peril at hand, when he may hear of it elsewhere, and to seek auxiliaries for himself, when he may be auxiliary to others; for that this will be the issue, if we throw away our present advantage, we all know pretty well. but, it may be said, we have resolved that succors are necessary, and we will send them; tell us only how. marvel not then, athenians, if i say something to astonish the multitude. appoint law-revisers: [footnote: a provision was made by solon for a periodical revision, of the athenian laws by means of a legislative committee, called [greek: _nomothetai_]. see my article _nomothetes_, arch. dict.) they were chosen by lot from the judicial body, on a reference to them by a vote of the popular assembly, demosthenes says, "enact no statutes," instead of saying, "let the committee enact no statutes." this is because the committee would be taken from the people themselves, and the part are treated as the whole. so in speeches to juries we shall frequently observe that in mentioning the decision of some other jury he says, "you did this or that," as if they were the same persons.] at their session enact no statutes, for you have enough, but repeal those which are at present injurious; i mean, just plainly, the laws concerning our theatrical fund, and some concerning the troops, whereof the former divide the military fund among stayers-at-home for theatrical amusement, the latter indemnify deserters, and so dishearten men well inclined to the service. when you have repealed these, and made the road to good counsel safe, then find a man to propose what you all know to be desirable. but before doing so, look not for one who will advise good measures and be destroyed by you for his pains. such a person you will not find, especially as the only result would be, for the adviser and mover to suffer wrongfully, and, without forwarding matters, to render good counsel still more dangerous in future. besides, athenians, you should require the same men to repeal these laws, who have introduced them. it is unjust, that their authors should enjoy a popularity which has injured the commonwealth, while the adviser of salutary measures suffers by a displeasure that may lead to general improvement. till this is set right, athenians, look not that any one should be so powerful with you as to transgress these laws with impunity, or so senseless as to plunge into ruin right before him. another thing, too, you should observe, athenians, that a decree is worth nothing, without a readiness on your part to do what you determine. could decrees of themselves compel you to perform your duty, or execute what they prescribe, neither would you with many decrees have accomplished little or nothing, nor would philip have insulted you so long. had it depended on decrees, he would have been chastised long ago. but the course of things is otherwise. action, posterior in order of time to speaking and voting, is in efficacy prior and superior. this requisite you want; the others you possess. there are among you, athenians, men competent to advise what is needful, and you are exceedingly quick at understanding it; ay, and you will be able now to perform it, if you act rightly. for what time or season would you have better than the present? when will you do your duty, if not now? has not the man got possession of all our strongholds? and if he become master of this country, shall we not incur foul disgrace? are not they, to whom we promised sure protection in case of war, at this moment in hostilities? is he not an enemy, holding our possessions--a barbarian [footnote: _barbarians_ (among the greeks) designates persons who were not of hellenic origin. alexander, an ancestor of philip, had obtained admission to the olympic games by proving himself to be of argive descent. but the macedonian people were scarcely considered as greeks till a much later period; and demosthenes speaks rather with reference to the nation than to philip personally.]--anything you like to call him? but, o heavens! after permitting, almost helping him to accomplish these things, shall we inquire who were to blame for them? i know we shall not take the blame to ourselves. for so in battles, no runaway accuses himself, but his general, his neighbor, any one rather; though, sure enough, the defeat is owing to all the runaways; for each one who accuses the rest might have stood his ground, and had each done so they would have conquered. now then, does any man not give the best advice? let another rise and give it, but not censure the last speaker. does a second give better advice? follow it, and success attend you! perhaps it is not pleasant: but that is not the speaker's fault, unless he omits some needful prayer. [footnote: demosthenes sneers at the custom of introducing into the debate sententious professions of good-will, and prayers for prosperity; a poor substitute (he would say) for good counsel. compare virg. georg. iii. . alitur vitium vivitque tegendo, dum medicas adhibere manus ad vulnera pastor abnegat, et meliora, deos sedet omina poscens.] to pray is simple enough, athenians, collecting all that one desires in a short petition: but to decide, when measures are the subject of consideration, is not quite so easy; for we must choose the profitable rather than the pleasant, where both are not compatible. but if any one can let alone our theatrical fund, and suggest other supplies for the military, is he not cleverer? it may be asked. i grant it, if this were possible: but i wonder if any man ever was or will be able, after wasting his means in useless expenses, to find means for useful. the wishes of men are indeed a great help to such arguments, and therefore the easiest thing in the world is self-deceit; for every man believes what he wishes, though the reality is often different. see then, athenians, what the realities allow, and you will be able to serve and have pay. it becomes not a wise or magnanimous people, to neglect military operations for want of money, and bear disgraces like these; or, while you snatch up arms to march against corinthians and megarians, to let philip enslave greek cities for lack of provisions for your troops. i have not spoken for the idle purpose of giving offense: i am not so foolish or perverse, as to provoke your displeasure without intending your good: but i think an upright citizen should prefer the advancement of the commonweal to the gratification of his audience. and i hear, as perhaps you do, that the speakers in our ancestors' time, whom all that address you praise, but not exactly imitate, were politicians after this form and fashion;--aristides, nicias, my namesake, [footnote: demosthenes, the general so distinguished in the peloponnesian war, who defeated the spartans at pylus, and afterward lost his life in sicily.] pericles. but since these orators have appeared, who ask, what is your pleasure? what shall i move? how can i oblige you? the public welfare is complimented away for a moment's popularity, and these are the results; the orators thrive, you are disgraced. mark, o athenians, what a summary contrast may be drawn between the doings in our olden time and in yours. it is a tale brief and familiar to all; for the examples by which you may still be happy are found not abroad, men of athens, but at home. our forefathers, whom the speakers humored not nor caressed, as these men caress you, for five-and-forty years took the leadership of the greeks by general consent, and brought above ten thousand talents into the citadel; and the king of this country was submissive to them, as a barbarian should be to greeks; and many glorious trophies they erected for victories won by their own fighting on land and sea, and they are the sole people in the world who have bequeathed a renown superior to envy. such were their merits in the affairs of greece: see what they were at home, both as citizens and as men. their public works are edifices and ornaments of such beauty and grandeur in temples and consecrated furniture, that posterity have no power to surpass them. in private they were so modest and attached to the principle of our constitution, that whoever knows the style of house which aristides had, or miltiades, and the illustrious of that day, perceives it to be no grander than those of the neighbors. their politics were not for money-making; each felt it his duty to exalt the commonwealth. [footnote: as horace says:-- privatus illis census erat brevis, commune magnum.] by a conduct honorable toward the greeks, pious to the gods, brotherlike among themselves, they justly attained a high prosperity. so fared matters with them under the statesmen i have mentioned. how fare they with you under the worthies of our time? is there any likeness or resemblance? i pass over other topics, on which i could expatiate; but observe: in this utter absence of competitors, (lacedaemonians depressed, thebans employed, none of the rest capable of disputing the supremacy with us,) when we might hold our own securely and arbitrate the claims of others, we have been deprived of our rightful territory, and spent above fifteen hundred talents to no purpose; the allies, whom we gained in war, these persons have lost in peace, and we have trained up against ourselves an enemy thus formidable. or let any one come forward and tell me, by whose contrivance but ours philip has grown strong. well, sir, this looks bad, but things at home are better. what proof can be adduced? the parapets that are whitewashed? the roads that are repaired? fountains, and fooleries? [footnote: jacobs: _und solches geschwatz_. the proceedings of eubulus are here more particularly referred to.] look at the men of whose statesmanship these are the fruits. they have risen from beggary to opulence, or from obscurity to honor; some have made their private houses more splendid than the public buildings; and in proportion as the state has declined, their fortunes have been exalted. what has produced these results? how is it that all went prosperously then, and nowgoes wrong? because anciently the people, having the courage to be soldiers, controlled the statesmen, and disposed of all emoluments; any of the rest was happy to receive from the people his share of honor, office, or advantage. now, contrariwise, the statesmen dispose of emoluments; through them every thing is done; you the people, enervated, stripped of treasure and allies, are become as underlings and hangers-on, happy if these persons dole you out show-money or send you paltry beeves; [footnote: entertainments were frequently given to the people after sacrifices, at which a very small part of the victim was devoted to the gods, such as the legs and intestines, the rest being kept for more profane purposes. tho athenians were remarkably extravagant in sacrifices. demades, ridiculing the donations of public meat, compared the republic to an old woman, sitting at home in slippers and supping her broth. demosthenes, using the diminutive [greek: _boidia_], charges the magistrates with supplying lean and poor oxen, whereas the victims ought to be healthy and large, [greek: teleia]. see virgil, aen. xi. . hic amor, hoc studium; dum sacra secundus aruspex nuntiet, ac lucos vocet hostia pinguis in altos.] and, the unmanliest part of all, you are grateful for receiving your own. they, cooping you in the city, lead you to your pleasures, and make you tame and submissive to their hands. it is impossible, i say, to have a high and noble spirit, while you are engaged in petty and mean employments: whatever be the pursuits of men, their characters must be similar. by ceres, i should not wonder, if i, for mentioning these things, suffered more from your resentment than the men who have brought them to pass. for even liberty of speech you allow not on all subjects; i marvel indeed you have allowed it here. would you but even now, renouncing these practices, perform military service and act worthily of yourselves; would you employ these domestic superfluities as a means to gain advantage abroad; perhaps, athenians, perhaps you might gain some solid and important advantage, and be rid of these perquisites, which are like the diet ordered by physicians for the sick. as that neither imparts strength, nor suffers the patient to die, so your allowances are not enough to be of substantial benefit, nor yet permit you to reject them and turn to something else. thus do they increase the general apathy. what? i shall be asked: mean you stipendiary service? yes, and forthwith the same arrangement for all, athenians, that each, taking his dividend from the public, may be what the state requires. is peace to be had? you are better at home, under no compulsion to act dishonorably from indigence. is there such an emergency as the present? better to be a soldier, as you ought, in your country's cause, maintained by those very allowances. is any one of you beyond the military age? what he now irregularly takes without doing service, let him take by just regulation, superintending and transacting needful business. thus, without derogating from or adding to our political system, only removing some irregularity, i bring it into order, establishing a uniform rule for receiving money, for serving in war, for sitting on juries, for doing what each according to his age can do, and what occasion requires. i never advise we should give to idlers the wages of the diligent, or sit at leisure, passive and helpless, to hear that such a one's mercenaries are victorious; as we now do. not that i blame any one who does you a service: i only call upon you, athenians, to perform on your own account those duties for which you honor strangers, and not to surrender that post of dignity which, won through many glorious dangers, your ancestors have bequeathed. i have said nearly all that i think necessary. i trust you will adopt that course which is best for the country and yourselves. the first philippic. the argument. philip, after the defeat of onomarchus, had marched toward the pass of thermopylae, which, however, he found occupied by the athenians, who had sent a force for the purpose of preventing his advance. being baffled there, he directed his march into thrace, and alarmed the athenians for the safety of their dominions in the chersonese. at the same time he sent a fleet to attack the islands of lemnos and imbrus, infested the commerce of athens with his cruisers, and even insulted her coast. in thrace he became involved in the disputes between the rival kings amadocus and cersobleptes, espousing the cause of the former; and for some time he was engaged in the interior of that country, either at war with cersobleptes, or extending his own influence over other parts of thrace, where he established or expelled the rulers, as it suited him. it was just at that time that demosthenes spoke the following oration, the first in which he called the attention of his countrymen to the dangerous increase of philip's power. he had become convinced by the course of events, and by observing the restless activity of philip, that athens had more to fear from him than from thebes, or from any new combination of the grecian republics. the orator himself, perhaps, hardly appreciated the extent of philip's resources, strengthened as he was now by the friendship of thessaly, possessed of a navy and maritime towns, and relieved from the presence of any powerful neighbors. what were the precise views of demosthenes as to the extent of the impending danger, we can not say. it was not for him to frighten the athenians too much, but to awaken them from their lethargy. this he does in a speech, which, without idle declamation or useless ornament, is essentially practical. he alarms, but encourages, his countrymen; points out both their weakness and their strength; rouses them to a sense of danger, and shows the way to meet it; recommends not any extraordinary efforts, for which at the moment there was no urgent necessity, and to make which would have exceeded their power, but unfolds a scheme, simple and feasible, suiting the occasion, and calculated (if athenians had not been too degenerate) to lay the foundation of better things. had the question for debate been any thing new, athenians, i should have waited till most of the usual speakers [footnote: by an ancient ordinance of solon, those who were above fifty years of age were first called on to deliver their opinion. the law had ceased to be in force; but, as a decent custom, the older men usually commenced the debate. there would be frequent occasions for departing from such a custom, and demosthenes, who was now thirty-three, assigns his reason for speaking first.] had been heard; if any of their counsels had been to my liking, i had remained silent, else proceeded to impart my own. but as the subjects of discussion is one upon which they have spoken oft before, i imagine, though i rise the first, i am entitled to indulgence. for if these men had advised properly in time past, there would be no necessity for deliberating now. first i say, you must not despond, athenians, under your present circumstances, wretched as they are; for that which is worst in them as regards the past, is best for the future. what do i mean? that our affairs are amiss, men of athens, because you do nothing which is needful; if, notwithstanding you performed your duties, it were the same, there would be no hope of amendment. consider next, what you know by report, and men of experience remember; how vast a power the lacedaemonians had not long ago, yet how nobly and becomingly you consulted the dignity of athens, and undertook the war [footnote: he refers to the war in which athens assisted the thebans against lacedaemon, and in which chabrias won the naval battle of naxos. that war commenced twenty-six years before the speaking of the first philippic, and would be well remembered by many of the hearers. see the historical abstract in this volume.] against them for the rights of greece. why do i mention this? to show and convince you, athenians, that nothing, if you take precaution, is to be feared, nothing, if you are negligent, goes as you desire. take for examples the strength of the lacedaemonians then, which you overcame by attention to your duties, and the insolence of this man now, by which through neglect of our interests we are confounded. but if any among you, athenians, deem philip hard to be conquered, looking at the magnitude of his existing power, and the loss by us of all our strongholds, they reason rightly, but should reflect, that once we held pydna and potidaea and methone and all the region round about as our own, and many of the nations now leagued with him were independent and free, and preferred our friendship to his. had philip then taken it into his head, that it was difficult to contend with athens, when she had so many fortresses to infest his country, and he was destitute of allies, nothing that he has accomplished would he have undertaken, and never would he have acquired so large a dominion. but he saw well, athenians, that all these places are the open prizes of war, that the possessions of the absent naturally belong to the present, those of the remiss to them that will venture and toil. acting on such principle, he has won every thing and keeps it, either by way of conquest, or by friendly attachment and alliance; for all men will side with and respect those, whom they see prepared and willing to make proper exertion. if you, athenians, will adopt this principle now, though you did not before, and every man, where he can and ought to give his service to the, state, be ready to give it without excuse, the wealthy to contribute, the able-bodied to enlist; in a word, plainly, if you will become your own masters, and cease each expecting to do nothing himself, while his neighbor does every thing for him, you shall then with heaven's permission recover your own, and get back what has been frittered away, and chastise philip. do not imagine, that his empire is everlastingly secured to him as a god. there are who hate and fear and envy him, athenians, even among those that seem most friendly; and all feelings that are in other men belong, we may assume, to his confederates. but now they are all cowed, having no refuge through your tardiness and indolence, which i say you must abandon forthwith. for you see, athenians, the case, to what pitch of arrogance the man has advanced, who leaves you not even the choice of action or inaction, but threatens and uses (they say) outrageous language, and, unable to rest in possession of his conquests, continually widens their circle, and, while we dally and delay, throws his net all around us. when then, athenians, when will ye act as becomes you? in what event? in that of necessity, i suppose. and how should we regard the events happening now? methinks, to freemen the strongest necessity is the disgrace of their condition. or tell me, do ye like walking about and asking one another:--is there any news? why, could there be greater news than a man of macedonia subduing athenians, and directing the affairs of greece? is philip dead? no, but he is sick. and what matters it to you? should any thing befall this man, you will soon create another philip, if you attend to business thus. for even he has been exalted not so much by his own strength, as by our negligence. and again; should any thing happen to him; should fortune, which still takes better care of us than we of ourselves, be good enough to accomplish this; observe that, being on the spot, you would step in while things were in confusion, and manage them as you pleased; but as you now are, though occasion offered amphipolis, you would not be in a position to accept it, with neither forces nor counsels at hand. [footnote: important advice this, to men in all relations of life. good luck is for those who are in a position to avail themselves of it. illi poma cadunt qui poma sub arbore quaerit.] however, as to the importance of a general zeal in the discharge of duty, believing you are convinced and satisfied, i say no more. as to the kind of force which i think may extricate you from your difficulties, the amount, the supplies of money, the best and speediest method (in my judgment) of providing all the necessaries, i shall endeavor to inform you forthwith, making only one request, men of athens. when, you have heard all, determine; prejudge not before. and let none think i delay our operations, because i recommend an entirely new force. not those that cry, quickly! to-day! speak most to the purpose; (for what has already happened we shall not be able to prevent by our present armament;) but he that shows what and how great and whence procured must be the force capable of enduring, till either we have advisedly terminated the war, or overcome our enemies: for so shall we escape annoyance in future. this i think i am able to show, without offense to any other man who has a plan to offer. my promise indeed is large; it shall be tested by the performance; and you shall be my judges. first, then, athenians, i say we must provide fifty warships, [footnote: the athenian ship of war at this time was the trireme, or galley with three ranks of oars. it had at the prow a beak ([greek: _embolon_]), with a sharp iron head, which, in a charge, (generally made at the broadside,) was able to shatter the planks of the enemy's vessel. an ordinary trireme carried two hundred men, including the crew and marines. these last ([greek: _epibatai_]) were usually ten for each ship, but the number was often increased. the transports and vessels of burden, whether merchant vessels or boats for the carriage of military stores, were round-bottomed, more bulky in construction, and moved rather with sails than oars. hence the fighting ship is called [greek: _tacheia_], _swift_. it carried a sail, to be used upon occasion, though it was mainly worked with oars.] and hold ourselves prepared, in case of emergency, to embark and sail. i require also an equipment of transports for half the cavalry [footnote: the total number was one thousand, each tribe furnishing one hundred.] and sufficient boats. this we must have ready against his sudden, marches from his own country to thermopylae, the chersonese, olynthus, and any where he likes. for he should entertain the belief, that possibly you may rouse from this over-carelessness, and start off, as you did to euboea, [footnote: the expedition about five years before, when the thebans had sent an army to euboea, and timotheus roused his countrymen to expel them from the island. of this, demosthenes gives an animated account at the close of tho oration on the chersonese.] and formerly (they say) to haliartus, [footnote: b. c. , when the war between thebes and sparta had begun and lysander besieged haliartus. he was slain in a sally by the thebans and athenians.] and very lately to thermopylae. and although you should not pursue just the course i would advise, it is no slight matter, that philip, knowing you to be in readiness--know it he will for certain; there are too many among our own people who report every thing to him--may either keep quiet from apprehension, or, not heeding your arrangements, be taken off his guard, there being nothing to prevent your sailing, if he give you a chance, to attack his territories. such an armament, i say, ought instantly to be agreed upon and provided. but besides, men of athens, you should keep in hand some force, that will incessantly make war and annoy him: none of your ten or twenty thousand mercenaries, not your forces on paper, [footnote: literally "written in letters," that is, promised to the generals or allies, but never sent. jacobs: _eine macht die auf dem blatte steht_. compare shakspeare, henry iv, second part, act i. we fortify in paper and in figures. using the names of men instead of men.] but one that shall belong to the state, and, whether you appoint one or more generals, or this or that man or any other, shall obey and follow him. subsistence too i require for it. what the force shall be, how large, from what source maintained, how rendered efficient, i will show you, stating every particular. mercenaries i recommend--and beware of doing what has often been injurious--thinking all measures below the occasion, adopting the strongest in your decrees, you fail to accomplish the least--rather, i say, perform and procure a little, add to it afterward, if it prove insufficient. i advise then two thousand soldiers in all, five hundred to be athenians, of whatever age you think right, serving a limited time, not long, but such time as you think right, so as to relieve one another; the rest should be mercenaries. and with them two hundred horse, fifty at least athenians, like the foot, on the same terms of service; and transports for them. well; what besides? ten swift galleys: for, as philip has a navy, we must have swift galleys also, to convoy our power. how shall subsistence for these troops be provided? i will state and explain; but first let me tell you why i consider a force of this amount sufficient, and why i wish the men to be citizens. of that amount, athenians, because it is impossible for us now to raise an army capable of meeting him in the field: we must plunder [footnote: make predatory incursions, as livy says, "popula bundi magis quam justo more belli." jacobs: _den krieg als freibeuter fahren_. another german: _streifzuge zu machen_ (guerilla warfare). leland: "harass him with depredations." wilson, an old english translator: "rob and spoil upon him."] and adopt such kind of warfare at first: our force, therefore, must not be over-large, (for there is not pay or subsistence,) nor altogether mean. citizens i wish to attend and go on board, because i hear that formerly the state maintained mercenary troops at corinth, [footnote: he alludes to the time when corinth, athens, thebes, and argos, were allied against sparta, and held a congress at corinth, b. c. . the allies were at first defeated, but iphicrates gained some successes, and acquired considerable reputation by cutting off a small division (_mora_) of spartan infantry.] commanded by polystratus and iphicrates and chabrias and some others, and that you served with them yourselves; and i am told, that these mercenaries fighting by your side and you by theirs defeated the lacedaemonians. but ever since your hirelings have served by themselves, they have been vanquishing your friends and allies, while your enemies have become unduly great. just glancing at the war of our state, they go off to artabazus [footnote: diodorus relates that chares, in the social war, having no money to pay his troops, was forced to lend them to artabazus, then in rebellion against the king of persia. chares gained a victory for the satrap, and received a supply of money. but this led to a complaint and menace of war by the king, which brought serious consequences. see the historical abstract.] or any where rather, and the general follows, naturally; for it is impossible to command without giving pay. what therefore ask i? to remove the excuses both of general and soldiers, by supplying pay, and attaching native soldiers, as inspectors of the general's conduct. the way we manage things now is a mockery. for if you were asked: are you at peace, athenians? no, indeed, you would say; we are at war with philip. did you not choose from yourselves ten captains and generals, and also captains and two generals [footnote: there were chosen at athens every year ten generals (one for each tribe), [greek: _strataegoi_]. ten captains (one for each tribe), [greek: _taxiarchoi_]. two generals of cavalry, [greek: _ipparchoi_]. ten cavalry officers (one for each tribe), [greek: _phularchoi_]. in a regular army of citizens, when each tribe formed its own division, both of horse and foot, all these generals and officers would he present. thus, there were ten generals at marathon. a change took place in later times, when the armies were more miscellaneous. three athenian generals were frequently employed, and at a still later period only one. demosthenes here touches on a very important matter, which we can well understand, viz. the necessity of officering the foreign mercenaries from home.] of horse? how are they employed? except one man, whom you commission on service abroad, the rest conduct your processions with the sacrificers. like puppet-makers, you elect your infantry and cavalry officers for the market-place, not for war. consider, athenians, should there not be native captains, a native general of horse, your own commanders, that the force might really be the state's? or should your general of horse sail to lemnos, [footnote: to assist at a religious ceremony held annually at lemnos, where many athenians resided.] while menelaus commands the cavalry fighting for your possessions? i speak not as objecting to the man, but he ought to be elected by you, whoever the person be. perhaps you admit the justice of these statements, but wish principally to hear about the supplies, what they must be and whence procured. i will satisfy you. supplies, then, for maintenance, mere rations for these troops, come to ninety talents and a little more: for ten swift galleys forty talents, twenty minas a month to every ship; for two thousand soldiers forty more, that each soldier may receive for rations ten drachms a month; and for two hundred horsemen, each receiving thirty drachms a month, twelve talents. [footnote: as to athenian money, see appendix ii.] should any one think rations for the men a small provision, he judges erroneously. furnish that, and i am sure the army itself will, without injuring any greek or ally, procure every thing else from the war, so as to make out their full pay. i am ready to join the fleet as a volunteer, and submit to any thing, if this be not so. now for the ways and means of the supply, which i demand from you. [_statement of ways and means_.] [footnote: here the clerk or secretary reads the scheme drawn up by demosthenes, in the preparing of which he was probably assisted by the financial officers of the state. what follows was according to dionysius, spoken at a different time. the curious may consult leland, and jacobs' introduction to his translation.] this, athenians, is what we have been able to devise. when you vote upon the resolutions, pass what you [footnote: _i. e._ some measure, if not mine, whereby the war may be waged effectually. the reading of [greek: _poiaesate_], adopted by jacobs after schaefer, is not in congruity with the sentence.] approve, that you may oppose philip, not only by decrees and letters, but by action also. i think it will assist your deliberations about the war and the whole arrangements, to regard the position, athenians, of the hostile country, and consider, that philip by the winds and seasons of the year gets the start in most of his operations, watching for the trade-winds [footnote: the etesian winds blowing from the northwest in july, which would impede a voyage from athens to macedonia and thrace.] or the winter to commence them, when we are unable (he thinks) to reach the spot. on this account, we must carry on the war not with hasty levies, (or we shall be too late for every thing,) but with a permanent force and power. you may use as winter quarters for your troops lemnos, and thasus, and sciathus, and the islands [footnote: as scopelus, halonnesus, peparethus, which were then subject to athens.] in that neighborhood, which have harbors and corn and all necessaries for an army. in the season of the year, when it is easy to put ashore and there is no danger from the winds, they will easily take their station off the coast itself and at the entrances of the sea-ports. how and when to employ the troops, the commander appointed by you will determine as occasion requires. what you must find, is stated in my bill. if, men of athens, you will furnish the supplies which i mention, and then, after completing your preparations of soldiers, ships, cavalry, will oblige the entire force by law to remain in the service, and, while you become your own paymasters and commissaries, demand from your general an account of his conduct, you will cease to be always discussing the same questions without forwarding them in the least, and besides, athenians, not only will you cut off his greatest revenue--what is this? he maintains war against you through the resources of your allies, by his piracies on their navigation--but what next? you will be out of the reach of injury yourselves: he will not do as in time past, when falling upon lemnos and imbrus he carried off your citizens captive, seizing the vessels at geraestus he levied an incalculable sum, and lastly, made a descent at marathon and carried off the sacred galley [footnote: a ship called paralus generally used on religious missions or to carry public dispatches.] from our coast, and you could neither prevent these things nor send succors by the appointed time. but how is it, think you, athenians, that the panathenaic and dionysian festivals [footnote: the panathenaic festivals were in honor of pallas or athene, the protectress of athens, and commemorated also the union of the old attic towns under one government. there were two, the greater held every fourth year, the lesser annually. they were celebrated with sacrifices, races, gymnastic and musical contests, and various other amusements and solemnities, among which was the carrying the pictured robe of pallas to her temple. the dionysia, or festival of bacchus, will be spoken of more fully hereafter.] take place always at the appointed time, whether expert or unqualified persons be chosen to conduct either of them, whereon you expend larger sums than upon any armament, and which are more numerously attended and magnificent than almost any thing in the world; while all your armaments are after the time, as that to methone, to pagasae, to potidaea? because in the former case every thing is ordered by law, and each of you knows long before-hand, who is the choir-master [footnote: the choregus, or choir-master, of each tribe, had to defray the expense of the choruses, whether dramatic, lyric, or musical, which formed part of the entertainment on solemn occasions. this was one of the [greek: _leitourgiai_], or burdensome offices, to which men of property were liable at athens, of which we shall see more in other parts of our author.] of his tribe, who the gymnastic [footnote: the gymnasiarch, like the choregus, had a burden imposed on him by his tribe, to make certain provisions for the gymnasium, public place or school of exercise. some of the contests at the festivals being of a gymnastic nature, such as the torch-race, it was his duty to make arrangements for them, and more particularly to select the ablest youths of the school for performers.] master, when, from whom, and what he is to receive, and what to do. nothing there is left unascertained or undefined: whereas in the business of war and its preparations all is irregular, unsettled, indefinite. therefore, no sooner have we heard any thing, than we appoint ship-captains, dispute with them on the exchanges, [footnote: for every ship of war a captain, or trierarch, was appointed, whose duty it was, not merely to command, but take charge of the vessel, keep it in repair, and bear the expense (partly or wholly) of equipping it. in the peloponnesian war we find the charge laid upon two joint captains, and afterward it was borne by an association formed like the symmoriae of the property tax. demosthenes, when he came to the head of affairs, introduced some useful reforms in the system of the trierarchy. the exchange, [greek: _antidosis_], was a stringent but clumsy contrivance, to enforce the performance of these public duties by persons capable of bearing them. a party charged might call upon any other person to take take the office, or exchange estates with him. if he refused, complaint was made to the magistrate who had cognizance of the business, and the dispute was judicially heard and decided.] and consider about ways and means; then it is resolved that resident aliens and householders [footnote: freedmen, who had quitted their masters' house, and lived independently.] shall embark, then to put yourselves on board instead: but during these days the objects of our expedition are lost; for the time of action we waste in preparation, and favorable moments wait not our evasions and delays. the forces that we imagine we possess in the mean time, are found, when the crisis comes, utterly insufficient. and philip has arrived at such a pitch of arrogance, as to send the following letter to the euboeans: [_the letter is read_.] of that which has been read, athenians, most is true, unhappily true; perhaps not agreeable to hear. and if what one passes over in speaking, to avoid offense, one could pass over in reality, it is right to humor the audience; but if graciousness of speech, where it is out of place, does harm in action, shameful is it, athenians, to delude ourselves, and by putting off every thing unpleasant to miss the time for all operations, and be unable even to understand, that skillful makers of war should not follow circumstances, but be in advance of them; that just as a general may be expected to lead his armies, so are men of prudent counsel to guide circumstances, in order that their resolutions may be accomplished, not their motions determined by the event. yet you, athenians, with larger means than any people--ships, infantry, cavalry, and revenue--have never up to this day made proper use of any of them; and your war with philip differs in no respect from the boxing of barbarians. for among them the party struck feels always for the blow; [footnote: compare virgil, aen. ix . ille manum projecto tegmine demens ad vulnus tulit.] strike him somewhere else, there go his hands again; ward or look in the face he can not nor will. so you, if you hear of philip in the chersonese, vote to send relief there if at thermopylae, the same; if any where else, you run after his heels up and down, and are commanded by him; no plan have you devised for the war, no circumstance do you see beforehand, only [footnote: this loose mode of expression, which is found in the original, i designedly retain.] when you learn that something is done, or about to be done. formerly perhaps this was allowable: now it is come to a crisis, to be tolerable no longer. and it seems, men of athens, as if some god, ashamed for us at our proceedings, has put this activity into philip. for had he been willing to remain quiet in possession of his conquests and prizes, and attempted nothing further, some of you, i think, would be satisfied with a state of things, which brands our nation with the shame of cowardice and the foulest disgrace. but by continually encroaching and grasping after more, he may possibly rouse you, if you have not altogether despaired. i marvel, indeed, that none of you, athenians, notices with concern and anger, that the beginning of this war was to chastise philip, the end is to protect ourselves against his attacks. one thing is clear: he will not stop, unless some one oppose him. and shall we wait for this? and if you dispatch empty galleys and hopes from this or that person, think ye all is well? shall we not embark? shall we not sail with at least a part of our national forces, now though not before? shall we not make a descent upon his coast? where, then, shall we land? some one asks. the war itself, men of athens, will discover the rotten parts of his empire, if we make a trial; but if we sit at home, hearing the orators accuse and malign one another, no good can ever be achieved. methinks, where a portion of our citizens, though not all, are commissioned with the rest, heaven blesses, and fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of such an armament. for it is impossible--ay, impossible, for one man to execute all your wishes: to promise, [footnote: chares is particularly alluded to. the "promises of chares" passed into a proverb.] and assert, and accuse this or that person, is possible; but so your affairs are ruined. the general commands wretched unpaid hirelings; here are persons easily found, who tell you lies of his conduct; you vote at random from what you hear: what then can be expected? how is this to cease, athenians? when you make the same persons soldiers, and witnesses of the generals conduct, and judges when they return home at his audit; [footnote: the audit or scrutiny of his conduct which every officer of the republic had to undergo, before a jury, if necessary, at the end of his administration. in the case of a general, the scrutiny would be like a court-martial. the athenian people, (says demosthenes,) as represented by the citizen soldiers, would themselves be witnesses of the general's conduct. these same soldiers, when they came home, or at least a portion of them, might serve on the jury; and so the people would be both witnesses and judges.] so that you may not only hear of your own affairs, but be present to see them. so disgraceful is our condition now, that every general is twice or thrice tried [footnote: chares was tried several times. capital charges were preferred also against autocles, cephisodotus, leosthenes, callisthenes.] before you for his life, though none dares even once to hazard his life against the enemy: they prefer the death of kidnappers and thieves to that which becomes them; for it is a malefactor's part to die by sentence of the law, a general's to die in battle. among ourselves, some go about and say that philip is concerting with the lacedaemonians the destruction of thebes and the dissolution of republics; some, that he has sent envoys to the king; [footnote: the king of persia, generally called _the king_ by the greeks.] others, that he is fortifying cities in illyria: so we wander about, each inventing stories. for my part, athenians, by the gods i believe, that philip is intoxicated with the magnitude of his exploits, and has many such dreams in his imagination, seeing the absence of opponents, and elated by success; but most certainly he has no such plan of action, as to let the silliest people among us know what his intentions are; for the silliest are these newsmongers. let us dismiss such talk, and remember only that philip is an enemy, who robs us of our own and has long insulted us; that wherever we have expected aid from any quarter, it has been found hostile, and that the future depends on ourselves, and unless we are willing to fight him there, we shall perhaps be compelled to fight here. this let us remember, and then we shall have determined wisely, and have done with idle conjectures. you need not pry into the future, but assure yourselves it will be disastrous, unless you attend to your duty, and are willing to act as becomes you. as for me, never before have i courted favor, by speaking what i am not convinced is for your good, and now i have spoken my whole mind frankly and unreservedly. i could have wished, knowing the advantage of good counsel to you, i were equally certain of its advantage to the counselor: so should i have spoken with more satisfaction. now, with an uncertainty of the consequence to myself, but with a conviction that you will benefit by adopting it, i proffer my advice. i trust only, that what is most for the common benefit will prevail. the second philippic. the argument. soon after the close of the phocian war, the attention of philip was called to peloponnesus, where the dissensions between sparta and her old enemies afforded him an occasion of interference. the spartans had never abandoned their right to the province of messenia, which had been wrested from them by epaminondas; and since thebes was no longer to be feared, they seem to have conceived hopes of regaining their lost power. the argives and the arcadians of megalopolis were in league with messenia, but sparta had her allies in the peloponnesus, and even athens was suspected of favoring her cause. it does not appear that any open hostilities had taken place; but about this time the fears of the messenians induced them to solicit the alliance of philip. he willingly promised them his protection, and sent a body of troops into the peninsula. the progress which macedonian influence was making there having alarmed the athenians, they sent demosthenes with an embassy to counteract it. he went to messene and to argos, addressed the people, and pointed out the dangers, to which all greece was exposed by philip's ambition. it seems that he failed in rousing their suspicions, or they were too much occupied by an immediate peril to heed one that appeared remote. philip however resented this proceeding on the part of the athenians, and sent an embassy to expostulate with them, especially on the charge of bad faith and treachery which had been preferred against him by demosthenes. embassadors from argos and messene accompanied those of macedon, and complained of the connection that appeared to subsist between athens and lacedaemon, hostile (they thought) to the liberties of peloponnesus. in answer to these complaints, demosthenes addressed his second philippic to the popular assembly; repeating the substance of what he had said to the peloponnesians, vindicating his own conduct, and denouncing the macedonian party at athens. the embassy led to no immediate result; but the influence of demosthenes at home was increased. in all the speeches, men of athens, about philip's measures and infringements of the peace, i observe that statements made on our behalf are thought just and generous, [footnote: _generous_, as regards the greek states, whose independence the athenians stand up for. this praise demosthenes frequently claims for his countrymen, and, compared with the rest of the greeks, they deserved it. leland understood the word [greek: _philanthropous_] in the same sense, though he translates it _humane_. we use the term _philanthropic_ in a sense not unlike that of the orator; but, as leland truly observes, "the distinction of greek and barbarian precluded the rest of mankind from a just share in grecian philanthropy;" and he might have added, that their notions of slavery were not in accordance with an enlarged humanity. therefore, i prefer a word of a less arrogant meaning. jacobs: _billig_. francis: "filled with sentiments of exceeding moderation."] and all who accuse philip are heard with approbation; yet nothing (i may say) that is proper, or for the sake of which the speeches are worth hearing, is done. to this point are the affairs of athens brought, that the more fully and clearly one convicts philip of violating the peace with you, and plotting against the whole of greece, the more difficult it becomes to advise you how to act. the cause lies in all of us, athenians, that, when we ought to oppose an ambitious power by deeds and actions, not by words, we men of the hustings [footnote: auger has: "nous qui montons a la tribune."] shrink from our duty of moving and advising, for fear of your displeasure, and only declaim on the heinousness and atrocity of philip's conduct; you of the assembly, though better instructed than philip to argue justly, or comprehend the argument of another, to check him in the execution of his designs are totally unprepared. the result is inevitable, i imagine, and perhaps just. you each succeed better in what you are busy and earnest about; philip in actions, you in words. if you are still satisfied with using the better arguments, it is an easy matter, and there is no trouble: but if we are to take measures for the correction of these evils, to prevent their insensible progress, and the rising up of a mighty power, against which we could have no defense, then our course of deliberation is not the same as formerly; the orators, and you that hear them, must prefer good and salutary counsels to those which are easy and agreeable. first, men of athens, if any one regards without uneasiness the might and dominion of philip, and imagines that it threatens no danger to the state, or that all his preparations are not against you, i marvel, and would entreat you every one to hear briefly from me the reasons, why i am led to form a contrary expectation, and wherefore i deem philip an enemy; that, if i appear to have the clearer foresight, you may hearken to me; if they, who have such confidence and trust in philip, you may give your adherence to them. thus then i reason, athenians. what did philip first make himself master of after the peace? thermopylae and the phocian state. well, and how used he his power? he chose to act for the benefit of thebes, not of athens. why so? because, i conceive, measuring his calculations by ambition, by his desire of universal empire, without regard to peace, quiet, or justice, he saw plainly, that to a people of our character and principles nothing could he offer or give, that would induce you for self-interest to sacrifice any of the greeks to him. he sees that you, having respect for justice, dreading the infamy of the thing, and exercising proper forethought, would oppose him in any such attempt as much as if you were at war: but the thebans he expected (and events prove him right) would, in return for the services done them, allow him in every thing else to have his way, and, so far from thwarting or impeding him, would fight on his side if he required it. from the same persuasion he befriended lately the messenians and argives, which is the highest panegyric upon you, athenians; for you are adjudged by these proceedings to be the only people incapable of betraying for lucre the national rights of greece, or bartering your attachment to her for any obligation or benefit. and this opinion of you, that (so different) of the argives and thebans, he has naturally formed, not only from a view of present times, but by reflection on the past. for assuredly he finds and hears that your ancestors, who might have governed the rest of greece on terms of submitting to persia, not only spurned the proposal, when alexander, [footnote: alexander of macedon, son of amyntas, was sent by mardonius, the persian commander, to offer the most favorable terms to the athenians, if they would desert the cause of the greeks. the spartans at the same time sent an embassy, to remind them of their duty. the spirited reply which the athenians made to both embassies is related by herodotus. the thebans submitted to xerxes, and fought against the greeks at the battle of plataea. the argives were neutral, chiefly from jealousy of sparta. they demanded half the command of the allied army, as a condition of their assistance, but this could not be complied with.] this man's ancestor, came as herald to negotiate, but preferred to abandon their country and endure any suffering, and thereafter achieved such exploits as all the world loves to mention, though none could ever speak them worthily, and therefore i must be silent; for their deeds are too mighty to be uttered [footnote: the simple [greek: _eipein_] in the original is more forcible than if it had been [greek: _epainein_], or the like. compare shakspeare, coriolanus, act ii. sc. . i shall lack voice: the deeds of coriolanus should not be uttered feebly---- for this last before and in corioli, let me say, i can not speak him home.] in words. but the forefathers of the argives and thebans, they either joined the barbarian's army, or did not oppose it; and therefore he knows that both will selfishly embrace their advantage, without considering the common interest of the greeks. he thought then, if he chose your friendship, it must be on just principles; if he attached himself to them he should find auxiliaries of his ambition. this is the reason of his preferring them to you both then and now. for certainly he does not see them with a larger navy than you, nor has he acquired an inland empire and renounced that of the sea and the ports, nor does he forget the professions and promises on which he obtained the peace. well, it may be said, he knew all this, yet he so acted, not from ambition or the motives which i charge, but because the demands of the thebans were more equitable than yours. of all pleas, this now is the least open to him. he that bids the lacedaemonians resign messene, how can he pretend, when he delivered orchomenos and coronea to the thebans, to have acted on a conviction of justice? but, forsooth, he was compelled,--this plea remains--he made concessions against his will, being surrounded by thessalian horse and theban infantry. excellent! so of his intentions they talk; he will mistrust the thebans; and some carry news about, that he will fortify elatea. all this he intends and will intend i dare say; but to attack the lacedaemonians on behalf of messene and argos he does not intend; he actually sends mercenaries and money into the country, and is expected himself with a great force. the lacedaemonians, who are enemies of thebes, he overthrows; the phocians, whom he himself before destroyed, will he now preserve? and who can believe this? i can not think that philip, either if he was forced into his former measures, or if he were now giving up the thebans, would pertinaciously oppose their enemies; his present conduct rather shows that he adopted those measures by choice. all things prove to a correct observer, that his whole plan of action is against our state. and this has now become to him a sort of necessity. consider. he desires empire: he conceives you to be his only opponents. he has been for some time wronging you, as his own conscience best informs him, since, by retaining what belongs to you, he secures the rest of his dominion: had he given up amphipolis and potidaea, he deemed himself unsafe at home. he knows therefore, both that he is plotting against you, and that you are aware of it; and, supposing you to have intelligence, he thinks you must hate him; he is alarmed, expecting some disaster, if you get the chance, unless he hastes to prevent you. therefore he is awake, and on the watch against us; he courts certain people, thebans, and people in peloponnesus of the like views, who from cupidity, he thinks, will be satisfied with the present, and from dullness of understanding will foresee none of the consequences. and yet men of even moderate sense might notice striking facts, which i had occasion to quote to the messenians and argives, and perhaps it is better they should be repeated to you. ye, men of messene, said i, how do ye think the olynthians would have brooked to hear any thing against philip at those times, when he surrendered to them anthemus, which all former kings of macedonia claimed, when he cast out the athenian colonists and gave them potidaea, taking on himself your enmity, and giving them the land to enjoy? think ye they expected such treatment as they got, or would have believed it if they had been told? nevertheless, said i, they, after enjoying for a short time the land of others, are for a long time deprived by him of their own, shamefully expelled, not only vanquished, but betrayed by one another and sold. in truth, these too close connections with despots are not safe for republics. the thessalians, again, think ye, said i, when he ejected their tyrants, and gave back nicaea and magnesia, they expected to have the decemvirate [footnote: thessaly was anciently divided into four districts, each called a _tetras_, and this, as we learn from the third philippic, was restored soon after the termination of the sacred war. the object of philip in effecting this arrangement was, no doubt, to weaken the influence of the great thessalian families by a division of power; otherwise the pheraean tyranny might have been exchanged for an oligarchy powerful enough to be independent of macedonia. the decemvirate here spoken of (if the text be correct) was a further contrivance to forward philip's views; whether we adopt leland's opinion, that each tetrarchy was governed by a council of ten, or schaefer's, that each city was placed under ten governors. jacobs understands the word _decemvirate_ not to refer to any positive form of government, but generally to designate a _tyranny_, such as that which the lacedaemonians used to introduce into conquered cities. so, for example, the romans might have spoken of a decemvirate after the time of appius. however this be, philip seems to have contrived that the ruling body, whether in the tetrarchy or the decadarchy, should be his own creatures. two of them, eudicus and simus, are particularly mentioned by demosthenes as traitors.] which is now established? or that he who restored the meeting at pylae [footnote: _pylae_, which signifies _gates_, was a name applied by the greeks to divers passes, or defiles, but especially to the pass of _thermopylae_, which opened through the ridges of mount oeta into the country of the epicnemidian locrians, and was so called from the hot sulphureous springs that gushed from the foot of the mountain.] would take away their revenues? surely not. and yet these things have occurred, as all mankind may know. you behold philip, i said, a dispenser of gifts and promises: pray, if you are wise, that you may never know him for a cheat and a deceiver. by jupiter, i said, there are manifold contrivances for the guarding and defending of cities, as ramparts, walls, trenches, and the like: these are all made with hands, and require expense; but there is one common safeguard in the nature of prudent men, which is a good security for all, but especially for democracies against despots. what do i mean? mistrust. keep this, hold to this; preserve this only, and you can never be injured. what do ye desire? freedom. then see ye not that philip's very titles are at variance therewith? every king and despot is a foe to freedom, an antagonist to laws. will ye not beware, i said, lest, seeking deliverance from war, you find a master? they heard me with a tumult of approbation; and many other speeches they heard from the ambassadors, both in my presence and afterward; yet none the more, as it appears, will they keep aloof from philip's friendship and promises. and no wonder, that messenians and certain peloponnesians should act contrary to what their reason approves; but you, who understand yourselves, and by us orators are told, how you are plotted against, how you are inclosed! you, i fear, to escape present exertion, will come to ruin ere you are aware. so doth the moment's case and indulgence prevail over distant advantage. as to your measures, you will in prudence, i presume, consult hereafter by yourselves. i will furnish you with such an answer as it becomes the assembly to decide upon. [_here the proposed answer was read_] [footnote: whether this was moved by the orator himself, or formally read as his motion by the officer of the assembly, does not appear.] it were just, men of athens, to call the persons who brought those promises, on the faith whereof you concluded peace. for i should never have submitted to go as ambassador, and you would certainly not have discontinued the war, had you supposed that philip, on obtaining peace, would act thus; but the statements then made were very different. ay, and others you should call. whom? the men who declared--after the peace, when i had returned from my second mission, that for the oaths, when, perceiving your delusion, i gave warning, and protested, and opposed the abandonment of thermopylae and the phocians--that i, being a water-drinker, [footnote: it was philocrates who said this. there were many jokes against demosthenes as a water-drinker.] was naturally a churlish and morose fellow, that philip, if he passed the straits, would do just as you desired, fortify thespiae and plataea, humble the thebans, cut through the chersonese [footnote: this peninsula being exposed to incursions from thrace, a plan was conceived of cutting through the isthmus from pteleon to leuce-acte, to protect the athenian settlements. see the appendix to this volume, on the thracian chersonese.] at his own expense, and give you oropus and euboea in exchange for amphipolis. all these declarations on the hustings i am sure you remember, though you are not famous for remembering injuries. and, the most disgraceful thing of all, you voted in your confidence, that this same peace should descend to your posterity; so completely were you misled. why mention i this now, and desire these men to be called? by the gods, i will tell you the truth frankly and without reserve. not that i may fall a-wrangling, to provoke recrimination before you, [footnote: similarly auger: "ce n'est pas pour m'attirer les invectives de mes anciens adversaires en les invectivant moi-meme." jacobs otherwise: _nicht um durch schmahungen mir auf gleiche weise gehor bei euch zu verschaffen_. but i do not think that [greek: _emauto logon poiaeso_] can bear the sense of [greek: _logon tuchoimi_], "get a hearing for myself." and the orator's object is, not so much to sneer at the people by hinting that they are ready to hear abuse, as to deter his opponents from retaliation, or weaken its effect, by denouncing their opposition as corrupt. leland saw the meaning: "not that, by breaking out into invectives, i may expose myself to the like treatment."] and afford my old adversaries a fresh pretext for getting more from philip, nor for the purpose of idle garrulity. but i imagine that what philip is doing will grieve you hereafter more than it does now. i see the thing progressing, and would that my surmises were false; but i doubt it is too near already. so when you are able no longer to disregard events, when, instead of hearing from me or others that these measures are against athens, you all see it yourselves, and know it for certain, i expect you will be wrathful and exasperated. i fear then, as your embassadors have concealed the purpose for which they know they were corrupted, those who endeavor to repair what the others have lost may chance to encounter your resentment; for i see it is a practice with many to vent their anger, not upon the guilty, but on persons most in their power. while therefore the mischief is only coming and preparing, while we hear one another speak, i wish every man, though he knows it well, to be reminded, who it was [footnote: he means aeschines.] persuaded you to abandon phocis and thermopylae, by the command of which philip commands the road to attica and peloponnesus, and has brought it to this, that your deliberation must be, not about claims and interests abroad, but concerning the defense of your home and a war in attica, which will grieve every citizen when it comes, and indeed it has commenced from that day. had you not been then deceived, there would be nothing to distress the state. philip would certainly never have prevailed at sea and come to attica with a fleet, nor would he have marched with a land-force by phocis and thermopylae: he must either have acted honorably, observing the peace and keeping quiet, or been immediately in a war similar to that which made him desire the peace. enough has been said to awaken recollection. grant, o ye gods, it be not all fully confirmed! i would have no man punished, though death he may deserve, to the damage and danger of the country. the third philippic. the argument. this speech was delivered about three months after the last, while philip was advancing into thrace, and threatening both the chersonese and the propontine coast. no new event had happened, which called for any special consultation; but demosthenes, alarmed by the formidable character of philip's enterprises and vast military preparations, felt the necessity of rousing the athenians to exertion. he repeats in substance the arguments which he had used in the oration on the chersonese; points out the danger to be apprehended from the disunion among the greek states, from their general apathy and lack of patriotism, which he contrasts with the high and noble spirit of ancient times. from the past conduct of philip he shows what is to be expected in future; explains the difference between philip's new method of warfare and that adopted in the peloponnesian war, and urges the necessity of corresponding measures for defense. the peaceful professions of philip were not to be trusted; he was never more dangerous than when he made overtures of peace and friendship. the most powerful instruments that he employed for gaining ascendency were the venal orators, who were to be found in every grecian city, and on whom it was necessary to inflict signal punishment, before they had a chance of opposing foreign enemies. the advice of demosthenes now is, to dispatch reinforcements to the chersonese, to stir up the people of greece, and even to solicit the assistance of the persian king, who had no less reason than themselves to dread the ambition of philip. the events of the following year, when philip attacked the propontine cities, fully justified the warning of demosthenes. and the extraordinary activity, which the athenians displayed in resisting him, shows that the exertions of the orator had their due effect. even mitford confesses, with reference to the operations of that period, that athens found in demosthenes an able and effective minister. many speeches, men of athens, are made in almost every assembly about the hostilities of philip, hostilities which ever since the treaty of peace he has been committing as well against you as against the rest of the greeks; and all (i am sure) are ready to avow, though they forbear to do so, that our counsels and our measures should be directed to his humiliation and chastisement: nevertheless, so low have our affairs been brought by inattention and negligence, i fear it is a harsh truth to say, that if all the orators had sought to suggest, and you to pass resolutions for the utter ruining of the commonwealth, we could not methinks be worse off than we are. a variety of circumstances may have brought us to this state; our affairs have not declined from one or two causes only; but, if you rightly examine, you will find it chiefly owing to the orators, who study to please you rather than advise for the best. some of whom, athenians, seeking to maintain the basis of their own power and repute, have no forethought for the future, and therefore think you also ought to have none; others, accusing and calumniating practical statesmen, labor only to make athens punish athens, and in such occupations to engage her, that philip may have liberty to say and do what he pleases. politics of this kind are common here, but are the causes of your failures and embarrassment. i beg, athenians, that you will not resent my plain speaking of the truth. only consider. you hold liberty of speech in other matters to be the general right of all residents in athens, insomuch that you allow a measure of it even to foreigners and slaves, and many servants may be seen among you speaking their thoughts more freely than citizens in some other states; and yet you have altogether banished it from your councils. the result has been, that in the assembly you give yourselves airs and are flattered at hearing nothing but compliments, in your measures and proceedings you are brought to the utmost peril. if such be your disposition now, i must be silent: if you will listen to good advice without flattery, i am ready to speak. for though our affairs are in a deplorable condition, though many sacrifices have been made, still, if you will choose to perform your duty, it is possible to repair it all. a paradox, and yet a truth, am i about to state. that which is the most lamentable in the past is best for the future. how is this? because you performed no part of your duty, great or small, and therefore you fared ill: had you done all that became you, and your situation were the same, there would be no hope of amendment. philip has indeed prevailed over your sloth and negligence, but not over the country: you have not been worsted; you have not even bestirred yourselves. if now we were all agreed that philip is at war with athens and infringing the peace, nothing would a speaker need to urge or advise but the safest and easiest way of resisting him. but since, at the very time when philip is capturing cities and retaining divers of our dominions and assailing all people, there are men so unreasonable as to listen to repeated declarations in the assembly, that some of us are kindling war, one must be cautious and set this matter right: for whoever moves or advises a measure of defense, is in danger of being accused afterward as author of the war. i will first then examine and determine this point, whether it be in our power to deliberate on peace or war. if the country may be at peace, if it depends on us, (to begin with this,) i say we ought to maintain peace, and i call upon the affirmant to move a resolution, to take some measure, and not to palter with us. but if another, having arms in his hand and a large force around him, amuses you with the name of peace, while he carries on the operations of war, what is left but to defend yourselves? you may profess to be at peace, if you like, as he does; i quarrel not with that. but if any man supposes this to be a peace, which will enable philip to master all else and attack you last, he is a madman, or he talks of a peace observed toward him by you, not toward you by him. this it is that philip purchases by all his expenditure, the privilege of assailing you without being assailed in turn. if we really wait until he avows that he is at war with us, we are the simplest of mortals, for he would not declare that, though he marched even against attica and piraeus, at least if we may judge from his conduct to others. for example, to the olynthians he declared, when he was forty furlongs from their city, that there was no alternative, but either they must quit olynthus or he macedonia; though before that time, whenever he was accused of such an intent, he took it ill and sent embassadors to justify himself. again, he marched towards the phocions as if they were allies, and there were phocian envoys who accompanied his march, and many among you contended that his advance would not benefit the thebans. and he came into thessaly of late as a friend and ally, yet he has taken possession of pherae: and lastly he told these wretched people of oreus, [footnote: when he established his creature philistides in the government of oreus, as mentioned in the last oration and at the end of this.] that he had sent his soldiers out of good-will to visit them, as he heard they were in trouble and dissension, and it was the part of allies and true friends to lend assistance on such occasions. people who would never have harmed him, though they might have adopted measures of defense, he chose to deceive rather than warn them of his attack; and think ye he would declare war against you before he began it, and that while you are willing to be deceived? impossible. he would be the silliest of mankind, if, while you the injured parties make no complaint against him, but are accusing your own countrymen, he should terminate your intestine strife and jealousies, warn you to turn against him, and remove the pretexts of his hirelings for asserting, to amuse you, that he makes no war upon athens. o heavens! would any rational being judge by words rather than by actions, who is at peace with him and who at war? surely none. well then; philip immediately after the peace, before diopithes was in command or the settlers in the chersonese had been sent out, took serrium and doriscus, and expelled from serrium and the sacred mount the troops whom your general had stationed there. [footnote: this general was chares, to whom cersobleptes had intrusted the defense of those places. the sacred mount was a fortified position on the northern coast of the hellespont. it was here that miltocythes intrenched himself, when he rebelled against cotys; and philip took possession of it just before the peace with athens was concluded, as being important to his operations against cersobleptes. the statement of demosthenes, that the oaths had then been taken, is, as jacobs observes, incorrect; for they were sworn afterward in thessaly. but the argument is substantially the same, for the peace had been agreed to, and the ratification was purposely delayed by philip, to gain time for the completion of his designs.] what do you call such conduct? he had sworn the peace. don't say--what does it signify? how is the state concerned?--whether it be a trifling matter, or of no concernment to you, is a different question: religion and justice have the same obligation, be the subject of the offense great or small. tell me now; when he sends mercenaries into chersonesus, which the king and all the greeks have acknowledged to be yours, when he avows himself an auxiliary and writes us word so, what are such proceedings? he says he is not at war; i can not however admit such conduct to be an observance of the peace; far otherwise: i say, by his attempt on megara, [footnote: not long before this oration was delivered, philip was suspected of a design to seize megara. demosthenes gives an account, in his speech on the embassy, of a conspiracy between two megarians, ptaeodorus and perilaus, to introduce macedonian troops into the city. phocion was sent by the athenians to megara, with the consent of the megarian people, to protect them against foreign attack. he fortified the city and port, connecting them by long walls, and put them in security. the occupation of megara by philip must have been most perilous to athens, especially while euboea and thebes were in his interest; he would thus have inclosed her as it were in a net.] by his setting up despotism in euboea, by his present advance into thrace, by his intrigues in peloponnesus, by the whole course of operations with his army, he has been breaking the peace and making war upon you; unless indeed you will say, that those who establish batteries are not at war, until they apply them to the walls. but that you will not say: for whoever contrives and prepares the means for my conquest, is at war with me, before he darts or draws the bow. what, if any thing should happen, is the risk you run? the alienation of the hellespont, the subjection of megara and euboea to your enemy, the siding of the peloponnesians with him. then can i allow, that one who sets such an engine at work against athens is at peace with her? quite the contrary. from the day that he destroyed the phocians i date his commencement of hostilities. defend yourselves instantly, and i say you will be wise: delay it, and you may wish in vain to do so hereafter. so much do i dissent from your other counselors, men of athens, that i deem any discussion about chersonesus or byzantium out of place. succor them--i advise that--watch that no harm befalls them, send all necessary supplies to your troops in that quarter; but let your deliberations be for the safety of all greece, as being in the utmost peril. i must tell you why i am so alarmed at the state of our affairs: that, if my reasonings are correct, you may share them, and make some provision at least for yourselves, however disinclined to do so for others: but if, in your judgment, i talk nonsense and absurdity, you may treat me as crazed, and not listen to me, either now or in future. that philip from a mean and humble origin has grown mighty, that the greeks are jealous and quarreling among themselves, that it was far more wonderful for him to rise from that insignificance, than it would now be, after so many acquisitions, to conquer what is left; these and similar matters, which i might dwell upon, i pass over. but i observe that all people, beginning with you, have conceded to him a right, which in former times has been the subject of contest in every grecian war. and what is this? the right of doing what he pleases, openly fleecing and pillaging the greeks, one after another, attacking and enslaving their cities. you were at the head of the greeks for seventy-three years, [footnote: this would be from about the end of the persian war to the end of the peloponnesian, b. c. . isocrates speaks of the athenian sway as having lasted sixty-five or seventy years. but statements of this kind are hardly intended to be made with perfect accuracy. in the third olynthiac, as we have seen, demosthenes says, the athenians had the leadership by _consent of the greeks_ for forty-five years. this would exclude the peloponnesian war.] the lacedaemonians for twenty-nine; [footnote: from the end of the peloponnesian war to the battle of naxos, b. c. .] and the thebans had some power in these latter times after the battle of leuctra. yet neither you, my countrymen, nor thebans nor lacedaemonians, were ever licensed by the greeks to act as you pleased; far otherwise. when you, or rather the athenians at that time, appeared to be dealing harshly with certain people, all the rest, even such as had no complaint against athens, thought proper to side with the injured parties in a war against her. so, when the lacedaemonians became masters and succeeded to your empire, on their attempting to encroach and make oppressive innovations, [footnote: the spartans, whose severe military discipline rendered them far the best soldiers in greece, were totally unfit to manage the empire, at the head of which they found themselves after the humiliation of athens. their attempt to force an oligarchy upon every dependent state was an unwise policy, which made them generally odious. the decemvirates of lysander, and the governors ([greek: _armostai_]) established in various greek cities to maintain lacedaemonian influence, were regarded as instruments of tyranny. it was found that spartan governors and generals, when away from home, gave loose to their vicious inclinations, as if to indemnify themselves for the strictness of domestic discipline. it became a maxim in their politics, that the end justified the means. the most flagrant proof was given by the seizure of the cadmea at thebes; a measure, which led to a formidable confederacy against sparta, and brought her to the verge of destruction.] a general war was declared against them, even by such as had no cause of complaint. but wherefore mention other people? we ourselves and the lacedaemonians, although at the outset we could not allege any natural injuries, thought proper to make war for the injustice that we saw done to our neighbors. yet all the faults committed by the spartans in those thirty years, and by our ancestors in the seventy, are less, men of athens, than the wrongs which, in thirteen incomplete years that philip has been uppermost, [footnote: _i. e._ in power; but, as smead, an american editor, truly observes, [greek: _epipolyxei_] has a contemptuous signification, jacobs: _oben schwimmt_. the thirteen years are reckoned from the time when philip's interference in thessaly began; before which he had not assumed an important character in southern greece.] he has inflicted on the greeks: nay they are scarcely a fraction of these, as may easily be shown in a few words. olynthus and methone and apollonia, and thirty-two cities [footnote: the chalcidian cities.] on the borders of thrace, i pass over; all which he has so cruelly destroyed, that a visitor could hardly tell if they were ever inhabited: and of the phocians, so considerable a people exterminated, i say nothing. but what is the condition of thessaly? has he not taken away her constitutions and her cities, and established tetrarchies, to parcel her out, [footnote: this statement does not disagree with the mention of the [greek: _dekadarchia_] in the second philippic. supposing that thessaly was not only divided into tetrarchics, four provinces or cantons, but also governed by decemvirates of philip's appointment, placed in divers of her cities, then by the former contrivance she might be said [greek: _donlenein kat ethnae_], by the latter [greek: _kata poleis_]. it is not clear indeed whether several decemvirates, or one for the whole country, is to be understood. the singular number is equally capable of either interpretation.] not only by cities, but also by provinces, for subjection? are not the euboean states governed now by despots, and that in an island near to thebes and athens? does he not expressly write in his epistles, "i am at peace with those who are willing to obey me?" nor does he write so and not act accordingly. he is gone to the hellespont; he marched formerly against ambracia; elis, such an important city in peloponnesus, he possesses; [footnote: that is to say; a macedonian faction prevailed in elis. the democratical party had some time before endeavored to regain the ascendency, by aid of the phocian mercenaries of phalaecus; but they had been defeated by the troops of arcadia and elis.] he plotted lately to get megara: neither hellenic nor barbaric land contains the man's ambition. [footnote: so juvenal, sat x. : aestuat infelix angusto limite mundi, ut gyarae clausus scopulis parvaque seripho. and virgil, aen. ix. : nee te troja capit.] and we the greek community, seeing and hearing this, instead of sending embassies to one another about it and expressing indignation, are in such a miserable state, so intrenched in our miserable towns, that to this day we can attempt nothing that interest or necessity requires; we can not combine, or form any association for succor and alliance; we look unconcernedly on the man's growing power, each resolving (methinks) to enjoy the interval that another is destroyed in, not caring or striving for the salvation of greece: for none can be ignorant, that philip, like some course or attack of fever or other disease, is coming even on those that yet seem very far removed. and you must be sensible, that whatever wrong the greeks sustained from lacedaemonians or from us, was at least inflicted by genuine people of greece; and it might be felt in the same manner as if a lawful son, born to a large fortune, committed some fault or error in the management of it; on that ground one would consider him open to censure and reproach, yet it could not be said that he was an alien, and not heir to the property which he so dealt with. but if a slave or a spurious child wasted and spoiled what he had no interest in--heavens! how much more heinous and hateful would all have pronounced it! and yet in regard to philip and his conduct they feel not this, although he is not only no greek and noway akin to greeks, but not even a barbarian of a place honorable to mention; in fact, a vile fellow of macedon, from which a respectable slave could not be purchased formerly. what is wanting to make his insolence complete? besides his destruction of grecian cities, does he not hold the pythian games, the common festival of greece, and, if he comes not himself, send his vassals to preside? is he not master of thermopylae and the passes into greece, and holds he not those places by garrisons and mercenaries? has he not thrust aside thessalians, ourselves, dorians, the whole amphictyonic body, and got preaudience of the oracle, [footnote: this privilege, which had belonged to the phocians, was transferred to philip. it was considered an advantage as well as an honor in ancient times; for there were only certain days appointed in every month, when the oracle could be consulted, and the order of consultation was determined by lot in common cases. the delphians used to confer the right of pre-consultation on particular states or persons as a reward for some service or act of piety. thus the spartans received it; and croesus, king of lydia, for the magnificent presents which he sent to the temple.] to which even the greeks do not all pretend? does he not write to the thessalians, what form of government to adopt? send mercenaries to porthmus, [footnote: porthmus was the port of eretria, on the strait, opposite athens. the circumstances are stated by demosthenes at the latter end of the speech. by expelling the [greek: _daemos_] of eretria, he means of course the popular party, _die volkspartei_, as pabst has it; but they would by their own partisans be called the people.] to expel the eretrian commonalty; others to oreus, to set up philistides as ruler? yet the greeks endure to see all this; methinks they view it as they would a hailstorm, each praying that it may not fall on himself, none trying to prevent it. and not only are the outrages which he docs to greece submitted to, but even the private wrongs of every people: nothing can go beyond this! has he not wronged the corinthians by attacking ambracia [footnote: divers colonies were planted on the northwestern coast of greece by the corinthians, and also by the coreyraeans, who were themselves colonists from corinth. among them were leucas, ambracia, anactorium, epidamnus, and apollonia. leucas afterward became insular, by cutting through the isthmus. philip's meditated attack was in b. c. after the conquest of cassopia. leucas, by its insular position, would have been convenient for a descent on peloponnesus. we have seen that this design of philip was baffled by the exertions of demosthenes.] and leucas? the achaians, by swearing to give naupactus [footnote: naupactus, now _lepanto_, lay on the northern coast of the corinthian gulf. at the close of the peloponnesian war it came into the hands of the achaians, from whom it was taken by epaminondas, but after his death they regained it. the aetolians got possession of the town some time after, perhaps by macedonian assistance.] to the aetolians? from the thebans taken echinus? [footnote: the echinus here mentioned was a city on the northern coast of the maliac gulf in thessaly.] is he not marching against the byzantines his allies? from us--i omit the rest--but keeps he not cardia, the greatest city of the chersonese? still under these indignities we are all slack and disheartened, and look toward our neighbors, distrusting one another, instead of the common enemy. and how think ye a man, who behaves so insolently to all, how will he act, when he gets each separately under his control? but what has caused the mischief? there must be some cause, some good reason, why the greeks were so eager for liberty then, and now are eager for servitude. there was something, men of athens, something in the hearts of the multitude then, which there is not now, which overcame the wealth of persia and maintained the freedom of greece, and quailed not under any battle by land or sea; the loss whereof has ruined all, and thrown the affairs of greece into confusion. what was this? nothing subtle or clever: simply that whoever took money from the aspirants for power or the corruptors of greece were universally detested: it was dreadful to be convicted of bribery; the severest punishment was inflicted on the guilty, and there was no intercession or pardon. the favorable moments for enterprise, which fortune frequently offers to the careless against the vigilant, to them that will do nothing against those that discharge all their duty, could not be bought from orators or generals; no more could mutual concord, nor distrust of tyrants and barbarians, nor any thing of the kind. but now all such principles have been sold as in open market, and those imported in exchange, by which greece is ruined and diseased. [footnote: [greek: _apolole_] in reference to foreign affairs; [greek: _nenosaeken_] in regard to internal broils and commotions. compare shakspeare, macbeth iv. . o nation miserable, when shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?] what are they? envy where a man gets a bribe; laughter if he confesses it; mercy to the convicted; hatred of those that denounce the crime: all the usual attendants upon corruption. [footnote: he glances more particularly at philocrates, demades, and aeschines.] for as to ships and men and revenues and abundance of other materials, all that may be reckoned as constituting national strength--assuredly the greeks of our day are more fully and perfectly supplied with such advantages than greeks of the olden time. but they are all rendered useless, unavailable, unprofitable, by the agency of these traffickers. that such is the present state of things, you must see, without requiring my testimony: that it was different in former times, i will demonstrate, not by speaking my own words, but by showing an inscription of your ancestors, which they graved on a brazen column and deposited in the citadel, not for their own benefit, (they were right-minded enough without such records,) but for a memorial and example to instruct you, how seriously such conduct should be taken up. what says the inscription then? it says: "let arthmius, son of pythonax the zelite, [footnote: zelea is a town in mysia. arthmius was sent by artaxerxes into peloponnesus, to stir up a war against the athenians, who had irritated him by the assistance which they lent to egypt. aeschines says that arthmius was the [greek: _proxenos_] of athens, which may partly account for the decree passed against him.] be declared an outlaw, [footnote: of the various degrees of [greek: _atimia_] at athens i shall speak hereafter. i translate the word here, so as to meet the case of a foreigner, who had nothing to do with the franchises of the athenians, but who by their decree was excommunicated from the benefit of all international law.] and an enemy of the athenian people and their allies, him and his family." then the cause is written why this was done: because he brought the median gold into peloponnesus. that is the inscription. by the gods! only consider and reflect among yourselves, what must have been the spirit, what the dignity of those athenians who acted so! one arthmius a zelite, subject of the king, (for zelea is in asia,) because in his master's service he brought gold into peloponnesus, not to athens, they proclaimed an enemy of the athenians and their allies, him and his family, and outlawed. that is, not the outlawry commonly spoken of: for what would a zelite care, to be excluded from athenian franchises? it means not that; but in the statutes of homicide it is written, in cases where a prosecution for murder is not allowed, but killing is sanctioned, "and let him die an outlaw," says the legislator: by which he means, that whoever kills such a person shall be unpolluted. [footnote: that is, his act being justifiable homicide, he shall not be deemed (in a religious point of view) impure. as to the athenian law of homicide, see my article _phonos_ in the archaeological dictionary.] therefore they considered that the preservation of all greece was their own concern: (but for such opinion, they would not have cared, whether people in peloponnesus were bought and corrupted:) and whomsoever they discovered taking bribes, they chastised and punished so severely as to record their names in brass. the natural result was, that greece, was formidable to the barbarian, not the barbarian to greece. 'tis not so now: since neither in this nor in other respects are your sentiments the same. but what are they? you know yourselves: why am i to upbraid you with every thing? the greeks in general are alike and no better than you. therefore i say, our present affairs demand earnest attention and wholesome counsel. shall i say what? do you bid me, and won't you be angry? [_here is read the public document which demosthenes produces, after which he resumes his address_.] [footnote: the secretary of the assembly stood by the side of the orator, and read any public documents, such as statutes, decrees, bills and the like, which the orator desired to refer to or to verify. it does not appear what the document was, which demosthenes caused to be read here. if we may judge from the argument, it was some energetic resolution of the people, such as he would propose for an example on the present occasion.] there is a foolish saying of persons who wish to make us easy, that philip is not yet as powerful as the lacedaemonians were formerly, who ruled every where by land and sea, and had the king for their ally, and nothing withstood them; yet athens resisted even that nation, and was not destroyed. i myself believe, that, while every thing has received great improvement, and the present bears no resemblance to the past, nothing has been so changed and improved as the practice of war. for anciently, as i am informed, the lacedaemonians and all grecian people would for four or five months, during the season [footnote: the campaigning season, during the summer and fine time of the year. the peloponnesians generally invaded attica when the corn was ripe, burning and plundering all in their route. thucydides in his history divides the year into two parts, summer and winter.] only, invade and ravage the land of their enemies with heavy-armed and national troops, and return home again: and their ideas were so old-fashioned, or rather national, they never purchased [footnote: compare the old lines of ennius: non cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes ferro, non auro, vitam cernamus utrique.] an advantage from any; theirs was a legitimate and open warfare. but now you doubtless perceive, that the majority of disasters have been effected by treason; nothing is done in fair field or combat. you hear of philip marching where he pleases, not because he commands troops of the line, but because he has attached to him a host of skirmishers, cavalry, archers, mercenaries, and the like. when with these he falls upon a people in civil dissension, and none (for mistrust) will march out to defend the country, he applies engines and besieges them. i need not mention, that he makes no difference between winter and summer, that he has no stated season of repose. you, knowing these things, reflecting on them, must not let the war approach your territories, nor get your necks broken, relying on the simplicity of the old war with the lacedaemonians, but take the longest time beforehand for defensive measures and preparations, see that he stirs not from home, avoid any decisive engagement. for a war, if we choose, men of athens, to pursue a right course, we have many natural advantages; such as the position of his kingdom, which we may extensively plunder and ravage, and a thousand more; but for a battle he is better trained than we are. [footnote: chaeronea proved the wisdom of this advice. similar counsel was given by pericles in the peloponnesian war. had the athenians attempted to meet the invading army in the field, they must inevitably have been defeated in the early period of the war.] nor is it enough to adopt these resolutions and oppose him by warlike measures: you must on calculation and on principle abhor his advocates here, remembering that it is impossible to overcome your enemies abroad, until you have chastised those who are his ministers within the city. which, by jupiter and all the gods, you can not and will not do! you have arrived at such a pitch of folly or madness or--i know not what to call it: i am tempted often to think, that some evil genius is driving you to ruin--for the sake of scandal or envy or jest or any other cause, you command hirelings to speak, (some of whom would not deny themselves to be hirelings,) and laugh when they abuse people. and this, bad as it is, is not the worst: you have allowed these persons more liberty for their political conduct than your faithful counselors: and see what evils are caused by listening to such men with indulgence. i will mention facts that you will all remember. in olynthus some of the statesmen were in philip's interest, doing every thing for him; some were on the honest side, aiming to preserve their fellow-citizens from slavery. which party now destroyed their country? or which betrayed the cavalry, [footnote: after olynthus was besieged by philip, various sallies were made from the city, some of which were successful. but the treachery of lasthenes and his accomplices ruined all. a body of five hundred horse were led by him into an ambuscade, and captured by the besiegers. see appendix i.] by whose betrayal olynthus fell? the creatures of philip; they that, while the city stood, slandered and calumniated the honest counselors so effectually, that the olynthian people were induced to banish apollonides. nor is it there only, and nowhere else, that such practice has been ruinous. in eretria, when, after riddance of plutarch [footnote: when he was expelled by phocion after the battle of tamynae, b. c. .] and his mercenaries, the people got possession of their city and of porthmus, some were for bringing the government over to you, others to philip. his partisans were generally, rather exclusively, attended to by the wretched and unfortunate eretrians, who at length were persuaded to expel their faithful advisers. philip, their ally and friend, sent hipponicus and a thousand mercenaries, demolished the walls of porthmus, and established three rulers, hipparchus, automedon, clitarchus. since that he has driven them out of the country, twice attempting their deliverance: once he sent the troops with eurylochus, afterward those of parmenio. what need of many words? in oreus philip's agents were philistides, menippus, socrates, thoas, and agapaeus, who now hold the government: that was quite notorious: one euphraeus, a man that formerly dwelt here among you, was laboring for freedom and independence. how this man was in other respects insulted and trampled on by the people of oreus, were long to tell: but a year before the capture, discovering what philistides and his accomplices were about, he laid an information against them for treason. a multitude then combining, having philip for their paymaster, and acting under his direction, take euphraeus off to prison as a disturber of the public peace. seeing which, the people of oreus, instead of assisting the one and beating the others to death, with them were not angry, but said his punishment was just, and rejoiced at it. so the conspirators, having full liberty of action, laid their schemes and took their measures for the surrender of the city; if any of the people observed it, they were silent and intimidated, remembering the treatment of euphraeus; and so wretched was their condition, that on the approach of such a calamity none dared to utter a word, until the enemy drew up before the walls: then some were for defense, others for betrayal. since the city was thus basely and wickedly taken, the traitors have held despotic rule; people who formerly rescued them, and were ready for any maltreatment of euphraeus, they have either banished or put to death; euphraeus killed himself, proving by deed, that he had resisted philip honestly and purely for the good of his countrymen. what can be the reason--perhaps you wonder--why the olynthians and eretrians and orites were more indulgent to philip's advocates than to their own? the same which operates with you. they who advise for the best can not always gratify their audience, though they would; for the safety of the state must be attended to: their opponents by the very counsel which is agreeable advance philip's interest. one party required contribution; the other said there was no necessity: one were for war and mistrust; the other for peace, until they were ensnared. and so on for every thing else; (not to dwell on particulars;) the one made speeches to please for the moment, and gave no annoyance; the other offered salutary counsel, that was offensive. many rights did the people surrender at last, not from any such motive of indulgence or ignorance, but submitting in the belief that all was lost, which, by jupiter and apollo, i fear will be your case, when on calculation you see that nothing can be done. i pray, men of athens, it may never come to this! better die a thousand deaths than render homage to philip, or sacrifice any of your faithful counselors. a fine recompense have the people of oreus got, for trusting themselves to philip's friends and spurning euphraeus! finely are the eretrian commons rewarded, for having driven away your embassadors and yielded to clitarchus! yes; they are slaves, exposed to the lash and the torture. finally he spared the olynthians, who appointed lasthenes to command their horse, and expelled apollonides! it is folly and cowardice to cherish such hopes, and, while you take evil counsel and shirk every duty, and even listen to those who plead for your enemies, to think you inhabit a city of such magnitude, that you can not suffer any serious misfortune. yea, and it is disgraceful to exclaim on any occurrence, when it is too late, "who would have expected it? however--this or that should have been done, the other left undone." many things could the olynthians mention now, which, if foreseen at the time would have prevented their destruction. many could the orites mention, many the phocians, and each of the ruined states. but what would it avail them? as long as the vessel is safe, whether it be great or small, the mariner, the pilot, every man in turn should exert himself, and prevent its being overturned either by accident or design: but when the sea hath rolled over it, their efforts are vain. and we, likewise, o athenians, while we are safe, with a magnificent city, plentiful resources, lofty reputation--what [footnote: smead remarks here on the adroitness of the orator, who, instead of applying the simile of the ship to the administration of the state, which he felt that his quick-minded hearers had already done, suddenly interrupts himself with a question, which would naturally occur to the audience.] must we do? many of you, [footnote: _you_, [greek: _oi kathaemenoi_]. see my observations in the preface. i can not forbear noticing the manner in which francis translates the following [greek: _nae di ero_]. "let jupiter be witness, with what integrity i shall declare my opinion." the original means nothing of the kind. it is rare that [greek: _nae dia_] can be translated literally with effect. jacobs here has _wohlan_.] i dare say, have been longing to ask. well then, i will tell you; i will move a resolution: pass it, if you please. first, let us prepare for our own defense; provide ourselves, i mean, with ships, money, and troops--for surely, though all other people consented to be slaves, we at least ought to struggle for freedom. when we have completed our own preparations and made them apparent to the greeks, then let us invite the rest, and send our embassadors every where with the intelligence, to peloponnesus, to rhodes, to chios, to the king, i say; (for it concerns his interests, not to let philip make universal conquest;) that, if you prevail, you may have partners of your dangers and expenses, in case of necessity, or at all events that you may delay the operations. for, since the war is against an individual, [footnote: because a state is a permanent power; a single man is liable to a variety of accidents, and his power terminates with his life.] not against the collected power of a state, even this may be useful; as were the embassies last year to peloponnesus, and the remonstrances with which i and polyeuctus, that excellent man, and hegesippus, and clitomachus, and lycurgus, and the other envoys went round, and arrested philip's progress, so that he neither attacked ambracia nor started for peloponnesus. i say not, however, that you should invite the rest without adopting measures to protect yourselves: it would be folly, while you sacrifice your own interest, to profess a regard for that of strangers, or to alarm others about the future, while for the present you are unconcerned. i advise not this: i bid you send supplies to the troops in chersonesus, and do what else they require; prepare yourselves and make every effort first, then summon, gather, instruct the rest of the greeks. that is the duty of a state possessing a dignity such as yours. if you imagine that chalcidians or megarians will save greece, while you run away from the contest, you imagine wrong. well for any of those people, if they are safe themselves. this work belongs to you: this privilege your ancestors bequeathed to you, the prize of many perilous exertions. but if every one will sit seeking his pleasure, and studying to be idle himself, never will he find others to do his work, and more than this, i fear we shall be under the necessity of doing all that we like not at one time. were proxies to be had, our inactivity would have found them long ago; but they are not. such are the measures which i advise, which i propose: adopt them, and even yet, i believe, our prosperity may be re-established. if any man has better advice to offer, let him communicate it openly. whatever you determine, i pray to all the gods for a happy result. the fourth philippic. the argument. the subject of this oration is the same as the last, viz., the necessity of resistance to philip. the time of its delivery would appear to have been a little later, while philip was yet in thrace, and before he commenced the siege of the propontine towns. no new event is alluded to, except the seizure of hermias by the satrap mentor, the exact date of which is uncertain. the orator urges here, still more strongly than he had done in the third philippic, the necessity of applying to persia for assistance. his advice was followed, and a negotiation was opened with that monarchy, which led to the effective relief of perinthus. there is a remarkable passage in this speech, on the importance of general unanimity, which seems to imply that disputes had arisen between the richer and poorer classes, chiefly in regard to the application of the public revenue. the view which is here taken on the subject of the theoric distributions is so different from the argument in the olynthiacs, that modern critics have generally considered this oration to be spurious. another ground for such opinion is, that it contains various passages borrowed from other speeches, and not very skillfully put together. yet the genuineness seems not to have been doubted by any of the ancient grammarians. believing, men of athens, that the subject of your consultation is serious and momentous to the state, i will endeavor to advise what i think important. many have been the faults, accumulated for some time past, which have brought us to this wretched condition; but none is under the circumstances so distressing as this, men of athens; that your minds are alienated from public business; you are attentive just while you sit listening to some news, afterward you all go away, and, so far from caring for what you heard, you forget it altogether. well; of the extent of philip's arrogance and ambition, as evinced in his dealings with every people, you have been informed. that it is not possible to restrain him in such course by speeches and harangues, no man can be ignorant: or, if other reasons fail to convince you, reflect on this. whenever we have had to discuss our claims, on no occasion have we been worsted or judged in the wrong; we have still beaten and got the better of all in argument. but do his affairs go badly on this account, or ours well? by no means. for as philip immediately proceeds, with arms in his hand, to put all he possesses boldly at stake, while we with our equities, the speakers as well as the hearers, are sitting still, actions (naturally enough) outstrip words, and people attend not to what we have argued or may argue, but to what we do, all our doings are not likely to protect any of our injured neighbors: i need not say more upon the subject. therefore, as the states are divided into two parties, one that would neither hold arbitrary government nor submit to it, but live under free and equal laws; another desiring to govern their fellow-citizens, and be subject to some third power, by whose assistance they hope to accomplish that object; the partisans of philip, [footnote: i agree with pabst and auger that [greek: _ekeinon_] signifies philip. schaefer takes it neutrally.] who desire tyranny and despotism, have every where prevailed, and i know not whether there is any state left, besides our own, with a popular constitution firmly established. and those, that hold the government through him, have prevailed by all the means efficacious in worldly affairs; principally and mainly, by having a person to bribe the corruptible; secondly, a point no less important, by having at their command, at whatever season they required, an army to put down their opponents. we, men of athens, are not only in these respects behindhand; we can not even be awaked; like men that have drunk mandrake [footnote: used for a powerful opiate by the ancients. it is called mandragora also in english. see othello, act iii. sc. . not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy sirups of the world, shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep which thou ow'dst yesterday.] or some other sleeping potion; and methinks--for i judge the truth must be spoken--we are by reason thereof held in such disrepute and contempt, that, among the states in imminent danger, some dispute with us for the lead, some for the place of congress; others have resolved to defend themselves separately rather than in union with us. why am i so particular in mentioning these things? i seek not to give offense; so help me all the powers of heaven! i wish, men of athens, to make it clear and manifest to you all, that habitual sloth and indolence, the same in public matters as in private life, is not immediately felt on every occasion of neglect, but shows itself in the general result. [footnote: auger: "presentent a la fin un total effrayant."] look at serrium and doriscus; which were first disregarded after the peace. their names perhaps are unknown to many of you: yet your careless abandonment of these lost thrace and cersobleptes your ally. again, seeing these places neglected and unsupported by you, he demolished porthmus, and raised a tyrant in euboea like a fortress against attica. this being disregarded, megara was very nearly taken. you were insensible, indifferent to all his aggressions; gave no intimation that you would not permit their continuance. he purchased antrones, [footnote: a town in thessaly. we do not know all the details of philip's proceedings in that country, but we have seen enough to know, first under the guise of a protector he was not far short of being the master of the thessalian people. some of these towns were actually in his possession, as pherae and pagasae. but that the thesssalians were never entirely subjugated to macedonia, and still retained a hankering after independence, was proved at a later period by their desertion of antipater.] and not long after had got oreus into his power. many transactions i omit; pherae, the march against ambracia, the massacres at elis, [footnote: the elean exiles, having engaged in their service a body of the phocian mercenaries, made an incursion into elis, but were repelled. a large number of prisoners were taken and put to death. this happened b. c. . the government of elis was at that time in the hands of a macedonian party.] and numberless others: for i have not entered upon these details, to enumerate the people whom philip has oppressed and wronged, but to show you that philip will not desist from wronging all people and pursuing his conquests, until an effort is made to prevent him. there are persons whose custom it is, before they hear any speech in the debate, to ask immediately--"what must we do?"--not with the intention of doing what they are told (or they would be the most serviceable of men), but in order to get rid of the speaker. nevertheless, you should be advised what to do. first, o my countrymen, you must be firmly convinced in your minds, that philip is at war with our state, and has broken the peace; that, while he is inimical and hostile to the whole of athens, to the ground of athens, and i may add, to the gods in athens, (may they exterminate him!) there is nothing which he strives and plots against so much as our constitution, nothing in the world that he is so anxious about, as its destruction. and thereunto he is driven in some sort by necessity. consider. he wishes for empire: he believes you to be his only opponents. he has been a long time injuring you, as his own conscience best informs him; for by means of your possessions, which he is able to enjoy, he secures all the rest of his kingdom: had he given up amphipolis and potidaea, he would not have deemed himself safe even in macedonia. he knows therefore, both that he is plotting against you, and that you are aware of it; and, supposing you to have common sense, he judges that you detest him as you ought. besides these important considerations, he is assured that, though he became master of every thing else, nothing can be safe for him while you are under popular government: should any reverse ever befall him, (and many may happen to a man,) all who are now under constraint will come for refuge to you. for you are not inclined yourselves to encroach and usurp dominion; but famous rather for checking the usurper or depriving him of his conquests, ever ready to molest the aspirants for empire, and vindicate the liberty of all nations. he would not like that a free spirit should proceed from athens, to watch the occasions of his weakness; nor is such reasoning foolish or idle. first then you must assume, that he is an irreconcilable enemy of our constitution and democracy; secondly, you must be convinced, that all his operations and contrivances are designed for the injury of our state. none of you can be so silly as to suppose, that philip covets those miseries in thrace, (for what else can one call drongilus and cabyle and mastira and the places which he is said now to occupy?) and that to get possession of them he endures hardships and winters and the utmost peril, but covets not the harbors of athens, the docks, the galleys, the silver mines, the revenues of such value, the place and the glory--never may he or any other man obtain these by the conquest of our city!--or that he will suffer you to keep these things, while for the sake of the barley and millet in thracian caverns he winters in the midst of horrors. [footnote: see the note in the oration on the chersonese, page , where the same words nearly are repeated.] impossible. the object of that and every other enterprise of philip is, to become master here. so should every man be persuaded and convinced; and therefore, i say, should not call upon your faithful and upright counselor to move a resolution for war: [footnote: he deprecates here, as elsewhere, the factious proceedings of certain opponents, who sought to fasten the responsibility of a war on the orator, by forcing him to propose a decree. this (argues demosthenes) was unnecessary, as they were at war already.] such were the part of men seeking an enemy to fight with, not men forwarding the interests of the state. only see. suppose for the first breach of the treaty by philip, or for the second or third, (for there is a series of breaches,) any one had made a motion for war with him, and philip, just as he has now without such motion, had aided the cardians, would not the mover have been sacrificed? [footnote: pabst, following wolf, takes this in the more limited sense of being carried off to prison: _ins gefangniss geworfen_. the english translators, who have "torn to pieces," understand the word in the same sense that i do, as meaning generally "destroyed, exterminated."] would not all have imputed philip's aid of the cardians to that cause? don't then look for a person to vent your anger on for philip's trespasses, to throw to philip's hirelings to be torn in pieces. do not, after yourselves voting for war, dispute with each other, whether you ought or ought not to have done so. as philip conducts the war, so resist him: furnish those who are resisting him now [footnote: referring to diopithes and his troops in the chersonese.] with money and what else they demand; pay your contributions, men of athens, provide an army, swift-sailing galleys, horses, transports, all the materials of war. our present mode of operation is ridiculous; and by the gods i believe, that philip could not wish our republic to take any other course than what ye now pursue. you miss your time, waste your money, look for a person to manage your affairs, are discontented, accuse one another. how all this comes about, i will explain, and how it may cease i will inform you. nothing, o men of athens, have you ever set on foot or contrived rightly in the beginning: you always follow the event, stop when you are too late, on any new occurrence prepare and bustle again. but that is not the way of proceeding. it is never possible with sudden levies to perform any essential service. you must establish an army, provide maintenance for it, and paymasters, and commissaries, so ordering it that the strictest care be taken of your funds; demand from those officers an account of the expenditure, from your general an account of the campaign; and leave not the general any excuse for sailing elsewhere or prosecuting another enterprise. if ye so act and so resolve in earnest, you will compel philip to observe a just peace and remain in his own country, or will contend with him on equal terms; and perhaps, athenians, perhaps, as you now inquire what philip is doing, and whither marching, so he may be anxious to learn, whither the troops of athens are bound, and where they will make their appearance. should any man think that these are affairs of great expense and toil and difficulty, he thinks rightly enough: but let him consider what the consequences to athens must be, if she refuse so to act, and he will find it is our interest to perform our duties cheerfully. suppose you had some god for your surety--for certainly no mortal could guarantee a thing so fortunate--that, although you kept quiet and sacrificed every thing, philip would not attack you at last, yet, by jupiter and all the gods, it would be disgraceful, unworthy of yourselves, of the dignity of your state, and the deeds of your ancestors, for the sake of selfish indolence to abandon the rest of greece to servitude. for my part, i would rather die than have advised such a course: however, if any other man advises it, and can prevail on you, be it so; make no defense, abandon all. but if no man holds such an opinion, if on the contrary we all foresee, that, the more we permit philip to conquer, the more fierce and formidable an enemy we shall find him, what subterfuge remains? what excuse for delay? or when, o athenians, shall we be willing to act as becomes us? peradventure, when there is some necessity. but what may be called the necessity of freemen is not only come, but past long ago; and that of slaves you must surely deprecate. what is the difference? to a freeman shame for what is occurring is the strongest necessity; i know of none stronger that can be mentioned: to a slave, stripes and bodily chastisement; abominable things! too shocking to name! to be backward, men of athens, in performing those services to which the person and property of every one are liable, is wrong, very wrong, and yet it admits of some excuse: but refusing even to bear what is necessary to be heard, and fit to be considered, this calls for the severest censure. your practice however is, neither to attend until the business actually presses, as it does now, nor to deliberate about any thing at leisure. when philip is preparing, you, instead of doing the like and making counter-preparation, remain listless, and, if any one speaks a word, clamor him down: when you receive news that any place is lost or besieged, then you listen and prepare. but the time to have heard and consulted was then when you declined; the time to act and employ your preparations is now that you are hearing. such being your habits, you are the only people who adopt this singular course: others deliberate usually before action, you deliberate after action. one thing [footnote: he means negotiation with persia, to obtain pecuniary assistance.] remains, which should have been done long ago, but even yet is not too late: i will mention it. nothing in the world does athens need so much, as money for approaching exigencies. lucky events have occurred, and, if we rightly improve them, perhaps good service may be done. in the first place, those, [footnote: the thracians, who had always been regarded as benefactors of the persian king, since they assisted darius on his invasion of scythia. philip was making war in thrace at this time, and had subjected a considerable part of the country.] whom the king trusts and regards as his benefactors, are at enmity and war with philip. secondly, the agent and confidant [footnote: hermias, governor of atarneus in mysia, who for his treasonable practices against artaxerxes was seized by mentor and sent in chains to susa, where he was put to death. he was a friend of aristotle, who was at his court, when he was taken prisoner. the philosopher afterward married his sister.] of all philip's preparations against the king has been snatched off, and the king will hear all the proceedings, not from athenian accusers, whom he might consider to be speaking for their own interests, but from the acting minister himself; the charges therefore will be credible, and the only remaining argument for our embassadors will be, one which the persian monarch will rejoice to hear, that we should take common vengeance on the injurer of both, and that philip is much more formidable to the king, if he attack us first; for, should we be left in the lurch and suffer any mishap, he will march against the king without fear. on all these matters then i advise that you dispatch an embassy to confer with the king, and put aside that nonsense which has so often damaged you--"the barbarian," forsooth, "the common enemy"--and the like. i confess, when i see a man alarmed at a prince in susa and ecbatana, and declaring him to be an enemy of athens, him that formerly [footnote: in the confederate war, when the persian fleet enabled conon to defeat the lacedaemonians at onidus, b. c. .] assisted in re-establishing her power, and lately made overtures [footnote: artaxerxes had applied both to athens and lacedaemon to aid him in the recovery of egypt, which for many years had been held in a state of revolt. both these states refused to assist him. he then applied to thebes and argos, each of which sent an auxiliary force.]--if you did not accept them, but voted refusal, the fault is not his--while the same man speaks a different language of one who is close at our doors, and growing up in the centre of greece to be the plunderer of her people; i marvel, i dread this man, whoever he is, because he dreads not philip. there is another thing too, the attacking of which by unjust reproach and improper language hurts the state, and affords an excuse to men who are unwilling to perform any public duty: indeed you will find that every failure to discharge the obligation of a citizen is attributable to this. i am really afraid to discuss the matter; however, i will speak out. i believe i can suggest, for the advantage of the state, a plea for the poor against the rich, and for men of property against the indigent; could we remove the clamor which some persons unfairly raise about the theatric fund, [footnote: boeckh, schaefer, and others, regard it as conclusive against the genuineness of this oration, that a different view is here taken on the subject of the theoric fund from that which demosthenes had expressed in the olynthiacs. and certainly it is a strong argument. it is possible, however, that circumstances may have induced him to modify his opinion, or he may have thought it dangerous to meddle with the law of eubulus at the present crisis, which called for the greatest unanimity among all classes. we may partly gather from this speech, that there had been some agitation among the lower classes, occasioned by the complaints of the wealthy against this law. any agitation tending to a spirit of communism must have been extremely dangerous at athens, where the people had such power of muleting the higher classes by their votes in the popular assembly and courts of justice. it might therefore be better to let the people alone with their theatrical treats, their fees and largesses, than to provoke retaliation by abridging such enjoyments. leland observes on the subject as follows--"all that the orator here says in defense of the theatrical appointments is expressed with a caution and reserve quite opposite to his usual openness and freedom; and which plainly betray a consciousness of his being inconsistent with his former sentiments. how far he may be excused by the supposed necessity of yielding to the violent prepossessions of the people, and giving up a favorite point, i can not pretend to determine. but it is certainly not very honorable to demosthenes, to suppose with ulpian, that his former opposition was merely personal, and that the death of eubulus now put an end to it."] and the fear that it can not stand without some signal mischief. no greater help to our affairs could we introduce; [footnote: viz., than the removal of this clamor and alarm about the theatric fund.] none that would more strengthen the whole community. look at it thus. i will commence on behalf of those who are considered the needy class. there was a time with us, not long ago, when only a hundred and thirty talents came into the state; [footnote: this must be understood (according to boeckh) of the tribute only, which came in from the allies. the total revenue of athens must have greatly exceeded this.] and among the persons qualified to command ships or pay property-tax, there was not one who claimed exemption from his duty because no surplus existed: [footnote: there was as much ground for legal exemption then as there is now; and yet it was never claimed. why should the rich seek to be relieved from their burdens because of an abundance of revenue? that abundance is for the general benefit of the state, not for theirs in particular. such appears to be the argument, perhaps not quite satisfactory; but such it is. pabst, apparently reading [greek: _aph heautou_], has: _der nicht aus eigenem antrieb seine schuldigkeit zu thun bereit war, weil kein gelduberschuss vorhanden war_.] galleys sailed, money was forthcoming, every thing needful was done. since that time fortune happily has increased the revenue, and four hundred talents come in instead of one, without loss to any men of property, but with gain to them; for all the wealthy come for their share of the fund, and they are welcome to it. [footnote: _i. e._ the theoric fund, in which every member of the commonwealth had a right to share.] why then do we reproach one another on this account, and make it an excuse for declining our duties, unless we grudge the relief given by fortune to the poor? i would be sorry to blame them myself, and i think it not right. in private families i never see a young man behaving so to his elders, so unfeeling or so unreasonable, as to refuse to do any thing himself, unless all the rest will do what he does. such a person would certainly be amenable to the laws against undutiful conduct: [footnote: pabst: _die gesetze wegen ungebuhrlicher behandlung der eltern_. [greek: _kakosis_], "maltreatment", was a technical term in the attic law, denoting a failure of duty on the part of husbands, children, or guardians, toward their wives, parents, or wards, for which they were liable to be tried and punished in a suit called [greek: _kakoseos dikae_]. the jurisdiction over this offense belonged to the archon, who was the protector of all family rights.] for i ween there is a tribute assigned to parents both by nature and by law, which ought to be cheerfully offered and amply paid. accordingly, as each individual among us hath a parent, so should we regard the whole people as parents of the state, and, so far from depriving them of what the state bestows, we ought, in the absence of such bounty, to find other means to keep them from destitution. if the rich will adopt this principle, i think they will act both justly and wisely; for to deprive any class of a necessary provision, is to unite them in disaffection to the commonwealth. to the poor i would recommend, that they remove the cause, which makes men of property discontented with the present system, and excites their just complaints. i shall take the same course on behalf of the wealthy as i did just now, and not hesitate to speak the truth. there can not, i believe, be found a wretch so hard-hearted--i will not say among athenians, but among any other people--who would be sorry to see poor men, men without the necessaries of life, receiving these bounties. where then is the pinch [footnote: the expression "where is the rub?" would be still nearer to the original, and the expression reminds one of the line in hamlet: to sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub. reiske says the simile is taken from the collision of chariots in the race; but this is confining it too much. his vernacular explanation is: _woran stosst es sich? wo ist der haken?_ pabst has: _woran stosst sich die sache, und was erzeugt den verdruss?_] of the matter? where the difficulty? when they see certain persons transferring the usage established for the public revenue to private property, and the orator becoming immediately powerful with you, yea, (so far as privilege can make him,) immortal, and your secret vote contradicting your public clamor. [footnote: having admonished the higher classes to pay their property-tax and perform their public services cheerfully, and without seeking to be relieved at the expense of the public revenue, he proceeds to remind the lower classes of their duty. he warns them, that, while they receive a benefit from the funds of the state, they must not endeavor to increase those funds unduly by an invasion of the rights of property. his language is not open, but would easily be understood by his audience. the athenians ought not to promote lawsuits to increase court-fees; not to encourage prosecutions against wealthy citizens, in order to obtain fines and confiscations. he insinuates that there was too much cause for complaint already. [greek: _ton legonta_] is, not as schaefer contends, the rich man pleading his cause before the people, but, as wolf explains it, the popular orator or informer, who speedily rose to favor and influence, of which it was not easy to deprive him. his opponent, speaking in a just cause, might be applauded at the time, but the votes showed what was the real bias of the people. in courts of justice at athens the voting was usually by a secret ballot; (see my article _psephus_ in the archaeological dictionary;) and there being a large number of jurors, it would be difficult to discover by whose votes the verdict was obtained. it is impossible to read the frequent appeals made by athenian speakers to the passions and prejudices of the jury, without seeing that there was some ground for the insinuations of the orator in this passage.] hence arises mistrust, hence indignation. we ought, o ye men of athens, to have a just communion of political rights; the opulent holding themselves secure in their fortunes, and without fear of losing them, yet in time of danger imparting their substance freely for the defense of their country; while the rest consider the public revenue as public, and receive their share, but look on private property as belonging to the individual owner. thus it is that a small commonwealth becomes great, and a great one is preserved. to speak generally then, such are the obligations of each class; to insure their performance according to law, some regulation should be made. the causes of our present troubles and embarrassment are many and of ancient date: if you are willing to hear, i will declare them. you have quitted, o athenians, the position in which your ancestors left you; you have been persuaded by these politicians, that to stand foremost of the greeks, to keep a permanent force and redress injured nations, is all vanity and idle expense; you imagine that to live in quiet, to perform no duty, to abandon one thing after another and let strangers seize on all, brings with it marvelous welfare and abundant security. by such means a stranger has advanced to the post which you ought to have occupied, has become prosperous and great, and made large conquest; naturally enough. a prize there was, noble, great, and glorious, one for which the mightiest states were contending all along; but as the lacedaemonians were humbled, the thebans had their hands full through the phocian war, and we took no regard, he carried it off without competition. the result has been, to others terror, to him a vast alliance and extended power; while difficulties so many and so distressing surround the greeks, that even advice is not easy to be found. yet, perilous as i conceive the present crisis to be for all, no people are in such danger as you, men of athens; not only because philip's designs are especially aimed at you, but because of all people you are the most remiss. if, seeing the abundance of commodities and cheapness in your market, you are beguiled into a belief that the state is in no danger, your judgment is neither becoming nor correct. a market or a fair one may, from such appearances, judge to be well or ill supplied: but for a state, which every aspirant for the empire of greece has deemed to be alone capable of opposing him, and defending the liberty of all--for such a state! verily her marketable commodities are not the test of prosperity, but this--whether she can depend on the good-will of her allies; whether she is puissant in arms. on behalf of such a state these are the things to be considered; and in these respects your condition is wretched and deplorable. you will understand it by a simple reflection. when have the affairs of greece been in the greatest confusion? no other time could any man point out but the present. in former times greece was divided into two parties, that of the lacedaemonians and ours: some of the greeks were subject to us, some to them. the persian, on his own account, was mistrusted equally by all, but he used to make friends of the vanquished parties, and retain their confidence, until he put them on an equality with the other side; after which those that he succored would hate him as much as his original enemies. now however the king is on friendly terms with all the greeks, though least friendly with us, unless we put matters right. now too there are protectors [footnote: this is said with some irony: many states offer to come forward as protectors, but only on condition of taking the lead: they will not join the common cause on fair terms. many of the translations miss the sense here. leland understands it rightly: "there are several cities which affect the character of guardians and protectors." auger confounds this sentence with the next: "il s' eleve de tous cotes plusieurs puissances qui aspirent toutes a la primaute."] springing up in every quarter, and all claim the precedency, though some indeed have abandoned the cause, or envy and distrust each other--more shame for them--and every state is isolated, argives, thebans, lacedaemonians, corinthians, arcadians, and ourselves. but, divided as greece is among so many parties and so many leaderships, if i must speak the truth freely, there is no state whose offices and halls of council appear more deserted by grecian politics than ours. and no wonder; when neither friendship, nor confidence, nor fear leads any to negotiate with us. this, ye men of athens, has come not from any single cause, (or you might easily mend it,) but from a great variety and long series of errors. i will not stop to recount them, but will mention one, to which all may be referred, beseeching you not to be offended, if i boldly speak the truth. your interests are sold on every favorable opportunity: you partake of the idleness and ease, under the charm whereof you resent not your wrongs; while other persons get the reward. [footnote: schaefer rightly explains [greek: _timas_] to mean the price received for treason. but most of the translators, following wolf, understand it to mean the honors won by philip. [greek: _tois adikousin_] is rendered by auger, leland, and francis, "the traitors." i think it rather refers to, or at least includes, the enemies who profited by the treason, and made conquests from athens: of course meaning philip in particular.] into all these cases i could not enter now: but when any question about philip arises, some one starts up directly and says--"we must have no trifling, no proposal of war"--and then goes on to say--"what a blessing it is to be at peace! what a grievance to maintain a large army!"--and again--"certain persons wish to plunder the treasury"--and other arguments they urge, no doubt, in the full conviction of their truth. [footnote: there is no difficulty in this, if we understand it to be ironical; and no need of any amendment.] but surely there is no need of persuading you to observe peace, you that sit here persuaded already. it is philip (who is making war) that needs persuasion: prevail on him, and all is ready on your part. we should consider as grievous, not what we expend for our deliverance, but what we shall suffer in case of refusal. plunder of the treasury should be prevented by devising a plan for its safe custody, not by abandoning our interests. yet this very thing makes me indignant, that some of you are pained at the thought of your treasury being robbed, though it depends on yourselves to guard it and to punish the criminal, but are not pained to see philip plundering greece, plundering as he does one people after another, to forward his designs upon you. how comes it, ye men of athens, that of this flagrant aggressor, this capturer of cities, no one has ever declared that he commits hostility or injustice, while those who counsel against submission and sacrifice are charged as the authors of war? the reason is, that people wish to cast upon your faithful counselors the blame of any untoward events in the war; for war must necessarily be attended with many misfortunes. they believe that, if you resist philip with one heart and mind, you will prevail against him, and they can be hirelings no longer; but that if on the first outcry [footnote: leland: "the first unhappy accident." francis gives the right meaning, but with too many words; "the first tumults occasioned by any unfortunate success." spillau: "the first alarm."] you arraign certain persons and bring them to trial, they by accusing such persons will gain a double advantage, repute among the athenians and recompense from philip; and that you will punish your friendly advisers for a cause for which you ought to punish the traitors. such are the hopes, such the contrivance of these charges, "that certain persons wish to kindle a war." i am sure, however, that, without any athenian moving a declaration of war, philip has taken many of our possessions, and has recently sent succor to cardia. if we choose to assume that he is not making war against us, he would be the simplest of mankind to convince us of our mistake: for when the sufferers disclaim the injury, what should the offenders do? but when he marches to attack us, what shall we say then? he will assure us that he is not making war, as he assured the orites, when his troops were in their country, as he assured the pheraeans before he assaulted their walls, and the olynthians in the first instance, until he was in their territories with his army. shall we then say, that persons who bid us defend ourselves kindle a war? if so, we must be slaves; for nothing else remains. but remember: you have more at stake than some other people. philip desires not to subjugate your city, but to destroy it utterly. he is convinced, you will not submit to be slaves; if you were inclined, you would not know how, having been accustomed to command: you will be able, should occasion offer, to give him more trouble than any people in the world. for this reason he will show us no mercy, if he get us into his power: and therefore you must make up your minds, that the struggle will be one for life and death. these persons, who have openly sold themselves to philip, you must execrate, you must beat their brains out: for it is impossible, i say impossible, to vanquish your foreign enemies, until you have punished your enemies within the city: these are the stumbling-blocks that must cripple your efforts against the foreigner. from what cause, do ye think, philip insults you now; (for his conduct, in my judgment, amounts to nothing less;) and while he deceives other people by doing them services--this at least is something--you he threatens already? for example, the thessalians by many benefits he seduced into their present servitude: no man can tell how he cheated the poor olynthians, giving them first potidaea and many other places: now he is luring the thebans, having delivered up boeotia to them, and freed them from a tedious and harassing war. of these people, who each got a certain advantage, some have suffered what is notorious to all, others have yet to suffer what may befall them. as to yourselves; the amount of your losses i do not mention: but in the very making of the peace how have you been deceived! how plundered! lost you not the phocians, thermopylae, country toward thrace, doriscus, serrium, cersobleptes himself? holds he not cardia now, and avows it? why then does he behave thus to other people, and in a different way to you? because our city is the only one where liberty is allowed to speak for the enemy, where a man taking a bribe may safely address the people, though they have been deprived of their possessions. it was not safe at olynthus to advocate philip's cause, without the olynthian people sharing the benefit by possession of potidaea. it was not safe to advocate philip's cause in thessaly, without the people of thessaly sharing the benefit, by philip's expelling their tyrants and restoring the pylaean synod. it was not safe at thebes, until he restored boeotia to them, and destroyed the phocians. but at athens, though philip has taken from you amphipolis and the cardian territory, and is even turning euboea into a hostile post, and advancing to attack byzantium, it is safe to speak on philip's behalf. yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence. for the riches of a state i consider to be allies, confidence, good-will; of all which you are destitute. and by your neglecting these things and suffering your interests thus to be swept away, philip has grown prosperous and mighty, formidable to all the greeks and barbarians, while you are forlorn and abject, in the abundance of your market magnificent, but in your national defenses ridiculous. [footnote: the whole of the foregoing passage is taken, with some little variation, from the speech on the chersonese. it certainly would seem strange, if this oration had been forged by any grammarian, that he should have borrowed thus by wholesale from demosthenes. there is perhaps less difficulty in the supposition that demosthenes repeated his own words.] some of our orators, i observe, take not the same thought for you as for themselves. they say that you should keep quiet, though you are injured; but they can not themselves keep quiet among you, though no one injures them. come, raillery apart, suppose you were thus questioned, aristodemus, [footnote: this man was a tragic actor, and charged by demosthenes with being a partisan of philip. he was the first person who proposed peace with macedonia, shortly before the embassy of ten. see the argument to the oration on the peace.]--"tell me, as you know perfectly well, what every one else knows, that the life of private men is secure and free from trouble and danger, while that of statesmen is exposed to scandal [footnote: i have taken [greek: _philaition_] in the passive sense, as it is explained by reiske and schaefer, though it scarcely suits the character of the word. compare shakspeare, henry v. act iv. sc. . o hard condition, twin-born with greatness, subjected to the breath of every fool! what infinite heart's ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy!] and misfortune, full of trials and hardships every day, how comes it that you prefer, not the quiet and easy life, but the one surrounded with peril?"--what should you say? if we admitted the truth of what would be your best possible answer, namely, that all you do is for honor and renown, i wonder what puts it into your head, that you ought from such motives to exert yourself and undergo toil and danger, while you advise the state to give up exertion and remain idle. you can not surely allege, that aristodemus ought to be of importance at athens, and athens to be of no account among the greeks. nor again do i see, that for the commonwealth it is safe to mind her own affairs only, and hazardous for you, not to be a superlative busy-body. [footnote: all the translators have mistaken [greek: _ton allon pleon_], which is simply "more than others," as wolf explains it.] on the contrary, to you i see the utmost peril from your meddling and over-meddling, to the commonwealth peril from her inactivity. but i suppose, you inherit a reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ignoble and mean. this again is not so. your father was a thief, [footnote: this seems to shock leland, who spoils the pungency of the expression, by rendering it: "your father was like you, and therefore base and infamous." auger remarks: "l'invective de demosthene est fort eloquente, mais bien violente. l'amour de la patrie, contre laquelle sans doute agissait aristodeme, peut seul en excuser la vivacite."] if he resembled you, whereas by the ancestors of the commonwealth, as all men know, the greeks have twice been rescued from the brink of destruction. truly the behaviour of some persons, in private and in public, is neither equitable nor constitutional. how is it equitable, that certain of these men, returned from prison, should not know themselves, while the state, that once protected all greece and held the foremost place, is sunk in ignominy and humiliation? much could i add on many points, but i will forbear. it is not, i believe, to lack of words that our distresses have been owing either now or heretofore. the mischief is when you, after listening to sound arguments, and all agreeing in their justice, sit to hear with equal favor those who try to defeat and pervert them; not that you are ignorant of the men; (you are certain at the first glance, who speak for hire and are philip's political agents, and who speak sincerely for your good;) your object is to find fault with these, turn the thing into laughter and raillery, and escape the performance of your duty. such is the truth, spoken with perfect freedom, purely from good-will and for the best: not a speech fraught with flattery and mischief and deceit, to earn money for the speaker, and to put the commonwealth into the hands of our enemies. i say, you must either desist from these practices, or blame none but yourselves for the wretched condition of your affairs. none the public orations of demosthenes in two volumes vol ii translated by arthur wallace pickard on the chersonese (or. viii) [_introduction_. late in the year (some time after the acquittal of aeschines) philip invaded epirus, made alexander, brother of his wife olympias, king of the molossi instead of arybbas, and so secured, his own influence in that region. arybbas was honourably received at athens. philip next threatened ambracia and leucas, which were colonies of corinth, and promised to restore naupactus, which was in the hands of the achaeans, to the aetolians. but athens sent demosthenes, hegesippus, polyeuctus and others to rouse the corinthians to resistance, and also dispatched a force of citizens to acarnania to help in the defence against philip. philip thereupon returned, captured echinus and nicaea on the malian gulf, and established a tetrarch in each division of thessaly ( b.c., or early in ). in philistides was established, by philip's influence, as tyrant at oreus in euboea (as cleitarchus had been at eretria in the preceding year), and the democratic leader euphraeus committed suicide in prison.[ ] the town of chalcis, however, under callias and taurosthenes, remained friendly to athens, and made a treaty of alliance with her. about the same time a controversy, begun in the previous year, in regard to halonnesus, was renewed. this island had belonged to athens, but had been occupied by pirates. at some time not recorded (but probably since the peace of ) philip had expelled the pirates and taken possession of the island. he now sent a letter, offering to give halonnesus to athens, but not to _give it back_ (since this would concede their right to it); or else to submit the dispute to arbitration. he also offered to discuss a treaty for the settlement of private disputes between athenians and macedonians, and to concert measures with athens for clearing the aegean of pirates. he was willing to extend the advantages of the peace to other greek states, but not to agree that he and athens should respectively possess 'what was their own', instead of 'what they held'; though he was ready to submit to arbitration in regard to cardia and other disputed places. he again denied having made the promises attributed to him, and asked for the punishment of those who slandered him. hegesippus replied in an extant speech ('on halonnesus'), while demosthenes insisted that no impartial arbitrator could possibly be found. philip's terms in regard to halonnesus were refused, but the athenian claim to the island was not withdrawn. philip spent the greater part of and in thrace, mainly in the valley of the hebrus, where he endured very great hardships through the winter, and founded colonies of macedonian soldiers, the chief of these being philippopolis and cabyle. he also entered into relations with the getae, beyond the haemus, and garrisoned apollonia on the euxine. these operations were all preparatory to his projected attack upon byzantium. (byzantium and athens were at this time on unfriendly terms, owing to the part taken by the latter in the social war.) but the immediate subject of the present speech was the state of affairs in the chersonese in . the chersonese (with the exception of cardia) had been secured for athens in , but had been threatened by philip in ,[ ] when he made alliance with cardia, and forced the neighbouring thracian prince cersobleptes to submit. soon after the peace of philocrates, athens sent settlers to the chersonese under diopeithes. cardia alone refused to receive them, and diopeithes, with a mercenary force, prepared to compel the cardians to admit them; while philip sent troops to hold the town, and complained to athens in threatening terms of the actions of diopeithes, and more particularly of an inroad which diopeithes had made upon philip's territory in thrace. diopeithes had been ill-supported with money and men by athens, and had had recourse to piratical actions, in order to obtain supplies, thus arousing some indignation at athens; but the prospect of the heavy expenditure which would be necessary, if an expedition were sent to his aid, was also unattractive. demosthenes, however, proposed that diopeithes should be vigorously supported, on the ground that philip was really at war with athens, and that this was not the time to interfere with the general who alone was pushing the athenian cause. the speech was delivered early in the spring of . it is a masterpiece of oratory, at once statesmanlike and impassioned, and shows a complete command of every variety of tone. the latter part of it contains a strong denunciation of the macedonian party in athens, a defence of the orator's own career, and an urgent demand for the punishment of disloyalty. at the same time demosthenes does not embody the policy which he advises in any formal motion. for this we have to wait for the third philippic.] { } it was the duty, men of athens, of every speaker not to allow either malice or favour to influence any speech which he might make, but simply to declare the policy which he considered to be the best, particularly when your deliberations were concerned with public affairs of great importance. but since there are some who are led on to address you, partly out of contentiousness, partly from causes which i need not discuss, it is for you, men of athens--you, the people--to dismiss all other considerations, and both in the votes that you give and in the measures that you take to attend solely to what you believe to be for the good of the city. { } now our present anxiety arises out of affairs in the chersonese, and the campaign, now in its eleventh month, which philip is conducting in thrace. but most of the speeches which we have heard have been about the acts and intentions of diopeithes. for my part, i conceive that all charges made against any one who is amenable to the laws and can be punished by you when you will are matters which you are free to investigate, either immediately or after an interval, as you think fit; and there is no occasion for me or any one else to use strong language about them. { } but all those advantages which an actual enemy of the city, with a large force in the hellespont, is trying to snatch from you, and which, if we once fall behind-hand, we shall no longer be able to recover--these, surely, are matters upon which our interest demands that our plans be formed and our preparations made with the utmost dispatch; and that no clamour, no accusations about other matters, be allowed to drive us from this point. { } often as i am surprised at the assertions which are habitually made in your presence, nothing, men of athens, has surprised me more than the remark which i heard only lately in the council--that one who advises you ought, forsooth, to advise you plainly either to go to war or to keep the peace. { } very good.[ ] if philip is remaining inactive, if he is keeping nothing that is ours, in violation of the peace, if he is not organizing all mankind against us, there is nothing more to be said--we have simply to observe the peace; and i see that, for your part, you are quite ready to do so. but what if the oath that we swore, and the terms upon which we made the peace, stand inscribed for our eyes to see? { } what if it is proved that from the outset, before diopeithes sailed from athens with the settlers who are now accused of having brought about the war, philip wrongfully seized many of our possessions--and here, unrepealed, are your resolutions charging him with this--and that all along he has been uninterruptedly seizing the possessions of the other hellenic and foreign peoples, and uniting their resources against us? what is _then_ the meaning of the statement that we ought either to go to war or to keep the peace? { } for we have no choice in the matter: nothing remains open to us but the most righteous and most necessary of all acts--the act that they deliberately refuse to consider--i mean the act of retaliation against the aggressor: unless indeed, they intend to argue that, so long as philip keeps away from attica and the peiraeus, he does the city no wrong and is not committing acts of war. { } but if _this_ is their criterion of right and wrong, if _this_ is their definition of peace, then, although what they say is iniquitous, intolerable, and inconsistent with your security, as all must see, at the same time these very statements are actually contradictory of the charges which they are making against diopeithes. { } why, i beg to ask,[n] are we to give philip full leave to act in whatever way he chooses, so long as he does not touch attica, when diopeithes is not to be allowed even to assist the thracians, without being accused of initiating war? but even if this inconsistency is brought home to them, still, we are told, the conduct of the mercenaries in ravaging the hellespontine country is outrageous, and diopeithes has no right to drive the vessels to shore,[n] and ought to be stopped. { } i grant it: let it be done: i have nothing to say against it. yet nevertheless, if their advice is genuinely based on considerations of right, and right alone, i consider that they are bound to prove that, as surely as they are seeking to break up the force on which _athens_ at present relies, by slandering its commander to you when he tries to provide funds to support it, so surely _philip's_ force will be disbanded if you accept their advice. if they fail to prove this, you must consider that they are simply setting the city once more upon the same course which has already resulted in the utter ruin of her fortunes. { } for surely you know that nothing in the world has contributed so much to philip's successes, as his being always first on the scene of action. with a standing force always about him, and knowing beforehand what he intends to do, he suddenly falls upon whomsoever he pleases: while we wait until we learn that something is happening, and only then, in a turmoil, make our preparations. { } it follows, of course, that every position which he has attacked, he holds in undisturbed possession; while we are all behindhand; all our expenditure proves to have been so much useless waste; we have displayed our hostility and our desire to check him; but we are too late for action, and so we add disgrace to failure. { } you must therefore not fail to recognize, men of athens, that now, as before, all else that you hear consists of mere words and pretexts; and that the real aim of all that is being done is to secure that you may remain at home, that athens may have no force outside the city, and that thus philip may give effect to all his desires without let or hindrance. consider, in the first place, what is actually occurring at the present moment. { } he is at present passing the time[n] in thrace, with a great army under him; and, as we are told by those who are on the spot,[n] he is sending for a large addition to it from macedonia and thessaly. now if he waits for the etesian winds,[n] and then goes to byzantium and besieges it, tell me first whether you think that the byzantines will persist in their present infatuation,[n] and will not call upon you and entreat you to go to their aid? { } i do not think so. why, i believe that they would open their gates to men whom they distrust even more than they distrust you (if such exist), rather than surrender the city to philip--supposing, that is, that he does not capture them first. and then, if we are unable to set sail from athens, and if there are no forces there on the spot to help them, nothing can prevent their destruction. { } 'of course,' you say, 'for the men are possessed, and their infatuation passes all bounds.' very true; and yet they must be preserved; for the interests of athens require it. and besides, we cannot by any means be certain that he will not invade the chersonese. indeed, if we are to judge by the letter which he has sent to you, he there says that he _will_ punish the settlers[n] in the chersonese. { } if then the army that is now formed there is in existence, it will be able to help the chersonese, and to injure some part of philip's country. but when once it is dissolved, what shall we do if he marches against the chersonese? 'we shall of course put diopeithes on his trial.' and how will that improve our position? 'well, we should go to the rescue from athens ourselves.' what if the winds make it impossible? { } 'but, of course, he will not really get there.' and who can guarantee that? do you realize, men of athens, or take into account, what the coming season of the year is, the season against which some think you ought to evacuate the hellespont and hand it over to philip? what if, when he leaves thrace, he does not go near the chersonese or byzantium at all--for this, too, is a possibility which you must consider--but comes to chalcis[n] or megara, just as he lately came to oreus? is it better to resist him here, and to allow the war to come into attica, or to provide something to keep him busy there? the latter course is surely the better. { } realizing these things, therefore, as you all must, and taking due account of them, you must not, heaven knows, look askance at the force which diopeithes is trying to provide for athens, or attempt to disband it. you must yourselves prepare another force to support it: you must help him freely with money, and give him in all other respects your loyal co-operation. { } if philip were asked to say whether he would wish these soldiers who are now with diopeithes--describe them as you will, for i in no way dispute your description--to be prosperous and in high favour with the athenians, and to be augmented in numbers by the co-operation of the city; or whether he would rather see them broken up and destroyed in consequence of calumnious charges against them; he would prefer, i imagine, the latter alternative. can it then be, that there are men among us here who are trying to bring about the very thing that philip would pray heaven for? and if so, do you need to seek any further for the cause of the total ruin of the city's fortunes? { } i wish, therefore, to examine without reserve the present crisis of our affairs, to inquire what we ourselves are now doing, and how we are dealing with it. we do not wish to contribute funds, nor to serve with the forces in person; we cannot keep our hands from the public revenues;[n] we do not give the contributions of the allies[n] to diopeithes, nor do we approve of such supplies as he raises for himself; { } but we look malignantly at him, we ask whence he gets them, what he intends to do, and every possible question of that kind: and yet we are still not willing to confine ourselves to our own affairs, in consequence of the attitude which we have adopted; we still praise with our lips those who uphold the dignity of the city, though in our acts we are fighting on the side of their opponents. { } now whenever any one rises to speak, you always put to him the question 'what are we to do?' i wish to put to _you_ the question, 'what are we to _say_?' for if you will neither contribute, nor serve in person, nor leave the public funds alone, nor grant him the contributions, nor let him get what he can for himself, nor yet confine yourselves to your own affairs, i do not know what i can say. for when you give such licence to those who desire to make charges and accusations, that you listen to them even when they denounce him by anticipation for his alleged intentions--well, what _can_ one say? { } the possible effect of this is a matter which some of you require to understand, and i will speak without reserve; for indeed i could not speak otherwise. all the commanders who have ever yet sailed from athens--if i am wrong, i consent to any penalty that you please[n]--take money from the chians, from the erythraeans,[n] from any people from whom they can severally get it--i mean, any of the asiatic settlers who are now in question. { } those who have one or two ships take less, those who have a larger force take more. and those who give to them do not give either little or much for nothing; they are not so insane: in fact, with these sums they buy immunity from injury for the merchants who sail from their ports, freedom from piracy, the convoying of their vessels, and so on. they call the gifts 'benevolences',[n] and that is the name given to the sums thus obtained. { } and in the present case, when diopeithes is there with his army, it is obvious that all these peoples will give him money. from what other source do you imagine that a general can maintain his troops, when he has received nothing from you, and has no resources from which he can pay his men? will money drop from the sky? of course not. he subsists upon what he can collect or beg or borrow. { } the real effect, therefore, of the accusations made against him here, is simply to warn every one that they should refuse to give him anything, since he is to pay the penalty for his very intentions, not to speak of any action that he may have taken or any success that he may have achieved. that is the only meaning of the cry that 'he is preparing a blockade', or 'he is surrendering[n] the hellenes'. do any of his critics care about the hellenes who live in asia? { } were it so, they would be more thoughtful for the rest of mankind than for their own country. and the proposal to send another general to the hellespont amounts to no more than this. for if diopeithes is acting outrageously and is driving the vessels to shore, then, gentlemen, one little wax-tablet[n] is enough to put an end to it all: and what the laws command is that for these offences we should impeach the wrong-doers--not that we should keep a watch upon our own forces at such expense and with so many ships.[n] { } such insanity really passes all bounds. no! against the enemy whom we cannot arrest and render amenable to the laws, it is both right and necessary to maintain a force, to send war-ships, and to contribute war-funds: but against one of ourselves, a decree, an impeachment, a dispatch-boat[n] will answer our purpose. these are the means which sensible men would use: the policy of the other side is the policy of men whose spitefulness[n] is ruining your fortunes. { } and that there should be some such men, bad though it is, is not the worst. no! for you who sit there are already in such a frame of mind, that if any one comes forward and says that diopeithes is the cause of all the mischief, or chares,[n] or aristophon,[n] or any athenian citizen that he happens to name, you at once agree, and clamorously declare that he is right; { } but if any one comes forward and tells you the truth, and says, 'men of athens, this is nonsense. it is philip that is the cause of all this mischief and trouble; for if he were quiet, the city would have nothing to disturb her,' you cannot, indeed, deny the truth of his words, but you seem, i think, to be annoyed, as though you were losing something.[n] { } and the cause of these things is this--and i beseech you, in heaven's name, to let me speak unreservedly, when i am speaking for your true good--that some of your politicians have contrived that you should be terrifying and severe in your assemblies, but easy-going and contemptible in your preparations for war. and accordingly, if any one names as the culprit some one whom you know you can arrest in your own midst, you agree and you wish to act; but if one is named whom you must first master by force of arms, if you are to punish him at all, you are at a loss, i fancy, what to do, and you are vexed when this is brought home to you. { } for your politicians, men of athens, should have treated you in exactly the opposite way to this; they should train you to be kind and sympathetic in your assemblies; for there it is with the members of your own body and your own allies that your case is argued: but your terrors and your severity should be displayed in your preparations for war, where the struggle is with your enemies and your rivals. { } as it is, by their popular speeches, and by courting your favour to excess, they have brought you into such a condition that, while in your assemblies you give yourselves airs and enjoy their flattery, listening to nothing but what is meant to please you, in the world of facts and events you are in the last extremity of peril. imagine, in god's name, what would happen, if the hellenes were to call you to account for the opportunities which, in your indolence, you have now let pass, and were to put to you the question, { } 'is it true, men of athens, that you send envoys to us on every possible occasion, to tell us of philip's designs against ourselves and all the hellenes, and of the duty of keeping guard against the man, and to warn us in every way?' we should have to confess that it was true. we do act thus. 'then,' they would proceed, 'is it true, you most contemptible of all men, that though the man has been away for ten months, { } and has been cut off from every possibility of returning home, by illness and by winter and by wars, you have neither liberated euboea nor recovered any of your own possessions? is it true that you have remained at home, unoccupied and healthy--if such a word can be used of men who behave thus--and have seen him set up two tyrants in euboea, one to serve as a fortress directly menacing attica, the other to watch sciathus; { } and that you have not even rid yourselves of these dangers--granted that you did not want to do anything more--but have let them be? obviously you have retired in his favour, and have made it evident that if he dies ten times over, you will not make any move the more. why trouble us then with your embassies and your accusations?' if they speak thus to us, what will be our answer? what shall we say, athenians? i do not see what we can say. { } now there are some who imagine that they confute a speaker, as soon as they have asked him the question, 'what then are we to do?' i will first give them this answer--the most just and true of all--'do not do what you are doing now.' { } but at the same time i will give them a minute and detailed reply; and then let them show that their willingness to act upon it is not less than their eagerness to interrogate. first, men of athens, you must thoroughly make up your minds to the fact that philip is at war with athens, and has broken the peace--you must cease to lay the blame at one another's doors--and that he is evilly-disposed and hostile to the whole city, down to the very ground on which it is built; { } nay, i will go further--hostile to every single man in the city, even to those who are most sure that they are winning his favour. (if you think otherwise, consider the case of euthycrates[n] and lasthenes of olynthus, who fancied that they were on the most friendly terms with him, but, after they had betrayed their city, suffered the most utter ruin of all.) but his hostilities and intrigues are aimed at nothing so much as at our constitution, whose overthrow is the very first object in the world to him. { } and in a sense it is natural that he should aim at this. for he knows very well that even if he becomes master of all the rest of the world, he can retain nothing securely, so long as you are a democracy; and that if he chances to stumble anywhere, as may often happen to a man, all the elements which are now forced into union with him will come and take refuge with you. { } for though you are not yourselves naturally adapted for aggrandizement or the usurpation of empire, you have the art of preventing any other from seizing power and of taking it from him when he has it; and in every respect you are ready to give trouble to those who are ambitious of dominion, and to lead all men forth into liberty. and so he would not have freedom, from her home in athens, watching for every opportunity he may offer--far from it--and there is nothing unsound or careless in his reasoning. { } the first essential point, therefore, is this--that you conceive him to be the irreconcilable foe of your constitution and of democracy: for unless you are inwardly convinced of this, you will not be willing to take an active interest in the situation. secondly, you must realize clearly that all the plans which he is now so busily contriving are in the nature of preparations against this country; and wherever any one resists him, he there resists him on our behalf. { } for surely no one is so simple as to imagine that when philip is covetous of the wretched hamlets[n] of thrace--one can give no other name to drongilum, cabyle, masteira, and the places which he is now seizing--and when to get these places he is enduring heavy labours, hard winters, and the extremity of danger;--{ } no one can imagine, i say, that the harbours and the dockyards, and the ships of the athenians, the produce of your silver-mines, and your huge revenue, have no attraction for him, or that he will leave you in possession of these, while he winters in the very pit of destruction[n] for the sake of the millet and the spelt in the silos[n] of thrace. no, indeed! it is to get these into his power that he pursues both his operations in thrace and all his other designs. { } what then, as sensible men, must you do? knowing and realizing your position, as you do, you must lay aside this excessive, this irremediable[n] indolence: you must contribute funds, and require them from your allies; you must so provide and act, that this force which is now assembled may be held together; in order that, as philip has the force in readiness that is to injure and enslave all the hellenes, you may have in readiness that which shall preserve and succour them. { } you cannot effect by isolated expeditions any of the things which must be effected. you must organize a force, and provide maintenance for it, and paymasters, and a staff of servants; and when you have taken such steps as will ensure the strictest possible watch being kept over the funds, you must hold these officials accountable for the money, and the general for the actual operations. if you act thus, and honestly make up your minds to take this course, you will either compel philip to observe a righteous peace and remain in his own land--and no greater blessing could you obtain than that--or you will fight him on equal terms. { } it may be thought that this policy demands heavy expenditure, and great exertions and trouble. that is true indeed; but let the objector take into account what the consequences to the city must be, if he is unwilling to assent to this policy, and he will find that the ready performance of duty brings its reward. { } if indeed some god is offering us his guarantee--for no human guarantee would be sufficient in so great a matter--that if you remain at peace and let everything slide, philip will not in the end come and attack yourselves; then, although, before god and every heavenly power, it would be unworthy of you and of the position that the city holds, and of the deeds of our forefathers, to abandon all the rest of the hellenes to slavery for the sake of our own ease--although, for my part, i would rather have died than have suggested such a thing--yet, if another proposes it and convinces you, let it be so: do not defend yourselves: let everything go. { } but if no one entertains such a belief, if we all know that the very opposite is true, and that the wider the mastery we allow him to gain, the more difficult and powerful a foe we shall have to deal with, what further subterfuge is open to us? why do we delay? { } when shall we ever be willing, men of athens, to do our duty? 'when we are compelled,' you say. but the hour of compulsion, as the word is applied to free men, is not only here already, but has long passed; and we must surely pray that the compulsion which is put upon slaves may not come upon us. and what is the difference? it is this--that for a free man the greatest compelling force is his shame at the course which events are taking--i do not know what greater we can imagine; but the slave is compelled by blows and bodily tortures, which i pray may never fall to our lot; it is not fit to speak of them. { } i would gladly tell you the whole story, and show how certain persons are working for your ruin by their policy. i pass over, however, every point but this. whenever any question of our relations with philip arises, at once some one stands up and talks of the blessings of peace, of the difficulty of maintaining a large force, and of designs on the part of certain persons to plunder our funds; with other tales of the same kind, which enable them to delay your action, and give philip time to do what he wishes unopposed. { } what is the result? for you the result is your leisure, and a respite from immediate action--advantages which i fear you will some day feel to have cost you dear; and for them it is the favour they win, and the wages for these services. but i am sure that there is no need to persuade you to keep the peace--you sit here fully persuaded. it is the man who is committing acts of war that we need to persuade; for if he is persuaded, you are ready enough. { } nor is it the expenditure which is to ensure our preservation that ought to distress us, but the fate which is in prospect for us, if we are not willing to take this action: while the threatened 'plunder of our funds' is to be prevented by the proposal of some safeguard which will render them secure, not by the abandonment of our interests. { } and even so, men of athens, i feel indignant at the very fact that some of you are so much pained at the prospect of the plunder of our funds, when you have it in your power both to protect them and to punish the culprits, and yet feel no pain when philip is seizing all hellas piecemeal for his plunder, and seizing it to strengthen himself against you. { } what then is the reason, men of athens, that though philip's campaigns, his aggressions, his seizure of cities, are so unconcealed, none of my opponents has ever said that _he_ was bringing about war? why is it those who advise you not to allow it, not to make these sacrifices, that they accuse, and say that _they_ will be the cause of the war? i will inform you. { } it is because[n] they wish to divert the anger which you are likely to show, if you suffer at all from the war, on to the heads of those who are giving you the best advice in your own interests. they want you to sit and try such persons, instead of resisting philip; and they themselves are to be the prosecutors, instead of paying the penalty for their present actions. that is the meaning of their assertion that there are some here, forsooth, who want to bring about war. { } that is the real point of these allegations of responsibility. but this i know beyond all doubt--that without waiting for any one in athens to propose the declaration of war, philip has not only taken many other possessions of ours, but has just now sent an expedition to cardia. if, in spite of this, we wish to pretend that he is not making war on us, he would be the most senseless man living, were he to attempt to convince us of our error. { } but what shall we say, when his attack is made directly upon ourselves? he of course will say that he is not at war with us--just as he was not at war with oreus,[n] when his soldiers were in the land; nor with the pheraeans,[n] before that, when he was assaulting their walls; nor with the olynthians, first of all, until he and his army were actually within their territory. or shall we still say that those who urge resistance are bringing about war? if so, all that is left to us is slavery. if we may neither offer resistance, nor yet be suffered to remain at peace, no other compromise[n] is possible. { } and further, the issues at stake are not for you merely what they are for other states. what philip desires is not your subjection, but your utter annihilation. for he knows full well that you will never consent to be his slaves, and that even if you were willing, you would not know the way, accustomed as you are to govern; and he knows that you will be able to give him more trouble, if you get the opportunity, than all the rest of the world. { } the struggle, then, is a struggle for existence; and as such you ought to think of it: and you should show your abhorrence of those who have sold themselves to philip by beating them to death. for it is impossible, utterly impossible, to master your enemies outside the city, before you punish your enemies in the city itself. { } whence comes it, think you, that he is insulting us now (for his conduct seems to me to be nothing less than this), and that while he at least deceives all other peoples by doing them favours, he is using threats against you without more ado? for instance, he enticed the thessalians by large gifts into their present servitude; and words cannot describe how greatly he deceived the olynthians at first by the gift of poteidaea and much beside. { } at this moment he is alluring the thebans, by delivering up boeotia to them, and ridding them of a long and arduous campaign. each of these peoples has first reaped some advantage, before falling into those calamities which some of them have already suffered, as all the world knows, and some are destined to suffer whenever their time comes. but as for yourselves, to pass over all that you have been robbed of at an earlier period,[n] what deception, what robbery have been practised upon you in the very act of making the peace! { } have not the phocians, and thermopylae, and the thracian seaboard--doriscus, serrhium, cersobleptes himself--been taken from you? does not philip at this moment occupy the city of the cardians, and avow it openly? why is it then, that he behaves as he does to all others, and so differently to you? because yours is the one city in the world where men are permitted to speak on behalf of the enemy without fear; because here a man may take bribes, and still address you with impunity, even when you have been robbed of your own. in olynthus it was only safe to take philip's side when the people of olynthus as a whole had shared philip's favours, and was enjoying the possession of poteidaea. { } in thessaly it was only safe to take philip's side when the thessalian commons had shared philip's favours; for he had expelled the tyrants for them, and restored to them their amphictyonic position. in thebes it was not safe, until he had restored boeotia to thebes and annihilated the phocians. { } but at athens--though philip has not only robbed you of amphipolis and the territory of the cardians, but has turned euboea into a fortress overlooking your country, and is now on his way to attack byzantium--at athens it _is_ safe to speak in philip's interest. aye, and you know that, of such speakers, some who were poor are rapidly growing rich; and some who were without name or fame are becoming famous and distinguished, while you, on the other hand, are becoming inglorious instead of famous, bankrupt instead of wealthy. for a city's wealth consists, i imagine, in allies, confidence, loyalty--and of all these you are bankrupt. { } and because you are indifferent to these advantages, and let them drift away from you, he has become prosperous and powerful, and formidable to all, hellenes and foreigners alike; while you are deserted and humbled, with a splendid profusion of commodities in your market, and a contemptible lack of all those things with which you should have been provided. but i observe that certain speakers do not follow the same principles in the advice which they give you, as they follow for themselves. _you_, they tell you, ought to remain quiet, even when you are wronged; but _they_ cannot remain quiet in your presence, even when no one is wronging them. { } but now some one or other comes forward and says, 'ah, but you will not move a motion or take any risk. you are a poor-spirited coward.' bold, offensive, shameless, i am not, and i trust i may never be; and yet i think i have more courage than very many of your dashing statesmen. { } for one, men of athens, who overlooks all that the city's interest demands--who prosecutes, confiscates, gives, accuses--does so not from any bravery, but because in the popular character of his speeches and public actions he has a guarantee of his personal safety, and therefore is bold without risk. but one who in acting for the best sets himself in many ways against your wishes--who never speaks to please, but always to advise what is best; one who chooses a policy in which more issues must be decided by chance than by calculation, and yet makes himself responsible to you for both--that is the courageous man, { } and such is the citizen who is of value to his country, rather than those who, to gain an ephemeral popularity, have ruined the supreme interests of the city. so far am i from envying these men, or thinking them worthy citizens of their country, that if any one were to ask me to say, what good _i_ had really done to the city, although, men of athens, i could tell how often i had been trierarch and choregus,[n] how i had contributed funds, ransomed prisoners, and done other like acts of generosity, i would mention none of these things; { } i would say only that my policy is not one of measures like theirs--that although, like others, i could make accusations and shower favours and confiscate property and do all that my opponents do, i have never to this day set myself to do any of these things; i have been influenced neither by gain nor by ambition; but i continue to give the advice which sets me below many others in your estimation, but which must make you greater, if you will listen to it; for so much, perhaps, i may say without offence. { } nor, i think, should i be acting fairly as a citizen, if i devised such political measures as would at once make me the first man in athens, and you the last of all peoples. as the measures of a loyal politician develop, the greatness of his country should develop with them; and it is the thing which is best, not the thing which is easiest, that every speaker should advocate. nature will find the way to the easiest course unaided. to the best, the words and the guidance of the loyal citizen must show the way. { } i have heard it remarked before now, that though what i _say_ is always what is best, still i never contribute anything but words; whereas the city needs work of some practical kind. i will tell you without any concealment my own sentiments on this matter. there _is_ no work that can be demanded of any of your public advisers, except that he should advise what is best; and i think i can easily show you that this is so. { } no doubt you know how the great timotheus[n] delivered a speech to the effect that you ought to go to the rescue and save the euboeans, when the thebans were trying to reduce them to servitude; and how, in the course of his speech, he spoke somewhat in this strain:--'what?' said he, 'when you actually have the thebans in the island, do you debate what you are to do with them, and how you are to act? will you not cover the sea with warships, men of athens? will you not rise from your seats and go instantly to the peiraeus and launch your vessels?' { } so timotheus spoke, and you acted as he bade you; and through his speech and your action the work was done. but if he had given you the best possible advice (as in fact he did), and you had lapsed into indolence and paid no attention to it, would the city have achieved any of the results which followed on that occasion? impossible! and so it is with all that i say to-day, and with all that this or that speaker may say. for the actions you must look to yourselves; from the speaker you must require that he give you the best counsel that he can.[n] { } i desire now to sum up my advice and to leave the platform. i say that we must contribute funds, and must keep together the force now in existence, correcting anything that may seem amiss in it, but not disbanding the whole force because of the possible criticisms against it. we must send envoys everywhere to instruct, to warn, and to act. above all, we must punish those who take bribes in connexion with public affairs, and must everywhere display our abhorrence of them; in order that reasonable men, who offer their honest services, may find their policy justified in their own eyes and in those of others. { } if you treat the situation thus, and cease to ignore it altogether, there is a chance--a chance i say, even now--that it may improve. if, however, you sit idle, with an interest that stops short at applause and acclamation, and retires into the background when any action is required, i can imagine no oratory, which, without action on your part, will be able to save your country. footnotes [ ] see third philippic §§ sqq. [ ] see introduction to first philippic. [ ] [greek: est_o d_e.] the third philippic (or. ix) [_introduction_. the third philippic seems to have been delivered in the late spring or early summer of b. c., about two months after the speech on the chersonese, which apparently had little positive result, though it probably prevented the recall and prosecution of diopeithes. the immediate occasion of the third philippic was a request from the forces in the chersonese for supplies. the general situation is the same as at the date of the last speech, but the danger to byzantium is more pressing. demosthenes now takes the broad ground of panhellenic policy, and formally proposes to send envoys throughout greece, to unite all the greek states against philip, as well as to send immediate reinforcements and supplies to the chersonese. many critics, ancient and modern, have regarded this as the greatest of all demosthenes' political orations. the lessons of history (from the speaker's point of view) are repeated and enforced by the citation of instance after instance. the tone of the speech, while less varied than that of the last, is grave and intense. the passage (§§ ff.) in which the orator contrasts the spirit of athenian political life in the past with that of his own day is one of the most impressive in all his works, and the nobility of his appeal to the traditional ideals of athenian policy has been universally recognized even by his most severe critics. the speech is found in the mss. in two forms, of which the shorter omits a number of passages[ ] which the longer includes, though there are signs of an imperfect blending of the two versions in certain places. it seems probable that both versions are due to demosthenes, and the speech may have been more than once revised by him before publication or republication. in which form it was delivered there is not sufficient evidence to show.] { } many speeches are made, men of athens, at almost every meeting of the assembly, with reference to the aggressions which philip has been committing, ever since he concluded the peace, not only against yourselves but against all other peoples; and i am sure that all would agree, however little they may act on their belief, that our aim, both in speech and in action, should be to cause him to cease from his insolence and to pay the penalty for it. and yet i see that in fact the treacherous sacrifice of our interests has gone on, until what seems an ill-omened saying may, i fear, be really true--that if all who came forward desired to propose, and you desired to carry, the measures which would make your position as pitiful as it could possibly be, it could not (so i believe), be made worse than it is now. { } it may be that there are many reasons for this, and that our affairs did not reach their present condition from any one or two causes. but if you examine the matter aright, you will find that the chief responsibility rests with those whose aim is to win your favour, not to propose what is best. some of them, men of athens, so long as they can maintain the conditions which bring them reputation and influence, take no thought for the future [and therefore think that you also should take none]; while others, by accusing and slandering those who are actively at work,[n] are simply trying to make the city spend its energies in punishing the members of its own body, and so leave philip free to say and do what he likes. { } such political methods as these, familiar to you as they are, are the real causes of the evil. and i beg you, men of athens, if i tell you certain truths outspokenly, to let no resentment on your part fall upon me on this account. consider the matter in this light. in every other sphere of life, you believe that the right of free speech ought to be so universally shared by all who are in the city, that you have extended it both to foreigners and to slaves; and one may see many a servant in athens speaking his mind with greater liberty than is granted to citizens in some other states: but from the sphere of political counsel you have utterly banished this liberty. { } the result[n] is that in your meetings you give yourselves airs and enjoy their flattery, listening to nothing but what is meant to please you, while in the world of facts and events, you are in the last extremity of peril. if then you are still in this mood to-day, i do not know what i can say; but if you are willing to listen while i tell you, without flattery, what your interest requires, i am prepared to speak. for though our position is very bad indeed, and much has been sacrificed, it is still possible, even now, if you will do your duty, to set all right once more. { } it is a strange thing, perhaps, that i am about to say, but it is true. the worst feature in the past is that in which lies our best hope for the future. and what is this? it is that you are in your present plight because you do not do any part of your duty, small or great; for of course, if you were doing all that you should do, and were still in this evil case, you could not even hope for any improvement. as it is, philip has conquered your indolence and your indifference; but he has not conquered athens. you have not been vanquished--you have never even stirred. { } [now if it was admitted by us all that philip was at war with athens, and was transgressing the peace, a speaker would have to do nothing but to advise you as to the safest and easiest method of resistance to him. but since there are some who are in so extraordinary a frame of mind that, though he is capturing cities, though many of your possessions are in his hands, and though he is committing aggressions against all men, they still tolerate certain speakers, who constantly assert at your meetings that it is some of _us_ who are provoking the war, it is necessary to be on our guard and come to a right understanding on the matter. { } for there is a danger lest any one who proposes or advises resistance should find himself accused of having brought about the war.] [well, i say this first of all, and lay it down as a principle, that if it is open to us to deliberate whether we should remain at peace or should go to war ...] { } now if it is possible for the city to remain at peace--if the decision rests with us (that i may make this my starting-point)--then, i say that we ought to do so, and i call upon any one who says that it is so to move his motion, and to act and not to defraud us.[n] but if another with weapons in his hands and a large force about him holds out to you the _name_ of peace, while his own acts are acts of war, what course remains open to us but that of resistance? though if you wish to profess peace in the same manner as he, i have no quarrel with you. { } but if any man's conception of peace is that it is a state in which philip can master all that intervenes till at last he comes to attack ourselves, such a conception, in the first place, is madness; and, in the second place, this peace that he speaks of is a peace which you are to observe towards philip, while he does not observe it towards you: and this it is--this power to carry on war against you, without being met by any hostilities on your part--that philip is purchasing with all the money that he is spending. { } indeed, if we intend to wait till the time comes when he admits that he is at war with us, we are surely the most innocent persons in the world. why, even if he comes to attica itself, to the very peiraeus, he will never make such an admission, if we are to judge by his dealings with others. { } for, to take one instance, he told the olynthians, when he was five miles from the city, that there were only two alternatives--either they must cease to live in olynthus, or he to live in macedonia: but during the whole time before that, whenever any one accused him of any such sentiments, he was indignant and sent envoys to answer the charge. again, he marched into the phocians' country, as though visiting his allies:[n] it was by phocian envoys that he was escorted on the march; and most people in athens contended strongly that his crossing the pass would bring no good to thebes. { } worse still, he has lately seized pherae[n] and still holds it, though he went to thessaly as a friend and an ally. and, latest of all, he told those unhappy citizens of oreus[n] that he had sent his soldiers to visit them and to make kind inquiries; he had heard that they were sick, and suffering from faction, and it was right for an ally and a true friend to be present at such a time. { } now if, instead of giving them warning and using open force, he deliberately chose to deceive these men, who could have done him no harm, though they might have taken precautions against suffering any themselves, do you imagine that he will make a formal declaration of war upon you before he commences hostilities, and that, so long as you are content to be deceived? { } impossible! for so long as you, though you are the injured party, make no complaint against him, but accuse some of your own body, he would be the most fatuous man on earth if _he_ were to interrupt your strife and contentions with one another--to bid you turn upon himself, and so to cut away the ground from the arguments by which his hirelings put you off, when they tell you that _he_ is not at war with athens. { } in god's name, is there a man in his senses who would judge by words, and not by facts, whether another was at peace or at war with him? of course there is not. why, from the very first, when the peace had only just been made, before those who are now in the chersonese had been sent out, philip was taking serrhium[n] and doriscus, and expelling the soldiers who were in the castle of serrhium and the sacred mountain, where they had been placed by your general. { } but what was he doing, in acting thus? for he had sworn to a peace.[n] and let no one ask, 'what do these things amount to? what do they matter to athens?' for whether these acts were trifles which could have no interest for you is another matter; but the principles of religion[n] and justice, whether a man transgress them in small things or great, have always the same force. what? when he is sending mercenaries into the chersonese, which the king and all the hellenes have acknowledged to be yours; when he openly avows that he is going to the rescue, and states it in his letter, what is it that he is doing? { } he tells you, indeed, that he is not making war upon you. but so far am i from admitting that one who acts in this manner is observing the peace which he made with you, that i hold that in grasping at megara, in setting up tyrants in euboea, in advancing against thrace at the present moment, in pursuing his machinations in the peloponnese, and in carrying out his entire policy with the help of his army, he is violating the peace and is making war against you;--unless you mean to say that even to bring up engines to besiege you is no breach of the peace, until they are actually planted against your walls. but you will not say this; for the man who is taking the steps and contriving the means which will lead to my capture is at war with me, even though he has not yet thrown a missile or shot an arrow. { } now what are the things which would imperil your safety, if anything should happen?[n] the alienation of the hellespont, the placing of megara and euboea in the power of the enemy, and the attraction of peloponnesian sympathy to his cause. can i then say that one who is erecting such engines of war as these against the city is at peace with you? { } far from it! for from the very day when he annihilated the phocians--from that very day, i say, i date the beginning of his hostilities against you. and for your part, i think that you will be wise if you resist him at once; but that if you let him be, you will find that, when you wish to resist, resistance itself is impossible. indeed, so widely do i differ, men of athens, from all your other advisers, that i do not think there is any room for discussion to-day in regard to the chersonese or byzantium. { } we _must_ go to their defence, and take every care that they do not suffer [and we must send all that they need to the soldiers who are at present there]. but we _have_ to take counsel for the good of all the hellenes, in view of the grave peril in which they stand. and i wish to tell you on what grounds i am so alarmed at the situation, in order that if my reasoning is correct, you may share my conclusions, and exercise some forethought for yourselves at least, if you are actually unwilling to do so for the hellenes as a whole; but that if you think that i am talking nonsense, and am out of my senses, you may both now and hereafter decline to attend to me as though i were a sane man. { } the rise of philip to greatness from such small and humble beginnings; the mistrustful and quarrelsome attitude of the hellenes towards one another; the fact that his growth out of what he was into what he is was a far more extraordinary thing than would be his subjugation of all that remains, when he has already secured so much;--all this and all similar themes, upon which i might speak at length, i will pass over. { } but i see that all men, beginning with yourselves, have conceded to him the very thing which has been at issue in every hellenic war during the whole of the past. and what is this? it is the right to act as he pleases --to mutilate and to strip the hellenic peoples, one by one, to attack and to enslave their cities. { } for seventy-three years[n] you were the leading people of hellas, and the spartans for thirty years save one;[n] and in these last times, after the battle of leuctra,[n] the thebans too acquired some power: yet neither to you nor to thebes nor to sparta was such a right ever conceded by the hellenes, as the right to do whatever you pleased. far from it! { } first of all it was your own behaviour--or rather that of the athenians of that day--which some thought immoderate; and all, even those who had no grievance against athens, felt bound to join the injured parties, and to make war upon you. then, in their turn, the spartans, when they had acquired an empire and succeeded to a supremacy like your own, attempted to go beyond all bounds and to disturb the established order[n] to an unjustifiable extent; and once more, all, even those who had no grievance against them, had recourse to war. { } why mention the others? for we ourselves and the spartans, though we could originally allege no injury done by the one people to the other, nevertheless felt bound to go to war on account of the wrongs which we saw the rest suffering. and yet all the offences of the spartans in those thirty years of power, and of your ancestors in their seventy years, were less, men of athens, than the wrongs inflicted upon the greeks by philip, in the thirteen years, not yet completed, during which he has been to the fore. less do i say? { } they are not a fraction of them. [a few words will easily prove this.] i say nothing of olynthus, and methone, and apollonia, and thirty-two cities in the thracian region,[n] all annihilated by him with such savagery, that a visitor to the spot would find it difficult to tell that they had ever been inhabited. i remain silent in regard to the extirpation of the great phocian race. but what is the condition of thessaly? has he not robbed their very cities of their governments,[n] and set up tetrarchies, that they may be enslaved, not merely by whole cities, but by whole tribes at a time? { } are not the cities of euboea even now ruled by tyrants, and that in an island that is neighbour to thebes and athens? does he not write expressly in his letters, 'i am at peace with those who choose to obey me'? and what he thus writes he does not fail to act upon; for he is gone to invade the hellespont; he previously went to attack ambracia;[n] the great city of elis[n] in the peloponnese is his; he has recently intrigued against megara;[n] and neither hellas nor the world beyond it is large enough to contain the man's ambition. { } but though all of us, the hellenes, see and hear these things, we send no representatives to one another to discuss the matter; we show no indignation; we are in so evil a mood, so deep have the lines been dug which sever city from city, that up to this very day we are unable to act as either our interest or our duty require. { } we cannot unite; we can form no combination for mutual support or friendship; but we look on while the man grows greater, because every one has made up his mind (as it seems to me) to profit by the time during which his neighbour is being ruined, and no one cares or acts for the safety of the hellenes. for we all know that philip is like the recurrence or the attack of a fever or other illness, in his descent upon those who fancy themselves for the present well out of his reach. { } and further, you must surely realize that all the wrongs that the hellenes suffered from the spartans or ourselves they at least suffered at the hands of true-born sons of hellas; and (one might conceive) it was as though a lawful son, born to a great estate, managed his affairs in some wrong or improper way;--his conduct would in itself deserve blame and denunciation, but at least it could not be said that he was not one of the family, or was not the heir to the property. { } but had it been a slave or a supposititious son that was thus ruining and spoiling an inheritance to which he had no title, why, good heavens! how infinitely more scandalous and reprehensible all would have declared it to be. and yet they show no such feeling in regard to philip, although not only is he no hellene, not only has he no kinship with hellenes, but he is not even a barbarian from a country that one could acknowledge with credit;--he is a pestilent macedonian, from whose country it used not to be possible to buy even a slave of any value. { } and in spite of this, is there any degree of insolence to which he does not proceed? not content with annihilating cities, does he not manage the pythian games,[n] the common meeting of the hellenes, and send his slaves to preside over the competition in his absence? [is he not master of thermopylae, and of the passes which lead into hellenic territory? does he not hold that district with garrisons and mercenaries? has he not taken the precedence in consulting the oracle, and thrust aside ourselves and the thessalians and dorians and the rest of the amphictyons, though the right is not one which is given even to all of the hellenes?] { } does he not write to the thessalians to prescribe the constitution under which they are to live? does he not send one body of mercenaries to porthmus, to expel the popular party of eretria, and another to oreus, to set up philistides as tyrant? and yet the hellenes see these things and endure them, gazing (it seems to me) as they would gaze at a hailstorm--each people praying that it may not come their way, but no one trying to prevent it. nor is it only his outrages upon hellas that go unresisted. { } no one resists even the aggressions which are committed against himself. ambracia and leucas belong to the corinthians--he has attacked them: naupactus to the achaeans--he has sworn to hand it over to the aetolians: echinus[n] to the thebans--he has taken it from them, and is now marching against their allies the byzantines--is it not so? { } and of our own possessions, to pass by all the rest, is not cardia, the greatest city in the chersonese, in his hands? thus are we treated; and we are all hesitating and torpid, with our eyes upon our neighbours, distrusting one another, rather than the man whose victims we all are. but if he treats us collectively in this outrageous fashion, what do you think he will do, when he has become master of each of us separately? { } what then is the cause of these things? for as it was not without reason and just cause that the hellenes in old days were so prompt for freedom, so it is not without reason or cause that they are now so prompt to be slaves. there was a spirit, men of athens, a spirit in the minds of the people in those days, which is absent to-day--the spirit which vanquished the wealth of persia, which led hellas in the path of freedom, and never gave way in face of battle by sea or by land; a spirit whose extinction to-day has brought universal ruin and turned hellas upside down. what was this spirit? [it was nothing subtle nor clever.] { } it meant that men who took money from those who aimed at dominion or at the ruin of hellas were execrated by all; that it was then a very grave thing to be convicted of bribery; that the punishment for the guilty man was the heaviest that could be inflicted; that for him there could be no plea for mercy, nor hope of pardon. { } no orator, no general, would then sell the critical opportunity whenever it arose--the opportunity so often offered to men by fortune, even when they are careless and their foes are on their guard. they did not barter away the harmony between people and people, nor their own mistrust of the tyrant and the foreigner, nor any of these high sentiments. { } where are such sentiments now? they have been sold in the market and are gone; and those have been imported in their stead, through which the nation lies ruined and plague-stricken--the envy of the man who has received his hire; the amusement which accompanies his avowal; [the pardon granted to those whose guilt is proved;] the hatred of one who censures the crime; and all the appurtenances of corruption. { } for as to ships, numerical strength, unstinting abundance of funds and all other material of war, and all the things by which the strength of cities is estimated, every people can command these in greater plenty and on a larger scale by far than in old days. but all these resources are rendered unserviceable, ineffectual, unprofitable, by those who traffic in them. { } that these things are so to-day, you doubtless see, and need no testimony of mine: and that in times gone by the opposite was true, i will prove to you, not by any words of my own, but by the record inscribed by your ancestors on a pillar of bronze, and placed on the acropolis [not to be a lesson to themselves--they needed no such record to put them in a right mind--but to be a reminder and an example to you of the zeal that you ought to display in such a cause]. { } what then is the record? 'arthmius,[n] son of pythonax, of zeleia, is an outlaw, and is the enemy of the athenian people and their allies, he and his house.' then follows the reason for which this step was taken--'because he brought the gold from the medes into the peloponnese.' { } such is the record. consider, in heaven's name, what must have been the mind of the athenians of that day, when they did this, and their conception of their position. they set up a record, that because a man of zeleia, arthmius by name, a slave of the king of persia (for zeleia is in asia), as part of his service to the king, had brought gold, not to athens, but to the peloponnese, he should be an enemy of athens and her allies, he and his house, and that they should be outlaws. { } and this outlawry is no such disfranchisement as we ordinarily mean by the word. for what would it matter to a man of zeleia, that he might have no share in the public life of athens? but there is a clause in the law of murder, dealing with those in connexion with whose death the law does not allow a prosecution for murder [but the slaying of them is to be a holy act]: 'and let him die an outlaw,' it runs. the meaning, accordingly, is this--that the slayer of such a man is to be pure from all guilt. { } they thought, therefore, that the safety of all the hellenes was a matter which concerned themselves--apart from this belief, it could not have mattered to them whether any one bought or corrupted men in the peloponnese; and whenever they detected such offenders, they carried their punishment and their vengeance so far as to pillory their names for ever. as the natural consequence, the hellenes were a terror to the foreigner, not the foreigner to the hellenes. it is not so now. such is not your attitude in these or in other matters. { } but what is it? [you know it yourselves; for why should i accuse you explicitly on every point? and that of the rest of the hellenes is like your own, and no better; and so i say that the present situation demands our utmost earnestness and good counsel.[n]] and what counsel? do you bid me tell you, and will you not be angry if i do so? [_he reads from the document_.] { } now there is an ingenuous argument, which is used by those who would reassure the city, to the effect that, after all, philip is not yet in the position once held by the spartans, who ruled everywhere over sea and land, with the king for their ally, and nothing to withstand them; and that, none the less, athens defended herself even against them, and was not swept away. since that time the progress in every direction, one may say, has been great, and has made the world to-day very different from what it was then; but i believe that in no respect has there been greater progress or development than in the art of war. { } in the first place, i am told that in those days the spartans and all our other enemies would invade us for four or five months--during, that is, the actual summer--and would damage attica with infantry and citizen-troops, and then return home again. and so old-fashioned were the men of that day--nay rather, such true citizens--that no one ever purchased any object from another for money, but their warfare was of a legitimate and open kind. { } but now, as i am sure you see, most of our losses are the result of treachery, and no issue is decided by open conflict or battle; while you are told that it is not because he leads a column of heavy infantry[n] that philip can march wherever he chooses, but because he has attached to himself a force of light infantry, cavalry, archers, mercenaries, and similar troops. { } and whenever, with such advantages,[n] he falls upon a state which is disordered within, and in their distrust of one another no one goes out in defence of its territory, he brings up his engines and besieges them. i pass over the fact that summer and winter are alike to him--that there is no close season during which he suspends operations. { } but if you all know these things and take due account of them, you surely must not let the war pass into attica, nor be dashed from your seat through looking back to the simplicity of those old hostilities with sparta. you must guard against him, at the greatest possible distance, both by political measures and by preparations; you must prevent his stirring from home, instead of grappling with him at close quarters in a struggle to the death. { } for, men of athens, we have many natural advantages for a war,[n] if we are willing to do our duty. there is the character of his country, much of which we can harry and damage, and a thousand other things. but for a pitched battle he is in better training than we. { } nor have you only to recognize these facts, and to resist him by actual operations of war. you must also by reasoned judgement and of set purpose come to execrate those who address you in his interest, remembering that it is impossible to master the enemies of the city, until you punish those who are serving them in the city itself. { } and this, before god and every heavenly power--this you will not be able to do; for you have reached such a pitch of folly or distraction or--i know not what to call it; for often has the fear actually entered my mind, that some more than mortal power may be driving our fortunes to ruin--that to enjoy their abuse, or their malice, or their jests, or whatever your motive may chance to be, you call upon men to speak who are hirelings, and some of whom would not even deny it; and you laugh to hear their abuse of others. { } and terrible as this is, there is yet worse to be told. for you have actually made political life safer for these men, than for those who uphold your own cause. and yet observe what calamities the willingness to listen to such men lays up in store. i will mention facts known to you all. { } in olynthus, among those who were engaged in public affairs, there was one party who were on the side of philip, and served his interests in everything; and another whose aim was their city's real good, and the preservation of their fellow citizens from bondage. which were the destroyers of their country? which betrayed the cavalry, through whose betrayal olynthus perished? those whose sympathies were with philip's cause; those who, while the city still existed brought such dishonest and slanderous charges against the speakers whose advice was for the best, that, in the case of apollonides at least, the people of olynthus was even induced to banish the accused. { } nor is this instance of the unmixed evil wrought by these practices in the case of the olynthians an exceptional one, or without parallel elsewhere. for in eretria,[n] when plutarchus and the mercenaries had been got rid of, and the people had control of the city and of porthmus, one party wished to entrust the state to you, the other to entrust it to philip. and through listening mainly, or rather entirely, to the latter, these poor luckless eretrians were at last persuaded to banish the advocates of their own interests. { } for, as you know, philip, their ally, sent hipponicus with a thousand mercenaries, stripped porthmus of its walls, and set up three tyrants--hipparchus, automedon, and cleitarchus; and since then he has already twice expelled them from the country when they wished to recover their position [sending on the first occasion the mercenaries commanded by eurylochus, on the second, those under parmenio]. { } and why go through the mass of the instances? enough to mention how in oreus philip had, as his agents, philistides, menippus, socrates, thoas, and agapaeus--the very men who are now in possession of the city--and every one knew the fact; while a certain euphraeus,[n] who once lived here in athens, acted in the interests of freedom, to save his country from bondage. { } to describe the insults and the contumely with which he met would require a long story; but a year before the capture of the town he laid an information of treason against philistides and his party, having perceived the nature of their plans. a number of men joined forces, with philip for their paymaster and director, and haled euphraeus off to prison as a disturber of the peace. { } seeing this, the democratic party in oreus, instead of coming to the rescue of euphraeus, and beating the other party to death, displayed no anger at all against them, and agreed with a malicious pleasure that euphraeus deserved his fate. after this the conspirators worked with all the freedom they desired for the capture of the city, and made arrangements for the execution of the scheme; while any of the democratic party, who perceived what was going on, maintained a panic-stricken silence, remembering the fate of euphraeus. so wretched was their condition, that though this dreadful calamity was confronting them, no one dared open his lips, until all was ready and the enemy was advancing up to the walls. then the one party set about the defence, the other about the betrayal of the city. { } and when the city had been captured in this base and shameful manner, the successful party governed despotically: and of those who had been their own protectors, and had been ready to treat euphraeus with all possible harshness, they expelled some and murdered others; while the good euphraeus killed himself, thus testifying to the righteousness and purity of his motives in opposing philip on behalf of his countrymen. { } now for what reason, you may be wondering, were the peoples of olynthus and eretria and oreus more agreeably disposed towards philip's advocates than towards their own? the reason was the same as it is with you--that those who speak for your true good can never, even if they would, speak to win popularity with you; they are constrained to inquire how the state may be saved: while their opponents, in the very act of seeking popularity, are co-operating with philip. { } the one party said, 'you must pay taxes;' the other, 'there is no need to do so.' the one said, 'go to war, and do not trust him;' the other, 'remain at peace,'--until they were in the toils. and--not to mention each separately--i believe that the same thing was true of all. the one side said what would enable them to win favour; the other, what would secure the safety of their state. and at last the main body of the people accepted much that they proposed--not now from any such desire for gratification, nor from ignorance, but as a concession to circumstances, thinking that their cause was now wholly lost. { } it is this fate, i solemnly assure you, that i dread for you, when the time comes that you make your reckoning, and realize that there is no longer anything that can be done. may you never find yourselves, men of athens, in such a position! yet in any case, it were better to die ten thousand deaths, than to do anything out of servility towards philip [or to sacrifice any of those who speak for your good]. a noble recompense did the people in oreus receive, for entrusting themselves to philip's friends, and thrusting euphraeus aside! { } and a noble recompense the democracy of eretria, for driving away your envoys, and surrendering to cleitarchus! they are slaves, scourged and butchered! a noble clemency did he show to the olynthians, who elected lasthenes to command the cavalry, and banished apollonides! { } it is folly, and it is cowardice, to cherish hopes like these, to give way to evil counsels, to refuse to do anything that you should do, to listen to the advocates of the enemy's cause, and to fancy that you dwell in so great a city that, whatever happens, you will not suffer any harm. { } aye, and it is shameful to exclaim after the event, 'why, who would have expected this? of course, we ought to have done, or not to have done, such and such things!' the olynthians could tell you of many things, to have foreseen which in time would have saved them from destruction. so too could the people of oreus, and the phocians, and every other people that has been destroyed. { } but how does that help them now? so long as the vessel is safe, be it great or small, so long must the sailor and the pilot and every man in his place exert himself and take care that no one may capsize it by design or by accident: but when the seas have overwhelmed it, all their efforts are in vain. { } so it is, men of athens, with us. while we are still safe, with our great city, our vast resources, our noble name, what are we to do? perhaps some one sitting here has long been wishing to ask this question. aye, and i will answer it, and will move my motion; and you shall carry it, if you wish. we ourselves, in the first place, must conduct the resistance and make preparation for it--with ships, that is, and money, and soldiers. for though all but ourselves give way and become slaves, we at least must contend for freedom. { } and when we have made all these preparations ourselves, and let them be seen, then let us call upon the other states for aid, and send envoys to carry our message [in all directions--to the peloponnese, to rhodes, to chios, to the king; for it is not unimportant for his interests either that philip should be prevented from subjugating the world]; that so, if you persuade them, you may have partners to share the danger and the expense, in case of need; and if you do not, you may at least delay the march of events. { } for since the war is with a single man, and not against the strength of a united state, even delay is not without its value, any more than were those embassies[n] of protest which last year went round the peloponnese, when i and polyeuctus, that best of men, and hegesippus and the other envoys went on our tour, and forced him to halt, so that he neither went to attack acarnania, nor set out for the peloponnese. { } but i do not mean that we should call upon the other states, if we are not willing to take any of the necessary steps ourselves. it is folly to sacrifice what is our own, and then pretend to be anxious for the interests of others--to neglect the present, and alarm others in regard to the future. i do not propose this. i say that we must send money to the forces in the chersonese, and do all that they ask of us; that we must make preparation ourselves, while we summon, convene, instruct, and warn the rest of the hellenes. that is the policy for a city with a reputation such as yours. { } but if you fancy that the people of chalcis or of megara will save hellas, while you run away from the task, you are mistaken. they may well be content if they can each save themselves. the task is yours. it is the prerogative that your forefathers won, and through many a great peril bequeathed to you. { } but if each of you is to sit and consult his inclinations, looking for some way by which he may escape any personal action, the first consequence will be that you will never find any one who will act; and the second, i fear, that the day will come when we shall be forced to do, at one and the same time, all the things we wish to avoid. { } this then is my proposal, and this i move. if the proposal is carried out, i think that even now the state of our affairs may be remedied. but if any one has a better proposal to make, let him make it, and give us his advice. and i pray to all the gods that whatever be the decision that you are about to make, it may be for your good. footnotes [ ] these are printed in square brackets in the translation. on the crown (or. xviii) [_introduction_. the advice given by demosthenes in the third philippic (spoken before the middle of ) was in the main followed. he himself was sent almost immediately to byzantium, where he renewed the alliance between that city and athens, and at the same time entered into relations with abydos and the thracian princes. rhodes, and probably chios and cos, were also conciliated, and an embassy was sent to the king of persia to ask for aid against philip. the king appears to have sent assistance to diopeithes, and it is also stated (not on the best authority) that he sent large sums of money to demosthenes and hypereides. demosthenes further succeeded, in conjunction with callias of chalcis, in organizing a league against philip, which included corinth, megara, corcyra, and the acarnanians, and which at least supplied a considerable number of men and some funds. the cities of euboea, most of which had been in the hands of philip's party, were also formed into a confederacy, in alliance with athens, under the leadership of chalcis; philistides was expelled from oreus, about july , by the allied forces under cephisophon; and later in the summer, phocion drove cleitarchus from eretria. on the motion of aristonicus, the athenians voted demosthenes a golden crown, which was conferred on him in the theatre at the great dionysia in march . the arrest of anaxinus of oreus, and his condemnation as a spy, acting in philip's interest, must have occurred about the same time. not long afterwards demosthenes succeeded in carrying out a complete reorganization of the trierarchic system, by which he made the burden of the expense vary strictly according to property, and secured a regular and efficient supply of ships, money, and men. in the meantime (in or ) the island of peparethus was attacked by philip's ships, in revenge for the seizure of the macedonian garrison in halonnesus by the peparethians: and the athenian admirals were ordered to retaliate. philip himself had been pursuing his course in thrace; and on the rejection of his request to byzantium for an alliance, he laid siege (late in ) to perinthus (which lay on his way to byzantium), sending part of his forces through the chersonese. aided by byzantine and persian soldiers, perinthus held out, till at last philip took off most of his forces and besieged byzantium itself. he had shortly before this sent to athens an express declaration of war, and received a similar declaration from her, the formal excuse for which was found in the recent seizure by his ships of some athenian merchant-vessels. but with help from athens, chios, rhodes, and cos, the byzantines maintained the defence. philip's position became serious; but he managed by a ruse to get his ships away into the open sea, and even to do some damage to the athenian settlers in the chersonese. in the winter he withdrew from byzantium, and in made an incursion into scythia; but, returning through the country of the triballi, he sustained some loss, and was severely wounded. later in the year a new sacred war which had arisen gave him a convenient opportunity for the invasion of greece. at the meeting of the amphictyonic council in the autumn of ,[ ] aeschines was one of the representatives of athens. the athenians had recently offended thebes by re-gilding and dedicating in the restored temple at delphi fifty shields, with an inscription stating that they were spoil 'taken from the medes and the thebans, when they fought against the hellenes' (probably at plataeae in ). the locrians of amphissa intended (according to aeschines' account) to propose that the council should fine athens fifty talents. aeschines rose to state the case for athens; but a delegate from amphissa forbade all mention of the athenians, and demanded their exclusion from the temple, on the ground of their alliance with the accursed phocians. aeschines retorted by charging the amphisseans with cultivating and building upon the sacred plain of cirrha--acts forbidden for all time in b.c.--and roused the council to such indignation that they gathered a body of men and destroyed the harbour and the unlawful buildings of cirrha; but they were severely handled by the amphisseans, and the council now voted that the amphictyonic states should send representatives, to discuss the question of war against amphissa, to a meeting to be held at thermopylae before the spring meeting of the council. to this preliminary meeting, the athenians (though inclined to view aeschines' performance with favour), on the advice of demosthenes, sent no representatives; nor did the thebans (the allies of amphissa). war was declared by the amphictyons against amphissa; but cottyphus, the thessalian, who had been appointed general, made little headway, and (at the spring or the autumn meeting of the council) declared that the amphictyonic states must either send men and money, or else make philip their general. philip was, of course, at once appointed; but instead of proceeding against amphissa, marched to elateia and fortified it. this caused the greatest alarm at athens. demosthenes was immediately dispatched to thebes, where he succeeded, by what appear to have been liberal and judicious proposals, in making an alliance between thebes and athens, in spite of the attempts of philip's envoys to counteract his influence. euboea, megara, corinth, and other members of the league also sent help. philip himself called upon his own friends in the peloponnese for aid, and at last moved towards amphissa. demosthenes seems now to have succeeded in applying the festival-money to purposes of war, and with the aid of lycurgus, who became controller of the festival fund, to have amassed a large sum for the use of the state. at the dionysia of he was again crowned, on the proposal of demomeles and hypereides. the allies at first won some successes and refortified some of the phocian towns, but afterwards unfortunately divided their forces, and so enabled philip to defeat the two divisions separately, and to destroy amphissa. philip's proposals of peace found supporters both in thebes and in athens, but were counteracted by demosthenes. late in the summer of , the decisive battle was fought at chaeroneia, and resulted in the total rout of the allies. demosthenes himself was one of the fugitives. philip placed a macedonian garrison in thebes, restored his exiled friends to power there, established a council of three hundred, and (through them) put to death or banished his enemies. he also gave orchomenus, thespiae, and plataeae their independence. after a moment of panic, the athenians, led by demosthenes, lycurgus, and hypereides, proceeded to take all possible measures for the defence of the city, while private munificence supplied the treasury. demosthenes himself superintended the repair of the fortifications, and went on a mission to secure a supply of corn. but philip, instead of marching upon athens, sent a message by demades, whom he had taken prisoner at chaeroneia; and the assembly, in reply, instructed demades, aeschines, and phocion to ask philip to release his athenian prisoners. philip released them without ransom, and sent antipater and alexander (with the ashes of the athenian dead) to offer terms of peace. by the 'peace of demades', concluded while demosthenes was still absent, the alliance between athens and philip was renewed; the independence of athens was guaranteed; oropus was taken from thebes and restored to athens; and she was permitted to retain salamis, samos, delos, and probably lemnos and imbros. on the other hand, she lost all her possessions on the hellespont and in the chersonese, and promised to join the league which philip intended to form for the invasion of persia. demosthenes was selected by the assembly to deliver the funeral oration upon those who fell at chaeroneia; and although the macedonian party attacked him repeatedly in the law-courts, he was always acquitted. philip paid a long visit to the peloponnese, in the course of which he placed a macedonian garrison in corinth, ravaged laconia, giving parts of it to his allies, the argives and arcadians, and announced his plans for the invasion of persia at the head of the greeks; he then returned to macedonia. in demosthenes was again commissioner of fortifications, as well as controller of the festival fund--the most important office in the state. he not only performed his work most efficiently, but gave considerable sums for public purposes out of his private fortune; and early in ctesiphon proposed, and the council resolved, that he should once more be crowned at the dionysia. but before the proposal could be brought before the assembly, aeschines indicted ctesiphon for its alleged illegality. the trial did not take place until late in the summer of . we do not know the reason for so long a delay, but probably the events of the intervening time were such as to render the state of public feeling unfavourable to aeschines. in philip was assassinated, and was succeeded by alexander. in alexander destroyed thebes, which had revolted, and sold its inhabitants into slavery. he also demanded from athens the surrender of demosthenes and other anti-macedonian politicians and generals, but was persuaded to be content with the banishment of charidemus and ephialtes, and the promise of the prosecution of demosthenes for using subsidies from persia to help thebes--a prosecution which was allowed to drop. from onwards alexander was pursuing his conquests in the east, and we know practically nothing of the history of athens until the trial of ctesiphon came on in . aeschines alleged against ctesiphon ( ) that it was illegal to propose to crown any one who had not passed his examination before the board of auditors at the end of his term of office; and that demosthenes, who had been commissioner of fortifications and controller of the festival fund, was still in this position: ( ) that it was illegal to proclaim the grant of a crown at the dionysia, except in the case of crowns conferred by foreign states: ( ) that it was illegal to insert untrue statements in the public records, and that the language in which ctesiphon's decree described the political career of demosthenes was untrue. on the first point aeschines was almost certainly right: demosthenes' defence is sophistical, and all that could really be said was that the rule had often been broken before. on the second point, certainty is impossible: the most probable view (though it also has its difficulties) is that there were two inconsistent laws, and that one of them permitted the proclamation in the theatre, if expressly voted by the people; but the alleged illegality had certainly been often committed. the third point, which raised the question of the value to athens of demosthenes' whole political life, was that upon which the case really turned; and it is to this that demosthenes devotes the greater part of his speech, breaking up his reply into convenient stages by discussions (of a far less happy description) of the other counts of the indictment, and of the character and career of aeschines. as in the speech on the embassy, certain facts are misrepresented, and there are passages which are in bad taste; but demosthenes proves beyond doubt his unswerving loyalty to the high ideal of policy which he had formed for his country, and it is with good reason that parts of this speech have always been felt to reach a height of eloquence which has never been surpassed. the jury acquitted ctesiphon: and aeschines, failing to obtain a fifth part of the votes, and thus incurring a heavy fine and the loss of some of the rights of a citizen, left athens, and lived most of the remainder of his life at rhodes. the following is an analysis of the speech in outline:-- i. introduction (§§ - ). ii. defence against charges irrelevant to the indictment (§§ - ). ( ) introduction (§ ). ( ) postponement of reply to charges against his private life (§§ , ). ( ) reply to charges against his public life (§§ - ). (a) criticism of aeschines' method of attack (§§ - ). (b) reply in reference to the peace of philocrates (§§ - ). iii. defence against the indictment itself (§§ - ). ( ) introduction (§§ - ). ( ) defence of his policy b.c. - (§§ - ). ( ) the alleged illegality of crowning him before he had passed his audit (§§ - ). ( ) the alleged illegality of the proclamation in the theatre (§§ , ). ( ) conclusion, including criticism of aeschines' method of attack (§§ - ). iv. aeschines' life and character (§§ - ). ( ) introduction (§§ - ). ( ) parentage and early life of aeschines (§§ - ). ( ) aeschines' connexion with antiphon, python, anaxinus, and others (§§ - ). ( ) aeschines' part in stirring up the war against amphissa in (§§ - ). v. demosthenes' own policy in and (§§ - ). ( ) narrative and defence of the alliance with thebes (§§ - ). ( ) why did not aeschines protest at the time? (§§ - ). ( ) defence of his policy as true to the spirit of athenian history (§§ - ). ( ) narrative and defence, continued (§§ - ). ( ) further criticism of aeschines' method of attack (§§ - ). vi. replies to various arguments of aeschines (§§ - ). ( ) aeschines' comparison of the inquiry to the examination of a balance-sheet (§§ - ). ( ) a proper inquiry would show that demosthenes had increased the resources of athens (§§ - ). ( ) reply to the charge of saddling athens with an undue share of the expense of the war (§§ - ). ( ) reply to the charge of responsibility for the defeat of chaeroneia (§§ - ). ( ) vindication of his policy after the battle of chaeroneia (§§ - ). ( ) reply to aeschines' remarks about the harm done to athens by demosthenes' bad fortune (§§ - ). (a) general remarks (§§ - ). (b) the fortune of demosthenes (§§ , ). (c) the fortune of aeschines (§§ - ). (d) comparison of the two (§§ , ). (e) demosthenes' use of his fortune for purposes of public and private munificence (§§ - ). (f) demosthenes not responsible for the misfortunes of athens (§§ - ). ( ) reply to aeschines' warning against demosthenes' cleverness (§§ - ). (a) comparison of the use made of their talents by the two orators (§§ - ). (b) the choice of demosthenes, not aeschines, to deliver the funeral oration (§§ - ). ( ) aeschines' feelings about the defeat of chaeroneia (§§ - ). ( ) the part played by traitors in recent history (§§ - ). vii. epilogue (§§ - ). ( ) demosthenes' incorruptibility (§§ , ). ( ) demosthenes' measures for the protection of athens (§§ - ). ( ) comparison of the services of the two orators to athens (§§ - ). ( ) reply to the comparison of demosthenes with the men of old, by a final comparison of the two orators (§§ - ). ( ) peroration (§ ).] { } i pray first, men of athens, to every god and goddess, that the goodwill, which i ever feel towards this city and towards all of you, may in equal measure be vouchsafed to me by you at this present trial: and secondly--a prayer which especially touches yourselves, your consciences, and your reputation--that the gods may put it into your minds not to take counsel of my adversary[n] in regard to the spirit in which you ought to hear me (for that would surely be a cruel thing), { } but of the laws and of your oath; wherein besides all other precepts of justice, this also is written--that you shall listen to both sides with a like mind. and this means, not only that you should have formed no prejudice, and should accord equal goodwill to each, but also that you should give leave to every man who pleads before you to adopt that order, and make that defence, upon which he has resolved and fixed his choice. { } i am in many respects at a disadvantage in the present controversy, as compared with aeschines; and particularly, men of athens, in two points of importance. the first is that i am not contending for the same stake as he. it is not the same thing for me to lose your goodwill now, as it is for him to fail to win his case; since for me--but i would say nothing unpleasant [n]* at the opening of my address--i say only that aeschines can well afford to risk this attack upon me. the second disadvantage lies in the natural and universal tendency of mankind to hear invective and denunciation with pleasure, and to be offended with those who praise themselves. { } and of the two courses in question, that which contributes to men's pleasure has been given to aeschines, and that which annoys (i may say) every one is left for me. if, to avoid giving such annoyance, i say nothing of all that i myself have done, it will be thought that i am unable to clear myself of the charges against me, or to show the grounds upon which i claim to deserve distinction. if, on the other hand, i proceed to speak of my past acts and my political life, i shall often be compelled to speak of myself. i will endeavour, then, to do this as modestly as possible; and for all that the necessities of the case compel me to say, the blame must in fairness be borne by the prosecutor, who initiated a trial of such a kind as this. { } i think, men of athens, that you would all admit that this present trial equally concerns myself and ctesiphon, and demands no less earnest attention from me than from him. for while it is a painful and a grievous thing for a man to be robbed of anything, particularly if it is at the hands of an enemy that this befalls him, it is especially so, when he is robbed of your goodwill and kindness, just in proportion as to win these is the greatest possible gain. { } and because such is the issue at stake in the present trial, i request and entreat you all alike to give me, while i make my defence upon the charges that have been brought against me, a fair hearing, as you are commanded to do by the laws--those laws to which their original maker, your well-wisher and the people's friend, solon, thought fit to give the sanction not of enactment only, but also of an oath on the part of those who act as judges: { } not because he distrusted you (so at least it seems to me), but because he saw that a defendant cannot escape from the imputations and the slanders which fall with special force from the prosecutor, because he is the first to speak, unless each of you who sit in judgement, keeping his conscience pure in the sight of god, will receive the pleadings of the later speaker also with the same favour, and will thus, because his attention has been given equally and impartially to both sides, form his decision upon the case in its entirety. { } and now, when i am about, as it seems, to render an account of my whole private life and public career, i would once more invoke the aid of the gods; and in the presence of you all i pray, first, that the goodwill which i ever feel towards this city and towards all of you, may in equal measure be vouchsafed to me by you at this trial; and secondly, that whatsoever judgement upon this present suit will conduce to your public reputation, and the purity of each man's conscience, that judgement they may put it into all your minds to give. { } now if aeschines had confined his charges to the subject of the indictment, i too, in making my defence, would have dealt at once with the actual resolution of the council. but since he has devoted no less a portion of his speech to the relation of other matters, and for the most part has spoken against me falsely, i think it is necessary, and at the same time just, that i should deal briefly, men of athens, with these, in order that none of you may be led by irrelevant arguments to listen less favourably to my pleas in answer to the indictment itself. { } as for his slanderous vituperation of my private life, mark how straightforward and how just is the reply that i make. if you know me as the man that he charged me with being (for my life has been spent nowhere but in your own midst), do not even suffer me to speak--no, not though my whole public career has been one of transcendent merit--but rise and condemn me without delay. but if, in your judgement and belief, i am a better man than aeschines, and come of better men; if i and mine are no worse than any other respectable persons (to use no offensive expression); then do not trust him even in regard to other points, for it is plain that all that he said was equally fictitious; but once more accord to me to-day the goodwill which throughout the past you have so often displayed towards me in previous trials. { } knave as you are,[n] aeschines, you were assuredly more fool than knave, when you thought that i should dismiss all that i had to say with regard to my past acts and political life, and should turn to meet the abuse that fell from you. i shall not do so; i am not so brain-sick; but i will review the falsehoods and the calumnies which you uttered against my political career; and then, if the court desires it, i will afterwards refer to the ribald language that has been so incontinently used. { } the offences charged against me are many; and for some of them the laws assign heavy and even the most extreme penalties. but i will tell you what is the motive which animates the present suit. it gives play to the malice of a personal enemy, to his insolence, his abuse, his contumelies, and every expression of his hostility: and yet, assuming that the charges and the imputations which have been made are true, it does not enable the state[n] to exact a penalty that is adequate, or nearly adequate, to the offences. { } for it is not right to seek to debar another from coming before the people[n] and receiving a hearing, nor to do so in a spirit of malice and envy. heaven knows, it is neither straightforward, nor citizen-like, nor just, men of athens! if the crimes by which he saw me injuring the city were of such a magnitude as he just now so theatrically set forth, he should have had recourse to the punishments enjoined by the laws at the time of the crimes themselves. if he saw me so acting as to deserve impeachment, he should have impeached me, and so brought me to trial before you; if he saw me proposing illegal measures, he should have indicted me for their illegality. for surely, if he can prosecute ctesiphon on my account, he would not have failed to indict me in person, had he thought that he could convict me. { } and further, if he saw me committing any of those other crimes against you, which he just now slanderously enumerated, or any other crimes whatsoever, there are laws which deal with each, and punishments, and lawsuits and judgements involving penalties that are harsh and severe: to all of these he could have had recourse; and from the moment when it was seen that he had acted so, and had conducted his hostilities against me on that plan, his present accusation of me would have been in line with his past conduct. { } but as it is, he has forsaken the straight path of justice; he has shrunk from all attempts to convict me at the time; and after all these years, with the imputations, the jests, the invectives, that he has accumulated, he appears to play his part. so it is, that though his accusations are against me, it is ctesiphon that he prosecutes; and though he sets his quarrel with me in the forefront of the whole suit, he has never faced me in person to settle the quarrel, and it is another whom we see him trying to deprive of his civil rights. { } yet surely, besides everything else that may be pleaded on behalf of ctesiphon, this, i think, may surely be most reasonably urged--that we ought in justice to have brought our own quarrel to the test by ourselves, instead of avoiding all conflict with one another, and looking for a third party to whom we could do harm. such iniquity really passes all bounds. { } from this one may see the nature of all his charges alike, uttered, as they have been, without justice or regard for truth. yet i desire also to examine them severally, and more particularly the false statements which he made against me in regard to the peace and the embassy, when he ascribed to me[n] the things which he himself had done in conjunction with philocrates. and here it is necessary, men of athens, and perhaps appropriate,[n] that i should remind you of the state of affairs subsisting during that period, so that you may view each group of actions in the light of the circumstances of the time. { } when the phocian war had broken out[n] (not through any action of mine, for i had not yet entered public life), your own attitude, in the first place, was such, that you wished for the preservation of the phocians, although you saw that their actions were unjustifiable; while you would have been delighted at anything that might happen to the thebans, against whom you felt an indignation that was neither unreasonable nor unfair; for they had not used their good fortune at leuctra with moderation. and, in the second place, the peloponnese was all disunited: those who detested the spartans [n] were not strong enough to annihilate them, and those who had previously governed with the support of sparta [n] were no longer able to maintain their control over their cities; but both these and all the other states were in a condition of indeterminate strife and confusion. { } when philip saw this (for it was not hard to see), he tried, by dispensing money to the traitors whom each state contained, to throw them all into collision and stir up one against another; and thus, amid the blunders and perversity of others, he was making his own preparations, and growing great to the danger of all. and when it became clear to all that the then overbearing (but now unhappy) thebans, distressed by the length of the war, would be forced to fly to you for aid,[n] philip, to prevent this--to prevent the formation of any union between the cities--made offers of peace to you, and of assistance to them. { } now what was it that helped him, and enabled him to find in you his almost willing dupes? it was the baseness (if that is the right name to use), or the ignorance, or both, of the rest of the hellenes, who, though you were engaged in a long and continuous war, and that on behalf of the interests of all, as has been proved by the event, never assisted you either with money or with men, or in any other way whatsoever. and in your just and proper indignation with them, you listened readily to philip. it was for these reasons, therefore, and not through any action of mine, that the peace which we then conceded was negotiated; and any one who investigates the matter honestly will find that it is the crimes and the corrupt practices of these men, in the course of the negotiations, that are responsible for our position to-day. { } it is in the interests of truth that i enter into all these events with this exactitude and thoroughness; for however strong the appearance of criminality in these proceedings may be, it has, i imagine, nothing to do with me. the first man to suggest or mention the peace was aristodemus[n] the actor; and the person who took the matter up and moved the motion, and sold his services for the purpose, along with aeschines, was philocrates of hagnus--your partner, aeschines, not mine, even if you split your sides with lying; while those who supported him, from whatever motive (for of that i say nothing at present), were eubulus and cephisophon. i had no part in the matter anywhere. { } and yet, although the facts are such as with absolute truth i am representing them to be, he carried his effrontery so far as to dare to assert that i was not only responsible for the peace, but had also prevented the city from acting in conjunction with a general assembly of the hellenes in making it. what? and you--oh! how can one find a name that can be applied to you?--when you saw me (for you were there) preventing the city from taking this great step and forming so grand an alliance as you just now described, did you once raise a protest or come forward to give information and to set forth the crimes with which you now charge me? { } if i had covenanted with philip for money that i would prevent the coalition of the hellenes, your only course was to refuse to keep silence--to cry aloud, to protest, to reveal the fact to your fellow countrymen. on no occasion did you do this: no such utterance of yours was ever heard by any one. in fact there was no embassy away at the time on a mission to any hellenic state; the hellenes had all long ago been tried and found wanting;[n] and in all that he has said upon this matter there is not a single sound word. { } and, apart from that, his falsehoods involve the greatest calumnies upon this city. for if you were at one and the same time convoking the hellenes with a view to war, and sending ambassadors yourselves to philip to discuss peace, it was a deed for a eurybatus,[n] not a task for a state or for honest men, that you were carrying out. but that is not the case; indeed it is not. for what could possibly have been your object in summoning them at that moment? was it with a view to peace? but they all had peace already. or with a view to war? but you were yourselves discussing peace. it is therefore evident that neither was it i that introduced or was responsible for the peace in its original shape, nor is one of all the other falsehoods which he told of me shown to be true. { } again, consider the course of action which, when the city had concluded the peace, each of us now chose to adopt. for from this you will know who it was that co-operated with philip throughout, and who it was that acted in your interest and sought the good of the city. as for me, i proposed, as a member of the council, that the ambassadors should sail as quickly as possible to any district in which they should ascertain philip to be, and receive his oath from him. { } but even when i had carried this resolution, they would not act upon it. what did this mean, men of athens? i will inform you. philip's interest required that the interval before he took the oath should be as long as possible; yours, that it should be as short as possible. and why? because you broke off all your preparations for the war, not merely from the day when he took the oath, but from the day when you first hoped that peace would be made; and for his part, this was what he was all along working for; for he thought (and with truth) that whatever places he could snatch from athens before he took the oath, would remain securely his, since no one would break the peace for their sake. { } foreseeing and calculating upon this, men of athens, i proposed this decree--that we should sail to any district in which philip might be, and receive his oath as soon as possible, in order that the oaths might be taken while the thracians, your allies, were still in possession of those strongholds[n] of which aeschines just now spoke with contempt--serrhium, myrtenum, and ergiske; and that philip might not snatch from us the keys of the country and make himself master of thrace, nor obtain an abundant supply of money and of soldiers, and so proceed without difficulty to the prosecution of his further designs. { } and now, instead of citing or reading this decree he slanders me on the ground that i thought fit, as a member of the council, to introduce the envoys. but what should i have done? was i to propose _not_ to introduce those who had come for the express purpose of speaking with you? or to order the lessee of the theatre not to assign them seats? but they would have watched the play from the threepenny seats,[n] if this decree had not been proposed. should i have guarded the interests of the city in petty details, and sold them wholesale, as my opponents did? surely not. (_to the clerk_.) now take this decree, which the prosecutor passed over, though he knew it well, and read it. { } [_the decree of demosthenes is read_.] { } though i had carried this decree, and was seeking the good not of philip, but of the city, these worthy ambassadors paid little heed to it, but sat idle in macedonia for three whole months,[n] until philip arrived from thrace, after subduing the whole country; when they might, within ten days, or equally well[n] within three or four, have reached the hellespont, and saved the strongholds, by receiving his oath before he could seize them. for he would not have touched them when we were present; or else, if he had done so, we should have refused to administer the oath to him; and in that case he would have failed to obtain the peace: he would not have had both the peace and the strongholds as well. { } such was philip's first act of fraud, during the time of the embassy, and the first instance of venality on the part of these wicked men; and over this i confess that then and now and always i have been and am at war and at variance with them. now observe, immediately after this, a second and even greater piece of villainy. { } as soon as philip had sworn to the peace, after first gaining possession of thrace because these men did not obey my decree, he obtained from them--again by purchase--the postponement of our departure from macedonia, until all should be in readiness for his campaign against the phocians; in order that, instead of our bringing home a report of his intentions and his preparations for the march, which would make you set out and sail round to thermopylae with your war-ships as you did before,[n] you might only hear our report of the facts when he was already on this side of thermopylae, and you could do nothing. { } and philip was beset with such fear and such a weight of anxiety, lest in spite of his occupation of these places, his object should slip from his grasp, if, before the phocians were destroyed, you resolved to assist them, that he hired this despicable creature, not now in company with his colleagues, but by himself alone, to make to you a statement and a report of such a character that owing to them all was lost. { } but i request and entreat you, men of athens, to remember throughout this whole trial, that, had aeschines made no accusation that was not included in the indictment, i too would not have said a word that did not bear upon it; but since he has had recourse to all kinds of imputation and slander at once, i am compelled also to give a brief answer to each group of charges. { } what then were the statements uttered by him that day, in consequence of which all was lost? 'you must not be perturbed,' he said, 'at philip's having crossed to this side of thermopylae; for you will get everything that you desire, if you remain quiet; and within two or three days you will hear that he has become the friend of those whose enemy he was, and the enemy of those whose friend he was, when he first came. for,' said he, 'it is not phrases that confirm friendships' (a finely sententious expression!) 'but identity of interest; and it is to the interest of philip and of the phocians and of yourselves alike, to be rid of the heartless and overbearing demeanour of the thebans.' { } to these statements some gave a ready ear, in consequence of the tacit ill-feeling towards the thebans at the time. what then followed--and not after a long interval, but immediately? the phocians were overthrown; their cities were razed to the ground; you, who had believed aeschines and remained inactive, were soon afterwards bringing in your effects from the country; while aeschines received his gold; and besides all this, the city reaped the ill-will of the thebans and thessalians, while their gratitude for what had been done went to philip. { } to prove that this is so, (_to the clerk_) read me both the decree of callisthenes,[n] and philip's letter. (_to the jury_.) these two documents together will make all the facts plain. (_to the clerk_.) read. { } [_the decree of callisthenes is read_.] were these the hopes, on the strength of which you made the peace? was this what this hireling promised you? { } (_to the clerk_.) now read the letter which philip sent after this. [_philip's letter is read_.] { } you hear how obviously, in this letter sent to you, philip is addressing definite information to his own allies. 'i have done these things,' he tells them, 'against the will of the athenians, and to their annoyance; and so, men of thebes and thessaly, if you are wise, you will regard them as enemies, and will trust me.' he does not write in those actual terms, but that is what he intends to indicate. by these means he so carried them away, that they did not foresee or realize any of the consequences, but allowed him to get everything into his own power: and that is why, poor men, they have experienced their present calamities. { } but the man who helped him to create this confidence, who co-operated with him, who brought home that false report and deluded you, he it is who now bewails the sufferings of the thebans and enlarges upon their piteousness--he, who is himself the cause both of these and of the misery in phocis, and of all the other evils which the hellenes have endured. yes, it is evident that you are pained at what has come to pass, aeschines, and that you are sorry for the thebans, when you have property in boeotia[n] and are farming the land that was theirs; and that i rejoice at it--i, whose surrender was immediately demanded by the author of the disaster! { } but i have digressed into subjects of which it will perhaps be more convenient to speak presently. i will return to the proofs which show that it is the crimes of these men that are the cause of our condition to-day. for when you had been deceived by philip, through the agency of these men, who while serving as ambassadors had sold themselves and made a report in which there was not a word of truth--when the unhappy phocians had been deceived and their cities annihilated--what followed? { } the despicable thessalians and the slow-witted thebans regarded philip as their friend, their benefactor, their saviour. philip was their all-in-all. they would not even listen to the voice of any one who wished to express a different opinion. you yourselves, though you viewed what had been done with suspicion and vexation, nevertheless kept the peace; for there was nothing else that you could have done. and the other hellenes, who, like yourselves, had been deluded and disappointed of their hopes,[n] also kept the peace, and gladly;[n] since in a sense they also were remotely aimed at by the war. { } for when philip was going about and subduing the illyrians and triballi and some of the hellenes as well, and bringing many large forces into his own power, and when some of the members of the several states were taking advantage of the peace to travel to macedonia, and were being corrupted--aeschines among them--at such a time all of those whom philip had in view in thus making his preparations were really being attacked by him. { } whether they failed to realize it is another question, which does not concern me. for i was continually uttering warnings and protests, both in your midst and wherever i was sent. but the cities were stricken with disease: those who were engaged in political and practical affairs were taking bribes and being corrupted by the hope of money; while the mass of private citizens either showed no foresight, or else were caught by the bait of ease and leisure from day to day; and all alike had fallen victims to some such delusive fancy, as that the danger would come upon every one but themselves, and that through the perils of others they would be able to secure their own position as they pleased. { } and so, i suppose, it has come to pass that the masses have atoned for their great and ill-timed indifference by the loss of their freedom, while the leaders in affairs, who fancied that they were selling everything except themselves, have realized that they had sold themselves first of all. for instead of being called friends and guest-friends, as they were called at the time when they were taking their bribes, they now hear themselves called flatterers, and god-forsaken, and all the other names that they deserve. { } for no one, men of athens, spends his money out of a desire to benefit the traitor; nor, when once he has secured the object for which he bargains, does he employ the traitor to advise him with regard to other objects: if it were so, nothing could be happier than a traitor. but it is not so, of course. far from it! when the aspirant after dominion has gained his object, he is also the master of those who have sold it to him: and because then he knows their villainy, he then hates and mistrusts them, and covers them with insults. { } for observe--for even if the time of the events is past, the time for realizing truths like these is ever present to wise men. lasthenes[n] was called his 'friend'; but only until he had betrayed olynthus. and timolaus;[n] but only until he had destroyed thebes. and eudicus and simus[n] of larissa; but only until they had put thessaly in philip's power. and now, persecuted as they are, and insulted, and subjected to every kind of misery, the whole inhabited world has become filled with such men. and what of aristratus[n] at sicyon? what of perillus[n] at megara? are they not outcasts? { } from these instances one can see very clearly, that it is he who best protects his own country and speaks most constantly against such men, that secures for traitors and hirelings like yourselves, aeschines, the continuance of your opportunities for taking bribes. it is the majority of those who are here, those who resist your will, that you must thank for the fact that you live and draw your pay; for, left to yourselves, you would long ago have perished. { } there is still much that i might say about the transactions of that time, but i think that even what i have said is more than enough. the blame rests with aeschines, who has drenched me with the stale dregs[n] of his own villainy and crime, from which i was compelled to clear myself in the eyes of those who are too young to remember the events; though perhaps you who knew, even before i said a single word, of aeschines' service as a hireling, may have felt some annoyance as you listened. { } he calls it, forsooth, 'friendship' and 'guest-friendship'; and somewhere in his speech just now he used the expression, 'the man who casts in my teeth my guest-friendship with alexander.' _i_ cast in your teeth your guest-friendship with alexander? how did you acquire it? how came you to be thought worthy of it? never would i call you the guest-friend of philip or the friend of alexander--i am not so insane--unless you are to call harvesters and other hired servants the friends and guest-friends of those who have hired them. [but that is not the case, of course. far from it!] { } nay, i call you the hireling, formerly of philip, and now of alexander, and so do all who are present. if you disbelieve me, ask them--or rather i will ask them for you. men of athens, do you think of aeschines as the hireling or as the guest-friend of alexander? you hear what they say. { } i now wish, without more delay, to make my defence upon the indictment itself, and to go through my past acts, in order that aeschines may hear (though he knows them well) the grounds on which i claim to have a right both to the gifts which the council have proposed, and even to far greater than these. (_to the clerk_.) now take the indictment and read it. { , } [the indictment is read.] { } these, men of athens, are the points in the resolution which the prosecutor assails; and these very points will, i think, afford me my first means of proving to you that the defence which i am about to offer is an absolutely fair one. for i will take the points of the indictment in the very same order as the prosecutor: i will speak of each in succession, and will knowingly pass over nothing. { } any decision upon the statement that i 'consistently do and say what is best for the people, and am eager to do whatever good i can', and upon the proposal to vote me thanks for this, depends, i consider, upon my past political career: for it is by an investigation of my career that either the truth and the propriety, or else the falsehood, of these statements which ctesiphon has made about me will be discovered. { } again, the proposal to crown me, without the addition of the clause 'when he has submitted to his examination', and the order to proclaim the award of the crown in the theatre, must, i imagine, stand or fall with my political career; for the question is whether i deserve the crown and the proclamation before my fellow countrymen or not. at the same time i consider myself further bound to point out to you the laws under which the defendant's proposal could be made. in this honest and straightforward manner, men of athens, i have determined to make my defence; and now i will proceed to speak of my past actions themselves. { } and let no one imagine that i am detaching my argument from its connexion with the indictment, if i break into a discussion of international transactions. for it is the prosecutor who, by assailing the clause of the decree which states that i do and say what is best, and by indicting it as false, has rendered the discussion of my whole political career essentially germane to the indictment; and further, out of the many careers which public life offers, it was the department of international affairs that i chose; so that i have a right to derive my proofs also from that department. { } i will pass over all that philip snatched from us and secured, in the days before i took part in public life as an orator. none of these losses, i imagine, has anything to do with me. but i will recall to you, and will render you an account of all that, from the day when i entered upon this career, he was _prevented_ from taking, when i have made one remark. { } philip, men of athens, had a great advantage in his favour. for in the midst of the hellenic peoples--and not of some only, but of all alike--there had sprung up a crop of traitors--corrupt, god-forsaken men--more numerous than they have ever been within the memory of man. these he took to help and co-operate with him; and great as the mutual ill-will and dissensions of the hellenes already were, he rendered them even worse, by deceiving some, making presents to others, and corrupting others in every way; and at a time when all had in reality but one interest--to prevent his becoming powerful--he divided them into a number of factions. { } all the hellenes then being in this condition, still ignorant of the growing and accumulating evil, you have to ask yourselves, men of athens, what policy and action it was fitting for the city to choose, and to hold me responsible for this; for the person who assumed that responsibility in the state was myself. { } should she, aeschines, have sacrificed her pride and her own dignity? should she have joined the ranks of the thessalians and dolopes,[n] and helped philip to acquire the empire of hellas, cancelling thereby the noble and righteous deeds of our forefathers? or, if she should not have done this (for it would have been in very truth an atrocious thing), should she have looked on, while all that she saw would happen, if no one prevented it--all that she realized, it seems, at a distance--was actually taking place? { } nay, i should be glad to ask to-day the severest critic of my actions, which party he would have desired the city to join--the party which shares the responsibility for the misery and disgrace which has fallen upon the hellenes (the party of the thessalians and their supporters, one may call it), or the party which looked on while these calamities were taking place, in the hope of gaining some advantage for themselves--in which we should place the arcadians and messenians and argives. { } but even of these, many--nay, all--have in the end fared worse than we. for if philip had departed immediately after his victory, and gone his way; if afterwards he had remained at peace, and had given no trouble whatever to any of his own allies or of the other hellenes; then there would have been some ground for blaming and accusing those who had opposed his plans. but if he has stripped them all alike of their dignity, their paramountcy, and their independence--nay, even of their free constitutions,[n] wherever he could do so--can it be denied that the policy which you adopted on my advice was the most glorious policy possible? { } but i return to my former point. what was it fitting for the city to do, aeschines, when she saw philip establishing for himself a despotic sway over the hellenes? what language should have been used, what measures proposed, by the adviser of the people at athens (for that it was at athens makes the utmost difference), when i knew that from the very first, up to the day when i myself ascended the platform, my country had always contended for pre-eminence, honour, and glory, and in the cause of honour, and for the interests of all, had sacrificed more money and lives than any other hellenic people had spent for their private ends: { } when i saw that philip himself, with whom our conflict lay, for the sake of empire and absolute power, had had his eye knocked out, his collar-bone broken, his hand and his leg maimed, and was ready to resign any part of his body that fortune chose to take from him, provided that with what remained he might live in honour and glory? { } and surely no one would dare to say that it was fitting that in one bred at pella, a place then inglorious and insignificant, there should have grown up so lofty a spirit that he aspired after the empire of hellas, and conceived such a project in his mind; but that in you, who are athenians, and who day by day in all that you hear and see behold the memorials of the gallantry of your forefathers, such baseness should be found, that you would yield up your liberty to philip by your own deliberate offer and deed. { } no man would say this. one alternative remained, and that, one which you were bound to take--that of a righteous resistance to the whole course of action by which he was doing you injury. you acted thus from the first, quite rightly and properly; while i helped by my proposals and advice during the time of my political activity, and i do not deny it. but what ought i to have done? for the time has come to ask you this, aeschines, and to dismiss everything else. { } amphipolis, pydna, poteidaea, halonnesus--all are blotted from my memory. as for serrhium, doriscus, the sack of peparethus, and all the other injuries inflicted upon the city, i renounce all knowledge of their ever having happened--though you actually said that _i_ involved my countrymen in hostility by talking of these things, when the decrees which deal with them were the work of eubulus and aristophon[n] and diopeithes,[n] and not mine at all--so glibly do you assert anything that suits your purpose! { } but of this too i say nothing at present. i only ask you whether philip, who was appropriating euboea,[n] and establishing it as a stronghold to command attica; who was making an attempt upon megara, seizing oreus, razing the walls of porthmus, setting up philistides as tyrant at oreus and cleitarchus at eretria, bringing the hellespont into his own power, besieging byzantium, destroying some of the cities of hellas, and restoring his exiled friends to others--whether he, i say, in acting thus, was guilty of wrong, violating the truce and breaking the peace, or not? was it fit that one of the hellenes should arise to prevent it, or not? { } if it was not fit--if it was fit that hellas should become like the mysian booty[n] in the proverb before men's eyes, while the athenians had life and being, then i have lost my labour in speaking upon this theme, and the city has lost its labour in obeying me: then let everything that has been done be counted for a crime and a blunder, and those my own! but if it was right that one should arise to prevent it, for whom could the task be more fitting than for the people of athens? that then, was the aim of _my_ policy; and when i saw philip reducing all mankind to servitude, i opposed him, and without ceasing warned and exhorted you to make no surrender. { } but the peace, aeschines, was in reality broken by philip, when he seized the corn-ships, not by athens. (_to the clerk_.) bring the decrees themselves, and the letter of philip, and read them in order. (_to the jury_.) for they will make it clear who is responsible, and for what. { } [_a decree is read_.] { } this decree then was proposed by eubulus, not by me; and the next by aristophon; he is followed first by hegesippus, and he by aristophon again, and then by philocrates, then by cephisophon, and then by all of them. but i proposed no decree upon this subject. (_to the clerk_.) read. [_decrees are read_.] { } as then i point to these decrees, so, aeschines, do you point to a decree of any kind, proposed by me, which makes me responsible for the war. you cannot do so: for had you been able, there is nothing which you would sooner have produced. indeed, even philip himself makes no charge against me as regards the war, though he complains of others. (_to the clerk_.) read philip's letter itself. { , } [_philip's letter is read_.] { } in this letter he has nowhere mentioned the name of demosthenes, nor made any charge against me. why is it then that, though he complains of others, he has not mentioned my own actions? because, if he had written anything about me, he must have mentioned his own acts of wrong; for it was these acts upon which i kept my grip, and these which i opposed. first of all, when he was trying to steal into the peloponnese, i proposed the embassy to the peloponnese;[n] then, when he was grasping at euboea, the embassy to euboea;[n] then the expedition--not an embassy any more--to oreus,[n] and that to eretria, when he had established tyrants in those cities. { } after that i dispatched all the naval expeditions, in the course of which the chersonese and byzantium and all our allies were saved. in consequence of this, the noblest rewards at the hands of those who had benefited by your action became yours--votes of thanks, glory, honours, crowns, gratitude; while of the victims of his aggression, those who followed your advice at the time secured their own deliverance, and those who neglected it had the memory of your warnings constantly in their minds, and regarded you not merely as their well-wishers, but as men of wisdom and prophetic insight; for all that you foretold has come to pass. { } and further, that philistides would have given a large sum to retain oreus, and cleitarchus to retain eretria, and philip himself, to be able to count upon the use of these places against you, and to escape all exposure of his other proceedings and all investigation, by any one in any place, of his wrongful acts--all this is not unknown to any one, least of all to you, aeschines. { } for the envoys sent at that time by cleitarchus and philistides lodged at your house, when they came here, and you acted as their patron.[n] though the city rejected them, as enemies whose proposals were neither just nor expedient, to you they were friends. none of their attempts succeeded, slander me though you may, when you assert that i say nothing when i receive money, but cry out when i spend it. that, certainly, is not _your_ way: for you cry out with money in your hands, and will never cease, unless those present cause you to do so by taking away your civil rights[n] to-day. { } now on that occasion, gentlemen, you crowned me for my conduct. aristonicus proposed a decree whose very syllables were identical with those of ctesiphon's present proposal; the crown was proclaimed in the theatre; and this was already the second proclamation[n] in my honour: and yet aeschines, though he was there, neither opposed the decree, nor indicted the mover. (_to the clerk_.) take this decree also and read it. { } [_the decree of aristonicus is read_.] { } now is any of you aware of any discredit that attached itself to the city owing to this decree? did any mockery or ridicule ensue, such as aeschines said must follow on the present occasion, if i were crowned? but surely when proceedings are recent and well known to all, then it is that, if they are satisfactory, they meet with gratitude, and if they are otherwise, with punishment. it appears, then, that on that occasion i met with gratitude, not with blame or punishment. { } thus the fact that, up to the time when these events took place, i acted throughout as was best for the city, has been acknowledged by the victory of my advice and my proposals in your deliberations, by the successful execution of the measures which i proposed, and the award of crowns in consequence of them to the city and to myself and to all, and by your celebration of sacrifices to the gods, and processions, in thankfulness for these blessings. { } when philip had been expelled from euboea--and while the arms which expelled him were yours, the statesmanship and the decrees (even though some of my opponents may split their sides) were mine--he proceeded to look for some other stronghold from which he could threaten the city. and seeing that we were more dependent than any other people upon imported corn, and wishing to get our corn-trade into his power, he advanced to thrace. first, he requested the byzantines, his own allies, to join him in the war against you; and when they refused and said (with truth) that they had not made their alliance with him for such a purpose, he erected a stockade against the city, brought up his engines, and proceeded to besiege it. { } i will not ask again what you ought to have done when this was happening; it is manifest to all. but who was it that went to the rescue of the byzantines, and saved them? who was it that prevented the hellespont from falling into other hands at that time? it was you, men of athens--and when i say 'you', i mean this city. and who was it that spoke and moved resolutions and acted for the city, and gave himself up unsparingly to the business of the state? it was i. { } but of the immense benefit thus conferred upon all, you no longer need words of mine to tell you, since you have had actual experience of it. for the war which then ensued, apart from the glorious reputation that it brought you, kept you supplied with the necessaries of life in greater plenty and at lower prices than the present peace, which these worthy men are guarding to their country's detriment, in their hopes of something yet to be realized. may those hopes be disappointed! may they share the fortune which you, who wish for the best, ask of the gods, rather than cause you to share that upon which their own choice is fixed! (_to the clerk_.) read out to the jury the crowns awarded to the city in consequence of her action by the byzantines and by the perinthians. { , } [_the decree of the byzantines is read_.] { } read out also the crowns awarded by the peoples of the chersonese. [_the decree of the peoples of the chersonese is read_.] { } thus the policy which i had adopted was not only successful in saving the chersonese and byzantium, in preventing the hellespont from falling at that time into the power of philip, and in bringing honours to the city in consequence, but it revealed to the whole world the noble gallantry of athens and the baseness of philip. for all saw that he, the ally of the byzantines, was besieging them--what could be more shameful or revolting? { } and on the other hand, it was seen that you, who might fairly have urged many well-founded complaints against them for their inconsiderate conduct[n] towards you at an earlier period, not only refused to remember your grudge and to abandon the victims of aggression, but actually delivered them; and in consequence of this, you won glory and goodwill on all hands. and further, though every one knows that you have crowned many public men before now, no one can name any but myself--that is to say, any public counsellor and orator--for whose merits the city has received a crown. { } in order to prove to you, also, that the slanders which he uttered against the euboeans and byzantines, as he recalled to you any ill-natured action that they had taken towards you in the past, are disingenuous calumnies, not only because they are false (for this, i think, you may all be assumed to know), but also because, however true they might be, it was still to your advantage to deal with the political situation as i have done, i desire to describe, and that briefly, one or two of the noble deeds which this city has done in your own time. for an individual and a state should strive always, in their respective spheres, to fashion their future conduct after the highest examples that their past affords. { } thus, men of athens, at a time when the spartans were masters of land and sea,[n] and were retaining their hold, by means of governors and garrisons, upon the country all round attica--euboea, tanagra, all boeotia, megara, aegina, ceos, and the other islands--and when athens possessed neither ships nor walls, you marched forth to haliartus, and again, not many days later, to corinth, though the athenians of that day might have borne a heavy grudge against both the corinthians and the thebans for the part they had played in reference to the deceleian war.[n] { } but they bore no such grudge. far from it! and neither of these actions, aeschines, was taken by them to help benefactors; nor was the prospect before them free from danger. yet they did not on that account sacrifice those who fled to them for help. for the sake of glory and honour they were willing to expose themselves to the danger; and it was a right and a noble spirit that inspired their counsels. for the life of all men must end in death, though a man shut himself in a chamber and keep watch; but brave men must ever set themselves to do that which is noble, with their joyful hope for their buckler, and whatsoever god gives, must bear it gallantly. { } thus did your forefathers, and thus did the elder among yourselves: for, although the spartans were no friends or benefactors of yours, but had done much grievous wrong to the city, yet, when the thebans, after their victory at leuctra, attempted to annihilate them, you prevented it, not terrified by the strength or the reputation which the thebans then enjoyed, nor reckoning up what the men had done to you, for whom you were to face this peril. { } and thus, as you know, you revealed to all the hellenes, that whatever offences may be committed against you, though under all other circumstances you show your resentment of them, yet if any danger to life or freedom overtakes the transgressors, you will bear no grudge and make no reckoning. nor was it in these instances only that you were thus disposed. for once more, when the thebans were appropriating euboea,[n] you did not look on while it was done; you did not call to mind the wrong which had been done to you in the matter of oropus[n] by themison and theodorus: you helped even these; and it was then that the city for the first time had voluntary trierarchs, of whom i was one.[n] but i will not speak of this yet. { } and although to save the island was itself a noble thing to do, it was a yet nobler thing by far, that when their lives and their cities were absolutely in your power, you gave them back, as it was right to do, to the very men who had offended against you, and made no reckoning, when such trust had been placed in you, of the wrongs which you had suffered. i pass by the innumerable instances which i might still give--battles at sea, expeditions [by land, campaigns] both long ago and now in our day; in all of which the object of the city has been to defend the freedom and safety of the other hellenic peoples. { } and so, when in all these striking examples i had beheld the city ever ready to strive in defence of the interests of others, what was i likely to bid her do, what action was i likely to recommend to her, when the debate to some extent concerned her own interests? 'why,' you would say, 'to remember her grudge against those who wanted deliverance, and to look for excuses for sacrificing everything!' and who would not have been justified in putting me to death, if i had attempted to bring shame upon the city's high traditions, though it were only by word? the deed itself you would never have done, i know full well; for had you desired to do it, what was there to hinder you? were you not free so to act? had you not these men here to propose it? { } i wish now to return to the next in succession of my political acts; and here again you must ask yourselves, what was the best thing for the city? for, men of athens, when i saw that your navy was breaking up, and that, while the rich were obtaining exemption on the strength of small payments,[n] citizens of moderate or small means were losing all that they had; and further, that in consequence of these things the city was always missing her opportunities; i enacted a law in accordance with which i compelled the former--the rich--to do their duty fairly; i put an end to the injustice done to the poor, and (what was the greatest service of all to the state) i caused our preparations to be made in time. { } when i was indicted for this, i appeared before you at the ensuing trial, and was acquitted; the prosecutor failed to obtain the necessary fraction of the votes. but what sums do you think the leaders of the taxation-boards, or those who stood second or third, offered me, to induce me, if possible, not to enact the law, or at least to let it drop and lie under sworn notice of prosecution?[n] they offered sums so large, men of athens, that i should hesitate to mention them to you. it was a natural course for them to take. { } for under the former laws it was possible for them to divide their obligation between sixteen persons, paying little or nothing themselves, and grinding down their poorer fellow citizens: while by my law each must pay down a sum calculated in proportion to his property; and a man came to be charged with two warships, who had previously been one of sixteen subscribers to a single one (for they used now to call themselves no longer captains of their ships, but subscribers). thus there was nothing that they were not willing to give, if only the new plan could be brought to nothing, and they could escape being compelled to do their duty fairly. (_to the clerk_.) { } now read me, first, the decree[n] in accordance with which i had to meet the indictment; and then the lists of those liable under the former law, and under my own, respectively. read. [_the decree is read_.] { } now produce that noble list. [_a list is read_.] now produce, for comparison with this, the list under my own law. [_a list is read_.] was this, think you, but a trifling assistance which i rendered to the poor among you? { } would the wealthy have spent but a trifling sum to avoid doing their duty fairly? i am proud not only of having refused all compromise upon the measure, not only of having been acquitted when i was indicted, but also of having enacted a law which was beneficial, and of having given proof of it in practice. for throughout the war the armaments were equipped under my law, and no trierarch ever laid the suppliants' branch[n] before you in token of grievance, nor took sanctuary at munychia; none was imprisoned by the admiralty board; no warship was abandoned at sea and lost to the state, or left behind here as unseaworthy. under the former laws all these things used to happen; { } and the reason was that the obligation rested upon the poor, and in consequence there were many cases of inability to discharge it. i transferred the duties of the trierarchy from the poor to the rich; and therefore every duty was properly fulfilled. aye, and for this very reason i deserve to receive praise--that i always adopted such political measures as brought with them accessions of glory and honour and power to the city. no measure of mine is malicious, harsh, or unprincipled; none is degrading or unworthy of the city. the same spirit will be seen both in my domestic and my international policy. { } for just as in home affairs i did not set the favour of the rich above the rights of the many, so in international affairs i did not embrace the gifts and the friendship of philip, in preference to the common interests of all the hellenes. it still remains for me, i suppose, to speak about the proclamation, and about my examination. { } the statement that i acted for the best, and that i am loyal to you throughout and eager to do you good service, i have proved, i think, sufficiently, by what i have said. at the same time i am passing over the most important parts of my political life and actions; for i conceive that i ought first to render to you in their proper order my arguments in regard to the alleged illegality itself: which done, even if i say nothing about the rest of my political acts, i can still rely upon that personal knowledge of them which each of you possesses. { } of the arguments which the prosecutor jumbled together in utter confusion with reference to the laws accompanying his indictment,[n] i am quite certain that you could not follow the greater part, nor could i understand them myself; but i will simply address you straightforwardly upon the question of right. so far am i from claiming (as he just now slanderously declared) to be free from the liability to render an account, that i admit a life-long liability to account for every part of my administration and policy. { } but i do not admit that i am liable for one single day--you hear me, aeschines?--to account for what i have given to the people as a free-will offering out of my private estate; nor is any one else so liable, not even if he is one of the nine archons. what law is so replete with injustice and churlishness, that when a man has made a present out of his private property and done an act of generosity and munificence, it deprives him of the gratitude due to him, hales him before a court of disingenuous critics, and sets them to audit accounts of sums which he himself has given? there is no such law. if the prosecutor asserts that there is, let him produce it, and i will resign myself and say no more. { } but the law does not exist, men of athens; this is nothing but an informer's trick on the part of aeschines, who, because i was controller of the festival fund when i made this donation, says, 'ctesiphon proposed a vote of thanks to him when he was still liable to account.' the vote of thanks was not for any of the things for which i was liable to account; it was for my voluntary gift, and your charge is a misrepresentation. 'yes,' you say, 'but you were also a commissioner of fortifications.' i was, and thanks were rightly accorded me on the very ground that, instead of charging the sums which i spent, i made a present of them. a statement of account, it is true, calls for an audit and scrutineers; but a free gift deserves gratitude and thanks; and that is why the defendant proposed this motion in my favour. { } that this principle is not merely laid down in the laws, but rooted in your national character, i shall have no difficulty in proving by many instances. nausicles,[n] to begin with, has often been crowned by you, while general, for sacrifices which he had made from his private funds. again, when diotimus[n] gave the shields, and charidemus[n] afterwards, they were crowned. and again, neoptolemus here, while still director of many public works, has received honours for his voluntary gifts. it would really be too bad, if any one who held any office must either be debarred thereby from making a present to the state, or else, instead of receiving due gratitude, must submit accounts of the sums given. { } to prove the truth of my statements, (_to the clerk_) take and read the actual decrees which were passed in honour of these persons. read. { } [_two decrees are read_.] { } each of these persons, aeschines, was accountable as regards the office which he held, but not as regards the services for which he was crowned. nor am i, therefore; for i presume that i have the same rights as others with reference to the same matters. i made a voluntary gift. for this i receive thanks; for i am not liable to account for what i gave. i was holding office. true, and i have rendered an account of my official expenditure, but not of what i gave voluntarily. ah! but i exercised my office iniquitously! what? and you were there, when the auditors brought me before them, and did not accuse me? { } now that the court may see that the prosecutor himself bears me witness that i was crowned for services of which i was not liable to render an account, (_to the clerk_) take and read the decree which was proposed in my honour, in its entirety. (_to the jury_.) the points which he has omitted to indict in the council's resolution will show that the charges which he does make are deliberate misrepresentations. (_to the clerk_.) read. [_the decree is read_.] { } my donations then, were these, of which you have not made one the subject of indictment. it is the reward for these, which the council states to be my due, that you attack. you admit that it was legal to accept the gifts offered, and you indict as illegal the return of gratitude for them. in heaven's name, what must the perfect scoundrel, the really heaven-detested, malignant being be like? must he not be a man like this? { } but as regards the proclamation in the theatre, i pass by the fact that ten thousand persons have been thus proclaimed on ten thousand different occasions, and that my own name has often been so proclaimed before. but, in heaven's name, aeschines, are you so perverse and stupid, that you cannot grasp the fact that the recipient of the crown feels the same pride wherever the crown is proclaimed, and that it is for the benefit of those who confer it that the proclamation is made in the theatre? for those who hear are stimulated to do good service to the state, and commend those who return gratitude for such service even more than they commend the recipient of the crown. that is why the city has enacted this law. (_to the clerk_.) take the law itself and read it. [_the law is read_.] { } do you hear, aeschines, the plain words of the law? 'except such as the people or the council shall resolve so to proclaim. but let these be proclaimed.' why, wretched man, do you lay this dishonest charge? why do you invent false arguments? why do you not take hellebore[n] to cure you? what? are you not ashamed to bring a case founded upon envy, not upon any crime--to alter some of the laws, and to leave out parts of others, when they ought surely, in justice, to be read entire to those who have sworn to give their votes in accordance with the laws? { } and then, while you act in this way, you enumerate the qualities which should be found in a friend of the people, as if you had contracted for a statue, and discovered on receiving it that it had not the features required by the contract; or as if a friend of the people was known by a definition, and not by his works and his political measures! and you shout out expressions, proper and improper, like a reveller on a cart[n]--expressions which apply to you and your house, not to me. i will add this also, men of athens. { } the difference between abuse and accusation is, i imagine, that an accusation is founded upon crimes, for which the penalties are assigned by law; abuse, upon such slanders as their own character leads enemies to utter about one another. and i conceive that our forefathers built these courts of law, not that we might assemble you here and revile one another with improper expressions suggested by our adversary's private life, but that we might convict any one who happens to have committed some crime against the state. { } aeschines knew this as well as i; and yet he chose to make a ribald attack instead of an accusation. at the same time, it is not fair that he should go off without getting as much as he gives, even in this respect; and when i have asked him one question, i will at once proceed to the attack. are we to call you, aeschines, the enemy of the state, or of myself? of myself, of course. what? and when you might have exacted the penalty from me, on behalf of your fellow countrymen, according to the laws--at public examinations, by indictment, by all other forms of trial--did you always omit to do so? { } and yet to-day, when i am unassailable upon every ground--on the ground of law, of lapse of time, of the statutable limit,[n] of the many previous trials which i have undergone upon every charge, without having once been convicted of any crime against you to this day--and when the city must necessarily share to a greater or smaller degree in the glory of acts which were really acts of the people, have you confronted me upon such an issue as this? take care lest, while you profess to be _my_ enemy, you prove to be the enemy of your fellow countrymen! { } since then i have shown you all what is the vote which religion and justice demand of you, i am now obliged, it would seem, by the slanders which he has uttered (though i am no lover of abuse) to reply to his many falsehoods by saying just what is absolutely necessary about himself, and showing who he is, and whence he is sprung, that he so lightly begins to use bad language, pulling to pieces certain expressions of mine, when he has himself used expressions which any respectable man would have shrunk from uttering; { } for if the accuser were aeacus or rhadamanthus or minos,[n] instead of a scandal-monger,[n] an old hand in the marketplace,[n] a pestilent clerk, i do not believe that he would have spoken thus, or produced such a stock of ponderous phrases, crying aloud, as if he were acting a tragedy, 'o earth and sun and virtue,'[n] and the like; or again, invoking 'wit and culture, by which things noble and base are discerned apart'--for, of course, you heard him speaking in this way. { } scum of the earth! what have you or yours to do with virtue? how should _you_ discern what is noble and what is not? where and how did you get your qualification to do so? what right have _you_ to mention culture anywhere? a man of genuine culture would not only never have asserted such a thing of himself, but would have blushed to hear another do so: and those who, like you, fall far short of it, but are tactless enough to claim it, succeed only in causing distress to their hearers, when they speak--not in seeming to be what they profess. { } but though i am not at a loss to know what to say about you and yours, i am at a loss to know what to mention first. shall i tell first[n] how your father tromes was a slave in the house of elpias, who kept an elementary school near the temple of theseus, and how he wore shackles and a wooden halter? or how your mother, by celebrating her daylight nuptials in her hut near the shrine of the hero of the lancet,[n] was enabled to rear you, her beautiful statue, the prince of third-rate actors? but these things are known to all without my telling them. shall i tell how phormio, the ship's piper, the slave of dion of phrearrii, raised her up out of this noble profession? but, before god and every heavenly power, i shudder lest in using expressions which are fitly applied to you, i may be thought to have chosen a subject upon which it ill befits myself to speak. { } so i will pass this by, and will begin with the acts of his own life; for they were not like any chance actions,[n] but such as the people curses. for only lately--lately, do i say? only yesterday or the day before--did he become at once an athenian and an orator, and by the addition of two syllables converted his father from tromes into atrometus, and gave his mother the imposing name of glaucothea,[n] when every one knows that she used to be called empusa[n]--a name which was obviously given her because there was nothing that she would not do or have done to her; for how else should she have acquired it? { } yet, in spite of this, you are of so ungrateful and villainous a nature, that though, thanks to your countrymen, you have risen from slavery to freedom, and from poverty to wealth, far from feeling gratitude to them, you devote your political activity to working against them as a hireling. i will pass over every case in which there is any room for the contention that he has spoken in the interests of the city, and will remind you of the acts which he was manifestly proved to have done for the good of her enemies. { } which of you has not heard of antiphon,[n] who was struck off the list of citizens,[n] and came into the city in pursuance of a promise to philip that he would burn the dockyards? i found him concealed in the peiraeus, and brought him before the assembly; but the malignant aeschines shouted at the top of his voice, that it was atrocious of me, in a democratic country, to insult a citizen who had met with misfortune, and to go to men's houses without a decree;[n] and he obtained his release. { } and unless the council of areopagus had taken notice of the matter, and, seeing the inopportuneness of the ignorance which you had shown, had made a further search for the man, and arrested him, and brought him before you again, a man of that character would have been snatched out of your hands, and would have evaded punishment, and been sent out of the country by this pompous orator. as it was, you tortured and executed him--and so ought you also to have treated aeschines. { } the council of areopagus knew the part which he had played in this affair; and for this reason, when, owing to the same ignorance which so often leads you to sacrifice the public interests, you elected him[n] to advocate your claims in regard to the temple of delos, the council (since you had appointed it to assist you and entrusted it with full authority to act in the matter) immediately rejected aeschines as a traitor, and committed the case to hypereides. when the council took this step, the members took their votes from the altar,[n] and not one vote was given for this abominable man. { } to prove that what i say is true, (_to the clerk_) call the witnesses who testify to it. [_the witnesses are called_.] { } thus when the council rejected him from the office of advocate, and committed the case to another, it declared at the same time that he was a traitor, who wished you ill. such was one of the public appearances of this fine fellow, and such its character--so like the acts with which he charges me, is it not? now recall a second. for when philip sent python of byzantium,[n] and with him envoys from all his allies, in the hope of putting the city to shame and showing her to be in the wrong, i would not give way before the torrent of insolent rhetoric which python poured out upon you, but rose and contradicted him, and would not betray the city's rights, but proved the iniquity of philip's actions so manifestly, that even his own allies rose up and admitted it. but aeschines supported python; he gave testimony in opposition to his country, and that testimony false. { } nor was this sufficient for him; for again after this he was detected going to meet anaxinus[n] the spy in the house of thrason. but surely one who met the emissary of the enemy alone and conferred with him, must himself have been already a born spy and an enemy of his country. to prove the truth of what i say, (_to the clerk_) call the witnesses to these facts. [_the witnesses are called_.] { } there are still an infinite number of things which i might relate of him; but i pass them over. for the truth is something like this. i could still point to many instances in which he was found to be serving our enemies during that period, and showing his spite against me. but you do not store such things up in careful remembrance, to visit them with the indignation which they deserve; but, following a bad custom, you have given great freedom to any one who wishes to trip up the proposer of any advantageous measure by dishonest charges--bartering, as you do, the advantage of the state for the pleasure and gratification which you derive from invective; and so it is always easier and safer to be a hireling in the service of the enemy, than a statesman who has chosen to defend your cause. { } to co-operate with philip before we were openly at war with him was --i call earth and heaven to witness--atrocious enough. how could it be otherwise--against his own country? nevertheless, concede him this, if you will, concede him this. but when the corn-ships had been openly plundered, and the chersonese was being ravaged, and the man was on the march against attica; when the position of affairs was no longer in doubt, and war had begun; what action did this malignant mouther of verses ever do for your good? he can point to none. there is not a single decree, small or great, with reference to the interests of the city, standing in the name of aeschines. if he asserts that there is, let him produce it in the time allotted to me. but no such decree exists. in that case, however, only two alternatives are possible: either he had no fault to find at the time with my policy, and therefore made no proposal contrary to it; or else he was seeking the advantage of the enemy, and therefore refrained from bringing forward any better policy than mine. { } did he then abstain from speaking, as he abstained from proposing any motion, when any mischief was to be done? on the contrary, no one else had a chance of speaking. but though, apparently, the city could endure everything else, and he could do everything else unobserved, there was one final deed which was the culmination of all that he had done before. upon this he expended all that multitude of words, as he went through the decrees relating to the amphisseans, in the hope of distorting the truth. but the truth cannot be distorted. it is impossible. never will you wash away the stain of your actions there! you will not say enough for that! { } i call upon all the gods and goddesses who protect this land of attica, in the presence of you all, men of athens; and upon apollo of pytho, the paternal deity[n] of this city, and i pray to them all, that if i should speak the truth to you--if i spoke it at that very time without delay, in the presence of the people, when first i saw this abominable man setting his hand to this business (for i knew it, i knew it at once),--that then they may give me good fortune and life: but if, to gratify my hatred or any private quarrel, i am now bringing a false accusation against this man, then they may take from me the fruition of every blessing. { } why have i uttered this imprecation with such vehemence and earnestness? because, although i have documents, lying in the public archives, by which i will prove the facts clearly; although i know that you remember what was done; i have still the fear that he may be thought too insignificant a man to have done all the evil which he has wrought--as indeed happened before, when he caused the ruin of the unhappy phocians by the false report which he brought home. { } for the war at amphissa, which was the cause of philip's coming to elateia, and of one being chosen[n] commander of the amphictyons, who overthrew the fortunes of the hellenes--_he_ it is who helped to get it up; he, in his sole person, is to blame for disasters to which no equal can be found. i protested at the time, and cried out, before the assembly, 'you are bringing war into attica, aeschines--an amphictyonic war.' but a packed group of his supporters refused to let me speak, while the rest were amazed, and imagined that i was bringing a baseless charge against him, out of personal animosity. { } but what the true nature of these proceedings was, men of athens--why this plan was contrived, and how it was executed--you must hear from me to-day, since you were prevented from doing so at the time. you will behold a business cunningly organized; you will advance greatly in your knowledge of public affairs; and you will see what cleverness there was in philip. { } philip had no prospect of seeing the end of the war with you, or ridding himself of it, unless he could make the thebans and thessalians enemies of athens. for although the war was being wretchedly and inefficiently conducted by your generals, he was nevertheless suffering infinite damage from the war itself and from the freebooters. the exportation of the produce of his country and the importation of what he needed were both impossible. { } moreover, he was not at that time superior to you at sea, nor could he reach attica, if the thessalians would not follow him, or the thebans give him a passage through their country; and although he was overcoming in the field the generals whom you sent out, such as they were (for of this i say nothing), he found himself suffering from the geographical conditions themselves, and from the nature of the resources[n] which either side possessed. { } now if he tried to encourage either the thessalians or the thebans to march against you in order to further his own quarrel, no one, he thought, would pay any attention to him; but if he adopted their own common grounds of action and were chosen commander, he hoped to find it easier to deceive or to persuade them, as the case might be. what then does he do? he attempts (and observe with what skill) to stir up an amphictyonic war, and a disturbance in connexion with the meeting of the council. { } for he thought that they would at once find that they needed his help, to deal with these. now if one of his own or his allies' representatives on the council[n] brought the matter forward, he thought that both the thebans and the thessalians would regard the proceeding with suspicion, and that all would be on their guard: but if it was an athenian, sent by you, his adversaries, that did so, he would easily escape detection--as, in fact, happened. { }* how then did he manage this? he hired aeschines. no one, i suppose, either realized beforehand what was going on or guarded against it--that is how such affairs are usually conducted here; aeschines was nominated a delegate to the council; three or four people held up their hands for him, and he was declared elected. but when, bearing with him the prestige of this city, he reached the amphictyons, he dismissed and closed his eyes to all other considerations, and proceeded to perform the task for which he had been hired. he composed and recited a story, in attractive language, of the way in which the cirrhaean territory had come to be dedicated; { } and with this he persuaded the members of the council, who were unused to rhetoric and did not foresee what was about to happen, that they should resolve to make the circuit of the territory,[n] which the amphisseans said they were cultivating because it was their own, while he alleged that it was part of the consecrated land. the locrians were not bringing any suit against us, or taking any such action as (in order to justify himself) he now falsely alleges. you may know this from the following consideration. it was clearly impossible[n] for the locrians to bring a suit against athens to an actual issue, without summoning us. who then served the summons upon us? before what authority was it served? tell us who knows: point to him. you cannot do so. it was a hollow and a false pretext of which you thus made a wrongful use. { } while the amphictyons were making the circuit of the territory in accordance with aeschines' suggestion, the locrians fell upon them and came near to shooting them all down with their spears; some of the members of the council they even carried off with them. and now that complaints and hostilities had been stirred up against the amphisseans, in consequence of these proceedings, the command was first held by cottyphus, and his force was drawn from the amphictyonic powers alone. but since some did not come, and those who came did nothing, the men who had been suborned for the purpose--villains of long standing, chosen from the thessalians and from the traitors in other states--took steps with a view to entrusting the affair to philip, as commander, at the next meeting of the council. { } they had adopted arguments of a persuasive kind. either, they said, the amphictyons must themselves contribute funds, maintain mercenaries, and fine those who refused to do so; or they must elect philip. to make a long story short, the result was that philip was appointed. and immediately afterwards, having collected a force and crossed the pass, ostensibly on his way to the territory of cirrha, he bids a long farewell to the cirrhaeans and locrians, and seizes elateia. { } now if the thebans had not changed their policy at once, upon seeing this, and joined us, the trouble would have descended upon the city in full force, like a torrent in winter. as it was, the thebans checked him for the moment; chiefly, men of athens, through the goodwill of some heavenly power towards us; but secondarily, so far as it lay in one man's power, through me also. (_to the clerk_.) now give me the decrees in question, and the dates of each proceeding; (_to the jury_) that you may know what trouble this abominable creature stirred up, unpunished. (_to the clerk_.) read me the decrees. { } [_the decrees of the amphictyons are read_.] { } (_to the clerk_.) now read the dates of these proceedings. (_to the jury_.) they are the dates at which aeschines was delegate to the council. (_to the clerk_.) read. [_the dates are read_.] { } now give me the letter which philip sent to his allies in the peloponnese, when the thebans failed to obey his summons. for from this, too, you may clearly see that he concealed the real reason for his action--the fact that he was taking measures against hellas and the thebans and yourselves--and pretended to represent the common cause and the will of the amphictyons. and the man who provided him with all these occasions and pretexts was aeschines. (_to the clerk_.) read. { } [_philip's letter is read_.] { } you see that he avoids the mention of his own reasons for action, and takes refuge in those provided by the amphictyons. who was it that helped him to prepare such a case? who put such pretexts at his disposal? who is most to blame for the disasters that have taken place? is it not aeschines? and so, men of athens, you must not go about saying that hellas has suffered such things as these at the hands of one man.[n] i call earth and heaven to witness, that it was at the hands, not of one man, but of many villains in each state. { } and of these aeschines is one; and, had i to speak the truth without any reserve, i should not hesitate to describe him as the incarnate curse of all alike--men, regions or cities--that have been ruined since then. for he who supplied the seed is responsible for the crop. i wonder that you did not turn away your eyes at the very sight of him: but a cloud of darkness seems to hang between you and the truth. { } i find that in dealing with the measures taken by aeschines for the injury of his country, i have reached the time when i must speak of my own statesmanship in opposition to these measures; and it is fair that you should listen to this, for many reasons, but above all because it will be a shameful thing, if, when i have faced the actual realities of hard work for you, you will not even suffer the story of them to be told. { } for when i saw the thebans, and (i may almost say) yourselves as well, being led by the corrupt partisans of philip in either state to overlook, without taking a single precaution against it, the thing which was really dangerous to both peoples and needed their utmost watchfulness--the unhindered growth of philip's power; while, on the contrary, you were quite ready to entertain ill-feeling and to quarrel with one another; i kept unceasing watch to prevent this. nor did i rely only on my own judgement in thinking that this was what your interest required. { } i knew that aristophon, and afterwards eubulus, always wished to bring about this friendly union, and that, often as they opposed one another in other matters, they always agreed in this. cunning fox! while they lived, you hung about them and flattered them; yet now that they are dead, you do not see that you are attacking them. for your censure of my policy in regard to thebes is far more a denunciation of them than of me, since they were before me in approving of that alliance. { } but i return to my previous point--that it was when aeschines had brought about the war at amphissa, and the others, his accomplices, had effectually helped him to create the ill-feeling against the thebans, that philip marched against us. for it was to render this possible that their attempt to throw the two cities into collision was made; and had we not roused ourselves a little before it was too late, we should never have been able to regain the lost ground; to such a length had these men carried matters. what the relations between the two peoples already were, you will know when you have heard these decrees and replies. (_to the clerk_.) take these and read them. { , } [_the decrees are read_.] { } (_to the clerk_.) now read the replies. { } [_the replies are read_.] { } having established such relations between the cities, through the agency of these men, and being elated by these decrees and replies, philip came with his army and seized elateia, thinking that under no circumstances whatever should we and the thebans join in unison after this. and though the commotion which followed in the city is known to you all, let me relate to you briefly just the bare facts. { } it was evening, and one had come to the prytanes[n] with the news that elateia had been taken. upon this they rose up from supper without delay; some of them drove the occupants out of the booths in the market-place and set fire to the wicker-work;[n] others sent for the generals and summoned the trumpeter; and the city was full of commotion. on the morrow, at break of day, the prytanes summoned the council to the council-chamber, while you made your way to the assembly; and before the council had transacted its business and passed its draft-resolution,[n] the whole people was seated on the hill-side.[n] { } and now, when the council had arrived, and the prytanes had reported the intelligence which they had received, and had brought forward the messenger, and he had made his statement, the herald proceeded to ask, 'who wishes to speak?' but no one came forward; and though the herald repeated the question many times, still no one rose, though all the generals were present, and all the orators, and the voice of their country was calling for some one to speak for her deliverance. for the voice of the herald, uttered in accordance with the laws, is rightly to be regarded as the common voice of our country. { } and yet, if it was for those to come forward who wished for the deliverance of the city, all of you and all the other athenians would have risen, and proceeded to the platform, for i am certain that you all wished for her deliverance. if it was for the wealthiest, the three hundred[n] would have risen; and if it was for those who had both these qualifications--loyalty to the city and wealth--then those would have risen, who subsequently made those large donations; for it was loyalty and wealth that led them so to do. { } but that crisis and that day called, it seems, not merely for a man of loyalty and wealth, but for one who had also followed the course of events closely from the first, and had come to a true conclusion as to the motive and the aim with which philip was acting as he was. for no one who was unacquainted with these, and had not scrutinized them from an early period, was any the more likely, for all his loyalty and wealth, to know what should be done, or to be able to advise you. { } the man who was needed was found that day in me. i came forward and addressed you in words which i ask you to listen to with attention, for two reasons--first, because i would have you realize that i was the only orator or politician who did not desert his post as a loyal citizen in the hour of danger, but was found there, speaking and proposing what your need required, in the midst of the terror; and secondly, because by the expenditure of a small amount of time, you will be far better qualified for the future in the whole art of political administration. { } my words then were these: 'those who are unduly disturbed by the idea that philip can count upon the support of thebes do not, i think, understand the present situation. for i am quite sure that, if this were so, we should have heard of his being, not at elateia, but on our own borders. at the same time, i understand quite well, that he has come to prepare the way for himself at thebes. { } listen,' i said, 'while i tell you the true state of affairs. philip already has at his disposal all the thebans whom he could win over either by bribery or by deception; and those who have resisted him from the first and are opposing him now, he has no chance of winning. what then is his design and object in seizing elateia? he wishes, by making a display of force in their neighbourhood and bringing up his army, to encourage and embolden his own friends, and to strike terror into his enemies, that so they may either concede out of terror what they now refuse, or may be compelled. { } now,' i said, 'if we make up our minds at the present moment to remember any ill-natured action which the thebans may have done us, and to distrust them on the assumption that they are on the side of our enemies, we shall be doing, in the first place, just what philip would pray for: and further, i am afraid that his present opponents may then welcome him, that all may philippize[n] with one consent, and that he and they may march to attica together. if, however, you follow my advice, and give your minds to the problem before us, instead of to contentious criticism of anything that i may say, i believe that i shall be able to win your approval for my proposals, and to dispel the danger which threatens the city. { } what then must you do? you must first moderate your present alarm, and then change your attitude, and be alarmed, all of you, for the thebans. they are far more within the reach of disaster than we: it is they whom the danger threatens first. secondly, those who are of military age, with the cavalry, must march to eleusis,[n] and let every one see that you yourselves are in arms; in order that those who sympathize with you in thebes may be enabled to speak in defence of the right, with the same freedom that their opponents enjoy, when they see that, just as those who are trying to sell their country to philip have a force ready to help them at elateia, so those who would struggle for freedom have you ready at hand to help them, and to go to their aid, if any one attacks them. { } next i bid you elect ten envoys, and give them full authority, with the generals, to decide the time of their own journey to thebes, and to order the march of the troops. but when the envoys arrive in thebes, how do i advise that they should handle the matter? i ask your special attention to this. they must require nothing of the thebans--to do so at such a moment would be shameful; but they must undertake that we will go to their aid, if they bid us do so, on the ground that they are in extreme peril, and that we foresee the future better than they; in order that, if they accept our offer and take our advice, we may have secured our object, and our action may wear an aspect worthy of this city; or, if after all we are unsuccessful, the thebans may have themselves to blame for any mistakes which they now make, while we shall have done nothing disgraceful or ignoble.' { } when i had spoken these words, and others in the same strain, i left the platform. all joined in commending these proposals; no one said a word in opposition; and i did not speak thus, and then fail to move a motion; nor move a motion, and then fail to serve as envoy; nor serve as envoy, and then fail to persuade the thebans. i carried the matter through in person from beginning to end, and gave myself up unreservedly to meet the dangers which encompassed the city. (_to the clerk_.) bring me the resolution which was then passed. { } but now, aeschines, how would you have me describe your part, and how mine, that day? shall i call myself, as you would call me by way of abuse and disparagement, _battalus_?[n] and you, no ordinary hero even, but a real stage-hero, _cresphontes_ or _creon_,[n] or--the character which you cruelly murdered at collytus[n]--_oenomaus_? then i, battalus of paeania, proved myself of more value to my country in that crisis than oenomaus of cothocidae. in fact you were of no service on any occasion, while i played the part which became a good citizen throughout. (_to the clerk_.) read this decree. { - } [_the decree of demosthenes is read_.] { } this was the first step towards our new relations with thebes, and the beginning of a settlement. up to this time the cities had been inveigled into mutual hostility, hatred, and mistrust by these men. but this decree caused the peril that encompassed the city to pass away like a cloud. it was for an honest citizen, if he had any better plan than mine, to make it public at the time, instead of attacking me now. { } the true counsellor and the dishonest accuser, unlike as they are in everything, differ most of all in this: the one declares his opinion before the event, and freely surrenders himself as responsible, to those who follow his advice, to fortune, to circumstances, to any one.[n] the other is silent when he ought to speak, and then carps at anything untoward that may happen. { } that crisis, as i have said, was the opportunity for a man who cared for his country, the opportunity for honest speaking. but so much further than i need will i go, that if any one can _now_ point to any better course--or any course at all except that which i chose--i admit my guilt. if any one has discovered any course to-day, which would have been for our advantage, had we followed it at the time, i admit that it ought not to have escaped me. but if there neither is nor was such a possibility; if even now, even to-day, no one can mention any such course, what was the counsellor of the people to do? had he not to choose the best of the plans which suggested themselves and were feasible? { } this i did. for the herald asked the question, aeschines, 'who wishes to speak?' not 'who wishes to bring accusations about the past?' nor 'who wishes to guarantee the future?' and while you sat speechless in the assembly throughout that period, i came forward and spoke. since, however, you did not do so then, at least inform us now, and tell us what words, which should have been upon my lips, were left unspoken, what precious opportunity, offered to the city, was left unused, by me? what alliance was there, what course of action, to which i ought, by preference, to have guided my countrymen? { } but with all mankind the past is always dismissed from consideration, and no one under any circumstances proposes to deliberate about it. it is the future or the present that make their call upon a statesman's duty. now at that time the danger was partly in the future, and partly already present; and instead of cavilling disingenuously at the results, consider the principle of my policy under such circumstances. for in everything the final issue falls out as heaven wills; but the principle which he follows itself reveals the mind of the statesman. { } do not, therefore, count it a crime on my part, that philip proved victorious in the battle. the issue of that event lay with god, not with me. but show me that i did not adopt every expedient that was possible, so far as human reason could calculate; that i did not carry out my plan honestly and diligently, with exertions greater than my strength could bear; or that the policy which i initiated was not honourable, and worthy of athens, and indeed necessary: and then denounce me, but not before. { } but if the thunderbolt [or the storm] which fell has proved too mighty, not only for us, but for all the other hellenes, what are we to do? it is as though a ship-owner, who had done all that he could to ensure safety, and had equipped the ship with all that he thought would enable her to escape destruction, and had then met with a tempest in which the tackling had been strained or even broken to pieces, were to be held responsible for the wreck of the vessel. 'why,' he would say, 'i was not steering the ship'--just as i was not the general[n]--'i had no power over fortune: she had power over everything.' but consider and observe this point. { } if it was fated that we should fare as we did, even when we had the thebans to help us in the struggle, what must we have expected, if we had not had even them for our allies, but they had joined philip?--and this was the object for which philip employed[n] every tone that he could command. and if, when the battle took place, as it did, three days' march from attica, the city was encompassed by such peril and terror, what should we have had to expect, if this same disaster had occurred anywhere within the borders of our own country? do you realize that, as it was, a single day, and a second, and a third gave us the power to rally, to collect our forces, to take breath, to do much that made for the deliverance of the city: but that had it been otherwise--it is not well, however, to speak of things which we have not had to experience, thanks to the goodwill of one of the gods, and to the protection which the city obtained for herself in this alliance, which you denounce. { } the whole of this long argument, gentlemen of the jury, is addressed to yourselves and to the circle of listeners outside the bar; for to this despicable man it would have been enough to address a short, plain sentence. if to you alone, aeschines, the future was clear, before it came, you should have given warning, when the city was deliberating upon the subject; but if you had no such foreknowledge, you have the same ignorance to answer for as others. why then should you make these charges against me, any more than i against you? { } for i have been a better citizen than you with regard to this very matter of which i am speaking--i am not as yet talking of anything else--just in so far as i gave myself up to the policy which all thought expedient, neither shrinking from nor regarding any personal risk; while you neither offered any better proposals than mine (for then they would not have followed mine), nor yet made yourself useful in advancing mine in any way. what the most worthless of men, the bitterest enemy of the city, would do, you are found to have done, when all was over; and at the same time as the irreconcilable enemies of the city, aristratus in naxos, and aristoleos in thasos, are bringing the friends of athens to trial, aeschines, in athens itself, is accusing demosthenes. { } but surely one who treasured up[n] the misfortunes of the hellenes, that he might win glory from them for himself, deserved to perish rather than to stand as the accuser of another; and one who has profited by the very same crisis as the enemies of the city cannot possibly be loyal to his country. you prove it, moreover, by the life you live, the actions you do, the measures you take --and the measures, too, that you do not take. is anything being done which seems advantageous to the city? aeschines is speechless. has any obstruction, any untoward event occurred? there you find aeschines, like a rupture or a sprain, which wakes into life, so soon as any trouble overtakes the body. { } but since he bears so hardly upon the results, i desire to say what may even be a paradox; and let no one, in the name of heaven, be amazed at the length to which i go, but give a kindly consideration to what i say. even if what was to come was plain to all beforehand; even if all foreknew it; even if you, aeschines, had been crying with a loud voice in warning and protestation--you who uttered not so much as a sound; even then, i say, it was not right for the city to abandon her course, if she had any regard for her fame, or for our forefathers, or for the ages to come. { } as it is, she is thought, no doubt, to have failed to secure her object--as happens to all alike, whenever god wills it: but then, by abandoning in favour of philip her claim to take the lead of others, she must have incurred the blame of having betrayed them all. had she surrendered without a struggle those claims in defence of which our forefathers faced every imaginable peril, who would not have cast scorn upon you, aeschines--upon you, i say; not, i trust, upon athens nor upon me? { } in god's name, with what faces should we have looked upon those who came to visit the city, if events had come round to the same conclusion as they now have--if philip had been chosen as commander and lord of all, and we had stood apart, while others carried on the struggle to prevent these things; and that, although the city had never yet in time past preferred an inglorious security to the hazardous vindication of a noble cause? { } what hellene, what foreigner, does not know, that the thebans, and the spartans, who were powerful still earlier, and the persian king would all gratefully and gladly have allowed athens to take what she liked and keep all that was her own, if she would do the bidding of another, and let another take the first place in hellas? { } but this was not, it appears, the tradition of the athenians; it was not tolerable; it was not in their nature. from the beginning of time no one had ever yet succeeded in persuading the city to throw in her lot with those who were strong, but unrighteous in their dealings, and to enjoy the security of servitude. throughout all time she has maintained her perilous struggle for pre-eminence, honour, and glory. { } and this policy you look upon as so lofty, so proper to your own national character, that, of your forefathers also, it is those who have acted thus that you praise most highly. and naturally. for who would not admire the courage of those men, who did not fear to leave their land[n] and their city, and to embark upon their ships, that they might not do the bidding of another; who chose for their general themistocles (who had counselled them thus), and stoned cyrsilus to death, when he gave his voice for submission to a master's orders--and not him alone, for your wives stoned his wife also to death. { } for the athenians of that day did not look for an orator or a general who would enable them to live in happy servitude; they cared not to live at all, unless they might live in freedom. for every one of them felt that he had come into being, not for his father and his mother alone, but also for his country. and wherein lies the difference? he who thinks he was born for his parents alone awaits the death which destiny assigns him in the course of nature: but he who thinks he was born for his country also will be willing to die, that he may not see her in bondage, and will look upon the outrages and the indignities that he must needs bear in a city that is in bondage as more to be dreaded than death. { } now were i attempting to argue that _i_ had induced you to show a spirit worthy of your forefathers, there is not a man who might not rebuke me with good reason. but in fact, i am declaring that such principles as these are your own; i am showing that _before_ my time the city displayed this spirit, though i claim that i, too, have had some share, as your servant, in carrying out your policy in detail. { } but in denouncing the policy as a whole, in bidding you be harsh with me, as one who has brought terrors and dangers upon the city, the prosecutor, in his eagerness to deprive me of my distinction at the present moment, is trying to rob you of praises that will last throughout all time. for if you condemn the defendant on the ground that my policy was not for the best, men will think that your own judgement has been wrong, and that it was not through the unkindness of fortune that you suffered what befell you. { } but it cannot,[n] it cannot be that you were wrong, men of athens, when you took upon you the struggle for freedom and deliverance. no! by those who at marathon bore the brunt of the peril--our forefathers. no! by those who at plataeae drew up their battle-line, by those who at salamis, by those who off artemisium fought the fight at sea, by the many who lie in the sepulchres where the people laid them, brave men, all alike deemed worthy by their country, aeschines, of the same honour and the same obsequies--not the successful or the victorious alone! and she acted justly. for all these have done that which it was the duty of brave men to do; but their fortune has been that which heaven assigned to each. { } accursed, poring pedant![n] if you, in your anxiety to deprive me of the honour and the kindness shown to me by my countrymen, recounted trophies and battles and deeds of long ago--and of which of them did this present trial demand the mention?--what spirit was i to take upon me, when i mounted the platform, i who came forward to advise the city how she should maintain her pre-eminence? tell me, third-rate actor! the spirit of one who would propose things unworthy of this people? { } i should indeed have deserved to die! for you too, men of athens, ought not to judge private suits and public in the same spirit. the business transactions of everyday life must be viewed in the light of the special law and practice associated with each; but the public policy of statesmen must be judged by the principles that your forefathers set before them. and if you believe that you should act worthily of them, then, whenever you come into court to try a public suit, each of you must imagine that with his staff[n] and his ticket there is entrusted to him also the spirit of his country. { } but i have entered upon the subject of your forefathers' achievements, and have passed over certain decrees and transactions. i desire, therefore, to return to the point from which i digressed. when we came to thebes, we found envoys there from philip, and from the thessalians and his other allies--our friends in terror, his full of confidence. and to show you that i am not saying this now to suit my own purpose, read the letter which we, your envoys, dispatched without delay. { } the prosecutor, however, has exercised the art of misrepresentation to so extravagant a degree, that he attributes to circumstances, not to me, any satisfactory result that was achieved; but for everything that fell out otherwise, he lays the blame upon me and the fortune that attends me. in his eyes, apparently, i, the counsellor and orator, have no share in the credit for what was accomplished as the result of oratory and debate; while i must bear the blame alone for the misfortunes which we suffered in arms, and as a result of generalship. what more brutal, more damnable misrepresentation can be conceived? (_to the clerk_.) read the letter. [_the letter is read_.] { } when they had convened the assembly, they gave audience to the other side first, on the ground that they occupied the position of allies; and these came forward and delivered harangues full of the praises of philip and of accusations against yourselves, recalling everything that you had ever done in opposition to the thebans. the sum of it all was that they required the thebans to show their gratitude for the benefits which they had received from philip, and to exact the penalty for the injuries they had received from you, in whichever way they preferred--either by letting them march through their country against you, or by joining them in the invasion of attica; and they showed (as they thought) that the result of the course which they advised would be that the herds and slaves and other valuables of attica would find their way into boeotia; while the result of what (as they alleged) you were about to propose would be that those of boeotia would be plundered in consequence of the war. { } they said much more, but all tending to the same effect. as for our reply, i would give my whole life to tell it you in detail; but i fear lest, now that those times have gone by, you may feel as if a very deluge[n] had overwhelmed all, and may regard anything that is said on the subject as vanity and vexation. but hear at least what we persuaded them to do, and their answer to us. (_to the clerk_.) take this and read it. [_the answer of the thebans is read_.] { } after this they invited and summoned you; you marched; you went to their aid; and (to pass over the events which intervened) they received you in so friendly a spirit that while their infantry and cavalry were encamped outside the walls,[n] they welcomed your troops into their houses, within the city, among their children and wives, and all that was most precious to them. three eulogies did the thebans pronounce upon you before the world that day, and those of the most honourable kind--the first upon your courage, the second upon your righteousness, the third upon your self-control. for when they chose to side with you in the struggle, rather than against you, they judged that your courage was greater, and your requests more righteous, than philip's; and when they placed in your power what they and all men guard most jealously, their children and wives, they showed their confidence in your self-control. { } in all these points, men of athens, your conduct proved that their judgement had been correct. for the force came into the city; but no one made a single complaint--not even an unfounded complaint--against you; so virtuously did you conduct yourselves. and twice you fought by their side, in the earliest battles-the battle by the river[n] and the winter-battle[n]--and showed yourselves, not only irreproachable, but even admirable, in your discipline, your equipment, and your enthusiasm. these things called forth expressions of thanks to you from other states, and sacrifices and processions to the gods from yourselves. { } and i should like to ask aeschines whether, when all this was happening, and the city was full of pride and joy and thanksgiving, he joined in the sacrifices and the rejoicing of the multitude, or whether he sat at home grieving and groaning and angry at the good fortune of his country. if he was present, and was seen in his place with the rest, surely his present action is atrocious--nay, even impious--when he asks you, who have taken an oath by the gods, to vote to-day that those very things were not excellent, of whose excellence he himself on that day made the gods his witnesses. if he was not present, then surely he deserves to die many times, for grieving at the sight of the things which brought rejoicing to others. (_to the clerk_.) now read these decrees also. [_the decrees ordering sacrifices are read_.] { } thus we were occupied at that time with sacrifices, while the thebans were reflecting how they had been saved by our help; and those who, in consequence of my opponents' proceedings, had expected that they would themselves stand in need of help, found themselves, after all, helping others, in consequence of the action they took upon my advice. but what the tone of philip's utterance was, and how greatly he was confounded by what had happened, you can learn from his letter, which he sent to the peloponnese. (_to the clerk_.) take these and read them: (_to the jury_) that you may know what was effected by my perseverance, by my travels, by the hardships i endured, by all those decrees of which aeschines spoke so disparagingly just now. { } you have had, as you know, many great and famous orators, men of athens, before my time--callistratus himself, aristophon, cephalus, thrasybulus, and a vast number of others. yet not one of these ever gave himself up entirely to the state for any purpose: the mover of a decree would not serve as ambassador, the ambassador would not move the decree. each left himself, at one and the same time, some respite from work, and somewhere to lay the blame,[n] in case of accidents. { } 'well,' some one may say, 'did _you_ so excel them in force and boldness, as to do everything yourself?' i do not say that. but so strong was my conviction of the seriousness of the danger that had overtaken the city, that i felt that i ought not to give my personal safety any place whatever in my thoughts; it was enough for a man to do his duty and to leave nothing undone. { } and i was convinced with regard to myself--foolishly perhaps, but still convinced--that no mover would make a better proposal, no agent would execute it better, no ambassador would be more eager or more honest in his mission, than i. for these reasons, i assigned every one of these offices to myself. (_to the clerk_.) read philip's letters. [_philip's letters are read_.] { } to this condition, aeschines, was philip reduced by my statesmanship. this was the tone of his utterances, though before this he used to threaten the city with many a bold word. for this i was deservedly crowned by those here assembled, and though you were present, you offered no opposition; while diondas, who indicted the proposer, did not obtain the necessary fraction of the votes. (_to the clerk_.) read me these decrees, (_to the jury)_ which escaped condemnation, and which aeschines did not even indict. [_the decrees are read_.] { } these decrees, men of athens, contain the very same syllables, the very same words, as those which aristonicus previously employed in his proposal, and which ctesiphon, the defendant, has employed now; and aeschines neither prosecuted the proposer of them himself, nor supported the person who indicted him. yet surely, if the charges which he is bringing against me to-day are true, he would have had better reason then for prosecuting demomeles (the proposer of the decree) and hypereides, than he has for prosecuting ctesiphon. and why? { } because ctesiphon can refer you to them--to the decision of the courts, to the fact that aeschines himself did not accuse them, though they had moved exactly what he has moved now, to the prohibition by law of further prosecution in such cases, and to many other facts: whereas then the case would have been tried on its merits, before the defendant had got the advantage of any such precedent. { } but of course it was impossible then for aeschines to act as he has acted now--to select out of many periods of time long past, and many decrees, matters which no one either knew or thought would be mentioned to-day; to misrepresent them, to change the dates, to put false reasons for the actions taken in place of the true, and so appear to have a case. { } at the time this was impossible. every word spoken then must have been spoken with the truth in view, at no distance of time from the events, while you still remembered all the facts and had them practically at your fingers' ends. for that reason he evaded all investigation at the time; and he has come before you now, in the belief (i fancy) that you will make this a contest of oratory, instead of an inquiry into our political careers, and that it is upon our eloquence, not upon the interests of the city, that you will decide. { } yes, and he ingeniously suggests that you ought to disregard the opinion which you had of each of us when you left your homes and came into court; and that just as, when you draw up an account in the belief that some one has a balance, you nevertheless give way when you find that the counters all disappear[n] and leave nothing over, so now you should give your adhesion to the conclusion which emerges from the argument. now observe how inherently rotten everything that springs from dishonesty seems to be. { } by his very use of this ingenious illustration he has confessed that to-day, at all events, our respective characters are well established--that i am known to speak for my country's good, and he to speak for philip. for unless that were your present conception of each of us, he would not have sought to change your view. { } and further, i shall easily show you that it is not fair of him to ask you to alter this opinion--not by the use of counters--that is not how a political reckoning is made--but by briefly recalling each point to you, and treating you who hear me both as auditors of my account and witnesses to the facts. for that policy of mine which he denounces caused the thebans, instead of joining philip, as all expected them to do, in the invasion of our country, to range themselves by our side and stay his progress. { } it caused the war to take place not in attica, but on the confines of boeotia, eighty miles from the city. instead of our being harried and plundered by freebooters from euboea, it gave peace to attica from the side of the sea throughout the war. instead of philip's taking byzantium and becoming master of the hellespont, it caused the byzantines to join us in the war against him. { } can such achievements, think you, be reckoned up like counters? are we to cancel them out,[n] rather than provide that they shall be remembered for all time? i need not now add that it fell to others to taste the barbarity which is to be seen in every case in which philip got any one finally into his power; while you reaped (and quite rightly) the fruits of the generosity which he feigned while he was bringing within his grasp all that remained. but i pass this over. { } nay, i will not even hesitate to say, that one who wished to review an orator's career straightforwardly and without misrepresentation, would not have included in his charges such matters as you just now spoke of--making up illustrations, and mimicking words and gestures. of course the fortune which befell the hellenes--surely you see this?--was entirely due to my using this word instead of that, or waving my hand in one direction rather than the other! { } he would have inquired, by reference to the actual facts, what resources and what forces the city had at her command when i entered political life; what i subsequently collected for her when i took control; and what was the condition of our adversaries. then if i had diminished our forces, he would have proved that the fault lay at my door; but if i had greatly increased them, he would have abstained from deliberate misrepresentation. but since you have avoided such an inquiry, i will undertake it; and do you, gentlemen, observe whether my argument is just. { } the military resources of the city included the islanders--and not all, but only the weakest. for neither chios nor rhodes nor corcyra was with us. their contribution in money came to talents, and these had been collected in advance.[n] infantry and cavalry, besides our own, we had none. but the circumstance which was most alarming to us and most favourable to our enemies was that these men had contrived that all our neighbours should be more inclined to enmity than to friendship--the megareans, the thebans, and the euboeans. { } such was the position of the city at the time; and what i say admits of no contradiction. now consider the position of philip, with whom our conflict lay. in the first place, he held absolute sway over his followers--and this for purposes of war is the greatest of all advantages. next, his followers had their weapons in their hands always. then he was well off for money, and did whatever he resolved to do, without giving warning of it by decrees, or debating about it in public, or being put on trial by dishonest accusers, or defending himself against indictments for illegality, or being bound to render an account to any one. he was himself absolute master, commander, and lord of all. { } but i who was set to oppose him--for this inquiry too it is just to make--what had i under my control? nothing! for, to begin with, the very right to address you--the only right i had--you extended to philip's hirelings in the same measure as to me; and as often as they defeated me--and this frequently happened, whatever the reason on each occasion--so often you went away leaving a resolution recorded in favour of the enemy. { } but in spite of all these disadvantages, i won for you the alliance of the euboeans, achaeans, corinthians, thebans, megareans, leucadians, and corcyreans, from whom were collected--apart from their citizen-troops-- , mercenaries and , cavalry. { } and i instituted a money-contribution, on as large a scale as i could. but if you refer,[n] aeschines, to what was fair as between ourselves and the thebans or the byzantines or the euboeans--if at this time you talk to us of equal shares--you must be ignorant, in the first place, of the fact that in former days also, out of those ships of war, three hundred [n] in all, which fought for the hellenes, athens provided two hundred, and did not think herself unfairly used, or let herself be seen arraigning those who had counselled her action, or taking offence at the arrangement. it would have been shameful. no! men saw her rendering thanks to heaven, because when a common peril beset the hellenes, she had provided double as much as all the rest to secure the deliverance of all. { } moreover, it is but a hollow benefit that you are conferring upon your countrymen by your dishonest charges against me. why do you tell them _now_, what course they ought to have taken? why did you not propose such a course at the time (for you were in athens, and were present) if it was possible in the midst of those critical times, when we had to accept, not what we chose, but what circumstances allowed; since there was one at hand, bidding against us, and ready to welcome those whom we rejected, and to pay them into the bargain. { } but if i am accused to-day, for what i have actually done, what if at the time i had haggled over these details, and the other states had gone off and joined philip, and he had become master at once of euboea and thebes and byzantium? what do you think these impious men would then have done? { } what would they have said? would they not have declared that the states had been surrendered? that they had been driven away, when they wished to be on your side? 'see,' they would have said (would they not?), 'he has obtained through the byzantines the command of the hellespont and the control of the corn trade of hellas; and through the thebans a trying border war has been brought into attica; and owing to the pirates who sail from euboea, the sea has become unnavigable,' and much more in addition. { } a villainous thing, men of athens, is the dishonest accuser always--villainous, and in every way malignant and fault-finding! aye, and this miserable creature is a fox by nature, that has never done anything honest or gentlemanly--a very tragical ape, a clodhopping oenomaus, a counterfeit orator! { } where is the profit to your country from your cleverness? do you instruct us now about things that are past? it is as though a doctor, when he was paying his visits to the sick, were to give them no advice or instructions to enable them to become free from their illness, but, when one of his patients died and the customary offerings[n] were being paid him, were to explain, as he followed to the tomb, 'if this man had done such and such things, he would not have died.' crazy fool! do you tell us this _now_? { } nor again will you find that the defeat--if you exult at it, when you ought to groan, accursed man!--was determined by anything that was within my control. consider the question thus. in no place to which i was sent by you as ambassador, did i ever come away defeated by the ambassadors of philip--not from thessaly nor from ambracia, not from the illyrians nor from the thracian princes, not from byzantium nor from any other place, nor yet, on the last occasion, from thebes. but every place in which his ambassadors were defeated in argument, he proceeded to attack and subdue by force of arms. { } do you then require those places at _my_ hands? are you not ashamed to jeer at a man as a coward, and in the same breath to require him to prove superior, by his own unaided efforts, to the army of philip--and that with no weapons to use but words? for what else was at my disposal? i could not control the spirit of each soldier, or the fortune of the combatants, or the generalship displayed, of which, in your perversity, you demand an account from me. { } no; but every investigation that can be made as regards those duties for which an orator should be held responsible, i bid you make. i crave no mercy. and what are those duties? to discern events in their beginnings, to foresee what is coming, and to forewarn others. these things i have done. again, it is his duty to reduce to the smallest possible compass, wherever he finds them, the slowness, the hesitation, the ignorance, the contentiousness, which are the errors inseparably connected with the constitution of all city-states; while, on the other hand, he must stimulate men to unity, friendship, and eagerness to perform their duty. all these things i have done, and no one can discover any dereliction of duty on my part at any time. { } if one were to ask any person whatever, by what means philip had accomplished the majority of his successes, every one would reply that it was by means of his army, and by giving presents and corrupting those in charge of affairs. now i had no control or command of the forces: neither, then, does the responsibility for anything that was done in that sphere concern me. and further, in the matter of being or not being corrupted by bribes, i have defeated philip. for just as the bidder has conquered one who accepts his money, if he effects his purchase, so one who refuses to accept it [and is not corrupted] has conquered the bidder. in all, therefore, in which i am concerned, the city has suffered no defeat. { } the justification, then, with which i furnished the defendant for such a motion as he proposed with regard to me, consisted (along with many other points) of the facts which i have described, and others like them. i will now proceed to that justification which all of you supplied. for immediately after the battle, the people, who knew and had seen all that i did, and now stood in the very midst of the peril and terror, at a moment when it would not have been surprising if the majority had shown some harshness towards me--the people, i say, in the first place carried my proposals for ensuring the safety of the city; and all the measures undertaken for its protection--the disposition of the garrisons, the entrenchments, the funds for the fortifications--were all provided for by decrees which i proposed. and, in the second place, when the people chose a corn-commissioner, out of all athens they elected me. { } subsequently all those who were interested in injuring me combined, and assailed me with indictments, prosecutions after audit, impeachments, and all such proceedings--not in their own names at first, but through the agency of men behind whom, they thought, they would best be screened against recognition. for you doubtless know and remember that during the early part of that period i was brought to trial every day; and neither the desperation of sosicles, nor the dishonest misrepresentations of philocrates,[n] nor the frenzy of diondas and melantus, nor any other expedient, was left untried by them against me. and in all these trials, thanks to the gods above all, but secondarily to you and the rest of the athenians, i was acquitted--and justly; for such a decision is in accordance both with truth and with the credit of jurors who have taken their oath, and given a verdict in conformity with it. { } so whenever i was impeached, and you absolved me and did not give the prosecutor the necessary fraction of the votes, you were voting that my policy was the best. whenever i was acquitted upon an indictment, it was a proof that my motion and proposals were according to law. whenever you set your seal to my accounts at an audit, you confessed in addition that i had acted throughout with uprightness and integrity. and this being so, what epithet was it fitting or just that ctesiphon should apply to my actions? was it not that which he saw applied by the people, and by juries on their oath, and ratified by truth in the judgement of all men? { } 'yes,' he replies, 'but cephalus'[n] boast was a noble one--that he had never been indicted at all.' true, and a happy thing also it was for him. but why should one who has often been tried, but has never been convicted of crime, deserve to incur criticism any the more on that account? yet in truth, men of athens, so far as aeschines is concerned, i too can make this noble boast that cephalus made. for he has never yet preferred or prosecuted any indictment against me; so that by you at least, aeschines, i am admitted to be no worse a citizen than cephalus. { } his want of feeling and his malignity may be seen in many ways, and not least in the remarks which he made about fortune. for my part, i think that, as a rule, when one human being reproaches another with his fortune, he is a fool. for when he who thinks himself most prosperous and fancies his fortune most excellent, does not know whether it will remain so until the evening, how can it be right to speak of one's fortune, or to taunt another with his? but since aeschines adopts a tone of lofty superiority upon this as upon many other subjects, observe, men of athens, how much more truthful and more becoming in a human being my own remarks upon aeschines' fortune will be. { } i believe that the fortune of this city is good; and i see that the god of dodona also declares this to you through his oracle. but i think that the prevailing fortune of mankind as a whole to-day is grievous and terrible. for what man, hellene or foreigner, has not tasted abundance of evil at this present time? { } now the fact that we chose the noblest course, and that we are actually better off than those hellenes who expected to live in prosperity if they sacrificed us, i ascribe to the good fortune of the city. but in so far as we failed, in so far as everything did not fall out in accordance with our wishes, i consider that the city has received the share which was due to us of the fortune of mankind in general. { } but my personal fortune, and that of every individual among us, ought, i think, in fairness to be examined with reference to our personal circumstances. that is my judgement with regard to fortune, and i believe (as i think you also do) that my judgement is correct and just. but aeschines asserts that my personal fortune has more influence than the fortune of the city as a community--the insignificant and evil more than the good and important! how can this be? { } if, however, you determine at all costs to scrutinize my fortune, aeschines, then compare it with your own; and if you find that mine is better than yours, then cease to revile it. examine it, then, from the very beginning. and, in heaven's name, let no one condemn me for any want of good taste. for i neither regard one who speaks insultingly of poverty, nor one who prides himself on having been brought up in affluence, as a man of sense. but the slanders and misrepresentations of this unfeeling man oblige me to enter upon a discussion of this sort; and i will conduct it with as much moderation as the facts allow. { } i then, aeschines, had the advantage as a boy of attending the schools which became my position, and of possessing as much as one who is to do nothing ignoble owing to poverty must possess. when i passed out of boyhood, my life corresponded with my upbringing--i provided choruses and equipped warships; i paid the war-tax; i neglected none of the paths to distinction in public or private life, but gave my services both to my country and my friends; and when i thought fit to enter public life, the measures which i decided to adopt were of such a character that i have been crowned many times both by my country and by many other hellenic peoples, while not even you, my enemies, attempt to say that my choice was not at least an honourable one. { } such is the fortune which has accompanied my life, and though i might say much more about it, i refrain from doing so, in my anxiety not to annoy any one by the expression of my pride. and you--the lofty personage, the despiser of others--what has been your fortune when compared with this?--the fortune, thanks to which you were brought up as a boy in the depths of indigence, in close attendance upon the school along with your father, pounding up the ink, sponging down the forms, sweeping the attendants' room,[n] occupying the position of a menial, not of a free-born boy! { } then, when you became a man, you used to read out the books[n] to your mother at her initiations, and help her in the rest of the hocus-pocus, by night dressing the initiated[n] in fawnskins, drenching them from the bowl, purifying them and wiping them down with the clay and the bran, and (when they were purified) bidding them stand up and say, 'the ill is done, the good begun,' priding yourself upon raising the shout of joy more loudly than any one had ever done before--and i can believe it, for, when his voice is so loud, you dare not imagine that his shout is anything but superlatively fine. { } but by day you used to lead those noble companies through the streets, men crowned with fennel and white poplar,[n] throttling the puff-adders and waving them over your head, crying out 'euoe, saboe,'[n] and dancing to the tune of 'hyes attes, attes hyes'--addressed by the old hags as leader, captain, ivy-bearer, fan-bearer, and so on; and as the reward of your services getting sops and twists and barley-bannocks! who would not congratulate himself with good reason on such things, and bless his own fortune? { } but when you were enrolled among your fellow parishioners,[n] by whatever means (for of that i say nothing)--when, i say, you _were_ enrolled, you at once selected the noblest of occupations, that of a clerk and servant to petty magistrates. { } and when at length you escaped from this condition also, after yourself doing all that you impute to others, you in no way--heaven knows!--disgraced your previous record by the life which you subsequently lived; for you hired yourself out to the actors simylus and socrates--the roarers, they were nicknamed --and played as a third-rate actor, collecting figs[n] and bunches of grapes and olives, like a fruiterer gathering from other peoples' farms, and getting more out of this than out of the dramatic competitions in which you were competing for your lives; for there was war without truce or herald between yourselves and the spectators; and the many wounds you received from them make it natural for you to jeer at the cowardice of those who have had no such experiences. { } but i will pass over all that might be accounted for by your poverty, and proceed to my charges against your character itself. for you chose a line of political action (when at length it occurred to you to take up politics too), in pursuance of which, when your country's fortune was good, you lived the life of a hare, in fear and trembling, always expecting a thrashing for the crimes which lay on your conscience; whereas all have seen your boldness amid the misfortunes of others. { } but when a man plucks up courage at the death of a thousand of his fellow citizens, what does he deserve to suffer at the hands of the living? i have much more to say about him, but i will leave it unsaid. it is not for me, i think, to mention lightly all the infamy and disgrace which i could prove to be connected with him, but only so much as it is not discreditable to myself to speak of. { } and now review the history of your life and of mine, side by side--good temperedly, aeschines, not unkindly: and then ask these gentlemen which fortune, of the two, each of them would choose. you taught letters; i attended school. you conducted initiations; i was initiated. you were a clerk; i a member of the assembly: you, a third-rate actor, i a spectator of the play. you used to be driven from the stage, while i hissed. your political life has all been lived for the good of our enemies, mine for the good of my country. { } to pass over all besides, even on this very day, i am being examined with regard to my qualification for a crown--it is already admitted that i am clear of all crimes; while you have already the reputation of a dishonest informer, and for you the issue at stake is whether you are to continue such practices, or to be stopped once for all, through failing to obtain a fifth part of the votes. a good fortune indeed--can you not see?--is that which has accompanied your life, that you should denounce mine! { } and now let me read to you the evidence of the public burdens which i have undertaken; and side by side with them, do you, aeschines, read the speeches which you used to murder-- 'i leave the abysm of death and gates of gloom,'[n] and 'know that i am not fain ill-news to bring'; and 'evil in evil wise',[n] may you be brought to perdition, by the gods above all, and then by all those here present, villainous citizen, villainous third-rate actor that you are. (_to the clerk_.) read the evidence. [_the evidence is read_.] { } such was i in my relation to the state. and as to my private life, unless you all know that i was open-hearted and generous and at the disposal of all who had need of me, i am silent; i prefer to tell you nothing, and to produce no evidence whatever, to show whether i ransomed some from the enemy, or helped others to give their daughters in marriage, or rendered any such services. { } for my principle may perhaps be expressed thus. i think that one who has received a kindness ought to remember it all his life; but that the doer of the kindness should forget it once for all; if the former is to behave like a good man, the latter like one free from all meanness. to be always recalling and speaking of one's own benefactions is almost like upbraiding the recipients of them. i will do nothing of the kind, and will not be led into doing so. whatever be the opinion that has been formed of me in these respects, with that i am content. { } but i desire to be rid of personal topics, and to say a little more to you about public affairs. for if, aeschines, you can mention one of all those who dwell beneath the sun above us, hellene or foreigner, who has not suffered under the absolute sway, first of philip, and now of alexander, so be it! i concede that it is my fortune or misfortune, whichever you are pleased to call it, that has been to blame for everything. { } but if many of those who have never once even seen me or heard my voice have suffered much and terribly--and not individuals alone, but whole cities and nations--how much more just and truthful it is to regard the common fortune (as it seems to be) of all mankind, and a certain stubborn drift of events in the wrong direction, as the cause of these sufferings. { } such considerations, however, you discard. you impute the blame to me, whose political life has been lived among my own fellow countrymen--and that, though you know that your slander falls in part (if not entirely) upon all of them, and above all upon yourself. for if, when i took part in the discussion of public affairs, i had had absolute power, it would have been possible for all of you, the other orators, to lay the blame on me. { } but if you were present at every meeting of the assembly; if the city always brought forward questions of policy for public consideration; if at the time my policy appeared the best to every one, and above all to you (for it was certainly from no goodwill that you relinquished to me the hopes, the admiration, the honours, which all attached themselves to my policy at that time, but obviously because the truth was too strong for you, and you had nothing better to propose); then surely you are guilty of monstrous iniquity, in finding fault to-day with a policy, than which, at the time, you could propose nothing better. { } among all the rest of mankind, i observe that some such principles as the following have been, as it were, determined and ordained. if a man commits a deliberate crime, indignation and punishment are ordained against him. if he commits an involuntary mistake, instead of punishment, he is to receive pardon. if, without crime or mistake, one who has given himself up wholly to that which seems to be for the advantage of all has, in company with all, failed to achieve success, then it is just, not to reproach or revile such a man, but to sympathize with him. { } moreover, it will be seen that all these principles are not so ordained in the laws alone. nature herself has laid them down in her unwritten law, and in the moral consciousness of mankind. aeschines, then, has so far surpassed all mankind in brutality and in the art of misrepresentation, that he actually denounces me for things which he himself mentioned under the name of misfortunes. { } in addition to everything else, as though he had himself always spoken straightforwardly and in loyalty, he bade you keep your eyes on me carefully, and make sure that i did not mislead or deceive you. he called me 'a clever speaker', 'a wizard', 'a sophist', and so on: just as if it followed that when a man had the first word and attributed his own qualities to another, the truth was really as he stated, and his hearers would not inquire further who he himself was, that said such things. but i am sure that you all know this man, and are aware that these qualities belong to him far more than to me. and again, { } i am quite sure that my cleverness--yes, let the word pass; though i observe that the influence of a speaker depends for the most part on his audience; for in proportion to the welcome and the goodwill which you accord to each speaker is the credit which he obtains for wisdom;--i am sure, i say, that if i too possess any such skill, you will all find it constantly fighting on your behalf in affairs of state, never in opposition to you, never for private ends; while the skill of aeschines, on the contrary, is employed, not only in upholding the cause of the enemy, but in attacking any one who has annoyed him or come into collision with him anywhere. he neither employs it uprightly, nor to promote the interests of the city. { } for a good and honourable citizen ought not to require from a jury, who have come into court to represent the interests of the community, that they shall give their sanction to his anger, or his enmity, or any other such passion; nor ought he to come before you to gratify such feelings. it were best that he had no such passions in his nature at all; but if they are really inevitable, then he should keep them tame and subdued. under what circumstances, then, should a politician and an orator show passion? { } when any of the vital interests of his country are at stake; when it is with its enemies that the people has to deal: those are the circumstances. for then is the opportunity of a loyal and gallant citizen. but that when he has never to this day demanded my punishment, either in the name of the city or in his own, for any public--nor, i will add, for any private--crime, he should have come here with a trumped-up charge against the grant of a crown and a vote of thanks, and should have spent so many words upon it--that is a sign of personal enmity and jealousy and meanness, not of any good quality. { } and that he should further have discarded every form of lawsuit against myself, and should have come here to-day to attack the defendant, is the very extremity of baseness. it shows, i think, aeschines, that your motive in undertaking this suit was your desire, not to exact vengeance for any crime, but to give a display of rhetoric and elocution. yet it is not his language, aeschines, that deserves our esteem in an orator, nor the pitch of his voice, but his choice of the aims which the people chooses, his hatred or love of those whom his country loves or hates. { } he whose heart is so disposed will always speak with loyal intent; but he who serves those from whom the city foresees danger to herself, does not ride at the same anchor as the people, and therefore does not look for safety to the same quarter. but i do, mark you! for i have made the interests of my countrymen my own, and have counted nothing as reserved for my own private advantage. what? { } you have not done so either? how can that be, when immediately after the battle you went your way as an ambassador to philip, the author of the calamities which befell your country at that time; and that, despite the fact that until then you always denied this intimacy[n] with him, as every one knows? but what is meant by a deceiver of the city? is it not one who does not say what he thinks? upon whom does the herald justly pronounce the curse? is it not upon such a man as this? with what greater crime can one charge a man who is an orator, than that of saying one thing and thinking another? such a man you have been found to be. { } and after this do you open your mouth, or dare to look this audience in the face? do you imagine that they do not know who you are? or that the slumber of forgetfulness has taken such hold upon them all, that they do not remember the speeches which you used to deliver during the war, when you declared with imprecations and oaths that you had nothing to do with philip, and that i was bringing this accusation against you, when it was not true, to satisfy my personal enmity? { } but so soon as the news of the battle had come, you thought no more of all this, but at once avowed and professed that you stood on a footing of friendship and guest-friendship with him; though these were nothing but your hireling-service under other names; for upon what honest or equal basis could aeschines, the son of glaucothea the tambourine--player,[n] enjoy the guest-friendship, or the friendship, or the acquaintance of philip? i cannot see. in fact, you had been hired by him to ruin the interests of these your countrymen. and yet, though your own treason has been so plainly detected--though you have been an informer against yourself after the event--you still revile me, and reproach me with crimes of which, you will find, any one is more guilty than i. { } many a great and noble enterprise, aeschines, did this city undertake and succeed in, inspired by me; and she did not forget them. it is a proof of this, that when, immediately after the event, the people had to elect one who should pronounce the oration over the dead, and you were nominated, they did not elect you, for all your fine voice, nor demades, who had just negotiated the peace, nor hegemon,[n] nor any other member of your party: they elected me. and when you and pythocles[n] came forward in a brutal and shameless fashion, god knows! and made the same charges against me as you are making again to-day, and abused me, the people elected me even more decidedly. { } and the reason you know well; but i will tell it you nevertheless. they knew for themselves both the loyalty and zeal which inspired my conduct of affairs, and the iniquity of yourself and your friends. for what you denied with oaths when our cause was prosperous, you admitted in the hour of the city's failure; and those, accordingly, who were only enabled by the misfortunes of their country to express their views without fear, they decided to have been enemies of their own for a long while, though only then did they stand revealed.{ } and further, they thought that one who was to pronounce an oration over the dead, and to adorn their valour, should not have come beneath the same roof, nor shared the same libation,[n] as those who were arrayed against them; that he should not there join with those who with their own hands had slain them, in the revel[n] and the triumph-song over the calamities of the hellenes, and then come home and receive honour--that he should not play the mourner over their fate with his voice, but should grieve for them in his heart. what they required they saw in themselves and in me, but not in you; and this was why they appointed me, and not any of you. { } nor, when the people acted thus, did the fathers and brothers of the slain, who were then publicly appointed to conduct the funeral, act otherwise. for since (in accordance with the ordinary custom) they had to hold the funeral-feast in the house of the nearest of kin, as it were, to the slain, they held it at my house, and with reason; for though by birth each was more nearly akin to his dead than i, yet none stood nearer to them all in common. for he who had their life and their success most at heart, had also, when they had suffered what i would they had not, the greatest share of sorrow for them all. (_to the clerk _) { } read him the epitaph which the city resolved to inscribe above them at the public cost; (_to aeschines_) that even by these very lines, aeschines, you may know that you are a man destitute of feeling, a dishonest accuser, an abominable wretch! _the inscription_.[n] these for their country, fighting side by side, by deeds of arms dispelled the foemen's pride. heir lives they saved not, bidding death make clear-- impartial judge!--their courage or their fear. for greece they fought, lest, 'neath the yoke brought low, in thraldom she th' oppressor's scorn should know. now in the bosom of their fatherland after their toil they rest--'tis god's command. 'tis god's alone from failure free to live;[n] escape from fate to no man doth he give. { } do you hear, aeschines [in these very lines], 'tis god's alone from failure free to live'? not to the statesman has he ascribed the power to secure success for those who strive, but to the gods. why then, accursed man, do you revile _me_, for our failure, in words which i pray the gods to turn upon the heads of you and yours? { } but, even after all the other lying accusations which he has brought against me, the thing which amazed me most of all, men of athens, was that when he mentioned what had befallen the city, he did not think of it as a loyal and upright citizen would have thought. he shed no tears; he felt no emotion of sorrow in his heart: he lifted up his voice, he exulted, he strained his throat, evidently in the belief that he was accusing me, though in truth he was giving us an illustration, to his own discredit, of the utter difference between his feelings and those of others, at the painful events which had taken place. { } but surely one who professes, as aeschines professes now, to care for the laws and the constitution, ought to show, if nothing else, at least that he feels the same griefs and the same joys as the people, and has not, by his political profession, ranged himself on the side of their opponents. that you have done the latter is manifest today, when you pretend that the blame for everything is mine, and that it is through me that the city was plunged in trouble: though it was not through my statesmanship or my policy, gentlemen, { } that you began to help the hellenes: for were you to grant me this--that it was through me that you had resisted the dominion which was being established over the hellenes--you would have granted me a testimonial which all those that you have given to others together could not equal. but neither would i make such an assertion; for it would be unjust to you; nor, i am sure, would you concede its truth: and if aeschines were acting honestly, he would not have been trying to deface and misrepresent the greatest of your glories, in order to satisfy his hatred towards me. { } but why do i rebuke him for this, when he has made other lying charges against me, which are more outrageous by far? for when a man charges me--i call heaven and earth to witness!--with philippizing, what will he not say? by heracles and all the gods, if one had to inquire truthfully, setting aside all calumny and all expression of animosity, who are in reality the men upon whose heads all would naturally and justly lay the blame for what has taken place, you would find that it was those in each city who resemble aeschines, not those who resemble me. { } for they, when philip's power was weak and quite insignificant--when we repeatedly warned and exhorted you and showed you what was best--they, to satisfy their own avarice, sacrificed the interests of the community, each group deceiving and corrupting their own fellow citizens, until they brought them into bondage. thus the thessalians were treated by daochus, cineas, and thrasydaeus; the arcadians by cercidas, hieronymus and eucampidas; the argives by myrtis, teledamus, and mnaseas; the eleans by euxitheus, cleotimus and aristaechmus; the messenians by the sons of the godforsaken philiadas--neon and thrasylochus; the sicymians by aristratus and epichares; the corinthians by deinarchus and demaretus; the megareans by ptoeodorus, helixus and perillus; the thebans by timolaus, theogeiton, and anemoetas; the euboeans by hipparchus and sosistratus. { } daylight will fail me before the list of the traitors is complete. all these, men of athens, are men who pursue the same designs in their own cities, as my opponents pursue among you--abominable men, flatterers, evil spirits, who have hacked the limbs each of his own fatherland, and like boon companions have pledged away their freedom, first to philip and now to alexander; men whose measure of happiness is their belly, and their lowest instincts; while as for freedom, and the refusal to acknowledge any man as lord--the standard and rule of good to the hellenes of old--they have flung it to the ground. { } of this shameful and notorious conspiracy and wickedness--or rather (to speak with all earnestness, men of athens), of this treason against the freedom of the hellenes--athens has been guiltless in the eyes of all men, in consequence of my statesmanship, as i have been guiltless in your eyes. and do you then ask me for what merits i count myself worthy to receive honour? i tell you that at a time when every politician in hellas had been corrupted--beginning with yourself--[firstly by philip, and now by alexander], { } no opportunity that offered, no generous language, no grand promises, no hopes, no fears, nor any other motive, tempted or induced me to betray one jot of what i believed to be the rights and interests of the city; nor, of all the counsel that i have given to my fellow countrymen, up to this day, has any ever been given (as it has by you) with the scales of the mind inclining to the side of gain, but all out of an upright, honest, uncorrupted soul. i have taken the lead in greater affairs than any man of my own time, and my administration has been sound and honest throughout all. { } that is why i count myself worthy of honour. but as for the fortifications and entrenchments, for which you ridiculed me, i judge them to be deserving, indeed, of gratitude and commendation--assuredly they are so--but i set them far below my own political services. not with stones, nor with bricks, did i fortify this city. not such are the works upon which i pride myself most. but would you inquire honestly wherein my fortifications consist? you will find them in munitions of war, in cities, in countries, in harbours, in ships, in horses, and in men ready to defend my fellow countrymen. { } these are the defences i have set to protect attica, so far as by human calculation it could be done; and with these i have fortified our whole territory--not the circuit of the peiraeus or of the city alone. nor in fact, did _i _prove inferior to philip in calculations--far from it!--or in preparations for war; but the generals of the confederacy,[n] and their forces, proved inferior to him in fortune. where are the proofs of these things? they are clear and manifest. i bid you consider them. { } what was the duty of a loyal citizen--one who was acting with all forethought and zeal and uprightness for his country's good? was it not to make euboea the bulwark of attica on the side of the sea, and boeotia on that of the mainland, and on that of the regions towards the peloponnese, our neighbours[n] in that direction? was it not to provide for the corn-trade, and to ensure that it should pass along a continuously friendly coast all the way to the peiraeus? { } was it not to preserve the places which were ours--proconnesus, the chersonese, tenedos--by dispatching expeditions to aid them, and proposing and moving resolutions accordingly; and to secure the friendship and alliance of the rest--byzantium, tenedos, euboea? was it not to take away the greatest of the resources which the enemy possessed, and to add what was lacking to those of the city? { } all this has been accomplished by my decrees and by the measures which i have taken; and all these measures, men of athens, will be found by any one who will examine them without jealousy, to have been correctly planned, and executed with entire honesty: the opportunity for each step was not, you will find, neglected or left unrecognized or thrown away by me, and nothing was left undone, which it was within the power and the reasoning capacity of a single man to effect. but if the might of some divine power, or the inferiority of our generals, or the wickedness of those who were betraying your cities, or all these things together, continuously injured our whole cause, until they effected its overthrow, how is demosthenes at fault? { } had there been in each of the cities of hellas one man, such as i was, as i stood at my own post in your midst--nay, if all thessaly and all arcadia had each had but one man animated by the same spirit as myself--not one hellenic people, either beyond or on this side of thermopylae, would have experienced the evils which they now suffer. { } all would have been dwelling in liberty and independence, free from all fears, secure and prosperous, each in their own land, rendering thanks for all these great blessings to you and the rest of the athenian people, through me. but that you may know that in my anxiety to avoid jealousy, i am using language which is far from adequate to the actual facts, (_to the clerk_) read me this; and take and recite the list of the expeditions sent out in accordance with my decrees. [_the list of expeditions is read]_ { } these measures, and others like them, aeschines, were the measures which it was the duty of a loyal and gallant citizen to take. if they were successful, it was certain that we should be indisputably the strongest power, and that with justice as well as in fact: and now that they have resulted otherwise, we are left with at least an honourable name. no man casts reproach either upon the city, or upon the choice which she made: they do but upbraid fortune, who decided the issue thus. { } it was not, god knows, a citizen's duty to abandon his country's interests, to sell his services to her opponents, and cherish the opportunities of the enemy instead of those of his country. nor was it, on the one hand, to show his malice against the man who had faced the task of proposing and moving measures worthy of the city, and persisting in that intention; while, on the other hand, he remembered and kept his eyes fixed upon any private annoyance which another had caused him: nor was it to maintain a wicked and festering inactivity, as you so often do. { } assuredly there is an inactivity that is honest and brings good to the state--the inactivity which you,[n] the majority of the citizens, observe in all sincerity. but that is not the inactivity of aeschines. far from it! he, on the contrary, retires just when he chooses, from public life (and he often chooses to do so), that he may watch for the moment when you will be sated with the continual speeches of the same adviser, or when fortune has thrown some obstacle in your path, or some other disagreeable event has happened (for in the life of man many things are possible); and then, when such an opportunity comes, suddenly, like a gale of wind, out of his retirement he comes forth an orator, with his voice in training, and his phrases and his sentences collected; and these he strings together lucidly, without pausing for breath, though they bring with them no profit, no accession of anything good, but only calamity to one or another of his fellow citizens, and shame to all alike. { } surely, aeschines, if all this practice and study sprang from an honest heart, resolved to pursue the interests of your country, the fruits of it should have been noble and honourable and profitable to all--alliances of cities, supplies of funds, opening of ports,[n] enactment of beneficial laws, acts of opposition to our proved enemies. { } it was for all such services that men looked in bygone days; and the past has offered, to any loyal and gallant citizen, abundant opportunities of displaying them: but nowhere in the ranks of such men will you ever be found to have stood--not first, nor second, nor third, nor fourth, nor fifth, nor sixth, nor in any position whatsoever; at least, not in any matters whereby your country stood to gain. { } for what alliance has the city gained by negotiations of yours? what assistance, what fresh access of goodwill or fame? what diplomatic or administrative action of yours has brought new dignity to the city? what department of our home affairs, or our relations with hellenic and foreign states, over which you have presided, has shown any improvement? where are your ships? where are your munitions of war? where are your dockyards? where are the walls that you have repaired? where are your cavalry? where in the world _is_ your sphere of usefulness? what pecuniary assistance have you ever given, as a good and generous fellow citizen,[n] either to rich or poor? { } 'but, my good sir, 'you say, 'if i have done none of these things, i have at least given my loyalty and goodwill.' where? when? why, even at a time when all who ever opened their lips upon the platform contributed voluntarily to save the city, till, last of all, aristonicus gave what he had collected to enable him to regain his civil rights--even then, most iniquitous of men! you never came forward or made any contribution whatever: and assuredly it was not from poverty, when you had inherited more than five talents out of the estate of your father-in-law philo, and had received two talents subscribed by the leaders of the naval boards,[n] for your damaging attack upon my naval law.[n] { } but i will say no more about this, lest by passing from subject to subject i should break away from the matter in hand. it is at least plain that your failure to contribute was not due to your poverty, but to your anxiety to do nothing in opposition to those whose interest is the guide of your whole public life. on what occasions, then, do your spirit and your brilliancy show themselves? when something must be done to injure your fellow countrymen--then your voice is most glorious, your memory most perfect; then you are a prince of actors, a theocrines[n] on the tragic stage! { } again, you have recalled the gallant men of old, and you do well to do so. yet it is not just, men of athens, to take advantage of the good feeling which you may be relied upon to entertain towards the dead, in order to examine me before you by their standard, and compare me, who am still living amongst you, with them. { } who in all the world does not know that against the living there is always more or less of secret jealousy, while none, not even their enemies, hate the dead any more? and am i, in spite of this law of nature, to be judged and examined to-day by the standard of those who were before me? by no means! it would be neither just nor fair, aeschines. but let me be compared with yourself, or with any of those who have adopted the same policy as yourself, and are still alive. { } and consider this also. which of these alternatives is the more honourable? which is better for the city?--that the good services done by men of former times--tremendous, nay even beyond all description though they may be--should be made an excuse for exposing to ingratitude and contumely those that are rendered to the present generation? or that all who act in loyalty should have a share in the honours and the kindness which our fellow citizens dispense? { } aye, and (if i must say this after all) the policy and the principles which i have adopted will be found, if rightly viewed, to resemble and to have the same aims as those of the men who in that age received praise; while yours resemble those of the dishonest assailants of such persons in those days. for in their time also there were obviously persons who disparaged the living and praised the men of old, acting in the same malicious way as yourself. { } do you say then, that i am in no way like them? but are you like them, aeschines? or your brother? or any other orator of the present day? for my part, i should say, 'none.' nay, my good sir--to use no other epithet--compare the living with the living, their contemporaries, as men do in every other matter, whether they are comparing poets or choruses or competitors in the games. { } because philammon was not so powerful as glaucus of carystus[n] and some other athletes of former times, he did not leave olympia uncrowned: but because he fought better than all who entered against him, he was crowned and proclaimed victor. do you likewise examine me beside the orators of the day--beside yourself, beside any one in the world that you choose. { } i fear no man's rivalry. for, while the city was still free to choose the best course, and all alike could compete with one another in loyalty to their country, i was found the best adviser of them all. it was by my laws, by my decrees, by my diplomacy, that all was effected. not one of your party appeared anywhere, unless some insult was to be offered to your fellow countrymen. but when there happened, what i would had never happened--when it was not statesmen that were called to the front, but those who would do the bidding of a master, those who were anxious to earn wages by injuring their country, and to flatter a stranger--then, along with every member of your party, you were found at your post, the grand and resplendent owner of a stud;[n] while i was weak, i confess, yet more loyal to my fellow countrymen than you. { } two characteristics, men of athens, a citizen of a respectable character (for this is perhaps the least invidious phrase that i can apply to myself) must be able to show: when he enjoys authority, he must maintain to the end the policy whose aims are noble action and the pre-eminence of his country: and at all times and in every phase of fortune he must remain loyal. for this depends upon his own nature; while his power and his influence are determined by external causes. and in me, you will find, this loyalty has persisted unalloyed. for mark this. { } not when my surrender was demanded, not when i was called to account before the amphictyons, not in face either of threats or of promises, not when these accursed men were hounded on against me like wild beasts, have i ever been false to my loyalty towards you. for from the very first, i chose the straight and honest path in public life: i chose to foster the honour, the supremacy, the good name of my country, to seek to enhance them, and to stand or fall with them. { } i do not walk through the market, cheerful and exultant over the success of strangers, holding out my hand and giving the good tidings to any whom i expect to report my conduct yonder, but shuddering, groaning, bowing myself to the earth, when i hear of the city's good fortune, as do these impious men, who make a mock of the city --not remembering that in so doing they are mocking themselves--while they direct their gaze abroad, and, whenever another has gained success through the failure of the hellenes, belaud that state of things, and declare that we must see that it endures for all time. { } never, o all ye gods, may any of you consent to their desire! if it can be, may you implant even in these men a better mind and heart. but if they are verily beyond all cure, then bring them and them alone to utter and early destruction, by land and sea. and to us who remain, grant the speediest release from the fears that hang over us, and safety that naught can shake! footnotes [ ] some writers suppose that it was at the meeting in the spring of . the evidence is not conclusive, but appears to point to the date given here. notes on the naval boards § . _who praise your forefathers_. the advocates of war with persia had doubtless appealed to the memory of marathon and salamis, and the old position of athens as the champion of greece against persia. § , . the argument is this: 'if a war with persia needed a special kind of force, we could not prepare for it without being detected: but as all wars need the same kind of force, our preparations need rouse no suspicion in persia particularly.' _acknowledged foes_: i.e. probably thebes, or the revolted allies of athens, with whom a disadvantageous peace had, perhaps, just been made. it is not, however, impossible that philip also is in the orator's mind; for though at the time he was probably engaged in war with the illyrians and paeonians, his quarrel with athens in regard to amphipolis had not been settled. the olynthians may also be thought of. (see introd. to phil. i and olynthiacs.) § . _rhapsodies_. the rhapsodes who went about greece reciting homer and other poets had lost the distinction they once enjoyed, and 'rhapsody' became a synonym for idle declamation. § . _a bold speech_: i.e. a demand for instant war, helped out by rhetorical praises of the men of old. § . _unmarried heiresses and orphans_. these would be incapable of discharging the duties of the trierarchy, though their estates were liable for the war-tax. partners were probably exempted, when none of them possessed so large a share in the common property as would render him liable for trierarchy. _property outside attica_. according to the terms made by athens with her allies when the 'second delian league' was formed in , athens undertook that no athenian should hold property in an allied state. but this condition had been broken, and the multiplication of athenian estates [greek: _kl_erhouchiai_] in allied territories had been one of the causes of the war with the allies. _unable to contribute_: e. g. owing to no longer possessing the estate which he had when the assessment was made. § . _to associate, &c_. the sections which contained a very rich man were to have poor men included in it, so that the total wealth of every section might be the same, and the distribution of the burden between the sections fair. § . _the first hundred, &c_. demosthenes thinks of the fleet as composed, according to need, of , , or vessels, and treats each hundred as a separate squadron, to be separately divided among the boards. _by lot_. in this and other clauses of his proposal, demosthenes stipulates for the use of the lot ([greek: _sunkl_er_osai_], [greek: epikl_erosai]) to avoid all unfair selection. it is only in the distribution of duties among the smaller sections within each board that assignment by arrangement ([greek: _apodounai_], a word suggesting distribution according to fitness or convenience) is to be allowed. § . _taxable capital_ ([greek: _tim_ema_]). the war-tax and the trierarchic burdens were assessed on a valuation of the contributor's property. upon this valuation of his taxable capital he paid the percentage required. (the old view that he was taxed not upon his capital, as valued, but upon a fraction of it varying with his wealth, rests upon an interpretation of passages in the speeches against aphobus, which is open to grave question.) the total amount of the single valuations was the 'estimated taxable capital of the country' ([greek: _tim_ema t_es ch_oras_]). this, in the case of the trierarchy, would be the aggregate amount of the valuations of the , wealthiest men, viz. , talents. (of course the capital taxable for the war-tax would be considerably larger. even at a time when the prosperity of attica was much lower, in - b.c., it was nearly , talents, according to polybius, ii. . .) § . a tabular statement will make this plain:-- _persons _total capital taxable _ships_. responsible_. for each ship_. tal. " " the percentage payable on the taxable capital was of course higher, the larger the number of ships required. each ship appears to have cost on the average a talent to equip. the percentages in the three cases contained in the table would therefore be - / , - / , and , respectively. (compare § .) § . _fittings ... in arrear_. apparently former trierarchs had not always given back the fittings of their vessels, which had either been provided at the expense of the state, or lent to the trierarchs by the state. § . _wards_ ([greek: _trittyes_]). the trittys or ward was one-third of a tribe. § . _you see ... city_. the assembly met on the pnyx, whence there was a view of the acropolis and of the greater part of the ancient city. _prophets_. the athenian populace seems always to have been liable to the influence of soothsayers, who professed to utter oracles from the gods, particularly when war was threatening. this was so (e. g.) at the time of the peloponnesian war (thucyd. ii. , v. ), and the soothsayer is delightfully caricatured by aristophanes in the _birds_ and elsewhere. § . _two hundred ships ... one hundred were athenian_. in the speech on the crown, § , demosthenes gives the numbers as and . perhaps a transcriber at an early stage in the history of the text accidentally wrote hh (the symbol for ) instead of hhh, in the case of the first number, and a later scribe then 'corrected' the second number into h instead of hh. the numbers given by herodotus are and , and, for the persian ships, , . § . _against egypt_, which was now in rebellion against artaxerxes. orontas, satrap of mysia, was more or less constantly in revolt during this period. § . _even more certainly_ [greek: _palai_]: lit. 'long ago'. the transition from temporal to logical priority is paralleled in certain uses of other temporal adverbs, e.g. [greek: _euthys_] (aristotle, _poet_. v), and [greek: _schol_e_] (of which, as weil notes, [greek: _palai_] is the exact opposite). § . _sins against hellas_. this refers to the support given to the persian invaders by thebes in the persian wars (herod. viii. ). for the megalopolitans § . _plataeae_ (which had been overthrown by the enemies of athens in the course of the peloponnesian war, but rebuilt, with the aid of sparta, in ) was destroyed by thebes in - . about the same time thebes destroyed thespiae, which, like plataeae, was well-disposed towards athens; and in the thebans massacred the male population of orchomenus, and sold the women and children into slavery. § . _oropus_ had sometimes belonged to thebes and sometimes to athens. in it was taken from athens by themison, tyrant of eretria (exactly opposite oropus, on the coast of euboea), and placed in the hands of thebes until the ownership should be decided. thebes retained it until it was restored to athens by philip in . § . _when all the peloponnesians, &c_. the reference seems to be to the year , shortly after the battle of leuctra, when the peloponnesian states sought the protection of athens against sparta, and, being refused, became allies of thebes (diodorus xv. ). in athens made an alliance with sparta. § . _saved the spartans_. see last note. athens also assisted the spartans at mantineia in . _the thebans_. in and the following years athens assisted thebes against the spartans under agesilaus and cleombrotus. _the euboeans_. in or euboea succeeded in obtaining freedom from the domination of thebes by the aid of athenian troops under timotheus. § . _triphylia_, a district between elis and messenia, was the subject of a long-standing dispute between the eleans and the arcadians, and seems to have been in the hands of the latter since (about) . _tricaranum_, a fortress in the territory of phlius, had been seized by the argives in , and used as a centre from which incursions were made into phliasian territory. § . _allies of thebes_: in order to preserve the balance of power between thebes and sparta. § . _the theban confederacy_. the reference is particularly to the arcadian allies of thebes, but the wider expression perhaps suggests a general policy of a more ambitious kind. § . _you, i think, know_. he refers to the older members of the assembly, who would remember the tyrannical conduct of sparta during the period of her supremacy (the first quarter of the fourth century b.c.). § . _pillars_. the terms of an alliance were usually recorded upon pillars erected by each state on some site fixed by agreement or custom. § . _in the war_: i.e. the 'sacred war', against the phocians. for the freedom of the rhodians § . _now it will be seen_: i.e. if you come to a right decision, and help the rhodians. § . _the egyptians_. see speech on naval boards, § n. § . _to advise you_: i.e. in the speech on the naval boards (see especially §§ , of that speech). § . _ariobarzanes_, satrap of the hellespont, joined in the general revolt of the princes of asia minor against persia in , at first secretly (as though making war against other satraps) but afterwards openly. timotheus was sent to help him, on the understanding that he must not break the peace of antalcidas ( b.c.), according to which the greek cities in asia were to belong to the king, but the rest were to be independent (except that athens was to retain lemnos, imbros, and scyros). when ariobarzanes broke out in open revolt, timotheus could not help him without breaking the first provision; but the persian occupation tion of samos was itself a violation of the second, and he was therefore justified in relieving the town. § . _while he is in her neighbourhood_. artaxerxes almost certainly went in person to egypt about this time. (that he went before is proved by isocrates, _philippus_, § ; and he was no doubt expected to go, even before he went.) the alternative rendering, 'since he is still to be a neighbouring power to herself,' is less good, since he would be this, whether he conquered egypt or not. § . _rhodians who are now in possession_: i.e. the oligarchs, who held the town with the help of caria. _some of their fellow-citizens_: i.e. some of the democratic party. § . _official patron_ ([greek: _proxenos_]). the 'official patron' of another state in athens was necessarily an athenian, and so differed from the modern consul, whom he otherwise resembled in many ways (cf. phillipson, _international law and custom of ancient greece and rome_, vol. i, pp. - ). § . _publicly provided_: i.e. in treaties between the states. § . _when our democracy_, &c.: i.e. in , when, at the conclusion of the peloponnesian war, the tyranny of the thirty was established, and a very large number of democratic citizens were driven into exile. the argives refused the spartan demand for the surrender of some of these to the thirty (diodorus xiv. ). § . _one who is a barbarian-aye, and a woman_ ([greek: _barbaron anthr_opon kai tauta gynaika_]). this has been taken to refer ( ) to artaxerxes and artemisia. but [greek: _kai tauta_] cannot be simply [greek: _pros tont_o_], and [greek: _kai tauta gynaika_] must refer to the same person as [greek: _barbaron anthr_opon_]; ( ) to artaxerxes alone, the words [greek: _kai tauta gynaika_] being a gratuitous insult such as it was customary for athenians to level at any persian; ( ) to artemisia alone, [greek: anthr_opos] being feminine here as often. it is not possible to decide certainly between ( ) and ( ). artemisia is more prominent in the speech than the king, but it is the king who is referred to in the next sentence. § . _rendered athens weak_. the success of sparta in the peloponnesian war was rendered possible, to a great extent, by the supply of funds from persia. in cyrus made his famous expedition against artaxerxes ii, and clearchus (with other generals) commanded the greek troops which assisted him. the death of cyrus in the battle of cunaxa in put an end to his rebellion. § . _rights of the rest of the world_. weil suggests that it may have been argued that to intervene in rhodian affairs would be to break the treaty made with the allies in (about), at the end of the social war, whereby their independence was guaranteed. § . _chalcedon_ was on the asiatic shore of the bosporus, and therefore by the peace of antalcidas belonged to the king (see n. on § ). by the same treaty, selymbria, on the north coast of the propontis, ought to have been independent. the byzantines, who had obtained their independence of athens in the social war, were extending their influence greatly at this time. § . _the treaty_: again the peace of antalcidas. _even if there actually are such advisers_: or, 'even if any one actually asserts the existence of such persons.' § . _two treaties_. the first must be the peace of callias ( b.c.), the terms of which are given in the speech on the embassy, § . the second was the peace of antalcidas. § . _the knowledge of what is right_. the parallel passage in § seems to confirm this rendering, rather than the alternative, 'the intention to do what is right.' § . _oligarchical_. this expression is partly directed at those who, in opposing the exiled democrats, supported the oligarchs of rhodes; and it may be partly explained by the fact that the policy of eubulus, who wished to avoid all interferences which might lead to war, was particularly satisfactory to the wealthier classes in athens. but it was a common practice to accuse an opponent of anti-democratic sentiments, and of trying to get the better of the people by illegitimate means (cf. speech on embassy, § , &c.). § . cf. speech on naval boards, § . the first philippic § . _the war with sparta_. probably the boeotian war ( - b.c.), when athens supported thebes against sparta. _in defence of the right_. the attempt of the spartans to conquer boeotia was a violation of the peace of antalcidas (see n. on speech for rhodians, § ). but demosthenes' expression may be quite general in its meaning. § . _tribes_. probably refers especially to the thracians (see introd. to the speech). the paeonian and illyrian chieftains also made alliance with athens in . § . _to euboea_. see speech for megalopolitans, § n. _to haliartus_: in , when athens sent a force to aid the thebans against the spartans under lysander. (for other allusions see introd. to the speech.) § . _paper-armies_ ([greek: epistolimaious ... dynameis]): lit. 'armies existing in dispatches.' § . _athens once maintained_, &c. the reference is to the corinthian war of - b.c. the athenian general iphicrates organized a mercenary force of peltasts in support of corinth, and did great damage to sparta; he was succeeded in the command by chabrias. nothing more is certainly known of polystratus than is told us here, though he may be referred to in the speech against leptines, § , as receiving honours from athens. _to artabazus_. in chares was sent to oppose the revolted allies of athens, but being short of funds, assisted artabazus in his rebellion against persia, and was richly rewarded. (see introd. to speech on naval boards.) § . _spectators of these mysteries of generalship_ ([greek: epoptai t_on ] [greek: *_strat_egoumen_on_]). the word [greek: _epopt_es_] is chiefly used of spectators of the mysteries, and is here applied sarcastically to the citizens whom demosthenes desires to see what has hitherto been a hidden thing from them--the conduct of their generals. § . _ten captains and generals, &c_. there was one general ([greek: _strat_egos_]) and one captain ([greek: _taxiarchos_]) of infantry, and one general of cavalry ([greek: _phylarchos_]), for each of the ten tribes. there were two regular masters of the horse ([greek: _hipparchoi_]), and a third appointed for the special command of the athenian troops in lemnos. the generals ([greek: _strat_egoi_]) had various civil duties, among them the organization of the military processions at the panathenaea and other great festivals. § . _menelaus_. either a macedonian chieftain, who had assisted the athenian commander timotheus against poteidaea in , and probably received athenian citizenship; or else philip's half-brother menelaus. but there is no evidence that the latter ever served in the athenian forces, and probably the former is meant. § . _etesian winds_. these blow strongly from the north over the aegean from july to september. § . _the whole force in its entirety_. so with butcher's punctuation. but it is perhaps better to place a comma after [greek: _dynamin_], and translate, 'after making ready ... soldiers, ships, cavalry--the entire force complete--you bind them,' &c. § . see introd. to the speech. geraestus was the southernmost most point of euboea. the 'sacred trireme', the paralus, when conveying the athenian deputation to the festival of delos, put in on its way at marathon, where there was an altar of the delian apollo, to offer sacrifice. § . the festival of the panathenaea was managed by the athlothetae, who were appointed by lot, and consequently could not be specially qualified; whereas the stewards ([greek: _epimel_etai_]) who assisted the archon in the management of the dionysia, were at this time elected, presumably on the ground of their fitness. _an amount of trouble_ ([greek: _ochlon_]). possibly 'a larger crowd'. but there is no point in mentioning the crowd; the point lies in the pains taken; and thucyd. vi. ([greek: _upo tou ochl_odous t_es parhaskeu_es_]) confirms the rendering given. § . the choregus paid the expenses of a chorus at the dionysiac (and certain other) festivals. the gymnasiarchs, or stewards of the games, managed the games and torch-races which formed part of the panathenaea and many other festivals. the offices were imposed by law upon men who possessed a certain estate, but any one who felt that another could bear the burden better might challenge him either to perform the duty or to exchange property with him. (see appendix to goodwin's edition of demosthenes' speech against meidias.) _independent freedmen_: lit. 'dwellers apart,' i.e. freedmen who no longer lived with the master whose slaves they had been. § . _empty ships_. if these are the ships referred to in olynth. iii, section , the date of the first philippic must be later than october b.c. § . _promises_. the 'promises of chares' became almost proverbial. § . _examination_, or 'audit'. a general, like every other responsible official, had to report his proceedings, at the end of his term of office, to a board of auditors, and might be prosecuted before a jury by any one who was dissatisfied with his report. § . _negotiating with sparta, &c_. as a matter of fact, philip had evidently come to an understanding with thebes by this time; but he may have caused some such rumours to be spread, in order to get rid of any possible opposition from sparta. the 'breaking-up of the free states' probably refers to the desire of sparta to destroy megalopolis, which was in alliance with thebes. _sent ambassadors to the king_. arrian, ii. , mentions a letter of darius to alexander, recalling how philip had been in friendship and alliance with artaxerxes ochus. it is possible, therefore, that the rumour to which demosthenes alludes had some foundation. the first olynthiac (_note_.--most of the allusions in the olynthiacs are explained by the introduction to the first philippic.) § . _power over everything, open or secret_. the translation generally approved, 'power to publish or conceal his designs,' is hardly possible. the [greek: kai] in the phrase [greek: rh_eta kai aporr_eta] (or [greek: arr_eta]) cannot be taken disjunctively here, when it is always conjunctive in this phrase elsewhere, the whole phrase being virtually equivalent to 'everything whatever'. § . _how he treated_, &c. the scholiast says that philip killed the traitors at amphipolis first, saying that if they had not been faithful to their own countrymen, they were not likely to be faithful to himself; and that the traitors at pydna, finding that they were not likely to be spared, took sanctuary, and having been persuaded to surrender themselves on promise of their lives, were executed nevertheless. neither story is confirmed by other evidence. § . _in aid of the euboeans_: in or . see speech for megalopolitans, § n. § . _magnesia_. there seems to have been a town of the same name as the district. _attacked the olynthians_. this refers to the short invasion of (see vol. i, p. ), not to that which is the subject of the olynthiacs. _arybbas_ was king of the molossi, and uncle of philip's wife, olympias. nothing is known of this expedition against him. he was deposed by philip in . (see vol. ii, p. .) § . _these towns_: the towns of the chalcidic peninsula, over which olynthus had acquired influence. this sentence shows that olynthus itself had not yet been attacked. § . _but, my good sir_, &c. this must be the objection of an imaginary opponent. it can hardly be taken (as seems to be intended by butcher) as demosthenes' reply to the question, 'or some other power?' ('but, my good sir, the other power will not want to help him.') there is, however, much to be said for sandys's punctuation, [greek: _ean m_e bo_eth_es_eth umeis _e allos tis_], 'unless you or some other power go to their aid.' after the death of onomarchus in , the phocians were incapable of withstanding invasion without help. the second olynthiac § . _timotheus, &c_. in an athenian force under timotheus invaded the territory of the olynthian league, and took torone, poteidaea, and other towns, with the help of perdiccas, king of macedonia. _ruling dynasty_: i.e. the dynasty of lycophron and peitholaus at pherae. (see introd. to first philippic.) § . _this war_: i.e. the war with philip generally. the reference is supposed to be to the conduct of chares in (cf. phil. i, section ii.), though in fact it was against the revolted allies, not against philip, that he had been sent. sigeum was a favourite resort of chares, and it is conjectured that he may have obtained possession of lampsacus and sigeum (both on the asiatic shore of the hellespont) in . the explanation of the conduct of the generals is to be found in the fact that in asia minor they could freely appropriate prizes of war and plunder, since under the terms of the peace of antalcidas, athens could claim nothing in asia for her own. § . _taxes by boards_. each of the boards constituted in - for the collection of the war-tax (see vol. i, p. ) had a leader or chairman ([greek: __hegem_on_]), one of the richest men in athens, whose duty it was to advance the sums required by the state, recovering them afterwards from the other members of the boards. probably the three hundred were divided equally among the boards, a leader, a 'second', and a 'third' (speech on crown, § ) being assigned to each. the 'general' here perhaps corresponds to the 'second'. the third olynthiac § . _two or three years ago_ (lit. 'this is the third or fourth year since). it was in november b.c. if the present speech was delivered before november , not quite three years would have elapsed. (the greek words, [greek: triton _he tetarton etos touti], must, on the analogy of the speech against meidias, § , against stephanus, ii. § , and against aphobus, i. § , &c., mean 'two or three', not 'three or four years ago'). the vagueness of the expression is more likely to be due to the date of the third olynthiac being not far short of three years from that of the siege of heraeon teichos, than to the double-dating (on the one hand by actual lapse of time, and on the other by archon-years--from july to july--or by military campaigning seasons) which most commentators assume to be intended here, but which seems to me over-subtle and unlike demosthenes. _that year_: i.e. the archonship of aristodemus, which ran from july b.c. to july . § . _the mysteries_. these were celebrated from the th to the th of boedromion (late in september). _charidemus_, of oreus in euboea, was a mercenary leader who had served many masters at different times--athens, olynthus, cotys, and cersobleptes--and had played most of them false at some time or other. but he was given the citizenship in for the part which he had taken in effecting the cession of the chersonese to athens, and was a favourite with the people. he was sent on the occasion here referred to with ten ships, for which he was to find mercenary soldiers. § . _with might ... power_. a quotation, probably from the text of the treaty of alliance between athens and olynthus. § . _funds of the phocians are exhausted_. the phocian leader phalaecus had been using the temple-treasures of delphi, but they were now exhausted. § . _a legislative commission_: i.e. a special commission on the model of the regular commission which was appointed annually from the jurors for the year (if the assembly so decreed), and before which those who wished to make or to oppose changes in the laws appeared, the proceedings taking the form of a prosecution and defence of the laws in question. the assembly itself did not legislate, though it passed decrees, which had to be consistent with the existing laws. as regards legislation, it merely decided whether in any given year alterations in the laws should or should not be allowed. § . _malingerers_. the scholiast says that the choregi were persuaded to choose persons as members of their choruses, in order to enable them to escape military service, choreutae being legally exempted. other exemptions also existed. § . _persons who proposed them_. this can only refer to eubulus and his party. § . _corinthians and megareans_. from the pseudo-demosthenic speech on the constitution ([greek: _pe_ri suntaxe_os_]) and from philochorus (quoted in the scholia of didymus upon that speech) it appears that the athenians had in invaded megara, under the general ephialtes, and forced the megareans to agree to a delimitation of certain land sacred to the two goddesses of eleusis, which the megareans had violated, perhaps for some years past (see speech against aristocrates, § ). a scholiast also refers to the omission by corinth to invite the athenians to the isthmian games, in consequence of which the athenians sent an armed force to attend the games. probably this was also a recent occurrence, and due to an understanding between corinth and megara. § . _my own namesake_: i.e. demosthenes, who was a distinguished general during the peloponnesian war, and perished in the sicilian expedition. § . _for forty-five years_: i.e. between the persian and peloponnesian wars, - b.c. _the king_: i.e. perdiccas ii, who, however, took the side of sparta shortly after the beginning of the peloponnesian war. he died in . (the date of the beginning of his reign is unknown, but he did not become sole king of the whole of macedonia until .) § . _spartans had been ruined_: sc. by the battles of leuctra (in ) and mantineia (in ). _thebans had their hands full_, owing to the war with the phocians, from onwards. § . _in the war_, when athens joined thebes against sparta (in ). 'the allies' are those members of the second delian league (formed in ) who had been lost in the social war which ended in or about , when athens was at peace with thebes and sparta. (see introduction, vol. i, p. .) § . _procession at the boedromia_. the boedromia was a festival held in september in honour of apollo and artemis agrotera, probably a procession was not a regular part of the festival at this time. the importance which the populace attached to such processions is illustrated by the speech against timocrates, § . § . _is it then paid service, &c_.: almost, 'do you then suggest that we should _earn_ our money?' § . _adding or subtracting_: sc. from the sums dispensed by the state to the citizens. _somebody's mercenaries_. the reference is probably to the successes of charidemus when first sent (see introd. to olynthiacs). on the peace § . _disturbances in euboea_. plutarchus of eretria applied for athenian aid against callias of chalcis, who was attacking him with the aid of macedonian troops. demosthenes was strongly opposed to granting the request, but it was supported by eubulus and meidias, and a force was sent under phocion, probably early in (though the chronology has been much debated, and some place the expedition in or ). owing to the premature action or the treachery of plutarchus at tamynae (where the athenian army was attacked), phocion had some difficulty in winning a victory. plutarchus afterwards seized a number of athenian soldiers, and athens had actually to ransom them. phocion's successor, molossus, was unsuccessful. when peace was made in the summer of , the euboeans became for the most part independent of athens, and were regarded with ill-feeling by athens for some years. there is no proof that the proposers of the expedition were bribed, as demosthenes alleges. § . _neoptolemus_. see speech on embassy, §§ , . § . _public service_: i.e. as trierarch or choregus or gymnasiarch, &c. see n. on phil. i. § . § . _there were some_ : i.e. aeschines and his colleagues. (see introd.) _thespiae and plataeae_. see speech for megalopolitans, section n. § . _self-styled amphictyons_. the amphictyonic council represented the ancient amphictyonic league of hellenic tribes (now differing widely in importance, but equally represented on the council), and was supreme in all matters affecting the temple of apollo at delphi. (see n. on speech on crown, § .) the council summoned by philip was open to criticism ( ) because only certain members of it were present, of whom the thebans and thessalians were the chief, ( ) because philip had been given the vote of the dispossessed phocians. § . _however stupid, &c_. it had been conventional for over a century to apply this adjective to the boeotians, and therefore to the thebans. for a more favourable view, see w. rhys roberts, _ancient boeotians_, chap. i. § . _oropus_. see speech for megalopolitans, § ii n. § . _argives, &c_. see speech for megalopolitans throughout (with introd.). _those whom they have exiled_: especially the refugees from orchomenus and coroneia. see vol. i, p. . _phocian fugitives_. the amphictyonic council had recently declared that these had been guilty of sacrilege, and might be seized wherever they might be. § . _all that they themselves had toiled for_: i.e. the conquest of the phocians in the sacred war. § . _some persons_: i.e. aeschines and others who tried to excuse philip's treatment of the phocians to the athenian people. § . _admission ... delphi_. the phocians had formerly contrived their exclusion from the amphictyonic meeting and from the temple and oracle of delphi. the council now restored them, and excluded the phocians. § . _refuse to submit_: reading [greek: (_oud) otioun upomeinai_.] the insertion of [greek: _oude_] (after cobet) seems necessary, [greek: _otioun upomeinai_] alone would mean 'face any risk', but this would be contradicted by the next clause. to translate, 'who think that we should face any risk, but do not see that the risk would be one of war,' is to narrow the meaning of [greek: _otioun_] unduly. § . _treaty of peace_: i.e. the peace of philocrates. _cardians_. the athenians claimed cardia (the key of the chersonese on the thracian side) as an ally, though in fact it was expressly excluded from the towns ceded to athens by cersobleptes in , and had made alliance with philip in . _prince of caria_. see speech for rhodians (with introd.). _drive our vessels to shore_: a regular form of ancient piracy (see speech on chersonese, § ). the byzantines drove the athenian corn-ships into their own harbour. the victims were relieved of their money or their corn. _shadow at delphi_: i.e. the empty privilege (as demosthenes here chooses to represent it) of membership of the amphictyonic league and council, now claimed by philip. the second philippic § . _sympathetic_: i.e. towards other greek states, desirous of securing independence. § . _alexander_, &c. alexander of macedon was sent by mardonius, the persian commander, to offer athens alliance with persia on favourable terms. demosthenes has confused the order of events, and speaks as if this message was brought before the battle of salamis. the athenians left the city twice, before the battle of salamis and before that of plataeae; it was after salamis that alexander was sent (herod. viii. , &c.). § . _fortify elateia_. this would be a menace to thebes (cf. speech on the crown, §§ , ). elateia commands the road from thermopylae to thebes. § . _well-balanced_ ([greek: _s_ophronousi_]), or 'free from passion', i.e. not liable to be carried away by ambition or cupidity as the thebans were. this is different from mere 'good sense' ([greek: _syphronein, noun echea_]). for theban 'stupidity', see speech on peace, § (and n.). § . _council of ten_ ([greek: _dekadarchian_]). it is clear that some sort of oligarchical government, nominated by philip, is referred to; but the relation of this to the tetrarchies mentioned in the speech on the chersonese, § , as established by philip, is uncertain. these corresponded to the four tribes or divisions of thessaly (thessaliotis, phthiotis, pelasgiotis, histiaeotis); and this is confirmed by a statement in theopompus' forty-fourth book, to which harpocration (s.v. [greek: _dekadarchia_]) refers. harpocration states that philip did not establish a decadarchy in thessaly; and if he is right, then either (a) demosthenes purposely used an inaccurate word, in order to suggest to the messenians the idea of a government like that of the councils of ten established some sixty years before by sparta in the towns subject to her; or (b) the text is wrong, and [greek: _dekadarchian_] is a misreading of [greek: darchian], in which [greek: d] was the numeral (= ), and the whole stood for [greek: _tetrarchian_]. as to (a), it is difficult to suppose that the messenians would not know what had happened in thessaly so well that the innuendo would fall flat. there is no evidence that 'decadarchy' could be used simply as a synonym for 'oligarchy'. as to (b), the supposed corruption is possible; but then we are left with [greek: _tetrarchian_] where we should expect [greek: _tetrarchias_]: for there is no parallel to [greek: _tetrarchia_] (sing.) in the sense of 'a system of tetrarchies'. it is, however, quite possible that demosthenes was thinking especially of the thessalians of pherae, and of the particular tetrarchy established over them: and this seems on the whole the best solution. if, on the other hand, harpocration is wrong, the reference here may be to a council of ten, either established previously to the tetrarchies, and superseded by them, or else coexistent with and superior to them; in either case, since the singular is used, this decadarchy must have been a single government over the whole of thessaly (or perhaps of the district about pherae only), not a number of councils, one in each city or division of thessaly. (theopompus' forty-fourth book probably dealt with b.c., two years after the present speech, though before the speech on the chersonese; but we are not told that he assigned the establishment of the tetrarchies to that year.) § . _find yourselves slaves_: lit. 'find your master.' § . _by yourselves_: i.e. in the absence of the ambassadors from philip and other states. _who conveyed the promises_: i.e. ctesiphon, aristodemus, and neoptolemus (see speech on embassy, §§ , , , &c.): but demosthenes has probably aeschines also in view. § . _water-drinker_. see speech on embassy, § . § . _secure myself as good a hearing_. most editions accept this rendering of [greek: _emaut_o logon poi_es-o_]. but though [greek: _logon didonai_] = 'grant a hearing,' and [greek: _logon tychein_] = 'get a hearing,' [greek: _logon eaut_o poiein_] is strange for 'secure oneself a hearing', and the passage regularly quoted from the speech against aristocrates, § , is not parallel, since [greek: _tout_o_] in that passage is not a reflexive pronoun, and [greek: _logon pepoi_eke_] almost = [greek: _logon ded_oki_]. possibly the text is corrupt, and we should either read [greek: _psogon_] (with h. richards) or [greek: _emautou_] ('make you take as much account of me as of my opponents'). _further claim_: since an attack on the part of demosthenes would incite them to make out a plausible case for philip once more, and so earn his gratitude. on the embassy [the literal translation of the title is 'on the misconduct as ambassador'.] § . _drawing your lots_. the jurors who were to serve in each trial were selected by lot out of the total number of jurors for the year. § . _one of those_: i.e. timarchus (see introd.). _supremacy_. the sovereignty of the people was exercised to a great extent through the law-courts, the jury being always large enough to be fairly representative of popular opinion, though probably there was generally a rather disproportionate preponderance of poorer men among the jurors, the payment being insufficient to attract others. (see introduction, vol. i, pp. , , .) § . _the ten thousand_: the general assembly of the arcadians at megalopolis. § . _he came to me_, &c. aeschines denies this, saying that it would have been absurd, when he knew that demosthenes and philocrates had acted together throughout (see introd.). § . _in the very presence_, &c.: contrast speech on the crown, § (and see n. there). aeschines states that he was in fact replying to inflammatory speeches made by orators who pointed to the propylaea, and appealed to the memory of ancestral exploits; and that he simply urged that it was possible for the athenians to copy the wisdom of their forefathers without giving way to an unseasonable passion for strife. § . _had again acted_: i.e. as on the first embassy, if the reading is correct (or perhaps, 'had committed a fresh series of wrongful acts'). but possibly [greek: _peprhakot_on_] is right, 'had sold fresh concessions' to philip. § . aeschines replies that every one expected philip to turn against thebes; and that for the rest, he was only reporting the gossip of the macedonian camp, where the representatives of many states were gathered together, and not making promises at all. it is noteworthy, however, that in the speech on the peace, § , shortly after the events in question, when the speeches made would be fresh in every one's memory, demosthenes gives the same account of his opponent's assertions; and aeschines probably said something very like what is attributed to him. § . _debt due to the god_: i.e. the value of the temple-treasure of delphi, which the phocians had plundered. § . _for however contemptible_, &c. the argument seems to be this. 'you must not say that a man like aeschines could not have brought about such vast results. athens may employ inferior men, but any one who represents athens has to deal with great affairs, and so his acts may have great consequences. and again, although it may have been philip who actually ruined the phocians, and although aeschines could never have done it alone, still he did his best to help.' § . _the town hall_, or prytaneum, where the prytanes (the acting committee of the council) met, and other magistrates had their offices. _timagoras_ was accused (according to xenophon) by his colleague leon of having conspired with pelopidas of thebes against the interests of athens, when on a mission to the court of artaxerxes in . in § demosthenes also states that he received large sums of money from artaxerxes. § . aeschines denies that he wrote the letter for philip, and his denial is fairly convincing. § . _a talent_. according to aristotle (_eth. nic_. v. ) the conventional amount payable as ransom was one mina per head. but from § it appears that the macedonians sometimes asked for more than this. _laudable ambition_: i.e. to get credit for having thought of the ransom of the prisoners. § . _handed in_: either to the clerk or to the proedroi (the committee of chairmen of the assembly). § . aeschines states that philip's invitation was declined because it was suggested that philip would keep the soldiers sent as hostages. § . _on our way to delphi_. demosthenes had been one of the athenian representatives at the meeting of the amphictyonic council at delphi this year. _gave its vote_, &c. after the battle of aegospotami at the end of the peloponnesian war, the representative of thebes proposed to the spartans and their allies that athens should be destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery. § . _read this law over_: i.e. that the herald might proclaim it after him. § . for the spartans see § . the phocians had treated the athenians badly when proxenus was sent to thermopylae (see introd. to speech on peace). hegesippus may have opposed the acceptance of philip's invitation to the athenians to join him. aeschines (on the embassy, §§ , ) mentions no names in connexion with the refusal, but represents it as the sacrifice of a unique opportunity of saving the phocians (cf. § n.). § . _deceit and cunning, and of nothing else_ ([greek: _pasa apat_e_]). the argument is, 'aeschines will try to allege wrongful acts on the part of the phocians; but there was no time for such acts in the five days; and this proves that there were no such acts to justify their ruin, and that their overthrow was due to nothing but trickery.' this is better than to translate '_every kind of_ deceit and trickery was concocted for the ruin of the phocians'; for this is not the point, nor is it what would be inferred from the fact that there was only a five-days' interval between the speech of aeschines and the capitulation of the phocians. there is no need to emend to [greek: _h_e pasa apat_e_]. _on account of the peace_: i.e. of the negotiations for the peace, before it was finally arranged. _all that they wished_: viz. the restoration of the temple of delphi to their kinsmen, the dorians of mount parnassus. § . _four whole months_: in reality, three months and a few days. § . _phocian people_: i.e. those who were left in phocis, as distinct from the exiles just referred to. § . _of diophantus_. in , when philip had been repulsed by onomarchus, diophantus proposed that public thanksgivings should be held (see introd. to first philippic). _of callisthenes_: in , after the phocians had surrendered to philip. _the sacrifice to heracles_: perhaps one of the two festivals which were respectively held at marathon and at cynosarges. § . _constitutional_: lit. 'an excuse for a citizen,' under a constitution by which no one was compelled to enter public life, and any one who did so without the requisite capacity had to take the responsibility for his errors. § . _impeached_. an impeachment was brought before the council (or, more rarely, the assembly). the procedure was only applied to cases of extraordinary gravity, and particularly to what would now be called cases of treason. § . _by torture_. the evidence of slaves might be given under torture, in response to a challenge from one or other of the parties to a suit. the most diverse opinions as to the value of such evidence are expressed by the orators, according to the requirements of their case. the consent of both sides was necessary; and in a very large number of cases, one side or the other appears to have refused to allow evidence to be taken in this way. _was going_: i.e. to philip. § . _accept his discharge_. there seems to be a play on two senses of the verb [greek: aphienai], viz. 'to discharge from the obligations of a contract', and 'to acquit'. § . _why, this is the finest_, &c. the expression ([greek: touto gar esti to lamprhon]) recurs in § , a closely parallel passage, and need not be regarded as an interpolation in either case. the interpretation given seems slightly preferable, and is approved by weil. it is almost equally possible to translate the greek by 'such is the brilliant defence which he offers'; but perhaps this does not suit § so well. _stand up_. apparently aeschines declined the invitation, which was quite within the custom of the athenian courts. either of the principal parties could ask the other questions, and have the answers taken down as evidence. _cases that have all_, &c. the reference is to the prosecution of timarchus, when advanced in age, for offences committed in early youth. there may also be an allusion to aeschines' early career as an actor. § . _declined on oath_. an elected official could refuse to serve, if he took an oath that there was some good reason (such as illness) for excusing him. § . _though not elected_. aeschines (on the embassy, § ) replies that in fact the commission was renewed at a second meeting of the assembly, and that he was then well enough to go and was elected. (that there was a second election of ambassadors is confirmed by demosthenes' own statement in § of the present speech, that he himself was twice elected and twice refused to serve.) § . _thesmothetae_: the six archons who did not hold the special offices of archon eponymus, polemarch, or king archon. _aeschines went_, &c. to have refused to be present would really have been to make a political demonstration against thebes, which would have had perilous results. aeschines defends himself on the ground that in his view the peace was no disadvantage to athens, so that he might well join in the honours paid to the gods. § . _metroon_. the temple of the great mother (cybele), which was the athenian record-office. _the name of aeschines_: i.e. its removal from the list of ambassadors. § . _in their interest_. if the words are not corrupt, the meaning is probably 'in the interest of philip and the thebans'; or possibly, 'in reference to these matters.' § . _as his informant_. the text is possibly corrupt, though as it stands it might perhaps bear the meaning given, if [greek: hyparchei] were understood with [greek: autos]. others (with or without emendation) take the sense to be 'to manage his business ... just as he would manage it in person '. § . for timagoras see § n. § . _summon philip's envoys_: i.e. in order to report the decision of the assembly, and so close the matter. § . _ask him whether_, &c. the argument seems to be this 'if aeschines was the ambassador of a city which had been victorious against philip, the latter would naturally wish to buy easy terms of peace; and aeschines might undertake to procure such terms, without committing a particularly heinous offence, since he would only be getting some advantage for himself out of the general good fortune of his country. but to secure advantages for himself at his country's expense, when his country was already suffering disaster, would be far worse. and as aeschines complains that the generals had incurred disaster, he convicts himself of the worse offence.' § . the _tilphossaeum_ was apparently a mountain near lake copais in boeotia. the town which strabo calls tilphusium may have been on the mountain. neones, or neon, was a phocian village; hedyleion, a mountain in boeotia. § . _ah! he will say_, &c. either the words are interpolated, or there is a lacuna. the objection is nowhere refuted. § . doriscus, &c. the places mentioned did not really belong to athens, but to cersobleptes, who was being assisted by athenian troops, so that, strictly speaking, philip was within his rights; and in fact (according to aeschines), cersobleptes and the sacred mountain were taken by philip the day before the athenians and their allies swore to the peace at athens. § . _eucleides_ had been sent to protest against philip's attack upon cersobleptes in (see vol. i, p. ). philip replied that he had not yet been officially informed by the athenian ambassadors of the conclusion of the peace, and was therefore not yet bound by it. § . _procure their ransom_: i.e. from the various macedonians who had captured them, or to whom they had been given or sold. § . _committed to writing_, &c. formal evidence (as distinct from the mere assertions of a speaker) was written down, and the witness was asked to swear to it. a witness who was called upon might swear that he had no knowledge of the matter in question ([greek: _exomnysthai_]). by writing down his evidence and swearing to it, demosthenes took the risk of prosecution for perjury. § . _might be proved in countless ways_: or 'would need a speech of infinite length '. but as [greek: _kai_] and not [greek: _de_] follows, i slightly prefer the former rendering. (the latter is supported by the third philippic, § , but there the next clause is connected by [greek: _de_].) _ergophilus_ was heavily fined in (see speech against aristocrates, § ); cephisodotus in (ibid. § , and aeschines against ctesiphon, § ); timomachus went into exile in to escape condemnation (against aristocrates, § , &c.). ergocles was perhaps the friend of thrasybulas (see lysias, orations xxviii, xxix), and may have been condemned for his conduct in thrace, as well as for malversation at halicarnassus. dionysius is unknown. § . _has got beyond_, &c.: an ironical way of saying that he has so much overdone his application to himself of the title of (prospective) 'benefactor' of athens, that another word (e.g. 'deceiver') would be more appropriate. the word [greek: _psychrhon_] is (at least by greek literary critics) applied to strong expressions out of place, and here also, probably, of an exaggerated phrase which falls flat. this is perhaps the best interpretation of a very difficult passage. § . for timagoras, see § n. tharrex and smicythus are unknown. adeimantus was one of the generals at aegospotami, the only athenian prisoner spared by lysander, and on that account suspected of treason by the athenians, and prosecuted by conon (called 'the elder', to distinguish him from his grandson, who was a contemporary of demosthenes). § . guest-friend. the term ([greek: xenos]) was applied to the relationship (more formal than that of simple friendship) between citizens of different states, who were bound together by ties of hospitality and mutual goodwill. § . _the thirty_: i.e. the 'thirty tyrants' who ruled athens (with the support of sparta) for a few months in . see n. on § . § . aeschines warmly denies this story. he says that demosthenes tried to bribe aristophanes of olynthus to swear that it was true, and that the woman was his own wife. he adds that the jury, on an appeal from eubulus, refused to let demosthenes complete the story. § . _initiations_: see speech on crown, §§ ff., with notes. § . _played the rogue_. the scholiast says that clerks were sometimes bribed to alter the laws and decrees which they read to the court; and a magistrates' clerk had doubtless plenty of opportunities for conniving at petty frauds. § . _should not have been sworn to_. this is out of chronological order as it stands, and emendations have been proposed, but unnecessarily. § . _would not have him for your representative_: in the question about athenian rights at delos. see introduction to the speech. § . _i have no further time, &c_.: lit. 'no one will pour water for me' into the water-clock, by which all trials were regulated. § . _consider_, &c. there is an anacoluthon in the greek, which may be literally translated, 'consider, if, where i who am absolutely guiltless was afraid of being ruined by them--what ought these men themselves, the actual criminals, to suffer?' § . _get money out of you_: i.e. to be bought off. § . _choregus and trierarch_: see introd. to speech on naval boards, and n. on philippic i. § . § . _all was well_ ([greek: eupenespai]). the reading is almost certainly wrong. weil rightly demands some word contrasting with [greek: agnoein] ('did not understand his country') in the corresponding clause. § . _vase-cases_: i.e. boxes to contain bottles of oil or perfume for toilet use. § . _the cock-pit_. that this is the meaning seems to be proved by the words of aeschines (against timarchus, § ); otherwise the natural translation would be 'to the bird-market'. cocks were no doubt sold in the bird-market; but aeschines refers directly to cock-fighting, not to the purchase of the birds. § . _hack-writers_: lit. 'speech-writers,' who composed speeches for litigants, and no doubt padded them out with quotations from poets, as well as with rhetorical commonplaces. demosthenes taunts aeschines particularly with ransacking unfamiliar plays, instead of those he knew well. § . _reared up... greatness_: or possibly, 'reared up all these sons of hers.' _hero-physician_. see speech on the crown, § n. _round chamber_, in the prytaneum or town hall (see § n.). § . _at the risk of his own life_. he tried to avoid the risk by feigning madness. salamis was in the hands of the megareans, and the athenians had become so weary of their unsuccessful attempts to recover it, that they decreed the penalty of death upon any one who proposed to make a fresh attempt. the verses, however, which are quoted in the text, are probably derived not from the poem which solon composed for this purpose, but from another of his political poems. § . _with a cap on your head_. plutarch (solon c) says that 'solon burst into the market-place suddenly, with a cap on his head'. the cap was intended to suggest that he had just returned from salamis, since it was the custom to wear a cap only when on a journey, or in case of illness (of. plato, _republic_, iii. _d_). there may possibly be an allusion also to aeschines' own alleged sickness (§ above), but this is very doubtful. the words more probably mean, 'however closely you copy solon' (as you copied his attitude in speaking), 'when you run about declaiming against me.' § . _accepted the challenge_. at the examination before the board of auditors (logistae) the question was almost certainly put, whether any one present wished to challenge the report of the ambassador under examination. § . _claim_ ([greek: axioumenoi]): or, 'are thought worthy'; but the first sense is much better in the parallel passage in § , and this 'middle' use seems to be sufficiently attested, though the active voice is used in the same sense in § . § . _paramount position_: i.e. among the tribes of north greece (magnetes, perrhaebi, &c.). § . _concluded the war, &c_. in b.c. in fact, however, they only obtained peace by joining the spartan alliance. § . _arthmius_: see philippic iii. § (and note). § . _callias_, in b.c. cf. speech for the rhodians, § . the chelidonian islands lay off the south coast of lycia, the cyanean rocks at the northern mouth of the bosporus. § . _epicrates_ was sent as ambassador to persia early in the fourth century, and received large presents. according to plutarch he escaped condemnation; but he may have been tried more than once. the comic poets make fun of his long beard. _who brought the people back from the peiraeus_. thrasybulus occupied the peiraeus in , secured the expulsion of the thirty tyrants from athens, and restored the democracy. § . _the decree_: i.e. the decree by which epicrates and his colleagues were condemned. § . _for this is the splendid thing_: cf. § n. § . _exiled_ and _punished_. we should perhaps (with weil) read [greek: _e] ('or') for [greek: kai] ('and'). _descendant of harmodius_: i.e. proxenus, who had been only recently condemned, and is therefore not named. § . _another priestess_. according to the scholiast, the reference is to ninus, a priestess of sabazios, who was prosecuted by menecles for making love-potions for young men. the connexion of this offence with the meetings of the initiated is left to be understood. § . _the burden undertaken_. such burdens as the duties of choregus, trierarch, &c., might be voluntarily undertaken, as they were by demosthenes (see n. on philippic i. § ). § . _cyrebion_, or 'light-as-chaff', was the nickname of epicrates, aeschines' brother-in-law (not the epicrates of § ). _as a reveller_, no doubt in some dionysiac revel, in which it was not considered decent to take part without a mask. (the original purpose of masks, however, was not to conceal one's identity from motives of shame, though demosthenes suggests it as a motive here.) _were water flowing upstream_. a half-proverbial expression implying that the world was being turned upside-down, when such a person could prosecute for such offences. § . _hegesilaus_ was one of the generals sent to euboea to help plutarchus; cf. speech on the peace, § n. he was accused of abetting plutarchus in the deception which he practised upon athens. for thrasybulus, cf. § . _the primary question_: i.e. of the guilt or innocence of the defendant. if he was pronounced guilty, the question of sentence (or damages) had to be argued and decided separately. § . _claim to be_: cf. n. on § . _churning the butter_ ([greek: etyrheue]): i.e. concocting the plot. (for the metaphor cf. aristophanes, _knights_ .) § . _zeus and dione_. these names show that the oracles referred to were probably given at dodona. § . _oath of the young soldiers_. when the young athenian came of age, he received a shield and spear in the temple of aglaurus, and swore to defend his country and to uphold its constitution (cf. lycurgus, _against leocrates_, § ). § . _keeping step with pythocles_, who was a tall man, while aeschines was short. § . _drymus and panactum_ were on the border between boeotia and attica. nothing else is known of the expedition. § . _chares_. see nn. on philippic i. §§ , ; olynthiac ii. § , and introductions. § . _of one of whom_, &c.: i.e. of philip (see § ff., and introd. to speech on the peace). § . _euthycrates_. see introd. to olynthiacs. on the chersonese § . the argument is, 'if philip is not committing hostilities so long as he keeps away from attica, diopeithes is not doing so, so long as he keeps away from macedonia, and only operates in thrace.' _drive the vessels_, &c. see speech on the peace, § n. § . _passing the time_: i.e. until a convenient season for an attack arrives. _those who are on the spot_: i.e. in thrace, and who had doubtless sent messages to athens. others think that the words mean 'those who are here from thrace'. _etesian winds_. see first philippic, § n. _infatuation_: i.e. hostility to athens. § . _punish the settlers_: i.e. those who were sent with diopeithes and demanded admission to cardia. § . _chalcis_, in euboea (see introd.). § . _keep our hands ... revenues_: a reference to the distributions of festival-money (see third olynthiac, with introduction and notes). _contributions of the allies_. this interpretation seems on the whole better warranted than 'contributions promised to diopeithes'. § . _i consent to any penalty_: lit. *'i assess my own penalty at anything'--a metaphor from the practice of the law-courts, which allowed a convicted prisoner to propose an alternative penalty to that suggested by the prosecutor. _erythraeans_: erythrae was on the coast of asia minor, opposite chios. § . _benevolences_: the same word as was used of the forced contributions levied by english kings. § . _surrendering_: i.e. to his soldiers, to be plundered (if the phrase is meant to convey anything but a vague accusation). § . _wax-tablet_: i.e. a summons. _so many ships_. the critics of diopeithes must have proposed the sending of a definite force to control him. § . _a dispatch-boat_: lit. 'the _paralus_'. this ship, and the _salaminia_, were the two vessels regularly employed on public errands. _spitefulness_: i.e. towards diopeithes. § . _chares_: see references in n. on speech on embassy, § . _aristophon_. the reference may be to his conduct as general in the early days of the war with philip about amphipolis. his activity as a statesman began as far back as , and he was one of the most influential politicians in athens from about to . § . _losing something_: _sc_. a scapegoat whom you could punish. § . _euthycrates_, &c. see introd. to olynthiacs. § . _wretched hamlets_ ([greek: kak_on]): lit. 'evils' or 'miseries'; but the word is possibly corrupt. (the original reading may possibly have been [greek: kalyb_on].) according to the scholiast, drongilum and cabyle are near amphipolis and the strymon; but others assign different localities to them. masteira is quite unknown. § . _pit of destruction_ ([greek: barhathrh_o]). this was literally the pit into which the bodies of condemned criminals were thrown at athens. _silos_: underground store-houses for grain, such as were found in ceos not many years ago, and may still be in use. § . _irremediable_ ([greek: an_ekeston]). the reading of two good manuscripts [greek: aneikaston] (otherwise only known as a late greek word) may be correct. if so, it may mean 'unparalleled', or 'inexplicable'. § . the meaning is, that by denouncing those who propose active measures now, they are preparing the way in order to prosecute them so soon as you find the war burdensome; whereas they should themselves be prosecuted for letting things go as far as they have gone. § . _oreus_. see introd. _pheraeans_, in . see introd. to second philippic; and cf. third philippic, § . _compromise_. slavery seems to be ironically regarded as a compromise between activity and quiescence. § . _robbed of at an earlier period_. the sense must either be this, or else 'all that you have lost in open war '. in either case emendation is required. § . _trierarch and choregus_. demosthenes was choregus in , and trierarch in , , and . § . _timotheus_: in , when athens liberated euboea from the thebans. cf. first philippic, § , first olynthiac, § . the effect of timotheus' speech was such that the expedition started within three days. (speech against androtion, § .) § . _best counsel that he can_. the text is probably corrupt; but this was probably the sense of the original. the third philippic § . _actively at work_: the reference is to diopeithes (see speech on chersonese, § ). §§ , . passages are repeated from the speech on the chersonese, § , and first philippic, § . § . _not to defraud us_: i.e. by making statements which he is not prepared to act upon. § . _as though visiting his allies_. this is not true, though envoys from the phocians, as from most other greek states of importance, were in philip's camp. with the whole passage, cf. speech on embassy, §§ ff. § . _pherae_. see speech on chersonese, § n. for oreus see introd. to speech on chersonese, and § and ff. of this speech. § . _serrhium, &c_. see introd. to speech on peace. _he had sworn to a peace_. this is untrue; see speech on embassy, § , where it is part of the charge against aeschines' party, that they had enabled philip to take these places _before_ he had sworn to the peace. § . _religion_: with special reference here to the sanctity of the oath. _into the chersonese_: i.e. to help cardia. the claim of athens to cardia was not good, and it appears from the speech of hegesippus against halonnesus, § , that the athenians had recognized the independence of the town. § . _if anything should happen_: e.g. the outbreak of open war, or (more probably) a defeat. § . _seventy-three years_: i.e. - b. c. _thirty years save one_: i.e. - b.c. (in the latter year chabrias defeated the spartans off naxos). _battle of leucira_: in b.c. § . _disturb the established order_: i.e. by establishing oligarchical governments in place of democracy. § . _in the thracian region_: strictly, in chalcidice and the neighbourhood. see introd. to olynthiacs. _robbed their very cities of their governments_. this is preferable to the (grammatically) equally possible rendering, 'robbed them of their constitutions and their cities,' as it suits the facts better. philip seems to have substituted tetrarchies for separate city-states. (see speech on chersonese, § , and second philippic, § n.) § . _ambracia_. see introd. to speech on chersonese. _elis_: introd. to speech on embassy. _megara_: speech on embassy, §§ , . § . _pythian games_. see introd. to speech on peace. in philip sent a deputy to preside in his name. §§ , . see introd. to speech on chersonese. echinus was a theban colony in thessaly, on the north coast of the malian gulf. § . _arthmius_, &c. (cf. speech on embassy, § ). zeleia was in the troad, near cyzicus. arthmius was apparently proxenus of athens at zeleia, and as such had probably certain rights at athens, of which the decree deprived him; so that demosthenes' remarks at the beginning of § are slightly misleading. § . at the end of this section two versions are imperfectly blended, and it does not appear what were the contents of the document. some suppose that the insertion 'he reads from the document' is an early conjectural interpolation. § . _because be leads_, &c. philip did, in fact, bring the macedonian heavy infantry to great perfection for the purposes of a pitched battle, though the decisive action was generally that of the cavalry. but the other troops which demosthenes names would enable him to execute rapid movements with success. the use of light-armed troops had already been developed by the athenian general, iphicrates. § . _with such advantages_: lit. 'under these conditions' (_not_ 'to crown all', nor 'at the head of these troops'). § . contrast speech on naval boards, section . §§ ff. see introd. to speech on embassy. § . euphraeus had been a disciple of plato, and an adviser of perdiccas, philip's elder brother. it was he who recommended perdiccas to entrust the government of part of macedonia to philip, whom he afterwards so strongly opposed. § . _embassies_. see introd. to speech on chersonese. on the crown § . _to take counsel_, &c. aeschines had asked the jury to refuse demosthenes a hearing, or at least to require him to follow the same order of treatment as himself. § . _unpleasant_. many render [greek: duocheres] 'inauspicious', 'ill-omened'; but as we do not know exactly what was in demosthenes' mind, it is better not to give the word a meaning which it does not bear elsewhere. it may, however, mean 'vexatious'. § . _knave as you are_, &c. the assonance of the original might perhaps be partly reproduced by rendering 'evil-minded as you are, it was yet a very simple-minded idea that your mind conceived', &c. § . _it does not enable the state_: lit. 'it is not possible for the state.' the point is that the prosecution of ctesiphon, while expressing the malice of aeschines towards demosthenes, does not enable the state to punish demosthenes himself for his alleged offences, since any penalty inflicted would fall on ctesiphon. § . _to debar another_, &c. this probably refers to the attempt to deprive demosthenes of a hearing, not (as some have thought) to the attempt to get so heavy a fine inflicted upon ctesiphon that he would be unable to pay it, and would therefore lose his rights as a citizen. § . _ascribed to me_, &c. aeschines was anxious, in view of the existing state of feeling at athens, to disown his part in connexion with the peace of philocrates; while demosthenes undoubtedly assisted philocrates in the earlier of the negotiations and discussions which led to the peace. _appropriate_. 'the recapitulation of the history is not a mere argumentative necessity, but has a moral fitness also; in fact, the whole defence of demosthenes resolves itself into a proof that he only acted in the spirit of athenian history' (simcox). § . _when the phocian war bad broken out_: i.e. in - . demosthenes made his first speech in the assembly in . _those who detested the spartans_: i.e. the messenians and arcadians. _those who had previously governed_, &c.: e.g. the oligarchies which had governed with the help of sparta in phlius and mantinea, and were overthrown after the battle of leuctra. § . _would be forced_, &c. this is a misrepresentation, since philip and the thebans had been in alliance for some time, and thebes had no such grounds for apprehending evil from philip, as would make her apply to athens. § . _aristodemus_, &c. see introd. to speech on the peace. as a matter of fact, demosthenes acted with philocrates at least down to the return of the first embassy, and himself proposed to crown aristodemus for his services (aeschines, on the embassy, §§ - ). § . _the hellenes bad all_, &c. it is not easy to reconcile this passage with § of the speech on the embassy, from which it appears that representatives of other states were present in athens; but these so-called envoys may have been private visitors, and in any case there was no real hope of uniting greece against philip. § . _eurybatus_ is said to have been sent as an envoy by croesus to cyrus, and to have turned traitor. the name came to be proverbial. § . _those strongholds_. see introd. to speech on the peace. § . _but they would have watched_, &c. the passage has been taken in several ways: ( ) 'they would have had to watch,' &c., and this would have been discreditable to athens; ( ) 'they would have watched,' &c., i.e. they would not have been excluded, as you desired, in any case; ( ) 'but, you say, they would have paid two obols apiece,' and the city would have gained this. the sentence which follows favours ( ), but perhaps ( ) is best. the petty interests of the city would include (from the point of view assumed by aeschines) the abstention from showing civility to the enemy's envoys. the two-obol (threepenny) seats were the cheapest. § . _three whole months_. in fact the ambassadors were only absent from athens about ten weeks altogether. _equally well_. the reading ([greek: homoios]) is probably wrong; but if it is right, this must be the meaning. § . _as you did before_, in . see introd. to first philippic. § . _decree of callisthenes_. this ordered the bringing in of effects from the country. see speech on embassy, §§ , . § . _property in boeotia_. see speech on embassy, § . § . _their hopes_: sc. of the humiliation of thebes. _and gladly_: i.e. they were glad to be free from a danger which (though remotely) threatened themselves, as the next sentence explains. i can see no good reason for taking the participle [greek: polemoumenoi] as concessive ('_although_ they also,' &c.). § . for lasthenes see introd. to olynthiacs. timolaus probably contrived the surrender of thebes after the battle of chaeroneia. eudicus is unknown. simus invoked philip's aid against the tyrants at pherae in (see introd, to first philippic). aristratus was tyrant of sicyon, and made alliance with philip in . for perillus, see speech on embassy, section . § . _stale dregs_: strictly the remains, and especially the wine left in the cups, from the previous night's feast; here the long-admitted responsibility of aeschines for the peace of . § . _dolopes_: a small tribe living to the south-west of thessaly. § . _free constitutions_. this refers especially to the thessalians, who had been placed under tetrarchies (see philippic iii. § ). § . _aristophon_. see speech on chersonese, § n. diopeithes is perhaps diopeithes of sphettus (mentioned by hypereides, speech against euxenippus, § ), not the general sent by athens to the chersonese. § . for the events mentioned in this section, see introd. to speech on the embassy. § . _mysian booty_. a proverbial expression derived from the helpless condition of mysia (according to legend) in the absence of its king, telephus. § . _to the peloponnese_, in (see introd. to second philippic): _to euboea_ in - (see introd. to speech on embassy); _to oreus_, &c., in (see introd. to this speech). § . _as their patron_, i.e. as consul (or official patron) of oreus in athens. see n. on speech for rhodians, § . civil rights. see vol. i, p. . § . _this was already the second proclamation_: i.e. the proclamation in accordance with the decree of aristonicus. it is indeed just possible that the reference is to the proposal of ctesiphon, 'for this is now the second proclamation,' &c. if so, we should have to assume that the proclamation under the decree of demomeles in was prevented by the disaster of chaeroneia. but the first sentence of § is against this (see goodwin's edition _ad loc_.). § . _inconsiderate conduct_: i.e. in joining the revolt of the athenian allies in . § . _when the spartans_, &c. the section refers to the events of . _deceleian war_: i.e. the last part of the peloponnesian war ( - b.c.), when deceleia (in attica) was occupied by the spartans. § . _thebans... euboea_: in or . see speech for megalopolitans, § n. § . _oropus_. see speech for megalopolitans, section n. _i was one_. demosthenes was, in fact, co-trierarch with philinus (speech against meidias, § ). § . see speech on naval boards (with introd. and notes), and n. on olynthiac ii, § . _obtaining exemption_. the undertaking of the trierarchy conferred exemption from other burdens for the year, and (conversely) no one responsible for another public burden need be trierarch. the leaders of the taxation boards referred to in § are probably not (as generally supposed) the richest men in the _naval_ boards [footnote: they may indeed have been so, but it was in virtue of their function as leading members of the hundred boards (for collecting the war tax) that they were grouped together as the three hundred.] (responsible for trierarchy), but those in the hundred boards responsible for the war tax. in each of these boards there was a leader, a 'second', and a 'third', and these, all together, are almost certainly identical with the 'three hundred' responsible for advancing the sum due. when these were already advancing the war tax, they became exempt from trierarchy, and their poorer colleagues in the naval boards (to which of course they also belonged) had to bear the burden without them. but under demosthenes' law the trierarchic payment was required from all alike, in strict proportion to their valuation as entered for the purposes of the war tax; and the three hundred (the leaders, seconds, and thirds) were no longer exempted. (this explains their anxiety to get the law shelved.) even in years when they were not exempt, before demosthenes' law was passed, they only paid a very small share in proportion to their wealth, since all the members of each naval board paid the same sum. it appears, however, that (though the three hundred as such cannot be shown to have had any office in connexion with the trierarchy) the richer men in the naval boards arranged the contracts for the work of equipment, and that when they had contracted that the work should be done (e.g.) for a talent, they sometimes recovered the whole talent from their poorer colleagues. (speech against meidias, § .) § . _lie under sworn notice_, &c. ([greek: en hupomosia]). one who intended to indict the proposer of a law for illegality had probably to give sworn notice of his intention, and the suggestion made to demosthenes was that when such notice had been given, he should let the law drop. § . _the decree_, &c.: i.e. either a decree suspending the law until the indictment should be heard, or one ordering the trial on the indictment to be held. § . _no trierarch_, &c. a trierarch who thought the burden too heavy for him could appeal against it by laying a branch on the altar in the pnyx, or by taking sanctuary in the temple of artemis at munychia. a dilatory or recalcitrant trierarch could be arrested by order of the ten commissioners ([greek: apostuleis]) who constituted a sort of admiralty board. § . _the laws_, &c. the laws alleged to have been violated were copied out, and accompanied the indictment. with regard to the laws in the present case, see goodwin's edition, pp. - . § . _nausides_ was sent to oppose philip at thermopylae in (see introd. to first philippic). diotimus had a command at sea in , and his surrender was demanded by alexander in , as was also that of charidernus (see n. on olynthiac iii, § ), who had now been a regular athenian general for many years, and had been sent to assist byzantium in (see speech against aristocrates, _passim_). § . _hellebore_: supposed in antiquity to cure madness. § . _reveller on a cart_, e.g. on the second day of the anthesteria, when masked revellers rode in wagons and assailed the bystanders with abusive language. such ceremonial abuse was perhaps originally supposed to have power to avert evil, and occurs in primitive ritual all over the world. § . _the statutable limit_. there was a limit of time (differing according to the alleged offence) after which no action could be brought. demosthenes could not now be prosecuted for any of the offences with which aeschines charged him. § . _aeacus_, &c.: the judges of the dead in hades, according to popular legend. _scandal-monger_. the greek word ([greek: spermologos]) is used primarily of a small bird that pecks up seeds, and hence of a person who picks up petty gossip. (in acts xvii. it is the word which is applied to st. paul, and translated 'this babbler'.) _an old band in the market-place_: i.e. a rogue. a clerk would perhaps often be found in the offices about the market-place; or the reference may be to the market-place as a centre of gossip. _o earth_, &c. demosthenes quotes from the peroration of aeschines' speech. § . the stories which demosthenes retails in these sections deal with a time which must have been forty or fifty years before the date of this speech, and probably contain little truth, beyond the facts that aeschines' father was a schoolmaster (not a slave), and was assisted by aeschines himself; and that his mother was priestess of a 'thiasos' or voluntary association of worshippers of dionysus-sabazios, among whose ceremonies was doubtless one symbolizing a marriage or mystical union between the god and his worshippers. (whether the form of 'sacred marriage' which was originally intended to promote the fertility of the ground by 'sympathetic magic' entered into the ritual of sabazios is doubtful.) such a rite, though probably in fact quite innocent, gave rise to suspicions, of which demosthenes takes full advantage; and the fact that well-known courtesans (such as phryne and perhaps ninus) sometimes organized such 'mysteries' would lend colour to the suspicions. _hero of the lancet_ ([greek: to kalamit_e aer_oi]). the interpretation is very uncertain (see goodwin, pp. ff.); and, according as [greek: kalamos] is taken in the sense of 'lancet', 'splints', or 'bow', editors render the phrase 'hero of the lancet', 'hero of the splints', 'archer-hero' (identified by some with toxaris, the scythian physician, whose arrival in athens in solon's time is described in lucian's [greek: skuth_es ae proxenos]). that the hero was a physician is shown by the speech on the embassy, § . § . _for they were not like_, &c. ([greek: ouge gar h_onetuchen _en, all ois hu daemos kataratai]). the meaning is quite uncertain. the most likely interpretations are: ( ) that given in the text, [greek: a bebioken] being understood as the subject of [greek: _en], and [greek: _on etuchen] as = [greek: tout_on a etuchen], i.e. 'not belonging to the class of acts which were such as chance made them,' but acts of a quite definite kind, viz. the kind which the people curses (through the mouth of the herald at each meeting of the assembly); ( ) 'for he was not of ordinary parents, but of such as the people curses'; the subject of [greek: _en] being aeschines. but there is the difficulty that, with this subject for [greek: _en, _on etuchen] can only represent [greek: tout_on _on etuchen _on], whereas the sense required is [greek: tout_on oi etuchon], or (the regular idiom) [greek: t_on tuchunt_on]; and the sense is not so good, for the context [greek: opse gar]) shows that the clause ought to refer to the _acts_ of aeschines about which he is going to speak, not to his parentage, which the orator has done with. _glaucothea_. her real name is said to have been glaucis. glaucothea was the name of a sea-nymph. the change of the father's name tromes ('trembler') to atrometus ('dauntless') would also betoken a rise in the world. _empusa_, or 'the foul phantom': a female demon capable of assuming any shape. obscene ideas were sometimes associated with her. § . for antiphon, see introd. to speech on the embassy. _struck off the list_: at the revision of the lists in . (each deme revised the list of its own members, subject to an appeal to the courts.) _without a decree_: i.e. a decree authorizing a domiciliary visit. § . _when ... you elected him_. see introd. to speech on the embassy. _from the altar_: a peculiarly solemn form of voting; it is mentioned in the speech against macartatus, § . § . _when philip sent_, &c. see introd. to speech on the embassy. § . the ostensible purpose of anaxinus' visit was to make purchases for olympias, philip's wife. aeschines states that anaxinus had once been demosthenes' own host at oreus. § . _paternal deity_: as father of ion, the legendary ancestor of the ionians, and so of the athenians. § . _and of one_, &c. i have followed the general consensus of recent editors; but i do not feel at all sure that the antecedent of [greek: us] is not [greek: polemos]. in that case we should translate, 'which led to philip's coming to elateia and being chosen commander of the amphictyons, and which overthrew,' &c. § . _nature of the resources_, &c.: i.e. especially the possession by athens of a strong fleet. § . _representatives on the council_. the amphictyonic council was composed of two representatives (hieromnemones) from each of twelve primitive tribes, of which the thessalians, the boeotians, the ionians (one of whose members was appointed by athens), and the dorians (one member appointed by sparta) were the chief, while some of the tribes were now very obscure. there were also present delegates (pylagori) from various towns. these were not members of the council, and had no vote, but might speak. athens sent three such delegates to each meeting. (see goodwin, pp. , .) § . _make the circuit_, or 'beat the bounds'. the actual proceedings (according to aeschines' account, summarized in the introd. to this speech) were much more violent. _it was clearly impossible_, &c. the argument is unconvincing. aeschines may have known of the intention of the locrians without their having served a formal summons. § . _one man_: i.e. philip. § . _the prytanes_: the acting committee of the council. _set fire to the wicker-work_: i.e. probably the hurdles, &c., of which the booths were partly composed. probably a bonfire was a well-understood form of summons to an assembly called in an emergency. _the draft-resolution_. see introd., vol. i, p. . _on the hill-side_: i.e. on the pnyx, the meeting-place of the assembly. § . _the three hundred_. see n. on § . § . _philippize_. the word was coined during the wars with philip, on the analogy of 'medize'--the term used of the action of the traitors who supported the invading persians (medes) early in the fifth century. § . _to eleusis_, which was on the most convenient (though not the shortest) route for an army marching to thebes. § . _battalus_: a nickname given to demosthenes by his nurse on account of the impediment in his speech from which he suffered in early days, or of his general delicacy. aeschines had tried to fix an obscene interpretation upon it. _creon_. see speech on the embassy, § . _at collytus_: i.e. at the rural dionysia held in that deme. § . _any one_: lit. 'any one who chooses,' i.e. to call him to account. the expression ([greek: ho boulomenos]) is apparently half technical, as applied to a self-appointed prosecutor. (cf. aristophanes, _plutus_ and .) § . _the general_: i.e. at chaeroneia. § . _philip employed_. most editors say '_aeschines_ employed'. but this would require [greek: outos] not [greek: ekeinos], and § also supports the interpretation here given. § . _treasured up_, &c. the suggestion seems to be that aeschines foresaw the disasters, but concealed his knowledge, 'storing them up' in order to make a reputation out of them later. § . _to leave their land_, &c.: i.e. at the time of xerxes' invasion in , when the athenians abandoned the city and trusted to the 'wooden walls' of their ships. § . on this magnificent passage, see the treatise _on the sublime_, chaps, xvi, xvii. § . _poring pedant_: lit. 'one who stoops over writings'. here used perhaps with reference to aeschines' having 'worked up' allusions to the past for the purpose of his speech, while he remained blind to the great issues of the present. many editors think that the reference is to his earlier occupation as a schoolmaster or a clerk; but this is perhaps less suitable to the context. § . _staff...ticket_. the colour of the staff indicated the court in which the juror was to sit; the ticket was exchanged for his pay at the end of the day. § . _a very deluge_. he is thinking, no doubt, of the disaster at chaeroneia and the destruction of thebes. § . _while their infantry_, &c. the theban forces when prepared for action would naturally camp outside the walls (see olynth. i, § , where demosthenes similarly thinks of the athenian army encamping outside athens). but although they were thus encamped outside, and had left their wives and children unguarded within, they allowed the athenian soldiers to enter the city freely. § . _the river_: probably the cephisus. both battles are otherwise unknown. if one of them was in winter, it must have taken place not long after the capture of elateia, and several months before the battle of chaeroneia. § . _somewhere to lay the blame_: or possibly, 'some opportunity of recovering himself,' or 'some place of retreat'. but the interpretation given (which is that of harpocration) is supported by the use of [greek: anenenkein] in § . § . _counters all disappear_. the calculation was made by taking away, for each item of debt or expenditure, so many counters from the total representing the sum originally possessed. when the frame (or _abacus_) containing the counters was left clear, it meant that there was no surplus. (the right reading, however, may be [greek: an kathair_osin], 'if the counters are decisive,' or [greek: han kathair_osin], 'whatever the counters prove, you concede.') § . _cancel them out_ ([greek: antanelein]): strictly, to strike each out of the account in view of something on the opposite side (i.e. in view of the alternative which you would have proposed). § . _collected in advance_: i.e. athens had been anticipating her income. § . _if you refer_, &c. aeschines had accused demosthenes of saddling athens with two-thirds of the expense of the war, and thebes with only one-third. _three hundred_, &c. see speech on naval boards, § n. § . _customary offerings_, made at the tomb on the third and ninth days after the death. § . _philocrates_: not philocrates of hagnus, the proposer of the peace of , but an eleusinian. for diondas, see § . the others are unknown. § . _cephalus_. cf. § . he was an orator and statesman of the early part of the fourth century. (the best account of him is in beloch, _attische politik_, p. .) § . _the attendants' room_. the 'attendants' are those who escorted the boys to and from school--generally slaves. § . _the books_, &c. cf. § and notes. the books probably contained the formulae of initiation, or the hymns which were chanted by some dionysiac societies. the service described here is probably that of the combined worship of dionysus-sabazios and the great mother (cybele). _dressing_, &c. the candidate for initiation was clothed in a fawn-skin, and was 'purified' by being smeared with clay (while sitting down, with head covered) and rubbed clean with bran, and after the initiation was supposed to enter upon a new and higher life. it is possible that the veiling and disguising with clay originally signified a death to the old life, such as is the ruling idea in many initiations of a primitive type. (cf. aristophanes, travesty of an initiation-ceremony in the _clouds_ .) § . _fennel and white poplar_. these were credited with magical and protective properties. _euoe, saboe_: the cry to sabazios. one is tempted to render it by 'glory! hallelujah!' in fact, the dionysiac 'thiasoi', or some of them, had many features, good as well as bad, in common with the salvation army. the cry 'euoe, saboe' is of thracian origin; 'hyes attes' is phrygian. the serpents, the ivy, and the winnowing-fan figured in more than one variety of dionysiac service. it is not certain that for 'ivy-bearer' ([greek: kittophorhos]) we should not read 'chest-bearer' ([greek: kistophoros]) used with reference to the receptacle containing sacred objects, of which we hear elsewhere in connexion with similar rites. § . _fellow-parishioners_; lit. 'members of your deme'. each deme kept the register of citizens belonging to it. enrolment was possible at the age of years, and had to be confirmed by the council. (see aristotle, _constitution of athens_, chap. xiii.) § . _collecting figs_, &c. two interpretations are possible: ( ) that the spectators in derision threw fruit--probably not of the best--at aeschines on the stage, and he gathered it up, as a fruiterer collects fruit from various growers, and lived on it; or ( ) that while he was a strolling player, aeschines used to rob orchards. of these ( ) seems by far the better in the context. § . _i leave the abysm_, &c. the opening of euripides' _hecuba_. the line next quoted is unknown. 'evil in evil wise' ([greek: kakon kak_os]) is found in a line of lynceus, a fourth-century tragedian. § . _denied this intimacy with him_: or possibly (with the scholiast), 'declined this office.' § . _the tambourine-player_. such instruments were used in orgiastic rites. § . hegemon and pythocles were members of the macedonian party, who were put to death in by order of the assembly. (see speech on embassy, §§ , .) § . _same libation_: i.e. the same banquet. the libation preceded the drinking. to 'go beneath the same roof' with a polluted person was supposed to involve contamination. _in the revel_. cf. speech on the embassy, § . the reference, however, is here more particularly to philip's revels after the battle of chaeroneia, in which, demosthenes suggests, the athenian envoys took part. § . the genuineness of the epitaph is doubtful. line is singularly untrue. the text is almost certainly corrupt in places (e.g. ll. and ). _their lives_, &c. as the text stands, [greek: aret_es] and [greek: deimatos] must be governed by [greek: brab_e,], 'made hades the judge of their valour or their cowardice.' but this leaves [greek: ouk esa_osan psuchas] as a quasiparenthesis, very difficult to accept in so simple and at the same time so finished a form of composition as the epigram. there are many emendations. _'tis god's_, &c. the line, [greek: m_eden hamartein esti the_on kai panta katorhthoun], is taken from simonides' epitaph on the heroes of marathon. the sense of the couplet is plain from § ; but [greek: en biot_e] in l. is possibly corrupt. § . _the confederacy_, i.e. athens, thebes, and their allies at chaeroneia. § . _our neighbours_, especially megara and corinth. § . _the inactivity which you_, &c.: i.e. abstention from taking a prominent part in public life. § . _opening of ports_: i.e. to athenian commerce. § . _what pecuniary assistance_, &c. demosthenes is thinking of his own services in ransoming prisoners, &c. some editors translate, 'what public financial aid have you ever given to rich or poor?' i.e. 'when have you ever dispensed state funds in such a way as to benefit any one?' it is impossible to decide with certainty between the two alternatives; but the meanings of [greek: politik_e] ('citizen-like', 'such as one would expect from a good fellow-citizen') and [greek: koin_e], which i assume, seem to be supported by §§ and respectively. § . _leaders of the naval boards_. see introd. to speech on naval boards. _damaging attack_, &c. this probably refers to modifications introduced on aeschines' proposal into demosthenes' trierarchic law of , not at the time of its enactment, but after some experience of its working. (see aeschines, 'against ctesiphon,' § .) § . theocrines was a tragic actor, who was attacked in the pseudo-demosthenic speech 'against theocrines'. harpocration's description of him as a 'sycophant', or dishonest informer, may be merely an inference from the speech. § . _your brother_. see speech on the embassy, §§ , . it is not known which brother is here referred to. § . philammon was a recent olympic victor in the boxing match; glaucus, a celebrated boxer early in the fifth century. § . _owner of a stud_. to keep horses was a sign of great wealth in athens. index abdera, i. abydos, ii. acarnania, acarnanians, ii. achaeans, ii. acropolis, i.; ii. adeimantus, i. admiralty board ([greek: apostoleis]), ii. aeacus, ii. aegina, ii. aeschines, i.; ii. aetolia, aetolians, ii. agapaeus, ii. aglaurus, temple of, i.; ii. agyrrhius, i. alcidamas, i. alenadae, i. alexander ( b.c.), i.; ii. alexander the great, ii. amadocus, i. ambassadors, duties of, i. ambracia, ii. amphictyonic council, its constitution and functions, i.; ii. from - b.c., i.; ii. and the amphissean war, ii. demosthenes at the, ii. amphipolis, i.; ii. amphissa, amphissean war: _see_ amphictyonic council. anaximenes, i. anaxinus, ii. androtion, i. anemoetas, ii. antalcidas: _see_ peace. anthemus, i. antipater, i. antiphon, i.; ii. aphobetus, i. apollodorus, i. apollonia, ii. apollonides, of cardia, i. of olynthus, ii. apollophanes, i. arcadia, arcadians, i.; ii. (_see_ also megalopolis.) areopagus, council of, i.; ii. argaeus, i. argives, argos, i.; ii. ariobarzanes, i.; ii. aristaechmus, ii. aristides, i. aristocrates, i. aristodemus, i.; ii. aristoleos, ii. aristonicus, ii. aristophanes, ii. aristophon, i.; ii. aristotle, i. aristratus, of naxos, ii. of sicyon, ii. arrhidaeus, i. artabazus, i.; ii. artaxerxes, i.; ii. (_see also_ persia.) artemisia, i.; ii. artemisium, ii. arthmius, i.; ii. arybbas, i.; ii. asiatic greeks, i.; ii. assembly, the athenian, its functions, character, and defects, i.; ii. debates in, i.; ii. (_see also_ athenian people.) athenian people, their indifference and procrastination, i.; ii. their incalculability, i. their traditions and traditional policy, i.; ii. (_see also_ assembly, democracy.) atrestidas, i. atrometus, i.; ii. auditors, board of (logistae), i.; ii. automedon, ii. balance of power, principle of, i. battalus, ii. boedromia, i.; ii. boeotia, i.; ii. (_see also_ thebes.) boeotian war, ii. brougham, lord; preface; i. byzantium, i; ii. cabyle, ii. callias (author of peace), i. (_see also _peace.) (of chalcis), ii. (public slave), i. callisthenes, i.; ii. callistratus, i.; ii. cardia, cardians, i.; ii. caria, prince of, i. (_see also_ artemisia, mausolus.) ceos, ii. cephalus, ii. cephisodotus, i.; ii. cephisophon, ii. cercidas, ii. cersobleptes, i.; ii. chabrias, i.; ii. chaeroneia, battle of, ii. chalcedon, i.; ii. chalcidic league, i.; ii. chalcis, ii. chares, i.; ii. charidemus, i.; ii. chelidonian islands, ii. chersonese, i.; ii. (_see also_ cardia.) chios, i.; ii. cineas, ii. cirrha, cirrhaean plain, ii. clearchus, i.; ii. cleitarchus, i.; ii. cleophon, i. cleotimus, ii. collytus, ii. conon, i. corcyra, i.; ii. corinth, corinthians, i.; ii. corn-supply, &c. (athenian), i.; ii. coroneia, i.; ii. corsia, i. cos, i.; ii. cottyphus, ii. council, of areopagus. (_see_ areopagus.) of five hundred, i.; ii. crenides, i. creon, i.; ii. cresphontes, ii. ctesiphon (negotiator of peace), i.; ii. (indicted by eubulus), i. (proposer of crown), ii. curse, public, i.; ii. cyanean rocks, ii. cyprothemis, i. cyrebion, i.; ii. cyrsilus, ii. cyrus, i.; ii. daochus, ii. dardani, i. deceleian war, ii. deinarchus, ii. delos, i.; ii. delphi, temple at, i.; ii. demades, i.; ii. demaretus, ii. democracy, and oligarchy, i. and tyranny, i.; ii. (_see also_ athenian people.) demomeles, ii. demosthenes (general), i.; ii. dercylus, i. diodorus, i. dion, ii. diondas, ii. dionysia, i.; ii. dionysius (general), i.; ii. dionysius of halicarnassus, i. dionysus, ii. diopeithes (general), ii. (of sphettus?), ii. diophantus, i.; ii. diotimus, ii. disunion of the hellenes, i.; ii. dium, i. dodona, oracle of, ii. dolopes, ii. dorians of parnassus, ii. doriscus, i.; ii. drongilum, ii. drymus, i. echinus, ii. egypt, i; ii. elateia, i.; ii. election by lot, i. eleusis, ii. elis, i.; ii. elpias, ii. embassies to peloponnesian states, ii. embassy, the first, i. the second, i.; ii. (_see also_ peace of philocrates.) the third, i.; ii. empusa, ii. ephialtes, ii. epichares, ii. epicrates, i.; ii. (_see also_ cyrebion). epirus, ii. eretria, i.; ii. ergiske, ii. ergocles, i.; ii. ergophilus, i.; ii. erythraeans, ii. etesian winds, i.; ii. euboea, euboeans, i.; ii. eubulus, i.; ii. eucleides, i.; ii. eudicus, ii. euphraeus, ii. eurybatus, ii. eurylochus, i. euripides, i. euthycles, i. euthycrates, i.; ii. execcstus, i. festival fund, i.; ii. financial system (athenian), i.; ii. (_see also_ military system, naval system.) fortifications, commissioner of, ii. of athens, ii. fortune, i.; ii. funeral oration, after chaeroneia, ii. geraestus, i.; ii. getae, ii. glaucothea, i.; ii. glaucus, ii. gods, and crime, i. and perjury, i. command issues of events, ii. protect athens, i.; ii. guest-friendship, ii. haliartus, i.; ii. halonnesus, ii. halus, i. harmodius, i. hedyleum, i.; ii. hegemon, ii. hegesilaus, i.; ii. hegesippus, i.; ii. hellespont, i.; ii. (_see also_ chersonese, thrace.) heracles, sacrifice to, i.; ii. heraeon teichos, i.; ii. hero of the lancet (hero-physician), i.; ii. hierax, i. hieronymus, i. hipparchus, ii. hipponicus, ii. hypereides, i.; ii. iatrocles, i. illyria, illyrians, i.; ii. imbros, i.; ii. iphicrates, i.; ii. isaeus, i. ischander, i. isocrates, i.; ii. lacedaemon, lacedaemonians. (_see_ sparta, spartans.) lampsacus, i.; ii. lasthenes, i.; ii. larissa, i.; ii. law-courts, supremacy of, i.; ii. (_see also_ trials.) legislative commission, i.; ii. lemnos, i.; ii. leon, i.; ii. leptines, i. leucas, ii. leuctra, battle of, i.; ii. locrians, i.; ii. (_see also_ amphissa.) logistae. (_see_ auditors.) longinus, i. lycophron, i. lycurgus, ii. macedonian empire, i. magnesia, i.; ii. mantineia, battle of, i.; ii. oligarchy in, ii. marathon, i.; ii. battle of, i.; ii. mardonius, ii. maroneia, i. masteira, ii. mausolus, i. mecyberna, i. megalopolis, i.; ii. (_see also_ arcadia.) megara, megareans, i.; ii. meidias, ii. melantus, ii. menecles, ii. menelaus, i.; ii. menippus, ii. mercenaries, i.; ii. messene, messenians, i.; ii. methone, i.; ii. metroon, i.; ii. military system (athenian), i.; ii. (_see also_ mercenaries, naval system.) miltiades, i. mnaseas, ii. moerocles, i. molon, i. molossi, ii. molossus, ii. minos, ii. mother, the great, ii. mountain, sacred, i.; ii. munychia, ii. murder, law of, ii. myrtenum, ii. myrtis, ii. 'mysian booty,' ii. mysteries, the, ii. mytilene, i. naval boards, i.; ii. naval system (athenian), i.; ii. (_see also_ financial system, military system.) naupactus, ii. nausicles, ii. neapolis, i. neoptolemus, i.; ii. (another?), ii. neon, ii. neones, i.; ii. nicaea, i.; ii. nicias (general), i. (another), i. ninus, ii. oenomaus, ii. oligarchy, i.; ii. olympian games, i. olympias, ii. olynthus, olynthians, i.; ii. onomarchus, i. orators, corrupt and disloyal, i.; ii. and speech on the crown, _passim_. (_see also_ traitors.) difficulties and risks of, i.; ii. duties of, i.; ii. past and present athenian, i.; ii. position of, in athens, i.; ii. recriminations of, i.; ii. seeking popularity, i.; ii. orchomenus, i.; ii. oreus, i.; ii. orontas, i.; ii. oropus, i.; ii. paeonians, i.; ii. pagasae, i. pammenes, i. panactum, i.; ii. panathenaea, i.; ii. pangaeus, mount, i. parmenio, i. peace of antalcidas, i.; ii. of callias, i.; ii. of demades, ii. of philocrates, i.; ii. peitholaus, i. peiraeus, i.; ii. pella, i.; ii. pelopidas, ii. peparethus, ii. periander, law of, i. perdiccas, ii. pericles, i. perillus, i.; ii. perinthus, i.; ii. persia, persian king, i.; ii. phalaecus, i.; ii. pharsalus, i. pherae, pheraeans, i.; ii. philammon, ii. philiadas, ii. philinus, ii. philip, his advantages over athens, i.; ii. his army, ii. his character, i.; ii. his policy, i.; ii. philippi, i. philippopolis, ii. philo, i.; ii. philochares, i. philocrates (author of peace), i.; ii. (another), ii. philonicus, i. philistides, ii. phlius, phliasians, i.; ii. phocians, phocis, i.; ii. phocion, i.; ii. phormio, ii. phryne, ii. phrynon, i. phyle, i. pirates, &c., ii. pittalacus, i. plataeae, i.; ii. (battle of), ii. plutarchus, i.; ii. pnyx, ii. polyeuctus, ii. polystratus, i.; ii. porthmus, i.; ii. poteidaea, i.; ii. prisoners, ransom of, i.; ii. proconnesus, ii. proedroi, ii. prophets, i.; ii. proxenus, i.; ii. prytanes, i.; ii. ptoeodorus, i.; ii. pydna, i.; ii. pythian games, i.; ii. pythocles, i.; ii. python, i.; ii. rhadamanthus, ii. rhodes, rhodians, i.; ii. river, battle by the, ii. round chamber, i.; ii. sabazios. (_see_ dionysus.) sacred war, i. (_see also_ amphissean war.) salamis, salaminians, i.; ii. battle of, i.; ii. samos, i.; ii. satyrus, i. schools (athenian), i.; ii. sciathus, i.; ii. scyros, i. scythia, ii. selymbria, i.; ii. serrhium, i.; ii. sicyon, ii. sigeum, i.; ii. simonides, ii. simus, ii. simylus, ii. smicythus, i.; ii. socrates (of oreus), ii. (actor), ii. solon, i.; ii. sophocles, i. sosicles, ii. sosistratus, ii. sparta, spartans, i.; ii. stageira, i. symmories. (_see_ naval boards.) tamynae, ii. tanagra, ii. taurosthenes, ii. taxation. (_see_ financial system.) teledamus, ii. tenedos, ii. tetrarchies, ii. tharrex, i.; ii. thasos, i. thebans, thebes, i.; ii. themison, ii. themistocles, i.; ii. theocrines, ii. theodoras (actor), i. (of oropus), ii. theogeiton, ii. theopompus, ii. theoric fund. (_see_ festival fund.) thermopylae, i.; ii. theseus, temple of, ii. thesmothetae, i.; ii. thessalians, thessaly, i.; ii. (_see also_ magnesia, pagasae, pharsalus, pherae.) thirty tyrants, the, i.; ii. thoas, ii. thrace, thracians, i.; ii. (_see also_ cersobleptes, chersonese, hellespont.) thrason, ii. thrasybulus, i.; ii. thrasydaeus, ii. thrasylochus, ii. thucydides, i. tigranes, i. tilphossaeum, i; ii. . timagoras, i.; ii. timarchus, i.; ii. timocrates, i. timolaus, ii. timomachus, i. timotheus, i.; ii. torone, i.; ii. torture, i.; ii. traitors, i.; ii. (_see also_ orators, corruption of.) trials, athenian (character and procedure), i. (_see also_ law-courts.) triballi, i.; ii. tricaranum, i.; ii. trierarchy. (_see_ naval boards naval system.) triphylia, i.; ii. tromes, ii. walls, the, i. winter-battle, the, ii. xenocleides, i. xenophron, i. zeleia, i.; ii. the athenian constitution by aristotle translated by sir frederic g. kenyon part ...[they were tried] by a court empanelled from among the noble families, and sworn upon the sacrifices. the part of accuser was taken by myron. they were found guilty of the sacrilege, and their bodies were cast out of their graves and their race banished for evermore. in view of this expiation, epimenides the cretan performed a purification of the city. part after this event there was contention for a long time between the upper classes and the populace. not only was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were the serfs of the rich. they were known as pelatae and also as hectemori, because they cultivated the lands of the rich at the rent thus indicated. the whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. all loans secured upon the debtor's person, a custom which prevailed until the time of solon, who was the first to appear as the champion of the people. but the hardest and bitterest part of the constitution in the eyes of the masses was their state of serfdom. not but what they were also discontented with every other feature of their lot; for, to speak generally, they had no part nor share in anything. part now the ancient constitution, as it existed before the time of draco, was organized as follows. the magistrates were elected according to qualifications of birth and wealth. at first they governed for life, but subsequently for terms of ten years. the first magistrates, both in date and in importance, were the king, the polemarch, and the archon. the earliest of these offices was that of the king, which existed from ancestral antiquity. to this was added, secondly, the office of polemarch, on account of some of the kings proving feeble in war; for it was on this account that ion was invited to accept the post on an occasion of pressing need. the last of the three offices was that of the archon, which most authorities state to have come into existence in the time of medon. others assign it to the time of acastus, and adduce as proof the fact that the nine archons swear to execute their oaths 'as in the days of acastus,' which seems to suggest that it was in his time that the descendants of codrus retired from the kingship in return for the prerogatives conferred upon the archon. whichever way it may be, the difference in date is small; but that it was the last of these magistracies to be created is shown by the fact that the archon has no part in the ancestral sacrifices, as the king and the polemarch have, but exclusively in those of later origin. so it is only at a comparatively late date that the office of archon has become of great importance, through the dignity conferred by these later additions. the thesmothetae were many years afterwards, when these offices had already become annual, with the object that they might publicly record all legal decisions, and act as guardians of them with a view to determining the issues between litigants. accordingly their office, alone of those which have been mentioned, was never of more than annual duration. such, then, is the relative chronological precedence of these offices. at that time the nine archons did not all live together. the king occupied the building now known as the boculium, near the prytaneum, as may be seen from the fact that even to the present day the marriage of the king's wife to dionysus takes place there. the archon lived in the prytaneum, the polemarch in the epilyceum. the latter building was formerly called the polemarcheum, but after epilycus, during his term of office as polemarch, had rebuilt it and fitted it up, it was called the epilyceum. the thesmothetae occupied the thesmotheteum. in the time of solon, however, they all came together into the thesmotheteum. they had power to decide cases finally on their own authority, not, as now, merely to hold a preliminary hearing. such then was the arrangement of the magistracies. the council of areopagus had as its constitutionally assigned duty the protection of the laws; but in point of fact it administered the greater and most important part of the government of the state, and inflicted personal punishments and fines summarily upon all who misbehaved themselves. this was the natural consequence of the facts that the archons were elected under qualifications of birth and wealth, and that the areopagus was composed of those who had served as archons; for which latter reason the membership of the areopagus is the only office which has continued to be a life-magistracy to the present day. part such was, in outline, the first constitution, but not very long after the events above recorded, in the archonship of aristaichmus, draco enacted his ordinances. now his constitution had the following form. the franchise was given to all who could furnish themselves with a military equipment. the nine archons and the treasurers were elected by this body from persons possessing an unencumbered property of not less than ten minas, the less important officials from those who could furnish themselves with a military equipment, and the generals [strategi] and commanders of the cavalry [hipparchi] from those who could show an unencumbered property of not less than a hundred minas, and had children born in lawful wedlock over ten years of age. these officers were required to hold to bail the prytanes, the strategi, and the hipparchi of the preceding year until their accounts had been audited, taking four securities of the same class as that to which the strategi and the hipparchi belonged. there was also to be a council, consisting of four hundred and one members, elected by lot from among those who possessed the franchise. both for this and for the other magistracies the lot was cast among those who were over thirty years of age; and no one might hold office twice until every one else had had his turn, after which they were to cast the lot afresh. if any member of the council failed to attend when there was a sitting of the council or of the assembly, he paid a fine, to the amount of three drachmas if he was a pentacosiomedimnus, two if he was a knight, and one if he was a zeugites. the council of areopagus was guardian of the laws, and kept watch over the magistrates to see that they executed their offices in accordance with the laws. any person who felt himself wronged might lay an information before the council of areopagus, on declaring what law was broken by the wrong done to him. but, as has been said before, loans were secured upon the persons of the debtors, and the land was in the hands of a few. part since such, then, was the organization of the constitution, and the many were in slavery to the few, the people rose against the upper class. the strife was keen, and for a long time the two parties were ranged in hostile camps against one another, till at last, by common consent, they appointed solon to be mediator and archon, and committed the whole constitution to his hands. the immediate occasion of his appointment was his poem, which begins with the words: i behold, and within my heart deep sadness has claimed its place, as i mark the oldest home of the ancient ionian race slain by the sword. in this poem he fights and disputes on behalf of each party in turn against the other, and finally he advises them to come to terms and put an end to the quarrel existing between them. by birth and reputation solon was one of the foremost men of the day, but in wealth and position he was of the middle class, as is generally agreed, and is, indeed, established by his own evidence in these poems, where he exhorts the wealthy not to be grasping. but ye who have store of good, who are sated and overflow, restrain your swelling soul, and still it and keep it low: let the heart that is great within you be trained a lowlier way; ye shall not have all at your will, and we will not for ever obey. indeed, he constantly fastens the blame of the conflict on the rich; and accordingly at the beginning of the poem he says that he fears 'the love of wealth and an overweening mind', evidently meaning that it was through these that the quarrel arose. part as soon as he was at the head of affairs, solon liberated the people once and for all, by prohibiting all loans on the security of the debtor's person: and in addition he made laws by which he cancelled all debts, public and private. this measure is commonly called the seisachtheia [= removal of burdens], since thereby the people had their loads removed from them. in connexion with it some persons try to traduce the character of solon. it so happened that, when he was about to enact the seisachtheia, he communicated his intention to some members of the upper class, whereupon, as the partisans of the popular party say, his friends stole a march on him; while those who wish to attack his character maintain that he too had a share in the fraud himself. for these persons borrowed money and bought up a large amount of land, and so when, a short time afterwards, all debts were cancelled, they became wealthy; and this, they say, was the origin of the families which were afterwards looked on as having been wealthy from primeval times. however, the story of the popular party is by far the most probable. a man who was so moderate and public-spirited in all his other actions, that when it was within his power to put his fellow-citizens beneath his feet and establish himself as tyrant, he preferred instead to incur the hostility of both parties by placing his honour and the general welfare above his personal aggrandisement, is not likely to have consented to defile his hands by such a petty and palpable fraud. that he had this absolute power is, in the first place, indicated by the desperate condition the country; moreover, he mentions it himself repeatedly in his poems, and it is universally admitted. we are therefore bound to consider this accusation to be false. part next solon drew up a constitution and enacted new laws; and the ordinances of draco ceased to be used, with the exception of those relating to murder. the laws were inscribed on the wooden stands, and set up in the king's porch, and all swore to obey them; and the nine archons made oath upon the stone, declaring that they would dedicate a golden statue if they should transgress any of them. this is the origin of the oath to that effect which they take to the present day. solon ratified his laws for a hundred years; and the following was the fashion in which he organized the constitution. he divided the population according to property into four classes, just as it had been divided before, namely, pentacosiomedimni, knights, zeugitae, and thetes. the various magistracies, namely, the nine archons, the treasurers, the commissioners for public contracts (poletae), the eleven, and clerks (colacretae), he assigned to the pentacosiomedimni, the knights, and the zeugitae, giving offices to each class in proportion to the value of their rateable property. to who ranked among the thetes he gave nothing but a place in the assembly and in the juries. a man had to rank as a pentacosiomedimnus if he made, from his own land, five hundred measures, whether liquid or solid. those ranked as knights who made three hundred measures, or, as some say, those who were able to maintain a horse. in support of the latter definition they adduce the name of the class, which may be supposed to be derived from this fact, and also some votive offerings of early times; for in the acropolis there is a votive offering, a statue of diphilus, bearing this inscription: the son of diphilus, athenion hight, raised from the thetes and become a knight, did to the gods this sculptured charger bring, for his promotion a thank-offering. and a horse stands in evidence beside the man, implying that this was what was meant by belonging to the rank of knight. at the same time it seems reasonable to suppose that this class, like the pentacosiomedimni, was defined by the possession of an income of a certain number of measures. those ranked as zeugitae who made two hundred measures, liquid or solid; and the rest ranked as thetes, and were not eligible for any office. hence it is that even at the present day, when a candidate for any office is asked to what class he belongs, no one would think of saying that he belonged to the thetes. part the elections to the various offices solon enacted should be by lot, out of candidates selected by each of the tribes. each tribe selected ten candidates for the nine archonships, and among these the lot was cast. hence it is still the custom for each tribe to choose ten candidates by lot, and then the lot is again cast among these. a proof that solon regulated the elections to office according to the property classes may be found in the law still in force with regard to the treasurers, which enacts that they shall be chosen from the pentacosiomedimni. such was solon's legislation with respect to the nine archons; whereas in early times the council of areopagus summoned suitable persons according to its own judgement and appointed them for the year to the several offices. there were four tribes, as before, and four tribe-kings. each tribe was divided into three trittyes [=thirds], with twelve naucraries in each; and the naucraries had officers of their own, called naucrari, whose duty it was to superintend the current receipts and expenditure. hence, among the laws of solon now obsolete, it is repeatedly written that the naucrari are to receive and to spend out of the naucraric fund. solon also appointed a council of four hundred, a hundred from each tribe; but he assigned to the council of the areopagus the duty of superintending the laws, acting as before as the guardian of the constitution in general. it kept watch over the affairs of the state in most of the more important matters, and corrected offenders, with full powers to inflict either fines or personal punishment. the money received in fines it brought up into the acropolis, without assigning the reason for the mulct. it also tried those who conspired for the overthrow of the state, solon having enacted a process of impeachment to deal with such offenders. further, since he saw the state often engaged in internal disputes, while many of the citizens from sheer indifference accepted whatever might turn up, he made a law with express reference to such persons, enacting that any one who, in a time [transcriber's note: of?] civil factions, did not take up arms with either party, should lose his rights as a citizen and cease to have any part in the state. part such, then, was his legislation concerning the magistracies. there are three points in the constitution of solon which appear to be its most democratic features: first and most important, the prohibition of loans on the security of the debtor's person; secondly, the right of every person who so willed to claim redress on behalf of any one to whom wrong was being done; thirdly, the institution of the appeal to the jurycourts; and it is to this last, they say, that the masses have owed their strength most of all, since, when the democracy is master of the voting-power, it is master of the constitution. moreover, since the laws were not drawn up in simple and explicit terms (but like the one concerning inheritances and wards of state), disputes inevitably occurred, and the courts had to decide in every matter, whether public or private. some persons in fact believe that solon deliberately made the laws indefinite, in order that the final decision might be in the hands of the people. this, however, is not probable, and the reason no doubt was that it is impossible to attain ideal perfection when framing a law in general terms; for we must judge of his intentions, not from the actual results in the present day, but from the general tenor of the rest of his legislation. part these seem to be the democratic features of his laws; but in addition, before the period of his legislation, he carried through his abolition of debts, and after it his increase in the standards of weights and measures, and of the currency. during his administration the measures were made larger than those of pheidon, and the mina, which previously had a standard of seventy drachmas, was raised to the full hundred. the standard coin in earlier times was the two-drachma piece. he also made weights corresponding with the coinage, sixty-three minas going to the talent; and the odd three minas were distributed among the staters and the other values. part when he had completed his organization of the constitution in the manner that has been described, he found himself beset by people coming to him and harassing him concerning his laws, criticizing here and questioning there, till, as he wished neither to alter what he had decided on nor yet to be an object of ill will to every one by remaining in athens, he set off on a journey to egypt, with the combined objects of trade and travel, giving out that he should not return for ten years. he considered that there was no call for him to expound the laws personally, but that every one should obey them just as they were written. moreover, his position at this time was unpleasant. many members of the upper class had been estranged from him on account of his abolition of debts, and both parties were alienated through their disappointment at the condition of things which he had created. the mass of the people had expected him to make a complete redistribution of all property, and the upper class hoped he would restore everything to its former position, or, at any rate, make but a small change. solon, however, had resisted both classes. he might have made himself a despot by attaching himself to whichever party he chose, but he preferred, though at the cost of incurring the enmity of both, to be the saviour of his country and the ideal lawgiver. part the truth of this view of solon's policy is established alike by common consent, and by the mention he has himself made of the matter in his poems. thus: i gave to the mass of the people such rank as befitted their need, i took not away their honour, and i granted naught to their greed; while those who were rich in power, who in wealth were glorious and great, i bethought me that naught should befall them unworthy their splendour and state; so i stood with my shield outstretched, and both were safe in its sight, and i would not that either should triumph, when the triumph was not with right. again he declares how the mass of the people ought to be treated: but thus will the people best the voice of their leaders obey, when neither too slack is the rein, nor violence holdeth the sway; for indulgence breedeth a child, the presumption that spurns control, when riches too great are poured upon men of unbalanced soul. and again elsewhere he speaks about the persons who wished to redistribute the land: so they came in search of plunder, and their cravings knew no bound, every one among them deeming endless wealth would here be found. and that i with glozing smoothness hid a cruel mind within. fondly then and vainly dreamt they; now they raise an angry din, and they glare askance in anger, and the light within their eyes burns with hostile flames upon me. yet therein no justice lies. all i promised, fully wrought i with the gods at hand to cheer, naught beyond in folly ventured. never to my soul was dear with a tyrant's force to govern, nor to see the good and base side by side in equal portion share the rich home of our race. once more he speaks of the abolition of debts and of those who before were in servitude, but were released owing to the seisachtheia: of all the aims for which i summoned forth the people, was there one i compassed not? thou, when slow time brings justice in its train, o mighty mother of the olympian gods, dark earth, thou best canst witness, from whose breast i swept the pillars broadcast planted there, and made thee free, who hadst been slave of yore. and many a man whom fraud or law had sold for from his god-built land, an outcast slave, i brought again to athens; yea, and some, exiles from home through debt's oppressive load, speaking no more the dear athenian tongue, but wandering far and wide, i brought again; and those that here in vilest slavery crouched 'neath a master's frown, i set them free. thus might and right were yoked in harmony, since by the force of law i won my ends and kept my promise. equal laws i gave to evil and to good, with even hand drawing straight justice for the lot of each. but had another held the goad as one in whose heart was guile and greediness, he had not kept the people back from strife. for had i granted, now what pleased the one, then what their foes devised in counterpoise, of many a man this state had been bereft. therefore i showed my might on every side, turning at bay like wolf among the hounds. and again he reviles both parties for their grumblings in the times that followed: nay, if one must lay blame where blame is due, wer't not for me, the people ne'er had set their eyes upon these blessings e'en in dreams: while greater men, the men of wealthier life, should praise me and should court me as their friend. for had any other man, he says, received this exalted post, he had not kept the people back, nor ceased til he had robbed the richness of the milk. but i stood forth a landmark in the midst, and barred the foes from battle. part such then, were solon's reasons for his departure from the country. after his retirement the city was still torn by divisions. for four years, indeed, they lived in peace; but in the fifth year after solon's government they were unable to elect an archon on account of their dissensions, and again four years later they elected no archon for the same reason. subsequently, after a similar period had elapsed, damasias was elected archon; and he governed for two years and two months, until he was forcibly expelled from his office. after this, it was agreed, as a compromise, to elect ten archons, five from the eupatridae, three from the agroeci, and two from the demiurgi, and they ruled for the year following damasias. it is clear from this that the archon was at the time the magistrate who possessed the greatest power, since it is always in connexion with this office that conflicts are seen to arise. but altogether they were in a continual state of internal disorder. some found the cause and justification of their discontent in the abolition of debts, because thereby they had been reduced to poverty; others were dissatisfied with the political constitution, because it had undergone a revolutionary change; while with others the motive was found in personal rivalries among themselves. the parties at this time were three in number. first there was the party of the shore, led by megacles the son of alcmeon, which was considered to aim at a moderate form of government; then there were the men of the plain, who desired an oligarchy and were led by lycurgus; and thirdly there were the men of the highlands, at the head of whom was pisistratus, who was looked on as an extreme democrat. this latter party was reinforced by those who had been deprived of the debts due to them, from motives of poverty, and by those who were not of pure descent, from motives of personal apprehension. a proof of this is seen in the fact that after the tyranny was overthrown a revision was made of the citizen-roll, on the ground that many persons were partaking in the franchise without having a right to it. the names given to the respective parties were derived from the districts in which they held their lands. part pisistratus had the reputation of being an extreme democrat, and he also had distinguished himself greatly in the war with megara. taking advantage of this, he wounded himself, and by representing that his injuries had been inflicted on him by his political rivals, he persuaded the people, through a motion proposed by aristion, to grant him a bodyguard. after he had got these 'club-bearers', as they were called, he made an attack with them on the people and seized the acropolis. this happened in the archonship of comeas, thirty-one years after the legislation of solon. it is related that, when pisistratus asked for his bodyguard, solon opposed the request, and declared that in so doing he proved himself wiser than half the people and braver than the rest,--wiser than those who did not see that pisistratus designed to make himself tyrant, and braver than those who saw it and kept silence. but when all his words availed nothing he carried forth his armour and set it up in front of his house, saying that he had helped his country so far as lay in his power (he was already a very old man), and that he called on all others to do the same. solon's exhortations, however, proved fruitless, and pisistratus assumed the sovereignty. his administration was more like a constitutional government than the rule of a tyrant; but before his power was firmly established, the adherents of megacles and lycurgus made a coalition and drove him out. this took place in the archonship of hegesias, five years after the first establishment of his rule. eleven years later megacles, being in difficulties in a party struggle, again opened negotiations with pisistratus, proposing that the latter should marry his daughter; and on these terms he brought him back to athens, by a very primitive and simple-minded device. he first spread abroad a rumour that athens was bringing back pisistratus, and then, having found a woman of great stature and beauty, named phye (according to herodotus, of the deme of paeania, but as others say a thracian flower-seller of the deme of collytus), he dressed her in a garb resembling that of the goddess and brought her into the city with pisistratus. the latter drove in on a chariot with the woman beside him, and the inhabitants of the city, struck with awe, received him with adoration. part in this manner did his first return take place. he did not, however, hold his power long, for about six years after his return he was again expelled. he refused to treat the daughter of megacles as his wife, and being afraid, in consequence, of a combination of the two opposing parties, he retired from the country. first he led a colony to a place called rhaicelus, in the region of the thermaic gulf; and thence he passed to the country in the neighbourhood of mt. pangaeus. here he acquired wealth and hired mercenaries; and not till ten years had elapsed did he return to eretria and make an attempt to recover the government by force. in this he had the assistance of many allies, notably the thebans and lygdamis of naxos, and also the knights who held the supreme power in the constitution of eretria. after his victory in the battle at pallene he captured athens, and when he had disarmed the people he at last had his tyranny securely established, and was able to take naxos and set up lygdamis as ruler there. he effected the disarmament of the people in the following manner. he ordered a parade in full armour in the theseum, and began to make a speech to the people. he spoke for a short time, until the people called out that they could not hear him, whereupon he bade them come up to the entrance of the acropolis, in order that his voice might be better heard. then, while he continued to speak to them at great length, men whom he had appointed for the purpose collected the arms and locked them up in the chambers of the theseum hard by, and came and made a signal to him that it was done. pisistratus accordingly, when he had finished the rest of what he had to say, told the people also what had happened to their arms; adding that they were not to be surprised or alarmed, but go home and attend to their private affairs, while he would himself for the future manage all the business of the state. part such was the origin and such the vicissitudes of the tyranny of pisistratus. his administration was temperate, as has been said before, and more like constitutional government than a tyranny. not only was he in every respect humane and mild and ready to forgive those who offended, but, in addition, he advanced money to the poorer people to help them in their labours, so that they might make their living by agriculture. in this he had two objects, first that they might not spend their time in the city but might be scattered over all the face of the country, and secondly that, being moderately well off and occupied with their own business, they might have neither the wish nor the time to attend to public affairs. at the same time his revenues were increased by the thorough cultivation of the country, since he imposed a tax of one tenth on all the produce. for the same reasons he instituted the local justices, and often made expeditions in person into the country to inspect it and to settle disputes between individuals, that they might not come into the city and neglect their farms. it was in one of these progresses that, as the story goes, pisistratus had his adventure with the man of hymettus, who was cultivating the spot afterwards known as 'tax-free farm'. he saw a man digging and working at a very stony piece of ground, and being surprised he sent his attendant to ask what he got out of this plot of land. 'aches and pains', said the man; 'and that's what pisistratus ought to have his tenth of'. the man spoke without knowing who his questioner was; but pisistratus was so pleased with his frank speech and his industry that he granted him exemption from all taxes. and so in matters in general he burdened the people as little as possible with his government, but always cultivated peace and kept them in all quietness. hence the tyranny of pisistratus was often spoken of proverbially as 'the age of gold'; for when his sons succeeded him the government became much harsher. but most important of all in this respect was his popular and kindly disposition. in all things he was accustomed to observe the laws, without giving himself any exceptional privileges. once he was summoned on a charge of homicide before the areopagus, and he appeared in person to make his defence; but the prosecutor was afraid to present himself and abandoned the case. for these reasons he held power long, and whenever he was expelled he regained his position easily. the majority alike of the upper class and of the people were in his favour; the former he won by his social intercourse with them, the latter by the assistance which he gave to their private purses, and his nature fitted him to win the hearts of both. moreover, the laws in reference to tyrants at that time in force at athens were very mild, especially the one which applies more particularly to the establishment of a tyranny. the law ran as follows: 'these are the ancestral statutes of the athenians; if any persons shall make an attempt to establish a tyranny, or if any person shall join in setting up a tyranny, he shall lose his civic rights, both himself and his whole house.' part thus did pisistratus grow old in the possession of power, and he died a natural death in the archonship of philoneos, three and thirty years from the time at which he first established himself as tyrant, during nineteen of which he was in possession of power; the rest he spent in exile. it is evident from this that the story is mere gossip which states that pisistratus was the youthful favourite of solon and commanded in the war against megara for the recovery of salamis. it will not harmonize with their respective ages, as any one may see who will reckon up the years of the life of each of them, and the dates at which they died. after the death of pisistratus his sons took up the government, and conducted it on the same system. he had two sons by his first and legitimate wife, hippias and hipparchus, and two by his argive consort, iophon and hegesistratus, who was surnamed thessalus. for pisistratus took a wife from argos, timonassa, the daughter of a man of argos, named gorgilus; she had previously been the wife of archinus of ambracia, one of the descendants of cypselus. this was the origin of his friendship with the argives, on account of which a thousand of them were brought over by hegesistratus and fought on his side in the battle at pallene. some authorities say that this marriage took place after his first expulsion from athens, others while he was in possession of the government. part hippias and hipparchus assumed the control of affairs on grounds alike of standing and of age; but hippias, as being also naturally of a statesmanlike and shrewd disposition, was really the head of the government. hipparchus was youthful in disposition, amorous, and fond of literature (it was he who invited to athens anacreon, simonides, and the other poets), while thessalus was much junior in age, and was violent and headstrong in his behaviour. it was from his character that all the evils arose which befell the house. he became enamoured of harmodius, and, since he failed to win his affection, he lost all restraint upon his passion, and in addition to other exhibitions of rage he finally prevented the sister of harmodius from taking the part of a basket-bearer in the panathenaic procession, alleging as his reason that harmodius was a person of loose life. thereupon, in a frenzy of wrath, harmodius and aristogeiton did their celebrated deed, in conjunction with a number of confederates. but while they were lying in wait for hippias in the acropolis at the time of the panathenaea (hippias, at this moment, was awaiting the arrival of the procession, while hipparchus was organizing its dispatch) they saw one of the persons privy to the plot talking familiarly with him. thinking that he was betraying them, and desiring to do something before they were arrested, they rushed down and made their attempt without waiting for the rest of their confederates. they succeeded in killing hipparchus near the leocoreum while he was engaged in arranging the procession, but ruined the design as a whole; of the two leaders, harmodius was killed on the spot by the guards, while aristogeiton was arrested, and perished later after suffering long tortures. while under the torture he accused many persons who belonged by birth to the most distinguished families and were also personal friends of the tyrants. at first the government could find no clue to the conspiracy; for the current story, that hippias made all who were taking part in the procession leave their arms, and then detected those who were carrying secret daggers, cannot be true, since at that time they did not bear arms in the processions, this being a custom instituted at a later period by the democracy. according to the story of the popular party, aristogeiton accused the friends of the tyrants with the deliberate intention that the latter might commit an impious act, and at the same time weaken themselves, by putting to death innocent men who were their own friends; others say that he told no falsehood, but was betraying the actual accomplices. at last, when for all his efforts he could not obtain release by death, he promised to give further information against a number of other persons; and, having induced hippias to give him his hand to confirm his word, as soon as he had hold of it he reviled him for giving his hand to the murderer of his brother, till hippias, in a frenzy of rage, lost control of himself and snatched out his dagger and dispatched him. part after this event the tyranny became much harsher. in consequence of his vengeance for his brother, and of the execution and banishment of a large number of persons, hippias became a distrusted and an embittered man. about three years after the death of hipparchus, finding his position in the city insecure, he set about fortifying munichia, with the intention of establishing himself there. while he was still engaged on this work, however, he was expelled by cleomenes, king of lacedaemon, in consequence of the spartans being continually incited by oracles to overthrow the tyranny. these oracles were obtained in the following way. the athenian exiles, headed by the alcmeonidae, could not by their own power effect their return, but failed continually in their attempts. among their other failures, they fortified a post in attica, lipsydrium, above mt. parnes, and were there joined by some partisans from the city; but they were besieged by the tyrants and reduced to surrender. after this disaster the following became a popular drinking song: ah! lipsydrium, faithless friend! lo, what heroes to death didst send, nobly born and great in deed! well did they prove themselves at need of noble sires a noble seed. having failed, then, in every other method, they took the contract for rebuilding the temple at delphi, thereby obtaining ample funds, which they employed to secure the help of the lacedaemonians. all this time the pythia kept continually enjoining on the lacedaemonians who came to consult the oracle, that they must free athens; till finally she succeeded in impelling the spartans to that step, although the house of pisistratus was connected with them by ties of hospitality. the resolution of the lacedaemonians was, however, at least equally due to the friendship which had been formed between the house of pisistratus and argos. accordingly they first sent anchimolus by sea at the head of an army; but he was defeated and killed, through the arrival of cineas of thessaly to support the sons of pisistratus with a force of a thousand horsemen. then, being roused to anger by this disaster, they sent their king, cleomenes, by land at the head of a larger force; and he, after defeating the thessalian cavalry when they attempted to intercept his march into attica, shut up hippias within what was known as the pelargic wall and blockaded him there with the assistance of the athenians. while he was sitting down before the place, it so happened that the sons of the pisistratidae were captured in an attempt to slip out; upon which the tyrants capitulated on condition of the safety of their children, and surrendered the acropolis to the athenians, five days being first allowed them to remove their effects. this took place in the archonship of harpactides, after they had held the tyranny for about seventeen years since their father's death, or in all, including the period of their father's rule, for nine-and-forty years. part after the overthrow of the tyranny, the rival leaders in the state were isagoras son of tisander, a partisan of the tyrants, and cleisthenes, who belonged to the family of the alcmeonidae. cleisthenes, being beaten in the political clubs, called in the people by giving the franchise to the masses. thereupon isagoras, finding himself left inferior in power, invited cleomenes, who was united to him by ties of hospitality, to return to athens, and persuaded him to 'drive out the pollution', a plea derived from the fact that the alcmeonidae were suppposed to be under the curse of pollution. on this cleisthenes retired from the country, and cleomenes, entering attica with a small force, expelled, as polluted, seven hundred athenian families. having effected this, he next attempted to dissolve the council, and to set up isagoras and three hundred of his partisans as the supreme power in the state. the council, however, resisted, the populace flocked together, and cleomenes and isagoras, with their adherents, took refuge in the acropolis. here the people sat down and besieged them for two days; and on the third they agreed to let cleomenes and all his followers depart, while they summoned cleisthenes and the other exiles back to athens. when the people had thus obtained the command of affairs, cleisthenes was their chief and popular leader. and this was natural; for the alcmeonidae were perhaps the chief cause of the expulsion of the tyrants, and for the greater part of their rule were at perpetual war with them. but even earlier than the attempts of the alcmeonidae, one cedon made an attack on the tyrants; when there came another popular drinking song, addressed to him: pour a health yet again, boy, to cedon; forget not this duty to do, if a health is an honour befitting the name of a good man and true. part the people, therefore, had good reason to place confidence in cleisthenes. accordingly, now that he was the popular leader, three years after the expulsion of the tyrants, in the archonship of isagoras, his first step was to distribute the whole population into ten tribes in place of the existing four, with the object of intermixing the members of the different tribes, and so securing that more persons might have a share in the franchise. from this arose the saying 'do not look at the tribes', addressed to those who wished to scrutinize the lists of the old families. next he made the council to consist of five hundred members instead of four hundred, each tribe now contributing fifty, whereas formerly each had sent a hundred. the reason why he did not organize the people into twelve tribes was that he might not have to use the existing division into trittyes; for the four tribes had twelve trittyes, so that he would not have achieved his object of redistributing the population in fresh combinations. further, he divided the country into thirty groups of demes, ten from the districts about the city, ten from the coast, and ten from the interior. these he called trittyes; and he assigned three of them by lot to each tribe, in such a way that each should have one portion in each of these three localities. all who lived in any given deme he declared fellow-demesmen, to the end that the new citizens might not be exposed by the habitual use of family names, but that men might be officially described by the names of their demes; and accordingly it is by the names of their demes that the athenians speak of one another. he also instituted demarchs, who had the same duties as the previously existing naucrari,--the demes being made to take the place of the naucraries. he gave names to the demes, some from the localities to which they belonged, some from the persons who founded them, since some of the areas no longer corresponded to localities possessing names. on the other hand he allowed every one to retain his family and clan and religious rites according to ancestral custom. the names given to the tribes were the ten which the pythia appointed out of the hundred selected national heroes. part by these reforms the constitution became much more democratic than that of solon. the laws of solon had been obliterated by disuse during the period of the tyranny, while cleisthenes substituted new ones with the object of securing the goodwill of the masses. among these was the law concerning ostracism. four years after the establishment of this system, in the archonship of hermocreon, they first imposed upon the council of five hundred the oath which they take to the present day. next they began to elect the generals by tribes, one from each tribe, while the polemarch was the commander of the whole army. then, eleven years later, in the archonship of phaenippus they won the battle of marathon; and two years after this victory, when the people had now gained self-confidence, they for the first time made use of the law of ostracism. this had originally been passed as a precaution against men in high office, because pisistratus took advantage of his position as a popular leader and general to make himself tyrant; and the first person ostracized was one of his relatives, hipparchus son of charmus, of the deme of collytus, the very person on whose account especially cleisthenes had enacted the law, as he wished to get rid of him. hitherto, however, he had escaped; for the athenians, with the usual leniency of the democracy, allowed all the partisans of the tyrants, who had not joined in their evil deeds in the time of the troubles to remain in the city; and the chief and leader of these was hipparchus. then in the very next year, in the archonship of telesinus, they for the first time since the tyranny elected, tribe by tribe, the nine archons by lot out of the five hundred candidates selected by the demes, all the earlier ones having been elected by vote; and in the same year megacles son of hippocrates, of the deme of alopece, was ostracized. thus for three years they continued to ostracize the friends of the tyrants, on whose account the law had been passed; but in the following year they began to remove others as well, including any one who seemed to be more powerful than was expedient. the first person unconnected with the tyrants who was ostracized was xanthippus son of ariphron. two years later, in the archonship of nicodemus, the mines of maroneia were discovered, and the state made a profit of a hundred talents from the working of them. some persons advised the people to make a distribution of the money among themselves, but this was prevented by themistocles. he refused to say on what he proposed to spend the money, but he bade them lend it to the hundred richest men in athens, one talent to each, and then, if the manner in which it was employed pleased the people, the expenditure should be charged to the state, but otherwise the state should receive the sum back from those to whom it was lent. on these terms he received the money and with it he had a hundred triremes built, each of the hundred individuals building one; and it was with these ships that they fought the battle of salamis against the barbarians. about this time aristides the son of lysimachus was ostracized. three years later, however, in the archonship of hypsichides, all the ostracized persons were recalled, on account of the advance of the army of xerxes; and it was laid down for the future that persons under sentence of ostracism must live between geraestus and scyllaeum, on pain of losing their civic rights irrevocably. part so far, then, had the city progressed by this time, growing gradually with the growth of the democracy; but after the persian wars the council of areopagus once more developed strength and assumed the control of the state. it did not acquire this supremacy by virtue of any formal decree, but because it had been the cause of the battle of salamis being fought. when the generals were utterly at a loss how to meet the crisis and made proclamation that every one should see to his own safety, the areopagus provided a donation of money, distributing eight drachmas to each member of the ships' crews, and so prevailed on them to go on board. on these grounds people bowed to its prestige; and during this period athens was well administered. at this time they devoted themselves to the prosecution of the war and were in high repute among the greeks, so that the command by sea was conferred upon them, in spite of the opposition of the lacedaemonians. the leaders of the people during this period were aristides, of lysimachus, and themistocles, son of lysimachus, and themistocles, son of neocles, of whom the latter appeared to devote himself to the conduct of war, while the former had the reputation of being a clever statesman and the most upright man of his time. accordingly the one was usually employed as general, the other as political adviser. the rebuilding of the fortifications they conducted in combination, although they were political opponents; but it was aristides who, seizing the opportunity afforded by the discredit brought upon the lacedaemonians by pausanias, guided the public policy in the matter of the defection of the ionian states from the alliance with sparta. it follows that it was he who made the first assessment of tribute from the various allied states, two years after the battle of salamis, in the archonship of timosthenes; and it was he who took the oath of offensive and defensive alliance with the ionians, on which occasion they cast the masses of iron into the sea. part after this, seeing the state growing in confidence and much wealth accumulated, he advised the people to lay hold of the leadership of the league, and to quit the country districts and settle in the city. he pointed out to them that all would be able to gain a living there, some by service in the army, others in the garrisons, others by taking a part in public affairs; and in this way they would secure the leadership. this advice was taken; and when the people had assumed the supreme control they proceeded to treat their allies in a more imperious fashion, with the exception of the chians, lesbians, and samians. these they maintained to protect their empire, leaving their constitutions untouched, and allowing them to retain whatever dominion they then possessed. they also secured an ample maintenance for the mass of the population in the way which aristides had pointed out to them. out of the proceeds of the tributes and the taxes and the contributions of the allies more than twenty thousand persons were maintained. there were , jurymen, , bowmen, , knights, members of the council, guards of the dockyards, besides fifty guards in the acropolis. there were some magistrates at home, and some abroad. further, when they subsequently went to war, there were in addition , heavy-armed troops, twenty guard-ships, and other ships which collected the tributes, with crews amounting to , men, selected by lot; and besides these there were the persons maintained at the prytaneum, and orphans, and gaolers, since all these were supported by the state. part such was the way in which the people earned their livelihood. the supremacy of the areopagus lasted for about seventeen years after the persian wars, although gradually declining. but as the strength of the masses increased, ephialtes, son of sophonides, a man with a reputation for incorruptibility and public virtue, who had become the leader of the people, made an attack upon that council. first of all he ruined many of its members by bringing actions against them with reference to their administration. then, in the archonship of conon, he stripped the council of all the acquired prerogatives from which it derived its guardianship of the constitution, and assigned some of them to the council of five hundred, and others to the assembly and the law-courts. in this revolution he was assisted by themistocles, who was himself a member of the areopagus, but was expecting to be tried before it on a charge of treasonable dealings with persia. this made him anxious that it should be overthrown, and accordingly he warned ephialtes that the council intended to arrest him, while at the same time he informed the areopagites that he would reveal to them certain persons who were conspiring to subvert the constitution. he then conducted the representatives delegated by the council to the residence of ephialtes, promising to show them the conspirators who assembled there, and proceeded to converse with them in an earnest manner. ephialtes, seeing this, was seized with alarm and took refuge in suppliant guise at the altar. every one was astounded at the occurrence, and presently, when the council of five hundred met, ephialtes and themistocles together proceeded to denounce the areopagus to them. this they repeated in similar fashion in the assembly, until they succeeded in depriving it of its power. not long afterwards, however, ephialtes was assassinated by aristodicus of tanagra. in this way was the council of areopagus deprived of its guardianship of the state. part after this revolution the administration of the state became more and more lax, in consequence of the eager rivalry of candidates for popular favour. during this period the moderate party, as it happened, had no real chief, their leader being cimon son of miltiades, who was a comparatively young man, and had been late in entering public life; and at the same time the general populace suffered great losses by war. the soldiers for active service were selected at that time from the roll of citizens, and as the generals were men of no military experience, who owed their position solely to their family standing, it continually happened that some two or three thousand of the troops perished on an expedition; and in this way the best men alike of the lower and the upper classes were exhausted. consequently in most matters of administration less heed was paid to the laws than had formerly been the case. no alteration, however, was made in the method of election of the nine archons, except that five years after the death of ephialtes it was decided that the candidates to be submitted to the lot for that office might be selected from the zeugitae as well as from the higher classes. the first archon from that class was mnesitheides. up to this time all the archons had been taken from the pentacosiomedimni and knights, while the zeugitae were confined to the ordinary magistracies, save where an evasion of the law was overlooked. four years later, in the archonship of lysicrates, thirty 'local justices', as they as they were called, were re-established; and two years afterwards, in the archonship of antidotus, consequence of the great increase in the number of citizens, it was resolved, on the motion of pericles, that no one should be admitted to the franchise who was not of citizen birth by both parents. part after this pericles came forward as popular leader, having first distinguished himself while still a young man by prosecuting cimon on the audit of his official accounts as general. under his auspices the constitution became still more democratic. he took away some of the privileges of the areopagus, and, above all, he turned the policy of the state in the direction of sea power, which caused the masses to acquire confidence in themselves and consequently to take the conduct of affairs more and more into their own hands. moreover, forty-eight years after the battle of salamis, in the archonship of pythodorus, the peloponnesian war broke out, during which the populace was shut up in the city and became accustomed to gain its livelihood by military service, and so, partly voluntarily and partly involuntarily, determined to assume the administration of the state itself. pericles was also the first to institute pay for service in the law-courts, as a bid for popular favour to counterbalance the wealth of cimon. the latter, having private possessions on a regal scale, not only performed the regular public services magnificently, but also maintained a large number of his fellow-demesmen. any member of the deme of laciadae could go every day to cimon's house and there receive a reasonable provision; while his estate was guarded by no fences, so that any one who liked might help himself to the fruit from it. pericles' private property was quite unequal to this magnificence and accordingly he took the advice of damonides of oia (who was commonly supposed to be the person who prompted pericles in most of his measures, and was therefore subsequently ostracized), which was that, as he was beaten in the matter of private possessions, he should make gifts to the people from their own property; and accordingly he instituted pay for the members of the juries. some critics accuse him of thereby causing a deterioration in the character of the juries, since it was always the common people who put themselves forward for selection as jurors, rather than the men of better position. moreover, bribery came into existence after this, the first person to introduce it being anytus, after his command at pylos. he was prosecuted by certain individuals on account of his loss of pylos, but escaped by bribing the jury. part so long, however, as pericles was leader of the people, things went tolerably well with the state; but when he was dead there was a great change for the worse. then for the first time did the people choose a leader who was of no reputation among men of good standing, whereas up to this time such men had always been found as leaders of the democracy. the first leader of the people, in the very beginning of things, was solon, and the second was pisistratus, both of them men of birth and position. after the overthrow of the tyrants there was cleisthenes, a member of the house of the alcmeonidae; and he had no rival opposed to him after the expulsion of the party of isagoras. after this xanthippus was the leader of the people, and miltiades of the upper class. then came themistocles and aristides, and after them ephialtes as leader of the people, and cimon son of miltiades of the wealthier class. pericles followed as leader of the people, and thucydides, who was connected by marriage with cimon, of the opposition. after the death of pericles, nicias, who subsequently fell in sicily, appeared as leader of the aristocracy, and cleon son of cleaenetus of the people. the latter seems, more than any one else, to have been the cause of the corruption of the democracy by his wild undertakings; and he was the first to use unseemly shouting and coarse abuse on the bema, and to harangue the people with his cloak girt up short about him, whereas all his predecessors had spoken decently and in order. these were succeeded by theramenes son of hagnon as leader of the one party, and the lyre-maker cleophon of the people. it was cleophon who first granted the two-obol donation for the theatrical performances, and for some time it continued to be given; but then callicrates of paeania ousted him by promising to add a third obol to the sum. both of these persons were subsequently condemned to death; for the people, even if they are deceived for a time, in the end generally come to detest those who have beguiled them into any unworthy action. after cleophon the popular leadership was occupied successively by the men who chose to talk the biggest and pander the most to the tastes of the majority, with their eyes fixed only on the interests of the moment. the best statesmen at athens, after those of early times, seem to have been nicias, thucydides, and theramenes. as to nicias and thucydides, nearly every one agrees that they were not merely men of birth and character, but also statesmen, and that they ruled the state with paternal care. on the merits of theramenes opinion is divided, because it so happened that in his time public affairs were in a very stormy state. but those who give their opinion deliberately find him, not, as his critics falsely assert, overthrowing every kind of constitution, but supporting every kind so long as it did not transgress laws; thus showing that he was able, as every good citizen should be, to live under any form of constitution, while he refused to countenance illegality and was its constant enemy. part so long as the fortune of the war continued even, the athenians preserved the democracy; but after the disaster in sicily, when the lacedaemonians had gained the upper hand through their alliance with the king of persia, they were compelled to abolish the democracy and establish in its place the constitution of the four hundred. the speech recommending this course before the vote was made by melobius, and the motion was proposed by pythodorus of anaphlystus; but the real argument which persuaded the majority was the belief that the king of persia was more likely to form an alliance with them if the constitution were on an oligarchical basis. the motion of pythodorus was to the following effect. the popular assembly was to elect twenty persons, over forty years of age, who, in conjunction with the existing ten members of the committee of public safety, after taking an oath that they would frame such measures as they thought best for the state, should then prepare proposals for the public safety. in addition, any other person might make proposals, so that of all the schemes before them the people might choose the best. cleitophon concurred with the motion of pythodorus, but moved that the committee should also investigate the ancient laws enacted by cleisthenes when he created the democracy, in order that they might have these too before them and so be in a position to decide wisely; his suggestion being that the constitution of cleisthenes was not really democratic, but closely akin to that of solon. when the committee was elected, their first proposal was that the prytanes should be compelled to put to the vote any motion that was offered on behalf of the public safety. next they abolished all indictments for illegal proposals, all impeachments and pubic prosecutions, in order that every athenian should be free to give his counsel on the situation, if he chose; and they decreed that if any person imposed a fine on any other for his acts in this respect, or prosecuted him or summoned him before the courts, he should, on an information being laid against him, be summarily arrested and brought before the generals, who should deliver him to the eleven to be put to death. after these preliminary measures, they drew up the constitution in the following manner. the revenues of the state were not to be spent on any purpose except the war. all magistrates should serve without remuneration for the period of the war, except the nine archons and the prytanes for the time being, who should each receive three obols a day. the whole of the rest of the administration was to be committed, for the period of the war, to those athenians who were most capable of serving the state personally or pecuniarily, to the number of not less than five thousand. this body was to have full powers, to the extent even of making treaties with whomsoever they willed; and ten representatives, over forty years of age, were to be elected from each tribe to draw up the list of the five thousand, after taking an oath on a full and perfect sacrifice. part these were the recommendations of the committee; and when they had been ratified the five thousand elected from their own number a hundred commissioners to draw up the constitution. they, on their appointment, drew up and produced the following recommendations. there should be a council, holding office for a year, consisting of men over thirty years of age, serving without pay. to this body should belong the generals, the nine archons, the amphictyonic registrar (hieromnemon), the taxiarchs, the hipparchs, the phylarch, the commanders of garrisons, the treasurers of athena and the other gods, ten in number, the hellenic treasurers (hellenotamiae), the treasurers of the other non-sacred moneys, to the number of twenty, the ten commissioners of sacrifices (hieropoei), and the ten superintendents of the mysteries. all these were to be appointed by the council from a larger number of selected candidates, chosen from its members for the time being. the other offices were all to be filled by lot, and not from the members of the council. the hellenic treasurers who actually administered the funds should not sit with the council. as regards the future, four councils were to be created, of men of the age already mentioned, and one of these was to be chosen by lot to take office at once, while the others were to receive it in turn, in the order decided by the lot. for this purpose the hundred commissioners were to distribute themselves and all the rest as equally as possible into four parts, and cast lots for precedence, and the selected body should hold office for a year. they were to administer that office as seemed to them best, both with reference to the safe custody and due expenditure of the finances, and generally with regard to all other matters to the best of their ability. if they desired to take a larger number of persons into counsel, each member might call in one assistant of his own choice, subject to the same qualification of age. the council was to sit once every five days, unless there was any special need for more frequent sittings. the casting of the lot for the council was to be held by the nine archons; votes on divisions were to be counted by five tellers chosen by lot from the members of the council, and of these one was to be selected by lot every day to act as president. these five persons were to cast lots for precedence between the parties wishing to appear before the council, giving the first place to sacred matters, the second to heralds, the third to embassies, and the fourth to all other subjects; but matters concerning the war might be dealt with, on the motion of the generals, whenever there was need, without balloting. any member of the council who did not enter the council-house at the time named should be fined a drachma for each day, unless he was away on leave of absence from the council. part such was the constitution which they drew up for the time to come, but for the immediate present they devised the following scheme. there should be a council of four hundred, as in the ancient constitution, forty from each tribe, chosen out of candidates of more than thirty years of age, selected by the members of the tribes. this council should appoint the magistrates and draw up the form of oath which they were to take; and in all that concerned the laws, in the examination of official accounts, and in other matters generally, they might act according to their discretion. they must, however, observe the laws that might be enacted with reference to the constitution of the state, and had no power to alter them nor to pass others. the generals should be provisionally elected from the whole body of the five thousand, but so soon as the council came into existence it was to hold an examination of military equipments, and thereon elect ten persons, together with a secretary, and the persons thus elected should hold office during the coming year with full powers, and should have the right, whenever they desired it, of joining in the deliberations of the council. the five thousand was also to elect a single hipparch and ten phylarchs; but for the future the council was to elect these officers according to the regulations above laid down. no office, except those of member of the council and of general, might be held more than once, either by the first occupants or by their successors. with reference to the future distribution of the four hundred into the four successive sections, the hundred commissioners must divide them whenever the time comes for the citizens to join in the council along with the rest. part the hundred commissioners appointed by the five thousand drew up the constitution as just stated; and after it had been ratified by the people, under the presidency of aristomachus, the existing council, that of the year of callias, was dissolved before it had completed its term of office. it was dissolved on the fourteenth day of the month thargelion, and the four hundred entered into office on the twenty-first; whereas the regular council, elected by lot, ought to have entered into office on the fourteenth of scirophorion. thus was the oligarchy established, in the archonship of callias, just about a hundred years after the expulsion of the tyrants. the chief promoters of the revolution were pisander, antiphon, and theramenes, all of them men of good birth and with high reputations for ability and judgement. when, however, this constitution had been established, the five thousand were only nominally selected, and the four hundred, together with the ten officers on whom full powers had been conferred, occupied the council-house and really administered the government. they began by sending ambassadors to the lacedaemonians proposing a cessation of the war on the basis of the existing position; but as the lacedaemonians refused to listen to them unless they would also abandon the command of the sea, they broke off the negotiations. part for about four months the constitution of the four hundred lasted, and mnasilochus held office as archon of their nomination for two months of the year of theopompus, who was archon for the remaining ten. on the loss of the naval battle of eretria, however, and the revolt of the whole of euboea except oreum, the indignation of the people was greater than at any of the earlier disasters, since they drew far more supplies at this time from euboea than from attica itself. accordingly they deposed the four hundred and committed the management of affairs to the five thousand, consisting of persons possessing a military equipment. at the same time they voted that pay should not be given for any public office. the persons chiefly responsible for the revolution were aristocrates and theramenes, who disapproved of the action of the four hundred in retaining the direction of affairs entirely in their own hands, and referring nothing to the five thousand. during this period the constitution of the state seems to have been admirable, since it was a time of war and the franchise was in the hands of those who possessed a military equipment. part the people, however, in a very short time deprived the five thousand of their monopoly of the government. then, six years after the overthrow of the four hundred, in the archonship of callias of angele, the battle of arginusae took place, of which the results were, first, that the ten generals who had gained the victory were all condemned by a single decision, owing to the people being led astray by persons who aroused their indignation; though, as a matter of fact, some of the generals had actually taken no part in the battle, and others were themselves picked up by other vessels. secondly, when the lacedaemonians proposed to evacuate decelea and make peace on the basis of the existing position, although some of the athenians supported this proposal, the majority refused to listen to them. in this they were led astray by cleophon, who appeared in the assembly drunk and wearing his breastplate, and prevented peace being made, declaring that he would never accept peace unless the lacedaemonians abandoned their claims on all the cities allied with them. they mismanaged their opportunity then, and in a very short time they learnt their mistake. the next year, in the archonship of alexias, they suffered the disaster of aegospotami, the consequence of which was that lysander became master of the city, and set up the thirty as its governors. he did so in the following manner. one of the terms of peace stipulated that the state should be governed according to 'the ancient constitution'. accordingly the popular party tried to preserve the democracy, while that part of the upper class which belonged to the political clubs, together with the exiles who had returned since the peace, aimed at an oligarchy, and those who were not members of any club, though in other respects they considered themselves as good as any other citizens, were anxious to restore the ancient constitution. the latter class included archinus, anytus, cleitophon, phormisius, and many others, but their most prominent leader was theramenes. lysander, however, threw his influence on the side of the oligarchical party, and the popular assembly was compelled by sheer intimidation to pass a vote establishing the oligarchy. the motion to this effect was proposed by dracontides of aphidna. part in this way were the thirty established in power, in the archonship of pythodorus. as soon, however, as they were masters of the city, they ignored all the resolutions which had been passed relating to the organization of the constitution, but after appointing a council of five hundred and the other magistrates out of a thousand selected candidates, and associating with themselves ten archons in piraeus, eleven superintendents of the prison, and three hundred 'lash-bearers' as attendants, with the help of these they kept the city under their own control. at first, indeed, they behaved with moderation towards the citizens and pretended to administer the state according to the ancient constitution. in pursuance of this policy they took down from the hill of areopagus the laws of ephialtes and archestratus relating to the areopagite council; they also repealed such of the statutes of solon as were obscure, and abolished the supreme power of the law-courts. in this they claimed to be restoring the constitution and freeing it from obscurities; as, for instance, by making the testator free once for all to leave his property as he pleased, and abolishing the existing limitations in cases of insanity, old age, and undue female influence, in order that no opening might be left for professional accusers. in other matters also their conduct was similar. at first, then, they acted on these lines, and they destroyed the professional accusers and those mischievous and evil-minded persons who, to the great detriment of the democracy, had attached themselves to it in order to curry favour with it. with all of this the city was much pleased, and thought that the thirty were doing it with the best of motives. but so soon as they had got a firmer hold on the city, they spared no class of citizens, but put to death any persons who were eminent for wealth or birth or character. herein they aimed at removing all whom they had reason to fear, while they also wished to lay hands on their possessions; and in a short time they put to death not less than fifteen hundred persons. part theramenes, however, seeing the city thus falling into ruin, was displeased with their proceedings, and counselled them to cease such unprincipled conduct and let the better classes have a share in the government. at first they resisted his advice, but when his proposals came to be known abroad, and the masses began to associate themselves with him, they were seized with alarm lest he should make himself the leader of the people and destroy their despotic power. accordingly they drew up a list of three thousand citizens, to whom they announced that they would give a share in the constitution. theramenes, however, criticized this scheme also, first on the ground that, while proposing to give all respectable citizens a share in the constitution, they were actually giving it only to three thousand persons, as though all merit were confined within that number; and secondly because they were doing two inconsistent things, since they made the government rest on the basis of force, and yet made the governors inferior in strength to the governed. however, they took no notice of his criticisms, and for a long time put off the publication of the list of the three thousand and kept to themselves the names of those who had been placed upon it; and every time they did decide to publish it they proceeded to strike out some of those who had been included in it, and insert others who had been omitted. part now when winter had set in, thrasybulus and the exiles occupied phyle, and the force which the thirty led out to attack them met with a reverse. thereupon the thirty decided to disarm the bulk of the population and to get rid of theramenes; which they did in the following way. they introduced two laws into the council, which they commanded it to pass; the first of them gave the thirty absolute power to put to death any citizen who was not included in the list of the three thousand, while the second disqualified all persons from participation in the franchise who should have assisted in the demolition of the fort of eetioneia, or have acted in any way against the four hundred who had organized the previous oligarchy. theramenes had done both, and accordingly, when these laws were ratified, he became excluded from the franchise and the thirty had full power to put him to death. theramenes having been thus removed, they disarmed all the people except the three thousand, and in every respect showed a great advance in cruelty and crime. they also sent ambassadors to lacedaemonian to blacken the character of theramenes and to ask for help; and the lacedaemonians, in answer to their appeal, sent callibius as military governor with about seven hundred troops, who came and occupied the acropolis. part these events were followed by the occupation of munichia by the exiles from phyle, and their victory over the thirty and their partisans. after the fight the party of the city retreated, and next day they held a meeting in the marketplace and deposed the thirty, and elected ten citizens with full powers to bring the war to a termination. when, however, the ten had taken over the government they did nothing towards the object for which they were elected, but sent envoys to lacedaemonian to ask for help and to borrow money. further, finding that the citizens who possessed the franchise were displeased at their proceedings, they were afraid lest they should be deposed, and consequently, in order to strike terror into them (in which design they succeeded), they arrested demaretus, one of the most eminent citizens, and put him to death. this gave them a firm hold on the government, and they also had the support of callibius and his peloponnesians, together with several of the knights; for some of the members of this class were the most zealous among the citizens to prevent the return of the exiles from phyle. when, however, the party in piraeus and munichia began to gain the upper hand in the war, through the defection of the whole populace to them, the party in the city deposed the original ten, and elected another ten, consisting of men of the highest repute. under their administration, and with their active and zealous cooperation, the treaty of reconciliation was made and the populace returned to the city. the most prominent members of this board were rhinon of paeania and phayllus of acherdus, who, even before the arrival of pausanias, opened negotiations with the party in piraeus, and after his arrival seconded his efforts to bring about the return of the exiles. for it was pausanias, the king of the lacedaemonians, who brought the peace and reconciliation to a fulfillment, in conjunction with the ten commissioners of arbitration who arrived later from lacedaemonian, at his own earnest request. rhinon and his colleagues received a vote of thanks for the goodwill shown by them to the people, and though they received their charge under an oligarchy and handed in their accounts under a democracy, no one, either of the party that had stayed in the city or of the exiles that had returned from the piraeus, brought any complaint against them. on the contrary, rhinon was immediately elected general on account of his conduct in this office. part this reconciliation was effected in the archonship of eucleides, on the following terms. all persons who, having remained in the city during the troubles, were now anxious to leave it, were to be free to settle at eleusis, retaining their civil rights and possessing full and independent powers of self-government, and with the free enjoyment of their own personal property. the temple at eleusis should be common ground for both parties, and should be under the superintendence of the ceryces, and the eumolpidae, according to primitive custom. the settlers at eleusis should not be allowed to enter athens, nor the people of athens to enter eleusis, except at the season of the mysteries, when both parties should be free from these restrictions. the secessionists should pay their share to the fund for the common defence out of their revenues, just like all the other athenians. if any of the seceding party wished to take a house in eleusis, the people would help them to obtain the consent of the owner; but if they could not come to terms, they should appoint three valuers on either side, and the owner should receive whatever price they should appoint. of the inhabitants of eleusis, those whom the secessionists wished to remain should be allowed to do so. the list of those who desired to secede should be made up within ten days after the taking of the oaths in the case of persons already in the country, and their actual departure should take place within twenty days; persons at present out of the country should have the same terms allowed to them after their return. no one who settled at eleusis should be capable of holding any office in athens until he should again register himself on the roll as a resident in the city. trials for homicide, including all cases in which one party had either killed or wounded another, should be conducted according to ancestral practice. there should be a general amnesty concerning past events towards all persons except the thirty, the ten, the eleven, and the magistrates in piraeus; and these too should be included if they should submit their accounts in the usual way. such accounts should be given by the magistrates in piraeus before a court of citizens rated in piraeus, and by the magistrates in the city before a court of those rated in the city. on these terms those who wished to do so might secede. each party was to repay separately the money which it had borrowed for the war. part when the reconciliation had taken place on these terms, those who had fought on the side of the thirty felt considerable apprehensions, and a large number intended to secede. but as they put off entering their names till the last moment, as people will do, archinus, observing their numbers, and being anxious to retain them as citizens, cut off the remaining days during which the list should have remained open; and in this way many persons were compelled to remain, though they did so very unwillingly until they recovered confidence. this is one point in which archinus appears to have acted in a most statesmanlike manner, and another was his subsequent prosecution of thrasybulus on the charge of illegality, for a motion by which he proposed to confer the franchise on all who had taken part in the return from piraeus, although some of them were notoriously slaves. and yet a third such action was when one of the returned exiles began to violate the amnesty, whereupon archinus haled him to the council and persuaded them to execute him without trial, telling them that now they would have to show whether they wished to preserve the democracy and abide by the oaths they had taken; for if they let this man escape they would encourage others to imitate him, while if they executed him they would make an example for all to learn by. and this was exactly what happened; for after this man had been put to death no one ever again broke the amnesty. on the contrary, the athenians seem, both in public and in private, to have behaved in the most unprecedentedly admirable and public-spirited way with reference to the preceding troubles. not only did they blot out all memory of former offences, but they even repaid to the lacedaemonians out of the public purse the money which the thirty had borrowed for the war, although the treaty required each party, the party of the city and the party of piraeus, to pay its own debts separately. this they did because they thought it was a necessary first step in the direction of restoring harmony; but in other states, so far from the democratic parties making advances from their own possessions, they are rather in the habit of making a general redistribution of the land. a final reconciliation was made with the secessionists at eleusis two years after the secession, in the archonship of xenaenetus. part this, however, took place at a later date; at the time of which we are speaking the people, having secured the control of the state, established the constitution which exists at the present day. pythodorus was archon at the time, but the democracy seems to have assumed the supreme power with perfect justice, since it had effected its own return by its own exertions. this was the eleventh change which had taken place in the constitution of athens. the first modification of the primaeval condition of things was when ion and his companions brought the people together into a community, for then the people was first divided into the four tribes, and the tribe-kings were created. next, and first after this, having now some semblance of a constitution, was that which took place in the reign of theseus, consisting in a slight deviation from absolute monarchy. after this came the constitution formed under draco, when the first code of laws was drawn up. the third was that which followed the civil war, in the time of solon; from this the democracy took its rise. the fourth was the tyranny of pisistratus; the fifth the constitution of cleisthenes, after the overthrow of the tyrants, of a more democratic character than that of solon. the sixth was that which followed on the persian wars, when the council of areopagus had the direction of the state. the seventh, succeeding this, was the constitution which aristides sketched out, and which ephialtes brought to completion by overthrowing the areopagite council; under this the nation, misled by the demagogues, made the most serious mistakes in the interest of its maritime empire. the eighth was the establishment of the four hundred, followed by the ninth, the restored democracy. the tenth was the tyranny of the thirty and the ten. the eleventh was that which followed the return from phyle and piraeus; and this has continued from that day to this, with continual accretions of power to the masses. the democracy has made itself master of everything and administers everything by its votes in the assembly and by the law-courts, in which it holds the supreme power. even the jurisdiction of the council has passed into the hands of the people at large; and this appears to be a judicious change, since small bodies are more open to corruption, whether by actual money or influence, than large ones. at first they refused to allow payment for attendance at the assembly; but the result was that people did not attend. consequently, after the prytanes had tried many devices in vain in order to induce the populace to come and ratify the votes, agyrrhius, in the first instance, made a provision of one obol a day, which heracleides of clazomenae, nicknamed 'the king', increased to two obols, and agyrrhius again to three. part the present state of the constitution is as follows. the franchise is open to all who are of citizen birth by both parents. they are enrolled among the demesmen at the age of eighteen. on the occasion of their enrollment the demesmen give their votes on oath, first whether the candidates appear to be of the age prescribed by the law (if not, they are dismissed back into the ranks of the boys), and secondly whether the candidate is free born and of such parentage as the laws require. then if they decide that he is not a free man, he appeals to the law-courts, and the demesmen appoint five of their own number to act as accusers; if the court decides that he has no right to be enrolled, he is sold by the state as a slave, but if he wins his case he has a right to be enrolled among the demesmen without further question. after this the council examines those who have been enrolled, and if it comes to the conclusion that any of them is less than eighteen years of age, it fines the demesmen who enrolled him. when the youths (ephebi) have passed this examination, their fathers meet by their tribes, and appoint on oath three of their fellow tribesmen, over forty years of age, who, in their opinion, are the best and most suitable persons to have charge of the youths; and of these the assembly elects one from each tribe as guardian, together with a director, chosen from the general body of athenians, to control the while. under the charge of these persons the youths first of all make the circuit of the temples; then they proceed to piraeus, and some of them garrison munichia and some the south shore. the assembly also elects two trainers, with subordinate instructors, who teach them to fight in heavy armour, to use the bow and javelin, and to discharge a catapult. the guardians receive from the state a drachma apiece for their keep, and the youths four obols apiece. each guardian receives the allowance for all the members of his tribe and buys the necessary provisions for the common stock (they mess together by tribes), and generally superintends everything. in this way they spend the first year. the next year, after giving a public display of their military evolutions, on the occasion when the assembly meets in the theatre, they receive a shield and spear from the state; after which they patrol the country and spend their time in the forts. for these two years they are on garrison duty, and wear the military cloak, and during this time they are exempt from all taxes. they also can neither bring an action at law, nor have one brought against them, in order that they may have no excuse for requiring leave of absence; though exception is made in cases of actions concerning inheritances and wards of state, or of any sacrificial ceremony connected with the family. when the two years have elapsed they thereupon take their position among the other citizens. such is the manner of the enrollment of the citizens and the training of the youths. part all the magistrates that are concerned with the ordinary routine of administration are elected by lot, except the military treasurer, the commissioners of the theoric fund, and the superintendent of springs. these are elected by vote, and hold office from one panathenaic festival to the next. all military officers are also elected by vote. the council of five hundred is elected by lot, fifty from each tribe. each tribe holds the office of prytanes in turn, the order being determined by lot; the first four serve for thirty-six days each, the last six for thirty-five, since the reckoning is by lunar years. the prytanes for the time being, in the first place, mess together in the tholus, and receive a sum of money from the state for their maintenance; and, secondly, they convene the meetings of the council and the assembly. the council they convene every day, unless it is a holiday, the assembly four times in each prytany. it is also their duty to draw up the programme of the business of the council and to decide what subjects are to be dealt with on each particular day, and where the sitting is to be held. they also draw up the programme for the meetings of the assembly. one of these in each prytany is called the 'sovereign' assembly; in this the people have to ratify the continuance of the magistrates in office, if they are performing their duties properly, and to consider the supply of corn and the defence of the country. on this day, too, impeachments are introduced by those who wish to do so, the lists of property confiscated by the state are read, and also applications for inheritances and wards of state, so that nothing may pass unclaimed without the cognizance of any person concerned. in the sixth prytany, in addition to the business already stated, the question is put to the vote whether it is desirable to hold a vote of ostracism or not; and complaints against professional accusers, whether athenian or aliens domiciled in athens, are received, to the number of not more than three of either class, together with cases in which an individual has made some promise to the people and has not performed it. another assembly in each prytany is assigned to the hearing of petitions, and at this meeting any one is free, on depositing the petitioner's olive-branch, to speak to the people concerning any matter, public or private. the two remaining meetings are devoted to all other subjects, and the laws require them to deal with three questions connected with religion, three connected with heralds and embassies, and three on secular subjects. sometimes questions are brought forward without a preliminary vote of the assembly to take them into consideration. heralds and envoys appear first before the prytanes, and the bearers of dispatches also deliver them to the same officials. part there is a single president of the prytanes, elected by lot, who presides for a night and a day; he may not hold the office for more than that time, nor may the same individual hold it twice. he keeps the keys of the sanctuaries in which the treasures and public records of the state are preserved, and also the public seal; and he is bound to remain in the tholus, together with one-third of the prytanes, named by himself. whenever the prytanes convene a meeting of the council or assembly, he appoints by lot nine proedri, one from each tribe except that which holds the office of prytanes for the time being; and out of these nine he similarly appoints one as president, and hands over the programme for the meeting to them. they take it and see to the preservation of order, put forward the various subjects which are to be considered, decide the results of the votings, and direct the proceedings generally. they also have power to dismiss the meeting. no one may act as president more than once in the year, but he may be a proedrus once in each prytany. elections to the offices of general and hipparch and all other military commands are held in the assembly, in such manner as the people decide; they are held after the sixth prytany by the first board of prytanes in whose term of office the omens are favourable. there has, however, to be a preliminary consideration by the council in this case also. part in former times the council had full powers to inflict fines and imprisonment and death; but when it had consigned lysimachus to the executioner, and he was sitting in the immediate expectation of death, eumelides of alopece rescued him from its hands, maintaining that no citizen ought to be put to death except on the decision of a court of law. accordingly a trial was held in a law-court, and lysimachus was acquitted, receiving henceforth the nickname of 'the man from the drum-head'; and the people deprived the council thenceforward of the power to inflict death or imprisonment or fine, passing a law that if the council condemn any person for an offence or inflict a fine, the thesmothetae shall bring the sentence or fine before the law-court, and the decision of the jurors shall be the final judgement in the matter. the council passes judgement on nearly all magistrates, especially those who have the control of money; its judgement, however, is not final, but is subject to an appeal to the lawcourts. private individuals, also, may lay an information against any magistrate they please for not obeying the laws, but here too there is an appeal to the law-courts if the council declare the charge proved. the council also examines those who are to be its members for the ensuing year, and likewise the nine archons. formerly the council had full power to reject candidates for office as unsuitable, but now they have an appeal to the law-courts. in all these matters, therefore, the council has no final jurisdiction. it takes, however, preliminary cognizance of all matters brought before the assembly, and the assembly cannot vote on any question unless it has first been considered by the council and placed on the programme by the prytanes; since a person who carries a motion in the assembly is liable to an action for illegal proposal on these grounds. part the council also superintends the triremes that are already in existence, with their tackle and sheds, and builds new triremes or quadriremes, whichever the assembly votes, with tackle and sheds to match. the assembly appoints master-builders for the ships by vote; and if they do not hand them over completed to the next council, the old council cannot receive the customary donation--that being normally given to it during its successor's term of office. for the building of the triremes it appoints ten commissioners, chosen from its own members. the council also inspects all public buildings, and if it is of opinion that the state is being defrauded, it reports the culprit to the assembly, and on condemnation hands him over to the law-courts. part the council also co-operates with other magistrates in most of their duties. first there are the treasurers of athena, ten in number, elected by lot, one from each tribe. according to the law of solon--which is still in force--they must be pentacosiomedimni, but in point of fact the person on whom the lot falls holds the office even though he be quite a poor man. these officers take over charge of the statue of athena, the figures of victory, and all the other ornaments of the temple, together with the money, in the presence of the council. then there are the commissioners for public contracts (poletae), ten in number, one chosen by lot from each tribe, who farm out the public contracts. they lease the mines and taxes, in conjunction with the military treasurer and the commissioners of the theoric fund, in the presence of the council, and grant, to the persons indicated by the vote of the council, the mines which are let out by the state, including both the workable ones, which are let for three years, and those which are let under special agreements years. they also sell, in the presence of the council, the property of those who have gone into exile from the court of the areopagus, and of others whose goods have been confiscated, and the nine archons ratify the contracts. they also hand over to the council lists of the taxes which are farmed out for the year, entering on whitened tablets the name of the lessee and the amount paid. they make separate lists, first of those who have to pay their instalments in each prytany, on ten several tablets, next of those who pay thrice in the year, with a separate tablet for each instalment, and finally of those who pay in the ninth prytany. they also draw up a list of farms and dwellings which have been confiscated and sold by order of the courts; for these too come within their province. in the case of dwellings the value must be paid up in five years, and in that of farms, in ten. the instalments are paid in the ninth prytany. further, the king-archon brings before the council the leases of the sacred enclosures, written on whitened tablets. these too are leased for ten years, and the instalments are paid in the prytany; consequently it is in this prytany that the greatest amount of money is collected. the tablets containing the lists of the instalments are carried into the council, and the public clerk takes charge of them. whenever a payment of instalments is to be made he takes from the pigeon-holes the precise list of the sums which are to be paid and struck off on that day, and delivers it to the receivers-general. the rest are kept apart, in order that no sum may be struck off before it is paid. part there are ten receivers-general (apodectae), elected by lot, one from each tribe. these officers receive the tablets, and strike off the instalments as they are paid, in the presence of the council in the council-chamber, and give the tablets back to the public clerk. if any one fails to pay his instalment, a note is made of it on the tablet; and he is bound to pay double the amount of the deficiency, or, in default, to be imprisoned. the council has full power by the laws to exact these payments and to inflict this imprisonment. they receive all the instalments, therefore, on one day, and portion the money out among the magistrates; and on the next day they bring up the report of the apportionment, written on a wooden notice-board, and read it out in the council-chamber, after which they ask publicly in the council whether any one knows of any malpractice in reference to the apportionment, on the part of either a magistrate or a private individual, and if any one is charged with malpractice they take a vote on it. the council also elects ten auditors (logistae) by lot from its own members, to audit the accounts of the magistrates for each prytany. they also elect one examiner of accounts (euthunus) by lot from each tribe, with two assessors (paredri) for each examiner, whose duty it is to sit at the ordinary market hours, each opposite the statue of the eponymous hero of his tribe; and if any one wishes to prefer a charge, on either public or private grounds, against any magistrate who has passed his audit before the law-courts, within three days of his having so passed, he enters on a whitened tablet his own name and that of the magistrate prosecuted, together with the malpractice that is alleged against him. he also appends his claim for a penalty of such amount as seems to him fitting, and gives in the record to the examiner. the latter takes it, and if after reading it he considers it proved he hands it over, if a private case, to the local justices who introduce cases for the tribe concerned, while if it is a public case he enters it on the register of the thesmothetae. then, if the thesmothetae accept it, they bring the accounts of this magistrate once more before the law-court, and the decision of the jury stands as the final judgement. part the council also inspects the horses belonging to the state. if a man who has a good horse is found to keep it in bad condition, he is mulcted in his allowance of corn; while those which cannot keep up or which shy and will not stand steady, it brands with a wheel on the jaw, and the horse so marked is disqualified for service. it also inspects those who appear to be fit for service as scouts, and any one whom it rejects is deprived of his horse. it also examines the infantry who serve among the cavalry, and any one whom it rejects ceases to receive his pay. the roll of the cavalry is drawn up by the commissioners of enrolment (catalogeis), ten in number, elected by the assembly by open vote. they hand over to the hipparchs and phylarchs the list of those whom they have enrolled, and these officers take it and bring it up before the council, and there open the sealed tablet containing the names of the cavalry. if any of those who have been on the roll previously make affidavit that they are physically incapable of cavalry service, they strike them out; then they call up the persons newly enrolled, and if any one makes affidavit that he is either physically or pecuniarily incapable of cavalry service they dismiss him, but if no such affidavit is made the council vote whether the individual in question is suitable for the purpose or not. if they vote in the affirmative his name is entered on the tablet; if not, he is dismissed with the others. formerly the council used to decide on the plans for public buildings and the contract for making the robe of athena; but now this work is done by a jury in the law-courts appointed by lot, since the council was considered to have shown favouritism in its decisions. the council also shares with the military treasurer the superintendence of the manufacture of the images of victory and the prizes at the panathenaic festival. the council also examines infirm paupers; for there is a law which provides that persons possessing less than three minas, who are so crippled as to be unable to do any work, are, after examination by the council, to receive two obols a day from the state for their support. a treasurer is appointed by lot to attend to them. the council also, speaking broadly, cooperates in most of the duties of all the other magistrates; and this ends the list of the functions of that body. part there are ten commissioners for repairs of temples, elected by lot, who receive a sum of thirty minas from the receivers-general, and therewith carry out the most necessary repairs in the temples. there are also ten city commissioners (astynomi), of whom five hold office in piraeus and five in the city. their duty is to see that female flute- and harp- and lute-players are not hired at more than two drachmas, and if more than one person is anxious to hire the same girl, they cast lots and hire her out to the person to whom the lot falls. they also provide that no collector of sewage shall shoot any of his sewage within ten stradia of the walls; they prevent people from blocking up the streets by building, or stretching barriers across them, or making drain-pipes in mid-air with a discharge into the street, or having doors which open outwards; they also remove the corpses of those who die in the streets, for which purpose they have a body of state slaves assigned to them. part market commissioners (agoranomi) are elected by lot, five for piraeus, five for the city. their statutory duty is to see that all articles offered for sale in the market are pure and unadulterated. commissioners of weights and measures (metronomi) are elected by lot, five for the city, and five for piraeus. they see that sellers use fair weights and measures. formerly there were ten corn commissioners (sitophylaces), elected by lot, five for piraeus, and five for the city; but now there are twenty for the city and fifteen for piraeus. their duties are, first, to see that the unprepared corn in the market is offered for sale at reasonable prices, and secondly, to see that the millers sell barley meal at a price proportionate to that of barley, and that the bakers sell their loaves at a price proportionate to that of wheat, and of such weight as the commissioners may appoint; for the law requires them to fix the standard weight. there are ten superintendents of the mart, elected by lot, whose duty is to superintend the mart, and to compel merchants to bring up into the city two-thirds of the corn which is brought by sea to the corn mart. part the eleven also are appointed by lot to take care of the prisoners in the state gaol. thieves, kidnappers, and pickpockets are brought to them, and if they plead guilty they are executed, but if they deny the charge the eleven bring the case before the law-courts; if the prisoners are acquitted, they release them, but if not, they then execute them. they also bring up before the law-courts the list of farms and houses claimed as state-property; and if it is decided that they are so, they deliver them to the commissioners for public contracts. the eleven also bring up informations laid against magistrates alleged to be disqualified; this function comes within their province, but some such cases are brought up by the thesmothetae. there are also five introducers of cases (eisagogeis), elected by lot, one for each pair of tribes, who bring up the 'monthly' cases to the law-courts. 'monthly' cases are these: refusal to pay up a dowry where a party is bound to do so, refusal to pay interest on money borrowed at per cent., or where a man desirous of setting up business in the market has borrowed from another man capital to start with; also cases of slander, cases arising out of friendly loans or partnerships, and cases concerned with slaves, cattle, and the office of trierarch, or with banks. these are brought up as 'monthly' cases and are introduced by these officers; but the receivers-general perform the same function in cases for or against the farmers of taxes. those in which the sum concerned is not more than ten drachmas they can decide summarily, but all above that amount they bring into the law-courts as 'monthly' cases. part the forty are also elected by lot, four from each tribe, before whom suitors bring all other cases. formerly they were thirty in number, and they went on circuit through the demes to hear causes; but after the oligarchy of the thirty they were increased to forty. they have full powers to decide cases in which the amount at issue does not exceed ten drachmas, but anything beyond that value they hand over to the arbitrators. the arbitrators take up the case, and, if they cannot bring the parties to an agreement, they give a decision. if their decision satisfies both parties, and they abide by it, the case is at an end; but if either of the parties appeals to the law-courts, the arbitrators enclose the evidence, the pleadings, and the laws quoted in the case in two urns, those of the plaintiff in the one, and those of the defendant in the other. these they seal up and, having attached to them the decision of the arbitrator, written out on a tablet, place them in the custody of the four justices whose function it is to introduce cases on behalf of the tribe of the defendant. these officers take them and bring up the case before the law-court, to a jury of two hundred and one members in cases up to the value of a thousand drachmas, or to one of four hundred and one in cases above that value. no laws or pleadings or evidence may be used except those which were adduced before the arbitrator, and have been enclosed in the urns. the arbitrators are persons in the sixtieth year of their age; this appears from the schedule of the archons and the eponymi. there are two classes of eponymi, the ten who give their names to the tribes, and the forty-two of the years of service. the youths, on being enrolled among the citizens, were formerly registered upon whitened tablets, and the names were appended of the archon in whose year they were enrolled, and of the eponymus who had been in course in the preceding year; at the present day they are written on a bronze pillar, which stands in front of the council-chamber, near the eponymi of the tribes. then the forty take the last of the eponymi of the years of service, and assign the arbitrations to the persons belonging to that year, casting lots to determine which arbitrations each shall undertake; and every one is compelled to carry through the arbitrations which the lot assigns to him. the law enacts that any one who does not serve as arbitrator when he has arrived at the necessary age shall lose his civil rights, unless he happens to be holding some other office during that year, or to be out of the country. these are the only persons who escape the duty. any one who suffers injustice at the hands of the arbitrator may appeal to the whole board of arbitrators, and if they find the magistrate guilty, the law enacts that he shall lose his civil rights. the persons thus condemned have, however, in their turn an appeal. the eponymi are also used in reference to military expeditions; when the men of military age are despatched on service, a notice is put up stating that the men from such-and-such an archon and eponymus to such-and-such another archon and eponymus are to go on the expedition. part the following magistrates also are elected by lot: five commissioners of roads (hodopoei), who, with an assigned body of public slaves, are required to keep the roads in order: and ten auditors, with ten assistants, to whom all persons who have held any office must give in their accounts. these are the only officers who audit the accounts of those who are subject to examination, and who bring them up for examination before the law-courts. if they detect any magistrate in embezzlement, the jury condemn him for theft, and he is obliged to repay tenfold the sum he is declared to have misappropriated. if they charge a magistrate with accepting bribes and the jury convict him, they fine him for corruption, and this sum too is repaid tenfold. or if they convict him of unfair dealing, he is fined on that charge, and the sum assessed is paid without increase, if payment is made before the ninth prytany, but otherwise it is doubled. a tenfold fine is not doubled. the clerk of the prytany, as he is called, is also elected by lot. he has the charge of all public documents, and keeps the resolutions which are passed by the assembly, and checks the transcripts of all other official papers and attends at the sessions of the council. formerly he was elected by open vote, and the most distinguished and trustworthy persons were elected to the post, as is known from the fact that the name of this officer is appended on the pillars recording treaties of alliance and grants of consulship and citizenship. now, however, he is elected by lot. there is, in addition, a clerk of the laws, elected by lot, who attends at the sessions of the council; and he too checks the transcript of all the laws. the assembly also elects by open vote a clerk to read documents to it and to the council; but he has no other duty except that of reading aloud. the assembly also elects by lot the commissioners of public worship (hieropoei) known as the commissioners for sacrifices, who offer the sacrifices appointed by oracle, and, in conjunction with the seers, take the auspices whenever there is occasion. it also elects by lot ten others, known as annual commissioners, who offer certain sacrifices and administer all the quadrennial festivals except the panathenaea. there are the following quadrennial festivals: first that of delos (where there is also a sexennial festival), secondly the brauronia, thirdly the heracleia, fourthly the eleusinia, and fifthly the panathenaea; and no two of these are celebrated in the same place. to these the hephaestia has now been added, in the archonship of cephisophon. an archon is also elected by lot for salamis, and a demarch for piraeus. these officers celebrate the dionysia in these two places, and appoint choregi. in salamis, moreover, the name of the archon is publicly recorded. part all the foregoing magistrates are elected by lot, and their powers are those which have been stated. to pass on to the nine archons, as they are called, the manner of their appointment from the earliest times has been described already. at the present day six thesmothetae are elected by lot, together with their clerk, and in addition to these an archon, a king, and a polemarch. one is elected from each tribe. they are examined first of all by the council of five hundred, with the exception of the clerk. the latter is examined only in the lawcourt, like other magistrates (for all magistrates, whether elected by lot or by open vote, are examined before entering on their offices); but the nine archons are examined both in the council and again in the law-court. formerly no one could hold the office if the council rejected him, but now there is an appeal to the law-court, which is the final authority in the matter of the examination. when they are examined, they are asked, first, 'who is your father, and of what deme? who is your father's father? who is your mother? who is your mother's father, and of what deme?' then the candidate is asked whether he possesses an ancestral apollo and a household zeus, and where their sanctuaries are; next if he possesses a family tomb, and where; then if he treats his parents well, and pays his taxes, and has served on the required military expeditions. when the examiner has put these questions, he proceeds, 'call the witnesses to these facts'; and when the candidate has produced his witnesses, he next asks, 'does any one wish to make any accusation against this man?' if an accuser appears, he gives the parties an opportunity of making their accusation and defence, and then puts it to the council to pass the candidate or not, and to the law-court to give the final vote. if no one wishes to make an accusation, he proceeds at once to the vote. formerly a single individual gave the vote, but now all the members are obliged to vote on the candidates, so that if any unprincipled candidate has managed to get rid of his accusers, it may still be possible for him to be disqualified before the law-court. when the examination has been thus completed, they proceed to the stone on which are the pieces of the victims, and on which the arbitrators take oath before declaring their decisions, and witnesses swear to their testimony. on this stone the archons stand, and swear to execute their office uprightly and according to the laws, and not to receive presents in respect of the performance of their duties, or, if they do, to dedicate a golden statue. when they have taken this oath they proceed to the acropolis, and there they repeat it; after this they enter upon their office. part the archon, the king, and the polemarch have each two assessors, nominated by themselves. these officers are examined in the lawcourt before they begin to act, and give in accounts on each occasion of their acting. as soon as the archon enters office, he begins by issuing a proclamation that whatever any one possessed before he entered into office, that he shall possess and hold until the end of his term. next he assigns choregi to the tragic poets, choosing three of the richest persons out of the whole body of athenians. formerly he used also to assign five choregi to the comic poets, but now the tribes provide the choregi for them. then he receives the choregi who have been appointed by the tribes for the men's and boys' choruses and the comic poets at the dionysia, and for the men's and boys' choruses at the thargelia (at the dionysia there is a chorus for each tribe, but at the thargelia one between two tribes, each tribe bearing its share in providing it); he transacts the exchanges of properties for them, and reports any excuses that are tendered, if any one says that he has already borne this burden, or that he is exempt because he has borne a similar burden and the period of his exemption has not yet expired, or that he is not of the required age; since the choregus of a boys' chorus must be over forty years of age. he also appoints choregi for the festival at delos, and a chief of the mission for the thirty-oar boat which conveys the youths thither. he also superintends sacred processions, both that in honour of asclepius, when the initiated keep house, and that of the great dionysia--the latter in conjunction with the superintendents of that festival. these officers, ten in number, were formerly elected by open vote in the assembly, and used to provide for the expenses of the procession out of their private means; but now one is elected by lot from each tribe, and the state contributes a hundred minas for the expenses. the archon also superintends the procession at the thargelia, and that in honour of zeus the saviour. he also manages the contests at the dionysia and the thargelia. these, then, are the festivals which he superintends. the suits and indictments which come before him, and which he, after a preliminary inquiry, brings up before the lawcourts, are as follows. injury to parents (for bringing these actions the prosecutor cannot suffer any penalty); injury to orphans (these actions lie against their guardians); injury to a ward of state (these lie against their guardians or their husbands), injury to an orphan's estate (these too lie against the guardians); mental derangement, where a party charges another with destroying his own property through unsoundness of mind; for appointment of liquidators, where a party refuses to divide property in which others have a share; for constituting a wardship; for determining between rival claims to a wardship; for granting inspection of property to which another party lays claim; for appointing oneself as guardian; and for determining disputes as to inheritances and wards of state. the archon also has the care of orphans and wards of state, and of women who, on the death of their husbands, declare themselves to be with child; and he has power to inflict a fine on those who offend against the persons under his charge, or to bring the case before the law-courts. he also leases the houses of orphans and wards of state until they reach the age of fourteen, and takes mortgages on them; and if the guardians fail to provide the necessary food for the children under their charge, he exacts it from them. such are the duties of the archon. part the king in the first place superintends the mysteries, in conjunction with the superintendents of mysteries. the latter are elected in the assembly by open vote, two from the general body of athenians, one from the eumolpidae, and one from the ceryces. next, he superintends the lenaean dionysia, which consists of a procession and a contest. the procession is ordered by the king and the superintendents in conjunction; but the contest is managed by the king alone. he also manages all the contests of the torch-race; and to speak broadly, he administers all the ancestral sacrifices. indictments for impiety come before him, or any disputes between parties concerning priestly rites; and he also determines all controversies concerning sacred rites for the ancient families and the priests. all actions for homicide come before him, and it is he that makes the proclamation requiring polluted persons to keep away from sacred ceremonies. actions for homicide and wounding are heard, if the homicide or wounding be willful, in the areopagus; so also in cases of killing by poison, and of arson. these are the only cases heard by that council. cases of unintentional homicide, or of intent to kill, or of killing a slave or a resident alien or a foreigner, are heard by the court of palladium. when the homicide is acknowledged, but legal justification is pleaded, as when a man takes an adulterer in the act, or kills another by mistake in battle, or in an athletic contest, the prisoner is tried in the court of delphinium. if a man who is in banishment for a homicide which admits of reconciliation incurs a further charge of killing or wounding, he is tried in phreatto, and he makes his defence from a boat moored near the shore. all these cases, except those which are heard in the areopagus, are tried by the ephetae on whom the lot falls. the king introduces them, and the hearing is held within sacred precincts and in the open air. whenever the king hears a case he takes off his crown. the person who is charged with homicide is at all other times excluded from the temples, nor is it even lawful for him to enter the market-place; but on the occasion of his trial he enters the temple and makes his defence. if the actual offender is unknown, the writ runs against 'the doer of the deed'. the king and the tribe-kings also hear the cases in which the guilt rests on inanimate objects and the lower animal. part the polemarch performs the sacrifices to artemis the huntress and to enyalius, and arranges the contest at the funeral of those who have fallen in war, and makes offerings to the memory of harmodius and aristogeiton. only private actions come before him, namely those in which resident aliens, both ordinary and privileged, and agents of foreign states are concerned. it is his duty to receive these cases and divide them into ten groups, and assign to each tribe the group which comes to it by lot; after which the magistrates who introduce cases for the tribe hand them over to the arbitrators. the polemarch, however, brings up in person cases in which an alien is charged with deserting his patron or neglecting to provide himself with one, and also of inheritances and wards of state where aliens are concerned; and in fact, generally, whatever the archon does for citizens, the polemarch does for aliens. part the thesmothetae in the first place have the power of prescribing on what days the lawcourts are to sit, and next of assigning them to the several magistrates; for the latter must follow the arrangement which the thesmothetae assign. moreover they introduce impeachments before the assembly, and bring up all votes for removal from office, challenges of a magistrate's conduct before the assembly, indictments for illegal proposals, or for proposing a law which is contrary to the interests of the state, complaints against proedri or their president for their conduct in office, and the accounts presented by the generals. all indictments also come before them in which a deposit has to be made by the prosecutor, namely, indictments for concealment of foreign origin, for corrupt evasion of foreign origin (when a man escapes the disqualification by bribery), for blackmailing accusations, bribery, false entry of another as a state debtor, false testimony to the service of a summons, conspiracy to enter a man as a state debtor, corrupt removal from the list of debtors, and adultery. they also bring up the examinations of all magistrates, and the rejections by the demes and the condemnations by the council. moreover they bring up certain private suits in cases of merchandise and mines, or where a slave has slandered a free man. it is they also who cast lots to assign the courts to the various magistrates, whether for private or public cases. they ratify commercial treaties, and bring up the cases which arise out of such treaties; and they also bring up cases of perjury from the areopagus. the casting of lots for the jurors is conducted by all the nine archons, with the clerk to the thesmothetae as the tenth, each performing the duty for his own tribe. such are the duties of the nine archons. part there are also ten commissioners of games (athlothetae), elected by lot, one from each tribe. these officers, after passing an examination, serve for four years; and they manage the panathenaic procession, the contest in music and that in gymnastic, and the horse-race; they also provide the robe of athena and, in conjunction with the council, the vases, and they present the oil to the athletes. this oil is collected from the sacred olives. the archon requisitions it from the owners of the farms on which the sacred olives grow, at the rate of three-quarters of a pint from each plant. formerly the state used to sell the fruit itself, and if any one dug up or broke down one of the sacred olives, he was tried by the council of areopagus, and if he was condemned, the penalty was death. since, however, the oil has been paid by the owner of the farm, the procedure has lapsed, though the law remains; and the oil is a state charge upon the property instead of being taken from the individual plants. when, then, the archon has collected the oil for his year of office, he hands it over to the treasurers to preserve in the acropolis, and he may not take his seat in the areopagus until he has paid over to the treasurers the full amount. the treasurers keep it in the acropolis until the panathenaea, when they measure it out to the commissioners of games, and they again to the victorious competitors. the prizes for the victors in the musical contest consist of silver and gold, for the victors in manly vigour, of shields, and for the victors in the gymnastic contest and the horse-race, of oil. part all officers connected with military service are elected by open vote. in the first place, ten generals (strategi), who were formerly elected one from each tribe, but now are chosen from the whole mass of citizens. their duties are assigned to them by open vote; one is appointed to command the heavy infantry, and leads them if they go out to war; one to the defence of the country, who remains on the defensive, and fights if there is war within the borders of the country; two to piraeus, one of whom is assigned to munichia, and one to the south shore, and these have charge of the defence of the piraeus; and one to superintend the symmories, who nominates the trierarchs arranges exchanges of properties for them, and brings up actions to decide on rival claims in connexion with them. the rest are dispatched to whatever business may be on hand at the moment. the appointment of these officers is submitted for confirmation in each prytany, when the question is put whether they are considered to be doing their duty. if any officer is rejected on this vote, he is tried in the lawcourt, and if he is found guilty the people decide what punishment or fine shall be inflicted on him; but if he is acquitted he resumes his office. the generals have full power, when on active service, to arrest any one for insubordination, or to cashier him publicly, or to inflict a fine; the latter is, however, unusual. there are also ten taxiarchs, one from each tribe, elected by open vote; and each commands his own tribesmen and appoints captains of companies (lochagi). there are also two hipparchs, elected by open vote from the whole mass of the citizens, who command the cavalry, each taking five tribes. they have the same powers as the generals have in respect of the infantry, and their appointments are also subject to confirmation. there are also ten phylarchs, elected by open vote, one from each tribe, to command the cavalry, as the taxiarchs do the infantry. there is also a hipparch for lemnos, elected by open vote, who has charge of the cavalry in lemnos. there is also a treasurer of the paralus, and another of the ammonias, similarly elected. part of the magistrates elected by lot, in former times some including the nine archons, were elected out of the tribe as a whole, while others, namely those who are now elected in the theseum, were apportioned among the demes; but since the demes used to sell the elections, these magistrates too are now elected from the whole tribe, except the members of the council and the guards of the dockyards, who are still left to the demes. pay is received for the following services. first the members of the assembly receive a drachma for the ordinary meetings, and nine obols for the 'sovereign' meeting. then the jurors at the law-courts receive three obols; and the members of the council five obols. the prytanes receive an allowance of an obol for their maintenance. the nine archons receive four obols apiece for maintenance, and also keep a herald and a flute-player; and the archon for salamis receives a drachma a day. the commissioners for games dine in the prytaneum during the month of hecatombaeon in which the panathenaic festival takes place, from the fourteenth day onwards. the amphictyonic deputies to delos receive a drachma a day from the exchequer of delos. also all magistrates sent to samos, scyros, lemnos, or imbros receive an allowance for their maintenance. the military offices may be held any number of times, but none of the others more than once, except the membership of the council, which may be held twice. part the juries for the law-courts are chosen by lot by the nine archons, each for their own tribe, and by the clerk to the thesmothetae for the tenth. there are ten entrances into the courts, one for each tribe; twenty rooms in which the lots are drawn, two for each tribe; a hundred chests, ten for each tribe; other chests, in which are placed the tickets of the jurors on whom the lot falls; and two vases. further, staves, equal in number to the jurors required, are placed by the side of each entrance; and counters are put into one vase, equal in number to the staves. these are inscribed with letters of the alphabet beginning with the eleventh (lambda), equal in number to the courts which require to be filled. all persons above thirty years of age are qualified to serve as jurors, provided they are not debtors to the state and have not lost their civil rights. if any unqualified person serves as juror, an information is laid against him, and he is brought before the court; and, if he is convicted, the jurors assess the punishment or fine which they consider him to deserve. if he is condemned to a money fine, he must be imprisoned until he has paid up both the original debt, on account of which the information was laid against him, and also the fine which the court as imposed upon him. each juror has his ticket of boxwood, on which is inscribed his name, with the name of his father and his deme, and one of the letters of the alphabet up to kappa; for the jurors in their several tribes are divided into ten sections, with approximately an equal number in each letter. when the thesmothetes has decided by lot which letters are required to attend at the courts, the servant puts up above each court the letter which has been assigned to it by the lot. part the ten chests above mentioned are placed in front of the entrance used by each tribe, and are inscribed with the letters of the alphabet from alpha to kappa. the jurors cast in their tickets, each into the chest on which is inscribed the letter which is on his ticket; then the servant shakes them all up, and the archon draws one ticket from each chest. the individual so selected is called the ticket-hanger (empectes), and his function is to hang up the tickets out of his chest on the bar which bears the same letter as that on the chest. he is chosen by lot, lest, if the ticket-hanger were always the same person, he might tamper with the results. there are five of these bars in each of the rooms assigned for the lot-drawing. then the archon casts in the dice and thereby chooses the jurors from each tribe, room by room. the dice are made of brass, coloured black or white; and according to the number of jurors required, so many white dice are put in, one for each five tickets, while the remainder are black, in the same proportion. as the archon draws out the dice, the crier calls out the names of the individuals chosen. the ticket-hanger is included among those selected. each juror, as he is chosen and answers to his name, draws a counter from the vase, and holding it out with the letter uppermost shows it first to the presiding archon; and he, when he has seen it, throws the ticket of the juror into the chest on which is inscribed the letter which is on the counter, so that the juror must go into the court assigned to him by lot, and not into one chosen by himself, and that it may be impossible for any one to collect the jurors of his choice into any particular court. for this purpose chests are placed near the archon, as many in number as there are courts to be filled that day, bearing the letters of the courts on which the lot has fallen. part the juror thereupon, after showing his counter again to the attendant, passes through the barrier into the court. the attendant gives him a staff of the same colour as the court bearing the letter which is on his counter, so as to ensure his going into the court assigned to him by lot; since, if he were to go into any other, he would be betrayed by the colour of his staff. each court has a certain colour painted on the lintel of the entrance. accordingly the juror, bearing his staff, enters the court which has the same colour as his staff, and the same letter as his counter. as he enters, he receives a voucher from the official to whom this duty has been assigned by lot. so with their counters and their staves the selected jurors take their seats in the court, having thus completed the process of admission. the unsuccessful candidates receive back their tickets from the ticket-hangers. the public servants carry the chests from each tribe, one to each court, containing the names of the members of the tribe who are in that court, and hand them over to the officials assigned to the duty of giving back their tickets to the jurors in each court, so that these officials may call them up by name and pay them their fee. part when all the courts are full, two ballot boxes are placed in the first court, and a number of brazen dice, bearing the colours of the several courts, and other dice inscribed with the names of the presiding magistrates. then two of the thesmothetae, selected by lot, severally throw the dice with the colours into one box, and those with the magistrates' names into the other. the magistrate whose name is first drawn is thereupon proclaimed by the crier as assigned for duty in the court which is first drawn, and the second in the second, and similarly with the rest. the object of this procedure is that no one may know which court he will have, but that each may take the court assigned to him by lot. when the jurors have come in, and have been assigned to their respective courts, the presiding magistrate in each court draws one ticket out of each chest (making ten in all, one out of each tribe), and throws them into another empty chest. he then draws out five of them, and assigns one to the superintendence of the water-clock, and the other four to the telling of the votes. this is to prevent any tampering beforehand with either the superintendent of the clock or the tellers of the votes, and to secure that there is no malpractice in these respects. the five who have not been selected for these duties receive from them a statement of the order in which the jurors shall receive their fees, and of the places where the several tribes shall respectively gather in the court for this purpose when their duties are completed; the object being that the jurors may be broken up into small groups for the reception of their pay, and not all crowd together and impede one another. part these preliminaries being concluded, the cases are called on. if it is a day for private cases, the private litigants are called. four cases are taken in each of the categories defined in the law, and the litigants swear to confine their speeches to the point at issue. if it is a day for public causes, the public litigants are called, and only one case is tried. water-clocks are provided, having small supply-tubes, into which the water is poured by which the length of the pleadings is regulated. ten gallons are allowed for a case in which an amount of more than five thousand drachmas is involved, and three for the second speech on each side. when the amount is between one and five thousand drachmas, seven gallons are allowed for the first speech and two for the second; when it is less than one thousand, five and two. six gallons are allowed for arbitrations between rival claimants, in which there is no second speech. the official chosen by lot to superintend the water-clock places his hand on the supply tube whenever the clerk is about to read a resolution or law or affidavit or treaty. when, however, a case is conducted according to a set measurement of the day, he does not stop the supply, but each party receives an equal allowance of water. the standard of measurement is the length of the days in the month poseideon. the measured day is employed in cases when imprisonment, death, exile, loss of civil rights, or confiscation of goods is assigned as the penalty. part most of the courts consist of members; and when it is necessary to bring public cases before a jury of , members, two courts combine for the purpose, the most important cases of all are brought , jurors, or three courts. the ballot balls are made of brass with stems running through the centre, half of them having the stem pierced and the other half solid. when the speeches are concluded, the officials assigned to the taking of the votes give each juror two ballot balls, one pierced and one solid. this is done in full view of the rival litigants, to secure that no one shall receive two pierced or two solid balls. then the official designated for the purpose takes away the jurors' staves, in return for which each one as he records his vote receives a brass voucher marked with the numeral (because he gets three obols when he gives it up). this is to ensure that all shall vote; since no one can get a voucher unless he votes. two urns, one of brass and the other of wood, stand in the court, in distinct spots so that no one may surreptitiously insert ballot balls; in these the jurors record their votes. the brazen urn is for effective votes, the wooden for unused votes; and the brazen urn has a lid pierced so as to take only one ballot ball, in order that no one may put in two at a time. when the jurors are about to vote, the crier demands first whether the litigants enter a protest against any of the evidence; for no protest can be received after the voting has begun. then he proclaims again, 'the pierced ballot for the plaintiff, the solid for the defendant'; and the juror, taking his two ballot balls from the stand, with his hand closed over the stem so as not to show either the pierced or the solid ballot to the litigants, casts the one which is to count into the brazen urn, and the other into the wooden urn. part when all the jurors have voted, the attendants take the urn containing the effective votes and discharge them on to a reckoning board having as many cavities as there are ballot balls, so that the effective votes, whether pierced or solid, may be plainly displayed and easily counted. then the officials assigned to the taking of the votes tell them off on the board, the solid in one place and the pierced in another, and the crier announces the numbers of the votes, the pierced ballots being for the prosecutor and the solid for the defendant. whichever has the majority is victorious; but if the votes are equal the verdict is for the defendant. each juror receives two ballots, and uses one to record his vote, and throws the other away. then, if damages have to be awarded, they vote again in the same way, first returning their pay-vouchers and receiving back their staves. half a gallon of water is allowed to each party for the discussion of the damages. finally, when all has been completed in accordance with the law, the jurors receive their pay in the order assigned by the lot. the end the birds by aristophanes (translator uncredited. footnotes have been retained because they provide the meanings of greek names, terms and ceremonies and explain puns and references otherwise lost in translation. occasional greek words in the footnotes have not been included. footnote numbers, in brackets, start anew at ( ) for each piece of dialogue, and each footnote follows immediately the dialogue to which it refers, labeled thus: f( ). introduction 'the birds' differs markedly from all the other comedies of aristophanes which have come down to us in subject and general conception. it is just an extravaganza pure and simple--a graceful, whimsical theme chosen expressly for the sake of the opportunities it afforded of bright, amusing dialogue, pleasing lyrical interludes, and charming displays of brilliant stage effects and pretty dresses. unlike other plays of the same author, there is here apparently no serious political motif underlying the surface burlesque and buffoonery. some critics, it is true, profess to find in it a reference to the unfortunate sicilian expedition, then in progress, and a prophecy of its failure and the political downfall of alcibiades. but as a matter of fact, the whole thing seems rather an attempt on the dramatist's part to relieve the overwrought minds of his fellow-citizens, anxious and discouraged at the unsatisfactory reports from before syracuse, by a work conceived in a lighter vein than usual and mainly unconnected with contemporary realities. the play was produced in the year b.c., just when success or failure in sicily hung in the balance, though already the outlook was gloomy, and many circumstances pointed to impending disaster. moreover, the public conscience was still shocked and perturbed over the mysterious affair of the mutilation of the hermae, which had occurred immediately before the sailing of the fleet, and strongly suspicious of alcibiades' participation in the outrage. in spite of the inherent charm of the subject, the splendid outbursts of lyrical poetry in some of the choruses and the beauty of the scenery and costumes, 'the birds' failed to win the first prize. this was acclaimed to a play of aristophanes' rival, amipsias, the title of which, 'the comastoe,' or 'revellers,' "seems to imply that the chief interest was derived from direct allusions to the outrage above mentioned and to the individuals suspected to have been engaged in it." for this reason, which militated against its immediate success, viz. the absence of direct allusion to contemporary politics--there are, of course, incidental references here and there to topics and personages of the day--the play appeals perhaps more than any other of our author's productions to the modern reader. sparkling wit, whimsical fancy, poetic charm, are of all ages, and can be appreciated as readily by ourselves as by an athenian audience of two thousand years ago, though, of course, much is inevitably lost "without the important adjuncts of music, scenery, dresses and what we may call 'spectacle' generally, which we know in this instance to have been on the most magnificent scale." the plot is this. euelpides and pisthetaerus, two old athenians, disgusted with the litigiousness, wrangling and sycophancy of their countrymen, resolve upon quitting attica. having heard of the fame of epops (the hoopoe), sometime called tereus, and now king of the birds, they determine, under the direction of a raven and a jackdaw, to seek from him and his subject birds a city free from all care and strife. arrived at the palace of epops, they knock, and trochilus (the wren), in a state of great flutter, as he mistakes them for fowlers, opens the door and informs them that his majesty is asleep. when he awakes, the strangers appear before him, and after listening to a long and eloquent harangue on the superior attractions of a residence among the birds, they propose a notable scheme of their own to further enhance its advantages and definitely secure the sovereignty of the universe now exercised by the gods of olympus. the birds are summoned to meet in general council. they come flying up from all quarters of the heavens, and after a brief mis-understanding, during which they come near tearing the two human envoys to pieces, they listen to the exposition of the latters' plan. this is nothing less than the building of a new city, to be called nephelococcygia, or 'cloud-cuckoo-town,' between earth and heaven, to be garrisoned and guarded by the birds in such a way as to intercept all communication of the gods with their worshippers on earth. all steam of sacrifice will be prevented from rising to olympus, and the immortals will very soon be starved into an acceptance of any terms proposed. the new utopia is duly constructed, and the daring plan to secure the sovereignty is in a fair way to succeed. meantime various quacks and charlatans, each with a special scheme for improving things, arrive from earth, and are one after the other exposed and dismissed. presently arrives prometheus, who informs epops of the desperate straits to which the gods are by this time reduced, and advises him to push his claims and demand the hand of basileia (dominion), the handmaid of zeus. next an embassy from the olympians appears on the scene, consisting of heracles, posidon and a god from the savage regions of the triballians. after some disputation, it is agreed that all reasonable demands of the birds are to be granted, while pisthetaerus is to have basileia as his bride. the comedy winds up with the epithalamium in honour of the nuptials. the birds dramatis personae euelpides pisthetaerus epops (the hoopoe) trochilus, servant to epops phoenicopterus heralds a priest a poet a prophet meton, a geometrician a commissioner a dealer in decrees iris a parricide cinesias, a dithyrambic bard an informer prometheus posidon triballus heracles slaves of pisthetaerus messengers chorus of birds scene: a wild, desolate tract of open country; broken rocks and brushwood occupy the centre of the stage. euelpides (to his jay)( ) do you think i should walk straight for yon tree? f( ) euelpides is holding a jay and pisthetaerus a crow; they are the guides who are to lead them to the kingdom of the birds. pisthetaerus (to his crow) cursed beast, what are you croaking to me?... to retrace my steps? euelpides why, you wretch, we are wandering at random, we are exerting ourselves only to return to the same spot; 'tis labour lost. pisthetaerus to think that i should trust to this crow, which has made me cover more than a thousand furlongs! euelpides and that i to this jay, which has torn every nail from my fingers! pisthetaerus if only i knew where we were.... euelpides could you find your country again from here? pisthetaerus no, i feel quite sure i could not, any more than could execestides( ) find his. f( ) a stranger who wanted to pass as an athenian, although coming originally for a far-away barbarian country. euelpides oh dear! oh dear! pisthetaerus aye, aye, my friend, 'tis indeed the road of "oh dears" we are following. euelpides that philocrates, the bird-seller, played us a scurvy trick, when he pretended these two guides could help us to find tereus,( ) the epops, who is a bird, without being born of one. he has indeed sold us this jay, a true son of tharelides,( ) for an obolus, and this crow for three, but what can they do? why, nothing whatever but bite and scratch!--what's the matter with you then, that you keep opening your beak? do you want us to fling ourselves headlong down these rocks? there is no road that way. f( ) a king of thrace, a son of ares, who married procne, the daughter of pandion, king of athens, whom he had assisted against the megarians. he violated his sister-in-law, philomela, and then cut out her tongue; she nevertheless managed to convey to her sister how she had been treated. they both agreed to kill itys, whom procne had borne to tereus, and dished up the limbs of his own son to the father; at the end of the meal philomela appeared and threw the child's head upon the table. tereus rushed with drawn sword upon the princesses, but all the actors in this terrible scene were metamorph(o)sed. tereus became an epops (hoopoe), procne a swallow, philomela a nightingale, and itys a goldfinch. according to anacreon and apollodorus it was procne who became the nightingale and philomela the swallow, and this is the version of the tradition followed by aristophanes. f( ) an athenian who had some resemblance to a jay--so says the scholiast, at any rate. pisthetaerus not even the vestige of a track in any direction. euelpides and what does the crow say about the road to follow? pisthetaerus by zeus, it no longer croaks the same thing it did. euelpides and which way does it tell us to go now? pisthetaerus it says that, by dint of gnawing, it will devour my fingers. euelpides what misfortune is ours! we strain every nerve to get to the birds,( ) do everything we can to that end, and we cannot find our way! yes, spectators, our madness is quite different from that of sacas. he is not a citizen, and would fain be one at any cost; we, on the contrary, born of an honourable tribe and family and living in the midst of our fellow-citizens, we have fled from our country as hard as ever we could go. 'tis not that we hate it; we recognize it to be great and rich, likewise that everyone has the right to ruin himself; but the crickets only chirrup among the fig-trees for a month or two, whereas the athenians spend their whole lives in chanting forth judgments from their law-courts.( ) that is why we started off with a basket, a stew-pot and some myrtle boughs( ) and have come to seek a quiet country in which to settle. we are going to tereus, the epops, to learn from him, whether, in his aerial flights, he has noticed some town of this kind. f( ) literally, 'to go to the crows,' a proverbial expression equivalent to our 'going to the devil.' f( ) they leave athens because of their hatred of lawsuits and informers; this is the especial failing of the athenians satirized in 'the wasps.' f( ) myrtle boughs were used in sacrifices, and the founding of every colony was started by a sacrifice. pisthetaerus here! look! euelpides what's the matter? pisthetaerus why, the crow has been pointing me to something up there for some time now. euelpides and the jay is also opening its beak and craning its neck to show me i know not what. clearly, there are some birds about here. we shall soon know, if we kick up a noise to start them. pisthetaerus do you know what to do? knock your leg against this rock. euelpides and you your head to double the noise. pisthetaerus well then use a stone instead; take one and hammer with it. euelpides good idea! ho there, within! slave! slave! pisthetaerus what's that, friend! you say, "slave," to summon epops! it would be much better to shout, "epops, epops!" euelpides well then, epops! must i knock again? epops! trochilus who's there? who calls my master? pisthetaerus apollo the deliverer! what an enormous beak!( ) f( ) the actors wore masks made to resemble the birds they were supposed to represent. trochilus good god! they are bird-catchers. euelpides the mere sight of him petrifies me with terror. what a horrible monster. trochilus woe to you! euelpides but we are not men. trochilus what are you, then? euelpides i am the fearling, an african bird. trochilus you talk nonsense. euelpides well, then, just ask it of my feet.( ) f( ) fear had had disastrous effects upon euelpides' internal economy, and this his feet evidenced. trochilus and this other one, what bird is it? pisthetaerus i? i am a cackling,( ) from the land of the pheasants. f( ) the same mishap had occurred to pisthetaerus. euelpides but you yourself, in the name of the gods! what animal are you? trochilus why, i am a slave-bird. euelpides why, have you been conquered by a cock? trochilus no, but when my master was turned into a peewit, he begged me to become a bird too, to follow and to serve him. euelpides does a bird need a servant, then? trochilus 'tis no doubt because he was a man. at times he wants to eat a dish of loach from phalerum; i seize my dish and fly to fetch him some. again he wants some pea-soup; i seize a ladle and a pot and run to get it. euelpides this is, then, truly a running-bird.( ) come, trochilus, do us the kindness to call your master. f( ) the greek word for a wren is derived from the same root as 'to run.' trochilus why, he has just fallen asleep after a feed of myrtle-berries and a few grubs. euelpides never mind; wake him up. trochilus i an certain he will be angry. however, i will wake him to please you. pisthetaerus you cursed brute! why, i am almost dead with terror! euelpides oh! my god! 'twas sheer fear that made me lose my jay. pisthetaerus ah! you great coward! were you so frightened that you let go your jay? euelpides and did you not lose your crow, when you fell sprawling on the ground? pray tell me that. pisthetaerus no, no. euelpides where is it, then? pisthetaerus it has flown away. euelpides then you did not let it go? oh! you brave fellow! epops open the forest,( ) that i may go out! f( ) no doubt there was some scenery to represent a forest. besides, there is a pun intended. the words answering for 'forests' and 'door' in greek only differ slightly in sound. euelpides by heracles! what a creature! what plumage! what means this triple crest? epops who wants me? euelpides the twelve great gods have used you ill, meseems. epops are you chaffing me about my feathers? i have been a man, strangers. euelpides 'tis not you we are jeering at. epops at what, then? euelpides why, 'tis your beak that looks so odd to us. epops this is how sophocles outrages me in his tragedies. know, i once was tereus.( ) f( ) sophocles had written a tragedy about tereus, in which, no doubt, the king finally appears as a hoopoe. euelpides you were tereus, and what are you now? a bird or a peacock?( ) f( ) (o)ne would expect the question to be "bird or man."--are you a peacock? the hoopoe resembles the peacock inasmuch as both have crests. epops i am a bird. euelpides then where are your feathers? for i don't see them. epops they have fallen off. euelpides through illness? epops no. all birds moult their feathers, you know, every winter, and others grow in their place. but tell me, who are you? euelpides we? we are mortals. epops from what country? euelpides from the land of the beautiful galleys.( ) f( ) athens. epops are you dicasts?( ) f( ) the athenians were madly addicted to lawsuits. (see 'the wasps.') euelpides no, if anything, we are anti-dicasts. epops is that kind of seed sown among you?( ) f( ) as much as to say, 'then you have such things as anti-dicasts?' and euelpides practically replaces, 'very few.' euelpides you have to look hard to find even a little in our fields. epops what brings you here? euelpides we wish to pay you a visit. epops what for? euelpides because you formerly were a man, like we are, formerly you had debts, as we have, formerly you did not want to pay them, like ourselves; furthermore, being turned into a bird, you have when flying seen all lands and seas. thus you have all human knowledge as well as that of birds. and hence we have come to you to beg you to direct us to some cosy town, in which one can repose as if on thick coverlets. epops and are you looking for a greater city than athens? euelpides no, not a greater, but one more pleasant to dwell in. epops then you are looking for an aristocratic country. euelpides i? not at all! i hold the son of scellias in horror.( ) f( ) his name was aristocrates; he was a general and commanded a fleet sent in aid of corcyra. epops but, after all, what sort of city would please you best? euelpides a place where the following would be the most important business transacted.--some friend would come knocking at the door quite early in the morning saying, "by olympian zeus, be at my house early, as soon as you have bathed, and bring your children too. i am giving a nuptial feast, so don't fail, or else don't cross my threshold when i am in distress." epops ah! that's what may be called being fond of hardships! and what say you? pisthetaerus my tastes are similar. epops and they are? pisthetaerus i want a town where the father of a handsome lad will stop in the street and say to me reproachfully as if i had failed him, "ah! is this well done, stilbonides! you met my son coming from the bath after the gymnasium and you neither spoke to him, nor embraced him, nor took him with you, nor ever once twitched his parts. would anyone call you an old friend of mine?" epops ah! wag, i see you are fond of suffering. but there is a city of delights, such as you want. 'tis on the red sea. euelpides oh, no. not a sea-port, where some fine morning the salaminian( ) galley can appear, bringing a writ-server along. have you no greek town you can propose to us? f( ) the state galley, which carried the officials of the athenian republic to their several departments and brought back those whose time had expired; it was this galley that was sent to sicily to fetch back alcibiades, who was accused of sacrilege. epops why not choose lepreum in elis for your settlement? euelpides by zeus! i could not look at lepreum without disgust, because of melanthius.( ) f( ) a tragic poet, who was a leper; there is a play, of course, on the word lepreum. epops then, again, there is the opuntian, where you could live. euelpides i would not be opuntian( ) for a talent. but come, what is it like to live with the birds? you should know pretty well. f( ) an allusion to opuntius, who was one-eyed. epops why, 'tis not a disagreeable life. in the first place, one has no purse. euelpides that does away with much roguery. epops for food the gardens yield us white sesame, myrtle-berries, poppies and mint. euelpides why, 'tis the life of the newly-wed indeed.( ) f( ) the newly-married ate a sesame-cake, decorated with garlands of myrtle, poppies and mint. pisthetaerus ha! i am beginning to see a great plan, which will transfer the supreme power to the birds, if you will but take my advice. epops take your advice? in what way? pisthetaerus in what way? well, firstly, do not fly in all directions with open beak; it is not dignified. among us, when we see a thoughtless man, we ask, "what sort of bird is this?" and teleas answers, "'tis a man who has no brain, a bird that has lost his head, a creature you cannot catch, for it never remains in any one place." epops by zeus himself! your jest hits the mark. what then is to be done? pisthetaerus found a city. epops we birds? but what sort of city should we build? pisthetaerus oh, really, really! 'tis spoken like a fool! look down. epops i am looking. pisthetaerus now look upwards. epops i am looking. pisthetaerus turn your head round. epops ah! 'twill be pleasant for me, if i end in twisting my neck! pisthetaerus what have you seen? epops the clouds and the sky. pisthetaerus very well! is not this the pole of the birds then? epops how their pole? pisthetaerus or, if you like it, the land. and since it turns and passes through the whole universe, it is called, 'pole.'( ) if you build and fortify it, you will turn your pole into a fortified city.( ) in this way you will reign over mankind as you do over the grasshoppers and cause the gods to die of rabid hunger. f( ) from (the word meaning) 'to turn.' f( ) the greek words for 'pole' and 'city' only differ by a single letter. epops how so? pisthetaerus the air is 'twixt earth and heaven. when we want to go to delphi, we ask the boeotians( ) for leave of passage; in the same way, when men sacrifice to the gods, unless the latter pay you tribute, you exercise the right of every nation towards strangers and don't allow the smoke of the sacrifices to pass through your city and territory. f( ) boeotia separated attica from phocis. epops by earth! by snares! by network!( ) i never heard of anything more cleverly conceived; and, if the other birds approve, i am going to build the city along with you. f( ) he swears by the powers that are to him dreadful. pisthetaerus who will explain the matter to them? epops you must yourself. before i came they were quite ignorant, but since i have lived with them i have taught them to speak. pisthetaerus but how can they be gathered together? epops easily. i will hasten down to the coppice to waken my dear procne!( ) as soon as they hear our voices, they will come to us hot wing. f( ) as already stated, according to the legend accepted by aristophanes, it was procne who was turned into the nightengale. pisthetaerus my dear bird, lose no time, i beg. fly at once into the coppice and awaken procne. epops chase off drowsy sleep, dear companion. let the sacred hymn gush from thy divine throat in melodious strains; roll forth in soft cadence your refreshing melodies to bewail the fate of itys,( ) which has been the cause of so many tears to us both. your pure notes rise through the thick leaves of the yew-tree right up to the throne of zeus, where phoebus listens to you, phoebus with his golden hair. and his ivory lyre responds to your plaintive accents; he gathers the choir of the gods and from their immortal lips rushes a sacred chant of blessed voices. (the flute is played behind the scene.) f( ) the son of tereus and procne. pisthetaerus oh! by zeus! what a throat that little bird possesses. he has filled the whole coppice with honey-sweet melody! euelpides hush! pisthetaerus what's the matter? euelpides will you keep silence? pisthetaerus what for? euelpides epops is going to sing again. epops (in the coppice) epopoi poi popoi, epopoi, popoi, here, here, quick, quick, quick, my comrades in the air; all you who pillage the fertile lands of the husbandmen, the numberless tribes who gather and devour the barley seeds, the swift flying race who sing so sweetly. and you whose gentle twitter resounds through the fields with the little cry of tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio, tio; and you who hop about the branches of the ivy in the gardens; the mountain birds, who feed on the wild olive berries or the arbutus, hurry to come at my call, trioto, trioto, totobrix; you also, who snap up the sharp-stinging gnats in the marshy vales, and you who dwell in the fine plain of marathon, all damp with dew, and you, the francolin with speckled wings; you too, the halcyons, who flit over the swelling waves of the sea, come hither to hear the tidings; let all the tribes of long-necked birds assemble here; know that a clever old man has come to us, bringing an entirely new idea and proposing great reforms. let all come to the debate here, here, here, here. torotorotorotorotix, kikkobau, kikkobau, torotorotorotorolililix. pisthetaerus can you see any bird? euelpides by phoebus, no! and yet i am straining my eyesight to scan the sky. pisthetaerus 'twas really not worth epops' while to go and bury himself in the thicket like a plover when a-hatching. phoenicopterus torotina, torotina. pisthetaerus hold, friend, here is another bird. euelpides i' faith, yes, 'tis a bird, but of what kind? isn't it a peacock? pisthetaerus epops will tell us. what is this bird? epops 'tis not one of those you are used to seeing; 'tis a bird from the marshes. pisthetaerus oh! oh! but he is very handsome with his wings as crimson as flame. epops undoubtedly; indeed he is called flamingo.( ) f( ) an african bird, that comes to the southern countries of europe, to greece, italy, and spain; it is even seen in provence. euelpides hi! i say! you! pisthetaerus what are you shouting for? euelpides why, here's another bird. pisthetaerus aye, indeed; 'tis a foreign bird too. what is this bird from beyond the mountains with a look as solemn as it is stupid? epops he is called the mede.( ) f( ) aristophanes amusingly mixes up real birds with people and individuals, whom he represents in the form of birds; he is personifying the medians here. pisthetaerus the mede! but, by heracles, how, if a mede, has he flown here without a camel? euelpides here's another bird with a crest. pisthetaerus ah! that's curious. i say, epops, you are not the only one of your kind then? epops this bird is the son of philocles, who is the son of epops;( ) so that, you see, i am his grandfather; just as one might say, hipponicus,( ) the son of callias, who is the son of hipponicus. f( ) philocles, a tragic poet, had written a tragedy on tereus, which was simply a plagiarism of the play of the same name by sophocles. philocles is the son of epops, because he got his inspiration from sophocles' tereus, and at the same time is father to epops, since he himself produced another tereus. f( ) this hipponicus is probably the orator whose ears alcibiades boxed to gain a bet; he was a descendant of callias, who was famous for his hatred of pisistratus. pisthetaerus then this bird is callias! why, what a lot of his feathers he has lost!( ) f( ) this callias, who must not be confounded with the foe of pisistratus, had ruined himself. epops that's because he is honest; so the informers set upon him and the women too pluck out his feathers. pisthetaerus by posidon, do you see that many-coloured bird? what is his name? epops this one? 'tis the glutton. pisthetaerus is there another glutton besides cleonymus? but why, if he is cleonymus, has he not thrown away his crest?( ) but what is the meaning of all these crests? have these birds come to contend for the double stadium prize?( ) f( ) cleonymus had cast away his shield; he was as great a glutton as he was a coward. f( ) a race in which the track had to be circled twice. epops they are like the carians, who cling to the crests of their mountains for greater safety.( ) f( ) a people of asia minor; when pursued by the ionians they took refuge in the mountains. pisthetaerus oh, posidon! do you see what swarms of birds are gathering here? euelpides by phoebus! what a cloud! the entrance to the stage is no longer visible, so closely do they fly together. pisthetaerus here is the partridge. euelpides faith! there is the francolin. pisthetaerus there is the poachard. euelpides here is the kingfisher. and over yonder? epops 'tis the barber. euelpides what? a bird a barber? pisthetaerus why, sporgilus is one.( ) here comes the owl. f( ) an athenian barber. euelpides and who is it brings an owl to athens?( ) f( ) the owl was dedicated to athene, and being respected at athens, it had greatly multiplied. hence the proverb, 'taking owls to athens,' similar to our english 'taking coals to newcastle.' pisthetaerus here is the magpie, the turtle-dove, the swallow, the horned owl, the buzzard, the pigeon, the falcon, the ring-dove, the cuckoo, the red-foot, the red-cap, the purple-cap, the kestrel, the diver, the ousel, the osprey, the woodpecker. euelpides oh! oh! what a lot of birds! what a quantity of blackbirds! how they scold, how they come rushing up! what a noise! what a noise! can they be bearing us ill-will? oh! there! there! they are opening their beaks and staring at us. pisthetaerus why, so they are. chorus popopopopopopopoi. where is he who called me? where am i to find him? epops i have been waiting for you this long while! i never fail in my word to my friends. chorus titititititititi. what good thing have you to tell me? epops something that concerns our common safety, and that is just as pleasant as it is to the purpose. two men, who are subtle reasoners, have come here to seek me. chorus where? what? what are you saying? epops i say, two old men have come from the abode of men to propose a vast and splendid scheme to us. chorus oh! 'tis a horrible, unheard-of crime! what are you saying? epops nay! never let my words scare you. chorus what have you done then? epops i have welcomed two men, who wish to live with us. chorus and you have dared to do that! epops aye, and am delighted at having done so. chorus where are they? epops in your midst, as i am. chorus ah! ah! we are betrayed; 'tis sacrilege! our friend, he who picked up corn-seeds in the same plains as ourselves, has violated our ancient laws; he has broken the oaths that bind all birds; he has laid a snare for me, he has handed us over to the attacks of that impious race which, throughout all time, has never ceased to war against us. as for this traitorous bird, we will decide his case later, but the two old men shall be punished forthwith; we are going to tear them to pieces. pisthetaerus 'tis all over with us. euelpides you are the sole cause of all our trouble. why did you bring me from down yonder? pisthetaerus to have you with me. euelpides say rather to have me melt into tears. pisthetaerus go to! you are talking nonsense. euelpides how so? pisthetaerus how will you be able to cry when once your eyes are pecked out? chorus io! io! forward to the attack, throw yourselves upon the foe, spill his blood; take to your wings and surround them on all sides. woe to them! let us get to work with our beaks, let us devour them. nothing can save them from our wrath, neither the mountain forests, nor the clouds that float in the sky, nor the foaming deep. come, peck, tear to ribbons. where is the chief of the cohort? let him engage the right wing. euelpides this is the fatal moment. where shall i fly to, unfortunate wretch that i am? pisthetaerus stay! stop here! euelpides that they may tear me to pieces? pisthetaerus and how do you think to escape them? euelpides i don't know at all. pisthetaerus come, i will tell you. we must stop and fight them. let us arm ourselves with these stew-pots. euelpides why with the stew-pots? pisthetaerus the owl will not attack us.( ) f( ) an allusion to the feast of pots; it was kept at athens on the third day of the anthesteria, when all sorts of vegetables were stewed together and offered for the dead to bacchus and athene. this feast was peculiar to athens.--hence pisthetaerus thinks that the owl will recognize they are athenians by seeing the stew-pots, and as he is an athenian bird, he will not attack them. euelpides but do you see all those hooked claws? pisthetaerus seize the spit and pierce the foe on your side. euelpides and how about my eyes? pisthetaerus protect them with this dish or this vinegar-pot. euelpides oh! what cleverness! what inventive genius! you are a great general, even greater than nicias,( ) where stratagem is concerned. f( ) nicias, the famous athenian general.--the siege of melos in b.c., or two years previous to the production of 'the birds,' had especially done him great credit. he was joint commander of the sicilian expedition. chorus forward, forward, charge with your beaks! come, no delay. tear, pluck, strike, flay them, and first of all smash the stew-pot. epops oh, most cruel of all animals, why tear these two men to pieces, why kill them? what have they done to you? they belong to the same tribe, to the same family as my wife.( ) f( ) procne, the daughter of pandion, king of athens. chorus are wolves to be spared? are they not our most mortal foes? so let us punish them. epops if they are your foes by nature, they are your friends in heart, and they come here to give you useful advice. chorus advice or a useful word from their lips, from them, the enemies of my forebears! epops the wise can often profit by the lessons of a foe, for caution is the mother of safety. 'tis just such a thing as one will not learn from a friend and which an enemy compels you to know. to begin with, 'tis the foe and not the friend that taught cities to build high walls, to equip long vessels of war; and 'tis this knowledge that protects our children, our slaves and our wealth. chorus well then, i agree, let us first hear them, for 'tis best; one can even learn something in an enemy's school. pisthetaerus their wrath seems to cool. draw back a little. epops 'tis only justice, and you will thank me later. chorus never have we opposed your advice up to now. pisthetaerus they are in a more peaceful mood; put down your stew-pot and your two dishes; spit in hand, doing duty for a spear, let us mount guard inside the camp close to the pot and watch in our arsenal closely; for we must not fly. euelpides you are right. but where shall we be buried, if we die? pisthetaerus in the ceramicus;( ) for, to get a public funeral, we shall tell the strategi that we fell at orneae,( ) fighting the country's foes. f( ) a space beyond the walls of athens which contained the gardens of the academy and the graves of citizens who had died for their country. f( ) a town in western argolis, where the athenians had been recently defeated. the somewhat similar work in greek signifies 'birds.' chorus return to your ranks and lay down your courage beside your wrath as the hoplites do. then let us ask these men who they are, whence they come, and with what intent. here, epops, answer me. epops are you calling me? what do you want of me? chorus who are they? from what country? epops strangers, who have come from greece, the land of the wise. chorus and what fate has led them hither to the land of the birds? epops their love for you and their wish to share your kind of life; to dwell and remain with you always. chorus indeed, and what are their plans? epops they are wonderful, incredible, unheard of. chorus why, do they think to see some advantage that determines them to settle here? are they hoping with our help to triumph over their foes or to be useful to their friends? epops they speak of benefits so great it is impossible either to describe or conceive them; all shall be yours, all that we see here, there, above and below us; this they vouch for. chorus are they mad? epops they are the sanest people in the world. chorus clever men? epops the slyest of foxes, cleverness its very self, men of the world, cunning, the cream of knowing folk. chorus tell them to speak and speak quickly; why, as i listen to you, i am beside myself with delight. epops here, you there, take all these weapons and hang them up inside close to the fire, near the figure of the god who presides there and under his protection;( ) as for you, address the birds, tell them why i have gathered them together. f( ) epops is addressing the two slaves, no doubt xanthias and manes, who are mentioned later on. pisthetaerus not i, by apollo, unless they agree with me as the little ape of an armourer agreed with his wife, not to bite me, nor pull me by the parts, nor shove things up my... chorus you mean the...(puts finger to bottom) oh! be quite at ease. pisthetaerus no, i mean my eyes. chorus agreed. pisthetaerus swear it. chorus i swear it and, if i keep my promise, let judges and spectators give me the victory unanimously. pisthetaerus it is a bargain. chorus and if i break my word, may i succeed by one vote only. herald hearken, ye people! hoplites, pick up your weapons and return to your firesides; do not fail to read the decrees of dismissal we have posted. chorus man is a truly cunning creature, but nevertheless explain. perhaps you are going to show me some good way to extend my power, some way that i have not had the wit to find out and which you have discovered. speak! 'tis to your own interest as well as to mine, for if you secure me some advantage, i will surely share it with you. but what object can have induced you to come among us? speak boldly, for i shall not break the truce,--until you have told us all. pisthetaerus i am bursting with desire to speak; i have already mixed the dough of my address and nothing prevents me from kneading it.... slave! bring the chaplet and water, which you must pour over my hands. be quick!( ) f( ) it was customary, when speaking in public and also at feasts, to wear a chaplet; hence the question euelpides puts.--the guests wore chaplets of flowers, herbs, and leaves, which had the property of being refreshing. euelpides is it a question of feasting? what does it all mean? pisthetaerus by zeus, no! but i am hunting for fine, tasty words to break down the hardness of their hearts.--i grieve so much for you, who at one time were kings... chorus we kings! over whom? pisthetaerus ...of all that exists, firstly of me and of this man, even of zeus himself. your race is older than saturn, the titans and the earth. chorus what, older than the earth! pisthetaerus by phoebus, yes. chorus by zeus, but i never knew that before! pisthetaerus 'tis because you are ignorant and heedless, and have never read your aesop. 'tis he who tells us that the lark was born before all other creatures, indeed before the earth; his father died of sickness, but the earth did not exist then; he remained unburied for five days, when the bird in its dilemma decided, for want of a better place, to entomb its father in its own head. euelpides so that the lark's father is buried at cephalae.( ) f( ) a deme of attica. in greek the word also means 'heads,' and hence the pun. epops hence, if we existed before the earth, before the gods, the kingship belongs to us by right of priority. euelpides undoubtedly, but sharpen your beak well; zeus won't be in a hurry to hand over his sceptre to the woodpecker. pisthetaerus it was not the gods, but the birds, who were formerly the masters and kings over men; of this i have a thousand proofs. first of all, i will point you to the cock, who governed the persians before all other monarchs, before darius and megabyzus.( ) 'tis in memory of his reign that he is called the persian bird. f( ) one of darius' best generals. after his expedition against the scythians, this prince gave him the command of the army which he left in europe. megabyzus took perinthos (afterwards called heraclea) and conquered thrace. euelpides for this reason also, even to-day, he alone of all the birds wears his tiara straight on his head, like the great king.( ) f( ) all persians wore the tiara, but always on one side; the great king alone wore it straight on his head. pisthetaerus he was so strong, so great, so feared, that even now, on account of his ancient power, everyone jumps out of bed as soon as ever he crows at daybreak. blacksmiths, potters, tanners, shoemakers, bathmen, corn-dealers, lyre-makers and armourers, all put on their shoes and go to work before it is daylight. euelpides i can tell you something about that. 'twas the cock's fault that i lost a splendid tunic of phrygian wool. i was at a feast in town, given to celebrate the birth of a child; i had drunk pretty freely and had just fallen asleep, when a cock, i suppose in a greater hurry than the rest, began to crow. i thought it was dawn and set out for alimos.( ) i had hardly got beyond the walls, when a footpad struck me in the back with his bludgeon; down i went and wanted to shout, but he had already made off with my mantle. f( ) noted as the birthplace of thucydides, a deme of attica of the tribe of leontis. demosthenes tells us it was thirty-five stadia from athens. pisthetaerus formerly also the kite was ruler and king over the greeks. epops the greeks? pisthetaerus and when he was king, 'twas he who first taught them to fall on their knees before the kites.( ) f( ) the appearance of the kite in greece betokened the return of springtime; it was therefore worshipped as a symbol of that season. euelpides by zeus! 'tis what i did myself one day on seeing a kite; but at the moment i was on my knees, and leaning backwards( ) with mouth agape, i bolted an obolus and was forced to carry my bag home empty.( ) f( ) to look at the kite, who no doubt was flying high in the sky. f( ) as already shown, the athenians were addicted to carrying small coins in their mouths.--this obolus was for the purpose of buying flour to fill the bag he was carrying pisthetaerus the cuckoo was king of egypt and of the whole of phoenicia. when he called out "cuckoo," all the phoenicians hurried to the fields to reap their wheat and their barley.( ) f( ) in phoenicia and egypt the cuckoo makes its appearance about harvest-time. euelpides hence no doubt the proverb, "cuckoo! cuckoo! go to the fields, ye circumcised."( ) f( ) this was an egyptian proverb, meaning, 'when the cuckoo sings we go harvesting.' both the phoenicians and the egyptians practised circumcision. pisthetaerus so powerful were the birds that the kings of grecian cities, agamemnon, menelaus, for instance, carried a bird on the tip of their sceptres, who had his share of all presents.( ) f( ) the staff, called a sceptre, generally terminated in a piece of carved work, representing a flower, a fruit, and most often a bird. euelpides that i didn't know and was much astonished when i saw priam come upon the stage in the tragedies with a bird, which kept watching lysicrates( ) to see if he got any present. f( ) a general accused of treachery. the bird watches lysicrates, because, according to pisthetaerus, he had a right to a share of the presents. pisthetaerus but the strongest proof of all is, that zeus, who now reigns, is represented as standing with an eagle on his head as a symbol of his royalty;( ) his daughter has an owl, and phoebus, as his servant, has a hawk. f( ) it is thus that phidias represents his olympian zeus. euelpides by demeter, 'tis well spoken. but what are all these birds doing in heaven? pisthetaerus when anyone sacrifices and, according to the rite, offers the entrails to the gods, these birds take their share before zeus. formerly men always swore by the birds and never by the gods; even now lampon( ) swears by the goose, when he wants to lie....thus 'tis clear that you were great and sacred, but now you are looked upon as slaves, as fools, as helots; stones are thrown at you as at raving madmen, even in holy places. a crowd of bird-catchers sets snares, traps, limed-twigs and nets of all sorts for you; you are caught, you are sold in heaps and the buyers finger you over to be certain you are fat. again, if they would but serve you up simply roasted; but they rasp cheese into a mixture of oil, vinegar and laserwort, to which another sweet and greasy sauce is added, and the whole is poured scalding hot over your back, for all the world as if you were diseased meat. f( ) one of the diviners sent to sybaris (in magna graecia, s. italy) with the athenian colonists, who rebuilt the town under the new name of thurium. chorus man, your words have made my heart bleed; i have groaned over the treachery of our fathers, who knew not how to transmit to us the high rank they held from their forefathers. but 'tis a benevolent genius, a happy fate, that sends you to us; you shall be our deliverer and i place the destiny of my little ones and my own in your hands with every confidence. but hasten to tell me what must be done; we should not be worthy to live, if we did not seek to regain our royalty by every possible means. pisthetaerus first i advise that the birds gather together in one city and that they build a wall of great bricks, like that at babylon, round the plains of the air and the whole region of space that divides earth from heaven. epops oh, cebriones! oh, porphyrion!( ) what a terribly strong place! f( ) as if he were saying, "oh, gods!" like lampon, he swears by the birds, instead of swearing by the gods.--the names of these birds are those of two of the titans. pisthetaerus th(en), this being well done and completed, you demand back the empire from zeus; if he will not agree, if he refuses and does not at once confess himself beaten, you declare a sacred war against him and forbid the gods henceforward to pass through your country with lust, as hitherto, for the purpose of fondling their alcmenas, their alopes, or their semeles!( ) if they try to pass through, you infibulate them with rings so that they can work no longer. you send another messenger to mankind, who will proclaim to them that the birds are kings, that for the future they must first of all sacrifice to them, and only afterwards to the gods; that it is fitting to appoint to each deity the bird that has most in common with it. for instance, are they sacrificing to aphrodite, let them at the same time offer barley to the coot; are they immolating a sheep to posidon, let them consecrate wheat in honour of the duck;( ) is a steer being offered to heracles, let honey-cakes be dedicated to the gull;( ) is a goat being slain for king zeus, there is a king-bird, the wren,( ) to whom the sacrifice of a male gnat is due before zeus himself even. f( ) alcmena, wife of amphitryon, king of thebes and mother of heracles.--semele, the daughter of cadmus and hermione and mother of bacchus; both seduced by zeus.--alope, daughter of cercyon, a robber, who reigned at eleusis and was conquered by perseus. alope was honoured with posidon's caresses; by him she had a son named hippothous, at first brought up by shepherds but who afterwards was restored to the throne of his grandfather by theseus. f( ) because water is the duck's domain, as it is that of posidon. f( ) because the gull, like heracles, is voracious. f( ) the germans still call it 'zaunkonig' and the french 'roitelet,' both names thus containing the idea of 'king.' euelpides this notion of an immolated gnat delights me! and now let the great zeus thunder! epops but how will mankind recognize us as gods and not as jays? us, who have wings and fly? pisthetaerus you talk rubbish! hermes is a god and has wings and flies, and so do many other gods. first of all, victory flies with golden wings, eros is undoubtedly winged too, and iris is compared by homer to a timorous dove.( ) if men in their blindness do not recognize you as gods and continue to worship the dwellers in olympus, then a cloud of sparrows greedy for corn must descend upon their fields and eat up all their seeds; we shall see then if demeter will mete them out any wheat. f( ) the scholiast draws our attention to the fact that homer says this of here and not of iris (iliad, v, ); it is only another proof that the text of homer has reached us in a corrupted form, or it may be that aristophanes was liable, like other people, to occasional mistakes of quotation. euelpides by zeus, she'll take good care she does not, and you will see her inventing a thousand excuses. pisthetaerus the crows too will prove your divinity to them by pecking out the eyes of their flocks and of their draught-oxen; and then let apollo cure them, since he is a physician and is paid for the purpose.( ) f( ) in sacrifices. euelpides oh! don't do that! wait first until i have sold my two young bullocks. pisthetaerus if on the other hand they recognize that you are god, the principle of life, that you are earth, saturn, posidon, they shall be loaded with benefits. epops name me one of these then. pisthetaerus firstly, the locusts shall not eat up their vine-blossoms; a legion of owls and kestrels will devour them. moreover, the gnats and the gall-bugs shall no longer ravage the figs; a flock of thrushes shall swallow the whole host down to the very last. epops and how shall we give wealth to mankind? this is their strongest passion. pisthetaerus when they consult the omens, you will point them to the richest mines, you will reveal the paying ventures to the diviner, and not another shipwreck will happen or sailor perish. epops no more shall perish? how is that? pisthetaerus when the auguries are examined before starting on a voyage, some bird will not fail to say, "don't start! there will be a storm," or else, "go! you will make a most profitable venture." euelpides i shall buy a trading-vessel and go to sea, i will not stay with you. pisthetaerus you will discover treasures to them, which were buried in former times, for you know them. do not all men say, "none knows where my treasure lies, unless perchance it be some bird."( ) f( ) an athenian proverb. euelpides i shall sell my boat and buy a spade to unearth the vessels. epops and how are we to give them health, which belongs to the gods? pisthetaerus if they are happy, is not that the chief thing towards health? the miserable man is never well. epops old age also dwells in olympus. how will they get at it? must they die in early youth? pisthetaerus why, the birds, by zeus, will add three hundred years to their life. epops from whom will they take them? pisthetaerus from whom? why, from themselves. don't you know the cawing crow lives five times as long as a man? euelpides ah! ah! these are far better kings for us than zeus! pisthetaerus far better, are they not? and firstly, we shall not have to build them temples of hewn stone, closed with gates of gold; they will dwell amongst the bushes and in the thickets of green oak; the most venerated of birds will have no other temple than the foliage of the olive tree; we shall not go to delphi or to ammon to sacrifice;( ) but standing erect in the midst of arbutus and wild olives and holding forth our hands filled with wheat and barley, we shall pray them to admit us to a share of the blessings they enjoy and shall at once obtain them for a few grains of wheat. f( ) a celebrated temple to zeus in an oasis of libya. chorus old man, whom i detested, you are now to me the dearest of all; never shall i, if i can help it, fail to follow your advice. inspirited by your words, i threaten my rivals the gods, and i swear that if you march in alliance with me against the gods and are faithful to our just, loyal and sacred bond, we shall soon have shattered their sceptre. 'tis our part to undertake the toil, 'tis yours to advise. epops by zeus! 'tis no longer the time to delay and loiter like nicias;( ) let us act as promptly as possible.... in the first place, come, enter my nest built of brushwood and blades of straw, and tell me your names. f( ) nicias was commander, along with demosthenes, and later on alcibiades, of the athenian forces before syracuse, in the ill-fated sicilian expedition, - b.c. he was much blamed for dilatoriness and indecision. pisthetaerus that is soon done; my name is pisthetaerus. epops and his? pisthetaerus euelpides, of the deme of thria. epops good! and good luck to you. pisthetaerus we accept the omen. epops come in here. pisthetaerus very well, 'tis you who lead us and must introduce us. epops come then. pisthetaerus oh! my god! do come back here. hi! tell us how we are to follow you. you can fly, but we cannot. epops well, well. pisthetaerus remember aesop's fables. it is told there, that the fox fared very ill, because he had made an alliance with the eagle. epops be at ease. you shall eat a certain root and wings will grow on your shoulders. pisthetaerus then let us enter. xanthias and manes,( ) pick up our baggage. f( ) servants of pisthetaerus and euelpides. chorus hi! epops! do you hear me? epops what's the matter? chorus take them off to dine well and call your mate, the melodious procne, whose songs are worthy of the muses; she will delight our leisure moments. pisthetaerus oh! i conjure you, accede to their wish; for this delightful bird will leave her rushes at the sound of your voice; for the sake of the gods, let her come here, so that we may contemplate the nightingale.( ) f( ) it has already been mentioned that, according to the legend followed by aristophanes, procne had been changed into a nightingale and philomela into a swallow. epops let it be as you desire. come forth, procne, show yourself to these strangers. pisthetaerus oh! great zeus! what a beautiful little bird! what a dainty form! what brilliant plumage!( ) f( ) the actor, representing procne, was dressed out as a courtesan, but wore a mask of a bird. euelpides do you know how dearly i should like to splint her legs for her? pisthetaerus she is dazzling all over with gold, like a young girl.( ) f( ) young unmarried girls wore golden ornaments; the apparel of married women was much simpler. euelpides oh! how i should like to kiss her! pisthetaerus why, wretched man, she has two little sharp points on her beak! euelpides i would treat her like an egg, the shell of which we remove before eating it; i would take off her mask and then kiss her pretty face. epops let us go in. pisthetaerus lead the way, and may success attend us. chorus lovable golden bird, whom i cherish above all others, you, whom i associate with all my songs, nightingale, you have come, you have come, to show yourself to me and to charm me with your notes. come, you, who play spring melodies upon the harmonious flute,( ) lead off our anapaests.( ) weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream, hearken to us, who are immortal beings, ethereal, ever young and occupied with eternal thoughts, for we shall teach you about all celestial matters; you shall know thoroughly what is the nature of the birds, what the origin of the gods, of the rivers, of erebus, and chaos; thanks to us, even prodicus( ) will envy you your knowledge. at the beginning there was only chaos, night, dark erebus, and deep tartarus. earth, the air and heaven had no existence. firstly, black-winged night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. he mated in deep tartarus with dark chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light. that of the immortals did not exist until eros had brought together all the ingredients of the world, and from their marriage heaven, ocean, earth and the imperishable race of blessed gods sprang into being. thus our origin is very much older than that of the dwellers in olympus. we are the offspring of eros; there are a thousand proofs to show it. we have wings and we lend assistance to lovers. how many handsome youths, who had sworn to remain insensible, have not been vanquished by our power and have yielded themselves to their lovers when almost at the end of their youth, being led away by the gift of a quail, a waterfowl, a goose, or a cock.( ) and what important services do not the birds render to mortals! first of all, they mark the seasons for them, springtime, winter, and autumn. does the screaming crane migrate to libya,--it warns the husbandman to sow, the pilot to take his ease beside his tiller hung up in his dwelling,( ) and orestes( ) to weave a tunic, so that the rigorous cold may not drive him any more to strip other folk. when the kite reappears, he tells of the return of spring and of the period when the fleece of the sheep must be clipped. is the swallow in sight? all hasten to sell their warm tunic and to buy some light clothing. we are your ammon, delphi, dodona, your phoebus apollo.( ) before undertaking anything, whether a business transaction, a marriage, or the purchase of food, you consult the birds by reading the omens, and you give this name of omen( ) to all signs that tell of the future. with you a word is an omen, you call a sneeze an omen, a meeting an omen, an unknown sound an omen, a slave or an ass an omen.( ) is it not clear that we are a prophetic apollo to you? if you recognize us as gods, we shall be your divining muses, through us you will know the winds and the seasons, summer, winter, and the temperate months. we shall not withdraw ourselves to the highest clouds like zeus, but shall be among you and shall give to you and to your children and the children of your children, health and wealth, long life, peace, youth, laughter, songs and feasts; in short, you will all be so well off, that you will be weary and satiated with enjoyment. oh, rustic muse of such varied note, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, i sing with you in the groves and on the mountain tops, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx.( ) i poured forth sacred strains from my golden throat in honour of the god pan,( ) tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, from the top of the thickly leaved ash, and my voice mingles with the mighty choirs who extol cybele on the mountain tops,( ) tototototototototinx. 'tis to our concerts that phrynichus comes to pillage like a bee the ambrosia of his songs, the sweetness of which so charms the ear, tio, tio, tio, tio, tinx. if there be one of you spectators who wishes to spend the rest of his life quietly among the birds, let him come to us. all that is disgraceful and forbidden by law on earth is on the contrary honourable among us, the birds. for instance, among you 'tis a crime to beat your father, but with us 'tis an estimable deed; it's considered fine to run straight at your father and hit him, saying, "come, lift your spur if you want to fight."( ) the runaway slave, whom you brand, is only a spotted francolin with us.( ) are you phrygian like spintharus?( ) among us you would be the phrygian bird, the goldfinch, of the race of philemon.( ) are you a slave and a carian like execestides? among us you can create yourself fore-fathers;( ) you can always find relations. does the son of pisias want to betray the gates of the city to the foe? let him become a partridge, the fitting offspring of his father; among us there is no shame in escaping as cleverly as a partridge. so the swans on the banks of the hebrus, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx, mingle their voices to serenade apollo, tio, tio, tio, tio. tiotinx, flapping their wings the while, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx; their notes reach beyond the clouds of heaven; all the dwellers in the forest stand still with astonishment and delight; a calm rests upon the waters, and the graces and the choirs in olympus catch up the strain, tio, tio, tio, tio, tiotinx. there is nothing more useful nor more pleasant than to have wings. to begin with, just let us suppose a spectator to be dying with hunger and to be weary of the choruses of the tragic poets; if he were winged, he would fly off, go home to dine and come back with his stomach filled. some patroclides in urgent need would not have to soil his cloak, but could fly off, satisfy his requirements, and, having recovered his breath, return. if one of you, it matters not who, had adulterous relations and saw the husband of his mistress in the seats of the senators, he might stretch his wings, fly thither, and, having appeased his craving, resume his place. is it not the most priceless gift of all, to be winged? look at diitrephes!( ) his wings were only wicker-work ones, and yet he got himself chosen phylarch and then hipparch; from being nobody, he has risen to be famous; 'tis now the finest gilded cock of his tribe.( ) f( ) the actor, representing procne, was a flute-player. f( ) the parabasis. f( ) a sophist of the island of ceos, a disciple of protagoras, as celebrated for his knowledge as for his eloquence. the athenians condemned him to death as a corrupter of youth in b.c. f( ) lovers were wont to make each other presents of birds. the cock and the goose are mentioned, of course, in jest. f( ) i.e. that it gave notice of the approach of winter, during which season the ancients did not venture to sea. f( ) a notorious robber. f( ) meaning, "we are your oracles." --dodona was an oracle in epirus.--the temple of zeus there was surrounded by a dense forest, all the trees of which were endowed with the gift of prophecy; both the sacred oaks and the pigeons that lived in them answered the questions of those who came to consult the oracle in pure greek. f( ) the greek word for 'omen' is the same as that for 'bird.' f( ) a satire on the passion of the greeks for seeing an omen in everything. f( ) an imitation of the nightingale's song. f( ) god of the groves and wilds. f( ) the 'mother of the gods'; roaming the mountains, she held dances, always attended by pan and his accompanying rout of fauns and satyrs. f( ) an allusion to cock-fighting; the birds are armed with brazen spurs. f( ) an allusion to the spots on this bird, which resemble the scars left by a branding iron. f( ) he was of asiatic origin, but wished to pass for an athenian. f( ) or philamnon, king of thrace; the scholiast remarks that the phrygians and the thracians had a common origin. f( ) the greek word here is also the name of a little bird. f( ) a basket-maker who had become rich.--the phylarchs were the headmen of the tribes. they presided at the private assemblies and were charged with the management of the treasury.--the hipparchs, as the name implies, were the leaders of the cavalry; there were only two of these in the athenian army. f( ) he had become a senator. pisthetaerus halloa! what's this? by zeus! i never saw anything so funny in all my life.( ) f( ) pisthetaerus and euelpides now both return with wings. euelpides what makes you laugh? pisthetaerus 'tis your bits of wings. d'you know what you look like? like a goose painted by some dauber-fellow. euelpides and you look like a close-shaven blackbird. pisthetaerus 'tis ourselves asked for this transformation, and, as aeschylus has it, "these are no borrowed feathers, but truly our own."( ) f( ) meaning, 'tis we who wanted to have these wings.--the verse from aeschylus, quoted here, is taken from 'the myrmidons,' a tragedy of which only a few fragments remain. epops come now, what must be done? pisthetaerus first give our city a great and famous name, then sacrifice to the gods. euelpides i think so too. epops let's see. what shall our city be called? pisthetaerus will you have a high-sounding laconian name? shall we call it sparta? euelpides what! call my town sparta? why, i would not use esparto for my bed,( ) even though i had nothing but bands of rushes. f( ) the greek word signified the city of sparta, and also a kind of broom used for weaving rough matting, which served for the beds of the very poor. pisthetaerus well then, what name can you suggest? euelpides some name borrowed from the clouds, from these lofty regions in which we dwell--in short, some well-known name. pisthetaerus do you like nephelococcygia?( ) f( ) a fanciful name constructed from (the word for) a cloud, and (the word for) a cuckoo; thus a city of clouds and cuckoos.--'wolkenkukelheim' is a clever approximation in german. cloud-cuckoo-town, perhaps, is the best english equivalent. epops oh! capital! truly 'tis a brilliant thought! euelpides is it in nephelococcygia that all the wealth of theovenes( ) and most of aeschines'( ) is? f( ) he was a boaster nicknamed 'smoke,' because he promised a great deal and never kept his word. f( ) also mentioned in 'the wasps.' pisthetaerus no, 'tis rather the plain of phlegra,( ) where the gods withered the pride of the sons of the earth with their shafts. f( ) because the war of the titans against the gods was only a fiction of the poets. euelpides oh! what a splendid city! but what god shall be its patron? for whom shall we weave the peplus?( ) f( ) a sacred cloth, with which the statue of athene in the acropolis was draped. pisthetaerus why not choose athene polias?( ) f( ) meaning, to be patron-goddess of the city. athene had a temple of this name. euelpides oh! what a well-ordered town 'twould be to have a female deity armed from head to foot, while clisthenes( ) was spinning! f( ) an athenian effeminate, frequently ridiculed by aristophanes. pisthetaerus who then shall guard the pelargicon?( ) f( ) this was the name of the wall surrounding the acropolis. epops one of us, a bird of persian strain, who is everywhere proclaimed to be the bravest of all, a true chick of ares.( ) f( ) i.e. the fighting cock. euelpides oh! noble chick! what a well-chosen god for a rocky home! pisthetaerus come! into the air with you to help the workers who are building the wall; carry up rubble, strip yourself to mix the mortar, take up the hod, tumble down the ladder, an you like, post sentinels, keep the fire smouldering beneath the ashes, go round the walls, bell in hand,( ) and go to sleep up there yourself; then d(i)spatch two heralds, one to the gods above, the other to mankind on earth and come back here. f( ) to waken the sentinels, who might else have fallen asleep.--there are several merry contradictions in the various parts of this list of injunctions. euelpides as for yourself, remain here, and may the plague take you for a troublesome fellow! pisthetaerus go, friend, go where i send you, for without you my orders cannot be obeyed. for myself, i want to sacrifice to the new god, and i am going to summon the priest who must preside at the ceremony. slaves! slaves! bring forward the basket and the lustral water. chorus i do as you do, and i wish as you wish, and i implore you to address powerful and solemn prayers to the gods, and in addition to immolate a sheep as a token of our gratitude. let us sing the pythian chant in honour of the god, and let chaeris accompany our voices. pisthetaerus (to the flute-player) enough! but, by heracles! what is this? great gods! i have seen many prodigious things, but i never saw a muzzled raven.( ) f( ) in allusion to the leather strap which flute-players wore to constrict the cheeks and add to the power of the breath. the performer here no doubt wore a raven's mask. epops priest! 'tis high time! sacrifice to the new gods. priest i begin, but where is he with the basket? pray to the vesta of the birds, to the kite, who presides over the hearth, and to all the god and goddess-birds who dwell in olympus. chorus oh! hawk, the sacred guardian of sunium, oh, god of the storks! priest pray to the swan of delos, to latona the mother of the quails, and to artemis, the goldfinch. pisthetaerus 'tis no longer artemis colaenis, but artemis the goldfinch.( ) f( ) hellanicus, the mitylenian historian, tells that this surname of artemis is derived from colaenus, king of athens before cecrops and a descendant of hermes. in obedience to an oracle he erected a temple to the goddess, invoking her as artemis colaenis (the artemis of colaenus). priest and to bacchus, the finch and cybele, the ostrich and mother of the gods and mankind. chorus oh! sovereign ostrich, cybele, the mother of cleocritus,( ) grant health and safety to the nephelococcygians as well as to the dwellers in chios... f( ) this cleocritus, says the scholiast, was long-necked and strutted like an ostrich. pisthetaerus the dwellers in chios! ah! i am delighted they should be thus mentioned on all occasions.( ) f( ) the chians were the most faithful allies of athens, and hence their name was always mentioned in prayers, decrees, etc. chorus ...to the heroes, the birds, to the sons of heroes, to the porphyrion, the pelican, the spoon-bill, the redbreast, the grouse, the peacock, the horned-owl, the teal, the bittern, the heron, the stormy petrel, the fig-pecker, the titmouse... pisthetaerus stop! stop! you drive me crazy with your endless list. why, wretch, to what sacred feast are you inviting the vultures and the sea-eagles? don't you see that a single kite could easily carry off the lot at once? begone, you and your fillets and all; i shall know how to complete the sacrifice by myself. priest it is imperative that i sing another sacred chant for the rite of the lustral water, and that i invoke the immortals, or at least one of them, provided always that you have some suitable food to offer him; from what i see here, in the shape of gifts, there is naught whatever but horn and hair. pisthetaerus let us address our sacrifices and our prayers to the winged gods. a poet oh, muse! celebrate happy nephelococcygia in your hymns. pisthetaerus what have we here? where did you come from, tell me? who are you? poet i am he whose language is sweeter than honey, the zealous slave of the muses, as homer has it. pisthetaerus you a slave! and yet you wear your hair long? poet no, but the fact is all we poets are the assiduous slaves of the muses, according to homer. pisthetaerus in truth your little cloak is quite holy too through zeal! but, poet, what ill wind drove you here? poet i have composed verses in honour of your nephelococcygia, a host of splendid dithyrambs and parthenians( ) worthy of simonides himself. f( ) verses sung by maidens. pisthetaerus and when did you compose them? how long since? poet oh! 'tis long, aye, very long, that i have sung in honour of this city. pisthetaerus but i am only celebrating its foundation with this sacrifice;( ) i have only just named it, as is done with little babies. f( ) this ceremony took place on the tenth day after birth, and may be styled the pagan baptism. poet "just as the chargers fly with the speed of the wind, so does the voice of the muses take its flight. oh! thou noble founder of the town of aetna,( ) thou, whose name recalls the holy sacrifices,( ) make us such gift as thy generous heart shall suggest." f( ) hiero, tyrant of syracuse.--this passage is borrowed from pindar. f( ) (hiero) in greek means 'sacrifice.' pisthetaerus he will drive us silly if we do not get rid of him by some present. here! you, who have a fur as well as your tunic, take it off and give it to this clever poet. come, take this fur; you look to me to be shivering with cold. poet my muse will gladly accept this gift; but engrave these verses of pindar's on your mind. pisthetaerus oh! what a pest! 'tis impossible then to be rid of him! poet "straton wanders among the scythian nomads, but has no linen garment. he is sad at only wearing an animal's pelt and no tunic." do you conceive my bent? pisthetaerus i understand that you want me to offer you a tunic. hi! you (to euelpides), take off yours; we must help the poet.... come, you, take it and begone. poet i am going, and these are the verses that i address to this city: "phoebus of the golden throne, celebrate this shivery, freezing city; i have travelled through fruitful and snow-covered plains. tralala! tralala!"( ) f( ) a parody of poetic pathos, not to say bathos. pisthetaerus what are you chanting us about frosts? thanks to the tunic, you no longer fear them. ah! by zeus! i could not have believed this cursed fellow could so soon have learnt the way to our city. come, priest, take the lustral water and circle the altar. priest let all keep silence! a prophet let not the goat be sacrificed.( ) f( ) which the priest was preparing to sacrifice. pisthetaerus who are you? prophet who am i? a prophet. pisthetaerus get you gone. prophet wretched man, insult not sacred things. for there is an oracle of bacis, which exactly applies to nephelococcygia. pisthetaerus why did you not reveal it to me before i founded my city? prophet the divine spirit was against it. pisthetaerus well, 'tis best to know the terms of the oracle. prophet "but when the wolves and the white crows shall dwell together between corinth and sicyon..." pisthetaerus but how do the corinthians concern me? prophet 'tis the regions of the air that bacis indicated in this manner. "they must first sacrifice a white-fleeced goat to pandora, and give the prophet, who first reveals my words, a good cloak and new sandals." pisthetaerus are the sandals there? prophet read. "and besides this a goblet of wine and a good share of the entrails of the victim." pisthetaerus of the entrails--is it so written? prophet read. "if you do as i command, divine youth, you shall be an eagle among the clouds; if not, you shall be neither turtle-dove, nor eagle, nor woodpecker." pisthetaerus is all that there? prophet read. pisthetaerus this oracle in no sort of way resembles the one apollo dictated to me: "if an impostor comes without invitation to annoy you during the sacrifice and to demand a share of the victim, apply a stout stick to his ribs." prophet you are drivelling. pisthetaerus "and don't spare him, were he an eagle from out of the clouds, were it lampon( ) himself or the great diopithes."( ) f( ) noted athenian diviner, who, when the power was still shared between thucydides and pericles, predicted that it would soon be centred in the hands of the latter; his ground for this prophecy was the sight of a ram with a single horn. f( ) no doubt another athenian diviner, and possibly the same person whom aristophanes names in 'the knights' and 'the wasps' as being a thief. prophet is all that there? pisthetaerus here, read it yourself, and go and hang yourself. prophet oh! unfortunate wretch that i am. pisthetaerus away with you, and take your prophecies elsewhere. meton( ) i have come to you. f( ) a celebrated geometrician and astronomer. pisthetaerus yet another pest! what have you come to do? what's your plan? what's the purpose of your journey? why these splendid buskins? meton i want to survey the plains of the air for you and to parcel them into lots. pisthetaerus in the name of the gods, who are you? meton who am i? meton, known throughout greece and at colonus.( ) f( ) a deme contiguous to athens. it is as though he said, "well known throughout all england and at croydon. pisthetaerus what are these things? meton tools for measuring the air. in truth, the spaces in the air have precisely the form of a furnace. with this bent ruler i draw a line from top to bottom; from one of its points i describe a circle with the compass. do you understand? pisthetaerus not the very least. meton with the straight ruler i set to work to inscribe a square within this circle; in its centre will be the market-place, into which all the straight streets will lead, converging to this centre like a star, which, although only orbicular, sends forth its rays in a straight line from all sides. pisthetaerus meton, you new thales...( ) f( ) thales was no less famous as a geometrician than he was as a sage. meton what d'you want with me? pisthetaerus i want to give you a proof of my friendship. use your legs. meton why, what have i to fear? pisthetaerus 'tis the same here as in sparta. strangers are driven away, and blows rain down as thick as hail. meton is there sedition in your city? pisthetaerus no, certainly not. meton what's wrong then? pisthetaerus we are agreed to sweep all quacks and impostors far from our borders. meton then i'm off. pisthetaerus i fear 'tis too late. the thunder growls already. (beats him.) meton oh, woe! oh, woe! pisthetaerus i warned you. now, be off, and do your surveying somewhere else. (meton takes to his heels.) an inspector where are the proxeni?( ) f( ) officers of athens, whose duty was to protect strangers who came on political or other business, and see to their interests generally. pisthetaerus who is this sardanapalus?( ) f( ) he addresses the inspector thus because of the royal and magnificent manners he assumes. inspector i have been appointed by lot to come to nephelococcygia as inspector.( ) f( ) magistrates appointed to inspect the tributary towns. pisthetaerus an inspector! and who sends you here, you rascal? inspector a decree of t(e)leas.( ) f( ) a much-despised citizen, already mentioned. he ironically supposes him invested with the powers of an archon, which ordinarily were entrusted only to men of good repute. pisthetaerus will you just pocket your salary, do nothing, and be off? inspector i' faith! that i will; i am urgently needed to be at athens to attend the assembly; for i am charged with the interests of pharnaces.( ) f( ) a persian satrap.--an allusion to certain orators, who, bribed with asiatic gold, had often defended the interests of the foe in the public assembly. pisthetaerus take it then, and be off. see, here is your salary. (beats him.) inspector what does this mean? pisthetaerus 'tis the assembly where you have to defend pharnaces. inspector you shall testify that they dare to strike me, the inspector. pisthetaerus are you not going to clear out with your urns? 'tis not to be believed; they send us inspectors before we have so much as paid sacrifice to the gods. a dealer in decrees "if the nephelococcygian does wrong to the athenian..." pisthetaerus now whatever are these cursed parchments? dealer in decrees i am a dealer in decrees, and i have come here to sell you the new laws. pisthetaerus which? dealer in decrees "the nephelococcygians shall adopt the same weights, measures and decrees as the olophyxians."( ) f( ) a macedonian people in the peninsula of chalcidice. this name is chosen because of its similarity to the greek word (for) 'to groan.' it is from another verb, meaning the same thing, that pisthetaerus coins the name of ototyxians, i.e. groaners, because he is about to beat the dealer.--the mother-country had the right to impose any law it chose upon its colonies. pisthetaerus and you shall soon be imitating the ototyxians. (beats him.) dealer in decrees hullo! what are you doing? pisthetaerus now will you be off with your decrees? for i am going to let you see some severe ones. inspector (returning) i summon pisthetaerus for outrage for the month of munychion.( ) f( ) corresponding to our month of april. pisthetaerus ha! my friend! are you still there? dealer in decrees "should anyone drive away the magistrates and not receive them, according to the decree duly posted..." pisthetaerus what! rascal! you are there too? inspector woe to you! i'll have you condemned to a fine of ten thousand drachmae. pisthetaerus and i'll smash your urns.( ) f( ) which the inspector had brought with him for the purpose of inaugurating the assemblies of the people or some tribunal. inspector do you recall that evening when you stooled against the column where the decrees are posted? pisthetaerus here! here! let him be seized. (the inspector runs off.) well! don't you want to stop any longer? priest let us get indoors as quick as possible; we will sacrifice the goat inside.( ) f( ) so that the sacrifices might no longer be interrupted. chorus henceforth it is to me that mortals must address their sacrifices and their prayers. nothing escapes my sight nor my might. my glance embraces the universe, i preserve the fruit in the flower by destroying the thousand kinds of voracious insects the soil produces, which attack the trees and feed on the germ when it has scarcely formed in the calyx; i destroy those who ravage the balmy terrace gardens like a deadly plague; all these gnawing crawling creatures perish beneath the lash of my wing. i hear it proclaimed everywhere: "a talent for him who shall kill diagoras of melos,( ) and a talent for him who destroys one of the dead tyrants."( ) we likewise wish to make our proclamation: "a talent to him among you who shall kill philocrates, the struthian;( ) four, if he brings him to us alive. for this philocrates skewers the finches together and sells them at the rate of an obolus for seven. he tortures the thrushes by blowing them out, so that they may look bigger, sticks their own feathers into the nostrils of blackbirds, and collects pigeons, which he shuts up and forces them, fastened in a net, to decoy others." that is what we wish to proclaim. and if anyone is keeping birds shut up in his yard, let him hasten to let them loose; those who disobey shall be seized by the birds and we shall put them in chains, so that in their turn they may decoy other men. happy indeed is the race of winged birds who need no cloak in winter! neither do i fear the relentless rays of the fiery dog-days; when the divine grasshopper, intoxicated with the sunlight, when noon is burning the ground, is breaking out into shrill melody; my home is beneath the foliage in the flowery meadows. i winter in deep caverns, where i frolic with the mountain nymphs, while in spring i despoil the gardens of the graces and gather the white, virgin berry on the myrtle bushes. i want now to speak to the judges about the prize they are going to award; if they are favourable to us, we will load them with benefits far greater than those paris( ) received. firstly, the owls of laurium,( ) which every judge desires above all things, shall never be wanting to you; you shall see them homing with you, building their nests in your money-bags and laying coins. besides, you shall be housed like the gods, for we shall erect gables( ) over your dwellings; if you hold some public post and want to do a little pilfering, we will give you the sharp claws of a hawk. are you dining in town, we will provide you with crops.( ) but, if your award is against us, don't fail to have metal covers fashioned for yourselves, like those they place over statues;( ) else, look out! for the day you wear a white tunic all the birds will soil it with their droppings. f( ) a disciple of democrites; he passed over from superstition to atheism. the injustice and perversity of mankind led him to deny the existence of the gods, to lay bare the mysteries and to break the idols. the athenians had put a price on his head, so he left greece and perished soon afterwards in a storm at sea. f( ) by this jest aristophanes means to imply that tyranny is dead, and that no one aspires to despotic power, though this silly accusation was constantly being raised by the demagogues and always favourably received by the populace. f( ) a poulterer.--strouthian, used in joke to designate him, as if from the name of his 'deme,' is derived from (the greek for) 'a sparrow.' the birds' foe is thus grotesquely furnished with an ornithological surname. f( ) from aphrodite (venus), to whom he had awarded the apple, prize of beauty, in the contest of the "goddesses three." f( ) laurium was an athenian deme at the extremity of the attic peninsula containing valuable silver mines, the revenues of which were largely employed in the maintenance of the fleet and payment of the crews. the "owls of laurium," of course, mean pieces of money; the athenian coinage was stamped with a representation of an owl, the bird of athene. f( ) a pun, impossible to keep in english, on the two meanings of (the greek) word which signifies both an eagle and the gable of a house or pediment of a temple. f( ) that is, birds' crops, into which they could stow away plenty of good things. f( ) the ancients appear to have placed metal discs over statues standing in the open air, to save them from injury from the weather, etc. pisthetaerus birds! the sacrifice is propitious. but i see no messenger coming from the wall to tell us what is happening. ah! here comes one running himself out of breath as though he were running the olympic stadium. messenger where, where is he? where, where, where is he? where, where, where is he? where is pisthetaerus, our leader? pisthetaerus here am i. messenger the wall is finished. pisthetaerus that's good news. messenger 'tis a most beautiful, a most magnificent work of art. the wall is so broad that proxenides, the braggartian, and theogenes could pass each other in their chariots, even if they were drawn by steeds as big as the trojan horse. pisthetaerus 'tis wonderful! messenger its length is one hundred stadia; i measured it myself. pisthetaerus a decent length, by posidon! and who built such a wall? messenger birds--birds only; they had neither egyptian brickmaker, nor stone-mason, nor carpenter; the birds did it all themselves; i could hardly believe my eyes. thirty thousand cranes came from libya with a supply of stones,( ) intended for the foundations. the water-rails chiselled them with their beaks. ten thousand storks were busy making bricks; plovers and other water fowl carried water into the air. f( ) so as not to be carried away by the wind when crossing the sea, cranes are popularly supposed to ballast themselves with stones, which they carry in their beaks. pisthetaerus and who carried the mortar? messenger herons, in hods. pisthetaerus but how could they put the mortar into hods? messenger oh! 'twas a truly clever invention; the geese used their feet like spades; they buried them in the pile of mortar and then emptied them into the hods. pisthetaerus ah! to what use cannot feet be put?( ) f( ) pisthetaerus modifies the greek proverbial saying, "to what use cannot hands be put?" messenger you should have seen how eagerly the ducks carried bricks. to complete the tale, the swallows came flying to the work, their beaks full of mortar and their trowel on their back, just the way little children are carried. pisthetaerus who would want paid servants after this? but tell me, who did the woodwork? messenger birds again, and clever carpenters too, the pelicans, for they squared up the gates with their beaks in such a fashion that one would have thought they were using axes; the noise was just like a dockyard. now the whole wall is tight everywhere, securely bolted and well guarded; it is patrolled, bell in hand; the sentinels stand everywhere and beacons burn on the towers. but i must run off to clean myself; the rest is your business. chorus well! what do you say to it? are you not astonished at the wall being completed so quickly? pisthetaerus by the gods, yes, and with good reason. 'tis really not to be believed. but here comes another messenger from the wall to bring us some further news! what a fighting look he has! second messenger oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! pisthetaerus what's the matter? second messenger a horrible outrage has occurred; a god sent by zeus has passed through our gates and has penetrated the realms of the air without the knowledge of the jays, who are on guard in the daytime. pisthetaerus 'tis an unworthy and criminal deed. what god was it? second messenger we don't know that. all we know is, that he has got wings. pisthetaerus why were not guards sent against him at once? second messenger we have d(i)spatched thirty thousand hawks of the legion of mounted archers.( ) all the hook-clawed birds are moving against him, the kestrel, the buzzard, the vulture, the great-horned owl; they cleave the air, so that it resounds with the flapping of their wings; they are looking everywhere for the god, who cannot be far away; indeed, if i mistake not, he is coming from yonder side. f( ) a corps of athenian cavalry was so named. pisthetaerus all arm themselves with slings and bows! this way, all our soldiers; shoot and strike! some one give me a sling! chorus war, a terrible war is breaking out between us and the gods! come, let each one guard air, the son of erebus,( ) in which the clouds float. take care no immortal enters it without your knowledge. scan all sides with your glance. hark! methinks i can hear the rustle of the swift wings of a god from heaven. f( ) chaos, night, tartarus, and erebus alone existed in the beginning; eros was born from night and erebus, and he wedded chaos and begot earth, air, and heaven; so runs the fable. pisthetaerus hi! you woman! where are you flying to? halt, don't stir! keep motionless! not a beat of your wing!--who are you and from what country? you must say whence you come.( ) f( ) iris appears from the top of the stage and arrests her flight in mid-career. iris i come from the abode of the olympian gods. pisthetaerus what's your name, ship or cap?( ) f( ) ship, because of her wings, which resemble oars; cap, because she no doubt wore the head-dress (as a messenger of the gods) with which hermes is generally depicted. iris i am swift iris. pisthetaerus paralus or salaminia?( ) f( ) the names of the two sacred galleys which carried athenian officials on state business. iris what do you mean? pisthetaerus let a buzzard rush at her and seize her.( ) f( ) a buzzard is named in order to raise a laugh, the greek name also meaning, etymologically, provided with three testicles, vigorous in love. iris seize me! but what do all these insults mean? pisthetaerus woe to you! iris 'tis incomprehensible. pisthetaerus by which gate did you pass through the wall, wretched woman? iris by which gate? why, great gods, i don't know. pisthetaerus you hear how she holds us in derision. did you present yourself to the officers in command of the jays? you don't answer. have you a permit, bearing the seal of the storks? iris am i awake? pisthetaerus did you get one? iris are you mad? pisthetaerus no head-bird gave you a safe-conduct? iris a safe-conduct to me, you poor fool! pisthetaerus ah! and so you slipped into this city on the sly and into these realms of air-land that don't belong to you. iris and what other roads can the gods travel? pisthetaerus by zeus! i know nothing about that, not i. but they won't pass this way. and you still dare to complain! why, if you were treated according to your deserts, no iris would ever have more justly suffered death. iris i am immortal. pisthetaerus you would have died nevertheless.--oh! 'twould be truly intolerable! what! should the universe obey us and the gods alone continue their insolence and not understand that they must submit to the law of the strongest in their due turn? but tell me, where are you flying to? iris i? the messenger of zeus to mankind, i am going to tell them to sacrifice sheep and oxen on the altars and to fill their streets with the rich smoke of burning fat. pisthetaerus of which gods are you speaking? iris of which? why, of ourselves, the gods of heaven. pisthetaerus you, gods? iris are there others then? pisthetaerus men now adore the birds as gods, and 'tis to them, by zeus, that they must offer sacrifices, and not to zeus at all! iris oh! fool! fool! rouse not the wrath of the gods, for 'tis terrible indeed. armed with the brand of zeus, justice would annihilate your race; the lightning would strike you as it did licymnius and consume both your body and the porticos of your palace.( ) f( ) iris' reply is a parody of the tragic style.--'lycimnius' is, according to the scholiast, the title of a tragedy by euripides, which is about a ship that is struck by lightning. pisthetaerus here! that's enough tall talk. just you listen and keep quiet! do you take me for a lydian or a phrygian( ) and think to frighten me with your big words? know, that if zeus worries me again, i shall go at the head of my eagles, who are armed with lightning, and reduce his dwelling and that of amphion to cinders.( ) i shall send more than six hundred porphyrions clothed in leopards' skins( ) up to heaven against him; and formerly a single porphyrion gave him enough to do. as for you, his messenger, if you annoy me, i shall begin by stretching your legs asunder, and so conduct myself, iris though you be, that despite my age, you will be astonished. i will show you something that will make you three times over. f( ) i.e. for a poltroon, like the slaves, most of whom came to athens from these countries. f( ) a parody of a passage in the lost tragedy of 'niobe' of aeschylus. f( ) because this bird has a spotted plumage.--porphyrion is also the name of one of the titans who tried to storm heave. iris may you perish, you wretch, you and your infamous words! pisthetaerus won't you be off quickly? come, stretch your wings or look out for squalls! iris if my father does not punish you for your insults... pisthetaerus ha!... but just you be off elsewhere to roast younger folk than us with your lightning. chorus we forbid the gods, the sons of zeus, to pass through our city and the mortals to send them the smoke of their sacrifices by this road. pisthetaerus 'tis odd that the messenger we sent to the mortals has never returned. herald oh! blessed pisthetaerus, very wise, very illustrious, very gracious, thrice happy, very... come, prompt me, somebody, do. pisthetaerus get to your story! herald all peoples are filled with admiration for your wisdom, and they award you this golden crown. pisthetaerus i accept it. but tell me, why do the people admire me? herald oh you, who have founded so illustrious a city in the air, you know not in what esteem men hold you and how many there are who burn with desire to dwell in it. before your city was built, all men had a mania for sparta; long hair and fasting were held in honour, men went dirty like socrates and carried staves. now all is changed. firstly, as soon as 'tis dawn, they all spring out of bed together to go and seek their food, the same as you do; then they fly off towards the notices and finally devour the decrees. the bird-madness is so clear, that many actually bear the names of birds. there is a halting victualler, who styles himself the partridge; menippus calls himself the swallow; opuntius the one-eyed crow; philocles the lark; theogenes the fox-goose; lycurgus the ibis; chaerephon the bat; syracosius the magpie; midias the quail;( ) indeed he looks like a quail that has been hit hard over the head. out of love for the birds they repeat all the songs which concern the swallow, the teal, the goose or the pigeon; in each verse you see wings, or at all events a few feathers. this is what is happening down there. finally, there are more than ten thousand folk who are coming here from earth to ask you for feathers and hooked claws; so, mind you supply yourself with wings for the immigrants. f( ) all these surnames bore some relation to the character or the build of the individual to whom the poet applies them.--chaerephon, socrates' disciple, was of white and ashen hue.--opuntius was one-eyed.--syracosius was a braggart.--midias had a passion for quail-fights, and, besides, resembled that bird physically. pisthetaerus ah! by zeus, 'tis not the time for idling. go as quick as possible and fill every hamper, every basket you can find with wings. manes( ) will bring them to me outside the walls, where i will welcome those who present themselves. f( ) pisthetaerus' servant, already mentioned. chorus this town will soon be inhabited by a crowd of men. pisthetaerus if fortune favours us. chorus folk are more and more delighted with it. pisthetaerus come, hurry up and bring them along. chorus will not man find here everything that can please him--wisdom, love, the divine graces, the sweet face of gentle peace? pisthetaerus oh! you lazy servant! won't you hurry yourself? chorus let a basket of wings be brought speedily. come, beat him as i do, and put some life into him; he is as lazy as an ass. pisthetaerus aye, manes is a great craven. chorus begin by putting this heap of wings in order; divide them in three parts according to the birds from whom they came; the singing, the prophetic( ) and the aquatic birds; then you must take care to distribute them to the men according to their character. f( ) from the inspection of which auguries were taken, e.g. the eagles, the vultures, the crows. pisthetaerus (to manes) oh! by the kestrels! i can keep my hands off you no longer; you are too slow and lazy altogether. a parricide( ) oh! might i but become an eagle, who soars in the skies! oh! might i fly above the azure waves of the barren sea!( ) f( ) or rather, a young man who contemplated parricide. f( ) a parody of verses in sophocles 'oenomaus.' pisthetaerus ha! 'twould seem the news was true; i hear someone coming who talks of wings. parricide nothing is more charming than to fly; i burn with desire to live under the same laws as the birds; i am bird-mad and fly towards you, for i want to live with you and to obey your laws. pisthetaerus which laws? the birds have many laws. parricide all of them; but the one that pleases me most is, that among the birds it is considered a fine thing to peck and strangle one's father. pisthetaerus aye, by zeus! according to us, he who dares to strike his father, while still a chick, is a brave fellow. parricide and therefore i want to dwell here, for i want to strangle my father and inherit his wealth. pisthetaerus but we have also an ancient law written in the code of the storks, which runs thus, "when the stork father has reared his young and has taught them to fly, the young must in their turn support the father." parricide 'tis hardly worth while coming all this distance to be compelled to keep my father! pisthetaerus no, no, young friend, since you have come to us with such willingness, i am going to give you these black wings, as though you were an orphan bird; furthermore, some good advice, that i received myself in infancy. don't strike your father, but take these wings in one hand and these spurs in the other; imagine you have a cock's crest on your head and go and mount guard and fight; live on your pay and respect your father's life. you're a gallant fellow! very well, then! fly to thrace and fight.( ) f( ) the athenians were then besieging amphipolis in the thracian chalcidice. parricide by bacchus! 'tis well spoken; i will follow your counsel. pisthetaerus 'tis acting wisely, by zeus. cinesias( ) "on my light pinions i soar off to olympus; in its capricious flight my muse flutters along the thousand paths of poetry in turn..." f( ) there was a real cinesias--a dythyrambic poet born at thebes. pisthetaerus this is a fellow will need a whole shipload of wings. cinesias (singing) "...and being fearless and vigorous, it is seeking fresh outlet." pisthetaerus welcome, cinesias, you lime-wood man!( ) why have you come here a-twisting your game leg in circles? f( ) the scholiast thinks that cinesias, who was tall and slight of build, wore a kind of corset of lime-wood to support his waist--surely rather a far-fetched interpretation! cinesias "i want to become a bird, a tuneful nightingale." pisthetaerus enough of that sort of ditty. tell me what you want. cinesias give me wings and i will fly into the topmost airs to gather fresh songs in the clouds, in the midst of the vapours and the fleecy snow. pisthetaerus gather songs in the clouds? cinesias 'tis on them the whole of our latter-day art depends. the most brilliant dithyrambs are those that flap their wings in void space and are clothed in mist and dense obscurity. to appreciate this, just listen. pisthetaerus oh! no, no, no! cinesias by hermes! but indeed you shall. "i shall travel through thine ethereal empire like a winged bird, who cleaveth space with his long neck..." pisthetaerus stop! easy all, i say!( ) f( ) the greek word used here was the word of command employed to stop the rowers. cinesias "...as i soar over the seas, carried by the breath of the winds..." pisthetaerus by zeus! but i'll cut your breath short. cinesias "...now rushing along the tracks of notus, now nearing boreas across the infinite wastes of the ether." (pisthetaerus beats him.) ah! old man, that's a pretty and clever idea truly! pisthetaerus what! are you not delighted to be cleaving the air?( ) f( ) cinesias makes a bound each time that pisthetaerus strikes him. cinesias to treat a dithyrambic poet, for whom the tribes dispute with each other, in this style!( ) f( ) the tribes of athens, or rather the rich citizens belonging to them, were wont on feast-days to give representations of dithyrambic choruses as well as of tragedies and comedies. pisthetaerus will you stay with us and form a chorus of winged birds as slender as leotrophides( ) for the cecropid tribe? f( ) another dithyrambic poet, a man of extreme leanness. cinesias you are making game of me, 'tis clear; but know that i shall never leave you in peace if i do not have wings wherewith to traverse the air. an informer what are these birds with downy feathers, who look so pitiable to me? tell me, oh swallow with the long dappled wings.( ) f( ) a parody of a hemistich from 'alcaeus.'--the informer is dissatisfied at only seeing birds of sombre plumage and poor appearance. he would have preferred to denounce the rich. pisthetaerus oh! but 'tis a regular invasion that threatens us. here comes another of them, humming along. informer swallow with the long dappled wings, once more i summon you. pisthetaerus it's his cloak i believe he's addressing; 'faith, it stands in great need of the swallows' return.( ) f( ) the informer, says the scholiast, was clothed with a ragged cloak, the tatters of which hung down like wings, in fact, a cloak that could not protect him from the cold and must have made him long for the swallows' return, i.e. the spring. informer where is he who gives out wings to all comers? pisthetaerus 'tis i, but you must tell me for what purpose you want them. informer ask no questions. i want wings, and wings i must have. pisthetaerus do you want to fly straight to pellene?( ) f( ) a town in achaia, where woollen cloaks were made. informer i? why, i am an accuser of the islands,( ) an informer... f( ) his trade was to accuse the rich citizens of the subject islands, and drag them before the athenian court; he explains later the special advantages of this branch of the informer's business. pisthetaerus a fine trade, truly! informer ...a hatcher of lawsuits. hence i have great need of wings to prowl round the cities and drag them before justice. pisthetaerus would you do this better if you had wings? informer no, but i should no longer fear the pirates; i should return with the cranes, loaded with a supply of lawsuits by way of ballast. pisthetaerus so it seems, despite all your youthful vigour, you make it your trade to denounce strangers? informer well, and why not? i don't know how to dig. pisthetaerus but, by zeus! there are honest ways of gaining a living at your age without all this infamous trickery. informer my friend, i am asking you for wings, not for words. pisthetaerus 'tis just my words that give you wings. informer and how can you give a man wings with your words? pisthetaerus 'tis thus that all first start. informer all? pisthetaerus have you not often heard the father say to young men in the barbers' shops, "it's astonishing how diitrephes' advice has made my son fly to horse-riding."--"mine," says another, "has flown towards tragic poetry on the wings of his imagination." informer so that words give wings? pisthetaerus undoubtedly; words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven. thus i hope that my wise words will give you wings to fly to some less degrading trade. informer but i do not want to. pisthetaerus what do you reckon on doing then? informer i won't belie my breeding; from generation to generation we have lived by informing. quick, therefore, give me quickly some light, swift hawk or kestrel wings, so that i may summon the islanders, sustain the accusation here, and haste back there again on flying pinions. pisthetaerus i see. in this way the stranger will be condemned even before he appears. informer that's just it. pisthetaerus and while he is on his way here by sea, you will be flying to the islands to despoil him of his property. informer you've hit it, precisely; i must whirl hither and thither like a perfect humming-top. pisthetaerus i catch the idea. wait, i' faith, i've got some fine corcyraean wings.( ) how do you like them? f( ) that is, whips--corcyra being famous for these articles. informer oh! woe is me! why, 'tis a whip! pisthetaerus no, no; these are the wings, i tell you, that set the top a-spinning. informer oh! oh! oh! pisthetaerus take your flight, clear off, you miserable cur, or you will soon see what comes of quibbling and lying. come, let us gather up our wings and withdraw. chorus in my ethereal flights i have seen many things new and strange and wondrous beyond belief. there is a tree called cleonymus belonging to an unknown species; it has no heart, is good for nothing and is as tall as it is cowardly. in springtime it shoots forth calumnies instead of buds and in autumn it strews the ground with bucklers in place of leaves.( ) far away in the regions of darkness, where no ray of light ever enters, there is a country, where men sit at the table of the heroes and dwell with them always--save always in the evening. should any mortal meet the hero orestes at night, he would soon be stripped and covered with blows from head to foot.( ) f( ) cleonymous is a standing butt of aristophanes' wit, both as an informer and a notorious poltroon. f( ) in allusion to the cave of the bandit orestes; the poet terms him a hero only because of his heroic name orestes. prometheus ah! by the gods! if only zeus does not espy me! where is pisthetaerus? pisthetaerus ha! what is this? a masked man! prometheus can you see any god behind me? pisthetaerus no, none. but who are you, pray? prometheus what's the time, please? pisthetaerus the time? why, it's past noon. who are you? prometheus is it the fall of day? is it no later than that?( ) f( ) prometheus wants night to come and so reduce the risk of being seen from olympus. pisthetaerus oh! 'pon my word! but you grow tiresome. prometheus what is zeus doing? is he dispersing the clouds or gathering them?( ) f( ) the clouds would prevent zeus seeing what was happening below him. pisthetaerus take care, lest i lose all patience. prometheus come, i will raise my mask. pisthetaerus ah! my dear prometheus! prometheus stop! stop! speak lower! pisthetaerus why, what's the matter, prometheus? prometheus h'sh! h'sh! don't call me by my name; you will be my ruin, if zeus should see me here. but, if you want me to tell you how things are going in heaven, take this umbrella and shield me, so that the gods don't see me. pisthetaerus i can recognize prometheus in this cunning trick. come, quick then, and fear nothing; speak on. prometheus then listen. pisthetaerus i am listening, proceed! prometheus it's all over with zeus. pisthetaerus ah! and since when, pray? prometheus since you founded this city in the air. there is not a man who now sacrifices to the gods; the smoke of the victims no longer reaches us. not the smallest offering comes! we fast as though it were the festival of demeter.( ) the barbarian gods, who are dying of hunger, are bawling like illyrians( ) and threaten to make an armed descent upon zeus, if he does not open markets where joints of the victims are sold. f( ) the third day of the festival of demeter was a fast. f( ) a semi-savage people, addicted to violence and brigandage. pisthetaerus what! there are other gods besides you, barbarian gods who dwell above olympus? prometheus if there were no barbarian gods, who would be the patron of execestides?( ) f( ) who, being reputed a stranger despite his pretension to the title of a citizen, could only have a strange god for his patron or tutelary deity. pisthetaerus and what is the name of these gods? prometheus their name? why, the triballi.( ) f( ) the triballi were a thracian people; it was a term commonly used in athens to describe coarse men, obscene debauchees and greedy parasites. pisthetaerus ah, indeed! 'tis from that no doubt that we derive the word 'tribulation.'( ) f( ) there is a similar pun in the greek. prometheus most likely. but one thing i can tell you for certain, namely, that zeus and the celestial triballi are going to send deputies here to sue for peace. now don't you treat, unless zeus restores the sceptre to the birds and gives you basileia( ) in marriage. f( ) i.e. the 'supremacy' of greece, the real object of the war. pisthetaerus who is this basileia? prometheus a very fine young damsel, who makes the lightning for zeus; all things come from her, wisdom, good laws, virtue, the fleet, calumnies, the public paymaster and the triobolus. pisthetaerus ah! then she is a sort of general manageress to the god. prometheus yes, precisely. if he gives you her for your wife, yours will be the almighty power. that is what i have come to tell you; for you know my constant and habitual goodwill towards men. pisthetaerus oh, yes! 'tis thanks to you that we roast our meat.( ) f( ) prometheus had stolen the fire from the gods to gratify mankind. prometheus i hate the gods, as you know. pisthetaerus aye, by zeus, you have always detested them. prometheus towards them i am a veritable timon;( ) but i must return in all haste, so give me the umbrella; if zeus should see me from up there, he would think i was escorting one of the canephori.( ) f( ) a celebrated misanthrope, contemporary to aristophanes. hating the society of men, he had only a single friend, apimantus, to whom he was attached, because of their similarity of character; he also liked alcibiades, because he foresaw that this young man would be the ruin of his country. f( ) the canephori were young maidens, chosen from the first families of the city, who carried baskets wreathed with myrtle at the feast of athene, while at those of bacchus and demeter they appeared with gilded baskets.--the daughters of 'metics,' or resident aliens, walked behind them, carrying an umbrella and a stool. pisthetaerus wait, take this stool as well. chorus near by the land of the sciapodes( ) there is a marsh, from the borders whereof the odious socrates evokes the souls of men. pisander( ) came one day to see his soul, which he had left there when still alive. he offered a little victim, a camel,( ) slit his throat and, following the example of ulysses, stepped one pace backwards.( ) then that bat of a chaerephon( ) came up from hell to drink the camel's blood. f( ) according to ctesias, the sciapodes were a people who dwelt on the borders of the atlantic. their feet were larger than the rest of their bodies, and to shield themselves from the sun's rays they held up one of their feet as an umbrella.--by giving the socratic philosophers the name of sciapodes here aristophanes wishes to convey that they are walking in the dark and busying themselves with the greatest nonsense. f( ) this pisander was a notorious coward; for this reason the poet jestingly supposes that he had lost his soul, the seat of courage. f( ) considering the shape and height of the camel, (it) can certainly not be included in the list of small victims, e.g. the sheep and the goat. f( ) in the evocation of the dead, book xi of the odyssey. f( ) chaerephon was given this same title by the herald earlier in this comedy.--aristophanes supposes him to have come from hell because he is lean and pallid. posidon( ) this is the city of nephelococcygia, cloud-cuckoo-town, whither we come as ambassadors. (to triballus) hi! what are you up to? you are throwing your cloak over the left shoulder. come, fling it quick over the right! and why, pray, does it draggle in this fashion? have you ulcers to hide like laespodias?( ) oh! democracy!( ) whither, oh! whither are you leading us? is it possible that the gods have chosen such an envoy? f( ) posidon appears on the stage accompanied by heracles and a triballian god. f( ) an athenian general.--neptune is trying to give triballus some notions of elegance and good behaviour. f( ) aristophanes supposes that democracy is in the ascendant in olympus as it is in athens. triballus leave me alone. posidon ugh! the cursed savage! you are by far the most barbarous of all the gods.--tell me, heracles, what are we going to do? heracles i have already told you that i want to strangle the fellow who has dared to block us in. posidon but, my friend, we are envoys of peace. heracles all the more reason why i wish to strangle him. pisthetaerus hand me the cheese-grater; bring me the silphium for sauce; pass me the cheese and watch the coals.( ) f( ) he is addressing his servant, manes. heracles mortal! we who greet you are three gods. pisthetaerus wait a bit till i have prepared my silphium pickle. heracles what are these meats?( ) f( ) heracles softens at sight of the food.--heracles is the glutton of the comic poets. pisthetaerus these are birds that have been punished with death for attacking the people's friends. heracles and you are seasoning them before answering us? pisthetaerus ah! heracles! welcome, welcome! what's the matter?( ) f( ) he pretends not to have seen them at first, being so much engaged with his cookery. heracles the gods have sent us here as ambassadors to treat for peace. a servant there's no more oil in the flask. pisthetaerus and yet the birds must be thoroughly basted with it.( ) f( ) he pretends to forget the presence of the ambassadors. heracles we have no interest to serve in fighting you; as for you, be friends and we promise that you shall always have rain-water in your pools and the warmest of warm weather. so far as these points go we are armed with plenary authority. pisthetaerus we have never been the aggressors, and even now we are as well disposed for peace as yourselves, provided you agree to one equitable condition, namely, that zeus yield his sceptre to the birds. if only this is agreed to, i invite the ambassadors to dinner. heracles that's good enough for me. i vote for peace. posidon you wretch! you are nothing but a fool and a glutton. do you want to dethrone your own father? pisthetaerus what an error! why, the gods will be much more powerful if the birds govern the earth. at present the mortals are hidden beneath the clouds, escape your observation, and commit perjury in your name; but if you had the birds for your allies, and a man, after having sworn by the crow and zeus, should fail to keep his oath, the crow would dive down upon him unawares and pluck out his eye. posidon well thought of, by posidon!( ) f( ) posidon jestingly swears by himself. heracles my notion too. pisthetaerus (to the triballian) and you, what's your opinion? triballus nabaisatreu.( ) f( ) the barbarian god utters some gibberish which pisthetaerus interprets into consent. pisthetaerus d'you see? he also approves. but hear another thing in which we can serve you. if a man vows to offer a sacrifice to some god, and then procrastinates, pretending that the gods can wait, and thus does not keep his word, we shall punish his stinginess. posidon ah! ah! and how? pisthetaerus while he is counting his money or is in the bath, a kite will relieve him, before he knows it, either in coin or in clothes, of the value of a couple of sheep, and carry it to the god. heracles i vote for restoring them the sceptre. posidon ask the triballian. heracles hi triballian, do you want a thrashing? triballus saunaka baktarikrousa. heracles he says, "right willingly." posidon if that be the opinion of both of you, why, i consent too. heracles very well! we accord the sceptre. pisthetaerus ah! i was nearly forgetting another condition. i will leave here to zeus, but only if the young basileia is given me in marriage. posidon then you don't want peace. let us withdraw. pisthetaerus it matters mighty little to me. cook, look to the gravy. heracles what an odd fellow this posidon is! where are you off to? are we going to war about a woman? posidon what else is there to do? heracles what else? why, conclude peace. posidon oh! you ninny! do you always want to be fooled? why, you are seeking your own downfall. if zeus were to die, after having yielded them the sovereignty, you would be ruined, for you are the heir of all the wealth he will leave behind. pisthetaerus oh! by the gods! how he is cajoling you. step aside, that i may have a word with you. your uncle is getting the better of you, my poor friend.( ) the law will not allow you an obolus of the paternal property, for you are a bastard and not a legitimate child. f( ) heracles, the god of strength, was far from being remarkable in the way of cleverness. heracles i a bastard! what's that you tell me? pisthetaerus why, certainly; are you not born of a stranger woman? besides, is not athene recognized as zeus' sole heiress? and no daughter would be that, if she had a legitimate brother. heracles but what if my father wished to give me his property on his death-bed, even though i be a bastard? pisthetaerus the law forbids it, and this same posidon would be the first to lay claim to his wealth, in virtue of being his legitimate brother. listen; thus runs solon's law: "a bastard shall not inherit, if there are legitimate children; and if there are no legitimate children, the property shall pass to the nearest kin."( ) f( ) this was athenian law. heracles and i get nothing whatever of the paternal property? pisthetaerus absolutely nothing. but tell me, has your father had you entered on the registers of his phratria?( ) f( ) the poet attributes to the gods the same customs as those which governed athens, and according to which no child was looked upon as legitimate unless his father had entered him on the registers of his phratria. the phratria was a division of the tribe and consisted of thirty families. heracles no, and i have long been surprised at the omission. pisthetaerus what ails you, that you should shake your fist at heaven? do you want to fight it? why, be on my side, i will make you a king and will feed you on bird's milk and honey. heracles your further condition seems fair to me. i cede you the young damsel. posidon but i, i vote against this opinion. pisthetaerus then it all depends on the triballian. (to the triballian.) what do you say? triballus big bird give daughter pretty and queen. heracles you say that you give her? posidon why no, he does not say anything of the sort, that he gives her; else i cannot understand any better than the swallows. pisthetaerus exactly so. does he not say she must be given to the swallows? posidon very well! you two arrange the matter; make peace, since you wish it so; i'll hold my tongue. heracles we are of a mind to grant you all that you ask. but come up there with us to receive basileia and the celestial bounty. pisthetaerus here are birds already cut up, and very suitable for a nuptial feast. heracles you go and, if you like, i will stay here to roast them. pisthetaerus you to roast them! you are too much the glutton; come along with us. heracles ah! how well i would have treated myself! pisthetaerus let some(one) bring me a beautiful and magnificent tunic for the wedding. chorus( ) at phanae,( ) near the clepsydra,( ) there dwells a people who have neither faith nor law, the englottogastors,( ) who reap, sow, pluck the vines and the figs( ) with their tongues; they belong to a barbaric race, and among them the philippi and the gorgiases( ) are to be found; 'tis these englottogastorian philippi who introduced the custom all over attica of cutting out the tongue separately at sacrifices.( ) f( ) the chorus continues to tell what it has seen on its flights. f( ) the harbour of the island of chios; but this name is here used in the sense of being the land of informers ((from the greek for) 'to denounce'). f( ) i.e. near the orators' platform, in the public assembly, or because there stood the water-clock, by which speeches were limited. f( ) a coined name, made up of (the greek for) the tongue, and (for) the stomach, and meaning those who fill their stomach with what they gain with their tongues, to wit, the orators. f( ) (the greek for) a fig forms part of the word which in greek means an informer. f( ) both rhetoricians. f( ) because they consecrated it specially to the god of eloquence. a messenger oh, you, whose unbounded happiness i cannot express in words, thrice happy race of airy birds, receive your king in your fortunate dwellings. more brilliant than the brightest star that illumes the earth, he is approaching his glittering golden palace; the sun itself does not shine with more dazzling glory. he is entering with his bride at his side,( ) whose beauty no human tongue can express; in his hand he brandishes the lightning, the winged shaft of zeus; perfumes of unspeakable sweetness pervade the ethereal realms. 'tis a glorious spectacle to see the clouds of incense wafting in light whirlwinds before the breath of the zephyr! but here he is himself. divine muse! let thy sacred lips begin with songs of happy omen. f( ) basileia, whom he brings back from heaven. chorus fall back! to the right! to the left! advance!( ) fly around this happy mortal, whom fortune loads with her blessings. oh! oh! what grace! what beauty! oh, marriage so auspicious for our city! all honour to this man! 'tis through him that the birds are called to such glorious destinies. let your nuptial hymns, your nuptial songs, greet him and his basileia! 'twas in the midst of such festivities that the fates formerly united olympian here to the king who governs the gods from the summit of his inaccessible throne. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! rosy eros with the golden wings held the reins and guided the chariot; 'twas he, who presided over the union of zeus and the fortunate here. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! f( ) terms used in regulating a dance. pisthetaerus i am delighted with your songs, i applaud your verses. now celebrate the thunder that shakes the earth, the flaming lightning of zeus and the terrible flashing thunderbolt. chorus oh, thou golden flash of the lightning! oh, ye divine shafts of flame, that zeus has hitherto shot forth! oh, ye rolling thunders, that bring down the rain! 'tis by the order of our king that ye shall now stagger the earth! oh, hymen! 'tis through thee that he commands the universe and that he makes basileia, whom he has robbed from zeus, take her seat at his side. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! pisthetaerus let all the winged tribes of our fellow-citizens follow the bridal couple to the palace of zeus( ) and to the nuptial couch! stretch forth your hands, my dear wife! take hold of me by my wings and let us dance; i am going to lift you up and carry you through the air. f( ) where pisthetaerus is henceforth to reign. chorus oh, joy! io paean! tralala! victory is thing, oh, thou greatest of the gods! none book ii. from the legislation of solon to the battle of marathon, b. c. - . chapter i. the conspiracy of cylon.--loss of salamis.--first appearance of solon.--success against the megarians in the struggle for salamis.-- cirrhaean war.--epimenides.--political state of athens.--character of solon.--his legislation.--general view of the athenian constitution. i. the first symptom in athens of the political crisis (b. c. ) which, as in other of the grecian states, marked the transition of power from the oligarchic to the popular party, may be detected in the laws of draco. undue severity in the legislature is the ordinary proof of a general discontent: its success is rarely lasting enough to confirm a government--its failure, when confessed, invariably strengthens a people. scarcely had these laws been enacted (b. c. ) when a formidable conspiracy broke out against the reigning oligarchy [ ]. it was during the archonship of megacles (a scion of the great alcmaeonic family, which boasted its descent from nestor) that the aristocracy was menaced by the ambition of an aristocrat. born of an ancient and powerful house, and possessed of considerable wealth, cylon, the athenian, conceived the design of seizing the citadel, and rendering himself master of the state. he had wedded the daughter of theagenes, tyrant of megara, and had raised himself into popular reputation several years before, by a victory in the olympic games (b. c. ). the delphic oracle was supposed to have inspired him with the design; but it is at least equally probable that the oracle was consulted after the design had been conceived. the divine voice declared that cylon should occupy the citadel on the greatest festival of jupiter. by the event it does not appear, however, that he selected the proper occasion. taking advantage of an olympic year, when many of the citizens were gone to the games, and assisted with troops by his father-in-law, he seized the citadel. whatever might have been his hopes of popular support--and there is reason to believe that he in some measure calculated upon it--the time was evidently unripe for the convulsion, and the attempt was unskilfully planned. the athenians, under megacles and the other archons, took the alarm, and in a general body blockaded the citadel. but they grew weary of the length of the siege; many of them fell away, and the contest was abandoned to the archons, with full power to act according to their judgment. so supine in defence of the liberties of the state are a people who have not yet obtained liberty for themselves! ii. the conspirators were reduced by the failure of food and water. cylon and his brother privately escaped. of his adherents, some perished by famine, others betook themselves to the altars in the citadel, claiming, as suppliants, the right of sanctuary. the guards of the magistrates, seeing the suppliants about to expire from exhaustion, led them from the altar and put them to death. but some of the number were not so scrupulously slaughtered--massacred around the altars of the furies. the horror excited by a sacrilege so atrocious, may easily be conceived by those remembering the humane and reverent superstition of the greeks:--the indifference of the people to the contest was changed at once into detestation of the victors. a conspiracy, hitherto impotent, rose at once into power by the circumstances of its defeat. megacles--his whole house--all who had assisted in the impiety, were stigmatized with the epithet of "execrable." the faction, or friends of cylon, became popular from the odium of their enemies--the city was distracted by civil commotion--by superstitious apprehensions of the divine anger--and, as the excesses of one party are the aliment of the other, so the abhorrence of sacrilege effaced the remembrance of a treason. iii. the petty state of megara, which, since the earlier ages, had, from the dependant of athens, grown up to the dignity of her rival, taking advantage of the internal dissensions in the latter city, succeeded in wresting from the athenian government the isle of salamis. it was not, however, without bitter and repeated struggles that athens at last submitted to the surrender of the isle. but, after signal losses and defeats, as nothing is ever more odious to the multitude than unsuccessful war, so the popular feeling was such as to induce the government to enact a decree, by which it was forbidden, upon pain of death, to propose reasserting the athenian claims. but a law, evidently the offspring of a momentary passion of disgust or despair, and which could not but have been wrung with reluctance from a government, whose conduct it tacitly arraigned, and whose military pride it must have mortified, was not likely to bind, for any length of time, a gallant aristocracy and a susceptible people. many of the younger portion of the community, pining at the dishonour of their country, and eager for enterprise, were secretly inclined to countenance any stratagem that might induce the reversal of the decree. at this time there went a report through the city, that a man of distinguished birth, indirectly descended from the last of the athenian kings, had incurred the consecrating misfortune of insanity. suddenly this person appeared in the market-place, wearing the peculiar badge that distinguished the sick [ ]. his friends were, doubtless, well prepared for his appearance--a crowd, some predisposed to favour, others attracted by curiosity, were collected round him-- and, ascending to the stone from which the heralds made their proclamations, he began to recite aloud a poem upon the loss of salamis, boldly reproving the cowardice of the people, and inciting them again to war. his supposed insanity protected him from the law-- his rank, reputation, and the circumstance of his being himself a native of salamis, conspired to give his exhortations a powerful effect, and the friends he had secured to back his attempt loudly proclaimed their applauding sympathy with the spirit of the address. the name of the pretended madman was solon, son of execestides, the descendant of codrus. plutarch (followed by mr. milford, mr. thirlwall, and other modern historians) informs us that the celebrated pisistratus then proceeded to exhort the assembly, and to advocate the renewal of the war--an account that is liable to this slight objection, that pisistratus at that time was not born! [ ] iv. the stratagem and the eloquence of solon produced its natural effect upon his spirited and excitable audience, and the public enthusiasm permitted the oligarchical government to propose and effect the repeal of the law [ ]. an expedition was decreed and planned, and solon was invested with its command. it was but a brief struggle to recover the little island of salamis: with one galley of thirty oars and a number of fishing-craft, solon made for salamis, took a vessel sent to reconnoitre by the megarians, manned it with his own soldiers, who were ordered to return to the city with such caution as might prevent the megarians discovering the exchange, on board, of foes for friends; and then with the rest of his force he engaged the enemy by land, while those in the ship captured the city. in conformity with this version of the campaign (which i have selected in preference to another recorded by plutarch), an athenian ship once a year passed silently to salamis--the inhabitants rushed clamouring down to meet it--an armed man leaped ashore, and ran shouting to the promontory of sciradium, near which was long existent a temple erected and dedicated to mars by solon. but the brave and resolute megarians were not men to be disheartened by a single reverse; they persisted in the contest--losses were sustained on either side, and at length both states agreed to refer their several claims on the sovereignty of the island to the decision of spartan arbiters. and this appeal from arms to arbitration is a proof how much throughout greece had extended that spirit of civilization which is but an extension of the sense of justice. both parties sought to ground their claims upon ancient and traditional rights. solon is said to have assisted the demand of his countrymen by a quotation, asserted to have been spuriously interpolated from homer's catalogue of the ships, which appeared to imply the ancient connexion of salamis and athens ( ); and whether or not this was actually done, the very tradition that it was done, nearly half a century before the first usurpation of pisistratus, is a proof of the great authority of homer in that age, and how largely the services rendered by pisistratus, many years afterward, to the homeric poems, have been exaggerated and misconstrued. the mode of burial in salamis, agreeable to the custom of the athenians and contrary to that of the megarians, and reference to certain delphic oracles, in which the island was called "ionian," were also adduced in support of the athenian claims. the arbitration of the umpires in favour of athens only suspended hostilities; and the megarians did not cease to watch (and shortly afterward they found) a fitting occasion to regain a settlement so tempting to their ambition. v. the credit acquired by solon in this expedition was shortly afterward greatly increased in the estimation of greece. in the bay of corinth was situated a town called cirrha, inhabited by a fierce and lawless race, who, after devastating the sacred territories of delphi, sacrilegiously besieged the city itself, in the desire to possess themselves of the treasures which the piety of greece had accumulated in the temple of apollo. solon appeared at the amphictyonic council, represented the sacrilege of the cirrhaeans, and persuaded the greeks to arm in defence of the altars of their tutelary god. clisthenes, the tyrant of sicyon, was sent as commander-in-chief against the cirrhaeans (b. c. ); and (according to plutarch) the records of delphi inform us that alcmaeon was the leader of the athenians. the war was not very successful at the onset; the oracle of apollo was consulted, and the answer makes one of the most amusing anecdotes of priestcraft. the besiegers were informed by the god that the place would not be reduced until the waves of the cirrhaean sea washed the territories of delphi. the reply perplexed the army; but the superior sagacity of solon was not slow in discovering that the holy intention of the oracle was to appropriate the land of the cirrhaeans to the profit of the temple. he therefore advised the besiegers to attack and to conquer cirrha, and to dedicate its whole territory to the service of the god. the advice was adopted--cirrha was taken (b. c. ); it became thenceforth the arsenal of delphi, and the insulted deity had the satisfaction of seeing the sacred lands washed by the waves of the cirrhaean sea. an oracle of this nature was perhaps more effectual than the sword of clisthenes in preventing future assaults on the divine city! the pythian games commenced, or were revived, in celebration of this victory of the pythian god. vi. meanwhile at athens--the tranquillity of the state was still disturbed by the mortal feud between the party of cylon and the adherents of the alcmaeonidae--time only served to exasperate the desire of vengeance in the one, and increase the indisposition to justice in the other. fortunately, however, the affairs of the state were in that crisis which is ever favourable to the authority of an individual. there are periods in all constitutions when, amid the excesses of factions, every one submits willingly to an arbiter. with the genius that might have made him the destroyer of the liberties of his country, solon had the virtue to constitute himself their saviour. he persuaded the families stigmatized with the crime of sacrilege, and the epithet of "execrable," to submit to the forms of trial; they were impeached, judged, and condemned to exile; the bodies of those whom death had already summoned to a sterner tribunal were disinterred, and removed beyond the borders of attica. nevertheless, the superstitions of the people were unappeased. strange appearances were beheld in the air, and the augurs declared that the entrails of the victims denoted that the gods yet demanded a fuller expiation of the national crime. at this time there lived in crete one of those remarkable men common to the early ages of the world, who sought to unite with the honours of the sage the mysterious reputation of the magician. epimenides, numbered by some among the seven wise men, was revered throughout greece as one whom a heavenlier genius animated and inspired. devoted to poetry, this crafty impostor carried its prerogatives of fiction into actual life; and when he declared--in one of his verses, quoted by st. paul in his epistle to titus--that "the cretans were great liars," we have no reason to exempt the venerable accuser from his own unpatriotic reproach. among the various legends which attach to his memory is a tradition that has many a likeness both in northern and eastern fable:--he is said to have slept forty-seven [ ] years in a cave, and on his waking from that moderate repose, to have been not unreasonably surprised to discover the features of the country perfectly changed. returning to cnossus, of which he was a citizen, strange faces everywhere present themselves. at his father's door he is asked his business, and at length, with considerable difficulty. he succeeds in making himself known to his younger brother, whom he had left a boy, and now recognised in an old decrepit man. "this story," says a philosophical biographer, very gravely, "made a considerable sensation"--an assertion not to be doubted; but those who were of a more skeptical disposition, imagined that epimenides had spent the years of his reputed sleep in travelling over foreign countries, and thus acquiring from men those intellectual acquisitions which he more piously referred to the special inspiration of the gods. epimenides did not scruple to preserve the mysterious reputation he obtained from this tale by fables equally audacious. he endeavoured to persuade the people that he was aeacus, and that he frequently visited the earth: he was supposed to be fed by the nymphs--was never seen to eat in public--he assumed the attributes of prophecy--and dying in extreme old age: was honoured by the cretans as a god. in addition to his other spiritual prerogatives, this reviler of "liars" boasted the power of exorcism; was the first to introduce into greece the custom of purifying public places and private abodes, and was deemed peculiarly successful in banishing those ominous phantoms which were so injurious to the tranquillity of the inhabitants of athens. such a man was exactly the person born to relieve the fears of the athenians, and accomplish the things dictated by the panting entrails of the sacred victims. accordingly (just prior to the cirrhaean war, b. c. ), a ship was fitted out, in which an athenian named nicias was sent to crete, enjoined to bring back the purifying philosopher, with all that respectful state which his celebrity demanded. epimenides complied with the prayer of the athenians he arrived at athens, and completed the necessary expiation in a manner somewhat simple for so notable an exorcist. he ordered several sheep, some black and some white, to be turned loose in the areopagus, directed them to be followed, and wherever they lay down, a sacrifice was ordained in honour of some one of the gods. "hence," says the historian of the philosophers, "you may still see throughout athens anonymous altars (i. e. altars uninscribed to a particular god), the memorials of that propitiation." the order was obeyed--the sacrifice performed--and the phantoms were seen no more. although an impostor, epimenides was a man of sagacity and genius. he restrained the excess of funeral lamentation, which often led to unseasonable interruptions of business, and conduced to fallacious impressions of morality; and in return he accustomed the athenians to those regular habits of prayer and divine worship, which ever tend to regulate and systematize the character of a people. he formed the closest intimacy with solon, and many of the subsequent laws of the athenian are said by plutarch to have been suggested by the wisdom of the cnossian sage. when the time arrived for the departure of epimenides, the athenians would have presented him with a talent in reward of his services, but the philosopher refused the offer; he besought the athenians to a firm alliance with his countrymen; accepted of no other remuneration than a branch of the sacred olive which adorned the citadel, and was supposed the primeval gift of minerva, and returned to his native city,--proving that a man in those days might be an impostor without seeking any other reward than the gratuitous honour of the profession. vii. with the departure of epimenides, his spells appear to have ceased; new disputes and new factions arose; and, having no other crimes to expiate, the athenians fell with one accord upon those of the government. three parties--the mountaineers, the lowlanders, and the coastmen--each advocating a different form of constitution, distracted the state by a common discontent with the constitution that existed, the three parties, which, if we glance to the experience of modern times, we might almost believe that no free state can ever be without--viz., the respective advocates of the oligarchic, the mixed, and the democratic government. the habits of life ever produce among classes the political principles by which they are severally regulated. the inhabitants of the mountainous district, free, rude, and hardy, were attached to a democracy; the possessors of the plains were the powerful families who inclined to an oligarchy, although, as in all aristocracies, many of them united, but with more moderate views, in the measures of the democratic party; and they who, living by the coast, were engaged in those commercial pursuits which at once produce an inclination to liberty, yet a fear of its excess, a jealousy of the insolence of the nobles, yet an apprehension of the licentiousness of the mob, arrayed themselves in favour of that mixed form of government--half oligarchic and half popular--which is usually the most acceptable to the middle classes of an enterprising people. but there was a still more fearful division than these, the three legitimate parties, now existing in athens: a division, not of principle, but of feeling--that menacing division which, like the cracks in the soil, portending earthquake, as it gradually widens, is the symptom of convulsions that level and destroy,--the division, in one word, of the rich and the poor--the havenots and the haves. under an oligarchy, that most griping and covetous of all forms of government, the inequality of fortunes had become intolerably grievous; so greatly were the poor in debt to the rich, that [ ] they were obliged to pay the latter a sixth of the produce of the land, or else to engage their personal labour to their creditors, who might seize their persons in default of payment. some were thus reduced to slavery, others sold to foreigners. parents disposed of their children to clear their debts, and many, to avoid servitude, in stealth deserted the land. but a large body of the distressed, men more sturdy and united, resolved to resist the iron pressure of the law: they formed the design of abolishing debts--dividing the land-- remodelling the commonwealth: they looked around for a leader, and fixed their hopes on solon. in the impatience of the poor, in the terror of the rich, liberty had lost its charms, and it was no uncommon nor partial hope that a monarchy might be founded on the ruins of an oligarchy already menaced with dissolution. viii. solon acted during these disturbances with more than his usual sagacity, and therefore, perhaps, with less than his usual energy. he held himself backward and aloof, allowing either party to interpret, as it best pleased, ambiguous and oracular phrases, obnoxious to none, for he had the advantage of being rich without the odium of extortion, and popular without the degradation of poverty. "phanias the lesbian" (so states the biographer of solon) "asserts, that to save the state he intrigued with both parties, promising to the poor a division of the lands, to the rich a confirmation of their claims;" an assertion highly agreeable to the finesse and subtlety of his character. appearing loath to take upon himself the administration of affairs, it was pressed upon him the more eagerly; and at length he was elected to the triple office of archon, arbitrator, and lawgiver; the destinies of athens were unhesitatingly placed within his hands; all men hoped from him all things; opposing parties concurred in urging him to assume the supreme authority of king; oracles were quoted in his favour, and his friends asserted, that to want the ambition of a monarch was to fail in the proper courage of a man. thus supported, thus encouraged, solon proceeded to his august and immortal task of legislation. ix. let us here pause to examine, by such light as is bequeathed us, the character of solon. agreeably to the theory of his favourite maxim, which made moderation the essence of wisdom, he seems to have generally favoured, in politics, the middle party, and, in his own actions, to have been singular for that energy which is the equilibrium of indifference and of rashness. elevated into supreme and unquestioned power--urged on all sides to pass from the office of the legislator to the dignity of the prince--his ambition never passed the line which his virtue dictated to his genius. "tyranny," said solon, "is a fair field, but it has no outlet." a subtle, as well as a noble saying; it implies that he who has once made himself the master of the state has no option as to the means by which he must continue his power. possessed of that fearful authority, his first object is to rule, and it becomes a secondary object to rule well. "tyranny has, indeed, no outlet!" the few, whom in modern times we have seen endowed with a similar spirit of self-control, have attracted our admiration by their honesty rather than their intellect; and the skeptic in human virtue has ascribed the purity of washington as much to the mediocrity of his genius as to the sincerity of his patriotism:--the coarseness of vulgar ambition can sympathize but little with those who refuse a throne. but in solon there is no disparity between the mental and the moral, nor can we account for the moderation of his views by affecting doubt of the extent of his powers. his natural genius was versatile and luxuriant. as an orator, he was the first, according to cicero, who originated the logical and brilliant rhetoric which afterward distinguished the athenians. as a poet, we have the assurance of plato that, could he have devoted himself solely to the art, even homer would not have excelled him. and though these panegyrics of later writers are to be received with considerable qualification--though we may feel assured that solon could never have been either a demosthenes or a homer, yet we have sufficient evidence in his history to prove him to have been eloquent--sufficient in the few remains of his verses to attest poetical talent of no ordinary standard. as a soldier, he seems to have been a dexterous master of the tactics of that primitive day in which military science consisted chiefly in the stratagems of a ready wit and a bold invention. as a negotiator, the success with which, out of elements so jarring and distracted, he created an harmonious system of society and law, is an unanswerable evidence not more of the soundness of his theories than of his practical knowledge of mankind. the sayings imputed to him which can be most reasonably considered authentic evince much delicacy of observation. whatever his ideal of good government, he knew well that great secret of statesmanship, never to carry speculative doctrines too far beyond the reach of the age to which they are to be applied. asked if he had given the athenians the best of laws, his answer was, "the best laws they are capable of receiving." his legislation, therefore, was no vague collection of inapplicable principles. while it has been the origin of all subsequent law,--while, adopted by the romans, it makes at this day the universal spirit which animates the codes and constitutions of europe--it was moulded to the habits, the manners, and the condition of the people whom it was intended to enlighten, to harmonize, and to guide. he was no gloomy ascetic, such as a false philosophy produces, affecting the barren sublimity of an indolent seclusion; open of access to all, free and frank of demeanour, he found wisdom as much in the market-place as the cell. he aped no coxcombical contempt of pleasure, no fanatical disdain of wealth; hospitable, and even sumptuous, in his habits of life, he seemed desirous of proving that truly to be wise is honestly to enjoy. the fragments of his verses which have come down to us are chiefly egotistical: they refer to his own private sentiments, or public views, and inform us with a noble pride, "that, if reproached with his lack of ambition, he finds a kingdom in the consciousness of his unsullied name." with all these qualities, he apparently united much of that craft and spirit of artifice which, according to all history, sacred as well as profane, it was not deemed sinful in patriarch or philosopher to indulge. where he could not win his object by reason, he could stoop to attain it by the affectation of madness. and this quality of craft was necessary perhaps, in that age, to accomplish the full utilities of his career. however he might feign or dissimulate, the end before him was invariably excellent and patriotic; and the purity of his private morals harmonized with that of his political ambition. what socrates was to the philosophy of reflection, solon was to the philosophy of action. x. the first law that solon enacted in his new capacity was bold and decisive. no revolution can ever satisfy a people if it does not lessen their burdens. poverty disposes men to innovation only because innovation promises relief. solon therefore applied himself resolutely, and at once, to the great source of dissension between the rich and the poor--namely, the enormous accumulation of debt which had been incurred by the latter, with slavery, the penalty of default. he induced the creditors to accept the compromise of their debts: whether absolutely cancelling the amount, or merely reducing the interest and debasing the coin, is a matter of some dispute; the greater number of authorities incline to the former supposition, and plutarch quotes the words of solon himself in proof of the bolder hypothesis, although they by no means warrant such an interpretation. and to remove for ever the renewal of the greatest grievance in connexion with the past distresses, he enacted a law that no man hereafter could sell himself in slavery for the discharge of a debt. even such as were already enslaved were emancipated, and those sold by their creditors into foreign countries were ransomed, and restored to their native land, but, though (from the necessity of the times) solon went to this desperate extent of remedy, comparable in our age only to the formal sanction of a national bankruptcy, he rejected with firmness the wild desire of a division of lands. there may be abuses in the contraction of debts which require far sterner alternatives than the inequalities of property. he contented himself in respect to the latter with a law which set a limit to the purchase of land--a theory of legislation not sufficiently to be praised, if it were possible to enforce it [ ]. at first, these measures fell short of the popular expectation, excited by the example of sparta into the hope of an equality of fortunes: but the reaction soon came. a public sacrifice was offered in honour of the discharge of debt, and the authority of the lawgiver was corroborated and enlarged. solon was not one of those politicians who vibrate alternately between the popular and the aristocratic principles, imagining that the concession of to-day ought necessarily to father the denial of to-morrow. he knew mankind too deeply not to be aware that there is no statesman whom the populace suspect like the one who commences authority with a bold reform, only to continue it with hesitating expedients. his very next measure was more vigorous and more unexceptionable than the first. the evil of the laws of draco was not that they were severe, but that they were inefficient. in legislation, characters of blood are always traced upon tablets of sand. with one stroke solon annihilated the whole of these laws, with the exception of that (an ancient and acknowledged ordinance) which related to homicide; he affixed, in exchange, to various crimes--to theft, to rape, to slander, to adultery--punishments proportioned to the offence. it is remarkable that in the spirit of his laws he appealed greatly to the sense of honour and the fear of shame, and made it one of his severest penalties to be styled atimos or unhonoured--a theory that, while it suited the existent, went far to ennoble the future, character of the athenians. in the same spirit the children of those who perished in war were educated at the public charge--arriving at maturity, they were presented with a suit of armour, settled in their respective callings, and honoured with principal seats in all public assemblies. that is a wise principle of a state which makes us grateful to its pensioners, and bids us regard in those supported at the public charge the reverent memorials of the public service [ ]. solon had the magnanimity to preclude, by his own hand, a dangerous temptation to his own ambition, and assigned death to the man who aspired to the sole dominion of the commonwealth. he put a check to the jobbing interests and importunate canvass of individuals, by allowing no one to propose a law in favour of a single person, unless he had obtained the votes of six thousand citizens; and he secured the quiet of a city exposed to the license of powerful factions, by forbidding men to appear armed in the streets, unless in cases of imminent exigence. xi. the most memorable of solon's sayings illustrates the theory of the social fabric he erected. when asked how injustice should be banished from a commonwealth, he answered, "by making all men interested in the injustice done to each;" an answer imbodying the whole soul of liberty. his innovations in the mere forms of the ancient constitution do not appear to have been considerable; he rather added than destroyed. thus he maintained or revived the senate of the aristocracy; but to check its authority he created a people. the four ancient tribes [ ], long subdivided into minor sections, were retained. foreigners, who had transported for a permanence their property and families to athens, and abandoned all connexion with their own countries, were admitted to swell the numbers of the free population. this made the constituent body. at the age of eighteen, each citizen was liable to military duties within the limits of attica; at the age of twenty he attained his majority, and became entitled to a vote in the popular assembly, and to all the other rights of citizenship. every free athenian of the age of twenty was thus admitted to a vote in the legislature. but the possession of a very considerable estate was necessary to the attainment of the higher offices. thus, while the people exercised universal suffrage in voting, the choice of candidates was still confined to an oligarchy. four distinct ranks were acknowledged; not according, as hitherto, to hereditary descent, but the possession of property. they whose income yielded five hundred measures in any commodity, dry or liquid, were placed in the first rank, under the title of pentacosiomedimnians. the second class, termed hippeis, knights or horsemen, was composed of those whose estates yielded three hundred measures. each man belonging to it was obliged to keep a horse for the public service, and to enlist himself, if called upon, in the cavalry of the military forces (the members of either of these higher classes were exempt, however, from serving on board ship, or in the infantry, unless intrusted with some command.) the third class was composed of those possessing two hundred [ ] measures, and called zeugitae; and the fourth and most numerous class comprehended, under the name of thetes, the bulk of the non-enslaved working population, whose property fell short of the qualification required for the zeugitae. glancing over these divisions, we are struck by their similarity to the ranks among our own northern and feudal ancestry, corresponding to the nobles, the knights, the burgesses, and the labouring classes, which have so long made, and still constitute, the demarcations of society in modern europe. the members of the first class were alone eligible to the highest offices as archons, those of the three first classes to the political assembly of the four hundred (which i shall presently describe), and to some minor magistracies; the members of the fourth class were excluded from all office, unless, as they voted in the popular assembly, they may be said to have had a share in the legislature, and to exercise, in extraordinary causes, judicial authority. at the same time no hereditary barrier excluded them from the hopes so dear to human aspirations. they had only to acquire the necessary fortune in order to enjoy the privileges of their superiors. and, accordingly, we find, by an inscription on the acropolis, recorded in pollux, that anthemion, of the lowest class, was suddenly raised to the rank of knight. [ ] xii. we perceive, from these divisions of rank, that the main principle of solon's constitution was founded, not upon birth, but wealth. he instituted what was called a timocracy, viz., an aristocracy of property; based upon democratic institutions of popular jurisdiction, election, and appeal. conformably to the principle which pervades all states, that make property the qualification for office, to property the general taxation was apportioned. and this, upon a graduated scale, severe to the first class, and completely exonerating the lowest. the ranks of the citizens thus established, the constitution acknowledged three great councils or branches of legislature. the first was that of the venerable areopagus. we have already seen that this institution had long existed among the athenians; but of late it had fallen into some obscurity or neglect, and was not even referred to in the laws of draco. solon continued the name of the assembly, but remodelled its constitution. anciently it had probably embraced all the eupatrids. solon defined the claims of the aspirants to that official dignity, and ordained that no one should be admitted to the areopagus who had not filled the situation of archon--an ordeal which implied not only the necessity of the highest rank, but, as i shall presently note, of sober character and unblemished integrity. the remotest traditions clothed the very name of this assembly with majesty and awe. holding their council on the sacred hill consecrated to mars, fable asserted that the god of battle had himself been arraigned before its tribunal. solon exerted his imagination to sustain the grandeur of its associations. every distinction was lavished upon senators, who, in the spirit of his laws, could only pass from the temple of virtue to that of honour. before their jurisdiction all species of crime might be arraigned--they had equal power to reward and to punish. from the guilt of murder to the negative offence of idleness [ ], their control extended--the consecration of altars to new deities, the penalties affixed to impiety, were at their decision, and in their charge. theirs was the illimitable authority to scrutinize the lives of men--they attended public meetings and solemn sacrifices, to preserve order by the majesty of their presence. the custody of the laws and the management of the public funds, the superintendence of the education of youth, were committed to their care. despite their power, they interfered but little in the management of political affairs, save in cases of imminent danger. their duties, grave, tranquil, and solemn, held them aloof from the stir of temporary agitation. they were the last great refuge of the state, to which, on common occasions, it was almost profanity to appeal. their very demeanour was modelled to harmonize with the reputation of their virtues and the dignity of their office. it was forbidden to laugh in their assembly--no archon who had been seen in a public tavern could be admitted to their order [ ], and for an areopagite to compose a comedy was a matter of special prohibition [ ]. they sat in the open air, in common with all courts having cognizance of murder. if the business before them was great and various, they were wont to divide themselves into committees, to each of which the several causes were assigned by lot, so that no man knowing the cause he was to adjudge could be assailed with the imputation of dishonest or partial prepossession. after duly hearing both parties, they gave their judgment with proverbial gravity and silence. the institution of the ballot (a subsequent custom) afforded secrecy to their award--a proceeding necessary amid the jealousy and power of factions, to preserve their judgment unbiased by personal fear, and the abolition of which, we shall see hereafter, was among the causes that crushed for a while the liberties of athens. a brazen urn received the suffrages of condemnation--one of wood those of acquittal. such was the character and constitution of the areopagus. [ ] xiii. the second legislative council ordained or revived by solon, consisted of a senate, composed, first of four hundred, and many years afterward of five hundred members. to this council all, save the lowest and most numerous class, were eligible, provided they had passed or attained the age of thirty. it was rather a chance assembly than a representative one. the manner of its election appears not more elaborate than clumsy. to every ward there was a president, called phylarchus. this magistrate, on a certain day in the year, gave in the names of all the persons within his district entitled to the honour of serving in the council, and desirous of enjoying it. these names were inscribed on brazen tablets, and cast into a certain vessel. in another vessel was placed an equal number of beans; supposing the number of candidates to be returned by each tribe to be (as it at first was) a hundred, there were one hundred white beans put into the vessel--the rest were black. then the names of the candidates and the beans were drawn out one by one; and each candidate who had the good fortune to have his name drawn out together with a white bean, became a member of the senate. thus the constitution of each succeeding senate might differ from the last--might, so far from representing the people, contradict their wishes--was utterly a matter of hazard and chance; and when mr. mitford informs us that the assembly of the people was the great foundation of evil in the athenian constitution, it appears that to the capricious and unsatisfactory election of this council we may safely impute many of the inconsistencies and changes which that historian attributes entirely to the more popular assembly [ ]. to this council were intrusted powers less extensive in theory than those of the areopagus, but far more actively exerted. its members inspected the fleet (when a fleet was afterward established)--they appointed jailers of prisons --they examined the accounts of magistrates at the termination of their office; these were minor duties; to them was allotted also an authority in other departments of a much higher and more complicated nature. to them was given the dark and fearful extent of power which enabled them to examine and to punish persons accused of offences unspecified by any peculiar law [ ]--an ordinance than which, had less attention been paid to popular control, the wildest ambition of despotism would have required no broader base for its designs. a power to punish crimes unspecified by law is a power above law, and ignorance or corruption may easily distort innocence itself into crime. but the main duty of the four hundred was to prepare the laws to be submitted to the assembly of the people--the great popular tribunal which we are about presently to consider. nor could any law, according to solon, be introduced into that assembly until it had undergone the deliberation, and received the sanction, of this preliminary council. with them, therefore, was the origin of all legislation. in proportion to these discretionary powers was the examination the members of the council underwent. previous to the admission of any candidate, his life, his character, and his actions were submitted to a vigorous scrutiny [ ]. the senators then took a solemn oath that they would endeavour to promote the public good, and the highest punishment they were allowed to inflict was a penalty of five hundred drachma. if that punishment were deemed by them insufficient, the criminal was referred to the regular courts of law. at the expiration of their trust, which expired with each year, the senators gave an account of their conduct, and the senate itself punished any offence of its members; so severe were its inflictions, that a man expelled from the senate was eligible as a judge--a proof that expulsion was a punishment awarded to no heinous offence. [ ] the members of each tribe presided in turn over the rest [ ] under the name of prytanes. it was the duty of the prytanes to assemble the senate, which was usually every day, and to keep order in the great assembly of the people. these were again subdivided into the proedri, who presided weekly over the rest, while one of this number, appointed by lot, was the chief president (or epistates) of the whole council; to him were intrusted the keys of the citadel and the treasury, and a wholesome jealousy of this twofold trust limited its exercise to a single day. each member gave notice in writing of any motion he intended to make--the prytanes had the prior right to propound the question, and afterward it became matter of open discussion--they decided by ballot whether to reject or adopt it; if accepted, it was then submitted to the assembly of the people, who ratified or refused the law which they might not originate. such was the constitution of the athenian council, one resembling in many points to the common features of all modern legislative assemblies. xiv. at the great assembly of the people, to which we now arrive, all freemen of the age of discretion, save only those branded by law with the opprobrium of atimos (unhonoured) [ ], were admissible. at the time of solon, this assembly was by no means of the importance to which it afterward arose. its meetings were comparatively rare, and no doubt it seldom rejected the propositions of the four hundred. but whenever different legislative assemblies exist, and popular control is once constitutionally acknowledged, it is in the nature of things that the more democratic assembly should absorb the main business of the more aristocratic. a people are often enslaved by the accident of a despot, but almost ever gain upon the checks which the constitution is intended habitually to oppose. in the later time, the assembly met four times in five weeks (at least, during the period in which the tribes were ten in number), that is, during the presidence of each prytanea. the first time of their meeting they heard matters of general import, approved or rejected magistrates, listened to accusations of grave political offences [ ], as well as the particulars of any confiscation of goods. the second time was appropriated to affairs relative as well to individuals as the community; and it was lawful for every man either to present a petition or share in a debate. the third time of meeting was devoted to the state audience of ambassadors. the fourth, to matters of religious worship or priestly ceremonial. these four periodical meetings, under the name of curia, made the common assembly, requiring no special summons, and betokening no extraordinary emergency. but besides these regular meetings, upon occasions of unusual danger, or in cases requiring immediate discussion, the assembly of the people might also be convened by formal proclamation; and in this case it was termed "sugkletos," which we may render by the word convocation. the prytanes, previous to the meeting of the assembly, always placarded in some public place a programme of the matters on which the people were to consult. the persons presiding over the meeting were proedri, chosen by lot from the nine tribes, excluded at the time being from the office of prytanes; out of their number a chief president (or epistates) was elected also by lot. every effort was made to compel a numerous attendance, and each man attending received a small coin for his trouble [ ], a practice fruitful in jests to the comedians. the prytanes might forbid a man of notoriously bad character to speak. the chief president gave the signal for their decision. in ordinary cases they held up their hands, voting openly; but at a later period, in cases where intimidation was possible, such as in the offences of men of power and authority, they voted in secret. they met usually in the vast arena of their market-place. [ ] xv. recapitulating the heads of that complex constitution i have thus detailed, the reader will perceive that the legislative power rested in three assemblies--the areopagus, the council, and the assembly of the people--that the first, notwithstanding its solemn dignity and vast authority, seldom interfered in the active, popular, and daily politics of the state--that the second originated laws, which the third was the great court of appeal to sanction or reject. the great improvement of modern times has been to consolidate the two latter courts in one, and to unite in a representative senate the sagacity of a deliberative council with the interests of a popular assembly;--the more closely we blend these objects, the more perfectly, perhaps, we attain, by the means of wisdom, the ends of liberty. xvi. but although in a senate composed by the determinations of chance, and an assembly which from its numbers must ever have been exposed to the agitation of eloquence and the caprices of passion, there was inevitably a crude and imperfect principle,--although two courts containing in themselves the soul and element of contradiction necessarily wanted that concentrated oneness of purpose propitious to the regular and majestic calmness of legislation, we cannot but allow the main theory of the system to have been precisely that most favourable to the prodigal exuberance of energy, of intellect, and of genius. summoned to consultation upon all matters, from the greatest to the least, the most venerable to the most trite--to-day deciding on the number of their war-ships, to-morrow on that of a tragic chorus; now examining with jealous forethought the new harriers to oligarchical ambition;--now appointing, with nice distinction, to various service the various combinations of music [ ];--now welcoming in their forum-senate the sober ambassadors of lacedaemon or the jewelled heralds of persia, now voting their sanction to new temples or the reverent reforms of worship; compelled to a lively and unceasing interest in all that arouses the mind, or elevates the passions, or refines the taste;--supreme arbiters of the art of the sculptor, as the science of the lawgiver,--judges and rewarders of the limner and the poet, as of the successful negotiator or the prosperous soldier; we see at once the all-accomplished, all-versatile genius of the nation, and we behold in the same glance the effect and the cause:--every thing being referred to the people, the people learned of every thing to judge. their genius was artificially forced, and in each of its capacities. they had no need of formal education. their whole life was one school. the very faults of their assembly, in its proneness to be seduced by extraordinary eloquence, aroused the emulation of the orator, and kept constantly awake the imagination of the audience. an athenian was, by the necessity of birth, what milton dreamed that man could only become by the labours of completest education: in peace a legislator, in war a soldier,--in all times, on all occasions, acute to judge and resolute to act. all that can inspire the thought or delight the leisure were for the people. theirs were the portico and the school--theirs the theatre, the gardens, and the baths; they were not, as in sparta, the tools of the state--they were the state! lycurgus made machines and solon men. in sparta the machine was to be wound up by the tyranny of a fixed principle; it could not dine as it pleased--it could not walk as it pleased--it was not permitted to seek its she machine save by stealth and in the dark; its children were not its own--even itself had no property in self. sparta incorporated, under the name of freedom, the worst complexities, the most grievous and the most frivolous vexations, of slavery. and therefore was it that lacedaemon flourished and decayed, bequeathing to fame men only noted for hardy valour, fanatical patriotism, and profound but dishonourable craft-- attracting, indeed, the wonder of the world, but advancing no claim to its gratitude, and contributing no single addition to its intellectual stores. but in athens the true blessing of freedom was rightly placed--in the opinions and the soul. thought was the common heritage which every man might cultivate at his will. this unshackled liberty had its convulsions and its excesses, but producing unceasing emulation and unbounded competition, an incentive to every effort, a tribunal to every claim, it broke into philosophy with the one--into poetry with the other--into the energy and splendour of unexampled intelligence with all. looking round us at this hour, more than four-and-twenty centuries after the establishment of the constitution we have just surveyed,--in the labours of the student--in the dreams of the poet--in the aspirations of the artist--in the philosophy of the legislator--we yet behold the imperishable blessings we derive from the liberties of athens and the institutions of solon. the life of athens became extinct, but her soul transfused itself, immortal and immortalizing, through the world. xvii. the penal code of solon was founded on principles wholly opposite to those of draco. the scale of punishment was moderate, though sufficiently severe. one distinction will suffice to give us an adequate notion of its gradations. theft by day was not a capital offence, but if perpetrated by night the felon might lawfully be slain by the owner. the tendency to lean to the side of mercy in all cases may be perceived from this--that if the suffrages of the judges were evenly divided, it was the custom in all the courts of athens to acquit the accused. the punishment of death was rare; that of atimia supplied its place. of the different degrees of atimia it is not my purpose to speak at present. by one degree, however, the offender was merely suspended from some privilege of freedom enjoyed by the citizens generally, or condemned to a pecuniary fine; the second degree allowed the confiscation of goods; the third for ever deprived the criminal and his posterity of the rights of a citizen: this last was the award only of aggravated offences. perpetual exile was a sentence never passed but upon state criminals. the infliction of fines, which became productive of great abuse in later times, was moderately apportioned to offences in the time of solon, partly from the high price of money, but partly, also, from the wise moderation of the lawgiver. the last grave penalty of death was of various kinds, as the cross, the gibbet, the precipice, the bowl--afflictions seldom in reserve for the freemen. as the principle of shame was a main instrument of the penal code of the athenians, so they endeavoured to attain the same object by the sublimer motive of honour. upon the even balance of rewards that stimulate, and penalties that deter, solon and his earlier successors conceived the virtue of the commonwealth to rest. a crown presented by the senate or the people--a public banquet in the hall of state-- the erection of a statue in the thoroughfares (long a most rare distinction)--the privilege of precedence in the theatre or assembly-- were honours constantly before the eyes of the young and the hopes of the ambitious. the sentiment of honour thus became a guiding principle of the legislation, and a large component of the character of the athenians. xviii. judicial proceedings, whether as instituted by solon or as corrupted by his successors, were exposed to some grave and vital evils hereafter to be noticed. at present i content myself with observing, that solon carried into the judicial the principles, of his legislative courts. it was his theory, that all the citizens should be trained to take an interest in state. every year a body of six thousand citizens was chosen by lot; no qualification save that of being thirty years of age was demanded in this election. the body thus chosen, called heliaea, was subdivided into smaller courts, before which all offences, but especially political ones, might be tried. ordinary cases were probably left by solon to the ordinary magistrates; but it was not long before the popular jurors drew to themselves the final trial and judgment of all causes. this judicial power was even greater than the legislative; for if an act had passed through all the legislative forms, and was, within a year of the date, found inconsistent with the constitution or public interests, the popular courts could repeal the act and punish its author. in athens there were no professional lawyers; the law being supposed the common interest of citizens, every encouragement was given to the prosecutor --every facility to the obtaining of justice. solon appears to have recognised the sound principle, that the strength of law is in the public disposition to cherish and revere it,--and that nothing is more calculated to make permanent the general spirit of a constitution than to render its details flexile and open to reform. accordingly, he subjected his laws to the vigilance of regular and constant revision. once a year, proposals for altering any existent law might be made by any citizen--were debated--and, if approved, referred to a legislative committee, drawn by lot from the jurors. the committee then sat in judgment on the law; five advocates were appointed to plead for the old law; if unsuccessful, the new law came at once into operation. in addition to this precaution, six of the nine archons (called thesmothetae), whose office rendered them experienced in the defects of the law, were authorized to review the whole code, and to refer to the legislative committee the consideration of any errors or inconsistencies that might require amendment. [ ] xix. with respect to the education of youth, the wise athenian did not proceed upon the principles which in sparta attempted to transfer to the state the dearest privileges of a parent. from the age of sixteen to eighteen (and earlier in the case of orphans) the law, indeed, seems to have considered that the state had a right to prepare its citizens for its service; and the youth was obliged to attend public gymnastic schools, in which, to much physical, some intellectual, discipline was added, under masters publicly nominated. but from the very circumstance of compulsory education at that age, and the absence of it in childhood, we may suppose that there had already grown up in athens a moral obligation and a general custom, to prepare the youth of the state for the national schools. besides the free citizens, there were two subordinate classes--the aliens and the slaves. by the first are meant those composed of settlers, who had not relinquished connexion with their native countries. these, as universally in greece, were widely distinguished from the citizens; they paid a small annual sum for the protection of the state, and each became a kind of client to some individual citizen, who appeared for him in the courts of justice. they were also forbidden to purchase land; but for the rest, solon, himself a merchant, appears to have given to such aliens encouragements in trade and manufacture not usual in that age; and most of their disabilities were probably rather moral or imaginary than real and daily causes of grievance. the great and paramount distinction was between the freeman and the slave. no slave could be admitted as a witness, except by torture; as for him there was no voice in the state, so for him there was no tenderness in the law. but though the slave might not avenge himself on the master, the system of slavery avenged itself on the state. the advantages to the intellect of the free citizens resulting from the existence of a class maintained to relieve them from the drudgeries of life, were dearly purchased by the constant insecurity of their political repose. the capital of the rich could never be directed to the most productive of all channels--the labour of free competition. the noble did not employ citizens--he purchased slaves. thus the commonwealth derived the least possible advantage from his wealth; it did not flow through the heart of the republic, employing the idle and feeding the poor. as a necessary consequence, the inequalities of fortune were sternly visible and deeply felt. the rich man had no connexion with the poor man--the poor man hated him for a wealth of which he did not (as in states where slavery does not exist) share the blessings--purchasing by labour the advantages of fortune. hence the distinction of classes defied the harmonizing effects of popular legislation. the rich were exposed to unjust and constant exactions; and society was ever liable to be disorganized by attacks upon property. there was an eternal struggle between the jealousies of the populace and the fears of the wealthy; and many of the disorders which modern historians inconsiderately ascribe to the institutions of freedom were in reality the growth of the existence of slavery. chapter ii. the departure of solon from athens.--the rise of pisistratus.--return of solon.--his conduct and death.--the second and third tyranny of pisistratus.--capture of sigeum.--colony in the chersonesus founded by the first miltiades.--death of pisistratus. i. although the great constitutional reforms of solon were no doubt carried into effect during his archonship, yet several of his legislative and judicial enactments were probably the work of years. when we consider the many interests to conciliate, the many prejudices to overcome, which in all popular states cripple and delay the progress of change in its several details, we find little difficulty in supposing, with one of the most luminous of modern scholars [ ], that solon had ample occupation for twenty years after the date of his archonship. during this period little occurred in the foreign affairs of athens save the prosperous termination of the cirrhaean war, as before recorded. at home the new constitution gradually took root, although often menaced and sometimes shaken by the storms of party and the general desire for further innovation. the eternal consequence of popular change is, that while it irritates the party that loses power, it cannot content the party that gains. it is obvious that each concession to the people but renders them better able to demand concessions more important. the theories of some--the demands of others--harassed the lawgiver, and threatened the safety of the laws. solon, at length, was induced to believe that his ordinances required the sanction and repose of time, and that absence --that moral death--would not only free himself from importunity, but his infant institutions from the frivolous disposition of change. in his earlier years he had repaired, by commercial pursuits, estates that had been empoverished by the munificence of his father; and, still cultivating the same resources, he made pretence of his vocation to solicit permission for an absence of ten years. he is said to have obtained a solemn promise from the people to alter none of his institutions during that period [ ]; and thus he departed from the city (probably b. c. ), of whose future glories he had laid the solid foundation. attracted by his philosophical habits to that solemn land, beneath whose mysteries the credulous greeks revered the secrets of existent wisdom, the still adventurous athenian repaired to the cities of the nile, and fed the passion of speculative inquiry from the learning of the egyptian priests. departing thence to cyprus, he assisted, as his own verses assure us, in the planning of a new city, founded by one of the kings of that beautiful island, and afterward invited to the court of croesus (associated with his father alyattes, then living), he imparted to the lydian, amid the splendours of state and the adulation of slaves, that well-known lesson on the uncertainty of human grandeur, which, according to herodotus, croesus so seasonably remembered at the funeral pile. [ ] ii. however prudent had appeared to solon his absence from athens, it is to be lamented that he did not rather brave the hazards from which his genius might have saved the state, than incur those which the very removal of a master-spirit was certain to occasion. we may bind men not to change laws, but we cannot bind the spirit and the opinion, from which laws alone derive cogency or value. we may guard against the innovations of a multitude, which a wise statesman sees afar off, and may direct to great ends; but we cannot guard against that dangerous accident--not to be foreseen, not to be directed--the ambition of a man of genius! during the absence of solon there rose into eminence one of those remarkable persons who give to vicious designs all the attraction of individual virtues. bold, generous, affable, eloquent, endowed with every gift of nature and fortune-- kinsman to solon, but of greater wealth and more dazzling qualities-- the young pisistratus, son of hippocrates, early connected himself with the democratic or highland party. the megarians, who had never relinquished their designs on salamis, had taken an opportunity, apparently before the travels, and, according to plutarch, even before the legislation of solon, to repossess themselves of the island. when the athenians were enabled to extend their energies beyond their own great domestic revolution, pisistratus obtained the command of an expedition against these dangerous neighbours, which was attended with the most signal success. a stratagem referred to solon by plutarch, who has with so contagious an inaccuracy blended into one the two several and distinct expeditions of pisistratus and solon, ought rather to be placed to the doubtful glory of the son of hippocrates [ ]. a number of young men sailed with pisistratus to colias, and taking the dress of women, whom they there seized while sacrificing to ceres, a spy was despatched to salamis, to inform the megarian guard that many of the principal athenian matrons were at colias, and might be easily captured. the megarians were decoyed, despatched a body of men to the opposite shore, and beholding a group in women's attire dancing by the strand, landed confusedly to seize the prize. the pretended females drew forth their concealed weapons, and the megarians, surprised and dismayed, were cut off to a man. the victors lost no time in setting sail for salamis, and easily regained the isle. pisistratus carried the war into megara itself, and captured the port of nisaea. these exploits were the foundation of his after greatness; and yet young, at the return of solon, he was already at the head of the democratic party. but neither his rank, his genius, nor his popular influence sufficed to give to his faction a decided eminence over those of his rivals. the wealthy nobles of the lowlands were led by lycurgus--the moderate party of the coastmen by megacles, the head of the alcmaeonidae. and it was in the midst, of the strife and agitation produced by these great sections of the people that solon returned to athens. iii. the venerable legislator was received with all the grateful respect he deserved; but age had dimmed the brilliancy of his powers. his voice could no longer penetrate the mighty crowds of the market-place. new idols had sprung up--new passions were loosed--new interests formed, and amid the roar and stir of the eternal movement, it was in vain for the high-hearted old man to recall those rushing on the future to the boundaries of the past. if unsuccessful in public, he was not discouraged from applying in private to the leaders of the several parties. of all those rival nobles, none deferred to his advice with so marked a respect as the smooth and plausible pisistratus. perhaps, indeed, that remarkable man contemplated the same objects as solon himself,--although the one desired to effect by the authority of the chief, the order and the energy which the other would have trusted to the development of the people. but, masking his more interested designs, pisistratus outbid all competition in his seeming zeal for the public welfare. the softness of his manners--his profuse liberality--his generosity even to his foes--the splendid qualities which induced cicero to compare him to julius cesar [ ], charmed the imagination of the multitude, and concealed the selfishness of his views. he was not a hypocrite, indeed, as to his virtues--a dissembler only in his ambition. even solon, in endeavouring to inspire him with a true patriotism, acknowledged his talents and his excellences. "but for ambition," said he, "athens possesses no citizen worthier than pisistratus." the time became ripe for the aspiring projects of the chief of the democracy. iv. the customary crowd was swarming in the market-place, when suddenly in the midst of the assembly appeared the chariot of pisistratus. the mules were bleeding--pisistratus himself was wounded. in this condition the demagogue harangued the people. he declared that he had just escaped from the enemies of himself and the popular party, who (under the auspices of the alcmaeonidae) had attacked him in a country excursion. he reminded the crowd of his services in war--his valour against the megarians--his conquest of nisaea. he implored their protection. indignant and inflamed, the favouring audience shouted their sympathy with his wrongs. "son of hippocrates," said solon, advancing to the spot, and with bitter wit, "you are but a bad imitator of ulysses. he wounded himself to delude his enemies--you to deceive your countrymen." [ ] the sagacity of the reproach was unheeded by the crowd. a special assembly of the people was convened, and a partisan of the demagogue moved that a body-guard of fifty men, armed but with clubs, should be assigned to his protection. despite the infirmities of his age, and the decrease of his popular authority, solon had the energy to oppose the motion, and predict its results. the credulous love of the people swept away all precaution--the guard was granted. its number did not long continue stationary; pisistratus artfully increased the amount, till it swelled to the force required by his designs. he then seized the citadel--the antagonist faction of megacles fled--and pisistratus was master of athens. amid the confusion and tumult of the city, solon retained his native courage. he appeared in public--harangued the citizens--upbraided their blindness--invoked their courage. in his speeches he bade them remember that if it be the more easy task to prevent tyranny, it is the more glorious achievement to destroy it. in his verses [ ] he poured forth the indignant sentiment which a thousand later bards have borrowed and enlarged; "blame not heaven for your tyrants, blame yourselves." the fears of some, the indifference of others, rendered his exhortations fruitless! the brave old man sorrowfully retreated to his house, hung up his weapons without his door, and consoled himself with the melancholy boast that "he had done all to save his country, and its laws." this was his last public effort against the usurper. he disdained flight; and, asked by his friends to what he trusted for safety from the wrath of the victor, replied, "to old age,"--a sad reflection, that so great a man should find in infirmity that shelter which he claimed from glory. v. the remaining days and the latter conduct of solon are involved in obscurity. according to plutarch, he continued at athens, pisistratus showing him the utmost respect, and listening to the counsel which solon condescended to bestow upon him: according to diogenes laertius, he departed again from his native city [ ], indignant at its submission, and hopeless of its freedom, refusing all overtures from pisistratus, and alleging that, having established a free government, he would not appear to sanction the success of a tyrant. either account is sufficiently probable. the wisdom of solon might consent to mitigate what he could not cure, or his patriotism might urge him to avoid witnessing the changes he had no power to prevent. the dispute is of little importance. at his advanced age he could not have long survived the usurpation of pisistratus, nor can we find any authority for the date of his death so entitled to credit as that of phanias, who assigns it to the year following the usurpation of pisistratus. the bright race was already run. according to the grave authority of aristotle, the ashes of solon were scattered over the isle of salamis, which had been the scene of his earlier triumphs; and athens, retaining his immortal, boasted not his perishable remains. vi. pisistratus directed with admirable moderation the courses of the revolution he had produced. many causes of success were combined in his favour. his enemies had been the supposed enemies of the people, and the multitude doubtless beheld the flight of the alcmaeonidae (still odious in their eyes by the massacre of cylon) as the defeat of a foe, while the triumph of the popular chief was recognised as the victory of the people. in all revolutions the man who has sided with the people is permitted by the people the greatest extent of license. it is easy to perceive, by the general desire which the athenians had expressed for the elevation of solon to the supreme authority that the notion of regal authority was not yet hateful to them, and that they were scarcely prepared for the liberties with which they were intrusted. but although they submitted thus patiently to the ascendency of pisistratus, it is evident that a less benevolent or less artful tyrant would not have been equally successful. raised above the law, that subtle genius governed only by the law; nay, he affected to consider its authority greater than his own. he assumed no title--no attribute of sovereignty. he was accused of murder, and he humbly appeared before the tribunal of the areopagus--a proof not more of the moderation of the usurper than of the influence of public opinion. he enforced the laws of solon, and compelled the unruly tempers of his faction to subscribe to their wholesome rigour. the one revolution did not, therefore, supplant, it confirmed, the other. "by these means," says herodotus, "pisistratus mastered athens, and yet his situation was far from secure." [ ] vii. although the heads of the more moderate party, under megacles, had been expelled from athens, yet the faction, equally powerful and equally hostile, headed by lycurgus, and embraced by the bulk of the nobles, still remained. for a time, extending perhaps to five or six years, pisistratus retained his power; but at length, lycurgus, uniting with the exiled alcmaeonidae, succeeded in expelling him from the city. but the union that had led to his expulsion ceased with that event. the contests between the lowlanders and the coastmen were only more inflamed by the defeat of the third party, which had operated as a balance of power, and the broils of their several leaders were fed by personal ambition as by hereditary animosities. megacles, therefore, unable to maintain equal ground with lycurgus, turned his thoughts towards the enemy he had subdued, and sent proposals to pisistratus, offering to unite their forces, and to support him in his pretensions to the tyranny, upon condition that the exiled chief should marry his daughter coesyra. pisistratus readily acceded to the terms, and it was resolved by a theatrical pageant to reconcile his return to the people. in one of the boroughs of the city there was a woman named phya, of singular beauty and lofty stature. clad in complete armour, and drawn in a chariot, this woman was conducted with splendour and triumph towards the city. by her side rode pisistratus--heralds preceded their march, and proclaimed her approach, crying aloud to the athenians "to admit pisistratus, the favourite of minerva, for that the goddess herself had come to earth on his behalf." the sagacity of the athenians was already so acute, and the artifice appeared to herodotus so gross, that the simple halicarnassean could scarcely credit the authenticity of this tale. but it is possible that the people viewed the procession as an ingenious allegory, to the adaptation of which they were already disposed; and that, like the populace of a later and yet more civilized people, they hailed the goddess while they recognised the prostitute [ ]. be that as it may, the son of hippocrates recovered his authority, and fulfilled his treaty with megacles by a marriage with his daughter. between the commencement of his first tyranny and the date of his second return, there was probably an interval of twelve years. his sons were already adults. partly from a desire not to increase his family, partly from some superstitious disinclination to the blood of the alcmaeonidae, which the massacre of cylon still stigmatized with contamination, pisistratus conducted himself towards the fair coesyra with a chastity either unwelcome to her affection, or afflicting to her pride. the unwedded wife communicated the mortifying secret to her mother, from whose lips it soon travelled to the father. he did not view the purity of pisistratus with charitable eyes. he thought it an affront to his own person that that of his daughter should be so tranquilly regarded. he entered into a league with his former opponents against the usurper, and so great was the danger, that pisistratus (despite his habitual courage) betook himself hastily to flight:--a strange instance of the caprice of human events, that a man could with a greater impunity subdue the freedom of his country, than affront the vanity of his wife! [ ] viii. pisistratus, his sons and partisans, retired to eretria in euboea: there they deliberated as to their future proceedings--should they submit to their exile, or attempt to retrieve, their power? the councils of his son hippias prevailed with pisistratus; it was resolved once more to attempt the sovereignty of athens. the neighbouring tribes assisted the exiles with forage and shelter. many cities accorded the celebrated noble large sums of money, and the thebans outdid the rest in pernicious liberality. a troop of argive adventurers came from the peloponnesus to tender to the baffled usurper the assistance of their swords, and lygdamis, an individual of naxos, himself ambitious of the government of his native state, increased his resources both by money and military force. at length, though after a long and tedious period of no less than eleven years, pisistratus resolved to hazard the issue of open war. at the head of a foreign force he advanced to marathon, and pitched his tents upon its immortal plain. troops of the factious or discontented thronged from athens to his camp, while the bulk of the citizens, unaffected ay such desertions, viewed his preparations with indifference. at length, when they heard that pisistratus had broken up his encampment, and was on his march to the city, the athenians awoke from their apathy, and collected their forces to oppose him. he continued to advance his troops, halted at the temple of minerva, whose earthly representative had once so benignly assisted him, and pitched his tents opposite the fane. he took advantage of that time in which the athenians, during the heats of the day, were at their entertainments, or indulging the noontide repose, still so grateful to the inhabitants of a warmer climate, to commence his attack. he soon scattered the foe, and ordered his sons to overtake them in their flight, to bid them return peacefully to their employments, and fear nothing from his vengeance. his clemency assisted the effect of his valour, and once more the son of hippocrates became the master of the athenian commonwealth. ix. pisistratus lost no time in strengthening himself by formidable alliances. he retained many auxiliary troops, and provided large pecuniary resources [ ]. he spared the persons of his opponents, but sent their children as hostages to naxos, which he first reduced and consigned to the tyranny of his auxiliary, lygdamis. many of his inveterate enemies had perished on the field--many fled from the fear of his revenge. he was undisturbed in the renewal of his sway, and having no motive for violence, pursued the natural bent of a mild and generous disposition, ruling as one who wishes men to forget the means by which his power has been attained. pisistratus had that passion for letters which distinguished most of the more brilliant athenians. although the poems of homer were widely known and deeply venerated long before his time, yet he appears, by a more accurate collection and arrangement of them, and probably by bringing them into a more general and active circulation in athens, to have largely added to the wonderful impetus to poetical emulation, which those immortal writings were calculated to give. when we consider how much, even in our own times, and with all the advantages of the press, the diffused fame and intellectual influence of shakspeare and milton have owed to the praise and criticism of individuals, we may readily understand the kind of service rendered by pisistratus to homer. the very example of so eminent a man would have drawn upon the poet a less vague and more inquiring species of admiration; the increased circulation of copies--the more frequent public recitals--were advantages timed at that happy season when the people who enjoyed them had grown up from wondering childhood to imitative and studious youth. and certain it is, that from this period we must date the marked and pervading influence of homer upon athenian poetry; for the renown of a poet often precedes by many generations the visible influence of his peculiar genius. it is chiefly within the last seventy years that we may date the wonderful effect that shakspeare was destined to produce upon the universal intellect of europe. the literary obligations of athens to pisistratus were not limited to his exertions on behalf of homer: he is said to have been the first in greece who founded a public library, rendering its treasures accessible to all. and these two benefits united, justly entitle the fortunate usurper to the praise of first calling into active existence that intellectual and literary spirit which became diffused among the athenian people, and originated the models and masterpieces of the world. it was in harmony with this part of his character that pisistratus refitted the taste and socialized the habits of the citizens, by the erection of buildings dedicated to the public worship, or the public uses, and laid out the stately gardens of the lyceum--(in after-times the favourite haunt of philosophy), by the banks of the river dedicated to song. pisistratus did thus more than continue the laws of solon--he inculcated the intellectual habits which the laws were designed to create. and as in the circle of human events the faults of one man often confirm what was begun by the virtues of another, so perhaps the usurpation of pisistratus was necessary to establish the institutions of solon. it is clear that the great lawgiver was not appreciated at the close of his life; as his personal authority had ceased to have influence, so possibly might have soon ceased the authority of his code. the citizens required repose to examine, to feel, to estimate the blessings of his laws--that repose they possessed under pisistratus. amid the tumult of fierce and equipoised factions it might be fortunate that a single individual was raised above the rest, who, having the wisdom to appreciate the institutions of solon, had the authority to enforce them. silently they grew up under his usurped but benignant sway, pervading, penetrating, exalting the people, and fitting them by degrees to the liberty those institutions were intended to confer. if the disorders of the republic led to the ascendency of pisistratus, so the ascendency of pisistratus paved the way for the renewal of the republic. as cromwell was the representative of the very sentiments he appeared to subvert--as napoleon in his own person incorporated the principles of the revolution of france, so the tyranny of pisistratus concentrated and imbodied the elements of that democracy he rather wielded than overthrew. x. at home, time and tranquillity cemented the new laws; poetry set before the emulation of the athenians its noblest monument in the epics of homer; and tragedy put forth its first unmellowed fruits in the rude recitations of thespis (b. c. ). [ ] pisistratus sought also to counterbalance the growing passion for commerce by peculiar attention to agriculture, in which it is not unlikely that he was considerably influenced by early prepossessions, for his party had been the mountaineers attached to rural pursuits, and his adversaries the coastmen engaged in traffic. as a politician of great sagacity, he might also have been aware, that a people accustomed to agricultural employments are ever less inclined to democratic institutions than one addicted to commerce and manufactures; and if he were the author of a law, which at all events he more rigidly enforced, requiring every citizen to give an account of his mode of livelihood, and affixing punishments to idleness, he could not have taken wiser precautions against such seditions as are begot by poverty upon indolence, or under a juster plea have established the superintendence of a concealed police. we learn from aristotle that his policy consisted much in subjecting and humbling the pediaei, or wealthy nobles of the lowlands. but his very affection to agriculture must have tended to strengthen an aristocracy, and his humility to the areopagus was a proof of his desire to conciliate the least democratic of the athenian courts. he probably, therefore, acted only against such individual chiefs as had incurred his resentment, or as menaced his power; nor can we perceive in his measures the systematic and deliberate policy, common with other greek tyrants, to break up an aristocracy and create a middle class. xi. abroad, the ambition of pisistratus, though not extensive, was successful. there was a town on the hellespont called sigeum, which had long been a subject of contest between the athenians and the mitylenaeans. some years before the legislation of solon, the athenian general, phryno, had been slain in single combat by pittacus, one of the seven wise men, who had come into the field armed like the roman retiarius, with a net, a trident, and a dagger. this feud was terminated by the arbitration of periander, tyrant of corinth, who awarded sigeum to the athenians, which was then in their possession, by a wise and plausible decree, that each party should keep what it had got. this war was chiefly remarkable for an incident that introduces us somewhat unfavourably to the most animated of the lyric poets. alcaeus, an eminent citizen of mitylene, and, according to ancient scandal, the unsuccessful lover of sappho, conceived a passion for military fame: in his first engagement he seems to have discovered that his proper vocation was rather to sing of battles than to share them. he fled from the field, leaving his arms behind him, which the athenians obtained, and suspended at sigeum in the temple of minerva. although this single action, which alcaeus himself recorded, cannot be fairly held a sufficient proof of the poet's cowardice, yet his character and patriotism are more equivocal than his genius. of the last we have ample testimony, though few remains save in the frigid grace of the imitations of horace. the subsequent weakness and civil dissensions of athens were not favourable to the maintenance of this distant conquest--the mitylenaeans regained sigeum. against this town pisistratus now directed his arms--wrested it from the mitylenaeans-- and, instead of annexing it to the republic of athens, assigned its government to the tyranny of his natural son, hegesistratus,--a stormy dominion, which the valour of the bastard defended against repeated assaults. [ ] xii. but one incident, the full importance of which the reader must wait a while to perceive, i shall in this place relate. among the most powerful of the athenians was a noble named miltiades, son of cypselus. by original descent he was from the neighbouring island of aegina, and of the heroic race of aeacus; but he dated the establishment of his house in athens from no less distant a founder than the son of ajax. miltiades had added new lustre to his name by a victory at the olympic games. it was probably during the first tyranny of pisistratus [ ] that an adventure, attended with vast results to greece, befell this noble. his family were among the enemies of pisistratus, and were regarded by that sagacious usurper with a jealous apprehension which almost appears prophetic. miltiades was, therefore, uneasy under the government of pisistratus, and discontented with his position in athens. one day, as he sat before his door (such is the expression of the enchanting herodotus, unconscious of the patriarchal picture he suggests [ ]), miltiades observed certain strangers pass by, whose garments and spears denoted them to be foreigners. the sight touched the chief, and he offered the strangers the use of his house, and the rites of hospitality. they accepted his invitation, were charmed by his courtesy, and revealed to him the secret of their travel. in that narrow territory which, skirting the hellespont, was called the chersonesus, or peninsula, dwelt the doloncians, a thracian tribe. engaged in an obstinate war with the neighbouring absinthians, the doloncians had sent to the oracle of delphi to learn the result of the contest. the pythian recommended the messengers to persuade the first man who, on their quitting the temple, should offer them the rites of hospitality, to found a colony in their native land. passing homeward through phocis and boeotia, and receiving no such invitation by the way, the messengers turned aside to athens; miltiades was the first who offered them the hospitality they sought; they entreated him now to comply with the oracle, and assist their countrymen; the discontented noble was allured by the splendour of the prospect--he repaired in person to delphi--consulted the pythian--received a propitious answer--and collecting all such of the athenians as his authority could enlist, or their own ambition could decoy, he repaired to the chersonesus (probably b. c. ). there he fortified a great part of the isthmus, as a barrier to the attacks of the absinthians: but shortly afterward, in a feud with the people of lampsacus, he was taken prisoner by the enemy. miltiades, however, had already secured the esteem and protection of croesus; and the lydian monarch remonstrated with the lampsacenes in so formidable a tone of menace, that the athenian obtained his release, and regained his new principality. in the meanwhile, his brother cimon (who was chiefly remarkable for his success at the olympic games), sharing the political sentiments of his house, had been driven into exile by pisistratus. by a transfer to the brilliant tyrant of a victory in the olympic chariot-race, he, however, propitiated pisistratus, and returned to athens. viii. full of years, and in the serene enjoyment of power, pisistratus died (b. c. ). his character may already be gathered from his actions: crafty in the pursuit of power, but magnanimous in its possession, we have only, with some qualification, to repeat the eulogium on him ascribed to his greater kinsman, solon--"that he was the best of tyrants, and without a vice save that of ambition." chapter iii. the administration of hippias.--the conspiracy of harmodius and aristogiton.--the death of hipparchus.--cruelties of hippias.--the young miltiades sent to the chersonesus.--the spartans combine with the alcmaeonidae against hippias.--the fall of the tyranny.--the innovations of clisthenes.--his expulsion and restoration.--embassy to the satrap of sardis.--retrospective view of the lydian, medean, and persian monarchies.--result of the athenian embassy to sardis.-- conduct of cleomenes.--victory of the athenians against the boeotians and chalcidians.--hippias arrives at sparta.--the speech of sosicles the corinthian.--hippias retires to sardis. i. upon the death of pisistratus, his three sons, hipparchus, hippias, and thessalus, succeeded to the government. nor, though hippias was the eldest, does he seem to have exercised a more prominent authority than the rest--since, in the time of thucydides, and long afterward, it was the popular error to consider hipparchus the first-born. hippias was already of mature age; and, as we have seen, it was he who had counselled his father not to despair, after his expulsion from athens. he was a man of courage and ability worthy of his race. he governed with the same careful respect for the laws which had distinguished and strengthened the authority of his predecessor. he even rendered himself yet more popular than pisistratus by reducing one half the impost of a tithe on the produce of the land, which that usurper had imposed. notwithstanding this relief, he was enabled, by a prudent economy, to flatter the national vanity by new embellishments to the city. in the labours of his government he was principally aided by his second brother, hipparchus, a man of a yet more accomplished and intellectual order of mind. but although hippias did not alter the laws, he chose his own creatures to administer them. besides, whatever share in the government was intrusted to his brothers, hipparchus and thessalus, his son and several of his family were enrolled among the archons of the city. and they who by office were intended for the guardians of liberty were the necessary servants of the tyrant. ii. if we might place unhesitating faith in the authenticity of the dialogue attributed to plato under the title of "hipparchus," we should have, indeed, high authority in favour of the virtues and the wisdom of that prince. and by whomsoever the dialogue was written, it refers to facts, in the passage relative to the son of pisistratus, in a manner sufficiently positive to induce us to regard that portion of it with some deference. according to the author, we learn that hipparchus, passionately attached to letters, brought anacreon to athens, and lived familiarly with simonides. he seems to have been inspired with the ambition of a moralist, and distributed hermae, or stone busts of mercury, about the city and the public roads, which, while answering a similar purpose to our mile-stones, arrested the eye of the passenger with pithy and laconic apothegms in verse; such as, "do not deceive your friend," and "persevere in affection to justice;"--proofs rather of the simplicity than the wisdom of the prince. it is not by writing the decalogue upon mile-stones that the robber would be terrified, or the adulterer converted. it seems that the apothegmatical hipparchus did not associate with anacreon more from sympathy with his genius than inclination to the subjects to which it was devoted. he was addicted to pleasure; nor did he confine its pursuits to the more legitimate objects of sensual affection. harmodius, a young citizen of no exalted rank, but much personal beauty, incurred the affront of his addresses [ ]. harmodius, in resentment, confided the overtures of the moralist to his friend and preceptor, aristogiton. while the two were brooding over the outrage, hipparchus, in revenge for the disdain of harmodius, put a public insult upon the sister of that citizen, a young maiden. she received a summons to attend some public procession, as bearer of one of the sacred vessels: on presenting herself she was abruptly rejected, with the rude assertion that she never could have been honoured with an invitation of which she was unworthy. this affront rankled deeply in the heart of harmodius, but still more in that of the friendly aristogiton, and they now finally resolved upon revenge. at the solemn festival of panathenaea, (in honour of minerva), it was the custom for many of the citizens to carry arms in the procession: for this occasion they reserved the blow. they intrusted their designs to few, believing that if once the attempt was begun the people would catch the contagion, and rush spontaneously to the assertion of their freedom. the festival arrived. bent against the elder tyrant, perhaps from nobler motives than those which urged them against hipparchus [ ], each armed with a dagger concealed in the sacred myrtle bough which was borne by those who joined the procession, the conspirators advanced to the spot in the suburbs where hippias was directing the order of the ceremonial. to their dismay, they perceived him conversing familiarly with one of their own partisans, and immediately suspected that to be the treason of their friend which in reality was the frankness of the affable prince. struck with fear, they renounced their attempt upon hippias, suddenly retreated to the city, and, meeting with hipparchus, rushed upon him, wounded, and slew him. aristogiton turned to fly--he escaped the guards, but was afterward seized, and "not mildly treated" [ ] by the tyrant. such is the phrase of thucydides, which, if we may take the interpretation of justin and the later writers, means that, contrary to the law, he was put to the torture [ ]. harmodius was slain upon the spot. the news of his brother's death was brought to hippias. with an admirable sagacity and presence of mind, he repaired, not to the place of the assassination, but towards the procession itself, rightly judging that the conspiracy had only broken out in part. as yet the news of the death of hipparchus had not reached the more distant conspirators in the procession, and hippias betrayed not in the calmness of his countenance any signs of his sorrow or his fears. he approached the procession, and with a composed voice commanded them to deposite their arms, and file off towards a place which he indicated. they obeyed the order, imagining he had something to communicate to them. then turning to his guards, hippias bade them seize the weapons thus deposited, and he himself selected from the procession all whom he had reason to suspect, or on whose persons a dagger was found, for it was only with the open weapons of spear and shield that the procession was lawfully to be made. thus rose and thus terminated that conspiracy which gave to the noblest verse and the most enduring veneration the names of harmodius and aristogiton. [ ] iii. the acutest sharpener of tyranny is an unsuccessful attempt to destroy it--to arouse the suspicion of power is almost to compel it to cruelty. hitherto we have seen that hippias had graced his authority with beneficent moderation; the death of his brother filled him with secret alarm; and the favour of the populace at the attempted escape of aristogiton--the ease with which, from a personal affront to an obscure individual, a formidable conspiracy had sprung up into life, convinced him that the arts of personal popularity are only to be relied on when the constitution of the government itself is popular. it is also said that, when submitted to the torture, aristogiton, with all the craft of revenge, asserted the firmest friends of hippias to have been his accomplices. thus harassed by distrust, hippias resolved to guard by terror a power which clemency had failed to render secure. he put several of the citizens to death. according to the popular traditions of romance, one of the most obnoxious acts of his severity was exercised upon a woman worthy to be the mistress of aristogiton. leaena, a girl of humble birth, beloved by that adventurous citizen, was sentenced to the torture, and, that the pain might not wring from her any confession of the secrets of the conspiracy, she bit out her tongue. the athenians, on afterward recovering their liberties, dedicated to the heroine a brazen lioness, not inappropriately placed in the vicinity of a celebrated statue of venus [ ]. no longer depending on the love of the citizens, hippias now looked abroad for the support of his power; he formed an alliance with hippoclus, the prince of lampsacus, by marrying his daughter with the son of that tyrant, who possessed considerable influence at the persian court, to which he already directed his eyes--whether as a support in the authority of the present, or an asylum against the reverses of the future. [ ] it was apparently about a year before the death of hipparchus, that stesagoras, the nephew and successor of that miltiades who departed from athens to found a colony in the thracian chersonesus, perished by an assassin's blow. hippias, evidently deeming he had the right, as sovereign of the parent country, to appoint the governor of the colony, sent to the chersonesus in that capacity the brother of the deceased, a namesake of the first founder, whose father, cimon, from jealousy of his power or repute, had been murdered by the sons of pisistratus [ ]. the new miltiades was a man of consummate talents, but one who scrupled little as to the means by which to accomplish his objects. arriving at his government, he affected a deep sorrow for the loss of his brother; the principal nobles of the various cities of the chersonesus came in one public procession to condole with him; the crafty chief seized and loaded them with irons, and, having thus insnared the possible rivals of his power, or enemies of his designs, he secured the undisputed possession of the whole chersonesus, and maintained his civil authority by a constant military force. a marriage with hegesipyle, a daughter of one of the thracian princes, at once enhanced the dignity and confirmed the sway of the young and aspiring chief. some years afterward, we shall see in this miltiades the most eminent warrior of his age--at present we leave him to an unquiet and perilous power, and return to hippias. iv. a storm gathered rapidly on against the security and ambition of the tyrant. the highborn and haughty family of the alcmaeonids had been expelled from athens at the victorious return of pisistratus-- their estates in attica confiscated--their houses razed--their very sepulchres destroyed. after fruitless attempts against the oppressors, they had retired to lipsydrium, a fortress on the heights of parnes, where they continued to cherish the hope of return and the desire of revenge. despite the confiscation of their attic estates, their wealth and resources, elsewhere secured, were enormous. the temple of delphi having been destroyed by fire, they agreed with the amphictyons to rebuild it, and performed the holy task with a magnificent splendour far exceeding the conditions of the contract. but in that religious land, wealth, thus lavished, was no unprofitable investment. the priests of delphi were not insensible of the liberality of the exiles, and clisthenes, the most eminent and able of the alcmaeonidae, was more than suspected of suborning the pythian. sparta, the supporter of oligarchies, was the foe of tyrants, and every spartan who sought the oracle was solemnly involved to aid the glorious enterprise of delivering the eupatrids of athens from the yoke of the pisistratidae. the spartans were at length moved by instances so repeatedly urged. policy could not but soften that jealous state to such appeals to her superstition. under the genius of the pisistratidae, athens had rapidly advanced in power, and the restoration of the alcmaeonidae might have seemed to the spartan sagacity but another term for the establishment of that former oligarchy which had repressed the intellect and exhausted the resources of an active and aspiring people. sparta aroused herself, then, at length, and "though in violation." says herodotus, "of some ancient ties of hospitality," despatched a force by sea against the prince of athens. that alert and able ruler lost no time in seeking assistance from his allies, the thessalians; and one of their powerful princes led a thousand horsemen against the spartans, who had debarked at phalerum. joined by these allies, hippias engaged and routed the enemy, and the spartan leader himself fell upon the field of battle. his tomb was long visible in cynosarges, near the gates of athens--a place rendered afterward more illustrious by giving name to the cynic philosophers. [ ] undismayed by their defeat, the spartans now despatched a more considerable force against the tyrant, under command of their king cleomenes. this army proceeded by land--entered attica--encountered, defeated, the thessalian horse [ ],--and marched towards the gates of athens, joined, as they proceeded, by all those athenians who hoped, in the downfall of hippias, the resurrection of their liberties. the spartan troops hastened to besiege the athenian prince in the citadel, to which he retired with his forces. but hippias had provided his refuge with all the necessaries which might maintain him in a stubborn and prolonged resistance. the spartans were unprepared for the siege--the blockade of a few days sufficed to dishearten them, and they already meditated a retreat. a sudden incident opening to us in the midst of violence one of those beautiful glimpses of human affection which so often adorn and sanctify the darker pages of history, unexpectedly secured the spartan triumph. hippias and his friends, fearing the safety of their children in the citadel, resolved to dismiss them privately to some place of greater security. unhappily, their care was frustrated, and the children fell into the hands of the enemy. all the means of success within their reach (the foe wearied--the garrison faithful), the parents yet resigned themselves at once to the voluntary sacrifice of conquest and ambition. upon the sole condition of recovering their children, hippias and his partisans consented to surrender the citadel, and quit the territories of attica within five days. thus, in the fourth year from the death of hipparchus (b. c. ), and about fifty years after the first establishment of the tyranny under its brilliant founder, the dominion of athens passed away from the house of pisistratus. v. the party of hippias, defeated, not by the swords of the enemy, but by the soft impulses of nature, took their way across the stream of the immemorial scamander, and sought refuge at sigeum, still under the government of hegesistratus, the natural brother of the exiled prince. the instant the pressure of one supreme power was removed, the two parties imbodying the aristocratic and popular principles rose into active life. the state was to be a republic, but of what denomination? the nobles naturally aspired to the predominance--at their head was the eupatrid isagoras; the strife of party always tends to produce popular results, even from elements apparently the most hostile. clisthenes, the head of the alcmaeonidae, was by birth even yet more illustrious than isagoras; for, among the nobles, the alcmaeonid family stood pre-eminent. but, unable to attain the sole power of the government, clisthenes and his party were unwilling to yield to the more numerous faction of an equal. the exile and sufferings of the alcmaeonids had, no doubt, secured to them much of the popular compassion; their gallant struggles against, their ultimate victory over the usurper, obtained the popular enthusiasm; thus it is probable, that an almost insensible sympathy had sprung up between this high-born faction and the people at large; and when, unable to cope with the party of the nobles, clisthenes attached himself to the movement of the commons, the enemy of the tyrant appeared in his natural position--at the head of the democracy. clisthenes was, however, rather the statesman of a party than the legislator for a people--it was his object permanently to break up the power of the great proprietors, not as enemies of the commonwealth, but as rivals to his faction. the surest way to diminish the influence of property in elections is so to alter the constituencies as to remove the electors from the immediate control of individual proprietors. under the old ionic and hereditary divisions of four tribes, many ancient associations and ties between the poorer and the nobler classes were necessarily formed. by one bold innovation, the whole importance of which was not immediately apparent, clisthenes abolished these venerable divisions, and, by a new geographical survey, created ten tribes instead of the former four. these were again subdivided into districts, or demes; the number seems to have varied, but at the earliest period they were not less than one hundred--at a later period they exceeded one hundred and seventy. to these demes were transferred all the political rights and privileges of the divisions they supplanted. each had a local magistrate and local assemblies. like corporations, these petty courts of legislature ripened the moral spirit of democracy while fitting men for the exercise of the larger rights they demanded. a consequence of the alteration of the number of the tribes was an increase in the number that composed the senate, which now rose from four to five hundred members. clisthenes did not limit himself to this change in the constituent bodies--he increased the total number of the constituents; new citizens were made--aliens were admitted--and it is supposed by some, though upon rather vague authorities, that several slaves were enfranchised. it was not enough, however, to augment the number of the people, it was equally necessary to prevent the ascension of a single man. encouraged by the example in other states of greece, forewarned by the tyranny of pisistratus, clisthenes introduced the institution of the ostracism [ ]. probably about the same period, the mode of election to public office generally was altered from the public vote to the secret lot [ ]. it is evident that these changes, whether salutary or pernicious, were not wanton or uncalled for. the previous constitution had not sufficed to protect the republic from a tyranny: something deficient in the machinery of solon's legislation had for half a century frustrated its practical intentions. a change was, therefore, necessary to the existence of the free state; and the care with which that change was directed towards the diminution of the aristocratic influence, is in itself a proof that such influence had been the shelter of the defeated tyranny. the athenians themselves always considered the innovations of clisthenes but as the natural development of the popular institutions of solon; and that decisive and energetic noble seems indeed to have been one of those rude but serviceable instruments by which a more practical and perfect action is often wrought out from the incompleted theories of greater statesmen. vi. meanwhile, isagoras, thus defeated by his rival, had the mean ambition to appeal to the spartan sword. ancient scandal attributes to cleomenes, king of sparta, an improper connexion with the wife of isagoras, and every one knows that the fondest friend of the cuckold is invariably the adulterer;--the national policy of founding aristocracies was doubtless, however, a graver motive with the spartan king than his desire to assist isagoras. cleomenes by a public herald proclaimed the expulsion of clisthenes, upon a frivolous pretence that the alcmaeonidae were still polluted by the hereditary sacrilege of cylon. clisthenes privately retired from the city, and the spartan king, at the head of an inconsiderable troop, re-entered athens-- expelled, at the instance of isagoras, seven hundred athenian families, as inculpated in the pretended pollution of clisthenes-- dissolved the senate--and committed all the offices of the state to an oligarchy of three hundred (a number and a council founded upon the dorian habits), each of whom was the creature of isagoras. but the noble assembly he had thus violently dissolved refused obedience to his commands; they appealed to the people, whom the valour of liberty simultaneously aroused, and the citadel, of which isagoras and the spartans instantly possessed themselves, was besieged by the whole power of athens. the conspirators held out only two days; on the third, they accepted the conditions of the besiegers, and departed peaceably from the city. some of the athenians, who had shared the treason without participating in the flight, were justly executed. clisthenes, with the families expelled by cleomenes, was recalled, and the republic of athens was thus happily re-established. vii. but the iron vengeance of that nation of soldiers, thus far successfully braved, was not to be foreboded without alarm by the athenians. they felt that cleomenes had only abandoned his designs to return to them more prepared for contest; and athens was not yet in a condition to brave the determined and never-sparing energies of sparta. the athenians looked around the states of greece--many in alliance with lacedaemon--some governed by tyrants--others distracted with their own civil dissensions; there were none from whom the new commonwealth could hope for a sufficient assistance against the revenge of cleomenes. in this dilemma, they resorted to the only aid which suggested itself, and sought, across the boundaries of greece, the alliance of the barbarians. they adventured a formal embassy to artaphernes, satrap of sardis, to engage the succour of darius, king of persia. accompanying the athenians in this mission, full of interest, for it was the first public transaction between that republic and the throne of persia, i pause to take a rapid survey of the origin of that mighty empire, whose destinies became thenceforth involved in the history of grecian misfortunes and grecian fame. that survey commences with the foundation of the lydian monarchy. viii. amid the grecian colonies of asia whose rise we have commemorated, around and above a hill commanding spacious and fertile plains watered by the streams of the cayster and maeander; an ancient pelasgic tribe called the maeonians had established their abode. according to herodotus, these settlers early obtained the name of lydians, from lydus, the son of atys. the dorian revolution did not spare these delightful seats, and an heraclid dynasty is said to have reigned five hundred years over the maeonians; these in their turn were supplanted by a race known to us as the mermnadae, the founder of whom, gyges, murdered and dethroned the last of the heraclidae; and with a new dynasty seems to have commenced a new and less asiatic policy. gyges, supported by the oracle of delphi, was the first barbarian, except one of the many phrygian kings claiming the name of midas, who made votive offerings to that grecian shrine. from his time this motley tribe, the link between hellas and the east, came into frequent collision with the grecian colonies. gyges himself made war with miletus and smyrna, and even captured colophon. with miletus, indeed, the hostility of the lydians became hereditary, and was renewed with various success by the descendants of gyges, until, in the time of his great-grandson alyattes, a war of twelve years with that splendid colony was terminated by a solemn peace and a strict alliance. meanwhile, the petty but warlike monarchy founded by gyges had preserved the asiatic greeks from dangers yet more formidable than its own ambition. from a remote period, savage and ferocious tribes, among which are pre-eminent the treres and cimmerians, had often ravaged the inland plains--now for plunder, now for settlement. magnesia had been entirely destroyed by the treres--even sardis, the capital of the mermnadae, had been taken, save the citadel, by the cimmerians. it was reserved for alyattes to terminate these formidable irruptions, and asia was finally delivered by his arms from a people in whom modern erudition has too fondly traced the ancestors of the cymry, or ancient britons [ ]. to this enterprising and able king succeeded a yet more illustrious monarch, who ought to have found in his genius the fame he has derived from his misfortunes. at the age of thirty-five croesus ascended the lydian throne. before associated in the government with his father, he had rendered himself distinguished in military service; and, wise, accomplished, but grasping and ambitious, this remarkable monarch now completed the designs of his predecessors. commencing with ephesus, he succeeded in rendering tributary every grecian colony on the western coast of asia; and, leaving to each state its previous institutions, he kept by moderation what he obtained by force. croesus was about to construct a fleet for the purpose of adding to his dominions the isles of the aegaean, but is said to have been dissuaded from his purpose by a profound witticism of one of the seven wise men of greece. "the islanders," said the sage, "are about to storm you in your capital of sardis, with ten thousand cavalry."-- "nothing could gratify me more," said the king, "than to see the islanders invading the lydian continent with horsemen."--"right," replied the wise man, "and it will give the islanders equal satisfaction to find the lydians attacking them by a fleet. to revenge their disasters on the land, the greeks desire nothing better than to meet you on the ocean." the answer enlightened the king, and, instead of fitting out his fleet, he entered into amicable alliance with the ionians of the isles [ ]. but his ambition was only thwarted in one direction to strike its roots in another; and he turned his invading arms against his neighbours on the continent, until he had progressively subdued nearly all the nations, save the lycians and cilicians, westward to the halys. and thus rapidly and majestically rose from the scanty tribe and limited territory of the old maeonians the monarchy of asia minor. ix. the renown of croesus established, his capital of sardis became the resort of the wise and the adventurous, whether of asia or of greece. in many respects the lydians so closely resembled the greeks as to suggest the affinity which historical evidence scarcely suffices to permit us absolutely to affirm. the manners and the customs of either people did not greatly differ, save that with the lydians, as still throughout the east, but little consideration was attached to women;--they were alike in their cultivation of the arts, and their respect for the oracles of religion--and delphi, in especial, was inordinately enriched by the prodigal superstition of the lydian kings. the tradition which ascribes to the lydians the invention of coined money is a proof of their commercial habits. the neighbouring tmolus teemed with gold, which the waters of the pactolus bore into the very streets of the city. their industry was exercised in the manufacture of articles of luxury rather than those of necessity. their purple garments.-their skill in the workmanship of metals--their marts for slaves and eunuchs--their export trade of unwrought gold--are sufficient evidence both of the extent and the character of their civilization. yet the nature of the oriental government did not fail to operate injuriously on the more homely and useful directions of their energy. they appear never to have worked the gold-mines, whose particles were borne to them by the careless bounty of the pactolus. their early traditional colonies were wafted on grecian vessels. the gorgeous presents with which they enriched the hellenic temples seem to have been fabricated by grecian art, and even the advantages of commerce they seem rather to have suffered than to have sought. but what a people so suddenly risen into splendour, governed by a wise prince, and stimulated perhaps to eventual liberty by the example of the european greeks, ought to have become, it is impossible to conjecture; perhaps the hellenes of the east. at this period, however, of such power--and such promise, the fall of the lydian empire was decreed. far from the fertile fields and gorgeous capital of lydia, amid steril mountains, inhabited by a simple and hardy race, rose the portentous star of the persian cyrus. x. a victim to that luxury which confirms a free but destroys a despotic state, the vast foundations of the assyrian empire were crumbling into decay, when a new monarchy, destined to become its successor, sprung up among one of its subject nations. divided into various tribes, each dependant upon the assyrian sceptre, was a warlike, wandering, and primitive race, known to us under the name of medes. deioces, a chief of one of the tribes, succeeded in uniting these scattered sections into a single people, built a city, and founded an independent throne. his son, phraortes, reduced the persians to his yoke--overran asia--advanced to nineveh--and ultimately perished in battle with a considerable portion of his army. succeeded by his son cyaxares, that monarch consummated the ambitious designs of his predecessors. he organized the miscellaneous hordes that compose an oriental army into efficient and formidable discipline, vanquished the assyrians, and besieged nineveh, when a mighty irruption of the scythian hordes called his attention homeward. a defeat, which at one blow robbed this great king of the dominion of asia, was ultimately recovered by a treacherous massacre of the scythian leaders (b. c. ). the medes regained their power and prosecuted their conquests--nineveh fell--and through the whole assyrian realm, babylon alone remained unsubjugated by the mede. to this new-built and wide-spread empire succeeded astyages, son of the fortunate cyaxares. but it is the usual character of a conquering tribe to adopt the habits and be corrupted by the vices of the subdued nations among which the invaders settle; and the peaceful reign of astyages sufficed to enervate that vigilant and warlike spirit in the victor race, by which alone the vast empires of the east can be preserved from their natural tendency to decay. the persians, subdued by the grandsire of astyages, seized the occasion to revolt. among them rose up a native hero, the gengis-khan of the ancient world. through the fables which obscure his history we may be allowed to conjecture, that cyrus, or khosroo, was perhaps connected by blood with astyages, and, more probably, that he was intrusted with command among the persians by that weak and slothful monarch. be that as it may, he succeeded in uniting under his banners a martial and uncorrupted population, overthrew the median monarchy, and transferred to a dynasty, already worn out with premature old age, the vigorous and aspiring youth of a mountain race. such was the formidable foe that now menaced the rising glories of the lydian king. xi. croesus was allied by blood with the dethroned astyages, and individual resentment at the overthrow of his relation co-operated with his anxious fears of the ambition of the victor. a less sagacious prince might easily have foreseen that the persians would scarcely be secure in their new possessions, ere the wealth and domains of lydia would tempt the restless cupidity of their chief. after much deliberation as to the course to be pursued, croesus resorted for advice to the most celebrated oracles of greece, and even to that of the libyan ammon. the answer he received from delphi flattered, more fatally than the rest, the inclinations of the king. he was informed "that if he prosecuted a war with persia a mighty empire would be overthrown, and he was advised to seek the alliance of the most powerful states of greece." overjoyed with a response to which his hopes gave but one interpretation, the king prodigalized fresh presents on the delphians, and received from them in return, for his people and himself, the honour of priority above all other nations in consulting the oracle, a distinguished seat in the temple, and the right of the citizenship of delphi. once more the fated monarch sought the oracle, and demanded if his power should ever fail. thus replied the pythian: "when a mule shall sit enthroned over the medes, fly, soft lydian, across the pebbly waters of the hermus." the ingenuity of croesus could discover in this reply no reason for alarm, confident that a mule could never be the sovereign of the medes. thus animated, and led on, the son of alyattes prepared to oppose, while it was yet time, the progress of the persian arms. he collected all the force he could summon from his provinces--crossed the halys--entered cappadocia--devastated the surrounding country--destroyed several towns--and finally met on the plains of pteria the persian army. the victory was undecided; but croesus, not satisfied with the force he led, which was inferior to that of cyrus, returned to sardis, despatched envoys for succour into egypt and to babylon, and disbanded, for the present, the disciplined mercenaries whom he had conducted into cappadocia. but cyrus was aware of the movements of the enemy, and by forced and rapid marches arrived at sardis, and encamped before its walls. his army dismissed--his allies scarcely reached by his embassadors--croesus yet showed himself equal to the peril of his fortune. his lydians were among the most valiant of the asiatic nations--dexterous in their national weapon, the spear, and renowned for the skill and prowess of their cavalry. xii. in a wide plain, in the very neighbourhood of the royal sardis, and watered "by the pebbly stream of the hermus," the cavalry of lydia met, and were routed by the force of cyrus. the city was besieged and taken, and the wisest and wealthiest of the eastern kings sunk thenceforth into a petty vassal, consigned as guest or prisoner to a median city near ecbatana [ ]. the prophecy was fulfilled, and a mighty empire overthrown. [ ] the grecian colonies of asia, during the lydian war, had resisted the overtures of cyrus, and continued faithful to croesus; they had now cause to dread the vengeance of the conqueror. the ionians and aeolians sent to demand the assistance of lacedaemon, pledged equally with themselves to the lydian cause. but the spartans, yet more cautious than courageous, saw but little profit in so unequal an alliance. they peremptorily refused the offer of the colonists, but, after their departure, warily sent a vessel of fifty oars to watch the proceedings of cyrus, and finally deputed latrines, a spartan of distinction, to inform the monarch of the persian, median, and lydian empires, that any injury to the grecian cities would be resented by the spartans. cyrus asked with polite astonishment of the greeks about him, "who these spartans were?" and having ascertained as much as he could comprehend concerning their military force and their social habits, replied, "that men who had a large space in the middle of their city for the purpose of cheating one another, could not be to him an object of terror:" so little respect had the hardy warrior for the decent frauds of oratory and of trade. meanwhile, he obligingly added, "that if he continued in health, their concern for the ionian troubles might possibly be merged in the greatness of their own." soon afterward cyrus swept onwards in the prosecution of his vast designs, overrunning assyria, and rushing through the channels of euphrates into the palaces of babylon, and the halls of the scriptural belshazzar. his son, cambyses, added the mystic egypt to the vast conquests of cyrus--and a stranger to the blood of the great victor, by means of superstitious accident or political intrigue, ascended the throne of asia, known to european history under the name of darius. the generals of cyrus had reduced to the persian yoke the ionian colonies; the isle of samos (the first of the isles subjected) was afterward conquered by a satrap of sardis, and darius, who, impelled by the ambition of his predecessors, had led with no similar success a vast armament against the wandering scythians, added, on his return, lesbos, chios, and other isles in the aegaean, to the new monarchy of the world. as, in the often analogous history of italian republics, we find in every incursion of the german emperor that some crafty noble of a free state joined the banner of a frederick or a henry in the hope of receiving from the imperial favour the tyranny of his own city--so there had not been wanting in the grecian colonies men of boldness and ambition, who flocked to the persian standard, and, in gratitude for their services against the scythian, were rewarded with the supreme government of their native cities. thus was raised coes, a private citizen, to the tyranny of mitylene--and thus histiaeus, already possessing, was confirmed by darius in, that of miletus. meanwhile megabazus, a general of the persian monarch, at the head of an army of eighty thousand men, subdued thrace, and made macedonia tributary to the persian throne. having now established, as he deemed securely, the affairs of the empire in asia minor, darius placed his brother artaphernes in the powerful satrapy of sardis, and returned to his capital of susa. xiii. to this satrap, brother of that mighty monarch, came the ambassadors of athens. let us cast our eyes along the map of the ancient world--and survey the vast circumference of the persian realm, stretching almost over the civilized globe. to the east no boundary was visible before the indus. to the north the empire extended to the caspian and the euxine seas, with that steep caucasian range, never passed even by the most daring of the early asiatic conquerors. eastward of the caspian, the rivers of oxus and iaxartes divided the subjects of the great king from the ravages of the tartar; the arabian peninsula interposed its burning sands, a barrier to the south--while the western territories of the empire, including syria, phoenicia, the fertile satrapies of asia minor, were washed by the mediterranean seas. suddenly turning from this immense empire, let us next endeavour to discover those dominions from which the athenian ambassadors were deputed: far down in a remote corner of the earth we perceive at last the scarce visible nook of attica, with its capital of athens--a domain that in its extremest length measured sixty geographical miles! we may now judge of the condescending wonder with which the brother of darius listened to the ambassadors of a people, by whose glory alone his name is transmitted to posterity. yet was there nothing unnatural or unduly arrogant in his reply. "send darius," said the satrap, affably, "earth and water (the accustomed symbols of homage), and he will accept your alliance." the ambassadors deliberated, and, impressed by the might of persia, and the sense of their own unfriended condition, they accepted the proposals. if, fresh from our survey of the immeasurable disparity of power between the two states, we cannot but allow the answer of the satrap was such as might be expected, it is not without a thrill of sympathy and admiration we learn, that no sooner had the ambassadors returned to athens, than they received from the handful of its citizens a severe reprimand for their submission. indignant at the proposal of the satrap, that brave people recurred no more to the thought of the alliance. in haughty patience, unassisted and alone, they awaited the burst of the tempest which they foresaw. xiv. meanwhile, cleomenes, chafed at the failure of his attempt on the athenian liberties, and conceiving, in the true spirit of injustice, that he had been rather the aggrieved than the aggressor, levied forces in different parts of the peloponnesus, but without divulging the object he had in view [ ]. that object was twofold-- vengeance upon athens, and the restoration of isagoras. at length he threw off the mask, and at the head of a considerable force seized upon the holy city of eleusis. simultaneously, and in concert with the spartan, the boeotians forcibly took possession of oenoe and hysix--two towns on the extremity of attica while from chalcis (the principal city of the isle of euboea which fronted the attic coast) a formidable band ravaged the athenian territories. threatened by this threefold invasion, the measures of the athenians were prompt and vigorous. they left for the present unavenged the incursions of the boeotians and chalcidians, and marched with all the force they could collect against cleomenes at eleusis. the two armies were prepared for battle, when a sudden revolution in the spartan camp delivered the athenians from the most powerful of their foes. the corinthians, insnared by cleomenes into measures, of the object of which they had first been ignorant, abruptly retired from the field. immediately afterward a dissension broke out between cleomenes and demaratus, the other king of sparta, who had hitherto supported his colleague in all his designs, and demaratus hastily quitted eleusis, and returned to lacedaemon. at this disunion between the kings of sparta, accompanied, as it was, by the secession of the corinthians, the other confederates broke up the camp, returned home, and left cleomenes with so scanty a force that he was compelled to forego his resentment and his vengeance, and retreat from the sacred city. the athenians now turned their arms against the chalcidians, who had retired to euboea; but, encountering the boeotians, who were on their march to assist their island ally, they engaged and defeated them with a considerable slaughter. flushed by their victory, the athenians rested not upon their arms--on the same day they crossed that narrow strait which divided them from euboea, and obtained a second and equally signal victory over the chalcidians. there they confirmed their conquest by the establishment of four thousand colonists [ ] in the fertile meadows of euboea, which had been dedicated by the islanders to the pasturage of their horses. the athenians returned in triumph to their city. at the price of two minae each, their numerous prisoners were ransomed, and the captive chains suspended from the walls of the citadel. a tenth part of the general ransom was consecrated, and applied to the purchase of a brazen chariot, placed in the entrance of the citadel, with an inscription which dedicated it to the tutelary goddess of athens. "not from the example of the athenians only," proceeds the father of history, "but from universal experience, do we learn that an equal form of government is the best. while in subjection to tyrants the athenians excelled in war none of their neighbours--delivered from the oppressor, they excelled them all; an evident proof that, controlled by one man they exerted themselves feebly, because exertion was for a master; regaining liberty, each man was made zealous, because his zeal was for himself, and his individual interest was the common weal." [ ] venerable praise and accurate distinction! [ ] xv. the boeotians, resentful of their defeat, sent to the pythian oracle to demand the best means of obtaining revenge. the pythian recommended an alliance with their nearest neighbours. the boeotians, who, although the inspiring helicon hallowed their domain, were esteemed but a dull and obtuse race, interpreted this response in favour of the people of the rocky island of aegina--certainly not their nearest neighbours, if the question were to be settled by geographers. the wealthy inhabitants of that illustrious isle, which, rising above that part of the aegean called sinus saronicus, we may yet behold in a clear sky from the heights of phyle,--had long entertained a hatred against the athenians. they willingly embraced the proffered alliance of the boeotians, and the two states ravaged in concert the coast of attica. while the athenians were preparing to avenge the aggression, they received a warning from the delphic oracle, enjoining them to refrain from all hostilities with the people of aegina for thirty years, at the termination of which period they were to erect a fane to aeacus (the son of jupiter, from whom, according to tradition, the island had received its name), and then they might commence war with success. the athenians, on hearing the response, forestalled the time specified by the oracle by erecting at once a temple to aeacus in their forum. after-circumstances did not allow them to delay to the end of thirty years the prosecution of the war. meanwhile the unsleeping wrath of their old enemy, cleomenes, demanded their full attention. in the character of that fierce and restless spartan, we recognise from the commencement of his career the taint of that insanity to which he subsequently fell a victim [ ]. in his earlier life, in a war with the argives, he had burnt five thousand fugitives by setting fire to the grove whither they had fled --an act of flagrant impiety, no less than of ferocious cruelty, according to the tender superstition of the greeks. during his occupation of eleusis, he wantonly violated the mysterious sanctuary of orgas--the place above all others most consecrated to the eleusinian gods. his actions and enterprises were invariably inconsistent and vague. he enters athens to restore her liberties-- joins with isagoras to destroy them; engages in an attempt to revolutionize that energetic state without any adequate preparation-- seizes the citadel to-day to quit it disgracefully to-morrow; invades eleusis with an army he cannot keep together, and, in the ludicrous cunning common to the insane, disguises from his allies the very enemy against whom they are to fight, in order, as common sense might have expected, to be deserted by them in the instant of battle. and now, prosecuting still further the contradictory tenour of his conduct, he who had driven hippias from athens persuades the spartan assembly to restore the very tyrant the spartan arms had expelled. in order to stimulate the fears of his countrymen, cleomenes [ ] asserted, that he had discovered in the athenian citadel certain oracular predictions, till then unknown, foreboding to the spartans many dark and strange calamities from the hands of the athenians [ ]. the astute people whom the king addressed were more moved by political interests than religious warnings. they observed, that when oppressed by tyranny, the athenians had been weak and servile, but, if admitted to the advantages of liberty, would soon grow to a power equal to their own [ ]: and in the restoration of a tyrant, their sagacity foreboded the depression of a rival. xvi. hippias, who had hitherto resided with his half-brother at sigeum, was invited to lacedaemon. he arrived--the spartans assembled the ambassadors of their various tribes--and in full council thus spoke the policy of sparta. "friends and allies, we acknowledge that we have erred; misled by deceiving oracles, we have banished from athens men united to us by ancient hospitality. we restored a republican government to an ungrateful people, who, forgetful that to us they owed their liberty, expelled from among them our subjects and our king. every day they exhibit a fiercer spirit--proofs of which have been already experienced by the boeotians, the chalcidians, and may speedily extend to others, unless they take in time wise and salutary precautions. we have erred--we are prepared to atone for our fault, and to aid you in the chastisement of the athenians. with this intention we have summoned hippias and yourselves, that by common counsel and united arms we may restore to the son of pisistratus the dominion and the dignity of which we have deprived him." the sentiments of the spartans received but little favour in the assembly. after a dead and chilling silence, up rose sosicles, the ambassador for corinth, whose noble reply reveals to us the true cause of the secession of the corinthians at eleusis. "we may expect," said he, with indignant eloquence, "to see the earth take the place of heaven, since you, oh spartans, meditate the subversion of equal laws and the restoration of tyrannical governments--a design than which nothing can be more unjust, nothing more wicked. if you think it well that states should be governed by tyrants, spartans, before you establish tyranny for others, establish it among yourselves! you act unworthily with your allies. you, who so carefully guard against the intrusion of tyranny in sparta--had you known it as we have done, you would be better sensible of the calamities it entails: listen to some of its effects." (here the ambassador related at length the cruelties of periander, the tyrant of corinth.) "such," said he, in conclusion, "such is a tyrannical government--such its effects. great was our marvel when we learned that it was you, oh spartans, who had sent for hippias,--at your sentiments we marvel more. oh! by the gods, the celestial guardians of greece, we adjure you not to build up tyrannies in our cities. if you persevere in your purpose--if, against all justice, you attempt the restoration of hippias, know, at least, that the corinthians will never sanction your designs." it was in vain that hippias, despite his own ability, despite the approval of the spartans, endeavoured to counteract the impression of this stern harangue,--in vain he relied on the declarations of the oracles,--in vain appealed to the jealousy of the corinthians, and assured them of the ambition of athens. the confederates with one accord sympathized with the sentiments of sosicles, and adjured the spartans to sanction no innovations prejudicial to the liberties of a single city of greece. xvii. the failure of propositions so openly made is a fresh proof of the rash and unthinking character of cleomenes--eager as usual for all designs, and prepared for none. the spartans abandoned their design, and hippias, discomfited but not dispirited, quitted the lacedaemonian capital. some of the chiefs of thessaly, as well as the prince of macedon, offered him an honourable retreat in their dominions. but it was not an asylum, it was an ally, that the unyielding ambition of hippias desired to secure. he regained sigeum, and thence, departing to sardis, sought the assistance of the satrap, artaphernes. he who in prosperity was the tyrant, became, in adversity, the traitor of his country; and the son of pisistratus exerted every effort of his hereditary talent of persuasion to induce the satrap not so much to restore the usurper as to reduce the athenian republic to the persian yoke [ ]. the arrival and the intrigues of this formidable guest at the court of sardis soon reached the ears of the vigilant athenians; they sent to artaphernes, exhorting him not to place confidence in those whose offences had banished them from athens. "if you wish for peace," returned the satrap, "recall hippias." rather than accede to this condition, that brave people, in their petty share of the extremity of greece, chose to be deemed the enemies of the vast monarchy of persia. [ ] chapter iv. histiaeus, tyrant of miletus, removed to persia.--the government of that city deputed to aristagoras, who invades naxos with the aid of the persians.--ill success of that expedition.--aristagoras resolves upon revolting from the persians.--repairs to sparta and to athens.-- the athenians and eretrians induced to assist the ionians.--burning of sardis.--the ionian war.--the fate of aristagoras.--naval battle of lade.--fall of miletus.--reduction of ionia.--miltiades.--his character.--mardonius replaces artaphernes in the lydian satrapy.-- hostilities between aegina and athens.--conduct of cleomenes.-- demaratus deposed.--death of cleomenes.--new persian expedition. i. we have seen that darius rewarded with a tributary command the services of grecian nobles during his scythian expedition. the most remarkable of these deputy tyrants was histiaeus, the tyrant of miletus. possessed of that dignity prior to his connexion with darius, he had received from the generosity of the monarch a tract of land near the river strymon, in thrace, sufficing for the erection of a city called myrcinus. to his cousin, aristagoras, he committed the government of miletus--repaired to his new possession, and employed himself actively in the foundations of a colony which promised to be one of the most powerful that miletus had yet established. the site of the infant city was selected with admirable judgment upon a navigable river, in the vicinity of mines, and holding the key of commercial communication between the long chain of thracian tribes on the one side, and the trading enterprise of grecian cities on the other. histiaeus was describing the walls with which the ancient cities were surrounded, when megabazus, commander of the forces intended to consummate the conquest of thrace, had the sagacity to warn the persian king, then at sardis, of the probable effects of the regal donation. "have you, sire, done wisely," said he, "in permitting this able and active greek to erect a new city in thrace? know you not that that favoured land, abounding in mines of silver, possesses, also, every advantage for the construction and equipment of ships; wild greeks and roving barbarians are mingled there, ripe for enterprise--ready to execute the commands of any resolute and aspiring leader! fear the possibility of a civil war--prevent the chances of the ambition of histiaeus,--have recourse to artifice rather than to force, get him in your power, and prevent his return to greece." darius followed the advice of his general, sent for histiaeus, loaded him with compliments, and, pretending that he could not live without his counsels, carried him off from his thracian settlement to the persian capital of susa. his kinsman, aristagoras, continued to preside over the government of miletus, then the most haughty and flourishing of the ionian states; but naxos, beneath it in power, surpassed it in wealth; the fertile soil of that fair isle--its numerous population--its convenient site--its abundant resources, attracted the cupidity of aristagoras; he took advantage of a civil commotion, in which many of the nobles were banished by the people-- received the exiles--and, under the pretence of restoring them, meditated the design of annexing the largest of the cyclades to the tyranny of miletus. he persuaded the traitorous nobles to suffer him to treat with artaphernes--successfully represented to that satrap the advantages of annexing the gem of the cyclades to the persian diadem--and darius, listening to the advice of his delegate, sent two hundred vessels to the invasion of naxos (b. c. ), under the command of his kinsman, megabates. a quarrel ensued, however, between the persian general and the governor of miletus. megabates, not powerful enough to crush the tyrant, secretly informed the naxians of the meditated attack; and, thus prepared for the assault, they so well maintained themselves in their city, that, after a siege of four months, the pecuniary resources, not only of megabates, but of aristagoras, were exhausted, and the invaders were compelled to retreat from the island. aristagoras now saw that he had fallen into the pit he had digged for others: his treasury was drained--he had incurred heavy debts with the persian government, which condemned him to reimburse the whole expense of the enterprise--he feared the resentment of megabates and the disappointment of artaphernes--and he foresaw that his ill success might be a reasonable plea for removing him from the government of miletus. while he himself was meditating the desperate expedient of a revolt, a secret messenger from histiaeus suddenly arrived at miletus. that wily greek, disgusted with his magnificent captivity, had had recourse to a singular expedient: selecting the most faithful of his slaves, he shaved his scull, wrote certain characters on the surface, and, when the hair was again grown, dismissed this living letter to aristagoras [ ]. the characters commanded the deputy to commence a revolt; for histiaeus imagined that the quiet of miletus was the sentence of his exile. ii. this seasonable advice, so accordant with his own views, charmed aristagoras: he summoned the milesians, and, to engage their zealous assistance, he divested himself of the tyranny, and established a republic. it was a mighty epoch that, for the stir of thought!-- everywhere had awakened a desire for free government and equal laws; and aristagoras, desirous of conciliating the rest of ionia, assisted her various states in the establishment of republican institutions. coes, the tyrant of mitylene, perished by the hands of the people; in the rest of ionia, the tyrants were punished but by exile. thus a spark kindled the universal train already prepared in thought, and the selfish ambition of aristagoras forwarded the march of a revolution in favour of liberty that embraced all the cities of ionia. but aristagoras, evidently a man of a profound, though tortuous policy, was desirous of engaging not only the colonies of greece, but the mother country also, in the great and perilous attempt to resist the persian. high above all the states of the elder greece soared the military fame of sparta; and that people the scheming milesian resolved first to persuade to his daring project. trusting to no ambassador, but to his own powers of eloquence, he arrived in person at sparta. with a brazen chart of the world, as then known, in his hand, he sought to inspire the ambition of cleomenes by pointing out the wide domains--the exhaustless treasures of the persian realm. he depreciated the valour of its people, ridiculed their weapons, and urged him to the vast design of establishing, by spartan valour, the magnificent conquest of asia. the spartans, always cold to the liberty of other states, were no less indifferent to the glory of barren victories; and when aristagoras too honestly replied, in answer to a question of the king, that from the ionian sea to susa, the persian capital, was a journey of three months, cleomenes abruptly exclaimed, "milesian, depart from sparta before sunset;--a march of three months from the sea!--the spartans will never listen to so frantic a proposal!" aristagoras, not defeated, sought a subsequent interview, in which he attempted to bribe the king, who, more accustomed to bribe others than be bribed, broke up the conference, and never afterward would renew it. iii. the patient and plotting milesian departed thence to athens (b. c. ): he arrived there just at the moment when the athenian ambassadors had returned from sardis, charged with the haughty reply of artaphernes to the mission concerning hippias. the citizens were aroused, excited, inflamed; equally indignant at the insolence, and fearful of the power, of the satrap. it was a favourable occasion for aristagoras! to the imagination of the reader this passage in history presents a striking picture. we may behold the great assembly of that lively, high-souled, sensitive, and inflammable people. there is the agora; there the half-built temple to aeacus;--above, the citadel, where yet hang the chains of the captive enemy;--still linger in the ears of the populace, already vain of their prowess, and haughty in their freedom, the menace of the persian--the words that threatened them with the restoration of the exiled tyrant; and at this moment, and in this concourse, we see the subtle milesian, wise in the experience of mankind, popular with all free states, from having restored freedom to the colonies of ionia--every advantage of foreign circumstance and intrinsic ability in his favour,--about to address the breathless and excited multitude. he rose: he painted, as he had done to cleomenes, in lively colours, the wealth of asia, the effeminate habits of its people--he described its armies fighting without spear or shield--he invoked the valour of a nation already successful in war against hardy and heroic foes--he appealed to old hereditary ties; the people of miletus had been an athenian colony--should not the parent protect the child in the greatest of all blessings--the right to liberty? now he entreats--now he promises,--the sympathy of the free, the enthusiasm of the brave, are alike aroused. he succeeds: the people accede to his views. "it is easier," says the homely herodotus, "to gain (or delude) a multitude than an individual; and the eloquence which had failed with cleomenes enlisted thirty thousand athenians." [ ] iv. the athenians agreed to send to the succour of their own colonists, the ionians, twenty vessels of war. melanthius, a man of amiable character and popular influence, was appointed the chief. this was the true commencement of the great persian war. v. thus successful, aristagoras departed from athens. arriving at miletus, he endeavoured yet more to assist his design, by attempting to arouse a certain colony in phrygia, formed of thracian captives [ ] taken by megabazus, the persian general. a great proportion of these colonists seized the occasion to return to their native land-- baffled the pursuit of the persian horse--reached the shore--and were transported in ionian vessels to their ancient home on the banks of the strymon. meanwhile, the athenian vessels arrived at miletus, joined by five ships, manned by eretrians of euboea, mindful of former assistance from the milesians in a war with their fellow-islanders, the chalcidians, nor conscious, perhaps, of the might of the enemy they provoked. aristagoras remained at miletus, and delegated to his brother the command of the milesian forces. the greeks then sailed to ephesus, debarked at coressus, in its vicinity, and, under the conduct of ephesian guides, marched along the winding valley of the cayster-- whose rapid course, under a barbarous name, the traveller yet traces, though the swans of the grecian poets haunt its waves no more--passed over the auriferous mount of tmolus, verdant with the vine, and fragrant with the saffron--and arrived at the gates of the voluptuous sardis. they found artaphernes unprepared for this sudden invasion-- they seized the city (b. c. ).--the satrap and his troops retreated to the citadel. the houses of sardis were chiefly built of reeds, and the same slight and inflammable material thatched the roofs even of the few mansions built of brick. a house was set on fire by a soldier--the flames spread throughout the city. in the midst of the conflagration despair gave valour to the besieged--the wrath of man was less fearful than that of the element; the lydians, and the persians who were in the garrison, rushed into the market-place, through which flowed the river of pactolus. there they resolved to encounter the enemy. the invaders were seized with a sudden panic, possibly as much occasioned by the rage of the conflagration as the desperation of the foe; and, retiring to mount tmolus, took advantage of the night to retrace their march along the valley of the cayster. vi. but the ionians were not fated to return in safety: from the borders of the river halys a troop of persians followed their retreat, and overtaking them when the ephesian territory was already gained, defeated the ionians with a great slaughter, amid which fell the leader of the eretrians. the athenians were naturally disappointed with the result of this expedition. returning home, they refused all the overtures of aristagoras to renew their incursions into asia. the gallant ionians continued, however, the hostilities they had commenced against darius. they sailed to the hellespont, and reduced byzantium, with the neighbouring cities. their forces were joined by the cyprians, aroused against the persian yoke by onesilus, a bold usurper, who had dethroned his brother, the prince of salamis, in cyprus; and the conflagration of sardis dazzling the carians, hitherto lukewarm, united to the ionian cause the bulk of that hardy population. the revolt now assumed a menacing and formidable aspect. informed of these events, darius summoned histiaeus: "the man," said he, "whom you appointed to the government of miletus has rebelled against me. assisted by the ionians, whom i shall unquestionably chastise, he has burnt sardis. had he your approbation? without it would he have dared such treason? beware how you offend a second time against my authority." histiaeus artfully vindicated himself from the suspicions of the king. he attributed the revolt of the ionians to his own absence, declared that if sent into ionia he would soon restore its inhabitants to their wonted submission, and even promised to render the island of sardinia tributary to persia. vii. deluded by these professions, darius dismissed the tyrant of miletus, requiring only his return on the fulfilment of his promises. meanwhile, the generals of darius pressed vigorously on the insurgents. against onesilus, then engaged in reducing amathus (the single city in cyprus opposed to him), artybius, a persian officer, conducted a formidable fleet. the ionians hastened to the succour of their cyprian ally--a battle ensued both by land and sea: in the latter the ionians defeated, after a severe contest, the phoenician auxiliaries of persia--in the former, a treacherous desertion of some of the cyprian troops gave a victory to the persian. the brave onesilus, who had set his fate upon the issue of the field, was among the slain. the persians proceeded to blockade, and ultimately to regain, the cyprian cities: of these, soli, which withstood a siege of five months, proffered the most obdurate resistance; with the surrender of that gallant city, cyprus once more, after a year of liberty, was subjected to the dominion of the great king. this success was increased by the reduction of several towns on the hellespont, and two signal defeats over the carians (b. c. ), in the last of which, the milesians, who had joined their ally, suffered a prodigious loss. the carians, however, were not subdued, and in a subsequent engagement they effected a great slaughter among the persians, the glory of which was enhanced by the death of daurises, general of the barbarians, and son-in-law to darius. but this action was not sufficiently decisive to arrest the progress of the persian arms. artaphernes, satrap of sardis, and otanes, the third general in command, led their forces into ionia and aeolia:--the ionian clazomenae, the aeolian cuma, were speedily reduced. viii. the capture of these places, with the general fortunes of the war, disheartened even the patient and adventurous aristagoras. he could not but believe that all attempts against the crushing power of darius were in vain. he assembled the adherents yet faithful to his arms, and painted to them the necessity of providing a new settlement. miletus was no longer secure, and the vengeance of darius was gathering rapidly around them. after some consultation they agreed to repair to that town and territory in thrace which had been given by darius to histiaeus [ ]. miletus was intrusted to the charge of a popular citizen named pythagoras, and these hardy and restless adventurers embarked for thrace. aristagoras was fortunate enough to reach in safety the settlement which had seemed so formidable a possession to the persian general; but his usual scheming and bold ambition, not contented with that domain, led him to the attack of a town in its vicinity. the inhabitants agreed to resign it into his hands, and, probably lulled into security by this concession, he was suddenly, with his whole force, cut off by an incursion of the thracian foe. so perished (b. c. ) the author of many subsequent and mighty events, and who, the more we regard his craft, his courage, his perseverance, and activity, the vastness of his ends, and the perseverance with which he pursued them, must be regarded by the historian as one of the most stirring and remarkable spirits of that enterprising age. ix. the people of miletus had not, upon light grounds or with feeble minds, embarked in the perilous attempt to recover their liberties. deep was the sentiment that inspired--solemn and stern the energy which supported them. the persian generals now collected in one body their native and auxiliary force. the cyprians, lately subdued (b. c. ), were compelled to serve. egypt and cilicia swelled the armament, and the skill of the phoenicians rendered yet more formidable a fleet of six hundred vessels. with this power the barbarians advanced upon miletus. most, if not all, of the ionian states prepared themselves for the struggle--delegates met at the panionium--it was agreed to shun the persians upon land--to leave to the milesians the defence of their city--to equip the utmost naval force they could command--and, assembling in one fleet off the small isle of lade, opposite to miletus, to hazard the battle upon the seas. three hundred and fifty triremes were provided, and met at the appointed place. the discipline of the navy was not equal to the valour of the enterprise; dionysius, commander of the phocaeans, attempted, perhaps too rigorously, to enforce it;--jealousy and disgust broke out among the troops--and the samian leaders, whether displeased with their allies, or tempted by the persians, who, through the medium of the exiled tyrants of greece, serving with them, maintained correspondence with the ionians, secretly agreed to desert in the midst of the ensuing battle. this compact made, the phoenicians commenced the attack, and the ionians, unsuspicious of treachery, met them with a contracted line. in the beginning of the engagement, the samians, excepting only eleven ships (whose captains were afterward rewarded by a public column in their native market-place), fulfilled their pledge, and sailed away to samos. the lesbians, stationed next them, followed their example, and confusion and flight became contagious. the chians alone redeemed the character of the allies, aided, indeed, by dionysius the phocaean, who, after taking three of the enemy's ships, refused to retreat till the day was gone, and then, sailing to phoenicia, sunk several trading vessels, enriched himself with their spoil, and eventually reaching sicily, became renowned as a pirate, formidable to the carthaginian and tyrsenian families of the old phoenician foe, but holding his grecian countrymen sacred from his depredations. the persian armament now bent all its vengeance on miletus; they besieged it both by land and by sea--every species of military machine then known was directed against its walls, and, in the sixth year after the revolt of aristagoras, miletus fell (b. c. )--miletus, the capital of ionia--the mother of a hundred colonies! pittacus, thales, arctinus, were among the great names she gave to science and to song. worthy of her renown, she fell amid the ruins of that freedom which she showed how nobly she could have continued to adorn by proving how sternly she could defend. the greater part of the citizens were slain--those who remained, with the women and the children, were borne into slavery by the victors. their valour and renown touched the heart of darius, and he established the captives in a city by that part of the erythraean sea which receives the waters of the barbarian tigris. their ancient territories were portioned out between the persians and the carians of pedasa. x. the athenians received the news of this fatal siege with the deepest sorrow, and herodotus records an anecdote illustrative of the character of that impassioned people, and interesting to the history of their early letters. phrynichus, a disciple of thespis, represented on the stage the capture of miletus, and the whole audience burst into tears. the art of the poet was considered criminal in thus forcibly reminding the athenians of a calamity which was deemed their own: he was fined a thousand drachmae, and the repetition of the piece forbidden--a punishment that was but a glorious homage to the genius of the poet and the sensibility of the people. after innumerable adventures, in which he exhibited considerable but perverted abilities, histiaeus fell into the hands of artaphernes, and died upon the cross. darius rebuked the zeal of the satrap, and lamented the death of a man, whose situation, perhaps, excused his artifices. and now the cloud swept onward--one after one the ionian cities were reduced--the islands of chios, lesbos, tenedos, depopulated; and all ionia subjugated and enslaved. the persian fleet proceeded to subdue all the towns and territories to the left of the hellespont. at this time their success in the chersonesus drove from that troubled isthmus a chief, whose acute and dauntless faculties made him subsequently the scourge of persia and the deliverer of greece. xi. we have seen miltiades, nephew to the first of that name, arrive at the chersonesus--by a stroke of dexterous perfidy, seize the persons of the neighbouring chieftains--attain the sovereignty of that peninsula, and marry the daughter of a thracian prince. in his character was united, with much of the intellect, all the duplicity of the greek. during the war between darius and the scythians, while affecting to follow the persian army, he had held traitorous intercourse with the foe. and proposed to the grecian chiefs to destroy the bridge of boats across the danube confided to their charge; so that, what with the force of the scythians and the pressure of famine, the army of darius would have perished among the scythian wastes, and a mighty enemy have been lost to greece--a scheme that, but for wickedness, would have been wise. with all his wiles, and all his dishonesty, miltiades had the art, not only of rendering authority firm, but popular. driven from his state by the scythian nomades, he was voluntarily recalled by the very subjects over whom he had established an armed sovereignty--a rare occurrence in that era of republics. surrounded by fierce and restless foes, and exercised in constant, if petty warfare, miltiades had acquired as much the experience of camps as the subtleties of grecian diplomacy; yet, like many of the wise of small states, he seems to have been more crafty than rash--the first for flight wherever flight was the better policy --but the first for battle if battle were the more prudent. he had in him none of the inconsiderate enthusiasm of the hero--none of the blind but noble subservience to honour. valour seems to have been for his profound intellect but the summation of chances, and when we afterward find him the most daring soldier, it is only because he was the acutest calculator. on seeing the phoenician fleet, raider persia, arrive off the isle of tenedos, which is opposite the chersonesus, miltiades resolved not to wait the issue of a battle: as before he had fled the scythian, so now, without a struggle, he succumbed to the phoenician sword. he loaded five vessels with his property--with four he eluded the hostile fleet--the fifth, commanded by his eldest son, was pursued and taken [ ]. in triumphant safety the chief of the chersonesus arrived at athens. he arrived at that free state to lose the dignity of a thracian prince, and suddenly to be reminded that he was an athenian citizen. he was immediately prosecuted for the crime of tyranny. his influence or his art, admiration of his genius, or compassion of his reverses, however, procured him an acquittal. we may well suppose that, high-born and wealthy, he lost no occasion of cementing his popularity in his native state. xii. meanwhile, the persians suspended for that year all further hostilities against the ionians. artaphernes endeavoured to conciliate the subdued colonies by useful laws, impartial taxes, and benign recommendations to order and to peace. the next year, however, that satrap was recalled (b. c. ), and mardonius, a very young noble, the son-in-law of darius, was appointed, at the head of a considerable naval and military force, to the administration of the affairs in that part of the persian empire. entering ionia, he executed a novel, a daring, but no unstatesman-like stroke of policy. he removed all the ionian tyrants, and everywhere restored republican forms of government; deeming, unquestionably, that he is the securest master of distant provinces who establishes among them the institutions which they best love. then proceeding to the hellespont, mardonius collected his mighty fleets and powerful army, and passed through europe towards the avowed objects of the persian vengeance-- the cities of eretria and athens. from the time that the athenians had assisted the forces of miletus and long in the destruction of sardis, their offence had rankled in the bosom of darius. like most monarchs, he viewed as more heinous offenders the foreign abetters of rebellion, than the rebels themselves. religion, no doubt, conspired to augment his indignation. in the conflagration of sardis the temple of the great persian deity had perished, and the inexpiated sacrilege made a duty of revenge. so keenly, indeed, did darius resent the share that the remote athenians had taken in the destruction of his lydian capital, that, on receiving the intelligence, he is said to have called for his bow, and, shooting an arrow in the air, to have prayed for vengeance against the offenders; and three times every day, as he sat at table, his attendants were commanded to repeat to him, "sir, remember the athenians." xiii. but the design of mardonius was not only directed against the athenians and the state of eretria, it extended also to the rest of greece: preparations so vast were not meant to be wasted upon foes apparently insignificant, but rather to consolidate the persian conquests on the asiatic coasts, and to impress on the neighbouring continent of europe adequate conceptions of the power of the great king. by sea, mardonius subdued the islanders of thasus, wealthy in its gold-mines; by land he added to the persian dependances in thrace and macedonia. but losses, both by storm and battle, drove him back to asia, and delayed for a season the deliberate and organized invasion of greece. in the following year (b. c. ), while the tributary cities mardonius had subdued were employed in constructing vessels of war and transports for cavalry, ambassadors were despatched by darius to the various states of greece, demanding the homage of earth and water--a preliminary calculated to ascertain who would resist, who submit to, his power--and certain to afford a pretext, in the one case for empire, in the other for invasion. many of the cities of the continent, and all the islands visited by the ambassadors, had the timidity to comply with the terms proposed. sparta and athens, hitherto at variance, united at once in a haughty and indignant refusal. to so great a height was the popular rage in either state aroused by the very demand, that the spartans threw the ambassadors into their wells, and the athenians, into their pit of punishment, bidding them thence get their earth and water; a singular coincidence of excess in the two states--to be justified by no pretence--to be extenuated only by the reflection, that liberty ever becomes a species of noble madness when menaced by foreign danger. [ ] xiv. with the rest of the islanders, the people of aegina, less resolute than their near neighbours and ancient foes, the athenians, acceded to the proposal of tribute. this, more than the pusillanimity of the other states, alarmed and inflamed the athenians; they suspected that the aeginetans had formed some hostile alliance against them with the persians, and hastened to accuse them to sparta of betraying the liberties of greece. nor was there slight ground for the suspicions of the athenians against aegina. the people of that island had hereditary and bitter feuds with the athenians, dating almost from their independence of their parent state of epidaurus; mercantile jealousies were added to ancestral enmity, and the wares of athens were forbidden all application to sacred uses in aegina. we have seen the recent occasion on which attica was invaded by these hostile neighbours, then allied with thebes: and at that period the naval force of gins was such as to exceed the unconscious and untried resources of the athenians. the latter had thus cause at once to hate and to dread a rival placed by nature in so immediate a vicinity to themselves, that the submission of aegina to the persian seemed in itself sufficient for the destruction of athens. xv. the athenian ambassadors met with the most favourable reception at sparta. the sense of their common danger, and sympathy in their mutual courage, united at once these rival states; even the rash and hitherto unrelenting cleomenes eagerly sought a reconciliation with his former foe. that prince went in person to aegina, determined to ascertain the authors of the suspected treachery;--with that characteristic violence which he never provided the means to support, and which so invariably stamps this unable and headstrong spartan, as one who would have been a fool, if he had not been a madman--cleomenes endeavoured to seize the persons of the accused. he was stoutly resisted, and disgracefully baffled, in this impotent rashness; and his fellow-king, demaratus, whom we remember to have suddenly deserted cleomenes at eleusis, secretly connived with the aeginetans in their opposition to his colleague, and furnished them with an excuse, by insinuating that cleomenes had been corrupted by the athenians. but demaratus was little aware of the dark and deadly passions which cleomenes combined with his constitutional insanity. revenge made a great component of his character, and the grecian history records few instances of a nature more vehemently vindictive. there had been various rumours at sparta respecting the legitimacy of demaratus. cleomenes entered into a secret intrigue with a kinsman of his colleague, named leotychides, who cherished an equal hatred against demaratus [ ]; the conditions between them were, that cleomenes should assist in raising leotychides to the throne of demaratus, and leotychides should assist cleomenes in his vengeance against aegina. no sooner was this conspiracy agreed upon than leotychides propagated everywhere the report that the birth of demaratus was spurious. the spartans attached the greatest value to legitimacy,--they sent to consult the pythian--and cleomenes, through the aid of colon, a powerful citizen of delphi, bribed the oracle to assert the illegitimacy of his foe. demaratus was deposed. sinking at once into the rank of a private citizen, he was elected to some inferior office. his enemy, leotychides, now upon his throne, sent him, by way of insult, a message to demand which he preferred--his past or his present dignity. demaratus was stung, and answered, that the question might fix the date of much weal or much wo to sparta; saying this, he veiled his head--sought his home--sacrificed to jupiter--and solemnly adjured his mother to enlighten him as to his legitimacy. the parental answer was far from unequivocal, and the matron appeared desirous of imputing the distinction of his birth to the shade of an ancient spartan hero, astrobachus, rather than to the earthly embrace of her husband. demaratus heard, and formed his decision: he escaped from sparta, baffled his pursuers, and fled into asia, where he was honourably received and largely endowed by the beneficent darius. xvi. leotychides, elected to the regal dignity, accompanied cleomenes to aegina: the people of that isle yielded to the authority they could not effectually resist; and ten of their most affluent citizens were surrendered as hostages to athens. but, in the meanwhile, the collusion of cleomenes with the oracle was discovered--the priestess was solemnly deposed--and cleomenes dreaded the just indignation of his countrymen. he fled to thessaly, and thence passing among the arcadians, he endeavoured to bind that people by the darkest oaths to take arms against his native city--so far could hatred stimulate a man consistent only in his ruling passion of revenge. but the mighty power of persia now lowering over lacedaemon, the spartan citizens resolved to sacrifice even justice to discretion: it was not a time to distract their forces by new foes, and they invited cleomenes back to sparta, with the offer of his former station. he returned, but his violent career, happily for all, was now closed; his constitutional madness, no longer confined to doubtful extravagance, burst forth into incontrollable excess. he was put under confinement, and obtaining a sword from a helot, who feared to disobey his commands, he deliberately destroyed himself--not by one wound, but slowly gashing the flesh from his limbs until he gradually ascended to the nobler and more mortal parts. this ferocious suicide excited universal horror, and it was generally deemed the divine penalty of his numerous and sacrilegious crimes: the only dispute among the greeks was, to which of his black offences the wrath of heaven was the most justly due. [ ] xvii. no sooner did the news of his suicide reach the aeginetans than those proud and wealthy islanders sought, by an embassy to sparta, to regain their hostages yet detained at athens. with the death of cleomenes, the anger of sparta against aegina suddenly ceased--or, rather, we must suppose that a new party, in fellowship with the aeginetan oligarchy, came into power. the spartans blamed leotychides for his co-operation with cleomenes; they even offered to give him up to the aeginetans--and it was finally agreed that he should accompany the ambassadors of aegina to athens, and insist on the surrender of the hostages. but the athenians had now arrived at that spirit of independence, when nor the deadly blows of persia, nor the iron sword of sparta, nor the treacherous hostilities of their nearest neighbour, could quell their courage or subdue their pride. they disregarded the presence and the orations of leotychides, and peremptorily refused to surrender their hostages. hostilities between aegina and athens were immediately renewed. the aeginetans captured (b. c. ) the sacred vessel then stationed at sunium, in which several of the most eminent athenians were embarked for the festival of apollo; nor could the sanctity of the voyage preserve the captives from the ignominy of irons. the athenians resolved upon revenge, and a civil dissension in aegina placed it in their power. an aeginetan traitor, named nicodromus, offered them his assistance, and, aided by the popular party opposed to the oligarchical government, he seized the citadel. with twenty ships from corinth, and fifty of their own, the athenians invaded aegina; but, having been delayed in making the adequate preparations, they arrived a day later than had been stipulated. nicodromus fled; the oligarchy restored, took signal and barbarous vengeance upon such of their insurgent countrymen as fell into their hands. meanwhile, the athenian fleet obtained a victory at sea, and the war still continued. xviii. while, seemingly unconscious of greater dangers, athens thus practised her rising energies against the little island of aegina, thrice every day the servants of the persian king continued to exclaim, "sir, remember the athenians!" [ ] the traitor, hippias, constantly about the person of the courteous monarch, never failed to stimulate still further his vengeance by appealing to his ambition. at length, darius resolved no longer to delay the accomplishment of his designs. he recalled mardonius, whose energy, indeed, had not been proportioned to his powers, and appointed two other generals-- datis, a native of the warlike media, and artaphernes, his own nephew, son to the former satrap of that name. these were expressly ordered to march at once against eretria and athens. and hippias, now broken in frame, advanced in age [ ], and after an exile of twenty years, accompanied the persian army--sanguine of success, and grasping, at the verge of life the shadow of his former sceptre. chapter v. the persian generals enter europe.--invasion of naxos, carystus, eretria.--the athenians demand the aid of sparta.--the result of their mission and the adventure of their messenger.--the persians advance to marathon.--the plain described.--division of opinion in the athenian camp.--the advice of miltiades prevails.--the dream of hippias.--the battle of marathon. i. on the cilician coast the persian armament encamped--thence, in a fleet of six hundred triremes, it sailed to samos (b. c. )--passed through the midst of the clustering cyclades, and along that part of the aegaean sea called "the icarian," from the legendary fate of the son of daedalus--invaded naxos--burnt her town and temples, and sparing the sacred delos, in which the median datis reverenced the traditionary birthplace of two deities analogous to those most honoured in the persian creed [ ]--awed into subjection the various isles, until it arrived at euboea, divided but by a strait from attica, and containing the city of the eretrians. the fleet first assailed carystus, whose generous citizens refused both to aid against their neighbours, and to give hostages for their conduct. closely besieged, and their lands wasted, they were compelled, however, to surrender to the persians. thence the victorious armament passed to eretria. the athenians had sent to the relief of that city the four thousand colonists whom they had established in the island--but fear, jealousy, division, were within the walls. ruin seemed certain, and a chief of the eretrians urged the colonists to quit a city which they were unable to save. they complied with the advice, and reached attica in safety. eretria, however, withstood a siege of six days; on the seventh the city was betrayed to the barbarians by two of that fatal oligarchical party, who in every grecian city seem to have considered no enemy so detestable as the majority of their own citizens; the place was pillaged--the temples burnt--the inhabitants enslaved. here the persians rested for a few days ere they embarked for attica. ii. unsupported and alone, the athenians were not dismayed. a swift-footed messenger was despatched to sparta, to implore its prompt assistance. on the day after his departure from athens, he reached his destination, went straight to the assembled magistrates, and thus addressed them: "men of lacedaemon, the athenians supplicate your aid; suffer not the most ancient of the grecian cities to be enslaved by the barbarian. already eretria is subjected to their yoke, and all greece is diminished by the loss of that illustrious city." the resource the athenians had so much right to expect failed them. the spartans, indeed, resolved to assist athens, but not until assistance would have come too late. they declared that their religion forbade them to commence a march till the moon was at her full, and this was only the ninth day of the month [ ]. with this unsatisfying reply, the messenger returned to athens. but, employed in this arduous enterprise--his imagination inflamed by the greatness of the danger--and its workings yet more kindled by the loneliness of his adventure and the mountain stillness of the places through which he passed, the athenian messenger related, on his return, a vision less probably the creation of his invention than of his excited fancy. passing over the mount parthenius, amid whose wild recesses gloomed the antique grove dedicated to telephus, the son of hercules [ ], the athenian heard a voice call to him aloud, and started to behold that mystic god to whom, above the rest of earth, were dedicated the hills and woods of arcady--the pelasgic pan. the god bade him "ask at athens why the athenians forgot his worship--he who loved them well-- and might yet assist them at their need." such was the tale of the messenger. the lively credulities of the people believed its truth, and in calmer times dedicated a temple to the deity, venerated him with annual sacrifices, and the race of torches. iii. while the athenians listened to the dreams of this poetical superstition, the mighty thousands of the mede and persian landed on the attic coast, and, conducted by hippias among their leaders, marched to the plain of marathon, which the traveller still beholds stretching wide and level, amid hills and marshes, at the distance of only ten miles from the gates of athens. along the shore the plain extends to the length of six miles--inland it exceeds two. he who surveys it now looks over a dreary waste, whose meager and arid herbage is relieved but by the scanty foliage of unfrequent shrubs or pear-trees, and a few dwarf pines drooping towards the sea. here and there may be seen the grazing buffalo, or the peasant bending at his plough:--a distant roof, a ruined chapel, are not sufficient evidences of the living to interpose between the imagination of the spectator and the dead. such is the present marathon--we are summoned back to the past. iv. it will be remembered that the athenians were divided into ten tribes at the instigation of clisthenes. each of these tribes nominated a general; there were therefore ten leaders to the athenian army. among them was miltiades, who had succeeded in ingratiating himself with the athenian people, and obtained from their suffrages a command. [ ] aided by a thousand men from plataea, then on terms of intimate friendship with the athenians, the little army marched from the city, and advanced to the entrance of the plain of marathon. here they arrayed themselves in martial order, near the temple of hercules, to the east of the hills that guard the upper part of the valley. thus encamped, and in sight of the gigantic power of the enemy, darkening the long expanse that skirts the sea, divisions broke out among the leaders;--some contended that a battle was by no means to be risked with such inferior forces--others, on the contrary, were for giving immediate battle. of this latter advice was miltiades--he was supported by a man already of high repute, though now first presented to our notice, and afterward destined to act a great and splendid part in the drama of his times. aristides was one of the generals of the army [ ], and strenuously co-operated with miltiades in the policy of immediate battle. despite, however, the military renown of the one, and the civil eminence of the other, the opposite and more tame opinion seemed likely to prevail, when miltiades suddenly thus addressed the polemarch callimachus. that magistrate, the third of the nine archons, was held by virtue of his office equal in dignity to the military leaders, and to him was confided the privilege of a casting vote. "on you, callimachus," said the chief of the chersonese, "on you it rests, whether athens shall be enslaved, or whether from age to age your country, freed by your voice, shall retain in yours a name dearer to her even than those of aristogiton and harmodius [ ]. never since the foundation of athens was she placed in so imminent a peril. if she succumb to the mede, she is rendered again to the tyranny of hippias--but if she conquer, she may rise to the first eminence among the states of greece. how this may be accomplished, and how upon your decision rests the event, i will at once explain. the sentiments of our leaders are divided--these are for instant engagement, those for procrastination. depend upon it, if we delay, some sedition, some tumult will break out among the athenians, and may draw a part of them to favour the medes; but if we engage at once, and before a single dissension takes from us a single man, we may, if the gods give us equal fortune, obtain the victory. consider the alternative--our decision depends on you." v. the arguments of miltiades convinced callimachus, who knew well the many divisions of the city, the strength which hippias and the pisistratidae still probably possessed within its walls, and who could not but allow that a superior force becomes ever more fearful the more deliberately it is regarded. he interposed his authority. it was decided to give battle. each general commanded in turn his single day. when it came to the turn of aristides, he gave up his right to miltiades, showing his colleagues that it was no disgrace to submit to the profound experience of another. the example once set was universally followed, and miltiades was thus left in absolute and undivided command. but that able and keen-sighted chief, fearing perhaps that if he took from another his day of command, jealousy might damp the ardour of the general thus deprived, and, as it were, degraded, waited till his own appointed day before he commenced the attack. vi. on the night before hippias conducted the barbarians to the plains of marathon, he is said to have dreamed a dream. he thought he was with his mother! in the fondness of human hopes he interpreted the vision favourably, and flattered himself that he should regain his authority, and die in his own house of old age. the morning now arrived (b. c. ) that was to attest the veracity of his interpretation. vii. to the left of the athenians was a low chain of hills, clothed with trees (and which furnished them timber to break the charge of the persian horse)--to their right a torrent;--their front was long, for, to render it more imposing in extent, and to prevent being outflanked by the persian numbers, the centre ranks were left weak and shallow, but on either wing the troops were drawn up more solidly and strong. callimachus, the polemarch, commanded the right wing--the plataeans formed the left. they had few, if any, horsemen or archers. the details which we possess of their arms and military array, if not in this, in other engagements of the same period, will complete the picture. we may behold them clad in bright armour, well proof and tempered, which covered breast and back--the greaves, so often mentioned by homer, were still retained--their helmets were wrought and crested, the cones mostly painted in glowing colours, and the plumage of feathers or horse-hair rich and waving, in proportion to the rank of the wearer. broad, sturdy, and richly ornamented were their bucklers--the pride and darling of their arms, the loss of which was the loss of honour; their spears were ponderous, thick, and long-- a chief mark of contradistinction from the slight shaft of persia-- and, with their short broadsword, constituted their main weapons of offence. no greek army marched to battle without vows, and sacrifice, and prayer--and now, in the stillness of the pause, the soothsayers examined the entrails of the victims--they were propitious, and callimachus solemnly vowed to diana a victim for the slaughter of every foe. loud broke the trumpets [ ]--the standards wrought with the sacred bird of athens were raised on high [ ];--it was the signal of battle--and the athenians rushed with an impetuous vehemence upon the persian power. "the first greeks of whom i have heard," says the simple halicarnassean, "who ever ran to attack a foe--the first, too, who ever beheld without dismay the garb and armour of the medes; for hitherto in greece the very name of mede had excited terror." viii. when the persian army, with its numerous horse, animal as well as man protected by plates of mail [ ]--its expert bowmen--its lines and deep files of turbaned soldiers, gorgeous with many a blazing standard,--headed by leaders well hardened, despite their gay garbs and adorned breastplates, in many a more even field;--when, i say, this force beheld the athenians rushing towards them, they considered them, thus few, and destitute alike of cavalry and archers [ ], as madmen hurrying to destruction. but it was evidently not without deliberate calculation that miltiades had so commenced the attack. the warlike experience of his guerilla life had taught him to know the foe against whom he fought. to volunteer the assault was to forestall and cripple the charge of the persian horse--besides, the long lances, the heavy arms, the hand-to-hand valour of the greeks, must have been no light encounter to the more weakly mailed and less formidably-armed infantry of the east. accustomed themselves to give the charge, it was a novelty and a disadvantage to receive it. long, fierce, and stubborn was the battle. the centre wing of the barbarians, composed of the sacians and the pure persian race, at length pressed hard upon the shallow centre of the greeks, drove them back into the country, and, eager with pursuit, left their own wings to the charge of callimachus on the one side and the plataean forces on the other. the brave polemarch, after the most signal feats of valour, fell fighting in the field; but his troops, undismayed, smote on with spear and sword. the barbarians retreated backward to the sea, where swamps and marshes encumbered their movements, and here (though the athenians did not pursue them far) the greater portion were slain, hemmed in by the morasses, and probably ridden down by their own disordered cavalry. meanwhile, the two tribes that had formed the centre, one of which was commanded by aristides [ ], retrieved themselves with a mighty effort, and the two wings, having routed their antagonists, now inclining towards each other, intercepted the barbarian centre, which, thus attacked, front and rear (large trees felled and scattered over the plain obstructing the movements of their cavalry), was defeated with prodigious slaughter. evening came on [ ]:--confused and disorderly, the persians now only thought of flight: the whole army retired to their ships, hard chased by the grecian victors, who, amid the carnage, fired the fleet. cynaegirus, brother to aeschylus, the tragic poet (himself highly distinguished for his feats that day), seized one of the vessels by the poop: his hand was severed by an axe; he died gloriously of his wounds. but to none did the fortunes of that field open a more illustrious career than to a youth of the tribe leontis, in whom, though probably then but a simple soldier in the ranks, was first made manifest the nature and the genius destined to command. the name of that youth was themistocles [ ]. seven vessels were captured--six thousand four hundred of the barbarians fell in the field--the athenians and their brave ally lost only one hundred and ninety-two; but among them perished many of their bravest nobles. it was a superstition not uncharacteristic of that imaginative people, and evincing how greatly their ardour was aroused, that many of them (according to plutarch) fancied they beheld the gigantic shade of their ancestral theseus, completely armed, and bearing down before them upon the foe. so perished the hopes of the unfortunate hippias; obscure and inglorious in his last hour, the exiled prince fell confounded amid the general slaughter. [ ] ix. despite the capture of some vessels, and the conflagration of others, the persians still retained a considerable fleet, and, succeeding in boarding their eretrian plunder (which they had left on the euboean isle), they passed thence the promontory of sunium, with the intention of circumventing the athenians, and arriving at athens before them--a design which it was supposed they were induced to form by the treachery of some one suspected, without sufficient proof, to belong to the house of the alcmaeonids, who held up a shield as a signal to the persians while they were under sail [ ]. but the athenians were under a prompt and vigilant commander, and while the barbarian fleet doubled the cape of sunium, they reached their city, and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. aristides, with the tribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisoners and the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealous care over the scattered and uncounted treasure [ ]. the painter of the nobler schools might find perhaps few subjects worthier of his art than aristides watching at night amid the torches of his men over the plains of marathon, in sight of the blue aegean, no longer crowded with the barbarian masts;--and the white columns of the temple of hercules, beside which the athenians had pitched their camp. the persian fleet anchored off phalerum, the athenian harbour, and remaining there, menacing but inactive, a short time, sailed back to asia. x. the moon had passed her full, when two thousand spartans arrived at athens: the battle was over and the victory won; but so great was their desire to see the bodies of the formidable medes, that they proceeded to marathon, and, returning to athens, swelled the triumph of her citizens by their applause and congratulations. xi. the marble which the persians had brought with them, in order to erect as a trophy of the victory they anticipated, was, at a subsequent period, wrought by phidias into a statue of nemesis. a picture of the battle, representing miltiades in the foremost place, and solemnly preserved in public, was deemed no inadequate reward to that great captain; and yet, conspicuous above the level plain of marathon, rises a long barrow, fifteen feet in height, the supposed sepulchre of the athenian heroes. still does a romantic legend, not unfamiliar with our traditions of the north, give a supernatural terror to the spot. nightly along the plain are yet heard by superstition the neighings of chargers and the rushing shadows of spectral war [ ]. and still, throughout the civilized world (civilized how much by the arts and lore of athens!) men of every clime, of every political persuasion, feel as greeks at the name of marathon. later fields have presented the spectacle of an equal valour, and almost the same disparities of slaughter; but never, in the annals of earth, were united so closely in our applause, admiration for the heroism of the victors, and sympathy for the holiness of their cause. it was the first great victory of opinion! and its fruits were reaped, not by athens only, but by all greece then, as by all time thereafter, in a mighty and imperishable harvest,--the invisible not less than the actual force of despotism was broken. nor was it only that the dread which had hung upon the median name was dispelled--nor that free states were taught their pre-eminence over the unwieldy empires which the persian conquerors had destroyed,--a greater lesson was taught to greece, when she discovered that the monarch of asia could not force upon a petty state the fashion of its government, or the selection of its rulers. the defeat of hippias was of no less value than that of darius; and the same blow which struck down the foreign invader smote also the hopes of domestic tyrants. one successful battle for liberty quickens and exalts that proud and emulous spirit from which are called forth the civilization and the arts that liberty should produce, more rapidly than centuries of repose. to athens the victory of marathon was a second solon. footnotes. [ ] in their passage through the press i have, however, had many opportunities to consult and refer to mr. thirlwall's able and careful work. [ ] the passage in aristotle (meteorol., l. i, c. ), in which, speaking of the ancient hellas (the country about dodona and the river achelous), the author says it was inhabited by a people (along with the helli, or selli) then called graeci, now hellenes (tote men graikoi, nun de hellaenes) is well known. the greek chronicle on the arundel marbles asserts, that the greeks were called graeci before they were called hellenes; in fact, graeci was most probably once a name for the pelasgi, or for a powerful, perhaps predominant, tribe of the pelasgi widely extended along the western coast--by them the name was borne into italy, and (used indiscriminately with that of pelasgi) gave the latin appellation to the hellenic or grecian people. [ ] modern travellers, in their eloquent lamentations over the now niggard waters of these immortal streams, appear to forget that strabo expressly informs us that the cephisus flowed in the manner of a torrent, and failed altogether in the summer. "much the same," he adds, "was the ilissus." a deficiency of water was always a principal grievance in attica, as we may learn from the laws of solon relative to wells. [ ] platon. timaeus. clinton's fasti hellenici, vol. i., p. . [ ] according to some they were from india, to others from egypt, to others again from phoenicia. they have been systematized into bactrians, and scythians, and philistines--into goths, and into celts; and tracked by investigations as ingenious as they are futile, beyond the banks of the danube to their settlements in the peloponnese. no erudition and no speculation can, however, succeed in proving their existence in any part of the world prior to their appearance in greece. [ ] sophoc. ajax, . [ ] all those words (in the latin) which make the foundation of a language, expressive of the wants or simple relations of life, are almost literally greek--such as pater, frater, aratrum, bos, ager, etc. for the derivation of the latin from the aeolic dialect of greece, see "scheid's prolegomena to lennep's etymologicon linguae grecae." [ ] the leleges, dryopes, and most of the other hordes prevalent in greece, with the pelasgi, i consider, with mr. clinton, but as tribes belonging to the great pelasgic family. one tribe would evidently become more civilized than the rest, in proportion to the social state of the lands through which it migrated--its reception of strangers from the more advanced east--or according as the circumstances of the soil in which it fixed its abode stimulated it to industry, or forced it to invention. the tradition relative to pelasgus, that while it asserts him to have been the first that dwelt in arcadia, declares also that he first taught men to build huts, wear garments of skins, and exchange the yet less nutritious food of herbs and roots for the sweet and palatable acorns of the "fagus," justly puzzled pausanias. such traditions, if they prove any thing, which i more than doubt, tend to prove that the tribe personified by the word "pelasgus," migrated into that very arcadia alleged to have been their aboriginal home, and taught their own rude arts to the yet less cultivated population they found there. [ ] see isaiah xxiii. [ ] the received account of the agricultural skill of the pelasgi is tolerably well supported. dionysius tells us that the aboriginals having assigned to those pelasgi, whom the oracle sent from dodona into italy, the marshy and unprofitable land called velia, they soon drained the fen:--their love of husbandry contributed, no doubt, to form the peculiar character of their civilization and religion. [ ] solinus and pliny state that the pelasgi first brought letters into italy. long the leading race of italy, their power declined, according to dionysius, two generations before the trojan war. [ ] paus. arcad., c. xxxviii. in a previous chapter (ii.) that accomplished antiquary observes, that it appeared to him that cecrops and lycaon (son of pelasgus and founder of lycosura) were contemporaries. by the strong and exaggerating expression of pausanias quoted in the text, we must suppose, not that he considered lycosura the first town of the earth, but the first walled and fortified city. the sons of lycaon were great builders of cities, and in their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition to have been made in the peloponnesus. the pelasgic architecture is often confounded with the cyclopean. the pelasgic masonry is polygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; that called the cyclopean, and described by pausanias, is utterly different, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with small pebbles inserted in the interstices. (see gell's topography of rome and its vicinity.) by some antiquaries, who have not made the mistake of confounding these distinct orders of architecture, the cyclopean has been deemed more ancient than the pelasgic,--but this also is an error. lycosura was walled by the pelasgians between four and five centuries prior to the introduction of the cyclopean masonry--in the building of the city of tiryns. sir william gell maintains the possibility of tracing the walls of lycosura near the place now called surias to kastro. [ ] the expulsion of the hyksos, which was not accomplished by one sudden, but by repeated revolutions, caused many migrations; among others, according to the egyptians, that of danaus. [ ] the egyptian monarchs, in a later age, employed the phoenicians in long and adventurous maritime undertakings. at a comparatively recent date, neco, king of egypt, despatched certain phoenicians on no less an enterprise than that of the circumnavigation of africa. [herod., iv., . rennell., geog. of herod.] that monarch was indeed fitted for great designs. the mediterranean and the red sea already received his fleets, and he had attempted to unite them by a canal which would have rendered africa an island. [herod., ii., , . heeren., phoenicians, c. iii. see also diodorus.] [ ] the general habits of a people can in no age preclude exceptions in individuals. indian rajahs do not usually travel, but we had an indian rajah for some years in the regent's park; the chinese are not in the habit of visiting england, but a short time ago some chinese were in london. grant that phoenicians had intercourse with egypt and with greece, and nothing can be less improbable than that a phoenician vessel may have contained some egyptian adventurers. they might certainly be men of low rank and desperate fortunes--they might be fugitives from the law--but they might not the less have seemed princes and sages to a horde of pelasgic savages. [ ] the authorities in favour of the egyptian origin of cecrops are.--diod., lib. i.; theopomp.; schol. aristoph.; plot.; suidas. plato speaks of the ancient connexion between sais and athens. solon finds the names of erechtheus and cecrops in egypt, according to the same authority, i grant a doubtful one (plat. critias.) the best positive authority of which i am aware in favour of the contrary supposition that cecrops was indigenous, is apollodorus. [ ] to enter into all the arguments that have been urged on either side relative to cecrops would occupy about two hundred pages of this work, and still leave the question in dispute. perhaps two hundred pages might be devoted to subjects more generally instructive. [ ] so, in the peruvian traditions, the apparition of two persons of majestic form and graceful garments, appearing alone and unarmed on the margin of the lake titiaca, sufficed to reclaim a naked and wretched horde from their savage life, to inculcate the elements of the social union, and to collect a people in establishing a throne. [ ] "like the greeks," says herodotus (book ii., c. ), "the egyptians confine themselves to one wife." latterly, this among the greeks, though a common, was not an invariable, restraint; but more on this hereafter. [ ] hobhouse's travels, letter . [ ] it is by no means probable that this city, despite its fortress, was walled like lycosura. [ ] at least strabo assigns boeotia to the government of cecrops. but i confess, that so far from his incorporating boeotia with attica, i think that traditions relative to his immediate successors appear to indicate that attica itself continued to retain independent tribes-- soon ripening, if not already advanced, to independent states. [ ] herod., ii., c. i. [ ] ibid., ii., c. liii. [ ] that all the pelasgi--scattered throughout greece, divided among themselves--frequently at war with each other, and certainly in no habits of peaceful communication--each tribe of different modes of life, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred in giving no names to their gods, and then have equally concurred in receiving names from egypt, is an assertion so preposterous, that it carries with it its own contradiction. many of the mistakes relative to the pelasgi appear to have arisen from supposing the common name implied a common and united tribe, and not a vast and dispersed people, subdivided into innumerable families, and diversified by innumerable influences. [ ] the connexion of ceres with isis was a subsequent innovation. [ ] orcos was the personification of an oath, or the sanctity of an oath. [ ] naith in the doric dialect. [ ] if onca, or onga, was the name of the phoenician goddess!--in the "seven against thebes," the chorus invoke minerva under the name of onca--and there can be no doubt that the grecian minerva is sometimes called onca; but it is not clear to me that the phoenicians had a deity of that name--nor can i agree with those who insist upon reading onca for siga in pausanias (lib. ix., chap. ), where he says siga was the name of the phoenician minerva. the phoenicians evidently had a deity correspondent with the greek minerva; but that it was named onca, or onga, is by no means satisfactorily proved; and the scholiast, on pindar, derives the epithet as applies to minerva from a boeotian village. [ ] de mundo, c. . [ ] the egyptians supposed three principles: st. one benevolent and universal spirit. d. matter coeval with eternity. d. nature opposing the good of the universal spirit. we find these principles in a variety of shapes typified through their deities. besides their types of nature, as the egyptians adopted hero gods, typical fables were invented to conceal their humanity, to excuse their errors, or to dignify their achievements. [ ] see heeren's political history of greece, in which this point is luminously argued. [ ] besides, it is not the character of emigrants from a people accustomed to castes, to propagate those castes superior to then own, of which they have exported no representatives. suppose none of that privileged and noble order, called the priests, to have accompanied the egyptian migrators, those migrators would never have dreamed of instituting that order in their new settlement any more than a colony of the warrior caste in india would establish out of their own order a spurious and fictitious caste of bramins. [ ] when, in a later age, karmath, the impostor of the east, sough to undermine mahometanism, his most successful policy was in declaring its commands to be allegories. [ ] herodotus (b. ii, c. ) observes, that it is to hesiod and homer the greeks owe their theogony; that they gave the gods their titles, fixed their ranks, and described their shapes. and although this cannot be believed literally, in some respects it may metaphorically. doubtless the poets took their descriptions from popular traditions; but they made those traditions immortal. jupiter could never become symbolical to a people who had once pictured to themselves the nod and curls of the jupiter of homer. [ ] cicero de natura deorum, b. ii.--most of the philosophical interpretations of the greek mythology were the offspring of the alexandrine schools. it is to the honour of aristarchus that he combated a theory that very much resembles the philosophy that would convert the youthful readers of mother bunch into the inventors of allegorical morality. [ ] but the worship can be traced to a much earlier date than that the most plausibly ascribed to the persian zoroaster. [ ] so epimenides of crete is said to have spent forty-five years in a cavern, and minos descends into the sacred cave of jupiter to receive from him the elements of law. the awe attached to woods and caverns, it may be observed, is to be found in the northern as well as eastern superstitions. and there is scarcely a nation on the earth in which we do not find the ancient superstition has especially attached itself to the cavern and the forest, peopling them with peculiar demons. darkness, silence, and solitude are priests that eternally speak to the senses; and few of the most skeptical of us have been lost in thick woods, or entered lonely caverns, without acknowledging their influence upon the imagination: "ipsa silentia," says beautifully the elder pliny, "ipsa silentia adoramus." the effect of streams and fountains upon the mind seems more unusual and surprising. yet, to a people unacquainted with physics, waters imbued with mineral properties, or exhaling mephitic vapours, may well appear possessed of a something preternatural. accordingly, at this day, among many savage tribes we find that such springs are regarded with veneration and awe. the people of fiji, in the south seas, have a well which they imagine the passage to the next world, they even believe that you may see in its waters the spectral images of things rolling on to eternity. fountains no less than groves, were objects of veneration with our saxon ancestors.--see meginhard, wilkins, etc. [ ] kings xvi., . [ ] of the three graces, aglaia, euphrosyne, and thalia, the spartans originally worshipped but one--(aglaia, splendour) under the name of phaenna, brightness: they rejected the other two, whose names signify joy and pleasure, and adopted a substitute in one whose name was sound (cletha,)--a very common substitute nowadays! [ ] the persian creed, derived from zoroaster, resembled the most to that of christianity. it inculcated the resurrection of the dead, the universal triumph of ormuzd, the principle of light--the destruction of the reign of ahrimanes, the evil principle. [ ] wherever egyptian, or indeed grecian colonies migrated, nothing was more natural than that, where they found a coincidence of scene, they should establish a coincidence of name. in epirus were also the acheron and cocytus; and campania contains the whole topography of the virgilian hades. [ ] see sect. xxi., p. . [ ] fire was everywhere in the east a sacred symbol--though it cannot be implicitly believed that the vulcan or hephaistus of the greeks has his prototype or original in the egyptian phta or phtas. the persian philosophy made fire a symbol of the divine intelligence-- the persian credulity, like the grecian, converted the symbol into the god (max. tyr., dissert. ; herod., lib. , c. ). the jews themselves connected the element with their true deity. it is in fire that jehovah reveals himself. a sacred flame was burnt unceasingly in the temples of israel, and grave the punishment attached to the neglect which suffered its extinction.--(maimonides, tract. vi.) [ ] the anaglyph expressed the secret writings of the egyptians, known only to the priests. the hieroglyph was known generally to the educated. [ ] in gaul, cesar finds some tribes more civilized than the rest, cultivating the science of sacrifice, and possessed of the dark philosophy of superstitious mysteries; but in certain other and more uncivilized tribes only the elements and the heavenly luminaries (quos cernunt et quorum opibus aperte juvantur) were worshipped, and the lore of sacrifice was unstudied. with the pelasgi as with the gauls, i believe that such distinctions might have been found simultaneously in different tribes. [ ] the arrival of ceres in attica is referred to the time of pandion by apollodorus. [ ] when lobeck desires to fix the date of this religious union at so recent an epoch as the time of solon, in consequence of a solitary passage in herodotus, in which solon, conversing with croesus, speaks of hostilities between the athenians and eleusinians, he seems to me to fail in sufficient ground for the assumption. the rite might have been instituted in consequence of a far earlier feud and league--even that traditionally recorded in the mythic age of erechtheus and eumolpus, but could not entirely put an end to the struggles of eleusis for independence, or prevent the outbreak of occasional jealousy and dissension. [ ] kneph, the agatho demon, or good spirit of egypt, had his symbol in the serpent. it was precisely because sacred with the rest of the world that the serpent would be an object of abhorrence with the jews. but by a curious remnant of oriental superstition, the early christians often represented the messiah by the serpent--and the emblem of satan became that of the saviour. [ ] lib. ii., c. , . [ ] and this opinion is confirmed by dionysius and strabo, who consider the dodona oracle originally pelasgic. [ ] also pelasgic, according to strabo. [ ] "the americans did not long suppose the efficacy of conjuration to be confined to one subject--they had recourse to it in every situation of danger or distress.------from this weakness proceeded likewise the faith of the americans in dreams, their observation of omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of animals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events." --robertson's history of america, book iv. might not any one imagine that he were reading the character of the ancient greeks? this is not the only point of resemblance between the americans (when discovered by the spaniards) and the greeks in their early history; but the resemblance is merely that of a civilization in some respects equally advanced. [ ] the notion of democritus of abdera, respecting the origin of dreams and divination, may not be uninteresting to the reader, partly from something vast and terrible in the fantasy, partly as a proof of the strange, incongruous, bewildered chaos of thought, from which at last broke the light of the grecian philosophy. he introduced the hypothesis of images (eidola,), emanating as it were from external objects, which impress our sense, and whose influence creates sensation and thought. dreams and divination he referred to the impressions communicated by images of gigantic and vast stature, which inhabited the air and encompassed the world. yet this philosopher is the original of epicurus, and epicurus is the original of the modern utilitarians! [ ] isaiah lxvi. i. [ ] this lucian acknowledges unawares, when, in deriding the popular religion, he says that a youth who reads of the gods in homer or hesiod, and finds their various immoralities so highly renowned, would feel no little surprise when he entered the world, to discover that these very actions of the gods were condemned and punished by mankind. [ ] ovid. metam., lib. ix. [ ] so the celebrated preamble to the laws for the locrians of italy (which, though not written by zaleucus, was, at all events, composed by a greek) declares that men must hold their souls clear from every vice; that the gods did not accept the offerings of the wicked, but found pleasure only in the just and beneficent actions of the good.-- see diod. siculus, lib. . [ ] a mainote hearing the druses praised for their valour, said, with some philosophy, "they would fear death more if they believed in an hereafter!" [ ] in the time of socrates, we may suspect, from a passage in plato's phaedo, that the vulgar were skeptical of the immortality of the soul, and it may be reasonably doubted whether the views of socrates and his divine disciple were ever very popularly embraced. [ ] it is always by connecting the divine shape with the human that we exalt our creations--so, in later times, the saints, the virgin, and the christ, awoke the genius of italian art. [ ] see note [ ]. [ ] in the later age of philosophy i shall have occasion to return to the subject. and in the appendix, with which i propose to complete the work, i may indulge in some conjectures relative to the corybantes curetes, teichines, etc. [ ] herodotus (i. vi., c. ) speaks of a remote time when the athenians had no slaves. as we have the authority of thucydides for the superior repose which attica enjoyed as compared with the rest of greece--so (her population never having been conquered) slavery in attica was probably of later date than elsewhere, and we may doubt whether in that favoured land the slaves were taken from any considerable part of the aboriginal race. i say considerable part, for crime or debt would have reduced some to servitude. the assertion of herodotus that the ionians were indigenous (and not conquerors as mueller pretends), is very strongly corroborated by the absence in attica of a class of serfs like the penestae of thessaly and the helots of laconia. a race of conquerors would certainly have produced a class of serfs. [ ] or else the land (properly speaking) would remain with the slaves, as it did with the messenians an helots--but certain proportions of the produce would be the due of the conquerors. [ ] immigration has not hitherto been duly considered as one of the original sources of slavery. [ ] in a horde of savages never having held communication or intercourse with other tribes, there would indeed be men who, by a superiority of physical force, would obtain an ascendency over the rest; but these would not bequeath to their descendants distinct privileges. exactly because physical power raised the father into rank--the want of physical power would merge his children among the herd. strength and activity cannot be hereditary. with individuals of a tribe as yet attaching value only to a swift foot or a strong arm, hereditary privilege is impossible. but if one such barbarous tribe conquer another less hardy, and inhabit the new settlement,-- then indeed commences an aristocracy--for amid communities, though not among individuals, hereditary physical powers can obtain. one man may not leave his muscles to his son; but one tribe of more powerful conformation than another would generally contrive to transmit that advantage collectively to their posterity. the sense of superiority effected by conquest soon produces too its moral effects--elevating the spirit of the one tribe, depressing that of the other, from generation to generation. those who have denied in conquest or colonization the origin of hereditary aristocracy, appear to me to have founded their reasonings upon the imperfectness of their knowledge of the savage states to which they refer for illustration. [ ] accordingly we find in the earliest records of greek history--in the stories of the heroic and the homeric age--that the king possessed but little authority except in matters of war: he was in every sense of the word a limited monarch, and the greeks boasted that they had never known the unqualified despotism of the east. the more, indeed, we descend from the patriarchal times; the more we shall find that colonists established in their settlements those aristocratic institutions which are the earliest barriers against despotism. colonies are always the first teachers of free institutions. there is no nation probably more attached to monarchy than the english, yet i believe that if, according to the ancient polity, the english were to migrate into different parts, and establish, in colonizing, their own independent forms of government; there would scarcely be a single such colony not republican! [ ] in attica, immigration, not conquest, must have led to the institution of aristocracy. thucydides observes, that owing to the repose in attica (the barren soil of which presented no temptation to the conqueror), the more powerful families expelled from the other parts of greece, betook themselves for security and refuge to athens. and from some of these foreigners many of the noblest families in the historical time traced their descent. before the arrival of these grecian strangers, phoenician or egyptian settlers had probably introduced an aristocratic class. [ ] modern inquirers pretend to discover the egyptian features in the effigy of minerva on the earliest athenian coins. even the golden grasshopper, with which the athenians decorated their hair, and which was considered by their vanity as a symbol of their descent from the soil, has been construed into an egyptian ornament--a symbol of the initiated.--(horapoll. hierogl., lib. ii., c. .) "they are the only grecian people," says diodorus, "who swear by isis, and their manners are very conformable to those of the egyptians; and so much truth was there at one time (when what was egyptian became the fashion) in this remark, that they were reproached by the comic writer that their city was egypt and not athens." but it is evident that all such resemblance as could have been derived from a handful of egyptians, previous to the age of theseus, was utterly obliterated before the age of solon. even if we accord to the tale of cecrops all implicit faith, the atticans would still remain a pelasgic population, of which a few early institutions--a few benefits of elementary civilization-- and, it may be, a few of the nobler families, were probably of egyptian origin. [ ] it has been asserted by some that there is evidence in ancient attica of the existence of castes similar to those in egypt and the farther east. but this assertion has been so ably refuted that i do not deem it necessary to enter at much length into the discussion. it will be sufficient to observe that the assumption is founded upon the existence of four tribes in attica, the names of which etymological erudition has sought to reduce to titles denoting the different professions of warriors, husbandmen, labourers, and (the last much more disputable and much more disputed) priests. in the first place, it has been cogently remarked by mr. clinton (f. h., vol. i., p. ), that this institution of castes has been very inconsistently attributed to the greek ion,--not (as, if egyptian, it would have been) to the egyptian cecrops. dly, if rightly referred to ion, who did not long precede the heroic age, how comes it that in that age a spirit the most opposite to that of castes universally prevailed--as all the best authenticated enactments of theseus abundantly prove? could institutions calculated to be the most permanent that legislation ever effected, and which in india have resisted every innovation of time, every revolution of war, have vanished from attica in the course of a few generations? dly, it is to be observed, that previous to the divisions referred to ion, we find the same number of four tribes under wholly different names;--under cecrops, under cranaus, under ericthonius or erectheus, they received successive changes of appellations, none of which denoted professions, but were moulded either from the distinctions of the land they inhabited, or the names of deities they adored. if remodelled by ion to correspond with distinct professions and occupations (and where is that social state which does not form different classes--a formation widely opposite to that of different castes?) cultivated by the majority of the members of each tribe, the name given to each tribe might be but a general title by no means applicable to every individual, and certainly not implying hereditary and indelible distinctions. thly, in corroboration of this latter argument, there is not a single evidence--a single tradition, that such divisions ever were hereditary. thly, in the time of solon and the pisistratida we find the four ionic tribes unchanged, but without any features analogous to those of the oriental castes.--(clinton, f. h., vol. i., p. .) thly, i shall add what i have before intimated (see note [ ]), that i do not think it the character of a people accustomed to castes to establish castes mock and spurious in any country which a few of them might visit or colonize. nay, it is clearly and essentially contrary to such a character to imagine that a handful of wandering egyptians, even supposing (which is absurd) that their party contained members of each different caste observed by their countrymen, would have incorporated with such scanty specimens of each caste any of the barbarous natives--they would leave all the natives to a caste by themselves. and an egyptian hierophant would as little have thought of associating with himself a pelasgic priest, as a bramin would dream of making a bramin caste out of a set of christian clergymen. but if no egyptian hierophant accompanied the immigrators, doubly ridiculous is it to suppose that the latter would have raised any of their own body, to whom such a change of caste would be impious, and still less any of the despised savages, to a rank the most honoured and the most reverent which egyptian notions of dignity could confer. even the very lowest egyptians would not touch any thing a grecian knife had polluted--the very rigidity with which caste was preserved in egypt would forbid the propagation of castes among barbarians so much below the very lowest caste they could introduce. so far, therefore, from egyptian adventurers introducing such an institution among the general population, their own spirit of caste must rapidly have died away as intermarriage with the natives, absence from their countrymen, and the active life of an uncivilized home, mixed them up with the blood, the pursuits, and the habits of their new associates. lastly, if these arguments (which might be easily multiplied) do not suffice, i say it is not for me more completely to destroy, but for those of a contrary opinion more completely to substantiate, an hypothesis so utterly at variance with the athenian character--the acknowledged data of athenian history; and which would assert the existence of institutions the most difficult to establish;--when established, the most difficult to modify, much more to efface. [ ] the thessali were pelasgic. [ ] thucyd., lib. i. [ ] homer--so nice a discriminator that he dwells upon the barbarous tongue even of the carians--never seems to intimate any distinction between the language and race of the pelasgi and hellenes, yet he wrote in an age when the struggle was still unconcluded, and when traces of any marked difference must have been sufficiently obvious to detect--sufficiently interesting to notice. [ ] strabo, viii. [ ] pausan., viii. [ ] with all my respect for the deep learning and acute ingenuity of mueller, it is impossible not to protest against the spirit in which much of the history of the dorians is conceived--a spirit than which nothing can be more dangerous to sound historical inquiry. a vague tradition, a doubtful line, suffice the daring author for proof of a foreign conquest, or evidence of a religious revolution. there are german writers who seem to imagine that the new school of history is built on the maxim of denying what is, and explaining what is not? ion is never recorded as supplanting, or even succeeding, an attic king. he might have introduced the worship of apollo; but, as mr. clinton rightly observes, that worship never superseded the worship of minerva, who still remained the tutelary divinity of the city. however vague the traditions respecting ion, they all tend to prove an alliance with the athenians, viz., precisely the reverse of a conquest of them. [ ] that connexion which existed throughout greece, sometimes pure, sometimes perverted, was especially and originally doric. [ ] prideaux on the marbles. the iones are included in this confederacy; they could not, then, have taken their name from the hellenic ion, for ion was not born at the time of amphictyon. the name amphictyon is, however, but a type of the thing amphictyony, or association. leagues of this kind were probably very common over greece, springing almost simultaneously out of the circumstances common to numerous tribes, kindred with each other, yet often at variance and feud. a common language led them to establish, by a mutual adoption of tutelary deities, a common religious ceremony, which remained in force after political considerations died away. i take the amphictyonic league to be one of the proofs of the affinity of language between the pelasgi and hellenes. it was evidently made while the pelasgi were yet powerful and unsubdued by hellenic influences, and as evidently it could not have been made if the pelasgi and hellenes were not perfectly intelligible to each other. mr. clinton (f. h., vol. i., ), assigns a more recent date than has generally been received to the great amphictyonic league, placing it between the sixtieth and the eightieth year from the fall of troy. his reason for not dating it before the former year is, that until then the thessali (one of the twelve nations) did not occupy thessaly. but, it may be observed consistently with the reasonings of that great authority, first, that the thessali are not included in the lists of the league given by harpocratio and libanius; and, secondly, that even granting that the great amphictyonic assembly of twelve nations did not commence at an earlier period, yet that that more celebrated amphictyony might have been preceded by other and less effectual attempts at association, agreeably to the legends of the genealogy. and this mr. clinton himself implies. [ ] strabo, lib. ix. [ ] mueller's dorians, vol. i. [ ] probably chosen in rotation from the different cities. [ ] even the bieromnemons (or deputies intrusted with religious cares) must have been as a class very inferior in ability to the pylagorae; for the first were chosen by lot, the last by careful selection. and thus we learn, in effect, that while the hieromnemon had the higher grade of dignity, the pylagoras did the greater share of business. [ ] milton, hist. of eng., book i. [ ] no man of rank among the old northern pirates was deemed honourable if not a pirate, gloriam sibi acquirens, as the vatzdaela hath it. [ ] most probably more than one prince. greece has three well accredited pretenders to the name and attributes even of the grecian hercules. [ ] herodotus marks the difference between the egyptian and grecian deity, and speaks of a temple erected by the phoenicians to hercules, when they built thasus, five hundred years before the son of amphitryon was known to the greeks. the historian commends such of the greeks as erected two temples to the divinity of that name, worshipping in the one as to a god, but in the other observing only the rites as to a hero.-b. ii., c. , . [ ] plot. in vit. thes.--apollod., l. . this story is often borrowed by the spanish romance-writers, to whom plutarch was a copious fountain of legendary fable. [ ] plut. in vit. thes. [ ] mr. mueller's ingenious supposition, that the tribute was in fact a religious ceremony, and that the voyage of theseus had originally no other meaning than the landings at naxos and delos, is certainly credible, but not a whit more so than, and certainly not so simple as, the ancient accounts in plutarch; as with mythological, so with historical legends, it is better to take the plain and popular interpretation whenever it seems conformable to the manners of the times, than to construe the story by newly-invented allegories. it is very singular that that is the plan which every writer on the early chronicles of france and england would adopt,--and yet which so few writers agree to*****[three illegible words in the print copy]***** the obscure records of the greeks. [ ] plutarch cites clidemus in support of another version of the tale, somewhat less probable, viz., that, by the death of minos and his son deucalion, ariadne became possessed of the throne, and that she remitted the tribute. [ ] thucydides, b. ii., c. . [ ] but many athenians preferred to a much later age the custom of living without the walls--scattered over the country.--(thucyd., lib. ii., .) we must suppose it was with them as with the moderns--the rich and the great generally preferred the capital, but there were many exceptions. [ ] for other instances in which the same word is employed by homer, see clinton's fast hell., vol. i., introduction, ix. [ ] paus., l. i., c. ; l. ii., c. . [ ] paus., l. vii., c. . an oracle of dodona had forewarned the athenians of the necessity of sparing the suppliants. [ ] herod. (lib. v., ) cites this expedition of the dorians for the establishment of a colony at megara as that of their first incursion into attica. [ ] suidas. one cannot but be curious as to the motives and policy of a person, virtuous as a man, but so relentless as a lawgiver. although draco was himself a noble, it is difficult to suppose that laws so stern and impartial would not operate rather against the more insolent and encroaching class than against the more subordinate ones. the attempt shows a very unwholesome state of society, and went far to produce the democratic action which solon represented rather than created. [ ] hume utters a sentiment exactly the reverse: "to expect," says he, in his essay on the rise of arts and sciences, "that the arts and sciences should take their first rise in a monarchy, is to expect a contradiction;" and he holds, in a subsequent part of the same essay, that though republics originate the arts and sciences, they may be transferred to a monarchy. yet this sentiment is utterly at variance with the fact; in the despotic monarchies of the east were the elements of the arts and sciences; it was to republics they were transferred, and republics perfected them. hume, indeed, is often the most incautious and uncritical of all writers. what can we think of an author who asserts that a refined taste succeeds best in monarchies, and then refers to the indecencies of horace and ovid as an example of the reverse in a republic--as if ovid and horace had not lived under a monarchy! and throughout the whole of this theory he is as thoroughly in the wrong. by refined taste he signifies an avoidance of immodesty of style. beaumont and fletcher, rochester, dean swift, wrote under monarchies--their pruriencies are not excelled by any republican authors of ancient times. what ancient authors equal in indelicacy the french romances from the time of the regent of orleans to louis xvi.? by all accounts, the despotism of china is the very sink of indecencies, whether in pictures or books. still more, what can we think of a writer who says, that "the ancients have not left us one piece of pleasantry that is excellent, unless one may except the banquet of xenophon and the dialogues of lucian?" what! has he forgotten aristophanes? has he forgotten plautus! no--but their pleasantry is not excellent to his taste; and he tacitly agrees with horace in censuring the "coarse railleries and cold jests" of the great original of moliere! [ ] which forbade the concentration of power necessary to great conquests. phoenicia was not one state, it was a confederacy of states; so, for the same reason, greece, admirably calculated to resist, was ill fitted to invade. [ ] for the dates of these migrations, see fast. hell., vol. i. [ ] to a much later period in the progress of this work i reserve a somewhat elaborate view of the history of sicily. [ ] pausanias, in corroboration of this fact, observes, that periboea, the daughter of alcathous, was sent with theseus with tribute into crete. [ ] when, according to pausanias, it changed its manners and its language. [ ] in length fifty-two geographical miles, and about twenty-eight to thirty-two broad. [ ] a council of five presided over the business of the oracle, composed of families who traced their descent from deucalion. [ ] great grandson to antiochus, son of hercules.--pausanias, l. , c. . [ ] but at argos, at least, the name, though not the substance, of the kingly government was extant as late as the persian war. [ ] those who meant to take part in the athletic exercises were required to attend at olympia thirty days previous to the games, for preparation and practice. [ ] it would appear by some etruscan vases found at veii, that the etruscans practised all the greek games--leaping, running, cudgel-playing, etc., and were not restricted, as niebuhr supposes, to boxing and chariot-races. [ ] it however diminishes the real honour of the chariot-race, that the owner of horses usually won by proxy. [ ] the indecorum of attending contests where the combatants were unclothed, was a sufficient reason for the exclusion of females. the priestess of ceres, the mighty mother, was accustomed to regard all such indecorums as symbolical, and had therefore refined away any remarkable indelicacy. [ ] plut. in alex. when one of the combatants with the cestus killed his antagonist by running the ends of his fingers through his ribs, he was ignominiously expelled the stadium. the cestus itself made of thongs of leather, was evidently meant not to increase the severity of the blow, but for the prevention of foul play by the antagonists laying hold of each other, or using the open hand. i believe that the iron bands and leaden plummets were roman inventions, and unknown at least till the later olympic games. even in the pancratium, the fiercest of all the contests--for it seems to have united wrestling with boxing (a struggle of physical strength, without the precise and formal laws of the boxing and wrestling matches), it was forbidden to kill an enemy, to injure his eyes, or to use the teeth. [ ] even to the foot-race, in which many of the competitors were of the lowest rank, the son of amyntas, king of macedon, was not admitted till he had proved an argive descent. he was an unsuccessful competitor. [ ] herodotus relates an anecdote, that the eleans sent deputies to egypt, vaunting the glories of the olympic games, and inquiring if the egyptians could suggest any improvement. the egyptians asked if the citizens of elis were allowed to contend, and, on hearing that they were, declared it was impossible they should not favour their own countrymen, and consequently that the games must lead to injustice--a suspicion not verified. [ ] cic. quaest. tusc., ii, . [ ] nero (when the glory had left the spot) drove a chariot of ten horses in olympia, out of which he had the misfortune to tumble. he obtained other prizes in other grecian games, and even contended with the heralds as a crier. the vanity of nero was astonishing, but so was that of most of his successors. the roman emperors were the sublimest coxcombs in history. in men born to stations which are beyond ambition, all aspirations run to seed. [ ] plut. in sympos. [ ] it does not appear that at elis there were any of the actual contests in music and song which made the character of the pythian games. but still it was a common exhibition for the cultivation of every art. sophist, and historian, and orator, poet and painter found their mart in the olympic fair. [ ] plut. in vita them. [ ] pausanias, lib. v. [ ] when phidias was asked on what idea he should form his statue, he answered by quoting the well-known verses of homer, on the curls and nod of the thunder god. [ ] i am of course aware that the popular story that herodotus read portions of his history at olympia has been disputed--but i own i think it has been disputed with very indifferent success against the testimony of competent authorities, corroborated by the general practice of the time. [ ] we find, indeed, that the messenians continued to struggle against their conquerors, and that about the time of the battle of marathon they broke out into a resistance sometimes called the third war.--plato, leg. iii. [ ] suppose vortigern to have been expelled by the britons, and to have implored the assistance of the saxons to reinstate him in his throne, the return of vortigern would have been a highly popular name for the invasion of the saxons. so, if the russians, after waterloo, had parcelled out france, and fixed a cossack settlement in her "violet vales," the destruction of the french would have been still urbanely entitled "the return of the bourbons." [ ] according to herodotus, the spartan tradition assigned the throne to aristodemus himself, and the regal power was not divided till after his death. [ ] he wrote or transcribed them, is the expression of plutarch, which i do not literally translate, because this touches upon very disputed ground. [ ] "sometimes the states," says plutarch, "veered to democracy-- sometimes to arbitrary power;" that is, at one time the nobles invoked the people against the king; but if the people presumed too far, they supported the king against the people. if we imagine a confederacy of highland chiefs even a century or two ago--give them a nominal king-- consider their pride and their jealousy--see them impatient of authority in one above them, yet despotic to those below--quarrelling with each other--united only by clanship, never by citizenship;--and place them in a half-conquered country, surrounded by hostile neighbours and mutinous slaves--we may then form, perhaps, some idea of the state of sparta previous to the legislation of lycurgus. [ ] when we are told that the object of lycurgus was to root out the luxury and effeminacy existent in sparta, a moment's reflection tells us that effeminacy and luxury could not have existed. a tribe of fierce warriors, in a city unfortified--shut in by rocks--harassed by constant war--gaining city after city from foes more civilized, stubborn to bear, and slow to yield--maintaining a perilous yoke over the far more numerous races they had subdued--what leisure, what occasion had such men to become effeminate and luxurious? [ ] see mueller's dorians, vol. ii., p. (translation). [ ] in the same passage aristotle, with that wonderful sympathy in opinion between himself and the political philosophers of our own day, condemns the principle of seeking and canvassing for suffrages. [ ] in this was preserved the form of royalty in the heroic times. aristotle well remarks, that in the council agamemnon bears reproach and insult, but in the field he becomes armed with authority over life itself--"death is in his hand." [ ] whereas the modern republics of italy rank among the causes which prevented their assuming a widely conquering character, their extreme jealousy of their commanders, often wisely ridiculed by the great italian historians; so that a baggage-cart could scarcely move, or a cannon be planted, without an order from the senate! [ ] mueller rightly observes, that though the ephoralty was a common dorian magistrature, "yet, considered as an office, opposed to the king and council, it is not for that reason less peculiar to the spartans; and in no doric, nor even in any grecian state is there any thing which exactly corresponds with it." [ ] they rebuked archidamus for having married too small a wife. see mueller's dorians, vol. ii. (translation), p. , and the authorities he quotes. [ ] aristot. pol., lib. ii., c. . [ ] idem. [ ] these remarks on the democratic and representative nature of the ephoralty are only to be applied to it in connexion with the spartan people. it must be remembered that the ephors represented the will of that dominant class, and not of the laconians or perioeci, who made the bulk of the non-enslaved population; and the democracy of their constitution was therefore but the democracy of an oligarchy. [ ] machiavel (discourses on the first decade of livy, b. i., c. vi.), attributes the duration of the spartan government to two main causes--first, the fewness of the body to be governed, allowing fewness in the governors; and secondly, the prevention of all the changes and corruption which the admission of strangers would have occasioned. he proceeds then to show that for the long duration of a constitution the people should be few in number, and all popular impulse and innovation checked; yet that, for the splendour and greatness of a state, not only population should be encouraged, but even political ferment and agitation be leniently regarded. sparta is his model for duration, republican rome for progress and empire. "to my judgment," the florentine concludes, "i prefer the latter, and for the strife and emulation between the nobles and the people, they are to be regarded indeed as inconveniences, but necessary to a state that would rise to the roman grandeur." [ ] plut. de musica. [ ] at corinth they were abolished by periander as favourable to an aristocracy, according to aristotle; but a better reason might be that they were dangerous to tyranny. [ ] "yet, although goods were appropriated, their uses," says aristotle, "were freely communicated,--a spartan could use the horses, the slaves, the dogs, and carriages of another." if this were to be taken literally, it is difficult to see how a spartan could be poor. we must either imagine that different times are confounded, or that limitations with which we are unacquainted were made in this system of borrowing. [ ] see, throughout the grecian history, the helots collecting the plunder of the battle-field, hiding it from the gripe of their lords, and selling gold at the price of brass! [ ] aristotle, who is exceedingly severe on the spartan ladies, says very shrewdly, that the men were trained to submission to a civil by a military system, while the women were left untamed. a spartan hero was thus made to be henpecked. yet, with all the alleged severity of the dorian morals, these sturdy matrons rather discarded the graces than avoided the frailties of their softer contemporaries. plato [plat. de legibus, lib. i. and lib. vi.] and aristotle [aristot. repub., lib. ii.] give very unfavourable testimonials of their chastity. plutarch, the blind panegyrist of sparta, observes with amusing composure, that the spartan husbands were permitted to lend their wives to each other; and polybius (in a fragment of the th book) [fragm. vatican., tom. ii., p. .] informs us that it was an old-fashioned and common custom in sparta for three or four brothers to share one wife. the poor husbands!--no doubt the lady was a match for them all! so much for those gentle creatures whom that grave german professor, m. mueller, holds up to our admiration and despair. [ ] in homer the condition of the slave seems, everywhere, tempered by the kindness and indulgence of the master. [ ] three of the equals always attended the king's person in war. [ ] the institution of the ephors has been, with probability, referred to this epoch--chosen at first as the viceroys in the absence of the kings. [ ] pausanias, messenics. [ ] see mueller's dorians, vol. i., p. , and clinton's fast. hell. vol. i., p. . [ ] for the dates here given of the second messenian war see fast. hell., vol. i., , and appendix . [ ] now called messina. [ ] in phocis were no less than twenty-two states (poleis); in boeotia, fourteen; in achaia, ten. the ancient political theorists held no community too small for independence, provided the numbers sufficed for its defence. we find from plato that a society of five thousand freemen capable of bearing arms was deemed powerful enough to constitute an independent state. one great cause of the ascendency of athens and sparta was, that each of those cities had from an early period swept away the petty independent states in their several territories of attica and laconia. [ ] machiavel (discor., lib. i., c. ii.). [ ] lib. iv., c. . [ ] aristotle cites among the advantages of wealth, that of being enabled to train horses. wherever the nobility could establish among themselves a cavalry, the constitution was oligarchical. yet, even in states which did not maintain a cavalry (as athens previous to the constitution of solon), an oligarchy was the first form of government that rose above the ruins of monarchy. [ ] one principal method of increasing the popular action was by incorporating the neighbouring villages or wards in one municipality with the capital. by this the people gained both in number and in union. [ ] sometimes in ancient greece there arose a species of lawful tyrants, under the name of aesymnetes. these were voluntarily chosen by the people, sometimes for life, sometimes for a limited period, and generally for the accomplishment of some particular object. thus was pittacus of mitylene elected to conduct the war against the exiles. with the accomplishment of the object he abdicated his power. but the appointment of aesymnetes can hardly be called a regular form of government. they soon became obsolete--the mere creatures of occasion. while they lasted, they bore a strong resemblance to the roman dictators--a resemblance remarked by dionysius, who quotes theophrastus as agreeing with aristotle in his account of the aesymnetes. [ ] for, as the great florentine has well observed, "to found well a government, one man is the best--once established, the care and execution of the laws should be transferred to many."--(machiavel. discor., lib. i., c. .) and thus a tyranny builds the edifice, which the republic hastens to inhabit. [ ] that of orthagoras and his sons in sicyon. "of all governments," says aristotle, "that of an oligarchy, or of a tyrant, is the least permanent." a quotation that cannot be too often pressed on the memory of those reasoners who insist so much on the brief duration of the ancient republics. [ ] besides the representation necessary to confederacies--such as the amphictyonic league, etc., a representative system was adopted at mantinea, where the officers were named by deputies chosen by the people. "this form of democracy," says aristotle, "existed among the shepherds and husbandmen of arcadia;" and was probably not uncommon with the ancient pelasgians. but the myrioi of arcadia had not the legislative power. [ ] "then to the lute's soft voice prolong the night, music, the banquet's most refined delight." pope's odyssey, book xxi., . it is stronger in the original-- moltae kai phormingi tu gar t'anathaemata daitos. [ ] iliad, book ix., pope's translation, line . [ ] heyne, f. clinton, etc. [ ] pope's translation, b. iv., line , etc. [ ] at least this passage is sufficient to refute the arguments of mr. mitford, and men more learned than that historian, who, in taking for their premises as an indisputable fact the extraordinary assumption, that homer never once has alluded to the return of the heraclidae, arrive at a conclusion very illogical, even if the premises were true, viz., that therefore homer preceded the date of that great revolution. [ ] i own that this seems to me the most probable way of accounting for the singular and otherwise disproportioned importance attached by the ancient poets to that episode in the trojan war, which relates to the feud of achilles and agamemnon. as the first recorded enmity between the great achaeans and the warriors of phthiotis, it would have a solemn and historical interest both to the conquering dorians and the defeated achaeans, flattering to the national vanity of either people. [ ] i adopt the analysis of the anti-homer arguments so clearly given by mr. coleridge in his eloquent introduction to the study of the greek poets. homer, p. . [ ] en spanei biblon, are the words of herodotus. leaves and the bark of trees were also used from a very remote period previous to the common use of the papyrus, and when we are told that leaves would not suffice for works of any length or duration, it must not be forgotten that in a much later age it was upon leaves (and mutton bones) that the koran was transcribed. the rudest materials are sufficient for the preservation of what men deem it their interest to preserve! [ ] see clinton's f. h., vol. i., p. . [ ] critics, indeed, discover some pretended gaps and interpolations; but these, if conceded, are no proof against the unity of homer; the wonder is, that there should be so few of such interpolations, considering the barbarous age which intervened between their composition and the time in which they were first carefully edited and collected. with more force it is urged against the argument in favour of the unity of homer, derived from the unity of the style and character, that there are passages which modern critics agree to be additions to the original poems, made centuries afterward, and yet unsuspected by the ancients; and that in these additions--such as the last books of the iliad, with many others less important--the homeric unity of style and character is still sustained. we may answer, however, that, in the first place, we have a right to be skeptical as to these discoveries--many of them rest on very insufficient critical grounds; in the second place, if we grant them, it is one thing whether a forged addition be introduced into a poem, and another thing whether the poem be all additions; in the third place, we may observe, that successful imitations of the style and characters of an author, however great, may be made many centuries afterward with tolerable ease, and by a very inferior genius, although, at the time he wrote or sung, it is not easy to suppose that half a dozen or more poets shared his spirit or style. it is a very common scholastic trick to imitate, nowadays, and with considerable felicity, the style of the greatest writers, ancient and modern. but the unity of homer does not depend on the question whether imitative forgeries were introduced into a great poem, but whether a multitude of great poets combined in one school on one subject. an ingenious student of shakspeare, or the elder dramatists, might impose upon the public credulity a new scene, or even a new play, as belonging to shakspeare, but would that be any proof that a company of shakspeares combined in the production of macbeth? i own, by-the-way, that i am a little doubtful as to our acumen in ascertaining what is homeric and what is not, seeing that schlegel, after devoting half a life to shakspeare (whose works are composed in a living language, the authenticity of each of which works a living nation can attest), nevertheless attributes to that poet a catalogue of plays of which shakspeare is perfectly innocent!--but, to be sure, steevens does the same! [ ] that pisistratus or his son, assisted by the poets of his day, did more than collect, arrange, and amend poems already in high repute, we have not only no authority to suppose, but much evidence to contradict. of the true services of pisistratus to homer, more hereafter. [ ] "the descent of theseus with pirithous into hell," etc.--paus., ix., c. . [ ] especially if with the boeotians we are to consider the most poetical passage (the introductory lines to the muses) a spurious interpolation. [ ] a herdsman. [ ] i cannot omit a tradition recorded by pausanias. a leaden table near the fountain was shown by the boeotians as that on which the "works and days" was written. the poems of hesiod certainly do not appear so adapted to recital as perusal. yet, by the most plausible chronology, they were only composed about one hundred years after those of homer! [ ] the aones, hyantes, and other tribes, which i consider part of the great pelasgic family, were expelled from boeotia by thracian hordes. [they afterward returned in the time of the dorian emigration.] some of the population must, however, have remained--the peasantry of the land; and in hesiod we probably possess the national poetry, and arrive at the national religion, of the old pelasgi. [ ] welcker. [ ] the deadly signs which are traced by praetus on the tablets of which bellerophon was the bearer, and which are referred to in the iliad, are generally supposed by the learned to have been pictorial, and, as it were, hieroglyphical figures; my own belief, and the easiest interpretation of the passage, is, that they were alphabetical characters--in a word, writing, not painting. [ ] pausanias, lib. i., c. , speaks of a wooden statue in the temple of pohas, in athens, said to have been the gift of cecrops; and, with far more claim to belief, in the previous chapter he tells us that the most holy of all the images was a statue of minerva, which, by the common consent of all the towns before incorporated in one city, was dedicated in the citadel, or polis. tradition, therefore, carried the date of this statue beyond the time of theseus. plutarch also informs us that theseus himself, when he ordained divine honours to be paid to ariadne, ordered two little statues to be made of her--one of silver and one of brass. [ ] all that homer calls the work of vulcan, such as the dogs in the palace of alcinous, etc., we may suppose to be the work of foreigners. a poet could scarcely attribute to the gods a work that his audience knew an artificer in their own city had made! [ ] see odyssey, book vii. [ ] the effect of the arts, habits, and manners of a foreign country is immeasurably more important upon us if we visit that country, than if we merely receive visits from its natives. for example, the number of french emigrants who crowded our shores at the time of the french revolution very slightly influenced english customs, etc. but the effect of the french upon us when, after the peace, our own countrymen flocked to france, was immense. [ ] herod., lib. ii., c. . [ ] grecian architecture seems to have been more free from obligation to any technical secrets of egyptian art than grecian statuary or painting. for, in the first place, it is more than doubtful whether the doric order was not invented in european greece long prior to the reign of psammetichus [the earliest known temple at corinth is supposed by col. leake to bear date b. c. , about one hundred and thirty years before the reign of psammetichus in egypt.]; and, in the second place, it is evident that the first hints and rudiments both of the doric and the ionic order were borrowed, not from buildings of the massive and perennial materials of egyptian architecture, but from wooden edifices; growing into perfection as stone and marble were introduced, and the greater difficulty and expense of the workmanship insensibly imposed severer thought and more elaborate rules upon the architect. but i cannot agree with mueller and others, that because the first hints of the doric order were taken from wooden buildings, therefore the first invention was necessarily with the dorians, since many of the asiatic cities were built chiefly of wood. it seems to me most probable that asia gave the first notions of these beautiful forms, and that the greeks carried them to perfection before the asiatics, not only from their keen perception of the graceful, but because they earlier made a general use of stone. we learn from herodotus that the gorgeous sardis was built chiefly of wood, at a time when the marble of paros was a common material of the grecian temples. [ ] thales was one of the seven wise men, b. c. , when pherecydes of syrus, the first prose writer, was about fourteen years old. mr. clinton fixes the acme of pherecydes about b. c. . cadmus of miletus flourished b. c. . [ ] to this solution of the question, why literature should generally commence with attempts at philosophy, may be added another: --when written first breaks upon oral communication, the reading public must necessarily be extremely confined. in many early nations, that reading public would be composed of the caste of priests; in this case philosophy would be cramped by superstition. in greece, there being no caste of priests, philosophy embraced those studious minds addicted to a species of inquiry which rejected the poetical form, as well as the poetical spirit. it may be observed, that the more limited the reading public, the more abstruse are generally prose compositions; as readers increase, literature goes back to the fashion of oral communication; for if the reciter addressed the multitude in the earlier age, so the writer addresses a multitude in the later; literature, therefore, commences with poetical fiction, and usually terminates with prose fiction. it was so in the ancient world--it will be so with england and france. the harvest of novels is, i fear, a sign of the approaching exhaustion of the soil. [ ] see chapter i. [ ] instead of periander of corinth, is (by plato, and therefore) more popularly, but less justly, ranked myson of chene. [ ] attributed also to thales; stob. serm. [ ] aristotle relates (pol., lib. i.) a singular anecdote of the means whereby this philosopher acquired wealth. his skill in meteorology made him foresee that there would be one season an extraordinary crop of olives. he hired during the previous winter all the oil-presses in chios and miletus, employing his scanty fortune in advances to the several proprietors. when the approaching season showed the ripening crops, every man wished to provide olive-presses as quickly as possible; and thales, having them all, let them at a high price. his monopoly made his fortune, and he showed to his friends, says aristotle, that it was very easy for philosophers to be rich if they desire it, though such is not their principal desire;-- philosophy does not find the same facilities nowadays. [ ] thus homer is cited in proof of the progenital humidity, "'okeanos hosper ginesis pantos tet ktai;" the bryant race of speculators would attack us at once with "the spirit moving on the face of the waters." it was not an uncommon opinion in greece that chaos was first water settling into slime, and then into earth; and there are good but not sufficient reasons to attribute a similar, and of course earlier, notion to the phoenicians, and still more perhaps to the indians. [ ] plut. de plac. phil. [ ] ap. stob. serm. [ ] laert. [ ] according to clinton's chronology, viz., one year after the legislation of draco. this emendation of dates formerly received throws considerable light upon the causes of the conspiracy, which perhaps took its strength from the unpopularity and failure of draco's laws. following the very faulty chronology which pervades his whole work, mr. mitford makes the attempt of cylon precede the legislation of draco. [ ] a cap. [ ] the expedition against salamis under solon preceded the arrival of epimenides at athens, which was in . the legislation of solon was b. c. --the first tyranny of pisistratus b. c. : viz., thirty-four years after solon's legislation, and at least thirty-seven years after solon's expedition to salamis. but pisistratus lived thirty-three years after his first usurpation, so that, if he had acted in the first expedition to salamis, he would have lived to an age little short of one hundred, and been considerably past eighty at the time of his third most brilliant and most energetic government! the most probable date for the birth of pisistratus is that assigned by mr. clinton, about b. c. , somewhat subsequent to solon's expedition to salamis, and only about a year prior to solon's legislation. according to this date, pisistratus would have been about sixty-eight at the time of his death. the error of plutarch evidently arose from his confounding two wars with megara for salamis, attended with similar results--the first led by solon, the second by pisistratus. i am the more surprised that mr. thirlwall should have fallen into the error of making pisistratus contemporary with solon in this affair, because he would fix the date of the recovery of salamis at b. c. (see note to thirlwall's greece, p. , vol. ii.), and would suppose solon to be about thirty-two at that time (viz., twenty-six years old in b. c.). (see thirlwall, vol. ii., p. , note.) now, as pisistratus could not have been well less than twenty-one, to have taken so prominent a share as that ascribed to him by plutarch and his modern followers, in the expedition, he must, according to such hypothesis, have been only eleven years younger than solon, have perpetrated his first tyranny just before solon died of old age, and married a second wife when he was near eighty! had this been the case, the relations of the lady could not reasonably have been angry that the marriage was not consummated! [ ] we cannot suppose, as the careless and confused plutarch would imply, that the people, or popular assembly, reversed the decree; the government was not then democratic, but popular assemblies existed, which, in extraordinary cases--especially, perhaps, in the case of war--it was necessary to propitiate, and customary to appeal to. i make no doubt that it was with the countenance and consent of the archons that solon made his address to the people, preparing them to receive the repeal of the decree, which, without their approbation, it might be unsafe to propose. [ ] as the quotation from homer is extremely equivocal, merely stating that ajax joined the ships that he led from salamis with those of the athenians, one cannot but suppose, that if solon had really taken the trouble to forge a verse, he would have had the common sense to forge one much more decidedly in favour of his argument. [ ] fifty-seven, according to pliny. [ ] plut. in vit. sol. [ ] arist. pol., lib. ii., c. . [ ] this regulation is probably of later date than the time of solon. to pisistratus is referred a law for disabled citizens, though its suggestion is ascribed to solon. it was, however, a law that evidently grew out of the principles of solon. [ ] a tribe contained three phratries, or fraternities--a phratry contained three genes or clans--a genos or clan was composed of thirty heads of families. as the population, both in the aggregate and in these divisions, must have been exposed to constant fluctuations, the aforesaid numbers were most probably what we may describe as a fiction in law, as boeckh (pol. econ. of athens, vol. i., p. , english translation) observes, "in the same manner that the romans called the captain a centurion, even if he commanded sixty men, so a family might have been called a triakas (i.e., a thirtiad), although it contained fifty or more persons." it has been conjectured indeed by some, that from a class not included in these families, vacancies in the phratries were filled up; but this seems to be a less probable supposition than that which i have stated above. if the numbers in pollux were taken from a census in the time of solon, the four tribes at that time contained three hundred and sixty families, each family consisting of thirty persons; this would give a total population of ten thousand eight hundred free citizens. it was not long before that population nearly doubled itself, but the titles of the subdivisions remained the same. i reserve for an appendix a more detailed and critical view of the vehement but tedious disputes of the learned on the complicated subject of the athenian tribes and families. [ ] boeckh (pub. econ. of athens, book iv., chap. v.) contends, from a law preserved by demosthenes, that the number of measures for the zeugitae was only one hundred and fifty. but his argument, derived from the analogy of the sum to be given to an heiress by her nearest relation, if he refused to marry her, is by no means convincing enough to induce us to reject the proportion of two hundred measures, "preserved (as boeckh confesses) by all writers," especially as in the time of demosthenes. boeckh himself, in a subsequent passage, rightly observes, that the names of zeugitae, etc., could only apply to new classes introduced in the place of those instituted by solon. [ ] with respect to the value of "a measure" in that time, it was estimated at a drachma, and a drachma was the price of a sheep. [ ] the law against idleness is attributable rather to pisistratus than solon. [ ] athenaeus, lib. xiv. [ ] plutarch de gloria athen. i do not in this sketch entirely confine myself to solon's regulations respecting the areopagus. [ ] the number of the areopagites depending upon the number of the archons, was necessarily fluctuating and uncertain. an archon was not necessarily admitted to the areopagus. he previously underwent a rigorous and severe examination of the manner in which he had discharged the duties of his office, and was liable to expulsion upon proofs of immorality or unworthiness. [ ] some modern writers have contended that at the time of solon the members of the council were not chosen by lot; their arguments are not to me very satisfactory. but if merely a delegation of the eupatrids, as such writers suppose, the council would be still more vicious in its constitution. [ ] pollux. [ ] aeschines in timarch. [ ] each member was paid (as in england once, as in america at this day) a moderate sum (one drachma) for his maintenance, and at the termination of his trust, peculiar integrity was rewarded with money from the public treasury. [ ] when there were ten tribes, each tribe presided thirty-five days, or five weeks; when the number was afterward increased to twelve, the period of the presidency was one month. [ ] atimos means rather unhonoured than dishonoured. he to whom, in its milder degree, the word was applied, was rather withdrawn (as it were) from honour than branded with disgrace. by rapid degrees, however, the word ceased to convey its original meaning; it was applied to offences so ordinary and common, that it sunk into a mere legal term. [ ] the more heinous of the triple offences, termed eisangelia. [ ] this was a subsequent law; an obolus, or one penny farthing, was the first payment; it was afterward increased to three oboli, or threepence three farthings. [ ] sometimes, also, the assembly was held in the pnyx, afterward so celebrated: latterly, also (especially in bad weather), in the temple of bacchus;--on extraordinary occasions, in whatever place was deemed most convenient or capacious. [ ] plato de legibus. [ ] plutarch assures us that solon issued a decree that his laws were to remain in force a hundred years: an assertion which modern writers have rejected as incompatible with their constant revision. it was not, however, so contradictory a decree as it seems at first glance--for one of the laws not to be altered was this power of amending and revising the laws. and, therefore, the enactment in dispute would only imply that the constitution was not to be altered except through the constitutional channel which solon had appointed. [ ] see fast. hell., vol. ii., . [ ] including, as i before observed, that law which provided for any constitutional change in a constitutional manner. [ ] "et croesum quem vox justi facunda solonis respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae." juv., sat. x., s. . the story of the interview and conversation between croesus and solon is supported by so many concurrent authorities, that we cannot but feel grateful to the modern learning, which has removed the only objection to it in an apparent contradiction of dates. if, as contended for by larcher, still more ably by wesseling, and since by mr. clinton, we agree that croesus reigned jointly with his father alyattes, the difficulty vanishes at once. [ ] plutarch gives two accounts of the recovery of salamis by solon; one of them, which is also preferred by aelian (var. c. xix., lib. vii.), i have adopted and described in my narrative of that expedition: the second i now give, but refer to pisistratus, not solon: in support of which opinion i am indebted to mr. clinton for the suggestion of two authorities. aeneas tacticus, in his treatise on sieges, chap. iv., and frontinus de stratagem., lib. iv., cap. vii.--justin also favours the claim of pisistratus to this stratagem, lib. xi., c. viii. [ ] the most sanguine hope indeed that cicero seems to have formed with respect to the conduct of cesar, was that he might deserve the title of the pisistratus of rome. [ ] if we may, in this anecdote, accord to plutarch (de vit. sol.) and aelian (var. lib. viii., c. xvi.) a belief which i see no reason for withholding. [ ] his own verses, rather than the narrative of plutarch, are the evidence of solon's conduct on the usurpation of pisistratus. [ ] this historian fixes the date of solon's visit to croesus and to cyprus (on which island he asserts him to have died), not during his absence of ten years, but during the final exile for which he contends. [ ] herod., l. i., c. . [ ] the procession of the goddess of reason in the first french revolution solves the difficulty that perplexed herodotus. [ ] mr. mitford considers this story as below the credit of history. he gives no sufficient reason against its reception, and would doubtless have been less skeptical had he known more of the social habits of that time, or possessed more intimate acquaintance with human nature generally. [ ] upon which points, of men and money, mr. mitford, who is anxious to redeem the character of pisistratus from the stain of tyranny, is dishonestly prevaricating. quoting herodotus, who especially insists upon these undue sources of aid, in the following words--'errixose taen tyrannida, epikouroisi te polloisi kai chraematon synodoisi, ton men, autothen, ton de, apo strumanos potamou synionton: this candid historian merely says, "a particular interest with the ruling parties in several neighbouring states, especially thebes and argos, and a wise and liberal use of a very great private property, were the resources in which besides he mostly relied." why he thus slurs over the fact of the auxiliary forces will easily be perceived. he wishes us to understand that the third tyranny of pisistratus, being wholesome, was also acceptable to the athenians, and not, as it in a great measure was, supported by borrowed treasure and foreign swords. [ ] who, according to plutarch, first appeared at the return of solon; but the proper date for his exhibitions is ascertained (fast. hell., vol. ii., p. ) several years after solon's death. [ ] these two wars, divided by so great an interval of time,--the one terminated by periander of corinth, the other undertaken by pisistratus,--are, with the usual blundering of mr. mitford, jumbled together into the same event. he places alcaeus in the war following the conquest of sigeum by pisistratus. poor alcaeus! the poet flourished olym. ( b. c.); the third tyranny of pisistratus may date somewhere about b. c., so that alcaeus, had he been alive in the time ascribed by mr. mitford to his warlike exhibitions, would have been (supposing him to be born twenty-six years before the date of his celebrity in ) just a hundred years old--a fitting age to commence the warrior! the fact is, mr. mitford adopted the rather confused account of herodotus, without taking the ordinary pains to ascertain dates, which to every one else the very names of periander and alcaeus would have suggested. [ ] for the reader will presently observe the share taken by croesus in the affairs of this miltiades during his government in the chersonesus; now croesus was conquered by cyrus about b. c. --it must, therefore, have been before that period. but the third tyranny of pisistratus appears to have commenced nine years afterward, viz., b. c. . the second tyranny probably commenced only two years before the fall of the lydian monarchy, and seems to have lasted only a year, and during that period croesus no longer exercised over the cities of the coast the influence he exerted with the people of lampsacus on behalf of miltiades; the departure of miltiades, son of cypselus, must therefore have been in the first tyranny, in the interval b. c.-- b. c., and probably at the very commencement of the reign--viz., about b. c. [ ] in the east, the master of the family still sits before the door to receive visiters or transact business. [ ] thucydides, b. vi., c. . the dialogue of hipparchus, ascribed to plato, gives a different story, but much of the same nature. in matters of history, we cannot doubt which is the best authority, thucydides or plato,--especially an apocryphal plato. [ ] although it is probable that the patriotism of aristogiton and harmodius "the beloved" has been elevated in after times beyond its real standard, yet mr. mitford is not justified in saying that it was private revenge, and not any political motive, that induced them to conspire the death of hippias and hipparchus. had it been so, why strike at hippias at all?--why attempt to make him the first and principal victim?--why assail hipparchus (against whom only they had a private revenge) suddenly, by accident, and from the impulse of the moment, after the failure of their design on the tyrant himself, with whom they had no quarrel? it is most probable that, as in other attempts at revolution, that of masaniello--that of rienzi--public patriotism was not created--it was stimulated and made passion by private resentment. [ ] mr. mitford has most curiously translated this passage thus: "aristogiton escaped the attending guards, but, being taken by the people (!!!) was not mildly treated. so thucydides has expressed himself." now thucydides says quite the reverse: he says that, owing to the crowd of the people, the guard could not at first seize him. how did mr. mitford make this strange blunder? the most charitable supposition is, that, not reading the greek, he was misled by an error of punctuation in the latin version. [ ] "qui cum per tormenta conscios caedis nominare cogeretur," etc. (justin., lib. ii., chap. ix.) this author differs from the elder writers as to the precise cause of the conspiracy. [ ] herodotus says they were both gephyraeans by descent; a race, according to him, originally phoenician.--herod. b. v., c. . [ ] mr. mitford too hastily and broadly asserts the whole story of leaena to be a fable: if, as we may gather from pausanias, the statue of the lioness existed in his time, we may pause before we deny all authenticity to a tradition far from inconsonant with the manners of the time or the heroism of the sex. [ ] thucyd., b. vi., c. . [ ] herodotus, b. vi., c. . in all probability, the same jealousy that murdered the father dismissed the son. hippias was far too acute and too fearful not to perceive the rising talents and daring temper of miltiades. by-the-way, will it be believed that mitford, in is anxiety to prove hippias and hipparchus the most admirable persons possible, not only veils the unnatural passions of the last, but is utterly silent about the murder of cimon, which is ascribed to the sons of pisistratus by herodotus, in the strongest and gravest terms.--mr. thirlwall (hist. of greece, vol. ii., p. ) erroneously attributes the assassination of cimon to pisistratus himself. [ ] suidas. laertius iv., , etc. others, as ammonius and simplicius ad aristotelem, derive the name of cynics given to these philosophers from the ridicule attached to their manners. [ ] whose ardour appears to have been soon damped. they lost but forty men, and then retired at once to thessaly. this reminds us of the wars between the italian republics, in which the loss of a single horseman was considered no trifling misfortune. the value of the steed and the rank of the horseman (always above the vulgar) made the cavalry of greece easily discouraged by what appears to us an inconsiderable slaughter. [ ] aelian. v. hist. xiii., . [ ] wachsm, l. i., p. . others contend for a later date to this most important change; but, on the whole, it seems a necessary consequence of the innovations of clisthenes, which were all modelled upon the one great system of breaking down the influence of the aristocracy. in the speech of otanes (herod., lib. iii., c. ), it is curious to observe how much the vote by lot was identified with a republican form of government. [ ] see sharon turner, vol. i., book i. [ ] herod., b. i., c. xxvi. [ ] ctesias. mr. thirlwall, in my judgment, very properly contents himself with recording the ultimate destination of croesus as we find it in ctesias, to the rejection of the beautiful romance of herodotus. justin observes that croesus was so beloved among the grecian cities, that, had cyrus exercised any cruelty against him, the persian hero would have drawn upon himself a war with greece. [ ] after his fall, croesus is said by herodotus to have reproached the pythian with those treacherous oracles that conduced to the loss of his throne, and to have demanded if the gods of greece were usually delusive and ungrateful. true to that dark article of grecian faith which punished remote generations for ancestral crimes, the pythian replied, that croesus had been fated to expiate in his own person the crimes of gyges, the murderer of his master;--that, for the rest, the declarations of the oracle had been verified; the mighty empire, denounced by the divine voice, had been destroyed, for it was his own, and the mule, cyrus, was presiding over the lydian realm: a mule might the persian hero justly be entitled, since his parents were of different ranks and nations. his father a low-born persian--his mother a median princess. herodotus assures us that croesus was content with the explanation--if so, the god of song was more fortunate than the earthly poets he inspires, who have indeed often, imitating his example, sacrificed their friends to a play upon words, without being so easily able to satisfy their victims. [ ] herod., l. v., c. . [ ] if colonists they can properly be called--they retained their connexion with athens, and all their rights of franchise. [ ] herod., l. v., c. . [ ] mr. mitford, constantly endeavouring to pervert the simple honesty of herodotus to a sanction of despotic governments, carefully slurs over this remarkable passage. [ ] pausanias, b. iii., c. and . [ ] mr. mitford, always unduly partial to the spartan policy, styles cleomenes "a man violent in his temper, but of considerable abilities." there is no evidence of his abilities. his restlessness and ferocity made him assume a prominent part which he was never adequate to fulfil: he was, at best, a cunning madman. [ ] why, if discovered so long since by cleomenes, were they concealed till now? the spartan prince, afterward detected in bribing the oracle itself, perhaps forged these oracular predictions. [ ] herod., b. v. c. . [ ] what is the language of mr. mitford at this treason? "we have seen," says that historian, "the democracy of athens itself setting the example (among the states of old greece) of soliciting persian protection. will, then, the liberal spirit of patriotism and equal government justify the prejudices of athenian faction (!!!) and doom hippias to peculiar execration, because, at length, he also, with many of his fellow-citizens, despairing of other means for ever returning to their native country, applied to artaphernes at sardis?" it is difficult to know which to admire most, the stupidity or dishonesty of this passage. the athenian democracy applied to persia for relief against the unjust invasion of their city and liberties by a foreign force; hippias applied to persia, not only to interfere in the domestic affairs of a free state, but to reduce that state, his native city, to the subjection of the satrap. is there any parallel between these cases? if not, what dulness in instituting it! but the dishonesty is equal to the dulness. herodotus, the only author mr. mitford here follows, expressly declares (i. v., c. ) that hippias sought to induce artaphernes to subject athens to the sway of the satrap and his master, darius; yet mr. mitford says not a syllable of this, leaving his reader to suppose that hippias merely sought to be restored to his country through the intercession of the satrap. [ ] herod., l. v., c. . [ ] aulus gellius, who relates this anecdote with more detail than herodotus, asserts that the slave himself was ignorant of the characters written on his scull, that histiaeus selected a domestic who had a disease in his eyes--shaved him, punctured the skin, and sending him to miletus when the hair was grown, assured the credulous patient that aristagoras would complete the cure by shaving him a second time. according to this story we must rather admire the simplicity of the slave than the ingenuity of histiaeus. [ ] rather a hyperbolical expression--the total number of free athenians did not exceed twenty thousand. [ ] the paeonians. [ ] hecataeus, the historian of miletus, opposed the retreat to myrcinus, advising his countrymen rather to fortify themselves in the isle of leros, and await the occasion to return to miletus. this early writer seems to have been one of those sagacious men who rarely obtain their proper influence in public affairs, because they address the reason in opposition to the passions of those they desire to lead. unsuccessful in this proposition, hecataeus had equally failed on two former occasions;--first, when he attempted to dissuade the milesians from the revolt of aristagoras: secondly, when, finding them bent upon it, he advised them to appropriate the sacred treasures in the temple at branchidae to the maintenance of a naval force. on each occasion his advice failed precisely because given without prejudice or passion. the successful adviser must appear to sympathize even with the errors of his audience. [ ] the humane darius--whose virtues were his own, his faults of his station--treated the son of miltiades with kindness and respect, married him to a persian woman, and endowed him with an estate. it was the habitual policy of that great king to attach to his dominions the valour and the intellect of the greeks. [ ] pausanias says, that talthybius afterward razed the house of miltiades, because that chief instigated the athenians to the execution of the persian envoys. [ ] demaratus had not only prevented the marriage of leotychides with a maiden named percalos, but, by a mixture of violence and artifice, married her himself. thus, even among the sober and unloving spartans, woman could still be the author of revolutions. [ ] the national pride of the spartans would not, however, allow that their king was the object of the anger of the gods, and ascribing his excesses to his madness, accounted for the last by a habit of excessive drinking which he had acquired from the scythians [ ] herod., l. , c. . [ ] ibid., l. , c. . [ ] the sun and moon. [ ] in his attack upon herodotus, plutarch asserts that the spartans did make numerous military excursions at the beginning of the month; if this be true, so far from excusing the spartans, it only corroborates the natural suspicion that they acted in accordance, not with superstition, but with their usual calculating and selfish policy --ever as slow to act in the defence of other states as prompt to assert the independence of their own. [ ] paus., l. , c. . [ ] the exact number of the athenians is certainly doubtful. herodotus does not specify it. justin estimates the number of citizens at ten thousand, besides a thousand plataeans: nepos at ten thousand in all; pausanias at nine thousand. but this total, furnished by authorities so equivocal, seems incredibly small. the free population could have been little short of twenty thousand. we must add the numbers, already great, of the resident aliens and the slaves, who, as pausanias tells us, were then for the first time admitted to military service. on the other hand it is evident, from the speech of miltiades to callimachus, and the supposed treachery of the alcmaeonidae, that some, nor an inconsiderable, force, was left in reserve at athens for the protection of the city. let us suppose, however, that two thirds of the athenian citizens of military age, viz., between the ages of twenty and sixty, marched to marathon (and this was but the common proportion on common occasions), the total force, with the slaves, the settlers, and the plataean auxiliaries, could not amount to less than fifteen or sixteen thousand. but whatever the precise number of the heroes of marathon, we have ample testimony for the general fact that it was so trifling when compared with the persian armament, as almost to justify the exaggeration of later writers. [ ] plut. in vit. aris. aristid., pro quatuor vias, vol. ii., p. , edit. dindorf. [ ] in his graceful work on athens and attica, mr. wordsworth has well observed the peculiar propriety of this reference to the examples of harmodius and aristogiton, as addressed to callimachus. they were from the same borough (aphidnae) as the polemarch himself. [ ] the goddess of athens was supposed to have invented a peculiar trumpet used by her favoured votaries. [ ] to raise the standard was the sign of battle.--suidas, thucyd. schol., c. . on the athenian standard was depicted the owl of minerva.--plut. in vit. lysand. [ ] aeschyl. persae. [ ] ibid. [ ] herod., l. ., c. xii. [ ] plut. in vit. aristid. [ ] roos hespera. aristoph., vesp . [ ] justin, lib. ii., c. ix. [ ] according, however, to suidas, he escaped and died at lemnos. [ ] this incident confirms the expressed fear of miltiades, that delay in giving battle might produce division and treachery among some of the athenians. doubtless his speech referred to some particular faction or individuals. [ ] plut. in vit. arist. [ ] these apparitions, recorded by pausanias, l. i., c. , are still believed in by the peasantry. end of the original print volume i. proofreading team. the athenian society aristophanes the eleven comedies now for the first time literally and completely translated from the greek tongue into english with translator's foreword an introduction to each comedy and elucidatory notes the first of two volumes * * * * * contents of the first volume translator's foreword authorities the knights introduction text and notes the acharnians introduction text and notes peace introduction text and notes lysistrata introduction text and notes the clouds introduction text and notes index * * * * * translator's foreword perhaps the first thing to strike us--paradoxical as it may sound to say so--about the athenian 'old comedy' is its _modernness_. of its very nature, satiric drama comes later than epic and lyric poetry, tragedy or history; aristophanes follows homer and simonides, sophocles and thucydides. of its essence, it is free from many of the conventions and restraining influences of earlier forms of literature, and enjoys much of the liberty of choice of subject and licence of method that marks present-day conditions of literary production both on and off the stage. its very existence presupposes a fuller and bolder intellectual life, a more advanced and complex city civilization, a keener taste and livelier faculty of comprehension in the people who appreciate it, than could anywhere be found at an earlier epoch. speaking broadly and generally, the aristophanic drama has more in common with modern ways of looking at things, more in common with the conditions of the modern stage, especially in certain directions--burlesque, extravaganza, musical farce, and even 'pantomime,' than with the earlier and graver products of the greek mind. the eleven plays, all that have come down to us out of a total of over forty staged by our author in the course of his long career, deal with the events of the day, the incidents and personages of contemporary athenian city life, playing freely over the surface of things familiar to the audience and naturally provoking their interest and rousing their prejudices, dealing with contemporary local gossip, contemporary art and literature, and above all contemporary politics, domestic and foreign. all this _farrago_ of miscellaneous subjects is treated in a frank, uncompromising spirit of criticism and satire, a spirit of broad fun, side-splitting laughter and reckless high spirits. whatever lends itself to ridicule is instantly seized upon; odd, eccentric and degraded personalities are caricatured, social foibles and vices pilloried, pomposity and sententiousness in the verses of the poets, particularly the tragedians, and most particularly in euripides--the pet aversion and constant butt of aristophanes' satire--are parodied. all is fish that comes to the comic dramatists net, anything that will raise a laugh is fair game. "it is difficult to compare the aristophanic comedy to any one form of modern literature, dramatic or other. it perhaps most resembles what we now call burlesque; but it had also very much in it of broad farce and comic opera, and something also (in the hits at the fashions and follies of the day with which it abounded) of the modern pantomime. but it was something more, and more important to the athenian public than any or all of these could have been. almost always more or less political, and sometimes intensely personal, and always with some purpose more or less important underlying its wildest vagaries and coarsest buffooneries, it supplied the place of the political journal, the literary review, the popular caricature and the party pamphlet, of our own times. it combined the attractions and influence of all these; for its grotesque masks and elaborate 'spectacle' addressed the eye as strongly as the author's keenest witticisms did the ear of his audience."[ ] rollicking, reckless, uproarious fun is the key-note; though a more serious intention is always latent underneath. aristophanes was a strong--sometimes an unscrupulous--partisan; he was an uncompromising conservative of the old school, an ardent admirer of the vanishing aristocratic régime, an anti-imperialist--'imperialism' was a _democratic_ craze at athens--and never lost an opportunity of throwing scorn on cleon the demagogue, his political _bête noïre_ and personal enemy, cleon's henchmen of the popular faction, and the war party generally. gravity, solemnity, seriousness, are conspicuous by their absence; even that 'restraint' which is the salient characteristic of greek expression in literature no less than in art, is largely relaxed in the rough-and-tumble, informal, miscellaneous _modern_ phantasmagoria of these diverting extravaganzas. at the same time we must not be misled by the word 'comedy' to bring aristophanes' work into comparison with what we call comedy now. this is quite another thing--confined to a representation of incidents of private, generally polite life, and made up of the intrigues and entanglements of social and domestic situations. such a comedy the greeks did produce, but at a date fifty or sixty years subsequent to aristophanes' day, and recognized by themselves as belonging to an entirely different genre. hence the distinction drawn between 'the old comedy,' of which cratinus and his younger contemporaries, eupolis and aristophanes, were the leading representatives, and which was at high-water mark just before and during the course of the great struggle of the peloponnesian war, and 'the new comedy,' a comedy of manners, the two chief exponents of which were philemon and menander, writing after athens had fallen under the macedonian yoke, and politics were excluded altogether from the stage. menander's plays in turn were the originals of those produced by plautus and terence at rome, whose existing comedies afford some faint idea of what the lost masterpieces of their greek predecessor must have been. unlike the 'old,' the 'new comedy' had no chorus and no 'parabasis.' this remarkable and distinctive feature, by-the-bye, of the old comedy, the 'parabasis' to wit, calls for a word of explanation. it was a direct address on the author's part to the audience, delivered in verse of a special metre, generally towards the close of the representation, by the leader of the chorus, but expressing the personal opinions and predilections of the poet, and embodying any remarks upon current topics and any urgent piece of advice which he was particularly anxious to insist on. often it was made the vehicle for special appeal to the sympathetic consideration of the spectators for the play and its merits. these 'parabases,' so characteristic of the aristophanic comedy, are conceived in the brightest and wittiest vein, and abound in topical allusions and personal hits that must have constituted them perhaps the most telling part of the whole performance. aristophanes deals with all questions; for him the domain of the comic poet has no limits, his mission is as wide as human nature. it is to athens he addresses himself, to the city as a whole; his criticism embraces morals no less than politics, poetry no less than philosophy; he does not hesitate to assail the rites and dogmas of paganism; whatever affords subject for laughter or vituperation lies within his province; there he is in his element, scourge in hand, his heart ablaze with indignation, pitiless, and utterly careless of all social distinctions. in politics aristophanes belongs to the party of the aristocracy. he could not do otherwise, seeing that the democratic principle was then triumphant; comedy is never laudatory, it lives upon criticism, it must bite to the quick to win a hearing; its strength, its vital force is contradiction. thus the abuses of democracy and demagogy were the most favourable element possible for the development of aristophanes' genius, just because his merciless satire finds more abundant subject-matter there than under any other form of civil constitution. then are we actually to believe that the necessity of his profession as a comic poet alone drove him into the faction of the malcontents? this would surely be to wilfully mistake the dignity of character and consistency of conviction which are to be found underlying all his productions. throughout his long career as a dramatist his predilections always remain the same, as likewise his antipathies, and in many respects the party he champions so ardently had claims to be regarded as representing the best interests of the state. it is but just therefore to proclaim aristophanes as having deserved well of his country, and to admit the genuine courage he displayed in attacking before the people the people's own favourites, assailing in word those who held the sword. to mock at the folly of a nation that lets itself be cajoled by vain and empty flatteries, to preach peace to fellow-citizens enamoured of war, was to fulfil a dangerous rôle, that would never have appealed, we may feel sure, to a mere vulgar ambition. moreover his genius, pre-eminently greek as it is, has an instinctive horror of all excesses, and hits out at them wherever he marks their existence, whether amongst the great or the humble of the earth. supposing the aristocracy, having won the victory the poet desired, had fallen in turn into oppression and misgovernment, doubtless aristophanes would have lashed its members with his most biting sarcasms. it is just because liberty is dear to his heart that he hates government by demagogues; he would fain free the city from the despotism of a clique of wretched intriguers that oppressed her. but at the same time the aristocracy favoured by our author was not such as comes by birth and privilege, but such as is won and maintained by merit and high service to the state. in matters of morality his satires have the same high aims. how should a corrupted population recover purity, if not by returning to the old unsullied sources from which earlier generations had drawn their inspiration? accordingly we find aristophanes constantly bringing on the stage the "men of marathon," the vigorous generation to which athens owed her freedom and her greatness. it is no mere childish commonplace with our poet, this laudation of a past age; the facts of history prove he was in the right, all the novelties he condemns were as a matter of fact so many causes that brought about athenian decadence. directly the citizen receives payment for attending the assembly, he is no longer a perfectly free agent in the disposal of his vote; besides, the practice is equivalent to setting a premium on idleness, and so ruining all proper activity; a populace maintained by the state loses all energy, falls into a lethargy and dies. the life of the forum is a formidable solvent of virtue and vigour; by dint of speechifying, men forget how to act. another thing was the introduction of 'the new education,' imported by 'the sophists,' which substituted for serious studies, definitely limited and systematically pursued, a crowd of vague and subtle speculations; it was a mental gymnastic that gave suppleness to the wits, it is true, but only by corrupting and deteriorating the moral sense, a system that in the long run was merely destructive. such, then, was the threefold poison that was destroying athenian morality--the triobolus, the noisy assemblies in the agora, the doctrines of the sophists; the antidote was the recollection of former virtue and past prosperity, which the poet systematically revives in contrast with the turpitudes and trivialities of the present day. there is no turning back the course of history; but if aristophanes' efforts have remained abortive, they are not therefore inglorious. is the moralist to despair and throw away his pen, because in so many cases his voice finds no echo? again we find aristophanes' literary views embodying the same good sense which led him to see the truth in politics and morals. here likewise it is not the individual he attacks; his criticism is general. his adversary is not the individual euripides, but under his name depraved taste and the abandonment of that noble simplicity which had produced the masterpieces of the age of pericles. euripides was no ordinary writer, that is beyond question; but the very excellence of his qualities made his influence only the more dangerous. literary reform is closely connected with moral regeneration, the decadence of the one being both cause and effect of the deterioration of the other. the author who should succeed in purifying the public taste would come near restoring to repute healthy and honest views of life. aristophanes essayed the task both by criticism and example--by criticism, directing the shafts of his ridicule at over-emphasis and over-subtlety, by example, writing himself in inimitable perfection the beautiful attic dialect, which was being enervated and effeminated and spoiled in the hands of his opponents. even the gods were not spared by the aristophanic wit and badinage; in 'plutus,' in 'the birds,' in 'the frogs,' we see them very roughly handled. to wonder at these profane drolleries, however, is to fail altogether to grasp the privileges of ancient comedy and the very nature of athenian society. the comic poets exercised unlimited rights of making fun; we do not read in history of a single one of the class having ever been called to the bar of justice to answer for the audacity of his dramatic efforts. the same liberty extended to religious matters; the athenian people, keen, delicately organized, quick to see a joke and loving laughter for its own sake, even when the point told against themselves, this people of mockers felt convinced the gods appreciated raillery just as well as men did. moreover, the greeks do not appear to have had any very strong attachment to paganism as a matter of dogmatic belief. to say nothing of the enlightened classes, who saw in this vast hierarchy of divinities only an ingenious allegory, the populace even was mainly concerned with the processions and songs and dances, the banquets and spectacular shows and all the external pomp and splendour of a cult the magnificence and varied rites of which amused its curiosity. but serious faith, ardent devotion, dogmatic discussion, is there a trace of these things? a sensual and poetic type of religion, paganism was accepted at athens only by the imagination, not by the reason; its ceremonies were duly performed, without any real piety touching the heart. thus the audience felt no call to champion the cause of their deities when held up to ribaldry on the open stage; they left them to defend themselves--if they could. thus aristophanes, we see, covered the whole field of thought; he scourged whatever was vicious or ridiculous, whether before the altars of the gods, in the schools of the sophists, or on the orators' platform. but the wider the duty he undertook, the harder it became to fulfil this duty adequately. how satisfy a public made up of so many and such diverse elements, so sharply contrasted by birth, fortune, education, opinion, interest? how hold sway over a body of spectators, who were at the same time judges? to succeed in the task he was bound to be master of all styles of diction--at one and the same time a dainty poet and a diverting buffoon. it is just this universality of genius, this combination of the most eminent and various qualities, that has won aristophanes a place apart among satirists; and if it be true to say that well-written works never die, the style alone of his comedies would have assured their immortality. no writer, indeed, has been more pre-eminent in that simple, clear, precise, elegant diction that is the peculiar glory of attic literature, the brilliant yet concise quality of which the authors of no other greek city were quite able to attain. he shows, each in its due turn, vigour and suppleness of language, he exercises a sure and spontaneous choice of correct terms, the proper combination of harmonious phrases, he goes straight to his object, he aims well and hits hard, even when he seems to be merely grazing the surface. under his apparent negligence lies concealed the high perfection of accomplished art. this applies to the dialogues. in the choruses, aristophanes speaks the tongue of pindar and sophocles; he follows the footsteps of those two mighty masters of the choric hymn into the highest regions of poetry; his lyric style is bold, impetuous, abounding in verve and brilliance, yet without the high-flown inspiration ever involving a lapse from good taste. one of the forms in which he is fondest of clothing his conceptions is allegory; it may truly lie said that the stage of aristophanes is a series of caricatures where every idea has taken on a corporeal presentment and is reproduced under human lineaments. to personify the abstract notion, to dress it up in the shape of an animated being for its better comprehension by the public, is in fact a proceeding altogether in harmony with the customs and conventions of ancient comedy. the comic poet never spares us a single detail of everyday life, no matter how commonplace or degrading; he pushes the materialistic delineation of the passions and vices to the extreme limit of obscene gesture and the most cynical shamelessness of word and act. this scorn of propriety, this unchecked licence of speech, has often been made a subject of reproach against aristophanes, and it appears to the best modern critics that the poet would have been not a whit less diverting or effective had he respected the dictates of common decency. but it is only fair, surely, before finally condemning our author, to consider whether the times in which he lived, the origin itself of the greek comedy, and the constitution of the audience, do not entitle him at any rate to claim the benefit of extenuating circumstances. we must not forget that comedy owes its birth to those festivals at which priapus was adored side by side with bacchus, and that 'phallophoria' (carrying the symbols of generation in procession) still existed as a religious rite at the date when aristophanes was composing his plays. nor must we forget that theatrical performances were at athens forbidden pleasures to women and children. above all we should take full account of the code of social custom and morality then prevailing. the ancients never understood modesty quite in the same way as our refined modern civilization does; they spoke of everything without the smallest reticence, and expressions which would revolt the least squeamish amongst ourselves did not surprise or shock the most fastidious. we ought not, therefore, to blame too severely the comic poet, who after all was only following in this respect the habits of his age; and if his pictures are often repulsively bestial, let us lay most blame to the account of a state of society which deserved to be painted in such odiously black colours. doubtless aristophanes might have given less prominence to these cynical representations, instead of revelling in them, as he really seems to have done; men of taste and refinement, and there must have been such even among his audience, would have thought all the better of him! but it was the populace filled the bulk of the benches, and the populace loved coarse laughter and filthy words. the poet supplied what the majority demanded; he was not the man to sacrifice one of the easiest and surest means of winning applause and popularity. aristophanes enjoyed an ample share of glory in his lifetime, and posterity has ratified the verdict given by his contemporaries. the epitaph is well-known which plato composed for him, after his death: "the graces, seeking an imperishable sanctuary, found the soul of aristophanes." such eulogy may appear excessive to one who re-peruses after the lapse of twenty centuries these pictures of a vanished world. but if, despite the profound differences of custom, taste and opinion which separate our own age from that of the greeks, despite the obscurity of a host of passages whose especial point lay in their reference to some topic of the moment, and which inevitably leave us cold at the present day--if, despite all this, we still feel ourselves carried away, charmed, diverted, dominated by this dazzling _verve_, these copious outpourings of imagination, wit and poesy, let us try to realize in thought what must have been the unbounded pleasure of an athenian audience listening to one of our author's satires. then every detail was realized, every nuance of criticism appreciated; every allusion told, and the model was often actually sitting in the semicircle of the auditorium facing the copy at that time being presented on the stage. "what a passion of excitement! what transports of enthusiasm and angry protest! what bursts of uncontrollable merriment! what thunders of applause! how the comic poet must have felt himself a king, indeed, in presence of these popular storms which, like the god of the sea, he could arouse and allay at his good will and pleasure!"[ ] to return for a moment to the coarseness of language so often pointed to as a blot in aristophanes. "the great comedian has been censured and apologized for on this ground, over and over again. his personal exculpation must always rest upon the fact, that the wildest licence in which he indulged was not only recognized as permissible, but actually enjoined as part of the ceremonial at these festivals of bacchus; that it was not only in accordance with public taste, but was consecrated as a part of the national religion.... but the coarseness of aristophanes is not corrupting. there is nothing immoral in his plots, nothing really dangerous in his broadest humour. compared with some of our old english dramatists, he is morality itself. and when we remember the plots of some french and english plays which now attract fashionable audiences, and the character of some modern french and english novels not unfrequently found (at any rate in england) upon drawing-room tables, the least that can be said is, that we had better not cast stones at aristophanes."[ ] moreover, it should be borne in mind that athenian custom did not sanction the presence of women--at least women of reputable character--at these performances. the particular plays, though none are free from it, which most abound in this ribald fun--for fun it always is, never mere pruriency for its own sake, aristophanes has a deal of the old 'esprit gaulois' about him--are the 'peace' and, as might be expected from its theme, lending itself so readily to suggestive allusions and situations, above all the 'lysistrata.' the 'thesmophoriazusae' and 'ecclesiazusae' also take ample toll in this sort of the 'risqué' situations incidental to their plots, the dressing up of men as women in the former, and of women as men in the latter. needless to say, no faithful translator will emasculate his author by expurgation, and the reader will here find aristophanes' comedies as aristophanes wrote them, not as mrs. grundy might wish him to have written them. these performances took place at the festivals of dionysus (bacchus), either the great dionysia or the minor celebration of the lenaea, and were in a sense religious ceremonials--at any rate under distinct religious sanction. the representations were held in the great theatre of dionysus, under the slope of the acropolis, extensive remains of which still exist; several plays were brought out at each festival in competition, and prizes, first and second, were awarded to the most successful productions--rewards which were the object of the most intense ambition. next to nothing is known of the private life of aristophanes, and that little, beyond the two or three main facts given below, is highly dubious, not to say apocryphal. he was born about b.c., probably at athens. his father held property in aegina, and the family may very likely have come originally from that island. at any rate, this much is certain, that the author's arch-enemy cleon made more than one judicial attempt to prove him of alien birth and therefore not properly entitled to the rights of athenian citizenship; but in this he entirely failed. the great comedian had three sons, but of these and their career history says nothing whatever. such incidents and anecdotes of our author's literary life as have come down to us are all connected with one or other of the several plays, and will be found alluded to in the special introductions prefixed to these. he died about b.c.--the best and central years of his life and work thus coinciding with the great national period of stress and struggle, the peloponnesian war, - b.c. he continued to produce plays for the athenian stage for the long period of thirty-seven years; though only eleven comedies, out of a reputed total of forty, have survived. a word or two as to existing translations of aristophanes. these, the english ones at any rate, leave much to be desired; indeed it is not too much to say that there is no version of our author in the language which gives the general reader anything like an adequate notion of these plays. we speak of prose renderings. aristophanes has been far more fortunate in his verse translators--mitchell, who published four comedies in this form in , old-fashioned, but still helpful, hookham frere, five plays ( ), both scholarly and spirited, and last but not least, mr. bickley rogers, whose excellent versions have appeared at intervals since . but from their very nature these cannot afford anything like an exact idea of the 'ipsissima verba' of the comedies, while all slur over or omit altogether passages in any way 'risqué.' there remains only our old friend 'bohn' ("the comedies of aristophanes; a literal translation by w. j. hickie"), and what stuff 'bohn' is! by very dint of downright literalness--though not, by-the-bye, always downright accuracy--any true notion of the author's meaning is quite obscured. the letter kills the spirit. the french prose versions are very good. that by c. poyard (in the series of "chefs-d'oeuvre des littératures anciennes") combines scholarly precision with an easy, racy, vernacular style in a way that seems impossible to any but a french scholar. the order here adopted for the successive plays differs slightly from that observed in most editions; but as these latter do not agree amongst themselves, this small assumption of licence appears not unwarrantable. chronologically 'the acharnians' ( b.c.) should come first; but it seems more convenient to group it with the two other "comedies of the war," the whole trilogy dealing with the hardships involved by the struggle with the lacedaemonians and the longings of the athenian people for the blessings of peace. this leaves 'the knights' to open the whole series--the most important politically of all aristophanes' productions, embodying as it does his trenchant attack on the great demagogue cleon and striking the keynote of the author's general attitude as advocate of old-fashioned conservatism against the new democracy, its reckless 'imperialism' and the unscrupulous and self-seeking policy, so the aristocratic party deemed it, of its accredited leaders. order, as thus rearranged, approximate date, and _motif_ (in brief) of each of the eleven comedies are given below: 'the knights': b.c.--eighth year of the war. attacks cleon, the progressives, and the war policy generally. comedies of the war:-- 'the acharnians': b.c.--sixth year of the war. insists on the miseries consequent on the war, especially affecting the rural population, as represented by the acharnian dicaeopolis and his fellow demesmen. incidentally makes fun of the tragedian euripides. 'peace': b.c.--tenth year of the war. further insists on the same theme, and enlarges on the blessings of peace. the hero trygaeus flies to olympus, mounted on a beetle, to bring back the goddess peace to earth. 'lysistrata': b.c.--twenty-first year of the war. a burlesque conspiracy entered into by the confederated women of hellas, led by lysistrata the athenian, to compel the men to conclude peace. 'the clouds': b.c.--satirizes socrates, the 'sophists,' and the 'new education.' 'the wasps': b.c. makes fun of the athenian passion for litigation, and the unsatisfactory organization of the courts. contains the incident of the mock trial of the thievish house-dog. 'the birds': b.c. euelpides and pisthetaerus, disgusted with the state of things at athens, build a new and improved city, cloud-cuckoo-town, in the kingdom of the birds. some see an allusion to the sicilian expedition, and alcibiades' utopian schemes. 'the frogs': b.c. a satire on euripides and the 'new tragedy.' dionysus, patron of the drama, dissatisfied with the contemporary condition of the art, goes down to hades to bring back to earth a poet of the older and worthier school. 'the thesmophoriazusae': b.c. another literary satire; euripides, summoned as a notorious defamer of women to defend himself before the dames of athens assembled in solemn conclave at the thesmophoria, or festival of demeter and persephone, induces his father-in-law, mnesilochus, to dress up in women's clothes, penetrate thus disguised into the assemblage, and plead the poet's cause, but with scant success. 'the ecclesiazusae': b.c. pokes fun at the ideal utopias, such as plato's 'republic,' based on sweeping social and economic changes, greatly in vogue with the sophists of the day. the women of the city disguise themselves as men, slip into the public assembly and secure a majority of votes. they then pass a series of decrees providing for community of goods and community of women, which produce, particularly the latter, a number of embarrassing and diverting consequences. 'plutus': and b.c. a whimsical allegory more than a regular comedy. plutus, the god of wealth, has been blinded by zeus; discovered in the guise of a ragged beggarman and succoured by chremylus, an old man who has ruined himself by generosity to his friends, he is restored to sight by aesculapius. he duly rewards chremylus, and henceforth apportions this world's goods among mankind on juster principles--enriching the just, but condemning the unjust to poverty. authorities list of editions, commentaries, etc., used or consulted text: edit. dindorf, oxford text: edit. blaydes. . text, with notes, etc.: edit. immanuel bekker. vols. . text, with notes, etc.: brunck. text, with (german) notes, etc.: separate plays: edit. kock. text, with notes, etc.: separate plays: edit. rev. w. w. merry. - . translation: english, by w. j. hickie. (bohn's classical library.) translation: english verse, 'knights,' 'acharnians,' 'clouds,' 'wasps,' by mitchell. . translation: english verse, 'knights,' 'acharnians,' 'birds,' 'frogs,' 'peace,' by hookham frere. . translation: english verse, various plays, by b. bickley rogers. onwards. translation: french, by c. poyard. ("chefs-d'oeuvre des littératures anciennes." paris, hachette. .) translation: french, by eugène talbot, with preface by sully prudhomme. vols. paris, lemerre. . translation: german, by droysen. "aristophanes" (ancient classics for english readers): edit. w. lucas collins. . "aristophane et l'ancienne comédie attique," par auguste couat. paris. . "aristophane et les partis à athens," par maurice croiset. paris, fontemoing. . "beiträge zur inneren geschichte athens im zeitalter des pelopon. krieges," g. gilbert. leipzig. . "die attischen politik seit perikles," j. beloch. leipzig. . "aristophanes und die historische kritik," müller-strübing. leipzig. . footnotes: [ ] ancient classics for english readers: aristophanes, by lucas collins, introductory chapter, p. . [ ] "aristophane": traduction nouvelle, par c. poyard (paris, ): introduction. [ ] ancient classics for english readers: "aristophanes," by lucas collins. introductory chapter, p. . the knights introduction this was the fourth play in order of time produced by aristophanes on the athenian stage; it was brought out at the lenaean festival, in january, b.c. of the author's previous efforts, two, 'the revellers' and 'the babylonians,' were apparently youthful essays, and are both lost. the other, 'the acharnians,' forms the first of the three comedies dealing directly with the war and its disastrous effects and urging the conclusion of peace; for this reason it is better ranged along with its sequels, the 'peace' and the 'lysistrata,' and considered in conjunction with them. in many respects 'the knights' may be reckoned the great comedian's masterpiece, the direct personal attack on the then all-powerful cleon, with its scathing satire and tremendous invective, being one of the most vigorous and startling things in literature. already in 'the acharnians' he had threatened to "cut up cleon the tanner into shoe-leather for the knights," and he now proceeds to carry his menace into execution, "concentrating the whole force of his wit in the most unscrupulous and merciless fashion against his personal enemy." in the first-mentioned play aristophanes had attacked and satirized the whole general policy of the democratic party--and incidentally cleon, its leading spirit and mouthpiece since the death of pericles; he had painted the miseries of war and invasion arising from this mistaken and mischievous line of action, as he regarded it, and had dwelt on the urgent necessity of peace in the interests of an exhausted country and ruined agriculture. now he turns upon cleon personally, and pays him back a hundredfold for the attacks the demagogue had made in the public assembly on the daring critic, and the abortive charge which the same unscrupulous enemy had brought against him in the courts of having "slandered the city in the presence of foreigners." "in this bitterness of spirit the play stands in strong contrast with the good-humoured burlesque of 'the acharnians' and the 'peace,' or, indeed, with any other of the author's productions which has reached us." the characters are five only. first and foremost comes demos, 'the people,' typifying the athenian democracy, a rich householder--a self-indulgent, superstitious, weak creature. he has had several overseers or factors in succession, to look after his estate and manage his slaves. the present one is known as 'the paphlagonian,' or sometimes as 'the tanner,' an unprincipled, lying, cheating, pilfering scoundrel, fawning and obsequious to his master, insolent towards his subordinates. two of these are nicias and demosthenes. here we have real names. nicias was high admiral of the athenian navy at the time, and demosthenes one of his vice-admirals; both held still more important commands later in connection with the sicilian expedition of - b.c. fear of consequences apparently prevented the poet from doing the same in the case of cleon, who is, of course, intended under the names of 'the paphlagonian' and 'the tanner.' indeed, so great was the terror inspired by the great man that no artist was found bold enough to risk his powerful vengeance by caricaturing his features, and no actor dared to represent him on the stage. aristophanes is said to have played the part himself, with his face, in the absence of a mask, smeared with wine-lees, roughly mimicking the purple and bloated visage of the demagogue. the remaining character is 'the sausage-seller,' who is egged on by nicias and demosthenes to oust 'the paphlagonian' from demos' favour by outvying him in his own arts of impudent flattery, noisy boasting and unscrupulous allurement. after a fierce and stubbornly contested trial of wits and interchange of 'billingsgate,' 'the sausage-seller' beats his rival at his own weapons and gains his object; he supplants the disgraced favourite, who is driven out of the house with ignominy. the comedy takes its title, as was often the case, from the chorus, which is composed of knights--the order of citizens next to the highest at athens, and embodying many of the old aristocratic preferences and prejudices. the drama was adjudged the first prize--the 'satyrs' of cratinus being placed second--by acclamation, as such a masterpiece of wit and intrepidity certainly deserved to be; but, as usual, the political result was nil. the piece was applauded in the most enthusiastic manner, the satire on the sovereign multitude was forgiven, and--cleon remained in as much favour as ever.[ ] * * * * * the knights dramatis personae demosthenes. nicias. agoracritus, a sausage-seller. cleon. demos, an old man, typifying the athenian people. chorus of knights. scene: in front of demos' house at athens. * * * * * the knights demosthenes. oh! alas! alas! oh! woe! oh! woe! miserable paphlagonian![ ] may the gods destroy both him and his cursed advice! since that evil day when this new slave entered the house he has never ceased belabouring us with blows. nicias. may the plague seize him, the arch-fiend--him and his lying tales! demosthenes. hah! my poor fellow, what is your condition? nicias. very wretched, just like your own. demosthenes. then come, let us sing a duet of groans in the style of olympus.[ ] demosthenes and nicias. boo, hoo! boo, hoo! boo, hoo! boo, hoo! boo, hoo! boo, hoo!! demosthenes. bah! 'tis lost labour to weep! enough of groaning! let us consider how to save our pelts. nicias. but how to do it! can you suggest anything? demosthenes. nay! you begin. i cede you the honour. nicias. by apollo! no, not i. come, have courage! speak, and then i will say what i think. demosthenes. "ah! would you but tell me what i should tell you!"[ ] nicias. i dare not. how could i express my thoughts with the pomp of euripides? demosthenes. oh! prithee, spare me! do not pelt me with those vegetables,[ ] but find some way of leaving our master. nicias. well, then! say "let-us-bolt," like this, in one breath. demosthenes. i follow you--"let-us-bolt." nicias. now after "let-us-bolt" say "at-top-speed!" demosthenes. "at-top-speed!" nicias. splendid! just as if you were masturbating yourself; first slowly, "let-us-bolt"; then quick and firmly, "at-top-speed!" demosthenes. let-us-bolt, let-us-bolt-at-top-speed![ ] nicias. hah! does that not please you? demosthenes. i' faith, yes! yet i fear me your omen bodes no good to my hide. nicias. how so? demosthenes. because hard rubbing abrades the skin when folk masturbate themselves. nicias. the best thing we can do for the moment is to throw ourselves at the feet of the statue of some god. demosthenes. of which statue? any statue? do you then believe there are gods? nicias. certainly. demosthenes. what proof have you? nicias. the proof that they have taken a grudge against me. is that not enough? demosthenes. i'm convinced it is. but to pass on. do you consent to my telling the spectators of our troubles? nicias. 'twould not be amiss, and we might ask them to show us by their manner, whether our facts and actions are to their liking. demosthenes. i will begin then. we have a very brutal master, a perfect glutton for beans,[ ] and most bad-tempered; 'tis demos of the pnyx,[ ] an intolerable old man and half deaf. the beginning of last month he bought a slave, a paphlagonian tanner, an arrant rogue, the incarnation of calumny. this man of leather knows his old master thoroughly; he plays the fawning cur, flatters, cajoles; wheedles, and dupes him at will with little scraps of leavings, which he allows him to get. "dear demos," he will say, "try a single case and you will have done enough; then take your bath, eat, swallow and devour; here are three obols."[ ] then the paphlagonian filches from one of us what we have prepared and makes a present of it to our old man. t'other day i had just kneaded a spartan cake at pylos;[ ] the cunning rogue came behind my back, sneaked it and offered the cake, which was my invention, in his own name. he keeps us at a distance and suffers none but himself to wait upon the master; when demos is dining, he keeps close to his side with a thong in his hand and puts the orators to flight. he keeps singing oracles to him, so that the old man now thinks of nothing but the sibyl. then, when he sees him thoroughly obfuscated, he uses all his cunning and piles up lies and calumnies against the household; then we are scourged and the paphlagonian runs about among the slaves to demand contributions with threats and gathers 'em in with both hands. he will say, "you see how i have had hylas beaten! either content me or die at once!" we are forced to give, for else the old man tramples on us and makes us spew forth all our body contains. there must be an end to it, friend. let us see! what can be done? who will get us out of this mess? nicias. the best thing, chum, is our famous "let-us-bolt!" demosthenes. but none can escape the paphlagonian, his eye is everywhere. and what a stride! he has one leg on pylos and the other in the assembly; his rump is exactly over the land of the chaonians, his hands are with the aetolians and his mind with the clopidians.[ ] nicias. 'tis best then to die; but let us seek the most heroic death. demosthenes. let me bethink me, what is the most heroic? nicias. let us drink the blood of a bull; 'tis the death which themistocles chose.[ ] demosthenes. no, not that, but a bumper of good unmixed wine in honour of the good genius;[ ] perchance we may stumble on a happy thought. nicias. look at him! "unmixed wine!" your mind is on drink intent? can a man strike out a brilliant thought when drunk? demosthenes. without question. go, ninny, blow yourself out with water; do you dare to accuse wine of clouding the reason? quote me more marvellous effects than those of wine. look! when a man drinks, he is rich, everything he touches succeeds, he gains lawsuits, is happy and helps his friends. come, bring hither quick a flagon of wine, that i may soak my brain and get an ingenious idea. nicias. eh, my god! what can your drinking do to help us? demosthenes. much. but bring it to me, while i take my seat. once drunk, i shall strew little ideas, little phrases, little reasonings everywhere. nicias (_returning with a flagon_). it is lucky i was not caught in the house stealing the wine. demosthenes. tell me, what is the paphlagonian doing now? nicias. the wretch has just gobbled up some confiscated cakes; he is drunk and lies at full-length a-snoring on his hides. demosthenes. very well, come along, pour me out wine and plenty of it. nicias. take it and offer a libation to your good genius; taste, taste the liquor of the genial soil of pramnium.[ ] demosthenes. oh, good genius! 'tis thy will, not mine. nicias. prithee, tell me, what is it? demosthenes. run indoors quick and steal the oracles of the paphlagonian, while he is asleep.[ ] nicias. bless me! i fear this good genius will be but a very bad genius for me. demosthenes. and set the flagon near me, that i may moisten my wit to invent some brilliant notion. nicias (_enters the house and returns at once_). how the paphlagonian grunts and snores! i was able to seize the sacred oracle, which he was guarding with the greatest care, without his seeing me. demosthenes. oh! clever fellow! hand it here, that i may read. come, pour me out some drink, bestir yourself! let me see what there is in it. oh! prophecy! some drink! some drink! quick! nicias. well! what says the oracle? demosthenes. pour again. nicias. is "pour again" in the oracle? demosthenes. oh, bacis![ ] nicias. but what is in it? demosthenes. quick! some drink! nicias. bacis is very dry! demosthenes. oh! miserable paphlagonian! this then is why you have so long taken such precautions; your horoscope gave you qualms of terror. nicias. what does it say? demosthenes. it says here how he must end. nicias. and how? demosthenes. how? the oracle announces clearly that a dealer in oakum must first govern the city.[ ] nicias. first dealer. and after him, who? demosthenes. after him, a sheep-dealer.[ ] nicias. two dealers, eh? and what is this one's fate? demosthenes. to reign until a greater scoundrel than he arises; then he perishes and in his place the leather-seller appears, the paphlagonian robber, the bawler, who roars like a torrent.[ ] nicias. and the leather-seller must destroy the sheep-seller? demosthenes. yes. nicias. oh! woe is me! where can another seller be found, is there ever a one left? demosthenes. there is yet one, who plies a firstrate trade. nicias. tell me, pray, what is that? demosthenes. you really want to know? nicias. yes. demosthenes. well then! 'tis a sausage-seller who must overthrow him. nicias. a sausage-seller! ah! by posidon! what a fine trade! but where can this man be found? demosthenes. let us seek him. nicias. lo! there he is, going towards the market-place; 'tis the gods, the gods who send him! demosthenes. this way, this way, oh, lucky sausage-seller, come forward, dear friend, our saviour, the saviour of our city. sausage-seller. what is it? why do you call me? demosthenes. come here, come and learn about your good luck, you who are fortune's favourite! nicias. come! relieve him of his basket-tray and tell him the oracle of the god; i will go and look after the paphlagonian. demosthenes. first put down all your gear, then worship the earth and the gods. sausage-seller. 'tis done. what is the matter? demosthenes. happiness, riches, power; to-day you have nothing, to-morrow you will have all, oh! chief of happy athens. sausage-seller. why not leave me to wash my tripe and to sell my sausages instead of making game of me? demosthenes. oh! the fool! your tripe! do you see these tiers of people?[ ] sausage-seller. yes. demosthenes. you shall be master to them all, governor of the market, of the harbours, of the pnyx; you shall trample the senate under foot, be able to cashier the generals, load them with fetters, throw them into gaol, and you will play the debauchee in the prytaneum.[ ] sausage-seller. what! i? demosthenes. you, without a doubt. but you do not yet see all the glory awaiting you. stand on your basket and look at all the islands that surround athens.[ ] sausage-seller. i see them. what then? demosthenes. look at the storehouses and the shipping. sausage-seller. yes, i am looking. demosthenes. exists there a mortal more blest than you? furthermore, turn your right eye towards caria and your left towards chalcedon.[ ] sausage-seller. 'tis then a blessing to squint! demosthenes. no, but 'tis you who are going to trade away all this. according to the oracle you must become the greatest of men. sausage-seller. just tell me how a sausage-seller can become a great man. demosthenes. that is precisely why you will be great, because you are a sad rascal without shame, no better than a common market rogue. sausage-seller. i do not hold myself worthy of wielding power. demosthenes. oh! by the gods! why do you not hold yourself worthy? have you then such a good opinion of yourself? come, are you of honest parentage? sausage-seller. by the gods! no! of very bad indeed. demosthenes. spoilt child of fortune, everything fits together to ensure your greatness. sausage-seller. but i have not had the least education. i can only read, and that very badly. demosthenes. that is what may stand in your way, almost knowing how to read. the demagogues will neither have an educated nor an honest man; they require an ignoramus and a rogue. but do not, do not let go this gift, which the oracle promises. sausage-seller. but what does the oracle say? demosthenes. faith! it is put together in very fine enigmatical style, as elegant as it is clear: "when the eagle-tanner with the hooked claws shall seize a stupid dragon, a blood-sucker, it will be an end to the hot paphlagonian pickled garlic. the god grants great glory to the sausage-sellers unless they prefer to sell their wares." sausage-seller. in what way does this concern me? pray instruct my ignorance. demosthenes. the eagle-tanner is the paphlagonian. sausage-seller. what do the hooked claws mean? demosthenes. it means to say, that he robs and pillages us with his claw-like hands. sausage-seller. and the dragon? demosthenes. that is quite clear. the dragon is long and so also is the sausage; the sausage like the dragon is a drinker of blood. therefore the oracle says, that the dragon will triumph over the eagle-tanner, if he does not let himself be cajoled with words. sausage-seller. the oracles of the gods summon me! faith! i do not at all understand how i can be capable of governing the people. demosthenes. nothing simpler. continue your trade. mix and knead together all the state business as you do for your sausages. to win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them. besides, you possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, cross-grained nature and the language of the market-place. in you all is united which is needful for governing. the oracles are in your favour, even including that of delphi. come, take a chaplet, offer a libation to the god of stupidity[ ] and take care to fight vigorously. sausage-seller. who will be my ally? for the rich fear the paphlagonian and the poor shudder at the sight of him. demosthenes. you will have a thousand brave knights,[ ] who detest him, on your side; also the honest citizens amongst the spectators, those who are men of brave hearts, and finally myself and the god. fear not, you will not see his features, for none have dared to make a mask resembling him. but the public have wit enough to recognize him.[ ] nicias. oh! mercy! here is the paphlagonian! cleon. by the twelve gods! woe betide you, who have too long been conspiring against demos. what means this chalcidian cup? no doubt you are provoking the chalcidians to revolt. you shall be killed, butchered, you brace of rogues. demosthenes. what! are you for running away? come, come, stand firm, bold sausage-seller, do not betray us. to the rescue, oh! knights. now is the time. simon, panaetius,[ ] get you to the right wing; they are coming on; hold tight and return to the charge. i can see the dust of their horses' hoofs; they are galloping to our aid. courage! repel, attack them, put them to flight. chorus. strike, strike the villain, who has spread confusion amongst the ranks of the knights, this public robber, this yawning gulf of plunder, this devouring charybdis,[ ] this villain, this villain, this villain! i cannot say the word too often, for he _is_ a villain a thousand times a day. come, strike, drive, hurl him over and crush him to pieces; hate him as we hate him; stun him with your blows and your shouts. and beware lest he escape you; he knows the way eucrates[ ] took straight to a bran sack for concealment. cleon. oh! veteran heliasts,[ ] brotherhood of the three obols,[ ] whom i fostered by bawling at random, help me; i am being beaten to death by rebels. chorus. and 'tis justice; you devour the public funds that all should share in; you treat the officers answerable for the revenue like the fruit of the fig tree, squeezing them to find which are still green or more or less ripe; and, when you find one simple and timid, you force him to come from the chersonese,[ ] then you seize him by the middle, throttle him by the neck, while you twist his shoulder back; he falls and you devour him.[ ] besides, you know very well how to select from among the citizens those who are as meek as lambs, rich, without guile and loathers of lawsuits. cleon. eh! what! knights, are you helping them? but, if i am beaten, 'tis in your cause, for i was going to propose to erect you a statue in the city in memory of your bravery. chorus. oh! the impostor! the dull varlet! see! he treats us like old dotards and crawls at our feet to deceive us; but the cunning wherein lies his power shall this time recoil on himself; he trips up himself by resorting to such artifices. cleon. oh citizens! oh people! see how these brutes are bursting my belly. chorus. what shouts! but 'tis this very bawling that incessantly upsets the city! sausage-seller. i can shout too--and so loud that you will flee with fear. chorus. if you shout louder than he does, i will strike up the triumphal hymn; if you surpass him in impudence, the cake is ours. cleon. i denounce this fellow; he has had tasty stews exported from athens for the spartan fleet. sausage-seller. and i denounce him, who runs into the prytaneum with empty belly and comes out with it full. demosthenes. and by zeus! he carries off bread, meat, and fish, which is forbidden. pericles himself never had this right. cleon. you are travelling the right road to get killed. sausage-seller. i'll bawl three times as loud as you. cleon. i will deafen you with my yells. sausage-seller. and i you with my bellowing. cleon. i shall calumniate you, if you become a strategus.[ ] sausage-seller. dog, i will lay your back open with the lash. cleon. i will make you drop your arrogance. sausage-seller. i will baffle your machinations. cleon. dare to look me in the face! sausage-seller. i too was brought up in the market-place. cleon. i will cut you to shreds if you whisper a word. sausage-seller. i will daub you with dung if you open your mouth. cleon. i own i am a thief; do you admit yourself another. sausage-seller. by our hermes of the market-place, if caught in the act, why, i perjure myself before those who saw me. cleon. these are my own special tricks. i will denounce you to the prytanes[ ] as the owner of sacred tripe, that has not paid tithe. chorus. oh! you scoundrel! you impudent bawler! everything is filled with your daring, all attica, the assembly, the treasury, the decrees, the tribunals. as a furious torrent you have overthrown our city; your outcries have deafened athens and, posted upon a high rock, you have lain in wait for the tribute moneys as the fisherman does for the tunny-fish. cleon. i know your tricks; 'tis an old plot resoled.[ ] sausage-seller. if you know naught of soling, i understand nothing of sausages; you, who cut bad leather on the slant to make it look stout and deceive the country yokels. they had not worn it a day before it had stretched some two spans. demosthenes 'tis the very trick he served me; both my neighbours and my friends laughed heartily at me, and before i reached pergasae[ ] i was swimming in my shoes. chorus. have you not always shown that blatant impudence, which is the sole strength of our orators? you push it so far, that you, the head of the state, dare to milk the purses of the opulent aliens and, at sight of you, the son of hippodamus[ ] melts into tears. but here is another man, who gives me pleasure, for he is a much greater rascal than you; he will overthrow you; 'tis easy to see, that he will beat you in roguery, in brazenness and in clever turns. come, you, who have been brought up among the class which to-day gives us all our great men, show us that a liberal education is mere tomfoolery. sausage-seller. just hear what sort of fellow that fine citizen is. cleon. will you not let me speak? sausage-seller. assuredly not, for i also am a sad rascal. chorus. if he does not give in at that, tell him your parents were sad rascals too. cleon. once more, will you not let me speak? sausage-seller. no, by zeus! cleon. yes, by zeus, but you shall! sausage-seller. no, by posidon! we will fight first to see who shall speak first. cleon. i will die sooner. sausage-seller. i will not let you.... chorus. let him, in the name of the gods, let him die. cleon. what makes you so bold as to dare to speak to my face? sausage-seller. 'tis that i know both how to speak and how to cook. cleon. hah! the fine speaker! truly, if some business matter fell your way, you would know thoroughly well how to attack it, to carve it up alive! shall i tell you what has happened to you? like so many others, you have gained some petty lawsuit against some alien.[ ] did you drink enough water to inspire you? did you mutter over the thing sufficiently through the night, spout it along the street, recite it to all you met? have you bored your friends enough with it? 'tis then for this you deem yourself an orator. ah! poor fool! sausage-seller. and what do you drink yourself then, to be able all alone by yourself to dumbfound and stupefy the city so with your clamour? cleon. can you match me with a rival? me! when i have devoured a good hot tunny-fish and drunk on top of it a great jar of unmixed wine, i hold up the generals of pylos to public scorn. sausage-seller. and i, when i have bolted the tripe of an ox together with a sow's belly and swallowed the broth as well, i am fit, though slobbering with grease, to bellow louder than all orators and to terrify nicias. chorus. i admire your language so much; the only thing i do not approve is that you swallow all the broth yourself. cleon. e'en though you gorged yourself on sea-dogs, you would not beat the milesians. sausage-seller. give me a bullock's breast to devour, and i am a man to traffic in mines.[ ] cleon. i will rush into the senate and set them all by the ears. sausage-seller. and i will lug out your gut to stuff like a sausage. cleon. as for me, i will seize you by the rump and hurl you head foremost through the door. chorus. in any case, by posidon, 'twill only be when you have thrown _me_ there first.[ ] cleon. beware of the carcan![ ] sausage-seller. i denounce you for cowardice. cleon. i will tan your hide. sausage-seller. i will flay you and make a thief's pouch with the skin. cleon. i will peg you out on the ground. sausage-seller. i will slice you into mince-meat. cleon. i will tear out your eyelashes. sausage-seller. i will slit your gullet. demosthenes. we will set his mouth open with a wooden stick as the cooks do with pigs; we will tear out his tongue, and, looking down his gaping throat, will see whether his inside has any pimples.[ ] chorus. thus then at athens we have something more fiery than fire, more impudent than impudence itself! 'tis a grave matter; come, we will push and jostle him without mercy. there, you grip him tightly under the arms; if he gives way at the onset, you will find him nothing but a craven; i know my man. sausage-seller. that he has been all his life and he has only made himself a name by reaping another's harvest; and now he has tied up the ears he gathered over there, he lets them dry and seeks to sell them.[ ] cleon. i do not fear you as long as there is a senate and a people which stands like a fool, gaping in the air. chorus. what unparalleled impudence! 'tis ever the same brazen front. if i don't hate you, why, i'm ready to take the place of the one blanket cratinus wets;[ ] i'll offer to play a tragedy by morsimus.[ ] oh! you cheat! who turn all into money, who flutter from one extortion to another; may you disgorge as quickly as you have crammed yourself! then only would i sing, "let us drink, let us drink to this happy event!"[ ] then even the son of iulius,[ ] the old niggard, would empty his cup with transports of joy, crying, "io, paean! io, bacchus!" cleon. by posidon! you! would you beat me in impudence! if you succeed, may i no longer have my share of the victims offered to zeus on the city altar. sausage-seller. and i, i swear by the blows that have so oft rained upon my shoulders since infancy, and by the knives that have cut me, that i will show more effrontery than you; as sure as i have rounded this fine stomach by feeding on the pieces of bread that had cleansed other folk's greasy fingers.[ ] cleon. on pieces of bread, like a dog! ah! wretch! you have the nature of a dog and you dare to fight a cynecephalus?[ ] sausage-seller. i have many another trick in my sack, memories of my childhood's days. i used to linger around the cooks and say to them, "look, friends, don't you see a swallow? 'tis the herald of springtime." and while they stood, their noses in the air, i made off with a piece of meat. chorus. oh! most clever man! how well thought out! you did as the eaters of artichokes, you gathered them before the return of the swallows.[ ] sausage-seller. they could make nothing of it; or, if they suspected a trick, i hid the meat in my breeches and denied the thing by all the gods; so that an orator, seeing me at the game, cried, "this child will get on; he has the mettle that makes a statesman." chorus. he argued rightly; to steal, perjure yourself and make a receiver of your rump[ ] are three essentials for climbing high. cleon. i will stop your insolence, or rather the insolence of both of you. i will throw myself upon you like a terrible hurricane ravaging both land and sea at the will of its fury. sausage-seller. then i will gather up my sausages and entrust myself to the kindly waves of fortune so as to make you all the more enraged. demosthenes. and i will watch in the bilges in case the boat should make water. cleon. no, by demeter! i swear, 'twill not be with impunity that you have thieved so many talents from the athenians.[ ] chorus (_to the sausage-seller_). oh! oh! reef your sail a bit! here is boreas blowing calumniously. cleon. i know that you got ten talents out of potidaea.[ ] sausage-seller. hold! i will give you one; but keep it dark! chorus. hah! that will please him mightily; now you can travel under full sail. sausage-seller. yes, the wind has lost its violence. cleon. i will bring four suits against you, each of one hundred talents.[ ] sausage-seller. and i twenty against you for shirking duty and more than a thousand for robbery. cleon. i maintain that your parents were guilty of sacrilege against the goddess.[ ] sausage-seller. and i, that one of your grandfathers was a satellite.... cleon. to whom? explain! sausage-seller. to byrsina, the mother of hippias.[ ] cleon. you are an impostor. sausage-seller. and you are a rogue. chorus. hit him hard. cleon. oh, oh, dear! the conspirators are murdering me! chorus. strike, strike with all your might; bruise his belly, lashing him with your guts and your tripe; punish him with both arms! oh! vigorous assailant and intrepid heart! have you not routed him totally in this duel of abuse? how shall i give tongue to my joy and sufficiently praise you? cleon. ah! by demeter! i was not ignorant of this plot against me; i knew it was forming, that the chariot of war was being put together.[ ] chorus (_to sausage-seller_). look out, look out! come, outfence him with some wheelwright slang? sausage-seller. his tricks at argos do not escape me. under pretence of forming an alliance with the argives, he is hatching a plot with the lacedaemonians there; and i know why the bellows are blowing and the metal that is on the anvil; 'tis the question of the prisoners. chorus. well done! forge on, if he be a wheelwright. sausage-seller. and there are men at sparta[ ] who are hammering the iron with you; but neither gold nor silver nor prayers nor anything else shall impede my denouncing your trickery to the athenians. cleon. as for me, i hasten to the senate to reveal your plotting, your nightly gatherings in the city, your trafficking with the medes and with the great king, and all you are foraging for in boeotia.[ ] sausage-seller. what price then is paid for forage by boeotians? cleon. oh! by heracles! i will tan your hide. chorus. come, if you have both wit and heart, now is the time to show it, as on the day when you hid the meat in your breeches, as you say. hasten to the senate, for he will rush there like a tornado to calumniate us all and give vent to his fearful bellowings. sausage-seller. i am going, but first i must rid myself of my tripe and my knives; i will leave them here. chorus. stay! rub your neck with lard; in this way you will slip between the fingers of calumny. sausage-seller. spoken like a finished master of fence. chorus. now, bolt down these cloves of garlic. sausage-seller. pray, what for? chorus. well primed with garlic, you will have greater mettle for the fight. but hurry, hurry, bestir yourself! sausage-seller. that's just what i am doing. chorus. and, above all, bite your foe, rend him to atoms, tear off his comb[ ] and do not return until you have devoured his wattles. go! make your attack with a light heart, avenge me and may zeus guard you! i burn to see you return the victor and laden with chaplets of glory. and you, spectators, enlightened critics of all kinds of poetry, lend an ear to my anapaests.[ ] chorus. had one of the old authors asked to mount this stage to recite his verses, he would not have found it hard to persuade me. but our poet of to-day is likewise worthy of this favour; he shares our hatred, he dares to tell the truth, he boldly braves both waterspouts and hurricanes. many among you, he tells us, have expressed wonder, that he has not long since had a piece presented in his own name, and have asked the reason why.[ ] this is what he bids us say in reply to your questions; 'tis not without grounds that he has courted the shade, for, in his opinion, nothing is more difficult than to cultivate the comic muse; many court her, but very few secure her favours. moreover, he knows that you are fickle by nature and betray your poets when they grow old. what fate befell magnes,[ ] when his hair went white? often enough has he triumphed over his rivals; he has sung in all keys, played the lyre and fluttered wings; he turned into a lydian and even into a gnat, daubed himself with green to become a frog.[ ] all in vain! when young, you applauded him; in his old age you hooted and mocked him, because his genius for raillery had gone. cratinus[ ] again was like a torrent of glory rushing across the plain, uprooting oak, plane tree and rivals and bearing them pell-mell in its wake. the only songs at the banquet were, 'doro, shod with lying tales' and 'adepts of the lyric muse';[ ] so great was his renown. look at him now! he drivels, his lyre has neither strings nor keys, his voice quivers, but you have no pity for him, and you let him wander about as he can, like connas,[ ] his temples circled with a withered chaplet; the poor old fellow is dying of thirst; he who, in honour of his glorious past, should be in the prytaneum drinking at his ease, and instead of trudging the country should be sitting amongst the first row of the spectators, close to the statue of dionysus[ ] and loaded with perfumes. crates,[ ] again, have you done hounding him with your rage and your hisses? true, 'twas but meagre fare that his sterile muse could offer you; a few ingenious fancies formed the sole ingredients, but nevertheless he knew how to stand firm and to recover from his falls. 'tis such examples that frighten our poet; in addition, he would tell himself, that before being a pilot, he must first know how to row, then to keep watch at the prow, after that how to gauge the winds, and that only then would he be able to command his vessel.[ ] if then you approve this wise caution and his resolve that he would not bore you with foolish nonsense, raise loud waves of applause in his favour this day, so that, at this lenaean feast, the breath of your favour may swell the sails of his trumphant galley and the poet may withdraw proud of his success, with head erect and his face beaming with delight. posidon, god of the racing steed, i salute you, you who delight in their neighing and in the resounding clatter of their brass-shod hoofs, god of the swift galleys, which, loaded with mercenaries, cleave the seas with their azure beaks, god of the equestrian contests, in which young rivals, eager for glory, ruin themselves for the sake of distinction with their chariots in the arena, come and direct our chorus; posidon with the trident of gold, you, who reign over the dolphins, who are worshipped at sunium and at geraestus[ ] beloved of phormio,[ ] and dear to the whole city above all the immortals, i salute you! let us sing the glory of our forefathers; ever victors, both on land and sea, they merit that athens, rendered famous by these, her worthy sons, should write their deeds upon the sacred peplus.[ ] as soon as they saw the enemy, they at once sprang at him without ever counting his strength. should one of them fall in the conflict, he would shake off the dust, deny his mishap and begin the struggle anew. not one of these generals of old time would have asked cleaenetus[ ] to be fed at the cost of the state; but our present men refuse to fight, unless they get the honours of the prytaneum and precedence in their seats. as for us, we place our valour gratuitously at the service of athens and of her gods; our only hope is, that, should peace ever put a term to our toils, you will not grudge us our long, scented hair nor our delicate care for our toilet. oh! pallas, guardian of athens, you, who reign over the most pious city, the most powerful, the richest in warriors and in poets, hasten to my call, bringing in your train our faithful ally in all our expeditions and combats, victory, who smiles on our choruses and fights with us against our rivals. oh! goddess! manifest yourself to our sight; this day more than ever we deserve that you should ensure our triumph. we will sing likewise the exploits of our steeds! they are worthy of our praises;[ ] in what invasions, what fights have i not seen them helping us! but especially admirable were they, when they bravely leapt upon the galleys, taking nothing with them but a coarse wine, some cloves of garlic and onions; despite this, they nevertheless seized the sweeps just like men, curved their backs over the thwarts and shouted, "hippopopoh! give way! come, all pull together! come, come! how! samphoras![ ] are you not rowing?" they rushed down upon the coast of corinth, and the youngest hollowed out beds in the sand with their hoofs or went to fetch coverings; instead of luzern, they had no food but crabs, which they caught on the strand and even in the sea; so that theorus causes a corinthian[ ] crab to say, "'tis a cruel fate, oh posidon! neither my deep hiding-places, whether on land or at sea, can help me to escape the knights." welcome, oh, dearest and bravest of men! how distracted i have been during your absence! but here you are back, safe and sound. tell us about the fight you have had. sausage-seller. the important thing is that i have beaten the senate.[ ] chorus. all glory to you! let us burst into shouts of joy! you speak well, but your deeds are even better. come, tell me everything in detail; what a long journey would i not be ready to take to hear your tale! come, dear friend, speak with full confidence to your admirers. sausage-seller. the story is worth hearing. listen! from here i rushed straight to the senate, right in the track of this man; he was already letting loose the storm, unchaining the lightning, crushing the knights beneath huge mountains of calumnies heaped together and having all the air of truth; he called you conspirators and his lies caught root like weeds in every mind; dark were the looks on every side and brows were knitted. when i saw that the senate listened to him favourably and was being tricked by his imposture, i said to myself, "come, gods of rascals and braggarts, gods of all fools, toad-eaters and braggarts and thou, market-place, where i was bred from my earliest days, give me unbridled audacity, an untiring chatter and a shameless voice." no sooner had i ended this prayer than a lewd man broke wind on my right. "hah! 'tis a good omen," said i, and prostrated myself; then i burst open the door by a vigorous push with my back, and, opening my mouth to the utmost, shouted, "senators, i wanted you to be the first to hear the good news; since the war broke out, i have never seen anchovies at a lower price!" all faces brightened at once and i was voted a chaplet for my good tidings; and i added, "with a couple of words i will reveal to you, how you can have quantities of anchovies for an obol; 'tis to seize on all the dishes the merchants have." with mouths gaping with admiration, they applauded me. however, the paphlagonian winded the matter and, well knowing the sort of language which pleases the senate best, said, "friends, i am resolved to offer one hundred oxen to the goddess in recognition of this happy event." the senate at once veered to his side. so when i saw myself defeated by this ox filth, i outbade the fellow, crying, "two hundred!" and beyond this i moved, that a vow be made to diana of a thousand goats if the next day anchovies should only be worth an obol a hundred. and the senate looked towards me again. the other, stunned with the blow, grew delirious in his speech, and at last the prytanes and the guards dragged him out. the senators then stood talking noisily about the anchovies. cleon, however, begged them to listen to the lacedaemonian envoy, who had come to make proposals of peace; but all with one accord, cried, "'tis certainly not the moment to think of peace now! if anchovies are so cheap, what need have we of peace? let the war take its course!" and with loud shouts they demanded that the prytanes should close the sitting and then leapt over the rails in all directions. as for me, i slipped away to buy all the coriander seed and leeks there were on the market and gave it to them gratis as seasoning for their anchovies. 'twas marvellous! they loaded me with praises and caresses; thus i conquered the senate with an obol's worth of leeks, and here i am. chorus. bravo! you are the spoilt child of fortune. ah! our knave has found his match in another, who has far better tricks in his sack, a thousand kinds of knaveries and of wily words. but the fight begins afresh; take care not to weaken; you know that i have long been your most faithful ally. sausage-seller. ah! ah! here comes the paphlagonian! one would say, 'twas a hurricane lashing the sea and rolling the waves before it in its fury. he looks as if he wanted to swallow me up alive! ye gods! what an impudent knave! cleon. to my aid, my beloved lies! i am going to destroy you, or my name is lost. sausage-seller. oh! how he diverts me with his threats! his bluster makes me laugh! and i dance the _mothon_ for joy,[ ] and sing at the top of my voice, cuckoo! cleon. ah! by demeter! if i do not kill and devour you, may i die! sausage-seller. if you do not devour me? and i, if i do not drink your blood to the last drop, and then burst with indigestion. cleon. i, i will strangle you, i swear it by the precedence which pylos gained me. sausage-seller. by the precedence! ah! might i see you fall from your precedence into the hindmost seat! cleon. by heaven! i will put you to the torture. sausage-seller. what a lively wit! come, what's the best to give you to eat? what do you prefer? a purse? cleon. i will tear out your inside with my nails. sausage-seller. and i will cut off your victuals at the prytaneum. cleon. i will haul you before demos, who will mete out justice to you. sausage-seller. and i too will drag you before him and belch forth more calumnies than you. cleon. why, poor fool, he does not believe you, whereas i play with him at will. sausage-seller. so that demos is your property, your contemptible creature. cleon. 'tis because i know the dishes that please him. sausage-seller. and these are little mouthfuls, which you serve to him like a clever nurse. you chew the pieces and place some in small quantities in his mouth, while you swallow three parts yourself. cleon. thanks to my skill, i know exactly how to enlarge or contract this gullet. sausage-seller. i can do as much with my rump. cleon. hah! my friend, you tricked me at the senate, but have a care! let us go before demos. sausage-seller. that's easily done; come, let's along without delay. cleon. oh, demos! come, i adjure you to help me, my father! sausage-seller. come, oh, my dear little demos; come and see how i am insulted. demos. what a hubbub! to the devil with you, bawlers! alas! my olive branch, which they have torn down![ ] ah! 'tis you, paphlagonian. and who, pray, has been maltreating you? cleon. you are the cause of this man and these young people having covered me with blows. demos. and why? cleon because you love me passionately, demos. demos. and you, who are you? sausage-seller. his rival. for many a long year have i loved you, have i wished to do you honour, i and a crowd of other men of means. but this rascal here has prevented us. you resemble those young men who do not know where to choose their lovers; you repulse honest folk; to earn your favours, one has to be a lamp-seller, a cobbler, a tanner or a currier. cleon. i am the benefactor of the people. sausage-seller. in what way, an it please you? cleon. in what way? i supplanted the generals at pylos, i hurried thither and i brought back the laconian captives. sausage-seller. and i, whilst simply loitering, cleared off with a pot from a shop, which another fellow had been boiling. cleon. demos, convene the assembly at once to decide which of us two loves you best and most merits your favour. sausage-seller. yes, yes, provided it be not at the pnyx. demos. i could not sit elsewhere; 'tis at the pnyx, that you must appear before me. sausage-seller. ah! great gods! i am undone! at home this old fellow is the most sensible of men, but the instant he is seated on those cursed stone seats,[ ] he is there with mouth agape as if he were hanging up figs by their stems to dry. chorus. come, loose all sail. be bold, skilful in attack and entangle him in arguments which admit of no reply. it is difficult to beat him, for he is full of craft and pulls himself out of the worst corners. collect all your forces to come forth from this fight covered with glory, but take care! let him not assume the attack, get ready your grapples and advance with your vessel to board him! cleon. oh! guardian goddess of our city! oh! athené! if it be true that next to lysicles, cynna and salabaccha[ ] none have done so much good for the athenian people as i, suffer me to continue to be fed at the prytaneum without working; but if i hate you, if i am not ready to fight in your defence alone and against all, may i perish, be sawn to bits alive and my skin be cut up into thongs. sausage-seller. and i, demos, if it be not true, that i love and cherish you, may i be cooked in a stew; and if that is not saying enough, may i be grated on this table with some cheese and then hashed, may a hook be passed through my testicles and let me be dragged thus to the ceramicus![ ] cleon. is it possible, demos, to love you more than i do? and firstly, as long as you have governed with my consent, have i not filled your treasury, putting pressure on some, torturing others or begging of them, indifferent to the opinion of private individuals, and solely anxious to please you? sausage-seller. there is nothing so wonderful in all that, demos; i will do as much; i will thieve the bread of others to serve up to you. no, he has neither love for you nor kindly feeling; his only care is to warm himself with your wood, and i will prove it. you, who, sword in hand, saved attica from the median yoke at marathon; you, whose glorious triumphs we love to extol unceasingly, look, he cares little whether he sees you seated uncomfortably upon a stone; whereas i, i bring you this cushion, which i have sewn with my own hands. rise and try this nice soft seat. did you not put enough strain on your breeches at salamis?[ ] demos. who are you then? can you be of the race of harmodius?[ ] upon my faith, 'tis nobly done and like a true friend of demos. cleon. petty flattery to prove him your goodwill! sausage-seller. but you have caught him with even smaller baits! cleon. never had demos a defender or a friend more devoted than myself; on my head, on my life, i swear it! sausage-seller. you pretend to love him and for eight years you have seen him housed in casks, in crevices and dovecots,[ ] where he is blinded with the smoke, and you lock him in without pity; archeptolemus brought peace and you tore it to ribbons; the envoys who come to propose a truce you drive from the city with kicks in their backsides. cleon. this is that demos may rule over all the greeks; for the oracles predict that, if he is patient, he must one day sit as judge in arcadia at five obols per day. meanwhile, i will nourish him, look after him and, above all, i will ensure to him his three obols. sausage-seller. no, little you care for his reigning in arcadia, 'tis to pillage and impose on the allies at will that you reckon; you wish the war to conceal your rogueries as in a mist, that demos may see nothing of them, and harassed by cares, may only depend on yourself for his bread. but if ever peace is restored to him, if ever he returns to his lands to comfort himself once more with good cakes, to greet his cherished olives, he will know the blessings you have kept him out of, even though paying him a salary; and, filled with hatred and rage, he will rise, burning with desire to vote against you. you know this only too well; 'tis for this you rock him to sleep with your lies. cleon. is it not shameful, that you should dare thus to calumniate me before demos, me, to whom athens, i swear it by demeter, already owes more than it ever did to themistocles? sausage-seller. oh! citizens of argos, do you hear what he says?[ ] you dare to compare yourself to themistocles, who found our city half empty and left it full to overflowing, who one day gave us the piraeus for dinner,[ ] and added fresh fish to all our usual meals.[ ] you, on the contrary, you, who compare yourself with themistocles, have only sought to reduce our city in size, to shut it within its walls, to chant oracles to us. and themistocles goes into exile, while you gorge yourself on the most excellent fare. cleon. oh! demos! am i compelled to hear myself thus abused, and merely because i love you? demos. silence! stop your abuse! all too long have i been your tool. sausage-seller. ah! my dear little demos, he is a rogue, who has played you many a scurvy trick; when your back is turned, he taps at the root the lawsuits initiated by the peculators, swallows the proceeds wholesale and helps himself with both hands from the public funds. cleon. tremble, knave; i will convict you of having stolen thirty thousand drachmae. sausage-seller. for a rascal of your kidney, you shout rarely! well! i am ready to die if i do not prove that you have accepted more than forty minae from the mitylenaeans.[ ] chorus. this indeed may be termed talking. oh, benefactor of the human race, proceed and you will be the most illustrious of the greeks. you alone shall have sway in athens, the allies will obey you, and, trident in hand, you will go about shaking and overturning everything to enrich yourself. but, stick to your man, let him not go; with lungs like yours you will soon have him finished. cleon. no, my brave friends, no, you are running too fast; i have done a sufficiently brilliant deed to shut the mouth of all enemies, so long as one of the bucklers of pylos remains. sausage-seller. of the bucklers! hold! i stop you there and i hold you fast. for if it be true, that you love the people, you would not allow these to be hung up with their rings;[ ] but 'tis with an intent you have done this. demos, take knowledge of his guilty purpose; in this way you no longer can punish him at your pleasure. note the swarm of young tanners, who really surround him, and close to them the sellers of honey and cheese; all these are at one with him. very well! you have but to frown, to speak of ostracism and they will rush at night to these bucklers, take them down and seize our granaries. demos. great gods! what! the bucklers retain their rings! scoundrel! ah! too long have you had me for your tool, cheated and played with me! cleon. but, dear sir, never you believe all he tells you. oh! never will you find a more devoted friend than me; unaided, i have known how to put down the conspiracies; nothing that is a-hatching in the city escapes me, and i hasten to proclaim it loudly. sausage-seller. you are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way 'tis only in troublous times that you line your pockets. but come, tell me, you, who sell so many skins, have you ever made him a present of a pair of soles for his slippers? and you pretend to love him! demos. no, he has never given me any. sausage-seller. that alone shows up the man; but i, i have bought you this pair of shoes; accept them. demos. none ever, to my knowledge, has merited so much from the people; you are the most zealous of all men for your country and for my toes. cleon. can a wretched pair of slippers make you forget all that you owe me? is it not i who curbed gryttus,[ ] the filthiest of the lewd, by depriving him of his citizen rights? sausage-seller. ah! noble inspector of back passages, let me congratulate you. moreover, if you set yourself against this form of lewdness, this pederasty, 'twas for sheer jealousy, knowing it to be the school for orators.[ ] but you see this poor demos without a cloak and that at his age too! so little do you care for him, that in mid-winter you have not given him a garment with sleeves. here, demos, here is one, take it! demos. this even themistocles never thought of; the piraeus was no doubt a happy idea, but meseems this tunic is quite as fine an invention. cleon. must you have recourse to such jackanapes' tricks to supplant me? sausage-seller. no, 'tis your own tricks that i am borrowing, just as a guest, driven by urgent need, seizes some other man's shoes.[ ] cleon. oh! you shall not outdo me in flattery! i am going to hand demos this garment; all that remains to you, you rogue, is to go and hang yourself. demos. faugh! may the plague seize you! you stink of leather horribly.[ ] sausage-seller. why, 'tis to smother you that he has thrown this cloak around you on top of the other; and it is not the first plot he has planned against you. do you remember the time when silphium[ ] was so cheap? demos. aye, to be sure i do! sausage-seller. very well! it was cleon who had caused the price to fall so low so that all could eat it and the jurymen in the courts were almost poisoned with farting in each others' faces. demos. hah! why, indeed, a scavenger told me the same thing. sausage-seller. were you not yourself in those days quite red in the gills with farting? demos. why, 'twas a trick worthy of pyrrandrus![ ] cleon. with what other idle trash will you seek to ruin me, you wretch! sausage-seller. oh! i shall be more brazen than you, for 'tis the goddess who has commanded me.[ ] cleon. no, on my honour, you will not! here, demos, feast on this dish; it is your salary as a dicast, which you gain through me for doing naught. sausage-seller. hold! here is a little box of ointment to rub into the sores on your legs. cleon. i will pluck out your white hairs and make you young again. sausage-seller. take this hare's scut to wipe the rheum from your eyes. cleon. when you wipe your nose, clean your fingers on my head. sausage-seller. no, on mine. cleon. on mine. (_to the sausage-seller._) i will have you made a trierarch[ ] and you will get ruined through it; i will arrange that you are given an old vessel with rotten sails, which you will have to repair constantly and at great cost. chorus. our man is on the boil; enough, enough, he is boiling over; remove some of the embers from under him and skim off his threats. cleon. i will punish your self-importance; i will crush you with imposts; i will have you inscribed on the list of the rich. sausage-seller. for me no threats--only one simple wish. that you may be having some cuttle-fish fried on the stove just as you are going to set forth to plead the cause of the milesians,[ ] which, if you gain, means a talent in your pocket; that you hurry over devouring the fish to rush off to the assembly; suddenly you are called and run off with your mouth full so as not to lose the talent and choke yourself. there! that is my wish. chorus. splendid! by zeus, apollo and demeter! demos. faith! here is an excellent citizen indeed, such as has not been seen for a long time. 'tis truly a man of the lowest scum! as for you, paphlagonian, who pretend to love me, you only feed me on garlic. return me my ring, for you cease to be my steward. cleon. here it is, but be assured, that if you bereave me of my power, my successor will be worse than i am. demos. this cannot be my ring; i see another device, unless i am going purblind. sausage-seller. what was your device? demos. a fig-leaf, stuffed with bullock's fat.[ ] sausage-seller. no, that is not it. demos. what is it then? sausage-seller. 'tis a gull with beak wide open, haranguing from the top of a stone.[ ] demos. ah! great gods! sausage-seller. what is the matter? demos. away! away out of my sight! 'tis not my ring he had, 'twas that of cleonymus. (_to the sausage-seller_.) hold, i give you this one; you shall be my steward. cleon. master, i adjure you, decide nothing till you have heard my oracles.[ ] sausage-seller. and mine. cleon. if you believe him, you will have to suck his tool for him. sausage-seller. if you listen to him, you'll have to let him skin your penis to the very stump. cleon. my oracles say that you are to reign over the whole earth, crowned with chaplets. sausage-seller. and mine say that, clothed in an embroidered purple robe, you shall pursue smicythes and her spouse,[ ] standing in a chariot of gold and with a crown on your head. demos. go, fetch me your oracles, that the paphlagonian may hear them. sausage-seller. willingly. demos. and you yours. cleon. i run. sausage-seller. and i run too; nothing could suit me better! chorus. oh! happy day for us and for our children, if cleon perish. yet just now i heard some old cross-grained pleaders on the market-place who hold not this opinion discoursing together. said they, "if cleon had not had the power we should have lacked two most useful tools, the pestle and the soup-ladle."[ ] you also know what a pig's education he has had; his school-fellows can recall that he only liked the dorian style and would study no other; his music-master in displeasure sent him away, saying: "this youth in matters of harmony, will only learn the dorian style because 'tis akin to bribery."[ ] cleon. there, behold and look at this heap; and yet i do not bring all. sausage-seller. ugh! i pant and puff under the weight and yet i do not bring all. demos. what are these? cleon. oracles. demos. all these? cleon. does that astonish you? why, i have another whole boxful of them. sausage-seller. and i the whole of my attics and two rooms besides. demos. come, let us see, whose are these oracles? cleon. mine are those of bacis.[ ] demos (_to the sausage-seller_). and whose are yours? sausage-seller. glanis's, the elder brother of bacis.[ ] demos. and of what do they speak? cleon. of athens, of pylos, of you, of me, of all. demos. and yours? sausage-seller. of athens, of lentils, of lacedaemonians, of fresh mackerel, of scoundrelly flour-sellers, of you, of me. ah! ha! now let him gnaw his own penis with chagrin! demos. come, read them out to me and especially that one i like so much, which says that i shall become an eagle and soar among the clouds. cleon. then listen and be attentive! "son of erectheus,[ ] understand the meaning of the words, which the sacred tripods set resounding in the sanctuary of apollo. preserve the sacred dog with the jagged teeth, that barks and howls in your defence; he will ensure you a salary and, if he fails, will perish as the victim of the swarms of jays that hunt him down with their screams." demos. by demeter! i do not understand a word of it. what connection is there between erectheus, the jays and the dog? cleon. 'tis i who am the dog, since i bark in your defence. well! phoebus commands you to keep and cherish your dog. sausage-seller. 'tis not so spoken by the god; this dog seems to me to gnaw at the oracles as others gnaw at doorposts. here is exactly what apollo says of the dog. demos. let us hear, but i must first pick up a stone; an oracle which speaks of a dog might bite me. sausage-seller. "son of erectheus, beware of this cerberus that enslaves freemen; he fawns upon you with his tail, when you are dining, but he is lying in wait to devour your dishes, should you turn your head an instant; at night he sneaks into the kitchen and, true dog that he is, licks up with one lap of his tongue both your dishes and ... the islands."[ ] demos. faith, glanis, you speak better than your brother. cleon. condescend again to hear me and then judge: "a woman in sacred athens will be delivered of a lion, who shall fight for the people against clouds of gnats with the same ferocity as if he were defending his whelps; care ye for him, erect wooden walls around him and towers of brass." do you understand that? demos. not the least bit in the world. cleon. the god tells you here to look after me, for, 'tis i who am your lion. demos. how! you have become a lion and i never knew a thing about it? sausage-seller. there is only one thing which he purposely keeps from you; he does not say what this wall of wood and brass is in which apollo warns you to keep and guard him. demos. what does the god mean, then? sausage-seller. he advises you to fit him into a five-holed wooden collar. demos. hah! i think that oracle is about to be fulfilled. cleon. do not believe it; these are but jealous crows, that caw against me; but never cease to cherish your good hawk; never forget that he brought you those lacedaemonian fish, loaded with chains.[ ] sausage-seller. ah! if the paphlagonian ran any risk that day, 'twas because he was drunk. oh, too credulous son of cecrops,[ ] do you accept that as a glorious exploit? a woman would carry a heavy burden if only a man had put it on her shoulders. but to fight! go to! he would shit himself, if ever it came to a tussle. cleon. note this pylos in front of pylos, of which the oracle speaks, "pylos is before pylos."[ ] demos. how "in front of pylos"? what does he mean by that? sausage-seller. he says he will seize upon your bath-tubs.[ ] demos. then i shall not bathe to-day. sausage-seller. no, as he has stolen our baths. but here is an oracle about the fleet, to which i beg your best attention. demos. read on! i am listening; let us first see how we are to pay our sailors.[ ] sausage-seller. "son of aegeus,[ ] beware of the tricks of the dog-fox,[ ] he bites from the rear and rushes off at full speed; he is nothing but cunning and perfidy." do you know what the oracle intends to say? demos. the dog-fox is philostratus.[ ] sausage-seller. no, no, 'tis cleon; he is incessantly asking you for light vessels to go and collect the tributes, and apollo advises you not to grant them. demos. what connection is there between a galley and a dog-fox? sausage-seller. what connection? why, 'tis quite plain--a galley travels as fast as a dog. demos. why, then, does the oracle not say dog instead of dog-fox? sausage-seller. because he compares the soldiers to young foxes, who, like them, eat the grapes in the fields. demos. good! well then! how am i to pay the wages of my young foxes? sausage-seller. i will undertake that, and in three days too! but listen to this further oracle, by which apollo puts you on your guard against the snares of the greedy fist. demos. of what greedy fist? sausage-seller. the god in this oracle very clearly points to the hand of cleon, who incessantly holds his out, saying, "fill it." cleon. 'tis false! phoebus means the hand of diopithes.[ ] but here i have a winged oracle, which promises you shall become an eagle and rule over all the earth. sausage-seller. i have one, which says that you shall be king of the earth and of the sea, and that you shall administer justice in ecbatana, eating fine rich stews the while. cleon. i have seen athené[ ] in a dream, pouring out full vials of riches and health over the people. sausage-seller. i too have seen the goddess, descending from the acropolis with an owl perched upon her helmet; on your head she was pouring out ambrosia, on that of cleon garlic pickle. demos. truly glanis is the wisest of men. i shall yield myself to you; guide me in my old age and educate me anew. cleon. ah! i adjure you! not yet; wait a little; i will promise to distribute barley every day. demos. ah! i will not hear another word about barley; you have cheated me too often already, both you and theophanes.[ ] cleon. well then! you shall have flour-cakes all piping hot. sausage-seller. i will give you cakes too, and nice cooked fish; you will only have to eat. demos. very well, mind you keep your promises. to whichever of you twain shall treat me best i hand over the reins of state. cleon. i will be first. sausage-seller. no, no, _i_ will. chorus. demos, you are our all-powerful sovereign lord; all tremble before you, yet you are led by the nose. you love to be flattered and fooled; you listen to the orators with gaping mouth and your mind is led astray. demos. 'tis rather you who have no brains, if you think me so foolish as all that; it is with a purpose that i play this idiot's role, for i love to drink the lifelong day, and so it pleases me to keep a thief for my minister. when he has thoroughly gorged himself, then i overthrow and crush him. chorus. what profound wisdom! if it be really so, why! all is for the best. your ministers, then, are your victims, whom you nourish and feed up expressly in the pnyx, so that, the day your dinner is ready, you may immolate the fattest and eat him. demos. look, see how i play with them, while all the time they think themselves such adepts at cheating me. i have my eye on them when they thieve, but i do not appear to be seeing them; then i thrust a judgment down their throat as it were a feather, and force them to vomit up all they have robbed from me. cleon. oh! the rascal! sausage-seller. oh! the scoundrel! cleon. demos, all is ready these three hours; i await your orders and i burn with desire to load you with benefits. sausage-seller. and i ten, twelve, a thousand hours, a long, long while, an infinitely long while. demos. as for me, 'tis thirty thousand hours that i have been impatient; very long, infinitely long that i have cursed you. sausage-seller. do you know what you had best do? demos. if i do not, tell me. sausage-seller. declare the lists open[ ] and we will contend abreast to determine who shall treat you the best. demos. splendid! draw back in line![ ] cleon. i am ready. demos. off you go! sausage-seller (_to cleon_). i shall not let you get to the tape. demos. what fervent lovers! if i am not to-day the happiest of men, 'tis because i shall be the most disgusted. cleon. look! 'tis i who am the first to bring you a seat. sausage-seller. and i a table. cleon. hold, here is a cake kneaded of pylos barley.[ ] sausage--seller. here are crusts, which the ivory hand of the goddess has hallowed.[ ] demos. oh! mighty athené! how large are your fingers! cleon. this is pea-soup, as exquisite as it is fine; 'tis pallas the victorious goddess at pylos who crushed the peas herself. sausage-seller. oh, demos! the goddess watches over you; she is stretching forth over your head ... a stew-pan full of broth. demos. and should we still be dwelling in this city without this protecting stew-pan? cleon. here are some fish, given to you by her who is the terror of our foes. sausage-seller. the daughter of the mightiest of the gods sends you this meat cooked in its own gravy, along with this dish of tripe and some paunch. demos. 'tis to thank me for the peplos i offered to her; 'tis well. cleon. the goddess with the terrible plume invites you to eat this long cake; you will row the harder on it. sausage-seller. take this also. demos. and what shall i do with this tripe? sausage-seller. she sends it you to belly out your galleys, for she is always showing her kindly anxiety for our fleet. now drink this beverage composed of three parts of water to two of wine. demos. ah! what delicious wine, and how well it stands the water.[ ] sausage-seller. 'twas the goddess who came from the head of zeus that mixed this liquor with her own hands. cleon. hold, here is a piece of good rich cake. sausage-seller. but i offer you an entire cake. cleon. but you cannot offer him stewed hare as i do. sausage-seller. ah! great gods! stewed hare! where shall i find it? oh! brain of mine, devise some trick! cleon. do you see this, poor fellow? sausage-seller. a fig for that! here are folk coming to seek me. cleon. who are they? sausage-seller. envoys, bearing sacks bulging with money. cleon. (_hearing money mentioned clean turns his head, and agoracritus seizes the opportunity to snatch away the stewed hare._) where, where, i say? sausage-seller. bah! what's that to you? will you not even now let the strangers alone? demos, do you see this stewed hare which i bring you? cleon. ah! rascal! you have shamelessly robbed me. sausage-seller. you have robbed too, you robbed the laconians at pylos. demos. an you pity me, tell me, how did you get the idea to filch it from him? sausage-seller. the idea comes from the goddess; the theft is all my own. cleon. and i had taken such trouble to catch this hare. sausage-seller. but 'twas i who had it cooked. demos (_to cleon_). get you gone! my thanks are only for him who served it. cleon. ah! wretch! have you beaten me in impudence! sausage-seller. well then, demos, say now, who has treated you best, you and your stomach? decide! demos. how shall i act here so that the spectators shall approve my judgment? sausage-seller. i will tell you. without saying anything, go and rummage through my basket, and then through the paphlagonian's, and see what is in them; that's the best way to judge. demos. let us see then, what is there in yours? sausage-seller. why, 'tis empty, dear little father; i have brought everything to you. demos. this is a basket devoted to the people. sausage-seller. now hunt through the paphlagonian's. well? demos. oh! what a lot of good things! why! 'tis quite full! oh! what a huge great part of this cake he kept for himself! he had only cut off the least little tiny piece for me. sausage-seller. but this is what he has always done. of everything he took, he only gave you the crumbs, and kept the bulk. demos. oh! rascal! was this the way you robbed me? and i was loading you with chaplets and gifts! cleon. 'twas for the public weal i robbed. demos (_to cleon_). give me back that crown;[ ] i will give it to him. sausage-seller. return it quick, quick, you gallows-bird. cleon. no, for the pythian oracle has revealed to me the name of him who shall overthrow me. sausage-seller. and that name was mine, nothing can be clearer. cleon. reply and i shall soon see whether you are indeed the man whom the god intended. firstly, what school did you attend when a child? sausage-seller. 'twas in the kitchens i was taught with cuffs and blows. cleon. what's that you say? ah! this is truly what the oracle said. and what did you learn from the master of exercises? sausage-seller. i learnt to take a false oath without a smile, when i had stolen something. cleon. oh! phoebus apollo, god of lycia! i am undone! and when you had become a man, what trade did you follow? sausage-seller. i sold sausages and did a bit of fornication. cleon. oh! my god! i am a lost man! ah! still one slender hope remains. tell me, was it on the market-place or near the gates that you sold your sausages? sausage-seller. near the gates, in the market for salted goods. cleon alas! i see the prophecy of the god is verily come true. alas! roll me home.[ ] i am a miserable, ruined man. farewell, my chaplet! 'tis death to me to part with you. so you are to belong to another; 'tis certain he cannot be a greater thief, but perhaps he may be a luckier one.[ ] sausage-seller. oh! zeus, the protector of greece! 'tis to you i owe this victory! demosthenes. hail! illustrious conqueror, but forget not, that if you have become a great man, 'tis thanks to me; i ask but a little thing; appoint me secretary of the law-court in the room of phanus. demos (_to the sausage-seller_). but what is your name then? tell me. sausage-seller. my name is agoracritus, because i have always lived on the market-place in the midst of lawsuits.[ ] demos. well then, agoracritus, i stand by you; as for the paphlagonian, i hand him over to your mercy. agoracritus. demos, i will care for you to the best of my power, and all shall admit that no citizen is more devoted than i to this city of simpletons. chorus. what fitter theme for our muse, at the close as at the beginning of his work, than this, to sing the hero who drives his swift steeds down the arena? why afflict lysistratus with our satires on his poverty,[ ] and thumantis,[ ] who has not so much as a lodging? he is dying of hunger and can be seen at delphi, his face bathed in tears, clinging to your quiver, oh, apollo! and supplicating you to take him out of his misery. an insult directed at the wicked is not to be censured; on the contrary, the honest man, if he has sense, can only applaud. him, whom i wish to brand with infamy, is little known himself; 'tis the brother of arignotus.[ ] i regret to quote this name which is so dear to me, but whoever can distinguish black from white, or the orthian mode of music from others, knows the virtues of arignotus, whom his brother, ariphrades,[ ] in no way resembles. he gloats in vice, is not merely a dissolute man and utterly debauched--but he has actually invented a new form of vice; for he pollutes his tongue with abominable pleasures in brothels licking up that nauseous moisture and befouling his beard as he tickles the lips of lewd women's private parts.[ ] whoever is not horrified at such a monster shall never drink from the same cup with me. at times a thought weighs on me at night; i wonder whence comes this fearful voracity of cleonymus.[ ] 'tis said, that when dining with a rich host, he springs at the dishes with the gluttony of a wild beast and never leaves the bread-bin until his host seizes him round the knees, exclaiming, "go, go, good gentleman, in mercy go, and spare my poor table!" 'tis said that the triremes assembled in council and that the oldest spoke in these terms, "are you ignorant, my sisters, of what is plotting in athens? they say, that a certain hyperbolus,[ ] a bad citizen and an infamous scoundrel, asks for a hundred of us to take them to sea against chalcedon."[ ] all were indignant, and one of them, as yet a virgin, cried, "may god forbid that i should ever obey him! i would prefer to grow old in the harbour and be gnawed by worms. no! by the gods i swear it, nauphanté, daughter of nauson, shall never bend to his law; 'tis as true as i am made of wood and pitch. if the athenians vote for the proposal of hyperbolus, let them! we will hoist full sail and seek refuge by the temple of theseus or the shrine of the euminides.[ ] no! he shall not command us! no! he shall not play with the city to this extent! let him sail by himself for tartarus, if such please him, launching the boats in which he used to sell his lamps." agoracritus. maintain a holy silence! keep your mouths from utterance! call no more witnesses; close these tribunals, which are the delight of this city, and gather at the theatre to chant the paean of thanksgiving to the gods for a fresh favour. chorus. oh! torch of sacred athens, saviour of the islands, what good tidings are we to celebrate by letting the blood of the victims flow in our market-places? agoracritus. i have freshened demos up somewhat on the stove and have turned his ugliness into beauty. chorus. i admire your inventive genius; but, where is he? agoracritus. he is living in ancient athens, the city of the garlands of violets. chorus. how i should like to see him! what is his dress like, what his manner? agoracritus. he has once more become as he was in the days when he lived with aristides and miltiades. but you will judge for yourselves, for i hear the vestibule doors opening. hail with your shouts of gladness the athens of old, which now doth reappear to your gaze, admirable, worthy of the songs of the poets and the home of the illustrious demos. chorus. oh! noble, brilliant athens, whose brow is wreathed with violets, show us the sovereign master of this land and of all greece. agoracritus. lo! here he is coming with his hair held in place with a golden band and in all the glory of his old-world dress; perfumed with myrrh, he spreads around him not the odour of lawsuits, but of peace. chorus. hail! king of greece, we congratulate you upon the happiness you enjoy; it is worthy of this city, worthy of the glory of marathon. demos. come, agoracritus, come, my best friend; see the service you have done me by freshening me up on your stove. agoracritus. ah! if you but remembered what you were formerly and what you did, you would for a certainty believe me to be a god. demos. but what did i? and how was i then? agoracritus. firstly, so soon as ever an orator declared in the assembly "demos, i love you ardently; 'tis i alone, who dream of you and watch over your interests"; at such an exordium you would look like a cock flapping his wings or a bull tossing his horns. demos. what, i? agoracritus. then, after he had fooled you to the hilt, he would go. demos. what! they would treat me so, and i never saw it! agoracritus. you knew only how to open and close your ears like a sunshade. demos. was i then so stupid and such a dotard? agoracritus. worse than that; if one of two orators proposed to equip a fleet for war and the other suggested the use of the same sum for paying out to the citizens, 'twas the latter who always carried the day. well! you droop your head! you turn away your face? demos. i redden at my past errors. agoracritus. think no more of them; 'tis not you who are to blame, but those who cheated you in this sorry fashion. but, come, if some impudent lawyer dared to say, "dicasts, you shall have no wheat unless you convict this accused man!" what would you do? tell me. demos. i would have him removed from the bar, i would bind hyperbolus about his neck like a stone and would fling him into the barathrum.[ ] agoracritus. well spoken! but what other measures do you wish to take? demos. first, as soon as ever a fleet returns to the harbour, i shall pay up the rowers in full. agoracritus. that will soothe many a worn and chafed bottom. demos. further, the hoplite enrolled for military service shall not get transferred to another service through favour, but shall stick to that given him at the outset. agoracritus. this will strike the buckler of cleonymus full in the centre. demos. none shall ascend the rostrum, unless their chins are bearded. agoracritus. what then will become of clisthenes and of strato?[ ] demos. i wish only to refer to those youths, who loll about the perfume shops, babbling at random, "what a clever fellow is pheax![ ] how cleverly he escaped death! how concise and convincing is his style! what phrases! how clear and to the point! how well he knows how to quell an interruption!" agoracritus. i thought you were the lover of those pathic minions. demos. the gods forefend it! and i will force all such fellows to go a-hunting instead of proposing decrees. agoracritus. in that case, accept this folding-stool, and to carry it this well-grown, big-testicled slave lad. besides, you may put him to any other purpose you please. demos. oh! i am happy indeed to find myself as i was of old! agoracritus. aye, you deem yourself happy, when i shall have handed you the truces of thirty years. truces! step forward![ ] demos. great gods! how charming they are! can i do with them as i wish? where did you discover them, pray? agoracritus. 'twas that paphlagonian who kept them locked up in his house, so that you might not enjoy them. as for myself, i give them to you; take them with you into the country. demos. and what punishment will you inflict upon this paphlagonian, the cause of all my troubles? agoracritus. 'twill not be over-terrible. i condemn him to follow my old trade; posted near the gates, he must sell sausages of asses' and dogs'-meat; perpetually drunk, he will exchange foul language with prostitutes and will drink nothing but the dirty water from the baths. demos. well conceived! he is indeed fit to wrangle with harlots and bathmen; as for you, in return for so many blessings, i invite you to take the place at the prytaneum which this rogue once occupied. put on this frog-green mantle and follow me. as for the other, let 'em take him away; let him go sell his sausages in full view of the foreigners, whom he used formerly so wantonly to insult. * * * * * finis of "the knights" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] mitchell's "aristophanes." preface to "the knights." [ ] a generic name, used to denote a slave, because great numbers came from paphlagonia, a country in asia minor. aristophanes also plays upon the word, [greek: paphlag_on], paphlagonian, and the verb, [greek: pathlazein], to boil noisily, thus alluding to cleon's violence and bluster when speaking. [ ] a musician, belonging to phrygia, who had composed melodies intended to describe pain. [ ] line of the 'hyppolytus,' by euripides. [ ] euripides' mother was said to have sold vegetables on the market. [ ] the whole of this passage seems a satire on the want of courage shown by these two generals. history, however, speaks of nicias as a brave soldier. [ ] i.e. living on his salary as a judge. the athenians used beans for recording their votes. [ ] place where the public assembly of athens, the [greek: ekkl_esia], was held. [ ] this was the salary paid to the ecclesiasts, the jury of citizens who tried cases. it was one obol at first, but cleon had raised it to three. [ ] a town in messina, opposite the little island of sphacteria; demosthenes had seized it, and the spartans had vainly tried to retake it, having even been obliged to leave four hundred soldiers shut up in sphacteria. cleon, sent out with additional forces, had forced the spartans to capitulate and had thus robbed demosthenes of the glory of the capture. (_see_ introduction.) [ ] literally, his rump is among the chaonians ([greek: chain_o], to gape open), because his anus is distended by pederastic practices; his hands with the aetolians ([greek: aite_o], to ask, to beg); his mind with the clopidians ([greek: klept_o], to steal). [ ] the versions of his death vary. he is said to have taken poison in order to avoid fighting against athens. [ ] a minor god, supposed by the ancients to preside over the life of each man; each empire, each province, each town had its titular genius. everyone offered sacrifice to his genius on each anniversary of his birth with wine, flowers and incense. [ ] a hill in asia minor, near smyrna. homer mentions the wine of pramnium. [ ] the common people, who at athens were as superstitious as everywhere else, took delight in oracles, especially when they were favourable, and cleon served them up to suit their taste and to advance his own ambition. [ ] famous seer of boeotia. [ ] eucrates, who was the leading statesman at athens after pericles. [ ] lysicles, who married the courtesan aspasia. [ ] literally, like cycloborus, a torrent in attica. [ ] he points to the spectators. [ ] the public meals were given in the prytaneum; to these were admitted those whose services merited that they should be fed at the cost of the state. this distinction depended on the popular vote, and was very often bestowed on demagogues very unworthy of the privilege. [ ] islands of the aegaean, subject to athens, which paid considerable tributes. [ ] caria and chalcedon were at the two extremities of asia minor; the former being at the southern, the latter at the northern end of that extensive coast. [ ] as though stupidity were an essential of good government. [ ] the athenian citizens were divided into four classes--the pentacosiomedimni, who possessed five hundred minae; the knights, who had three hundred and were obliged to maintain a charger (hence their name); the zeugitae and the thetes. in athens, the knights never had the high consideration and the share in the magistracy which they enjoyed at rome. [ ] it is said that aristophanes played the part of cleon himself, as no one dared to assume the role. (_see_ introduction.) [ ] they were two leaders of the knightly order. [ ] the famous whirlpool, near sicily. [ ] eucrates, the oakum-seller, already mentioned, when the object of a riot, took refuge in a mill and there hid himself in a sack of bran. [ ] the chief athenian tribunal only next in dignity to the areopagus; it generally consisted of two hundred members; it tried civil cases of the greatest importance and some crimes beyond the competence of other courts, e.g. rape, adultery, extortion. the sittings were in the open air, hence the name ([greek: _elios], the sun). [ ] the heliasts' salary. (_see_ above.) [ ] tributary to athens; olynthus and potidaea were the chief towns of this important peninsula. [ ] meaning he frightens him with the menace of judicial prosecution forces him to purchase silence. [ ] the strategi were the heads of the military forces. [ ] they presided at the public assemblies; they were also empowered to try the most important cases. [ ] an allusion to cleon's former calling. [ ] a country deme of attica. [ ] archeptolemus, a resident alien, who lived in piraeus. he had loaded athens with gifts and was nevertheless maltreated by cleon. [ ] this was easier than against a citizen because of the inferiority, in which the pride of the athenian held those born on other soil. [ ] when drunk he conceives himself rich and the man to buy up the rich silver mines of laurium, in south-east attica. [ ] the chorus throws itself between cleon and agoracritus to protect the latter. [ ] an iron collar, an instrument of torture and of punishment. [ ] a disease among swine. [ ] cleon wanted the spartans to purchase the prisoners of sphacteria from him. [ ] with piss--the result of his drunken habits. [ ] a tragic poet, apparently proverbial for feebleness of style. [ ] beginning of a song of simonides. [ ] a miser. [ ] guests used pieces of bread to wipe their fingers at table. [ ] 'dog's head,' a vicious species of ape. [ ] they were allowed to remain in the ground throughout the winter so that they might grow tender. [ ] an allusion to the pederastic habits ascribed to some of the orators by popular rumour. [ ] he imputes the crime to agoracritus of which he is guilty himself. [ ] a town in thrace and subject to athens. it therefore paid tribute to the latter. it often happened that the demagogues extracted considerable sums from the tributaries by threats or promises. [ ] it was customary in athens for the plaintiff himself to fix the fine to be paid by the defendant. [ ] athené, the tutelary divinity of athens. [ ] and wife of pisistratus. anything belonging to the ancient tyrants was hateful to the athenians. [ ] an allusion to the language used by the democratic orators, who, to be better understood by the people, constantly affected the use of terms belonging to the different trades. [ ] he accuses cleon of collusion with the enemy. [ ] cleon retorts upon his adversary the charge brought against himself. the boeotians were the allies of sparta. [ ] allusion to cock-fighting. [ ] the tripping metre usually employed in the _parabasis_. [ ] hitherto aristophanes had presented his pieces under an assumed name. [ ] a comic poet, who had carried off the prize eleven times; not a fragment of his works remains to us. [ ] an allusion to the titles of some of his pieces, viz. "the flute players, the birds, the lydians, the gnats, the frogs." [ ] the comic poet, rival of aristophanes, several times referred to above. [ ] these were the opening lines of poems by cratinus, often sung at festivities. [ ] a poet, successful at the olympic games, and in old age reduced to extreme misery. [ ] the place of honour in the dionysiac theatre, reserved for distinguished citizens. [ ] a comic poet, who was elegant but cold; he had at first played as an actor in the pieces of cratinus. [ ] besides the oarsmen and the pilot, there was on the grecian vessels a sailor, who stood at the prow to look out for rocks, and another, who observed the direction of the wind. [ ] two promontories, one in attica, the other in euboea, on which temples to posidon were erected. [ ] an athenian general, who had gained several naval victories. he had contributed to the success of the expedition to samos (thucydides, book i), and had recently beaten a peloponnesian fleet (thucydides, book ii). [ ] at the panathenaea, a festival held every fourth year, a peplus, or sail, was carried with pomp to the acropolis. on this various mythological scenes, having reference to athené, were embroidered--her exploits against the giants, her fight with posidon concerning the name to be given to athens, etc. it had also become customary to add the names and the deeds of such citizens as had deserved well of their country. [ ] cleaenetus had passed a law to limit the number of citizens to be fed at the prytaneum; it may be supposed, that those, who aspired to this distinction, sought to conciliate cleaenetus in their favour. [ ] the chorus of knights, not being able to sing their own praises, feign to divert these to their chargers. [ ] a horse branded with the obsolete letter [greek: sán]--[symbol: letter 'san'], as a mark of breed or high quality. [ ] crab was no doubt a nickname given to the corinthians on account of the position of their city on an isthmus between two seas. in the 'acharnians' theorus is mentioned as an ambassador, who had returned from the king of persia. [ ] the senate was a body composed of five hundred members, elected annually like the magistrates from the three first classes to the exclusion of the fourth, the thetes, which was composed of the poorest citizens. [ ] the [greek: moth_on], a rough, boisterous, obscene dance. [ ] at the festival of the pyanepsia, held in honour of athené as the protectress of theseus in his fight with the minotaur, the children carried olive branches in procession, round which strips of linen were wound; they were then fastened up over the entrances of each house. [ ] on which the citizens sat in the public assembly in the pnyx to hear the orators. in the centre of the semicircular space the tribune stood, a square block of stone, [greek: b_ema], and from this the people were addressed. [ ] lysicles was a dealer in sheep, who had wielded great power in athens after the death of pericles. cynna and salabaccha were two celebrated courtesans. [ ] place of interment for those who died for the country. [ ] seated on the banks for the rowers. [ ] assassin of the tyrant hippias, the son of pisistratus. his memory was held in great honour at athens. [ ] driven out by the invasions of the peloponnesians, the people of the outlying districts had been obliged to seek refuge within the walls of athens, where they were lodged wherever they could find room. [ ] a verse borrowed from euripides' lost play of 'telephus.' [ ] themistocles joined the piraeus to athens by the construction of the long walls. [ ] which were caught off the piraeus. [ ] mitylené, chief city of the island of lesbos, rebelled against the athenians and was retaken by chares. by a popular decree the whole manhood of the town was to suffer death, but this decree was withdrawn the next day. aristophanes insinuates that cleon, bought over with mitylenaean gold, brought about this change of opinion. on the contrary, thucydides says that the decree was revoked in spite of cleon's opposition. [ ] when bucklers were hung up as trophies, it was usual to detach the ring or brace, so as to render them useless for warlike purposes. [ ] an orator of debauched habits. [ ] an accusation frequently hurled at the orators. [ ] guests took off their shoes before entering the festal hall. [ ] an allusion to cleon's former calling of a tanner. [ ] a plant from cyrenaïca, which was imported into athens in large quantities after the conclusion of a treaty of navigation, which cleon made with this country. it was a very highly valued flavouring for sauces. [ ] the name of a supposed informer. the adjective, [greek: pyrrhos], yellow, the colour of ordure, is contained in the construction of this name; thus a most disgusting piece of word-play is intended. [ ] the orators were for ever claiming the protection of athené. [ ] a very expensive burden, which was imposed upon the rich citizen. the trierarchs had to furnish both the equipment of the triremes or war-galleys and their upkeep. they varied considerably in number and ended in reaching a total of ; the most opulent found the money, and were later repaid partly and little by little by those not so well circumstanced. later it was permissible for anyone, appointed as a trierarch, to point out someone richer than himself and to ask to have him take his place with the condition that if the other preferred, he should exchange fortunes with him and continue his office of trierarch. [ ] this is an allusion to some extortion of cleon's. [ ] the greek word [greek: d_emos] means both "the people" and fat, grease. the pun cannot well be kept in english. [ ] a voracious bird--in allusion to cleon's rapacity and to his loquacity in the assembly. [ ] the orators were fond of supporting their arguments with imaginary oracles--and cleon was an especial adept at this dodge. [ ] smicythes, king of thrace, spoken of in the oracle as a woman, doubtless on account of his cowardice. the word pursue is here used in a double sense, viz. in battle and in law. it is on account of this latter meaning, that aristophanes adds "and her spouse," because in cases in which women were sued at law, their husbands were summoned as conjointly liable. [ ] because he had smashed up and turned upside down the fortunes of athens. [ ] the pun--rather a far-fetched one--is between the words [greek: d_orh_osti] (in the dorian mode) and [greek: d_orhon] (a bribe). [ ] a boeotian soothsayer. [ ] a name invented by the sausage-seller on the spur of the moment, to cap cleon's boast. [ ] that is, athenian; erectheus was an ancient mythical king of athens. [ ] that is, the tributes paid to athens by the aegaean islands, whether allies or subjects. [ ] the lacedaemonian prisoners from sphacteria, so often referred to. [ ] that is, athenian; cecrops was the first king of athens, according to the legends. [ ] there were three towns of this name in different parts of greece. [ ] there is a pun here which it is impossible to render in english; the greek [greek: pylos](pylos) differs by only one letter from the word meaning a bath-tub ([greek: pyelos]). [ ] cleon was reproached by his enemies with paying small attention to the regular payment of the sailors. [ ] another poetical term to signify athenian; aegeus, an ancient mythical king of athens, father of theseus. [ ] impudent as a dog and cunning as a fox. [ ] an orator and statesman of the day; practically nothing is known about him. [ ] another orator and statesman, accused apparently of taking bribes. [ ] as pointed out before, the orators were fond of dragging athené continually into their speeches. [ ] one of cleon's protégés and flatterers. the scholiasts say he was his secretary. [ ] terms borrowed from the circus races. [ ] that is, at the expense of other folk. [ ] pieces of bread, hollowed out, which were filled with mincemeat or soup. [ ] both greeks and romans drank their wine mixed with water. [ ] after his success in the sphacteria affair cleon induced the people to vote him a chaplet of gold. [ ] that is, by means of the mechanical device of the greek stage known as the [greek: ekkukl_ema]. [ ] parody of a well-known verse from euripides' 'alcestis.' [ ] the name agoracritus is compounded: cf. [greek: agora], a market-place, and [greek: krinein], to judge. [ ] this grandiloquent opening is borrowed from pindar. [ ] mentioned in the 'acharnians.' [ ] a soothsayer. [ ] a flute-player. [ ] an allusion to the vice of the 'cunnilingue,' apparently a novel form of naughtiness at athens in aristophanes' day. [ ] as well known for his gluttony as for his cowardice. [ ] one of the most noisy demagogues of cleon's party; he succeeded him, but was later condemned to ostracism. [ ] a town in bithynia, situated at the entrance of the bosphorus and nearly opposite byzantium. it was one of the most important towns in asia minor. doubtless hyperbolus only demanded so large a fleet to terrorize the towns and oppress them at will. [ ] these temples were inviolable places of refuge, where even slaves were secure. [ ] a rocky cleft at the back of the acropolis into which criminals were hurled. [ ] young and effeminate orators of licentious habits. [ ] by adroit special pleading he had contrived to get his acquittal, when charged with a capital offence. [ ] they were personified on the stage as pretty little _filles de joie_. the acharnians introduction this is the first of the series of three comedies--'the acharnians,' 'peace' and 'lysistrata'--produced at intervals of years, the sixth, tenth and twenty-first of the peloponnesian war, and impressing on the athenian people the miseries and disasters due to it and to the scoundrels who by their selfish and reckless policy had provoked it, the consequent ruin of industry and, above all, agriculture, and the urgency of asking peace. in date it is the earliest play brought out by the author in his own name and his first work of serious importance. it was acted at the lenaean festival, in january, b.c., and gained the first prize, cratinus being second. its diatribes against the war and fierce criticism of the general policy of the war party so enraged cleon that, as already mentioned, he endeavoured to ruin the author, who in 'the knights' retorted by a direct and savage personal attack on the leader of the democracy. the plot is of the simplest. dicaeopolis, an athenian citizen, but a native of acharnae, one of the agricultural _demes_ and one which had especially suffered in the lacedaemonian invasions, sick and tired of the ill-success and miseries of the war, makes up his mind, if he fails to induce the people to adopt his policy of "peace at any price," to conclude a private and particular peace of his own to cover himself, his family, and his estate. the athenians, momentarily elated by victory and over-persuaded by the demagogues of the day--cleon and his henchmen, refuse to hear of such a thing as coming to terms. accordingly dicaeopolis dispatches an envoy to sparta on his own account, who comes back presently with a selection of specimen treaties in his pocket. the old man tastes and tries, special terms are arranged, and the play concludes with a riotous and uproarious rustic feast in honour of the blessings of peace and plenty. incidentally excellent fun is poked at euripides and his dramatic methods, which supply matter for so much witty badinage in several others of our author's pieces. other specially comic incidents are: the scene where the two young daughters of the famished megarian are sold in the market at athens as sucking-pigs--a scene in which the convenient similarity of the greek words signifying a pig and the 'pudendum muliebre' respectively is utilized in a whole string of ingenious and suggestive 'double entendres' and ludicrous jokes; another where the informer, or market-spy, is packed up in a crate as crockery and carried off home by the boeotian buyer. the drama takes its title from the chorus, composed of old men of acharnae. * * * * * the acharnians dramatis personae dicaeopolis. herald. amphitheus. ambassadors. pseudartabas. theorus. wife of dicaeopolis. daughter of dicaeopolis. euripides. cephisophon, servant of euripides. lamachus. attendant of lamachus. a megarian. maidens, daughters of the megarian. a boeotian. nicarchus. a husbandman. a bridesmaid. an informer. messengers. chorus of acharnian elders. scene: the athenian ecclesia on the pnyx; afterwards dicaeopolis' house in the country. * * * * * the acharnians dicaeopolis[ ] (_alone_). what cares have not gnawed at my heart and how few have been the pleasures in my life! four, to be exact, while my troubles have been as countless as the grains of sand on the shore! let me see of what value to me have been these few pleasures? ah! i remember that i was delighted in soul when cleon had to disgorge those five talents;[ ] i was in ecstasy and i love the knights for this deed; 'it is an honour to greece.'[ ] but the day when i was impatiently awaiting a piece by aeschylus,[ ] what tragic despair it caused me when the herald called, "theognis,[ ] introduce your chorus!" just imagine how this blow struck straight at my heart! on the other hand, what joy dexitheus caused me at the musical competition, when he played a boeotian melody on the lyre! but this year by contrast! oh! what deadly torture to hear chaeris[ ] perform the prelude in the orthian mode![ ]--never, however, since i began to bathe, has the dust hurt my eyes as it does to-day. still it is the day of assembly; all should be here at daybreak, and yet the pnyx[ ] is still deserted. they are gossiping in the market-place, slipping hither and thither to avoid the vermilioned rope.[ ] the prytanes[ ] even do not come; they will be late, but when they come they will push and fight each other for a seat in the front row. they will never trouble themselves with the question of peace. oh! athens! athens! as for myself, i do not fail to come here before all the rest, and now, finding myself alone, i groan, yawn, stretch, break wind, and know not what to do; i make sketches in the dust, pull out my loose hairs, muse, think of my fields, long for peace, curse town life and regret my dear country home,[ ] which never told me to 'buy fuel, vinegar or oil'; there the word 'buy,' which cuts me in two, was unknown; i harvested everything at will. therefore i have come to the assembly fully prepared to bawl, interrupt and abuse the speakers, if they talk of aught but peace. but here come the prytanes, and high time too, for it is midday! as i foretold, hah! is it not so? they are pushing and fighting for the front seats. herald. move on up, move on, move on, to get within the consecrated area.[ ] amphitheus. has anyone spoken yet? herald. who asks to speak? amphitheus. i do. herald. your name? amphitheus. amphitheus. herald. you are no man.[ ] amphitheus. no! i am an immortal! amphitheus was the son of ceres and triptolemus; of him was born celeus. celeus wedded phaencreté, my grandmother, whose son was lucinus, and, being born of him, i am an immortal; it is to me alone that the gods have entrusted the duty of treating with the lacedaemonians. but, citizens, though i am immortal, i am dying of hunger; the prytanes give me naught.[ ] a prytanis. guards! amphitheus. oh, triptolemus and ceres, do ye thus forsake your own blood? dicaeopolis. prytanes, in expelling this citizen, you are offering an outrage to the assembly. he only desired to secure peace for us and to sheathe the sword. prytanis. sit down and keep silence! dicaeopolis. no, by apollo, will i not, unless you are going to discuss the question of peace. herald. the ambassadors, who are returned from the court of the king! dicaeopolis. of what king? i am sick of all those fine birds, the peacock ambassadors and their swagger. herald. silence! dicaeopolis. oh! oh! by ecbatana,[ ] what assumption! an ambassador. during the archonship of euthymenes, you sent us to the great king on a salary of two drachmae per diem. dicaeopolis. ah! those poor drachmae! ambassador. we suffered horribly on the plains of the caÿster, sleeping under a tent, stretched deliciously on fine chariots, half dead with weariness. dicaeopolis. and i was very much at ease, lying on the straw along the battlements![ ] ambassador. everywhere we were well received and forced to drink delicious wine out of golden or crystal flagons.... dicaeopolis. oh, city of cranaus,[ ] thy ambassadors are laughing at thee! ambassador. for great feeders and heavy drinkers are alone esteemed as men by the barbarians. dicaeopolis. just as here in athens, we only esteem the most drunken debauchees. ambassador. at the end of the fourth year we reached the king's court, but he had left with his whole army to ease himself, and for the space of eight months he was thus easing himself in midst of the golden mountains.[ ] dicaeopolis. and how long was he replacing his dress? ambassador. the whole period of a full moon; after which he returned to his palace; then he entertained us and had us served with oxen roasted whole in an oven. dicaeopolis. who ever saw an oxen baked in an oven? what a lie! ambassador. on my honour, he also had us served with a bird three times as large as cleonymus,[ ] and called the boaster. dicaeopolis. and do we give you two drachmae, that you should treat us to all this humbug? ambassador. we are bringing to you, pseudartabas,[ ] the king's eye. dicaeopolis. i would a crow might pluck out thine with his beak, thou cursed ambassador! herald. the king's eye! dicaeopolis. eh! great gods! friend, with thy great eye, round like the hole through which the oarsman passes his sweep, you have the air of a galley doubling a cape to gain the port. ambassador. come, pseudartabas, give forth the message for the athenians with which you were charged by the great king. pseudartabas. jartaman exarx 'anapissonnai satra.[ ] ambassador. do you understand what he says? dicaeopolis. by apollo, not i! ambassador. he says, that the great king will send you gold. come, utter the word 'gold' louder and more distinctly. dicaeopolis. thou shalt not have gold, thou gaping-arsed ionian.[ ] dicaeopolis. ah! may the gods forgive me, but that is clear enough. ambassador. what does he say? dicaeopolis. that the ionians are debauchees and idiots, if they expect to receive gold from the barbarians. ambassador. not so, he speaks of medimni[ ] of gold. dicaeopolis. what medimni? thou art but a great braggart; but get your way, i will find out the truth by myself. come now, answer me clearly, if you do not wish me to dye your skin red. will the great king send us gold? (_pseudartabas makes a negative sign._) then our ambassadors are seeking to deceive us? (_pseudartabas signs affirmatively._) these fellows make signs like any greek; i am sure that they are nothing but athenians. oh, ho! i recognize one of these eunuchs; it is clisthenes, the son of sibyrtius.[ ] behold the effrontery of this shaven rump! how! great baboon, with such a beard do you seek to play the eunuch to us? and this other one? is it not straton? herald. silence! let all be seated. the senate invites the king's eye to the prytaneum.[ ] dicaeopolis. is this not sufficient to drive one to hang oneself? here i stand chilled to the bone, whilst the doors of the prytaneum fly wide open to lodge such rascals. but i will do something great and bold. where is amphitheus? come and speak with me. amphitheus. here i am. dicaeopolis. take these eight drachmae and go and conclude a truce with the lacedaemonians for me, my wife and my children; i leave you free, my dear citizens, to send out embassies and to stand gaping in the air. herald. bring in theorus, who has returned from the court of sitalces.[ ] theorus. i am here. dicaeopolis. another humbug! theorus. we should not have remained long in thrace.... dicaeopolis. forsooth, no, if you had not been well paid. theorus. ... if the country had not been covered with snow; the rivers were ice-bound at the time that theognis[ ] brought out his tragedy here; during the whole of that time i was holding my own with sitalces, cup in hand; and, in truth, he adored you to such a degree, that he wrote on the walls, "how beautiful are the athenians!" his son, to whom we gave the freedom of the city, burned with desire to come here and eat chitterlings at the feast of the apaturia;[ ] he prayed his father to come to the aid of his new country and sitalces swore on his goblet that he would succour us with such a host that the athenians would exclaim, "what a cloud of grasshoppers!" dicaeopolis. may i die if i believe a word of what you tell us! excepting the grasshoppers, there is not a grain of truth in it all! theorus. and he has sent you the most warlike soldiers of all thrace. dicaeopolis. now we shall begin to see clearly. herald. come hither, thracians, whom theorus brought. dicaeopolis. what plague have we here? theorus. 'tis the host of the odomanti.[ ] dicaeopolis. of the odomanti? tell me what it means. who has mutilated their tools like this? theorus. if they are given a wage of two drachmae, they will put all boeotia[ ] to fire and sword. dicaeopolis. two drachmae to those circumcised hounds! groan aloud, ye people of rowers, bulwark of athens! ah! great gods! i am undone; these odomanti are robbing me of my garlic![ ] will you give me back my garlic? theorus. oh! wretched man! do not go near them; they have eaten garlic.[ ] dicaeopolis. prytanes, will you let me be treated in this manner, in my own country and by barbarians? but i oppose the discussion of paying a wage to the thracians; i announce an omen; i have just felt a drop of rain.[ ] herald. let the thracians withdraw and return the day after to-morrow; the prytanes declare the sitting at an end. dicaeopolis. ye gods, what garlic i have lost! but here comes amphitheus returned from lacedaemon. welcome, amphitheus. amphitheus. no, there is no welcome for me and i fly as fast as i can, for i am pursued by the acharnians. dicaeopolis. why, what has happened? amphitheus. i was hurrying to bring your treaty of truce, but some old dotards from acharnae[ ] got scent of the thing; they are veterans of marathon, tough as oak or maple, of which they are made for sure--rough and ruthless. they all set to a-crying, "wretch! you are the bearer of a treaty, and the enemy has only just cut our vines!" meanwhile they were gathering stones in their cloaks, so i fled and they ran after me shouting. dicaeopolis. let 'em shout as much as they please! but have you brought me a treaty? amphitheus. most certainly, here are three samples to select from,[ ] this one is five years old; take it and taste. dicaeopolis. faugh! amphitheus. well? dicaeopolis. it does not please me; it smells of pitch and of the ships they are fitting out.[ ] amphitheus. here is another, ten years old; taste it. dicaeopolis. it smells strongly of the delegates, who go round the towns to chide the allies for their slowness.[ ] amphitheus. this last is a truce of thirty years, both on sea and land. dicaeopolis. oh! by bacchus! what a bouquet! it has the aroma of nectar and ambrosia; this does not say to us, "provision yourselves for three days." but it lisps the gentle numbers, "go whither you will."[ ] i accept it, ratify it, drink it at one draught and consign the acharnians to limbo. freed from the war and its ills, i shall keep the dionysia[ ] in the country. amphitheus. and i shall run away, for i'm mortally afraid of the acharnians. chorus. this way all! let us follow our man; we will demand him of everyone we meet; the public weal makes his seizure imperative. ho, there! tell me which way the bearer of the truce has gone; he has escaped us, he has disappeared. curse old age! when i was young, in the days when i followed phayllus,[ ] running with a sack of coals on my back, this wretch would not have eluded my pursuit, let him be as swift as he will; but now my limbs are stiff; old lacratides[ ] feels his legs are weighty and the traitor escapes me. no, no, let us follow him; old acharnians like ourselves shall not be set at naught by a scoundrel, who has dared, great gods! to conclude a truce, when i wanted the war continued with double fury in order to avenge my ruined lands. no mercy for our foes until i have pierced their hearts like a sharp reed, so that they dare never again ravage my vineyards. come, let us seek the rascal; let us look everywhere, carrying our stones in our hands; let us hunt him from place to place until we trap him; i could never, never tire of the delight of stoning him. dicaeopolis. peace! profane men![ ] chorus. silence all! friends, do you hear the sacred formula? here is he, whom we seek! this way, all! get out of his way, surely he comes to offer an oblation. dicaeopolis. peace, profane men! let the basket-bearer[ ] come forward, and thou, xanthias, hold the phallus well upright.[ ] wife of dicaeopolis. daughter, set down the basket and let us begin the sacrifice. daughter of dicaeopolis. mother, hand me the ladle, that i may spread the sauce on the cake. dicaeopolis. it is well! oh, mighty bacchus, it is with joy that, freed from military duty, i and all mine perform this solemn rite and offer thee this sacrifice; grant, that i may keep the rural dionysia without hindrance and that this truce of thirty years may be propitious for me. wife of dicaeopolis. come, my child, carry the basket gracefully and with a grave, demure face. happy he, who shall be your possessor and embrace you so firmly at dawn,[ ] that you belch wind like a weasel. go forward, and have a care they don't snatch your jewels in the crowd. dicaeopolis. xanthias, walk behind the basket-bearer and hold the phallus well erect; i will follow, singing the phallic hymn; thou, wife, look on from the top of the terrace.[ ] forward! oh, phales,[ ] companion of the orgies of bacchus, night reveller, god of adultery, friend of young men, these past six[ ] years i have not been able to invoke thee. with what joy i return to my farmstead, thanks to the truce i have concluded, freed from cares, from fighting and from lamachuses![ ] how much sweeter, phales, oh, phales, is it to surprise thratta, the pretty wood-maid, strymodorus' slave, stealing wood from mount phelleus, to catch her under the arms, to throw her on the ground and possess her! oh, phales, phales! if thou wilt drink and bemuse thyself with me, we will to-morrow consume some good dish in honour of the peace, and i will hang up my buckler over the smoking hearth. chorus. it is he, he himself. stone him, stone him, stone him, strike the wretch. all, all of you, pelt him, pelt him! dicaeopolis. what is this? by heracles, you will smash my pot.[ ] chorus. it is you that we are stoning, you miserable scoundrel. dicaeopolis. and for what sin, acharnian elders, tell me that! chorus. you ask that, you impudent rascal, traitor to your country; you alone amongst us all have concluded a truce, and you dare to look us in the face! dicaeopolis. but you do not know _why_ i have treated for peace. listen! chorus. listen to you? no, no, you are about to die, we will annihilate you with our stones. dicaeopolis. but first of all, listen. stop, my friends. chorus. i will hear nothing; do not address me; i hate you more than i do cleon,[ ] whom one day i shall flay to make sandals for the knights. listen to your long speeches, after you have treated with the laconians! no, i will punish you. dicaeopolis. friends, leave the laconians out of debate and consider only whether i have not done well to conclude my truce. chorus. done well! when you have treated with a people who know neither gods, nor truth, nor faith. dicaeopolis. we attribute too much to the laconians; as for myself, i know that they are not the cause of all our troubles. chorus. oh, indeed, rascal! you dare to use such language to me and then expect me to spare you! dicaeopolis. no, no, they are not the cause of all our troubles, and i who address you claim to be able to prove that they have much to complain of in us. chorus. this passes endurance; my heart bounds with fury. thus you dare to defend our enemies. dicaeopolis. were my head on the block i would uphold what i say and rely on the approval of the people. chorus. comrades, let us hurl our stones and dye this fellow purple. dicaeopolis. what black fire-brand has inflamed your heart! you will not hear me? you really will not, acharnians? chorus. no, a thousand times, no. dicaeopolis. this is a hateful injustice. chorus. may i die, if i listen. dicaeopolis. nay, nay! have mercy, have mercy, acharnians. chorus. you shall die. dicaeopolis. well, blood for blood! i will kill your dearest friend. i have here the hostages of acharnae;[ ] i shall disembowel them. chorus. acharnians, what means this threat? has he got one of our children in his house? what gives him such audacity? dicaeopolis. stone me, if it please you; i shall avenge myself on this. (_shows a basket_.) let us see whether you have any love for your coals. chorus. great gods! this basket is our fellow-citizen. stop, stop, in heaven's name! dicaeopolis. i shall dismember it despite your cries; i will listen to nothing. chorus. how! will you kill this coal-basket, my beloved comrade? dicaeopolis. just now, you did not listen to me. chorus. well, speak now, if you will; tell us, tell us you have a weakness for the lacedaemonians. i consent to anything; never will i forsake this dear little basket. dicaeopolis. first, throw down your stones. chorus. there! 'tis done. and you, do you put away your sword. dicaeopolis. let me see that no stones remain concealed in your cloaks. chorus. they are all on the ground; see how we shake our garments. come, no haggling, lay down your sword; we threw away everything while crossing from one side of the stage to the other.[ ] dicaeopolis. what cries of anguish you would have uttered had these coals of parnes[ ] been dismembered, and yet it came very near it; had they perished, their death would have been due to the folly of their fellow-citizens. the poor basket was so frightened, look, it has shed a thick black dust over me, the same as a cuttle-fish does. what an irritable temper! you shout and throw stones, you will not hear my arguments--not even when i propose to speak in favour of the lacedaemonians with my head on the block; and yet i cling to my life. chorus. well then, bring out a block before your door, scoundrel, and let us hear the good grounds you can give us; i am curious to know them. now mind, as you proposed yourself, place your head on the block and speak. dicaeopolis. here is the block; and, though i am but a very sorry speaker, i wish nevertheless to talk freely of the lacedaemonians and without the protection of my buckler. yet i have many reasons for fear. i know our rustics; they are delighted if some braggart comes, and rightly or wrongly loads both them and their city with praise and flattery; they do not see that such toad-eaters[ ] are traitors, who sell them for gain. as for the old men, i know their weakness; they only seek to overwhelm the accused with their votes.[ ] nor have i forgotten how cleon treated me because of my comedy last year;[ ] he dragged me before the senate and there he uttered endless slanders against me; 'twas a tempest of abuse, a deluge of lies. through what a slough of mud he dragged me! i nigh perished. permit me, therefore, before i speak, to dress in the manner most likely to draw pity. chorus. what evasions, subterfuges and delays! hold! here is the sombre helmet of pluto with its thick bristling plume; hieronymus[ ] lends it to you; then open sisyphus'[ ] bag of wiles; but hurry, hurry, pray, for our discussion does not admit of delay. dicaeopolis. the time has come for me to manifest my courage, so i will go and seek euripides. ho! slave, slave! slave. who's there? dicaeopolis. is euripides at home? slave. he is and he isn't; understand that, if you have wit for't. dicaeopolis. how? he is and he isn't![ ] slave. certainly, old man; busy gathering subtle fancies here and there, his mind is not in the house, but he himself is; perched aloft, he is composing a tragedy. dicaeopolis. oh, euripides, you are indeed happy to have a slave so quick at repartee! now, fellow, call your master. slave. impossible! dicaeopolis. so much the worse. but i will not go. come, let us knock at the door. euripides, my little euripides, my darling euripides, listen; never had man greater right to your pity. it is dicaeopolis of the chollidan deme who calls you. do you hear? euripides. i have no time to waste. dicaeopolis. very well, have yourself wheeled out here.[ ] euripides. impossible. dicaeopolis. nevertheless.... euripides. well, let them roll me out; as to coming down, i have not the time. dicaeopolis. euripides.... euripides. what words strike my ear? dicaeopolis. you perch aloft to compose tragedies, when you might just as well do them on the ground. i am not astonished at your introducing cripples on the stage.[ ] and why dress in these miserable tragic rags? i do not wonder that your heroes are beggars. but, euripides, on my knees i beseech you, give me the tatters of some old piece: for i have to treat the chorus to a long speech, and if i do it ill it is all over with me. euripides. what rags do you prefer? those in which i rigged out aeneus[ ] on the stage, that unhappy, miserable old man? dicaeopolis. no, i want those of some hero still more unfortunate. euripides. of phoenix, the blind man? dicaeopolis. no, not of phoenix, you have another hero more unfortunate than him. euripides. now, what tatters _does_ he want? do you mean those of the beggar philoctetes? dicaeopolis. no, of another far more the mendicant. euripides. is it the filthy dress of the lame fellow, bellerophon? dicaeopolis. no, 'tis not bellerophon; he, whom i mean, was not only lame and a beggar, but boastful and a fine speaker. euripides. ah! i know, it is telephus, the mysian. dicaeopolis. yes, telephus. give me his rags, i beg of you. euripides. slave! give him telephus' tatters; they are on top of the rags of thyestes and mixed with those of ino. slave. catch hold! here they are. dicaeopolis. oh! zeus, whose eye pierces everywhere and embraces all, permit me to assume the most wretched dress on earth. euripides, cap your kindness by giving me the little mysian hat, that goes so well with these tatters. i must to-day have the look of a beggar; "be what i am, but not appear to be";[ ] the audience will know well who i am, but the chorus will be fools enough not to, and i shall dupe 'em with my subtle phrases. euripides. i will give you the hat; i love the clever tricks of an ingenious brain like yours. dicaeopolis. rest happy, and may it befall telephus as i wish. ah! i already feel myself filled with quibbles. but i must have a beggar's staff. euripides. here you are, and now get you gone from this porch. dicaeopolis. oh, my soul! you see how you are driven from this house, when i still need so many accessories. but let us be pressing, obstinate, importunate. euripides, give me a little basket with a lamp alight inside. euripides. whatever do you want such a thing as that for? dicaeopolis. i do not need it, but i want it all the same. euripides. you importune me; get you gone! dicaeopolis. alas! may the gods grant you a destiny as brilliant as your mother's.[ ] euripides. leave me in peace. dicaeopolis. oh! just a little broken cup. euripides. take it and go and hang yourself. what a tiresome fellow! dicaeopolis. ah! you do not know all the pain you cause me. dear, good euripides, nothing beyond a small pipkin stoppered with a sponge. euripides. miserable man! you are robbing me of an entire tragedy.[ ] here, take it and be off. dicaeopolis. i am going, but, great gods! i need one thing more; unless i have it, i am a dead man. hearken, my little euripides, only give me this and i go, never to return. for pity's sake, do give me a few small herbs for my basket. euripides. you wish to ruin me then. here, take what you want; but it is all over with my pieces! dicaeopolis. i won't ask another thing; i'm going. i am too importunate and forget that i rouse against me the hate of kings.--ah! wretch that i am! i am lost! i have forgotten one thing, without which all the rest is as nothing. euripides, my excellent euripides, my dear little euripides, may i die if i ask you again for the smallest present; only one, the last, absolutely the last; give me some of the chervil your mother left you in her will. euripides. insolent hound! slave, lock the door. dicaeopolis. oh, my soul! i must go away without the chervil. art thou sensible of the dangerous battle we are about to engage upon in defending the lacedaemonians? courage, my soul, we must plunge into the midst of it. dost thou hesitate and art thou fully steeped in euripides? that's right! do not falter, my poor heart, and let us risk our head to say what we hold for truth. courage and boldly to the front. i wonder i am so brave! chorus. what do you purport doing? what are you going to say? what an impudent fellow! what a brazen heart! to dare to stake his head and uphold an opinion contrary to that of us all! and he does not tremble to face this peril! come, it is you who desired it, speak! dicaeopolis. spectators, be not angered if, although i am a beggar, i dare in a comedy to speak before the people of athens of the public weal; comedy too can sometimes discern what is right. i shall not please, but i shall say what is true. besides, cleon shall not be able to accuse me of attacking athens before strangers;[ ] we are by ourselves at the festival of the lenaea; the period when our allies send us their tribute and their soldiers is not yet. here is only the pure wheat without chaff; as to the resident strangers settled among us, they and the citizens are one, like the straw and the ear. i detest the lacedaemonians with all my heart, and may posidon, the god of taenarus,[ ] cause an earthquake and overturn their dwellings! my vines also have been cut. but come (there are only friends who hear me), why accuse the laconians of all our woes? some men (i do not say the city, note particularly, that i do not say the city), some wretches, lost in vices, bereft of honour, who were not even citizens of good stamp, but strangers, have accused the megarians of introducing their produce fraudulently, and not a cucumber, a leveret, a sucking-pig, a clove of garlic, a lump of salt was seen without its being said, "halloa! these come from megara," and their being instantly confiscated. thus far the evil was not serious, and we were the only sufferers. but now some young drunkards go to megara and carry off the courtesan simaetha; the megarians, hurt to the quick, run off in turn with two harlots of the house of aspasia; and so for three gay women greece is set ablaze. then pericles, aflame with ire on his olympian height, let loose the lightning, caused the thunder to roll, upset greece and passed an edict, which ran like the song, "that the megarians be banished both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent."[ ] meanwhile the megarians, who were beginning to die of hunger, begged the lacedaemonians to bring about the abolition of the decree, of which those harlots were the cause; several times we refused their demand; and from that time there was a horrible clatter of arms everywhere. you will say that sparta was wrong, but what should she have done? answer that. suppose that a lacedaemonian had seized a little seriphian[ ] dog on any pretext and had sold it, would you have endured it quietly? far from it, you would at once have sent three hundred vessels to sea, and what an uproar there would have been through all the city! there 'tis a band of noisy soldiery, here a brawl about the election of a trierarch; elsewhere pay is being distributed, the pallas figure-heads are being regilded, crowds are surging under the market porticos, encumbered with wheat that is being measured, wine-skins, oar-leathers, garlic, olives, onions in nets; everywhere are chaplets, sprats, flute-girls, black eyes; in the arsenal bolts are being noisily driven home, sweeps are being made and fitted with leathers; we hear nothing but the sound of whistles, of flutes and fifes to encourage the work-folk. that is what you assuredly would have done, and would not telephus have done the same? so i come to my general conclusion; we have no common sense. first semi-chorus. oh! wretch! oh! infamous man! you are naught but a beggar and yet you dare to talk to us like this! you insult their worships the informers! second semi-chorus. by posidon! he speaks the truth; he has not lied in a single detail. first semi-chorus. but though it be true, need he say it? but you'll have no great cause to be proud of your insolence! second semi-chorus. where are you running to? don't you move; if you strike this man i shall be at you. first semi-chorus. lamachus, whose glance flashes lightning, whose plume petrifies thy foes, help! oh! lamachus, my friend, the hero of my tribe and all of you, both officers and soldiers, defenders of our walls, come to my aid; else is it all over with me! lamachus. whence comes this cry of battle? where must i bring my aid? where must i sow dread? who wants me to uncase my dreadful gorgon's head?[ ] dicaeopolis. oh, lamachus, great hero! your plumes and your cohorts terrify me. chorus. this man, lamachus, incessantly abuses athens. lamachus. you are but a mendicant and you dare to use language of this sort? dicaeopolis. oh, brave lamachus, forgive a beggar who speaks at hazard. lamachus. but what have you said? let us hear. dicaeopolis. i know nothing about it; the sight of weapons makes me dizzy. oh! i adjure you, take that fearful gorgon somewhat farther away. lamachus. there. dicaeopolis. now place it face downwards on the ground. lamachus. it is done. dicaeopolis. give me a plume out of your helmet. lamachus. here is a feather. dicaeopolis. and hold my head while i vomit; the plumes have turned my stomach. lamachus. hah! what are you proposing to do? do you want to make yourself vomit with this feather? dicaeopolis. is it a feather? what bird's? a braggart's? lamachus. ah! ah! i will rip you open. dicaeopolis. no, no, lamachus! violence is out of place here! but as you are so strong, why did you not circumcise me? you have all you want for the operation there. lamachus. a beggar dares thus address a general! dicaeopolis. how? am i a beggar? lamachus. what are you then? dicaeopolis. who am i? a good citizen, not ambitious; a soldier, who has fought well since the outbreak of the war, whereas you are but a vile mercenary. lamachus. they elected me.... dicaeopolis. yes, three cuckoos did![ ] if i have concluded peace, 'twas disgust that drove me; for i see men with hoary heads in the ranks and young fellows of your age shirking service. some are in thrace getting an allowance of three drachmae, such fellows as tisameophoenippus and panurgipparchides. the others are with chares or in chaonia, men like geretotheodorus and diomialazon; there are some of the same kidney, too, at camarina and at gela,[ ] the laughing-stock of all and sundry. lamachus. they were elected. dicaeopolis. and why do you always receive your pay, when none of these others ever get any? speak, marilades, you have grey hair; well then, have you ever been entrusted with a mission? see! he shakes his head. yet he is an active as well as a prudent man. and you, dracyllus, euphorides or prinides, have you knowledge of ecbatana or chaonia? you say no, do you not? such offices are good for the son of caesyra[ ] and lamachus, who, but yesterday ruined with debt, never pay their shot, and whom all their friends avoid as foot passengers dodge the folks who empty their slops out of window. lamachus. oh! in freedom's name! are such exaggerations to be borne? dicaeopolis. lamachus is well content; no doubt he is well paid, you know. lamachus. but i propose always to war with the peloponnesians, both at sea, on land and everywhere to make them tremble, and trounce them soundly. dicaeopolis. for my own part, i make proclamation to all peloponnesians, megarians and boeotians, that to them my markets are open; but i debar lamachus from entering them. chorus. convinced by this man's speech, the folk have changed their view and approve him for having concluded peace. but let us prepare for the recital of the parabasis.[ ] never since our poet presented comedies, has he praised himself upon the stage; but, having been slandered by his enemies amongst the volatile athenians, accused of scoffing at his country and of insulting the people, to-day he wishes to reply and regain for himself the inconstant athenians. he maintains that he has done much that is good for you; if you no longer allow yourselves to be too much hoodwinked by strangers or seduced by flattery, if in politics you are no longer the ninnies you once were, it is thanks to him. formerly, when delegates from other cities wanted to deceive you, they had but to style you, "the people crowned with violets," and, at the word "violets" you at once sat erect on the tips of your bums. or, if to tickle your vanity, someone spoke of "rich and sleek athens," in return for that 'sleekness' he would get all, because he spoke of you as he would have of anchovies in oil. in cautioning you against such wiles, the poet has done you great service as well as in forcing you to understand what is really the democratic principle. thus, the strangers, who came to pay their tributes, wanted to see this great poet, who had dared to speak the truth to athens. and so far has the fame of his boldness reached that one day the great king, when questioning the lacedaemonian delegates, first asked them which of the two rival cities was the superior at sea, and then immediately demanded at which it was that the comic poet directed his biting satire. "happy that city," he added, "if it listens to his counsel; it will grow in power, and its victory is assured." this is why the lacedaemonians offer you peace, if you will cede them aegina; not that they care for the isle, but they wish to rob you of your poet.[ ] as for you, never lose him, who will always fight for the cause of justice in his comedies; he promises you that his precepts will lead you to happiness, though he uses neither flattery, nor bribery, nor intrigue, nor deceit; instead of loading you with praise, he will point you to the better way. i scoff at cleon's tricks and plotting; honesty and justice shall fight my cause; never will you find me a political poltroon, a prostitute to the highest bidder. i invoke thee, acharnian muse, fierce and fell as the devouring fire; sudden as the spark that bursts from the crackling oaken coal when roused by the quickening fan to fry little fishes, while others knead the dough or whip the sharp thasian pickle with rapid hand, so break forth, my muse, and inspire thy tribesmen with rough, vigorous, stirring strains. we others, now old men and heavy with years, we reproach the city; so many are the victories we have gained for the athenian fleets that we well deserve to be cared for in our declining life; yet far from this, we are ill-used, harassed with law-suits, delivered over to the scorn of stripling orators. our minds and bodies being ravaged with age, posidon should protect us, yet we have no other support than a staff. when standing before the judge, we can scarcely stammer forth the fewest words, and of justice we see but its barest shadow, whereas the accuser, desirous of conciliating the younger men, overwhelms us with his ready rhetoric; he drags us before the judge, presses us with questions, lays traps for us; the onslaught troubles, upsets and rends poor old tithonus, who, crushed with age, stands tongue-tied; sentenced to a fine,[ ] he weeps, he sobs and says to his friend, "this fine robs me of the last trifle that was to have bought my coffin." is this not a scandal? what! the clepsydra[ ] is to kill the white-haired veteran, who, in fierce fighting, has so oft covered himself with glorious sweat, whose valour at marathon saved the country! 'twas we who pursued on the field of marathon, whereas now 'tis wretches who pursue us to the death and crush us! what would marpsias reply to this?[ ] what an injustice, that a man, bent with age like thucydides, should be brow-beaten by this braggart advocate, cephisodemus,[ ] who is as savage as the scythian desert he was born in! is it not to convict him from the outset? i wept tears of pity when i saw an archer[ ] maltreat this old man, who, by ceres, when he was young and the true thucydides, would not have permitted an insult from ceres herself! at that date he would have floored ten miserable orators, he would have terrified three thousand archers with his shouts; he would have pierced the whole line of the enemy with his shafts. ah! but if you will not leave the aged in peace, decree that the advocates be matched; thus the old man will only be confronted with a toothless greybeard, the young will fight with the braggart, the ignoble with the son of clinias[ ]; make a law that in future, the old man can only be summoned and convicted at the courts by the aged and the young man by the youth. dicaeopolis. these are the confines of my market-place. all peloponnesians, megarians, boeotians, have the right to come and trade here, provided they sell their wares to me and not to lamachus. as market-inspectors i appoint these three whips of leprean[ ] leather, chosen by lot. warned away are all informers and all men of phasis.[ ] they are bringing me the pillar on which the treaty is inscribed[ ] and i shall erect it in the centre of the market, well in sight of all. a megarian. hail! market of athens, beloved of megarians. let zeus, the patron of friendship, witness, i regretted you as a mother mourns her son. come, poor little daughters of an unfortunate father, try to find something to eat; listen to me with the full heed of an empty belly. which would you prefer? to be sold or to cry with hunger. daughters. to be sold, to be sold! megarian. that is my opinion too. but who would make so sorry a deal as to buy you? ah! i recall me a megarian trick; i am going to disguise you as little porkers, that i am offering for sale. fit your hands with these hoofs and take care to appear the issue of a sow of good breed, for, if i am forced to take you back to the house, by hermes! you will suffer cruelly of hunger! then fix on these snouts and cram yourselves into this sack. forget not to grunt and to say wee-wee like the little pigs that are sacrificed in the mysteries. i must summon dicaeopolis. where is he? dicaeopolis, will you buy some nice little porkers? dicaeopolis. who are you? a megarian? megarian. i have come to your market. dicaeopolis. well, how are things at megara?[ ] megarian. we are crying with hunger at our firesides. dicaeopolis. the fireside is jolly enough with a piper. but what else is doing at megara, eh? megarian. what else? when i left for the market, the authorities were taking steps to let us die in the quickest manner. dicaeopolis. that is the best way to get you out of all your troubles. megarian. true. dicaeopolis. what other news of megara? what is wheat selling at? megarian. with us it is valued as highly as the very gods in heaven! dicaeopolis. is it salt that you are bringing? megarian. are you not holding back the salt? dicaeopolis. 'tis garlic then? megarian. what! garlic! do you not at every raid grub up the ground with your pikes to pull out every single head? dicaeopolis. what _do_ you bring then? megarian. little sows, like those they immolate at the mysteries. dicaeopolis. ah! very well, show me them. megarian. they are very fine; feel their weight. see! how fat and fine. dicaeopolis. but what is this? megarian. a _sow_, for a certainty.[ ] dicaeopolis. you say a sow! of what country, then? megarian. from megara. what! is that not a sow then? dicaeopolis. no, i don't believe it is. megarian. this is too much! what an incredulous man! he says 'tis not a sow; but we will stake, an you will, a measure of salt ground up with thyme, that in good greek this is called a sow and nothing else. dicaeopolis. but a sow of the human kind. megarian. without question, by diocles! of my own breed! well! what think you? will you hear them squeal? dicaeopolis. well, yes, i' faith, i will. megarian. cry quickly, wee sowlet; squeak up, hussy, or by hermes! i take you back to the house. girl. wee-wee, wee-wee! megarian. is that a little sow, or not? dicaeopolis. yes, it seems so; but let it grow up, and it will be a fine fat cunt. megarian. in five years it will be just like its mother. dicaeopolis. but it cannot be sacrificed. megarian. and why not? dicaeopolis. it has no tail.[ ] megarian. because it is quite young, but in good time it will have a big one, thick and red. dicaeopolis. the two are as like as two peas. megarian. they are born of the same father and mother; let them be fattened, let them grow their bristles, and they will be the finest sows you can offer to aphrodité. dicaeopolis. but sows are not immolated to aphrodité. megarian. not sows to aphrodité! why, 'tis the only goddess to whom they are offered! the flesh of my sows will be excellent on the spit. dicaeopolis. can they eat alone? they no longer need their mother! megarian. certainly not, nor their father. dicaeopolis. what do they like most? megarian. whatever is given them; but ask for yourself. dicaeopolis. speak! little sow. daughter. wee-wee, wee-wee! dicaeopolis. can you eat chick-pease?[ ] daughter. wee-wee, wee-wee, wee-wee! dicaeopolis. and attic figs? daughter. wee-wee, wee-wee! dicaeopolis. what sharp squeaks at the name of figs. come, let some figs be brought for these little pigs. will they eat them? goodness! how they munch them, what a grinding of teeth, mighty heracles! i believe those pigs hail from the land of the voracians. but surely, 'tis impossible they have bolted all the figs! megarian. yes, certainly, bar this one that i took from them. dicaeopolis. ah! what funny creatures! for what sum will you sell them? megarian. i will give you one for a bunch of garlic, and the other, if you like, for a quart measure of salt. dicaeopolis. i buy them of you. wait for me here. megarian. the deal is done. hermes, god of good traders, grant i may sell both my wife and my mother in the same way! an informer. hi! fellow, what countryman are you? megarian. i am a pig-merchant from megara. informer. i shall denounce both your pigs and yourself as public enemies. megarian. ah! here our troubles begin afresh! informer. let go that sack. i will punish your megarian lingo.[ ] megarian. dicaeopolis, dicaeopolis, they want to denounce me. dicaeopolis. who dares do this thing? inspectors, drive out the informers. ah! you offer to enlighten us without a lamp![ ] informer. what! i may not denounce our enemies? dicaeopolis. have a care for yourself, if you don't go off pretty quick to denounce elsewhere. megarian. what a plague to athens! dicaeopolis. be reassured, megarian. here is the value of your two swine, the garlic and the salt. farewell and much happiness! megarian. ah! we never have that amongst us. dicaeopolis. well! may the inopportune wish apply to myself. megarian. farewell, dear little sows, and seek, far from your father, to munch your bread with salt, if they give you any. chorus. here is a man truly happy. see how everything succeeds to his wish. peacefully seated in his market, he will earn his living; woe to ctesias,[ ] and all other informers, who dare to enter there! you will not be cheated as to the value of wares, you will not again see prepis[ ] wiping his foul rump, nor will cleonymus[ ] jostle you; you will take your walks, clothed in a fine tunic, without meeting hyperbolus[ ] and his unceasing quibblings, without being accosted on the public place by any importunate fellow, neither by cratinus,[ ] shaven in the fashion of the debauchees, nor by this musician, who plagues us with his silly improvisations, artemo, with his arm-pits stinking as foul as a goat, like his father before him. you will not be the butt of the villainous pauson's[ ] jeers, nor of lysistratus,[ ] the disgrace of the cholargian deme, who is the incarnation of all the vices, and endures cold and hunger more than thirty days in the month. a boeotian. by heracles! my shoulder is quite black and blue. ismenias, put the penny-royal down there very gently, and all of you, musicians from thebes, pipe with your bone flutes into a dog's rump.[ ] dicaeopolis. enough, enough, get you gone. rascally hornets, away with you! whence has sprung this accursed swarm of cheris[ ] fellows which comes assailing my door? boeotian. ah! by iolas![ ] drive them off, my dear host, you will please me immensely; all the way from thebes, they were there piping behind me and have completely stripped my penny-royal of its blossom. but will you buy anything of me, some chickens or some locusts? dicaeopolis. ah! good day, boeotian, eater of good round loaves.[ ] what do you bring? boeotian. all that is good in boeotia, marjoram, penny-royal, rush-mats, lamp-wicks, ducks, jays, woodcocks, waterfowl, wrens, divers. dicaeopolis. 'tis a very hail of birds that beats down on my market. boeotian. i also bring geese, hares, foxes, moles, hedgehogs, cats, lyres, martins, otters and eels from the copaic lake.[ ] dicaeopolis. ah! my friend, you, who bring me the most delicious of fish, let me salute your eels. boeotian. come, thou, the eldest of my fifty copaic virgins, come and complete the joy of our host. dicaeopolis. oh! my well-beloved, thou object of my long regrets, thou art here at last then, thou, after whom the comic poets sigh, thou, who art dear to morychus.[ ] slaves, hither with the stove and the bellows. look at this charming eel, that returns to us after six long years of absence.[ ] salute it, my children; as for myself, i will supply coal to do honour to the stranger. take it into my house; death itself could not separate me from her, if cooked with beet leaves. boeotian. and what will you give me in return? dicaeopolis. it will pay for your market dues. and as to the rest, what do you wish to sell me? boeotian. why, everything. dicaeopolis. on what terms? for ready-money or in wares from these parts? boeotian. i would take some athenian produce, that we have not got in boeotia. dicaeopolis. phaleric anchovies, pottery? boeotian. anchovies, pottery? but these we have. i want produce that is wanting with us and that is plentiful here. dicaeopolis. ah! i have the very thing; take away an informer, packed up carefully as crockery-ware. boeotian. by the twin gods! i should earn big money, if i took one; i would exhibit him as an ape full of spite. dicaeopolis. hah! here we have nicarchus,[ ] who comes to denounce you. boeotian. how small he is! dicaeopolis. but in his case the whole is one mass of ill-nature. nicarchus. whose are these goods? dicaeopolis. mine; they come from boeotia, i call zeus to witness. nicarchus. i denounce them as coming from an enemy's country. boeotian. what! you declare war against birds? nicarchus. and i am going to denounce you too. boeotian. what harm have i done you? nicarchus. i will say it for the benefit of those that listen; you introduce lamp-wicks from an enemy's country. dicaeopolis. then you go as far as denouncing a wick. nicarchus. it needs but one to set an arsenal afire. dicaeopolis. a wick set an arsenal ablaze! but how, great gods? nicarchus. should a boeotian attach it to an insect's wing, and, taking advantage of a violent north wind, throw it by means of a tube into the arsenal and the fire once get hold of the vessels, everything would soon be devoured by the flames. dicaeopolis. ah! wretch! an insect and a wick would devour everything. (_he strikes him_.) nicarchus (_to the chorus_). you will bear witness, that he mishandles me. dicaeopolis. shut his mouth. give him some hay; i am going to pack him up as a vase, that he may not get broken on the road. chorus. pack up your goods carefully, friend; that the stranger may not break it when taking it away. dicaeopolis. i shall take great care with it, for one would say he is cracked already; he rings with a false note, which the gods abhor. chorus. but what will be done with him? dicaeopolis. this is a vase good for all purposes; it will be used as a vessel for holding all foul things, a mortar for pounding together law-suits, a lamp for spying upon accounts, and as a cup for the mixing up and poisoning of everything. chorus. none could ever trust a vessel for domestic use that has such a ring about it. dicaeopolis. oh! it is strong, my friend, and will never get broken, if care is taken to hang it head downwards. chorus. there! it is well packed now! boeotian. marry, i will proceed to carry off my bundle. chorus. farewell, worthiest of strangers, take this informer, good for anything, and fling him where you like. dicaeopolis. bah! this rogue has given me enough trouble to pack! here! boeotian, pick up your pottery. boeotian. stoop, ismenias, that i may put it on your shoulder, and be very careful with it. dicaeopolis. you carry nothing worth having; however, take it, for you will profit by your bargain; the informers will bring you luck. a servant of lamachus. dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis. what do want crying this gait? servant. lamachus wants to keep the feast of cups,[ ] and i come by his order to bid you one drachma for some thrushes and three more for a copaic eel. dicaeopolis. and who is this lamachus, who demands an eel? servant. 'tis the terrible, indefatigable lamachus, he, who is always brandishing his fearful gorgon's head and the three plumes which o'ershadow his helmet. dicaeopolis. no, no, he will get nothing, even though he gave me his buckler. let him eat salt fish, while he shakes his plumes, and, if he comes here making any din, i shall call the inspectors. as for myself, i shall take away all these goods; i go home on thrushes' wings and blackbirds' pinions.[ ] chorus. you see, citizens, you see the good fortune which this man owes to his prudence, to his profound wisdom. you see how, since he has concluded peace, he buys what is useful in the household and good to eat hot. all good things flow towards him unsought. never will i welcome the god of war in my house; never shall he chant the 'harmodius' at my table;[ ] he is a sot, who comes feasting with those who are overflowing with good things and brings all sorts of mischief at his heels. he overthrows, ruins, rips open; 'tis vain to make him a thousand offers, "be seated, pray, drink this cup, proffered in all friendship," he burns our vine-stocks and brutally pours out the wine from our vineyards on the ground. this man, on the other hand, covers his table with a thousand dishes; proud of his good fortunes, he has had these feathers cast before his door to show us how he lives. dicaeopolis. oh! peace! companion of fair aphrodité and of the sweet graces, how charming are your features and yet i never knew it! would that eros might join me to thee, eros, crowned with roses as zeuxis[ ] shows him to us! perhaps i seem somewhat old to you, but i am yet able to make you a threefold offering; despite my age, i could plant a long row of vines for you; then beside these some tender cuttings from the fig; finally a young vine-stock, loaded with fruit and all round the field olive trees, which would furnish us with oil, wherewith to anoint us both at the new moons. herald. list, ye people! as was the custom of your forebears, empty a full pitcher of wine at the call of the trumpet; he, who first sees the bottom, shall get a wine-skin as round and plump as ctesiphon's belly. dicaeopolis. women, children, have you not heard? faith! do you not heed the herald? quick! let the hares boil and roast merrily; keep them a-turning; withdraw them from the flame; prepare the chaplets; reach me the skewers that i may spit the thrushes. chorus. i envy you your wisdom and even more your good cheer. dicaeopolis. what then will you say when you see the thrushes roasting? chorus. ah! true indeed! dicaeopolis. slave! stir up the fire. chorus. see, how he knows his business, what a perfect cook! how well he understands the way to prepare a good dinner! a husbandman. ah! woe is me! dicaeopolis. heracles! what have we here? husbandman. a most miserable man. dicaeopolis. keep your misery for yourself. husbandman. ah! friend! since you alone are enjoying peace, grant me a part of your truce, were it but five years. dicaeopolis. what has happened to you? husbandman. i am ruined; i have lost a pair of steers. dicaeopolis. how? husbandman. the boeotians seized them at phylé.[ ] dicaeopolis. ah! poor wretch! and yet you have not left off white? husbandman. their dung made my wealth. dicaeopolis. what can i do in the matter? husbandman. crying for my beasts has lost me my eyesight. ah! if you care for poor dercetes of phylé, anoint mine eyes quickly with your balm of peace. dicaeopolis. but, my poor fellow, i do not practise medicine. husbandman. come, i adjure you; perchance i shall recover my steers. dicaeopolis. 'tis impossible; away, go and whine to the disciples of pittalus.[ ] husbandman. grant me but one drop of peace; pour it into this reedlet. dicaeopolis. no, not a particle; go a-weeping elsewhere. husbandman. oh! oh! oh! my poor beasts! chorus. this man has discovered the sweetest enjoyment in peace; he will share it with none. dicaeopolis. pour honey over this tripe; set it before the fire to dry. chorus. what lofty tones he uses! did you hear him? dicaeopolis. get the eels on the gridiron! chorus. you are killing me with hunger; your smoke is choking your neighbours, and you split our ears with your bawling. dicaeopolis. have this fried and let it be nicely browned. a bridesmaid. dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis. who are you? bridesmaid. a young bridegroom sends you these viands from the marriage feast. dicaeopolis. whoever he be, i thank him. bridesmaid. and in return, he prays you to pour a glass of peace into this vase, that he may not have to go to the front and may stay at home to do his duty to his young wife. dicaeopolis. take back, take back your viands; for a thousand drachmae i would not give a drop of peace; but who are you, pray? bridesmaid. i am the bridesmaid; she wants to say something to you from the bride privately. dicaeopolis. come, what do you wish to say? (_the bridesmaid whispers in his ear._) _ah!_ what a ridiculous demand! the bride burns with longing to keep by her her husband's weapon. come! bring hither my truce; to her alone will i give some of it, for she is a woman, and, as such, should not suffer under the war. here, friend, reach hither your vial. and as to the manner of applying this balm, tell the bride, when a levy of soldiers is made to rub some in bed on her husband, where most needed. there, slave, take away my truce! now, quick hither with the wine-flagon, that i may fill up the drinking bowls! chorus. i see a man, striding along apace, with knitted brows; he seems to us the bearer of terrible tidings. herald. oh! toils and battles! 'tis lamachus! lamachus. what noise resounds around my dwelling, where shines the glint of arms. herald. the generals order you forthwith to take your battalions and your plumes, and, despite the snow, to go and guard our borders. they have learnt that a band of boeotians intend taking advantage of the feast of cups to invade our country. lamachus. ah! the generals! they are numerous, but not good for much! it's cruel, not to be able to enjoy the feast! dicaeopolis. oh! warlike host of lamachus! lamachus. wretch! do you dare to jeer me? dicaeopolis. do you want to fight this four-winged geryon? lamachus. oh! oh! what fearful tidings! dicaeopolis. ah! ah! i see another herald running up; what news does he bring me? herald. dicaeopolis! dicaeopolis. what is the matter? herald. come quickly to the feast and bring your basket and your cup; 'tis the priest of bacchus who invites you. but hasten, the guests have been waiting for you a long while. all is ready--couches, tables, cushions, chaplets, perfumes, dainties and courtesans to boot; biscuits, cakes, sesamé-bread, tarts, and--lovely dancing women, the sweetest charm of the festivity. but come with all haste. lamachus. oh! hostile gods! dicaeopolis. this is not astounding; you have chosen this huge, great ugly gorgon's head for your patron. you, shut the door, and let someone get ready the meal. lamachus. slave! slave! my knapsack! dicaeopolis. slave! slave! a basket! lamachus. take salt and thyme, slave, and don't forget the onions. dicaeopolis. get some fish for me; i cannot bear onions. lamachus. slave, wrap me up a little stale salt meat in a fig-leaf. dicaeopolis. and for me some good greasy tripe in a fig-leaf; i will have it cooked here. lamachus. bring me the plumes for my helmet. dicaeopolis. bring me wild pigeons and thrushes. lamachus. how white and beautiful are these ostrich feathers! dicaeopolis. how fat and well browned is the flesh of this wood-pigeon! lamachus. bring me the case for my triple plume. dicaeopolis. pass me over that dish of hare. lamachus. _oh!_ the moths have eaten the hair of my crest! dicaeopolis. i shall always eat hare before dinner. lamachus. hi! friend! try not to scoff at my armour. dicaeopolis. hi! friend! will you kindly not stare at my thrushes. lamachus. hi! friend! will you kindly not address me. dicaeopolis. i do not address you; i am scolding my slave. shall we wager and submit the matter to lamachus, which of the two is the best to eat, a locust or a thrush? lamachus. insolent hound! dicaeopolis. he much prefers the locusts. lamachus. slave, unhook my spear and bring it to me. dicaeopolis. slave, slave, take the sausage from the fire and bring it to me. lamachus. come, let me draw my spear from its sheath. hold it, slave, hold it tight. dicaeopolis. and you, slave, grip, grip well hold of the skewer. lamachus. slave, the bracings for my shield. dicaeopolis. pull the loaves out of the oven and bring me these bracings of my stomach. lamachus. my round buckler with the gorgon's head. dicaeopolis. my round cheese-cake. lamachus. what clumsy wit! dicaeopolis. what delicious cheese-cake! lamachus. pour oil on the buckler. hah! hah! i can see an old man who will be accused of cowardice. dicaeopolis. pour honey on the cake. hah! hah! i can see an old man who makes lamachus of the gorgon's head weep with rage. lamachus. slave, full war armour. dicaeopolis. slave, my beaker; that is _my_ armour. lamachus. with this i hold my ground with any foe. dicaeopolis. and i with this with any tosspot. lamachus. fasten the strappings to the buckler; personally i shall carry the knapsack. dicaeopolis. pack the dinner well into the basket; personally i shall carry the cloak. lamachus. slave, take up the buckler and let's be off. it is snowing! ah! 'tis a question of facing the winter. dicaeopolis. take up the basket, 'tis a question of getting to the feast. chorus. we wish you both joy on your journeys, which differ so much. one goes to mount guard and freeze, while the other will drink, crowned with flowers, and then sleep with a young beauty, who will rub his tool for him. i say it freely; may zeus confound antimachus, the poet-historian, the son of psacas! when choregus at the lenaea, alas! alas! he dismissed me dinnerless. may i see him devouring with his eyes a cuttle-fish, just served, well cooked, hot and properly salted; and the moment that he stretches his hand to help himself, may a dog seize it and run off with it. such is my first wish. i also hope for him a misfortune at night. that returning all-fevered from horse practice, he may meet an orestes,[ ] mad with drink, who breaks open his head; that wishing to seize a stone, he, in the dark, may pick up a fresh stool, hurl his missile, miss aim and hit cratinus.[ ] slave of lamachus. slaves of lamachus! water, water in a little pot! make it warm, get ready cloths, cerate, greasy wool and bandages for his ankle. in leaping a ditch, the master has hurt himself against a stake; he has dislocated and twisted his ankle, broken his head by falling on a stone, while his gorgon shot far away from his buckler. his mighty braggadocio plume rolled on the ground; at this sight he uttered these doleful words, "radiant star, i gaze on thee for the last time; my eyes close to all light, i die." having said this, he falls into the water, gets out again, meets some runaways and pursues the robbers with his spear at their backsides.[ ] but here he comes, himself. get the door open. lamachus. oh! heavens! oh! heavens! what cruel pain! i faint, i tremble! alas! i die! the foe's lance has struck me! but what would hurt me most would be for dicaeopolis to see me wounded thus and laugh at my ill-fortune. dicaeopolis (_enters with two courtesans_). oh! my gods! what bosoms! hard as a quince! come, my treasures, give me voluptuous kisses! glue your lips to mine. haha! i was the first to empty my cup. lamachus. oh! cruel fate! how i suffer! accursed wounds! dicaeopolis. hah! hah! hail! knight lamachus! (_embraces lamachus._) lamachus. by the hostile gods! _(bites dicaeopolis.)_ dicaeopolis. ah! great gods! lamachus. why do you embrace me? dicaeopolis. and why do you bite me? lamachus. 'twas a cruel score i was paying back! dicaeopolis. scores are not evened at the feast of cups! lamachus. oh! paean, paean! dicaeopolis. but to-day is not the feast of paean. lamachus. oh! support my leg, do; ah! hold it tenderly, my friends! dicaeopolis. and you, my darlings, take hold of my tool both of you! lamachus. this blow with the stone makes me dizzy; my sight grows dim. dicaeopolis. for myself, i want to get to bed; i am bursting with lustfulness, i want to be fucking in the dark. lamachus. carry me to the surgeon pittalus. dicaeopolis. take me to the judges. where is the king of the feast? the wine-skin is mine! lamachus. that spear has pierced my bones; what torture i endure! dicaeopolis. you see this empty cup! i triumph! i triumph! chorus. old man, i come at your bidding! you triumph! you triumph! dicaeopolis. again i have brimmed my cup with unmixed wine and drained it at a draught! chorus. you triumph then, brave champion; thine is the wine-skin! dicaeopolis. follow me, singing "triumph! triumph!" chorus. aye! we will sing of thee, thee and thy sacred wine-skin, and we all, as we follow thee, will repeat in thine honour, "triumph, triumph!" * * * * * finis of "the acharnians" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] a name invented by aristophanes and signifying 'a just citizen.' [ ] cleon had received five talents from the islanders subject to athens, on condition that he should get the tribute payable by them reduced; when informed of this transaction, the knights compelled him to return the money. [ ] a hemistich borrowed from euripides' 'telephus.' [ ] the tragedies of aeschylus continued to be played even after the poet's death, which occurred in b.c., ten years before the production of the acharnians. [ ] a tragic poet, whose pieces were so devoid of warmth and life that he was nicknamed [greek: chi_on], i.e. _snow_. [ ] a bad musician, frequently ridiculed by aristophanes; he played both the lyre and the flute. [ ] a lively and elevated method. [ ] a hill near the acropolis, where the assemblies were held. [ ] several means were used to force citizens to attend the assemblies; the shops were closed; circulation was only permitted in those streets which led to the pnyx; finally, a rope covered with vermilion was drawn round those who dallied in the agora (the marketplace), and the late-comers, ear-marked by the imprint of the rope, were fined. [ ] magistrates who, with the archons and the epistatae, shared the care of holding and directing the assemblies of the people; they were fifty in number. [ ] the peloponnesian war had already, at the date of the representation of the 'acharnians,' lasted five years, - b.c.; driven from their lands by the successive lacedaemonian invasions, the people throughout the country had been compelled to seek shelter behind the walls of athens. [ ] shortly before the meeting of the assembly, a number of young pigs were immolated and a few drops of their blood were sprinkled on the seats of the prytanes; this sacrifice was in honour of ceres. [ ] the name, amphitheus, contains the word, [greek: theos], _god_. [ ] amongst other duties, it was the office of the prytanes to look after the wants of the poor. [ ] the summer residence of the great king. [ ] referring to the hardships he had endured garrisoning the walls of athens during the lacedaemonian invasions early in the war. [ ] cranaus, the second king of athens, the successor of cecrops. [ ] lucian, in his 'hermotimus,' speaks of these golden mountains as an apocryphal land of wonders and prodigies. [ ] cleonymus was an athenian general of exceptionally tall stature; aristophanes incessantly rallies him for his cowardice; he had cast away his buckler in a fight. [ ] a name borne by certain officials of the king of persia. the actor of this part wore a mask, fitted with a single eye of great size. [ ] jargon, no doubt meaningless in all languages. [ ] the persians styled all greeks 'ionians' without distinction; here the athenians are intended. [ ] a greek measure, containing about six modii. [ ] noted for his extreme ugliness and his obscenity. aristophanes frequently holds him to scorn in his comedies. [ ] ambassadors were entertained there at the public expense. [ ] king of thrace. [ ] the tragic poet. [ ] a feast lasting three days and celebrated during the month pyanepsion (november). the greek word contains the suggestion of fraud ([greek: apat_e]). [ ] a thracian tribe from the right bank of the strymon. [ ] the boeotians were the allies of sparta. [ ] dicaeopolis had brought a clove of garlic with him to eat during the assembly. [ ] garlic was given to game-cocks, before setting them at each other, to give them pluck for the fight. [ ] at the least unfavourable omen, the sitting of the assembly was declared at an end. [ ] the deme of acharnae was largely inhabited by charcoal-burners, who supplied the city with fuel. [ ] he presents them in the form of wines contained in three separate skins. [ ] meaning, preparations for war. [ ] meaning, securing allies for the continuance of the war. [ ] when athens sent forth an army, the soldiers were usually ordered to assemble at some particular spot with provisions for three days. [ ] these feasts were also called the anthesteria or lenaea; the lenaeum was a temple to bacchus, erected outside the city. they took place during the month anthesterion (february). [ ] a celebrated athlete from croton and a victor at olympia; he was equally good as a runner and at the 'five exercises' ([greek: pentathlon.]). [ ] he had been archon at the time of the battle of marathon. [ ] a sacred formula, pronounced by the priest before offering the sacrifice ([greek: kan_ephoria]). [ ] the maiden who carried the basket filled with fruits at the dionysia in honour of bacchus. [ ] the emblem of the fecundity of nature; it consisted of a representation, generally grotesquely exaggerated, of the male genital organs; the phallophori crowned with violets and ivy and their faces shaded with green foliage, sang improvised airs, called 'phallics,' full of obscenity and suggestive 'double entendres.' [ ] the most propitious moment for love's gambols, observes the scholiast. [ ] married women did not join in the processions. [ ] the god of generation, worshipped in the form of a phallus. [ ] a remark, which fixes the date of the production of the 'acharnians,' viz. the sixth year of the peloponnesian war, b.c. [ ] lamachus was an athenian general, who figures later in this comedy. [ ] at the rural dionysia a pot of kitchen vegetables was borne in the procession along with other emblems. [ ] cleon the demagogue was a currier originally by trade. he was the sworn foe and particular detestation of the knights or aristocratic party generally. [ ] that is, the baskets of charcoal. [ ] the stage of the greek theatre was much broader, and at the same time shallower, than in a modern playhouse. [ ] a mountain in attica, in the neighbourhood of acharnae. [ ] orators in the pay of the enemy. [ ] satire on the athenians' addiction to lawsuits. [ ] 'the babylonians.' cleon had denounced aristophanes to the senate for having scoffed at athens before strangers, many of whom were present at the performance. the play is now lost. [ ] a tragic poet; we know next to nothing of him or his works. [ ] son of aeolus, renowned in fable for his robberies, and for the tortures to which he was put by pluto. he was cunning enough to break loose out of hell, but hermes brought him back again. [ ] this whole scene is directed at euripides; aristophanes ridicules the subtleties of his poetry and the trickeries of his staging, which, according to him, he only used to attract the less refined among his audience. [ ] "wheeled out"--that is, by means of the [greek: ekkukl_ema], a mechanical contrivance of the greek stage, by which an interior was shown, the set scene with performers, etc., all complete, being in some way, which cannot be clearly made out from the descriptions, swung out or wheeled out on to the main stage. [ ] having been lamed, it is of course implied, by tumbling from the lofty apparatus on which the author sat perched to write his tragedies. [ ] euripides delighted, or was supposed by his critic aristophanes to delight, in the representation of misery and wretchedness on the stage. 'aeneus,' 'phoenix,' 'philoctetes,' 'bellerophon,' 'telephus,' 'ino' are titles of six tragedies of his in this _genre_ of which fragments are extant. [ ] line borrowed from euripides. a great number of verses are similarly parodied in this scene. [ ] report said that euripides' mother had sold vegetables on the market. [ ] aristophanes means, of course, to imply that the whole talent of euripides lay in these petty details of stage property. [ ] 'the babylonians' had been produced at a time of year when athens was crowded with strangers; 'the acharnians,' on the contrary, was played in december. [ ] sparta had been menaced with an earthquake in b.c. posidon was 'the earthshaker,' god of earthquakes, as well as of the sea. [ ] a song by timocreon the rhodian, the words of which were practically identical with pericles' decree. [ ] a small and insignificant island, one of the cyclades, allied with the athenians, like most of these islands previous to and during the first part of the peloponnesian war. [ ] a figure of medusa's head, forming the centre of lamachus' shield. [ ] indicates the character of his election, which was arranged, so aristophanes implies, by his partisans. [ ] towns in sicily. there is a pun on the name gela--[greek: gela] and [greek: katagela] (ridiculous)--which it is impossible to keep in english. apparently the athenians had sent embassies to all parts of the greek world to arrange treaties of alliance in view of the struggle with the lacedaemonians; but only young debauchees of aristocratic connections had been chosen as envoys. [ ] a contemporary orator apparently, otherwise unknown. [ ] the _parabasis_ in the old comedy was a sort of address or topical harangue addressed directly by the poet, speaking by the chorus, to the audience. it was nearly always political in bearing, and the subject of the particular piece was for the time being set aside altogether. [ ] it will be remembered that aristophanes owned land in aegina. [ ] everything was made the object of a law-suit at athens. the old soldiers, inexpert at speaking, often lost the day. [ ] a water-clock used to limit the length of speeches in the courts. [ ] a braggart speaker, fiery and pugnacious. [ ] cephisodemus was an athenian, but through his mother possessed scythian blood. [ ] the city of athens was policed by scythian archers. [ ] alcibiades. [ ] the leather market was held at lepros, outside the city. [ ] meaning an informer ([greek: phain_o], to denounce). [ ] according to the athenian custom. [ ] megara was allied to sparta and suffered during the war more than any other city, because of its proximity to athens. [ ]: throughout this whole scene there is an obscene play upon the word [greek: choiros], which means in greek both 'sow' and 'a woman's organs of generation.' [ ] sacrificial victims were bound to be perfect in every part; an animal, therefore, without a tail could not be offered. [ ] the greek word, [greek: erebinthos], also means the male sexual organ. observe the little pig-girl greets this question with _three_ affirmative squeaks! [ ] the megarians used the doric dialect. [ ] a play upon the word [greek: phainein], which both means _to light_ and _to denounce_. [ ] an informer (sycophant), otherwise unknown. [ ] a debauchee of vile habits; a pathic. [ ] mentioned above; he was as proud as he was cowardly. [ ] an athenian general, quarrelsome and litigious, and an informer into the bargain. [ ] a comic poet of vile habits. [ ] a painter. [ ] a debauchee, a gambler, and always in extreme poverty. [ ] this kind of flute had a bellows, made of dog-skin, much like the bagpipes of to-day. [ ] a flute-player, mentioned above. [ ] a hero, much honoured in thebes; nephew of heracles. [ ] a form of bread peculiar to boeotia. [ ] a lake in boeotia. [ ] he was the lucullus of athens. [ ] this again fixes the date of the presentation of the 'acharnians' to b.c., the sixth year of the war, since the beginning of which boeotia had been closed to the athenians. [ ] an informer. [ ] the second day of the dionysia or feasts of bacchus, kept in the month anthesterion (february), and called the anthesteria. they lasted three days; the second being the feast of cups, a description of which is to be found at the end of this comedy, the third the feast of pans. vases, filled with grain of all kinds, were borne in procession and dedicated to hermes. [ ] a parody of some verses from a lost poet. [ ] a feasting song in honour of harmodius, the assassin of hipparchus the tyrant, son of pisistratus. [ ] the celebrated painter, born at heraclea, a contemporary of aristophanes. [ ] a deme and frontier fortress of attica, near the boeotian border. [ ] an athenian physician of the day. [ ] an allusion to the paroxysms of rage, as represented in many tragedies familiar to an athenian audience, of orestes, the son of agamemnon, after he had killed his mother. [ ] no doubt the comic poet, rival of aristophanes. [ ] unexpected wind-up of the story. aristophanes intends to deride the boasting of lamachus, who was always ascribing to himself most unlikely exploits. peace introduction the 'peace' was brought out four years after 'the acharnians' ( b.c.), when the war had already lasted ten years. the leading motive is the same as in the former play--the intense desire of the less excitable and more moderate-minded citizens for relief from the miseries of war. trygaeus, a rustic patriot, finding no help in men, resolves to ascend to heaven to expostulate personally with zeus for allowing this wretched state of things to continue. with this object he has fed and trained a gigantic dung-beetle, which he mounts, and is carried, like bellerophon on pegasus, on an aerial journey. eventually he reaches olympus, only to find that the gods have gone elsewhere, and that the heavenly abode is occupied solely by the demon of war, who is busy pounding up the greek states in a huge mortar. however, his benevolent purpose is not in vain; for learning from hermes that the goddess peace has been cast into a pit, where she is kept a fast prisoner, he calls upon the different peoples of hellas to make a united effort and rescue her, and with their help drags her out and brings her back in triumph to earth. the play concludes with the restoration of the goddess to her ancient honours, the festivities of the rustic population and the nuptials of trygaeus with opora (harvest), handmaiden of peace, represented as a pretty courtesan. such references as there are to cleon in this play are noteworthy. the great demagogue was now dead, having fallen in the same action as the rival spartan general, the renowned brasidas, before amphipolis, and whatever aristophanes says here of his old enemy is conceived in the spirit of 'de mortuis nil nisi bonum.' in one scene hermes is descanting on the evils which had nearly ruined athens and declares that 'the tanner' was the cause of them all. but trygaeus interrupts him with the words: "hold--say not so, good master hermes; let the man rest in peace where now he lies. he is no longer of our world, but yours." here surely we have a trait of magnanimity on the author's part as admirable in its way as the wit and boldness of his former attacks had been in theirs. * * * * * peace dramatis personae trygaeus. two servants of trygaeus. maidens, daughters of trygaeus. hermes. war. tumult. hierocles, a soothsayer. a sickle-maker. a crest-maker. a trumpet-maker. a helmet-maker. a spear-maker. son of lamachus. son of cleonymus. chorus of husbandmen. scene: a farmyard, two slaves busy beside a dungheap; afterwards, in olympus. * * * * * peace first servant. quick, quick, bring the dung-beetle his cake. second servant. coming, coming. first servant. give it to him, and may it kill him! second servant. may he never eat a better. first servant. now give him this other one kneaded up with ass's dung. second servant. there! i've done that too. first servant. and where's what you gave him just now; surely he can't have devoured it yet! second servant. indeed he has; he snatched it, rolled it between his feet and boiled it. first servant. come, hurry up, knead up a lot and knead them stiffly. second servant. oh, scavengers, help me in the name of the gods, if you do not wish to see me fall down choked. first servant. come, come, another made of the stool of a young scapegrace catamite. 'twill be to the beetle's taste; he likes it well ground.[ ] second servant. there! i am free at least from suspicion; none will accuse me of tasting what i mix. first servant. faugh! come, now another! keep on mixing with all your might. second servant. i' faith, no. i can stand this awful cesspool stench no longer, so i bring you the whole ill-smelling gear. first servant. pitch it down the sewer sooner, and yourself with it. second servant. maybe, one of you can tell me where i can buy a stopped-up nose, for there is no work more disgusting than to mix food for a beetle and to carry it to him. a pig or a dog will at least pounce upon our excrement without more ado, but this foul wretch affects the disdainful, the spoilt mistress, and won't eat unless i offer him a cake that has been kneaded for an entire day.... but let us open the door a bit ajar without his seeing it. has he done eating? come, pluck up courage, cram yourself till you burst! the cursed creature! it wallows in its food! it grips it between its claws like a wrestler clutching his opponent, and with head and feet together rolls up its paste like a ropemaker twisting a hawser. what an indecent, stinking, gluttonous beast! i know not what angry god let this monster loose upon us, but of a certainty it was neither aphrodité nor the graces. first servant. who was it then? second servant. no doubt the thunderer, zeus. first servant. but perhaps some spectator, some beardless youth, who thinks himself a sage, will say, "what is this? what does the beetle mean?" and then an ionian,[ ] sitting next him, will add, "i think 'tis an allusion to cleon, who so shamelessly feeds on filth all by himself."--but now i'm going indoors to fetch the beetle a drink. second servant. as for me, i will explain the matter to you all, children, youths, grown-ups and old men, aye, even to the decrepit dotards. my master is mad, not as you are, but with another sort of madness, quite a new kind. the livelong day he looks open-mouthed towards heaven and never stops addressing zeus. "ah! zeus," he cries, "what are thy intentions? lay aside thy besom; do not sweep greece away!" trygaeus. ah! ah! ah! first servant. hush, hush! methinks i hear his voice! trygaeus. oh! zeus, what art thou going to do for our people? dost thou not see this, that our cities will soon be but empty husks? first slave. as i told you, that is his form of madness. there you have a sample of his follies. when his trouble first began to seize him, he said to himself, "by what means could i go straight to zeus?" then he made himself very slender little ladders and so clambered up towards heaven; but he soon came hurtling down again and broke his head. yesterday, to our misfortune, he went out and brought us back this thoroughbred, but from where i know not, this great beetle, whose groom he has forced me to become. he himself caresses it as though it were a horse, saying, "oh! my little pegasus,[ ] my noble aerial steed, may your wings soon bear me straight to zeus!" but what is my master doing? i must stoop down to look through this hole. oh! great gods! here! neighbours, run here quick! here is my master flying off mounted on his beetle as if on horseback. trygaeus. gently, gently, go easy, beetle; don't start off so proudly, or trust at first too greatly to your powers; wait till you have sweated, till the beating of your wings shall make your limb joints supple. above all things, don't let off some foul smell, i adjure you; else i would rather have you stop in the stable altogether. second servant. poor master! is he crazy? trygaeus. silence! silence! second servant (_to trygaeus_). but why start up into the air on chance? trygaeus. 'tis for the weal of all the greeks; i am attempting a daring and novel feat. second servant. but what is your purpose? what useless folly! trygaeus. no words of ill omen! give vent to joy and command all men to keep silence, to close down their drains and privies with new tiles and to stop their own vent-holes.[ ] first servant. no, i shall not be silent, unless you tell me where you are going. trygaeus. why, where am i likely to be going across the sky, if it be not to visit zeus? first servant. for what purpose? trygaeus. i want to ask him what he reckons to do for all the greeks. second servant. and if he doesn't tell you? trygaeus. i shall pursue him at law as a traitor who sells greece to the medes.[ ] second servant. death seize me, if i let you go. trygaeus. it is absolutely necessary. second servant. alas! alas! dear little girls, your father is deserting you secretly to go to heaven. ah! poor orphans, entreat him, beseech him. little daughter. father! father! what is this i hear? is it true? what! you would leave me, you would vanish into the sky, you would go to the crows?[ ] 'tis impossible! answer, father, an you love me. trygaeus. yes, i am going. you hurt me too sorely, my daughters, when you ask me for bread, calling me your daddy, and there is not the ghost of an obolus in the house; if i succeed and come back, you will have a barley loaf every morning--and a punch in the eye for sauce! little daughter. but how will you make the journey? 'tis not a ship that will carry you thither. trygaeus. no, but this winged steed will. little daughter. but what an idea, daddy, to harness a beetle, on which to fly to the gods. trygaeus. we see from aesop's fables that they alone can fly to the abode of the immortals.[ ] little daughter. father, father, 'tis a tale nobody can believe! that such a stinking creature can have gone to the gods. trygaeus. it went to have vengeance on the eagle and break its eggs. little daughter. why not saddle pegasus? you would have a more _tragic_[ ] appearance in the eyes of the gods. trygaeus. eh! don't you see, little fool, that then twice the food would be wanted? whereas my beetle devours again as filth what i have eaten myself. little daughter. and if it fell into the watery depths of the sea, could it escape with its wings? trygaeus (_showing his penis_). i am fitted with a rudder in case of need, and my naxos beetle will serve me as a boat.[ ] little daughter. and what harbour will you put in at? trygaeus. why, is there not the harbour of cantharos at the piraeus?[ ] little daughter. take care not to knock against anything and so fall off into space; once a cripple, you would be a fit subject for euripides, who would put you into a tragedy.[ ] trygaeus. i'll see to it. good-bye! (_to the athenians._) you, for love of whom i brave these dangers, do ye neither let wind nor go to stool for the space of three days, for, if, while cleaving the air, my steed should scent anything, he would fling me head foremost from the summit of my hopes. now come, my pegasus, get a-going with up-pricked ears and make your golden bridle resound gaily. eh! what are you doing? what are you up to? do you turn your nose towards the cesspools? come, pluck up a spirit; rush upwards from the earth, stretch out your speedy wings and make straight for the palace of zeus; for once give up foraging in your daily food.--hi! you down there, what are you after now? oh! my god! 'tis a man emptying his belly in the piraeus, close to the house where the bad girls are. but is it my death you seek then, my death? will you not bury that right away and pile a great heap of earth upon it and plant wild thyme therein and pour perfumes on it? if i were to fall from up here and misfortune happened to me, the town of chios[ ]would owe a fine of five talents for my death, all along of your cursed rump. alas! how frightened i am! oh! i have no heart for jests. ah! machinist, take great care of me. there is already a wind whirling round my navel; take great care or, from sheer fright, i shall form food for my beetle.... but i think i am no longer far from the gods; aye, that is the dwelling of zeus, i perceive. hullo! hi! where is the doorkeeper? will no one open? * * * * * _the scene changes and heaven is presented._ hermes. meseems i can sniff a man. (_he perceives trygaeus astride his beetle._) why, what plague is this? trygaeus. a horse-beetle. hermes. oh! impudent, shameless rascal! oh! scoundrel! triple scoundrel! the greatest scoundrel in the world! how did you come here? oh! scoundrel of all scoundrels! your name? reply. trygaeus. triple scoundrel. hermes. your country? trygaeus. triple scoundrel. hermes. your father? trygaeus. my father? triple scoundrel. hermes. by the earth, you shall die, unless you tell me your name. trygaeus. i am trygaeus of the athmonian deme, a good vine-dresser, little addicted to quibbling and not at all an informer. hermes. why do you come? trygaeus. i come to bring you this meat. hermes. ah! my good friend, did you have a good journey? trygaeus. glutton, be off! i no longer seem a triple scoundrel to you. come, call zeus. hermes. ah! ah! you are a long way yet from reaching the gods, for they moved yesterday. trygaeus. to what part of the earth? hermes. eh! of the earth, did you say? trygaeus. in short, where are they then? hermes. very far, very far, right at the furthest end of the dome of heaven. trygaeus. but why have they left you all alone here? hermes. i am watching what remains of the furniture, the little pots and pans, the bits of chairs and tables, and odd wine-jars. trygaeus. and why have the gods moved away? hermes. because of their wrath against the greeks. they have located war in the house they occupied themselves and have given him full power to do with you exactly as he pleases; then they went as high up as ever they could, so as to see no more of your fights and to hear no more of your prayers. trygaeus. what reason have they for treating us so? hermes. because they have afforded you an opportunity for peace more than once, but you have always preferred war. if the laconians got the very slightest advantage, they would exclaim, "by the twin brethren! the athenians shall smart for this." if, on the contrary, the latter triumphed and the laconians came with peace proposals, you would say, "by demeter, they want to deceive us. no, by zeus, we will not hear a word; they will always be coming as long as we hold pylos."[ ] trygaeus. yes, that is quite the style our folk do talk in. hermes. so that i don't know whether you will ever see peace again. trygaeus. why, where has she gone to then? hermes. war has cast her into a deep pit. trygaeus. where? hermes. down there, at the very bottom. and you see what heaps of stones he has piled over the top, so that you should never pull her out again. trygaeus. tell me, what is war preparing against us? hermes. all i know is that last evening he brought along a huge mortar. trygaeus. and what is he going to do with his mortar? hermes. he wants to pound up all the cities of greece in it.... but i must say good-bye, for i think he is coming out; what an uproar he is making! trygaeus. ah! great gods! let us seek safety; meseems i already hear the noise of this fearful war mortar. war (_enters carrying a mortar_). oh! mortals, mortals, wretched mortals, how your jaws will snap! trygaeus. oh! divine apollo! what a prodigious big mortar! oh, what misery the very sight of war causes me! this then is the foe from whom i fly, who is so cruel, so formidable, so stalwart, so solid on his legs! war. oh! prasiae![ ] thrice wretched, five times, aye, a thousand times wretched! for thou shalt be destroyed this day. trygaeus. this does not yet concern us over much; 'tis only so much the worse for the laconians. war. oh! megara! megara! how utterly are you going to be ground up! what fine mincemeat[ ] are you to be made into! trygaeus. alas! alas! what bitter tears there will be among the megarians![ ] war. oh, sicily! you too must perish! your wretched towns shall be grated like this cheese.[ ] now let us pour some attic honey[ ] into the mortar. trygaeus. oh! i beseech you! use some other honey; this kind is worth four obols; be careful, oh! be careful of our attic honey. war. hi! tumult, you slave there! tumult. what do you want? war. out upon you! you stand there with folded arms. take this cuff o' the head for your pains. tumult. oh! how it stings! master, have you got garlic in your fist, i wonder? war. run and fetch me a pestle. tumult. but we haven't got one; 'twas only yesterday we moved. war. go and fetch me one from athens, and hurry, hurry! tumult. aye, i hasten there; if i return without one, i shall have no cause for laughing. [_exit._ trygaeus. ah! what is to become of us, wretched mortals that we are? see the danger that threatens if he returns with the pestle, for war will quietly amuse himself with pounding all the towns of hellas to pieces. ah! bacchus! cause this herald of evil to perish on his road! war. well! tumult (_who has returned_). well, what? war. you have brought back nothing? tumult. alas! the athenians have lost their pestle--the tanner, who ground greece to powder.[ ] trygaeus. oh! athené, venerable mistress! 'tis well for our city he is dead, and before he could serve us with this hash. war. then go and seek one at sparta and have done with it! tumult. aye, aye, master! war. be back as quick as ever you can. trygaeus (_to the audience_). what is going to happen, friends? 'tis a critical hour. ah! if there is some initiate of samothrace[ ] among you, 'tis surely the moment to wish this messenger some accident--some sprain or strain. tumult (_who returns_). alas! alas! thrice again, alas! war. what is it? again you come back without it? tumult. the spartans too have lost their pestle. war. how, varlet? tumult. they had lent it to their allies in thrace,[ ] who have lost it for them. trygaeus. long life to you, thracians! my hopes revive, pluck up courage, mortals! war. take all this stuff away; i am going in to make a pestle for myself. trygaeus. 'tis now the time to sing as datis did, as he masturbated himself at high noon, "oh pleasure! oh enjoyment! oh delights!" 'tis now, oh greeks! the moment when freed of quarrels and fighting, we should rescue sweet peace and draw her out of this pit, before some other pestle prevents us. come, labourers, merchants, workmen, artisans, strangers, whether you be domiciled or not, islanders, come here, greeks of all countries, come hurrying here with picks and levers and ropes! 'tis the moment to drain a cup in honour of the good genius. chorus. come hither, all! quick, quick, hasten to the rescue! all peoples of greece, now is the time or never, for you to help each other. you see yourselves freed from battles and all their horrors of bloodshed. the day, hateful to lamachus,[ ] has come. come then, what must be done? give your orders, direct us, for i swear to work this day without ceasing, until with the help of our levers and our engines we have drawn back into light the greatest of all goddesses, her to whom the olive is so dear. trygaeus. silence! if war should hear your shouts of joy he would bound forth from his retreat in fury. chorus. such a decree overwhelms us with joy; how different to the edict, which bade us muster with provisions for three days.[ ] trygaeus. let us beware lest the cursed cerberus[ ] prevent us even from the nethermost hell from delivering the goddess by his furious howling, just as he did when on earth. chorus. once we have hold of her, none in the world will be able to take her from us. huzza! huzza![ ] trygaeus. you will work my death if you don't subdue your shouts. war will come running out and trample everything beneath his feet. chorus. well then! _let_ him confound, let him trample, let him overturn everything! we cannot help giving vent to our joy. trygaeus. oh! cruel fate! my friends! in the name of the gods, what possesses you? your dancing will wreck the success of a fine undertaking. chorus. 'tis not i who want to dance; 'tis my legs that bound with delight. trygaeus. enough, an you love me, cease your gambols. chorus. there! tis over. trygaeus. you say so, and nevertheless you go on. chorus. yet one more figure and 'tis done. trygaeus. well, just this one; then you must dance no more. chorus. no, no more dancing, if we can help you. trygaeus. but look, you are not stopping even now. chorus. by zeus, i am only throwing up my right leg, that's all. trygaeus. come, i grant you that, but pray, annoy me no further. chorus. ah! the left leg too will have its fling; well, 'tis but its right. i am so happy, so delighted at not having to carry my buckler any more. i sing and i laugh more than if i had cast my old age, as a serpent does its skin. trygaeus. no, 'tis no time for joy yet, for you are not sure of success. but when you have got the goddess, then rejoice, shout and laugh; thenceforward you will be able to sail or stay at home, to make love or sleep, to attend festivals and processions, to play at cottabos,[ ] live like true sybarites and to shout, io, io! chorus. ah! god grant we may see the blessed day. i have suffered so much; have so oft slept with phormio[ ] on hard beds. you will no longer find me an acid, angry, hard judge as heretofore, but will find me turned indulgent and grown younger by twenty years through happiness. we have been killing ourselves long enough, tiring ourselves out with going to the lyceum[ ] and returning laden with spear and buckler.--but what can we do to please you? come, speak; for 'tis a good fate, that has named you our leader. trygaeus. how shall we set about removing these stones? hermes. rash reprobate, what do you propose doing? trygaeus. nothing bad, as cillicon said.[ ] hermes. you are undone, you wretch. trygaeus. yes, if the lot had to decide my life, for hermes would know how to turn the chance.[ ] hermes. you are lost, you are dead. trygaeus. on what day? hermes. this instant. trygaeus. but i have not provided myself with flour and cheese yet[ ] to start for death. hermes. you _are_ kneaded and ground already, i tell you.[ ] trygaeus. hah! i have not yet tasted that gentle pleasure. hermes. don't you know that zeus has decreed death for him who is surprised exhuming peace? trygaeus. what! must i really and truly die? hermes. you must. trygaeus. well then, lend me three drachmae to buy a young pig; i wish to have myself initiated before i die.[ ] hermes. oh! zeus, the thunderer![ ] trygaeus. i adjure you in the name of the gods, master, don't denounce us! hermes. i may not, i cannot keep silent. trygaeus. in the name of the meats which i brought you so good-naturedly. hermes. why, wretched man, zeus will annihilate me, if i do not shout out at the top of my voice, to inform him what you are plotting. trygaeus. oh, no! don't shout, i beg you, dear little hermes.... and what are you doing, comrades? you stand there as though you were stocks and stones. wretched men, speak, entreat him at once; otherwise he will be shouting. chorus. oh! mighty hermes! don't do it; no, don't do it! if ever you have eaten some young pig, sacrificed by us on your altars, with pleasure, may this offering not be without value in your sight to-day. trygaeus. do you not hear them wheedling you, mighty god? chorus. be not pitiless toward our prayers; permit us to deliver the goddess. oh! the most human, the most generous of the gods, be favourable toward us, if it be true that you detest the haughty crests and proud brows of pisander;[ ] we shall never cease, oh master, offering you sacred victims and solemn prayers. trygaeus. have mercy, mercy, let yourself be touched by their words; never was your worship so dear to them as to-day. hermes. i' truth, never have you been greater thieves.[ ] trygaeus. i will reveal a great, a terrible conspiracy against the gods to you. hermes. hah! speak and perchance i shall let myself be softened. trygaeus. know then, that the moon and that infamous sun are plotting against you, and want to deliver greece into the hands of the barbarians. hermes. what for? trygaeus. because it is to you that we sacrifice, whereas the barbarians worship them; hence they would like to see you destroyed, that they alone might receive the offerings. hermes. 'tis then for this reason that these untrustworthy charioteers have for so long been defrauding us, one of them robbing us of daylight and the other nibbling away at the other's disk.[ ] trygaeus. yes, certainly. so therefore, hermes, my friend, help us with your whole heart to find and deliver the captive and we will celebrate the great panathenaea[ ] in your honour as well as all the festivals of the other gods; for hermes shall be the mysteries, the dipolia, the adonia; everywhere the towns, freed from their miseries, will sacrifice to hermes, the liberator; you will be loaded with benefits of every kind, and to start with, i offer you this cup for libations as your first present. hermes. ah! how golden cups do influence me! come, friends, get to work. to the pit quickly, pick in hand and drag away the stones. chorus. we go, but you, the cleverest of all the gods, supervise our labours; tell us, good workman as you are, what we must do; we shall obey your orders with alacrity. trygaeus. quick, reach me your cup, and let us preface our work by addressing prayers to the gods. hermes. oh! sacred, sacred libations! keep silence, oh! ye people! keep silence! trygaeus. let us offer our libations and our prayers, so that this day may begin an era of unalloyed happiness for greece and that he who has bravely pulled at the rope with us may never resume his buckler. chorus. aye, may we pass our lives in peace, caressing our mistresses and poking the fire. trygaeus. may he who would prefer the war, oh dionysus, be ever drawing barbed arrows out of his elbows. chorus. if there be a citizen, greedy for military rank and honours, who refuses, oh, divine peace! to restore you to daylight, may he behave as cowardly as cleonymus on the battlefield. trygaeus. if a lance-maker or a dealer in shields desires war for the sake of better trade, may he be taken by pirates and eat nothing but barley. chorus. if some ambitious man does not help us, because he wants to become a general, or if a slave is plotting to pass over to the enemy, let his limbs be broken on the wheel, may he be beaten to death with rods! as for us, may fortune favour us! io! paean, io! trygaeus. don't say paean,[ ] but simply, io. chorus. very well, then! io! io! i'll simply say, io! trygaeus. to hermes, the graces, hora, aphrodité, eros! chorus. and not to ares? trygaeus. no. chorus. nor doubtless to enyalius? trygaeus. no. chorus. come, all strain at the ropes to tear away the stones. pull! hermes. heave away, heave, heave, oh! chorus. come, pull harder, harder. hermes. heave away, heave, heave, oh! chorus. still harder, harder still. hermes. heave away, heave! heave away, heave, heave, oh! trygaeus. come, come, there is no working together. come! all pull at the same instant! you boeotians are only pretending. beware! hermes. come, heave away, heave! chorus. hi! you two pull as well. trygaeus. why, i am pulling, i am hanging on to the rope and straining till i am almost off my feet; i am working with all my might. hermes. why does not the work advance then? trygaeus. lamachus, this is too bad! you are in the way, sitting there. we have no use for your medusa's head, friend.[ ] hermes. but hold, the argives have not pulled the least bit; they have done nothing but laugh at us for our pains while they were getting gain with both hands.[ ] trygaeus. ah! my dear sir, the laconians at all events pull with vigour. chorus. but look! only those among them who generally hold the plough-tail show any zeal,[ ] while the armourers impede them in their efforts. hermes. and the megarians too are doing nothing, yet look how they are pulling and showing their teeth like famished curs; the poor wretches are dying of hunger![ ] trygaeus. this won't do, friends. come! all together! everyone to the work and with a good heart for the business. hermes. heave away, heave! trygaeus. harder! hermes. heave away, heave! trygaeus. come on then, by heaven. hermes. heave away, heave! heave away, heave! chorus. this will never do. trygaeus. is it not a shame? some pull one way and others another. you, argives there, beware of a thrashing! hermes. come, put your strength into it. trygaeus. heave away, heave! chorus. there are many ill-disposed folk among us. trygaeus. do you at least, who long for peace, pull heartily. chorus. but there are some who prevent us. hermes. off to the devil with you, megarians! the goddess hates you. she recollects that you were the first to rub her the wrong way. athenians, you are not well placed for pulling. there you are too busy with law-suits; if you really want to free the goddess, get down a little towards the sea.[ ] chorus. come, friends, none but husbandmen on the rope. hermes. ah! that will do ever so much better. chorus. he says the thing is going well. come, all of you, together and with a will. trygaeus. 'tis the husbandmen who are doing all the work. chorus. come then, come, and all together! hah! hah! at last there is some unanimity in the work. don't let us give up, let us redouble our efforts. there! now we have it! come then, all together! heave away, heave! heave away, heave! heave away, heave! heave away, heave! heave away, heave! all together! (_peace is drawn out of the pit._) trygaeus. oh! venerated goddess, who givest us our grapes, where am i to find the ten-thousand-gallon words[ ] wherewith to greet thee? i have none such at home. oh! hail to thee, opora,[ ] and thou, theoria![ ] how beautiful is thy face! how sweet thy breath! what gentle fragrance comes from thy bosom, gentle as freedom from military duty, as the most dainty perfumes! hermes. is it then a smell like a soldier's knapsack? chorus. oh! hateful soldier! your hideous satchel makes me sick! it stinks like the belching of onions, whereas this lovable deity has the odour of sweet fruits, of festivals, of the dionysia, of the harmony of flutes, of the comic poets, of the verses of sophocles, of the phrases of euripides... trygaeus. that's a foul calumny, you wretch! she detests that framer of subtleties and quibbles. chorus. ... of ivy, of straining-bags for wine, of bleating ewes, of provision-laden women hastening to the kitchen, of the tipsy servant wench, of the upturned wine-jar, and of a whole heap of other good things. hermes. then look how the reconciled towns chat pleasantly together, how they laugh; and yet they are all cruelly mishandled; their wounds are bleeding still. trygaeus. but let us also scan the mien of the spectators; we shall thus find out the trade of each. hermes. ah! good gods! look at that poor crest-maker, tearing at his hair,[ ] and at that pike-maker, who has just broken wind in yon sword-cutler's face. trygaeus. and do you see with what pleasure this sickle-maker is making long noses at the spear-maker? hermes. now ask the husbandmen to be off. trygaeus. listen, good folk! let the husbandmen take their farming tools and return to their fields as quick as possible, but without either sword, spear or javelin. all is as quiet as if peace had been reigning for a century. come, let everyone go till the earth, singing the paean. chorus. oh, thou, whom men of standing desired and who art good to husbandmen, i have gazed upon thee with delight; and now i go to greet my vines, to caress after so long an absence the fig trees i planted in my youth. trygaeus. friends, let us first adore the goddess, who has delivered us from crests and gorgons;[ ] then let us hurry to our farms, having first bought a nice little piece of salt fish to eat in the fields. hermes. by posidon! what a fine crew they make and dense as the crust of a cake; they are as nimble as guests on their way to a feast. trygaeus. see, how their iron spades glitter and how beautifully their three-pronged mattocks glisten in the sun! how regularly they will align the plants! i also burn myself to go into the country and to turn over the earth i have so long neglected.--friends, do you remember the happy life that peace afforded us formerly; can you recall the splendid baskets of figs, both fresh and dried, the myrtles, the sweet wine, the violets blooming near the spring, and the olives, for which we have wept so much? worship, adore the goddess for restoring you so many blessings. chorus. hail! hail! thou beloved divinity! thy return overwhelms us with joy. when far from thee, my ardent wish to see my fields again made me pine with regret. from thee came all blessings. oh! much desired peace! thou art the sole support of those who spend their lives tilling the earth. under thy rule we had a thousand delicious enjoyments at our beck; thou wert the husbandman's wheaten cake and his safeguard. so that our vineyards, our young fig-tree woods and all our plantations hail thee with delight and smile at thy coming. but where was she then, i wonder, all the long time she spent away from us? hermes, thou benevolent god, tell us! hermes. wise husbandmen, hearken to my words, if you want to know why she was lost to you. the start of our misfortunes was the exile of phidias;[ ] pericles feared he might share his ill-luck, he mistrusted your peevish nature and, to prevent all danger to himself, he threw out that little spark, the megarian decree,[ ] set the city aflame, and blew up the conflagration with a hurricane of war, so that the smoke drew tears from all greeks both here and over there. at the very outset of this fire our vines were a-crackle, our casks knocked together;[ ] it was beyond the power of any man to stop the disaster, and peace disappeared. trygaeus. that, by apollo! is what no one ever told me; i could not think what connection there could be between phidias and peace. chorus. nor i; i know it now. this accounts for her beauty, if she is related to him. there are so many things that escape us. hermes. then, when the towns subject to you saw that you were angered one against the other and were showing each other your teeth like dogs, they hatched a thousand plots to pay you no more dues and gained over the chief citizens of sparta at the price of gold. they, being as shamelessly greedy as they were faithless in diplomacy, chased off peace with ignominy to let loose war. though this was profitable to them, 'twas the ruin of the husbandmen, who were innocent of all blame; for, in revenge, your galleys went out to devour their figs. trygaeus. and 'twas with justice too; did they not break down my black fig tree, which i had planted and dunged with my own hands? chorus. yes, by zeus! yes, 'twas well done; the wretches broke a chest for me with stones, which held six medimni of corn. hermes. then the rural labourers flocked into the city[ ] and let themselves be bought over like the others. not having even a grape-stone to munch and longing after their figs, they looked towards the orators.[ ] these well knew that the poor were driven to extremity and lacked even bread; but they nevertheless drove away the goddess each time she reappeared in answer to the wish of the country with their loud shrieks, that were as sharp as pitchforks; furthermore, they attacked the well-filled purses of the richest among our allies on the pretence that they belonged to brasidas' party.[ ] and then you would tear the poor accused wretch to pieces with your teeth; for the city, all pale with hunger and cowed with terror, gladly snapped up any calumny that was thrown it to devour. so the strangers, seeing what terrible blows the informers dealt, sealed their lips with gold. they grew rich, while you, alas! you could only see that greece was going to ruin. 'twas the tanner who was the author of all this woe.[ ] trygaeus. enough said, hermes, leave that man in hades, whither he has gone; he no longer belongs to us, but rather to yourself.[ ] that he was a cheat, a braggart, a calumniator when alive, why, nothing could be truer; but anything you might say now would be an insult to one of your own folk. oh! venerated goddess! why art thou silent? hermes. and how could she speak to the spectators? she is too angry at all that they have made her suffer. trygaeus. at least let her speak a little to you, hermes. hermes. tell me, my dear, what are your feelings with regard to them? come, you relentless foe of all bucklers, speak; i am listening to you. (_peace whispers into hermes' ear._) is that your grievance against them? yes, yes, i understand. hearken, you folk, this is her complaint. she says, that after the affair of pylos[ ] she came to you unbidden to bring you a basket full of truces and that you thrice repulsed her by your votes in the assembly. trygaeus. yes, we did wrong, but forgive us, for our mind was then entirely absorbed in leather.[ ] hermes. listen again to what she has just asked me. who was her greatest foe here? and furthermore, had she a friend who exerted himself to put an end to the fighting? trygaeus. her most devoted friend was cleonymus; it is undisputed. hermes. how then did cleonymus behave in fights? trygaeus. oh! the bravest of warriors! only he was not born of the father he claims; he showed it quick enough in the army by throwing away his weapons.[ ] hermes. there is yet another question she has just put to me. who rules now in the rostrum? trygaeus. 'tis hyperbolus, who now holds empire on the pnyx. (_to peace._) what now? you turn away your head! hermes. she is vexed, that the people should give themselves a wretch of that kind for their chief. trygaeus oh! we shall not employ him again; but the people, seeing themselves without a leader, took him haphazard, just as a man, who is naked, springs upon the first cloak he sees. hermes. she asks, what will be the result of such a choice of the city? trygaeus. we shall be more far-seeing in consequence. hermes. and why? trygaeus. because he is a lamp-maker. formerly we only directed our business by groping in the dark; now we shall only deliberate by lamplight. hermes. oh! oh! what questions she does order me to put to you! trygaeus. what are they? hermes. she wants to have news of a whole heap of old-fashioned things she left here. first of all, how is sophocles? trygaeus. very well; but something very strange has happened to him. hermes. what then? trygaeus. he has turned from sophocles into simonides.[ ] hermes. into simonides? how so? trygaeus. because, though old and broken-down as he is, he would put to sea on a hurdle to gain an obolus.[ ] hermes. and wise cratinus, is he still alive?[ ] trygaeus. he died about the time of the laconian invasion. hermes. how? trygaeus. of a swoon. he could not bear the shock of seeing one of his casks full of wine broken. ah! what a number of other misfortunes our city has suffered! so, dearest mistress, nothing can now separate us from thee. hermes. if that be so, receive opora here for a wife; take her to the country, live with her, and grow fine grapes together.[ ] trygaeus. come, my dear friend, come and accept my kisses. tell me, hermes, my master, do you think it would hurt me to fuck her a little, after so long an abstinence? hermes. no, not if you swallow a potion of penny-royal afterwards.[ ] but hasten to lead theoria[ ] to the senate; 'twas there she lodged before. trygaeus. oh! fortunate senate! thanks to theoria, what soups you will swallow for the space of three days![ ] how you will devour meats and cooked tripe! come, farewell, friend hermes! hermes. and to you also, my dear sir, may you have much happiness, and don't forget me. trygaeus. come, beetle, home, home, and let us fly on a swift wing. hermes. oh! he is no longer here. trygaeus. where has he gone to then? hermes. he is harnessed to the chariot of zeus and bears the thunderbolts. trygaeus. but where will the poor wretch get his food? hermes. he will eat ganymede's ambrosia. trygaeus. very well then, but how am i going to descend? hermes. oh! never fear, there is nothing simpler; place yourself beside the goddess. trygaeus. come, my pretty maidens, follow me quickly; there are plenty of folk awaiting you with standing tools. chorus. farewell and good luck be yours! let us begin by handing over all this gear to the care of our servants, for no place is less safe than a theatre; there is always a crowd of thieves prowling around it, seeking to find some mischief to do. come, keep a good watch over all this. as for ourselves, let us explain to the spectators what we have in our minds, the purpose of our play. undoubtedly the comic poet who mounted the stage to praise himself in the parabasis would deserve to be handed over to the sticks of the beadles. nevertheless, oh muse, if it be right to esteem the most honest and illustrious of our comic writers at his proper value, permit our poet to say that he thinks he has deserved a glorious renown. first of all, 'tis he who has compelled his rivals no longer to scoff at rags or to war with lice; and as for those heracles, always chewing and ever hungry, those poltroons and cheats who allow themselves to be beaten at will, he was the first to cover them with ridicule and to chase them from the stage;[ ] he has also dismissed that slave, whom one never failed to set a-weeping before you, so that his comrade might have the chance of jeering at his stripes and might ask, "wretch, what has happened to your hide? has the lash rained an army of its thongs on you and laid your back waste?" after having delivered us from all these wearisome ineptitudes and these low buffooneries, he has built up for us a great art, like a palace with high towers, constructed of fine phrases, great thoughts and of jokes not common on the streets. moreover 'tis not obscure private persons or women that he stages in his comedies; but, bold as heracles, 'tis the very greatest whom he attacks, undeterred by the fetid stink of leather or the threats of hearts of mud. he has the right to say, "i am the first ever dared to go straight for that beast with the sharp teeth and the terrible eyes that flashed lambent fire like those of cynna,[ ] surrounded by a hundred lewd flatterers, who spittle-licked him to his heart's content; it had a voice like a roaring torrent, the stench of a seal, a foul lamia's testicles and the rump of a camel."[ ] i did not recoil in horror at the sight of such a monster, but fought him relentlessly to win your deliverance and that of the islanders. such are the services which should be graven in your recollection and entitle me to your thanks. yet i have not been seen frequenting the wrestling school intoxicated with success and trying to tamper with young boys;[ ] but i took all my theatrical gear[ ] and returned straight home. i pained folk but little and caused them much amusement; my conscience rebuked me for nothing. hence both grown men and youths should be on my side and i likewise invite the bald[ ] to give me their votes; for, if i triumph, everyone will say, both at table and at festivals, "carry this to the bald man, give these cakes to the bald one, do not grudge the poet whose talent shines as bright as his own bare skull the share he deserves." oh, muse! drive the war far from our city and come to preside over our dances, if you love me; come and celebrate the nuptials of the gods, the banquets of us mortals and the festivals of the fortunate; these are the themes that inspire thy most poetic songs. and should carcinus come to beg thee for admission with his sons to thy chorus, refuse all traffic with them; remember they are but gelded birds, stork-necked dancers, mannikins about as tall as a pat of goat's dung, in fact machine-made poets.[ ] contrary to all expectation, the father has at last managed to finish a piece, but he owns himself a cat strangled it one fine evening.[ ] such are the songs[ ] with which the muse with the glorious hair inspires the able poet and which enchant the assembled populace, when the spring swallow twitters beneath the foliage;[ ] but the god spare us from the chorus of morsimus and that of melanthius![ ] oh! what a bitter discordancy grated upon my ears that day when the tragic chorus was directed by this same melanthius and his brother, these two gorgons,[ ] these two harpies, the plague of the seas, whose gluttonous bellies devour the entire race of fishes, these followers of old women, these goats with their stinking arm-pits. oh! muse, spit upon them abundantly and keep the feast gaily with me. trygaeus. ah! 'tis a rough job getting to the gods! my legs are as good as broken through it. how small you were, to be sure, when seen from heaven! you had all the appearance too of being great rascals; but seen close, you look even worse. servant. is that you, master? trygaeus. so i have been told. servant. what has happened to you? trygaeus. my legs pain me; it is such a plaguey long journey. servant. oh! do tell me.... trygaeus. what? servant. did you see any other man besides yourself strolling about in heaven? trygaeus. no, only the souls of two or three dithyrambic poets. servant. what were they doing up there? trygaeus. they were seeking to catch some lyric exordia as they flew by immersed in the billows of the air. servant. is it true, what they tell us, that men are turned into stars after death? trygaeus. quite true. servant. then who is that star i see over yonder? trygaeus. that is ion of chios,[ ] the author of an ode beginning "morning"; as soon as ever he got to heaven, they called him "the morning star." servant. and those stars like sparks, that plough up the air as they dart across the sky?[ ] trygaeus. they are the rich leaving the feast with a lantern and a light inside it. but hurry up, show this young girl into my house, clean out the bath, heat some water and prepare the nuptial couch for herself and me. when 'tis done, come back here; meanwhile i am off to present this one to the senate. servant. but where then did you get these pretty chattels? trygaeus. where? why in heaven. servant. i would not give more than an obolus for gods who have got to keeping brothels like us mere mortals. trygaeus. they are not all so, but there are some up there too who live by this trade. servant. come, that's rich! but i bethink me, shall i give her something to eat? trygaeus. no, for she would neither touch bread nor cake; she is used to licking ambrosia at the table of the gods. servant. well, we can give her something to lick down here too.[ ] chorus. here is a truly happy old man, as far as i can judge. trygaeus. ah! but what shall i be, when you see me presently dressed for the wedding? chorus. made young again by love and scented with perfumes, your lot will be one we all shall envy. trygaeus. and when i lie beside her and caress her bosoms? chorus. oh! then you will be happier than those spinning-tops who call carcinus their father.[ ] trygaeus. and i well deserve it; have i not bestridden a beetle to save the greeks, who now, thanks to me, can make love at their ease and sleep peacefully on their farms? servant. the girl has quitted the bath; she is charming from head to foot, both belly and buttocks; the cake is baked and they are kneading the sesame-biscuit;[ ] nothing is lacking but the bridegroom's penis. trygaeus. let us first hasten to lodge theoria in the hands of the senate. servant. but tell me, who is this woman? trygaeus. why, 'tis theoria, with whom we used formerly to go to brauron,[ ] to get tipsy and frolic. i had the greatest trouble to get hold of her. servant. ah! you charmer! what pleasure your pretty bottom will afford me every four years! trygaeus. let us see, who of you is steady enough to be trusted by the senate with the care of this charming wench? hi! you, friend! what are you drawing there? servant. i am drawing the plan of the tent i wish to erect for myself on the isthmus.[ ] trygaeus. come, who wishes to take the charge of her? no one? come, theoria, i am going to lead you into the midst of the spectators and confide you to their care. servant. ah! there is one who makes a sign to you. trygaeus. who is it? servant. 'tis ariphrades. he wishes to take her home at once. trygaeus. no, i'm sure he shan't. he would soon have her done for, licking up all her life juice.[ ] come, theoria, put down all this gear.[ ]--senate, prytanes, look upon theoria and see what precious blessings i place in your hands.[ ] hasten to raise its limbs and to immolate the victim. admire the fine chimney,[ ] it is quite black with smoke, for 'twas here that the senate did their cooking before the war. now that you have found theoria again, you can start the most charming games from to-morrow, wrestling with her on the ground, either on your hands and feet, or you can lay her on her side, or stand before her with bent knees, or, well rubbed with oil, you can boldly enter the lists, as in the pancratium, belabouring your foe with blows from your fist or otherwise.[ ] the next day you will celebrate equestrian games, in which the riders will ride side by side, or else the chariot teams, thrown one on top of another, panting and whinnying, will roll and knock against each other on the ground, while other rivals, thrown out of their seats, will fall before reaching the goal, utterly exhausted by their efforts.--come, prytanes, take theoria. oh! look how graciously yonder fellow has received her; you would not have been in such a hurry to introduce her to the senate, if nothing were coming to you through it;[ ] you would not have failed to plead some holiday as an excuse. chorus. such a man as you assures the happiness of all his fellow-citizens. trygaeus. when you are gathering your vintages you will prize me even better. chorus. e'en from to-day we hail you as the deliverer of mankind. trygaeus. wait until you have drunk a beaker of new wine, before you appraise my true merits. chorus. excepting the gods, there is none greater than yourself, and that will ever be our opinion. trygaeus. yea, trygaeus of athmonia has deserved well of you, he has freed both husbandman and craftsman from the most cruel ills; he has vanquished hyperbolus. chorus. well then, what must we do now? trygaeus. you must offer pots of green-stuff to the goddess to consecrate her altars. chorus. pots of green-stuff[ ] as we do to poor hermes--and even he thinks the fare but mean? trygaeus. what will you offer then? a fatted bull? chorus. oh, no! i don't want to start bellowing the battle-cry.[ ] trygaeus. a great fat swine then? chorus. no, no. trygaeus. why not? chorus. we don't want any of the swinishness of theagenes.[ ] trygaeus. what other victim do you prefer then? chorus. a sheep. trygaeus. a sheep? chorus. yes. trygaeus. but you must give the word the ionic form. chorus. purposely. so that if anyone in the assembly says, "we must go to war," all may start bleating in alarm, "oï, oï."[ ] trygaeus. a brilliant idea. chorus. and we shall all be lambs one toward the other, yea, and milder still toward the allies. trygaeus. then go for the sheep and haste to bring it back with you; i will prepare the altar for the sacrifice. chorus. how everything succeeds to our wish, when the gods are willing and fortune favours us! how opportunely everything falls out. trygaeus. nothing could be truer, for look! here stands the altar all ready at my door. chorus. hurry, hurry, for the winds are fickle; make haste, while the divine will is set on stopping this cruel war and is showering on us the most striking benefits. trygaeus. here is the basket of barley-seed mingled with salt, the chaplet and the sacred knife; and there is the fire; so we are only waiting for the sheep. chorus. hasten, hasten, for, if chaeris sees you, he will come without bidding, he and his flute; and when you see him puffing and panting and out of breath, you will have to give him something. trygaeus. come, seize the basket and take the lustral water and hurry to circle round the altar to the right. servant. there! 'tis done. what is your next bidding? trygaeus. hold! i take this fire-brand first and plunge it into the water. servant. be quick! be quick! sprinkle the altar. trygaeus. give me some barley-seed, purify yourself and hand me the basin; then scatter the rest of the barley among the audience. servant. 'tis done. trygaeus. you have thrown it? servant. yes, by hermes! and all the spectators have had their share. trygaeus. but not the women? servant. oh! their husbands will give it them this evening.[ ] trygaeus. let us pray! who is here? are there any good men?[ ] servant. come, give, so that i may sprinkle these. faith! they are indeed good, brave men. trygaeus. you believe so? servant. i am sure, and the proof of it is that we have flooded them with lustral water and they have not budged an inch.[ ] trygaeus. come then, to prayers; to prayers, quick!--oh! peace, mighty queen, venerated goddess, thou, who presidest over choruses and at nuptials, deign to accept the sacrifices we offer thee. servant. receive it, greatly honoured mistress, and behave not like the coquettes, who half open the door to entice the gallants, draw back when they are stared at, to return once more if a man passes on. but do not act like this to us. trygaeus. no, but like an honest woman, show thyself to thy worshippers, who are worn with regretting thee all these thirteen years. hush the noise of battle, be a true lysimacha to us.[ ] put an end to this tittle-tattle, to this idle babble, that set us defying one another. cause the greeks once more to taste the pleasant beverage of friendship and temper all hearts with the gentle feeling of forgiveness. make excellent commodities flow to our markets, fine heads of garlic, early cucumbers, apples, pomegranates and nice little cloaks for the slaves; make them bring geese, ducks, pigeons and larks from boeotia and baskets of eels from lake copaïs; we shall all rush to buy them, disputing their possession with morychus, teleas, glaucetes and every other glutton. melanthius[ ] will arrive on the market last of all; 'twill be, "no more eels, all sold!" and then he'll start a-groaning and exclaiming as in his monologue of medea,[ ] "i am dying, i am dying! alas! i have let those hidden in the beet escape me!"[ ] and won't we laugh? these are the wishes, mighty goddess, which we pray thee to grant. servant. take the knife and slaughter the sheep like a finished cook. trygaeus. no, the goddess does not wish it.[ ] servant. and why not? trygaeus. blood cannot please peace, so let us spill none upon her altar. therefore go and sacrifice the sheep in the house, cut off the legs and bring them here; thus the carcase will be saved for the choragus. chorus. you, who remain here, get chopped wood and everything needed for the sacrifice ready. trygaeus. don't i look like a diviner preparing his mystic fire? chorus. undoubtedly. will anything that it behoves a wise man to know escape you? don't you know all that a man should know, who is distinguished for his wisdom and inventive daring? trygaeus. there! the wood catches. its smoke blinds poor stilbides.[ ] i am now going to bring the table and thus be my own slave. chorus. you have braved a thousand dangers to save your sacred town. all honour to you! your glory will be ever envied. servant. hold! here are the legs, place them upon the altar. for myself, i mean to go back to the entrails and the cakes. trygaeus. i'll see to those; i want you here. servant. well then, here i am. do you think i have been long? trygaeus. just get this roasted. ah! who is this man, crowned with laurel, who is coming to me? servant. he has a self-important look; is he some diviner? trygaeus. no, i' faith! 'tis hierocles. servant. ah! that oracle-monger from oreus.[ ] what is he going to tell us? trygaeus. evidently he is coming to oppose the peace. servant. no, 'tis the odour of the fat that attracts him. trygaeus. let us appear not to see him. servant. very well. hierocles. what sacrifice is this? to what god are you offering it? trygaeus (_to the servant_). silence!--(_aloud._) look after the roasting and keep your hands off the meat. hierocles. to whom are you sacrificing? answer me. ah! the tail[ ] is showing favourable omens. servant. aye, very favourable, oh, loved and mighty peace! hierocles. come, cut off the first offering[ ] and make the oblation. trygaeus. 'tis not roasted enough. hierocles. yea, truly, 'tis done to a turn. trygaeus. mind your own business, friend! (_to the servant._) cut away. where is the table? bring the libations. hierocles. the tongue is cut separately. trygaeus. we know all that. but just listen to one piece of advice. hierocles. and that is? trygaeus. don't talk, for 'tis divine peace to whom we are sacrificing. hierocles. oh! wretched mortals, oh, you idiots! trygaeus. keep such ugly terms for yourself. hierocles. what! you are so ignorant you don't understand the will of the gods and you make a treaty, you, who are men, with apes, who are full of malice![ ] trygaeus. ha, ha, ha! hierocles. what are you laughing at? trygaeus. ha, ha! your apes amuse me! hierocles. you simple pigeons, you trust yourselves to foxes, who are all craft, both in mind and heart. trygaeus. oh, you trouble-maker! may your lungs get as hot as this meat! hierocles. nay, nay! if only the nymphs had not fooled bacis, and bacis mortal men; and if the nymphs had not tricked bacis a second time[ ].... trygaeus. may the plague seize you, if you won't stop wearying us with your bacis! hierocles. ... it would not have been written in the book of fate that the bonds of peace must be broken; but first.... trygaeus. the meat must be dusted with salt. hierocles. ... it does not please the blessed gods that we should stop the war until the wolf uniteth with the sheep. trygaeus. how, you cursed animal, could the wolf ever unite with the sheep? hierocles. as long as the wood-bug gives off a fetid odour, when it flies; as long as the noisy bitch is forced by nature to litter blind pups, so long shall peace be forbidden. trygaeus. then what should be done? not to stop the war would be to leave it to the decision of chance which of the two people should suffer the most, whereas by uniting under a treaty, we share the empire of greece. hierocles. you will never make the crab walk straight. trygaeus. you shall no longer be fed at the prytaneum; the war done, oracles are not wanted. hierocles. you will never smooth the rough spikes of the hedgehog. trygaeus. will you never stop fooling the athenians? hierocles. what oracle ordered you to burn these joints of mutton in honour of the gods? trygaeus. this grand oracle of homer's: "thus vanished the dark war-clouds and we offered a sacrifice to new-born peace. when the flame had consumed the thighs of the victim and its inwards had appeased our hunger, we poured out the libations of wine." 'twas i who arranged the sacred rites, but none offered the shining cup to the diviner.[ ] hierocles. i care little for that. 'tis not the sibyl who spoke it.[ ] trygaeus. wise homer has also said: "he who delights in the horrors of civil war has neither country nor laws nor home." what noble words! hierocles. beware lest the kite turn your brain and rob.... trygaeus. look out, slave! this oracle threatens our meat. quick, pour the libation, and give me some of the inwards. hierocles. i too will help myself to a bit, if you like. trygaeus. the libation! the libation! hierocles. pour out also for me and give me some of this meat. trygaeus. no, the blessed gods won't allow it yet; let us drink; and as for you, get you gone, for 'tis their will. mighty peace! stay ever in our midst. hierocles. bring the tongue hither. trygaeus. relieve us of your own. hierocles. the libation. trygaeus. here! and this into the bargain (_strikes him_). hierocles. you will not give me any meat? trygaeus. we cannot give you any until the wolf unites with the sheep. hierocles. i will embrace your knees. trygaeus. 'tis lost labour, good fellow; you will never smooth the rough spikes of the hedgehog.... come, spectators, join us in our feast. hierocles. and what am i to do? trygaeus. you? go and eat the sibyl. hierocles. no, by the earth! no, you shall not eat without me; if you do not give, i take; 'tis common property. trygaeus (_to the servant_). strike, strike this bacis, this humbugging soothsayer. hierocles. i take to witness.... trygaeus. and i also, that you are a glutton and an impostor. hold him tight and beat the impostor with a stick. servant. you look to that; i will snatch the skin from him, which he has stolen from us.[ ] are you going to let go that skin, you priest from hell! do you hear! oh! what a fine crow has come from oreus! stretch your wings quickly for elymnium.[ ] chorus. oh! joy, joy! no more helmet, no more cheese nor onions![ ] no, i have no passion for battles; what i love, is to drink with good comrades in the corner by the fire when good dry wood, cut in the height of the summer, is crackling; it is to cook pease on the coals and beechnuts among the embers; 'tis to kiss our pretty thracian[ ] while my wife is at the bath. nothing is more pleasing, when the rain is sprouting our sowings, than to chat with some friend, saying, "tell me, comarchides, what shall we do? i would willingly drink myself, while the heavens are watering our fields. come, wife, cook three measures of beans, adding to them a little wheat, and give us some figs. syra! call manes off the fields, 'tis impossible to prune the vine or to align the ridges, for the ground is too wet to-day. let someone bring me the thrush and those two chaffinches; there were also some curds and four pieces of hare, unless the cat stole them last evening, for i know not what the infernal noise was that i heard in the house. serve up three of the pieces for me, slave, and give the fourth to my father. go and ask aeschinades for some myrtle branches with berries on them, and then, for 'tis the same road, you will invite charinades to come and drink with me to the honour of the gods who watch over our crops." when the grasshopper sings its dulcet tune, i love to see the lemnian vines beginning to ripen, for 'tis the earliest plant of all. i love likewise to watch the fig filling out, and when it has reached maturity i eat with appreciation and exclaim, "oh! delightful season!" then too i bruise some thyme and infuse it in water. indeed i grow a great deal fatter passing the summer this way than in watching a cursed captain with his three plumes and his military cloak of a startling crimson (he calls it true sardian purple), which he takes care to dye himself with cyzicus saffron in a battle; then he is the first to run away, shaking his plumes like a great yellow prancing cock,[ ] while i am left to watch the nets.[ ] once back again in athens, these brave fellows behave abominably; they write down these, they scratch through others, and this backwards and forwards two or three times at random. the departure is set for to-morrow, and some citizen has brought no provisions, because he didn't know he had to go; he stops in front of the statue of pandion,[ ] reads his name, is dumbfounded and starts away at a run, weeping bitter tears. the townsfolk are less ill-used, but that is how the husbandmen are treated by these men of war, the hated of the gods and of men, who know nothing but how to throw away their shield. for this reason, if it please heaven, i propose to call these rascals to account, for they are lions in times of peace, but sneaking foxes when it comes to fighting. trygaeus. oh! oh! what a crowd for the nuptial feast! here! dust the tables with this crest, which is good for nothing else now. halloa! produce the cakes, the thrushes, plenty of good jugged hare and the little loaves. a sickle-maker. trygaeus, where is trygaeus? trygaeus. i am cooking the thrushes. sickle-maker. trygaeus, my best of friends, what a fine stroke of business you have done for me by bringing back peace! formerly my sickles would not have sold at an obolus apiece, to-day i am being paid fifty drachmas for every one. and here is a neighbour who is selling his casks for the country at three drachmae each. so come, trygaeus, take as many sickles and casks as you will for nothing. accept them for nothing; 'tis because of our handsome profits on our sales that we offer you these wedding presents. trygaeus. thanks. put them all down inside there, and come along quick to the banquet. ah! do you see that armourer yonder coming with a wry face? a crest-maker. alas! alas! trygaeus, you have ruined me utterly. trygaeus. what! won't the crests go any more, friend? crest-maker. you have killed my business, my livelihood, and that of this poor lance-maker too. trygaeus. come, come, what are you asking for these two crests? crest-maker. what do you bid for them? trygaeus. what do i bid? oh! i am ashamed to say. still, as the clasp is of good workmanship, i would give two, even three measures of dried figs; i could use 'em for dusting the table. crest-maker. all right, tell them to bring me the dried figs; 'tis always better than nothing. trygaeus. take them away, be off with your crests and get you gone; they are moulting, they are losing all their hair; i would not give a single fig for them. a breastplate-maker. good gods, what am i going to do with this fine ten-minae breast-plate, which is so splendidly made? trygaeus. oh, you will lose nothing over it. breastplate-maker. i will sell it you at cost price. trygaeus. 'twould be very useful as a night-stool.... breastplate-maker. cease your insults, both to me and my wares. trygaeus. ... if propped on three stones. look, 'tis admirable. breastplate-maker. but how can you wipe, idiot? trygaeus. i can pass one hand through here, and the other there, and so.... breastplate-maker. what! do you wipe with both hands? trygaeus. aye, so that i may not be accused of robbing the state, by blocking up an oar-hole in the galley.[ ] breastplate-maker. so you would pay ten minae[ ] for a night-stool? trygaeus. undoubtedly, you rascal. do you think i would sell my rump for a thousand drachmae?[ ] breastplate-maker. come, have the money paid over to me. trygaeus. no, friend; i find it hurts me to sit on. take it away, i won't buy. a trumpet-maker. what is to be done with this trumpet, for which i gave sixty drachmae the other day? trygaeus. pour lead into the hollow and fit a good, long stick to the top; and you will have a balanced cottabos.[ ] trumpet-maker. ha! would you mock me? trygaeus. well, here's another notion. pour in lead as i said, add here a dish hung on strings, and you will have a balance for weighing the figs which you give your slaves in the fields. a helmet-maker. cursed fate! i am ruined. here are helmets, for which i gave a mina each. what am i to do with them? who will buy them? trygaeus. go and sell them to the egyptians; they will do for measuring loosening medicines.[ ] a spear-maker. ah! poor helmet-maker, things are indeed in a bad way. trygaeus. that man has no cause for complaint. spear-maker. but helmets will be no more used. trygaeus. let him learn to fit a handle to them and he can sell them for more money.[ ] spear-maker. let us be off, comrade. trygaeus. no, i want to buy these spears. spear-maker. what will you give? trygaeus. if they could be split in two, i would take them at a drachma per hundred to use as vine-props. spear-maker. the insolent dog! let us go, friend. trygaeus. ah! here come the guests, children from the table to relieve themselves; i fancy they also want to hum over what they will be singing presently. hi! child! what do you reckon to sing? stand there and give me the opening line. the son of lamachus. "glory to the young warriors...." trygaeus. oh! leave off about your young warriors, you little wretch; we are at peace and you are an idiot and a rascal. son of lamachus. "the skirmish begins, the hollow bucklers clash against each other."[ ] trygaeus. bucklers! leave me in peace with your bucklers. son of lamachus. "and then there came groanings and shouts of victory." trygaeus. groanings! ah! by bacchus! look out for yourself, you cursed squaller, if you start wearying us again with your groanings and hollow bucklers. son of lamachus. then what should i sing? tell me what pleases you. trygaeus. "'tis thus they feasted on the flesh of oxen," or something similar, as, for instance, "everything that could tickle the palate was placed on the table." son of lamachus. "'tis thus they feasted on the flesh of oxen and, tired of warfare, unharnessed their foaming steeds." trygaeus. that's splendid; tired of warfare, they seat themselves at table; sing, sing to us how they still go on eating after they are satiated. son of lamachus. "the meal over, they girded themselves ..." trygaeus. with good wine, no doubt? son of lamachus. "... with armour and rushed forth from the towers, and a terrible shout arose." trygaeus. get you gone, you little scapegrace, you and your battles! you sing of nothing but warfare. who is your father then? son of lamachus. my father? trygaeus. why yes, your father. son of lamachus. i am lamachus' son. trygaeus. oh! oh! i could indeed have sworn, when i was listening to you, that you were the son of some warrior who dreams of nothing but wounds and bruises, of some boulomachus or clausimachus;[ ] go and sing your plaguey songs to the spearmen.... where is the son of cleonymus? sing me something before going back to the feast. i am at least certain he will not sing of battles, for his father is far too careful a man. son of cleonymus. "an inhabitant of saïs is parading with the spotless shield which i regret to say i have thrown into a thicket."[ ] trygaeus. tell me, you little good-for-nothing, are you singing that for your father? son or cleonymus. "but i saved my life." trygaeus. and dishonoured your family. but let us go in; i am very certain, that being the son of such a father, you will never forget this song of the buckler. you, who remain to the feast, 'tis your duty to devour dish after dish and not to ply empty jaws. come, put heart into the work and eat with your mouths full. for, believe me, poor friends, white teeth are useless furniture, if they chew nothing. chorus. never fear; thanks all the same for your good advice. trygaeus. you, who yesterday were dying of hunger, come, stuff yourselves with this fine hare-stew; 'tis not every day that we find cakes lying neglected. eat, eat, or i predict you will soon regret it. chorus. silence! keep silence! here is the bride about to appear! take nuptial torches and let all rejoice and join in our songs. then, when we have danced, clinked our cups and thrown hyperbolus through the doorway, we will carry back all our farming tools to the fields and shall pray the gods to give wealth to the greeks and to cause us all to gather in an abundant barley harvest, enjoy a noble vintage, to grant that we may choke with good figs, that our wives may prove fruitful, that in fact we may recover all our lost blessings, and that the sparkling fire may be restored to the hearth. trygaeus. come, wife, to the fields and seek, my beauty, to brighten and enliven my nights. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! chorus. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! oh! thrice happy man, who so well deserve your good fortune! trygaeus. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! chorus. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! first semi-chorus. what shall we do to her? second semi-chorus. what shall we do to her? first semi-chorus. we will gather her kisses. second semi-chorus. we will gather her kisses. chorus. come, comrades, we who are in the first row, let us pick up the bridegroom and carry him in triumph. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! trygaeus. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! chorus. you shall have a fine house, no cares and the finest of figs. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! trygaeus. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! chorus. the bridegroom's fig is great and thick; the bride's is very soft and tender. trygaeus. while eating and drinking deep draughts of wine, continue to repeat: oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! chorus. oh! hymen! oh! hymenaeus! trygaeus. farewell, farewell, my friends. all who come with me shall have cakes galore. * * * * * finis of "peace" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] an obscene allusion, the faeces of catamites being 'well ground' from the treatment they are in the habit of submitting to. [ ] 'peace' was no doubt produced at the festival of the apaturia, which was kept at the end of october, a period when strangers were numerous in athens. [ ] the winged steed of perseus--an allusion to a lost tragedy of euripides, in which bellerophon was introduced riding on pegasus. [ ] fearing that if it caught a whiff from earth to its liking, the beetle might descend from the highest heaven to satisfy itself. [ ] the persians and the spartans were not then allied as the scholiast states, since a treaty between them was only concluded in b.c., i.e. eight years after the production of 'peace'; the great king, however, was trying to derive advantages out of the dissensions in greece. [ ] _go to the crows_, a proverbial expression equivalent to our _go to the devil_. [ ] aesop tells us that the eagle and the beetle were at war; the eagle devoured the beetle's young and the latter got into its nest and tumbled out its eggs. on this the eagle complained to zeus, who advised it to lay its eggs in his bosom; but the beetle flew up to the abode of zeus, who, forgetful of the eagle's eggs, at once rose to chase off the objectionable insect. the eggs fell to earth and were smashed to bits. [ ] pegasus is introduced by euripides both in his 'andromeda' and his 'bellerophon.' [ ] boats, called 'beetles,' doubtless because in form they resembled these insects, were built at naxos. [ ] nature had divided the piraeus into three basins--cantharos, aphrodisium and zea; [greek: kántharos] is greek for a dung-beetle. [ ] in allusion to euripides' fondness for introducing lame heroes in his plays. [ ] an allusion to the proverbial nickname applied to the chians--[greek: chios apopat_on], "shitting chian." on account of their notoriously pederastic habits, the inhabitants of this island were known throughout greece as '_loose-arsed_' chians, and therefore always on the point of voiding their faeces. there is a further joke, of course, in connection with the hundred and one frivolous pretexts which the athenians invented for exacting contributions from the maritime allies. [ ] masters of pylos and sphacteria, the athenians had brought home the three hundred prisoners taken in the latter place in b.c.; the spartans had several times sent envoys to offer peace and to demand back both pylos and the prisoners, but the athenian pride had caused these proposals to be long refused. finally the prisoners had been given up in b.c., but the war was continued nevertheless. [ ] an important town in eastern laconia on the argolic gulf, celebrated for a temple where a festival was held annually in honour of achilles. it had been taken and pillaged by the athenians in the second year of the peloponnesian war, b.c. as he utters this imprecation, war throws some leeks, [greek: prasa], the root-word of the name prasiae, into his mortar. [ ] war throws some garlic into his mortar as emblematical of the city of megara, where it was grown in abundance. [ ] because the smell of bruised garlic causes the eyes to water. [ ] he throws cheese into the mortar as emblematical of sicily, on account of its rich pastures. [ ] emblematical of athens. the honey of mount hymettus was famous. [ ] cleon, who had lately fallen before amphipolis, in b.c. [ ] an island in the aegean sea, on the coast of thrace and opposite the mouth of the hebrus; the mysteries are said to have found their first home in this island, where the cabirian gods were worshipped; this cult, shrouded in deep mystery to even the initiates themselves, has remained an almost insoluble problem for the modern critic. it was said that the wishes of the initiates were always granted, and they were feared as to-day the _jettatori_ (spell-throwers, casters of the evil eye) in sicily are feared. [ ] brasidas perished in thrace in the same battle as cleon at amphipolis, b.c. [ ] an athenian general as ambitious as he was brave. in b.c. he had failed in an enterprise against heraclea, a storm having destroyed his fleet. since then he had distinguished himself in several actions, and was destined, some years later, to share the command of the expedition to sicily with alcibiades and nicias. [ ] meaning, to start on a military expedition. [ ] cleon. [ ] the chorus insist on the conventional choric dance. [ ] one of the most favourite games with the greeks. a stick was set upright in the ground and to this the beam of a balance was attached by its centre. two vessels were hung from the extremities of the beam so as to balance; beneath these two other and larger dishes were placed and filled with water, and in the middle of each a brazen figure, called manes, was stood. the game consisted in throwing drops of wine from an agreed distance into one or the other vessel, so that, dragged downwards by the weight of the liquor, it bumped against manes. [ ] a general of austere habits; he disposed of all his property to pay the cost of a naval expedition, in which he beat the fleet of the foe off the promontory of rhium in b.c. [ ] the lyceum was a portico ornamented with paintings and surrounded with gardens, in which military exercises took place. [ ] a citizen of miletus, who betrayed his country to the people of priené. when asked what he purposed, he replied, "nothing bad," which expression had therefore passed into a proverb. [ ] hermes was the god of chance. [ ] as the soldiers had to do when starting on an expedition. [ ] that is, you are pedicated. [ ] the initiated were thought to enjoy greater happiness after death. [ ] he summons zeus to reveal trygaeus' conspiracy. [ ] an athenian captain, who later had the recall of alcibiades decreed by the athenian people; in 'the birds' aristophanes represents him as a cowardly braggart. he was the reactionary leader who established the oligarchical government of the four hundred, b.c., after the failure of the syracusan expedition. [ ] among other attributes, hermes was the god of thieves. [ ] alluding to the eclipses of the sun and the moon. [ ] the panathenaea were dedicated to athené, the mysteries to demeter, the dipolia to zeus, the adonia to aphrodité and adonis. trygaeus promises hermes that he shall be worshipped in the place of all the other gods. [ ] the pun here cannot be kept. the word [greek: paian], paean, resembles [greek: paiein], to strike; hence the word, as recalling the blows and wounds of the war, seems of ill omen to trygaeus. [ ] the device on his shield was a gorgon's head. (_see_ 'the acharnians.') [ ] both sparta and athens had sought the alliance of the argives; they had kept themselves strictly neutral and had received pay from both sides. but, the year after the production of 'the wasps,' they openly joined athens, had attacked epidaurus and got cut to pieces by the spartans. [ ] these are the spartan prisoners from sphacteria, who were lying in gaol at athens. they were chained fast to large beams of wood. [ ] 'twas want of force, not want of will. they had suffered more than any other people from the war. (_see_ 'the acharnians.') [ ] meaning, look chiefly to your fleet. this was the counsel that themistocles frequently gave the athenians. [ ] a metaphor referring to the abundant vintages that peace would assure. [ ] the goddess of fruits. [ ] aristophanes personifies under this name the sacred ceremonies in general which peace would allow to be celebrated with due pomp. opora and theoria come on the stage in the wake of peace, clothed and decked out as courtesans. [ ] aristophanes has already shown us the husbandmen and workers in peaceful trades pulling at the rope to extricate peace, while the armourers hindered them by pulling the other way. [ ] an allusion to lamachus' shield. [ ] having been commissioned to execute a statue of athené, phidias was accused of having stolen part of the gold given him out of the public treasury for its decoration. rewarded for his work by calumny and banishment, he resolved to make a finer statue than his athené, and executed one for the temple of elis, that of the olympian zeus, which was considered one of the wonders of the world. [ ] he had issued a decree, which forbade the admission of any megarian on attic soil, and also all trade with that people. the megarians, who obtained all their provisions from athens, were thus almost reduced to starvation. [ ] that is, the vineyards were ravaged from the very outset of the war, and this increased the animosity. [ ] driven in from the country parts by the lacedaemonian invaders. [ ] the demagogues, who distributed the slender dole given to the poor, and by that means exercised undue power over them. [ ] meaning, the side of the spartans. [ ] cleon. [ ] it was hermes who conducted the souls of the dead down to the lower regions. [ ] the spartans had thrice offered to make peace after the pylos disaster. [ ] i.e. dominated by cleon. [ ] there is a pun here, that cannot be rendered, between [greek: apobolimaios], which means, _one who throws away his weapons_, and [greek: upobolimaios], which signifies, _a supposititious child_. [ ] simonides was very avaricious, and sold his pen to the highest bidder. it seems that sophocles had also started writing for gain. [ ] i.e. he would recoil from no risk to turn an honest penny. [ ] a comic poet as well known for his love of wine as for his writings; he died in b.c., the first year of the war, at the age of ninety-seven. [ ] opora was the goddess of fruits. [ ] the scholiast says fruit may be eaten with impunity in great quantities if care is taken to drink a decoction of this herb afterwards. [ ] theoria is confided to the care of the senate, because it was this body who named the [greek: the_orhoi], deputies appointed to go and consult the oracles beyond the attic borders or to be present at feasts and games. [ ] the great festivals, e.g. the dionysia, lasted three days. those in honour of the return of peace, which was so much desired, could not last a shorter time. [ ] in spite of what he says, aristophanes has not always disdained this sort of low comedy--for instance, his heracles in 'the birds.' [ ] a celebrated athenian courtesan of aristophanes' day. [ ] cleon. these four verses are here repeated from the parabasis of 'the wasps,' produced b.c., the year before this play. [ ] shafts aimed at certain poets, who used their renown as a means of seducing young men to grant them pederastic favours. [ ] the poet supplied everything needful for the production of his piece--vases, dresses, masks, etc. [ ] aristophanes was bald himself, it would seem. [ ] carcinus and his three sons were both poets and dancers. (_see_ the closing scene of 'the wasps.') perhaps relying little on the literary value of their work, it seems that they sought to please the people by the magnificence of its staging. [ ] he had written a piece called 'the mice,' which he succeeded with great difficulty in getting played, but it met with no success. [ ] this passage really follows on the invocation, "_oh, muse! drive the war_," etc., from which indeed it is only divided by the interpolated criticism aimed at carcinus. [ ] the scholiast informs us that these verses are borrowed from a poet of the sixth century b.c. [ ] sons of philocles, of the family of aeschylus, tragic writers, derided by aristophanes as bad poets and notorious gluttons. [ ] the gorgons were represented with great teeth, and therefore the same name was given to gluttons. the harpies, to whom the two voracious poets are also compared, were monsters with the face of a woman, the body of a vulture and hooked beak and claws. [ ] a tragic and dithyrambic poet, who had written many pieces, which had met with great success at athens. [ ] the shooting stars. [ ] that is, men's tools;--we can set her to 'fellate.' [ ] it has already been mentioned that the sons of carcinus were dancers. [ ] it was customary at weddings, says menander, to give the bride a sesame-cake as an emblem of fruitfulness, because sesame is the most fruitful of all seeds. [ ] an attic town on the east coast, noted for a magnificent temple, in which stood the statue of artemis, which orestes and iphigenia had brought from the tauric chersonese and also for the brauronia, festivals that were celebrated every four years in honour of the goddess. this was one of the festivals which the attic people kept with the greatest pomp, and was an occasion for debauchery. [ ] competitors intending to take part in the great olympic, isthmian and other games took with them a tent, wherein to camp in the open. further, there is an obscene allusion which the actor indicates by gesture, pointing to the girl's privates, signifying there is the lodging where he would fain find a delightful abode. the 'isthmus' is the perineum, the narrow space betwixt _anus_ and _cunnus_. [ ] he was a 'cunnilingue,' as we gather also from what aristophanes says of his infamous habits in the 'knights.' [ ] doubtless the vessels and other sacrificial objects and implements with which theoria was laden in her character of presiding deity at religious ceremonies. [ ] the whole passage is full of obscene _double entendres_. theoria throughout is spoken of in words applicable to either of her twofold character--as a sacred, religious feast, and as a lady of pleasure. [ ] where the meats were cooked after sacrifice; trygaeus points to theoria's privates, marking the secondary obscene sense he means to convey. [ ] "or otherwise"--that is, with the standing penis. the whole sentence contains a series of allusions to different 'modes of love.' [ ] one of the offices of the prytanes was to introduce those who asked admission to the senate, but it would seem that none could obtain this favour without payment. without this, a thousand excuses would be made; for instance, it would be a public holiday, and consequently the senate could receive no one. as there was some festival nearly every day, he whose purse would not open might have to wait a very long while. [ ] this was only offered to lesser deities. [ ] in the greek we have a play upon the similarity of the words, [greek: bous], a bull, and [greek: boan], to shout the battle cry. [ ] theagenes, of the piraeus, a hideous, coarse, debauched and evil-living character of the day. [ ] that is the vocative of [greek: oïs], [greek: oïos], the ionic form of the word; in attic greek it is contracted throughout--[greek: ois], [greek: oios], etc. [ ] an obscene jest. the greek word, says the scholiast, means both barley and the male organ. [ ] before sacrificing, the officiating person asked, "_who is here?_" and those present answered, "_many good men._" [ ] the actors forming the chorus are meant here. [ ] lysimacha is derived from [greek: luein], to put an end to, and [greek: mach_e], fight. [ ] a tragic poet, reputed a great gourmand. [ ] a tragedy by melanthius. [ ] eels were cooked with beet.--a parody on some verses in the 'medea' of melanthius. [ ] as a matter of fact, the sicyonians, who celebrated the festival of peace on the sixteenth day of the month of hecatombeon (july), spilled no blood upon her altar. [ ] a celebrated diviner, who had accompanied the athenians on their expedition to sicily. thus the war was necessary to make his calling pay and the smoke of the sacrifice offered to peace must therefore be unpleasant to him. [ ] a town in euboea on the channel which separated that island from thessaly. [ ] when sacrificing, the tail was cut off the victim and thrown into the fire. from the way in which it burnt the inference was drawn as to whether or not the sacrifice was agreeable to the deity. [ ] this was the part that belonged to the priests and diviners. as one of the latter class, hierocles is in haste to see this piece cut off. [ ] the spartans. [ ] emphatic pathos, incomprehensible even to the diviner himself; this is a satire on the obscure style of the oracles. bacis was a famous boeotian diviner. [ ] of course this is not a _bona fide_ quotation, but a whimsical adaptation of various homeric verses; the last is a coinage of his own, and means, that he is to have no part, either in the flesh of the victim or in the wine of the libations. [ ] probably the sibyl of delphi is meant. [ ] the skin of the victim, that is to say. [ ] a temple of euboea, close to oreus. the servant means, "return where you came from." [ ] this was the soldier's usual ration when on duty. [ ] slaves often bore the name of the country of their birth. [ ] because of the new colour which fear had lent his chlamys. [ ] meaning, that he deserts his men in mid-campaign, leaving them to look after the enemy. [ ] ancient king of athens. this was one of the twelve statues, on the pedestals of which the names of the soldiers chosen for departure on service were written. the decrees were also placarded on them. [ ] the trierarchs stopped up some of the holes made for the oars, in order to reduce the number of rowers they had to supply for the galleys; they thus saved the wages of the rowers they dispensed with. [ ] the mina was equivalent to about £ s. [ ] which is the same thing, since a mina was worth a hundred drachmae. [ ] for _cottabos_ see note above, p. . [footnote . transcriber.] [ ] _syrmaea_, a kind of purgative syrup much used by the egyptians, made of antiscorbutic herbs, such as mustard, horse-radish, etc. [ ] as wine-pots or similar vessels. [ ] these verses and those which both trygaeus and the son of lamachus quote afterwards are borrowed from the 'iliad.' [ ] boulomachus is derived from [greek: boulesthai] and [greek: mach_e] to wish for battle; clausimachus from [greek: klaein] and [greek: mach_e], the tears that battles cost. the same root, [greek: mach_e], battle, is also contained in the name lamachus. [ ] a distich borrowed from archilochus, a celebrated poet of the seventh century b.c., born at paros, and the author of odes, satires, epigrams and elegies. he sang his own shame. 'twas in an expedition against saïs, not the town in egypt as the similarity in name might lead one to believe, but in thrace, that he had cast away his buckler. "a mighty calamity truly!" he says without shame. "i shall buy another." lysistrata introduction the 'lysistrata,' the third and concluding play of the war and peace series, was not produced till ten years later than its predecessor, the 'peace,' viz. in b.c. it is now the twenty-first year of the war, and there seems as little prospect of peace as ever. a desperate state of things demands a desperate remedy, and the poet proceeds to suggest a burlesque solution of the difficulty. the women of athens, led by lysistrata and supported by female delegates from the other states of hellas, determine to take matters into their own hands and force the men to stop the war. they meet in solemn conclave, and lysistrata expounds her scheme, the rigorous application to husbands and lovers of a self-denying ordinance--"we must refrain from the male organ altogether." every wife and mistress is to refuse all sexual favours whatsoever, till the men have come to terms of peace. in cases where the women _must_ yield 'par force majeure,' then it is to be with an ill grace and in such a way as to afford the minimum of gratification to their partner; they are to lie passive and take no more part in the amorous game than they are absolutely obliged to. by these means lysistrata assures them they will very soon gain their end. "if we sit indoors prettily dressed out in our best transparent silks and prettiest gewgaws, and with our 'mottes' all nicely depilated, their tools will stand up so stiff that they will be able to deny us nothing." such is the burden of her advice. after no little demur, this plan of campaign is adopted, and the assembled women take a solemn oath to observe the compact faithfully. meantime as a precautionary measure they seize the acropolis, where the state treasure is kept; the old men of the city assault the doors, but are repulsed by "the terrible regiment" of women. before long the device of the bold lysistrata proves entirely effective, peace is concluded, and the play ends with the hilarious festivities of the athenian and spartan plenipotentiaries in celebration of the event. this drama has a double chorus--of women and of old men, and much excellent fooling is got out of the fight for possession of the citadel between the two hostile bands; while the broad jokes and decidedly suggestive situations arising out of the general idea of the plot outlined above may be "better imagined than described." * * * * * lysistrata dramatis personae lysistrata. calonicÉ. myrrhinÉ. lampito. stratyllis. a magistrate. cinesias. a child. herald of the lacedaemonians. envoys of the lacedaemonians. polycharides. market loungers. a servant. an athenian citizen. chorus of old men. chorus of women. scene: in a public square at athens; afterwards before the gates of the acropolis, and finally within the precincts of the citadel. * * * * * lysistrata lysistrata (_alone_). ah! if only they had been invited to a bacchic revelling, or a feast of pan or aphrodité or genetyllis,[ ] why! the streets would have been impassable for the thronging tambourines! now there's never a woman here-ah! except my neighbour calonicé, whom i see approaching yonder.... good day, calonicé. calonicÉ. good day, lysistrata; but pray, why this dark, forbidding face, my dear? believe me, you don't look a bit pretty with those black lowering brows. lysistrata. oh! calonicé, my heart is on fire; i blush for our sex. men _will_ have it we are tricky and sly.... calonicÉ. and they are quite right, upon my word! lysistrata. yet, look you, when the women are summoned to meet for a matter of the last importance, they lie abed instead of coming. calonicÉ. oh! they will come, my dear; but 'tis not easy, you know, for women to leave the house. one is busy pottering about her husband; another is getting the servant up; a third is putting her child asleep, or washing the brat or feeding it. lysistrata. but i tell you, the business that calls them here is far and away more urgent. calonicÉ. and why _do_ you summon us, dear lysistrata? what is it all about? lysistrata. about a big affair.[ ] calonicÉ. and is it thick too? lysistrata. yes indeed, both big and great. calonicÉ. and we are not all on the spot! lysistrata. oh! if it were what you suppose, there would be never an absentee. no, no, it concerns a thing i have turned about and about this way and that of many sleepless nights. calonicÉ. it must be something mighty fine and subtle for you to have turned it about so! lysistrata. so fine, it means just this, greece saved by the women! calonicÉ. by women! why, its salvation hangs on a poor thread then! lysistrata. our country's fortunes depend on us--it is with us to undo utterly the peloponnesians.... calonicÉ. that would be a noble deed truly! lysistrata. to exterminate the boeotians to a man! calonicÉ. but surely you would spare the eels.[ ] lysistrata. for athens' sake i will never threaten so fell a doom; trust me for that. however, if the boeotian and peloponnesian women join us, greece is saved. calonicÉ. but how should women perform so wise and glorious an achievement, we women who dwell in the retirement of the household, clad in diaphanous garments of yellow silk and long flowing gowns, decked out with flowers and shod with dainty little slippers? lysistrata. nay, but those are the very sheet-anchors of our salvation--those yellow tunics, those scents and slippers, those cosmetics and transparent robes. calonicÉ. how so, pray? lysistrata. there is not a man will wield a lance against another ... calonicÉ. quick, i will get me a yellow tunic from the dyer's. lysistrata. ... or want a shield. calonicÉ. i'll run and put on a flowing gown. lysistrata. ... or draw a sword. calonicÉ. i'll haste and buy a pair of slippers this instant. lysistrata. now tell me, would not the women have done best to come? calonicÉ. why, they should have _flown_ here! lysistrata. ah! my dear, you'll see that like true athenians, they will do everything too late[ ].... why, there's not a woman come from the shoreward parts, not one from salamis.[ ] calonicÉ. but i know for certain they embarked at daybreak. lysistrata. and the dames from acharnae![ ] why, i thought they would have been the very first to arrive. calonicÉ. theagenes wife[ ] at any rate is sure to come; she has actually been to consult hecaté.... but look! here are some arrivals--and there are more behind. ah! ha! now what countrywomen may they be? lysistrata. they are from anagyra.[ ] calonicÉ. yes! upon my word, 'tis a levy _en masse_ of all the female population of anagyra! myrrhinÉ. are we late, lysistrata? tell us, pray; what, not a word? lysistrata. i cannot say much for you, myrrhiné! you have not bestirred yourself overmuch for an affair of such urgency. myrrhinÉ i could not find my girdle in the dark. however, if the matter is so pressing, here we are; so speak. lysistrata. no, but let us wait a moment more, till the women of boeotia arrive and those from the peloponnese. myrrhinÉ yes, that is best.... ah! here comes lampito. lysistrata. good day, lampito, dear friend from lacedaemon. how well and handsome you look! what a rosy complexion! and how strong you seem; why, you could strangle a bull surely! lampito. yes, indeed, i really think i could. 'tis because i do gymnastics and practise the kick dance.[ ] lysistrata. and what superb bosoms! lampito. la! you are feeling me as if i were a beast for sacrifice. lysistrata. and this young woman, what countrywoman is she? lampito. she is a noble lady from boeotia. lysistrata. ah! my pretty boeotian friend, you are as blooming as a garden. calonicÉ. yes, on my word! and the garden is so prettily weeded too![ ] lysistrata. and who is this? lampito. 'tis an honest woman, by my faith! she comes from corinth. lysistrata. oh! honest, no doubt then--as honesty goes at corinth.[ ] lampito. but who has called together this council of women, pray? lysistrata. i have. lampito. well then, tell us what you want of us. lysistrata. with pleasure, my dear. myrrhinÉ. what is the most important business you wish to inform us about? lysistrata. i will tell you. but first answer me one question. myrrhinÉ. what is that? lysistrata. don't you feel sad and sorry because the fathers of your children are far away from you with the army? for i'll undertake, there is not one of you whose husband is not abroad at this moment. calonicÉ. mine has been the last five months in thrace--looking after eucrates.[ ] lysistrata. 'tis seven long months since mine left me for pylos.[ ] lampito. as for mine, if he ever does return from service, he's no sooner back than he takes down his shield again and flies back to the wars. lysistrata. and not so much as the shadow of a lover! since the day the milesians betrayed us, i have never once seen an eight-inch-long _godemiche_ even, to be a leathern consolation to us poor widows.... now tell me, if i have discovered a means of ending the war, will you all second me? myrrhinÉ. yes verily, by all the goddesses, i swear i will, though i have to put my gown in pawn, and drink the money the same day.[ ] calonicÉ. and so will i, though i must be split in two like a flat-fish, and have half myself removed. lampito. and i too; why, to secure peace, i would climb to the top of mount taygetus.[ ] lysistrata. then i will out with it at last, my mighty secret! oh! sister women, if we would compel our husbands to make peace, we must refrain.... myrrhinÉ. refrain from what? tell us, tell us! lysistrata. but will you do it? myrrhinÉ. we will, we will, though we should die of it. lysistrata. we must refrain from the male organ altogether.... nay, why do you turn your backs on me? where are you going? so, you bite your lips, and shake your heads, eh? why these pale, sad looks? why these tears? come, will you do it--yes or no? do you hesitate? myrrhinÉ. no, i will not do it; let the war go on. lysistrata. and you, my pretty flat-fish, who declared just now they might split you in two? calonicÉ. anything, anything but that! bid me go through the fire, if you will; but to rob us of the sweetest thing in all the world, my dear, dear lysistrata! lysistrata. and you? myrrhinÉ. yes, i agree with the others; i too would sooner go through the fire. lysistrata. oh, wanton, vicious sex! the poets have done well to make tragedies upon us; we are good for nothing then but love and lewdness![ ] but you, my dear, you from hardy sparta, if _you_ join me, all may yet be well; help me, second me, i conjure you. lampito. 'tis a hard thing, by the two goddesses[ ] it is! for a woman to sleep alone without ever a standing weapon in her bed. but there, peace must come first. lysistrata. oh, my dear, my dearest, best friend, you are the only one deserving the name of woman! calonicÉ. but if--which the gods forbid--we do refrain altogether from what you say, should we get peace any sooner? lysistrata. of course we should, by the goddesses twain! we need only sit indoors with painted cheeks, and meet our mates lightly clad in transparent gowns of amorgos[ ] silk, and with our "mottes" nicely plucked smooth; then their tools will stand like mad and they will be wild to lie with us. that will be the time to refuse, and they will hasten to make peace, i am convinced of that! lampito. yes, just as menelaus, when he saw helen's naked bosom, threw away his sword, they say. calonicÉ. but, poor devils, suppose our husbands go away and leave us. lysistrata. then, as pherecrates says, we must "flay a skinned dog,"[ ] that's all. calonicÉ. bah! these proverbs are all idle talk.... but if our husbands drag us by main force into the bedchamber? lysistrata. hold on to the door posts. calonicÉ. but if they beat us? lysistrata. then yield to their wishes, but with a bad grace; there is no pleasure for them, when they do it by force. besides, there are a thousand ways of tormenting them. never fear, they'll soon tire of the game; there's no satisfaction for a man, unless the woman shares it. calonicÉ. very well, if you _will_ have it so, we agree. lampito. for ourselves, no doubt we shall persuade our husbands to conclude a fair and honest peace; but there is the athenian populace, how are we to cure these folk of their warlike frenzy? lysistrata. have no fear; we undertake to make our own people hear reason. lampito. nay, impossible, so long as they have their trusty ships and the vast treasures stored in the temple of athené. lysistrata. ah! but we have seen to that; this very day the acropolis will be in our hands. that is the task assigned to the older women; while we are here in council, they are going, under pretence of offering sacrifice, to seize the citadel. lampito. well said indeed! so everything is going for the best. lysistrata. come, quick, lampito, and let us bind ourselves by an inviolable oath. lampito. recite the terms; we will swear to them. lysistrata. with pleasure. where is our usheress?[ ] now, what are you staring at, pray? lay this shield on the earth before us, its hollow upwards, and someone bring me the victim's inwards. calonicÉ. lysistrata, say, what oath are we to swear? lysistrata. what oath? why, in aeschylus, they sacrifice a sheep, and swear over a buckler;[ ] we will do the same. calonicÉ. no, lysistrata, one cannot swear peace over a buckler, surely. lysistrata. what other oath do you prefer? calonicÉ. let's take a white horse, and sacrifice it, and swear on its entrails. lysistrata. but where get a white horse from? calonicÉ. well, what oath shall we take then? lysistrata. listen to me. let's set a great black bowl on the ground; let's sacrifice a skin of thasian[ ] wine into it, and take oath not to add one single drop of water. lampito. ah! that's an oath pleases me more than i can say. lysistrata. let them bring me a bowl and a skin of wine. calonicÉ. ah! my dears, what a noble big bowl! what a delight 'twill be to empty it! lysistrata. set the bowl down on the ground, and lay your hands on the victim.... almighty goddess, persuasion, and thou, bowl, boon comrade of joy and merriment, receive this our sacrifice, and be propitious to us poor women! calonicÉ. oh! the fine red blood! how well it flows! lampito. and what a delicious savour, by the goddesses twain! lysistrata. now, my dears, let me swear first, if you please. calonicÉ. no, by the goddess of love, let us decide that by lot. lysistrata. come then, lampito, and all of you, put your hands to the bowl; and do you, calonicé, repeat in the name of all the solemn terms i am going to recite. then you must all swear, and pledge yourselves by the same promises.--"_i will have naught to do whether with lover or husband...._" calonicÉ. _i will have naught to do whether with lover or husband...._ lysistrata. _albeit he come to me with stiff and standing tool...._ calonicÉ. _albeit he come to me with stiff and standing tool...._ oh! lysistrata, i cannot bear it! lysistrata. _i will live at home in perfect chastity...._ calonicÉ. _i will live at home in perfect chastity...._ lysistrata. _beautifully dressed and wearing a saffron-coloured gown...._ calonicÉ. _beautifully dressed and wearing a saffron-coloured gown...._ lysistrata. _to the end i may inspire my husband with the most ardent longings._ calonicÉ. _to the end i may inspire my husband with the most ardent longings._ lysistrata. _never will i give myself voluntarily...._ calonicÉ. _never will i give myself voluntarily...._ lysistrata. _and if he has me by force...._ calonicÉ. _and if he has me by force...._ lysistrata. _i will be cold as ice, and never stir a limb...._ calonicÉ. _i will be cold as ice, and never stir a limb...._ lysistrata. _i will not lift my legs in air...._ calonicÉ. _i will not lift my legs in air...._ lysistrata. _nor will i crouch with bottom upraised, like carven lions on a knife-handle_. calonicÉ. _nor will i crouch with bottom upraised, like carven lions on a knife-handle_. lysistrata. _an if i keep my oath, may i be suffered to drink of this wine._ calonicÉ. _an if i keep my oath, may i be suffered to drink of this wine_. lysistrata. _but if i break it, let my bowl be filled with water_. calonicÉ. _but if i break it, let my bowl be filled with water_. lysistrata. will ye all take this oath? myrrhinÉ. yes, yes! lysistrata. then lo! i immolate the victim. (_she drinks._) calonicÉ. enough, enough, my dear; now let us all drink in turn to cement our friendship. lampito. hark! what do those cries mean? lysistrata. 'tis what i was telling you; the women have just occupied the acropolis. so now, lampito, do you return to sparta to organize the plot, while your comrades here remain as hostages. for ourselves, let us away to join the rest in the citadel, and let us push the bolts well home. calonicÉ. but don't you think the men will march up against us? lysistrata. i laugh at them. neither threats nor flames shall force our doors; they shall open only on the conditions i have named. calonicÉ. yes, yes, by the goddess of love! let us keep up our old-time repute for obstinacy and spite. chorus of old men.[ ] go easy, draces, go easy; why, your shoulder is all chafed by these plaguey heavy olive stocks. but forward still, forward, man, as needs must. what unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life! ah! strymodorus, who would ever have thought it? here we have the women, who used, for our misfortune, to eat our bread and live in our houses, daring nowadays to lay hands on the holy image of the goddess, to seize the acropolis and draw bars and bolts to keep any from entering! come, philurgus man, let's hurry thither; let's lay our faggots all about the citadel, and on the blazing pile burn with our hands these vile conspiratresses, one and all--and lycon's wife, lysistrata, first and foremost! nay, by demeter, never will i let 'em laugh at me, whiles i have a breath left in my body. cleomenes himself,[ ] the first who ever seized our citadel, had to quit it to his sore dishonour; spite his lacedaemonian pride, he had to deliver me up his arms and slink off with a single garment to his back. my word! but he was filthy and ragged! and what an unkempt beard, to be sure! he had not had a bath for six long years! oh! but that was a mighty siege! our men were ranged seventeen deep before the gate, and never left their posts, even to sleep. these women, these enemies of euripides and all the gods, shall i do nothing to hinder their inordinate insolence? else let them tear down my trophies of marathon. but look ye, to finish our toilsome climb, we have only this last steep bit left to mount. verily 'tis no easy job without beasts of burden, and how these logs do bruise my shoulder! still let us on, and blow up our fire and see it does not go out just as we reach our destination. phew! phew! (_blows the fire_). oh! dear! what a dreadful smoke! it bites my eyes like a mad dog. it is lemnos[ ] fire for sure, or it would never devour my eyelids like this. come on, laches, let's hurry, let's bring succour to the goddess; it's now or never! phew! phew! (_blows the fire_). oh! dear! what a confounded smoke!--there now, there's our fire all bright and burning, thank the gods! now, why not first put down our loads here, then take a vine-branch, light it at the brazier and hurl it at the gate by way of battering-ram? if they don't answer our summons by pulling back the bolts, then we set fire to the woodwork, and the smoke will choke 'em. ye gods! what a smoke! pfaugh! is there never a samos general will help me unload my burden?[ ]--ah! it shall not gall my shoulder any more. (_tosses down his wood._) come, brazier, do your duty, make the embers flare, that i may kindle a brand; i want to be the first to hurl one. aid me, heavenly victory; let us punish for their insolent audacity the women who have seized our citadel, and may we raise a trophy of triumph for success! chorus of women.[ ] oh! my dears, methinks i see fire and smoke; can it be a conflagration? let us hurry all we can. fly, fly, nicodicé, ere calycé and crityllé perish in the fire, or are stifled in the smoke raised by these accursed old men and their pitiless laws. but, great gods, can it be i come too late? rising at dawn, i had the utmost trouble to fill this vessel at the fountain. oh! what a crowd there was, and what a din! what a rattling of water-pots! servants and slave-girls pushed and thronged me! however, here i have it full at last; and i am running to carry the water to my fellow townswomen, whom our foes are plotting to burn alive. news has been brought us that a company of old, doddering greybeards, loaded with enormous faggots, as if they wanted to heat a furnace, have taken the field, vomiting dreadful threats, crying that they must reduce to ashes these horrible women. suffer them not, oh! goddess, but, of thy grace, may i see athens and greece cured of their warlike folly. 'tis to this end, oh! thou guardian deity of our city, goddess of the golden crest, that they have seized thy sanctuary. be their friend and ally, athené, and if any man hurl against them lighted firebrands, aid us to carry water to extinguish them. stratyllis. let me be, i say. oh! oh! (_she calls for help._) chorus of women. what is this i see, ye wretched old men? honest and pious folk ye cannot be who act so vilely. chorus of old men. ah, ha! here's something new! a swarm of women stand posted outside to defend the gates! chorus of women. ah! ah! we frighten you, do we; we seem a mighty host, yet you do not see the ten-thousandth part of our sex. chorus of old men. ho, phaedrias! shall we stop their cackle? suppose one of us were to break a stick across their backs, eh? chorus of women. let us set down our water-pots on the ground, to be out of the way, if they should dare to offer us violence. chorus of old men. let someone knock out two or three teeth for them, as they did to bupalus;[ ] they won't talk so loud then. chorus of women. come on then; i wait you with unflinching foot, and i will snap off your testicles like a bitch. chorus of old men. silence! ere my stick has cut short your days. chorus of women. now, just you dare to touch stratyllis with the tip of your finger! chorus of old men. and if i batter you to pieces with my fists, what will you do? chorus of women. i will tear out your lungs and entrails with my teeth. chorus of old men. oh! what a clever poet is euripides! how well he says that woman is the most shameless of animals. chorus of women. let's pick up our water-jars again, rhodippé. chorus of old men. ah! accursed harlot, what do you mean to do here with your water? chorus of women. and you, old death-in-life, with your fire? is it to cremate yourself? chorus of old men. i am going to build you a pyre to roast your female friends upon. chorus of women. and i,--i am going to put out your fire. chorus of old men. you put out my fire--you! chorus of women. yes, you shall soon see. chorus of old men. i don't know what prevents me from roasting you with this torch. chorus of women. i am getting you a bath ready to clean off the filth. chorus of old men. a bath for me, you dirty slut, you! chorus of women. yes, indeed, a nuptial bath--he, he! chorus of old men. do you hear that? what insolence! chorus of women. i am a free woman, i tell you. chorus of old men. i will make you hold your tongue, never fear! chorus of women. ah, ha! you shall never sit more amongst the heliasts.[ ] chorus of old men. burn off her hair for her! chorus of women. water, do your office! (_the women pitch the water in their water-pots over the old men._) chorus of old men. oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear! chorus of women. was it hot? chorus of old men. hot, great gods! enough, enough! chorus of women. i'm watering you, to make you bloom afresh. chorus of old men. alas! i am too dry! ah, me! how i am trembling with cold! magistrate. these women, have they made din enough, i wonder, with their tambourines? bewept adonis enough upon their terraces?[ ] i was listening to the speeches last assembly day,[ ] and demostratus,[ ] whom heaven confound! was saying we must all go over to sicily--and lo! his wife was dancing round repeating: alas! alas! adonis, woe is me for adonis! demostratus was saying we must levy hoplites at zacynthus[ ]--and lo! his wife, more than half drunk, was screaming on the house-roof: "weep, weep for adonis!"--while that infamous _mad ox_[ ] was bellowing away on his side.--do ye not blush, ye women, for your wild and uproarious doings? chorus of old men. but you don't know all their effrontery yet! they abused and insulted us; then soused us with the water in their water-pots, and have set us wringing out our clothes, for all the world as if we had bepissed ourselves. magistrate. and 'tis well done too, by poseidon! we men must share the blame of their ill conduct; it is we who teach them to love riot and dissoluteness and sow the seeds of wickedness in their hearts. you see a husband go into a shop: "look you, jeweller," says he, "you remember the necklace you made for my wife. well, t'other evening, when she was dancing, the catch came open. now, i am bound to start for salamis; will you make it convenient to go up to-night to make her fastening secure?" another will go to a cobbler, a great, strong fellow, with a great, long tool, and tell him: "the strap of one of my wife's sandals presses her little toe, which is extremely sensitive; come in about midday to supple the thing and stretch it." now see the results. take my own case--as a magistrate i have enlisted rowers; i want money to pay 'em, and lo! the women clap to the door in my face.[ ] but why do we stand here with arms crossed? bring me a crowbar; i'll chastise their insolence!--ho! there, my fine fellow! (_addressing one of his attendant officers_) what are you gaping at the crows about? looking for a tavern, i suppose, eh? come, crowbars here, and force open the gates. i will put a hand to the work myself. lysistrata. no need to force the gates; i am coming out--here i am. and why bolts and bars? what we want here is not bolts and bars and locks, but common sense. magistrate. really, my fine lady! where is my officer? i want him to tie that woman's hands behind her back. lysistrata. by artemis, the virgin goddess! if he touches me with the tip of his finger, officer of the public peace though he be, let him look out for himself! magistrate (_to the officer_). how now, are you afraid? seize her, i tell you, round the body. two of you at her, and have done with it! first woman. by pandrosos! if you lay a hand on her, i'll trample you underfoot till you shit your guts! magistrate. oh, there! my guts! where is my other officer? bind that minx first, who speaks so prettily! second woman. by phoebé, if you touch her with one finger, you'd better call quick for a surgeon! magistrate. what do you mean? officer, where are you got to? lay hold of her. oh! but i'm going to stop your foolishness for you all! third woman. by the tauric artemis, if you go near her, i'll pull out your hair, scream as you like. magistrate. ah! miserable man that i am! my own officers desert me. what ho! are we to let ourselves be bested by a mob of women? ho! scythians mine, close up your ranks, and forward! lysistrata. by the holy goddesses! you'll have to make acquaintance with four companies of women, ready for the fray and well armed to boot. magistrate. forward, scythians, and bind them! lysistrata. forward, my gallant companions; march forth, ye vendors of grain and eggs, garlic and vegetables, keepers of taverns and bakeries, wrench and strike and tear; come, a torrent of invective and insult! (_they beat the officers._) enough, enough! now retire, never rob the vanquished! magistrate. here's a fine exploit for my officers! lysistrata. ah, ha! so you thought you had only to do with a set of slave-women! you did not know the ardour that fills the bosom of free-born dames. magistrate. ardour! yes, by apollo, ardour enough--especially for the wine-cup! chorus of old men. sir, sir! what use of words? they are of no avail with wild beasts of this sort. don't you know how they have just washed us down--and with no very fragrant soap! chorus of women. what would you have? you should never have laid rash hands on us. if you start afresh, i'll knock your eyes out. my delight is to stay at home as coy as a young maid, without hurting anybody or moving any more than a milestone; but 'ware the wasps, if you go stirring up the wasps' nest! chorus of old men. ah! great gods! how get the better of these ferocious creatures? 'tis past all bearing! but come, let us try to find out the reason of the dreadful scourge. with what end in view have they seized the citadel of cranaus,[ ] the sacred shrine that is raised upon the inaccessible rock of the acropolis? question them; be cautious and not too credulous. 'twould be culpable negligence not to pierce the mystery, if we may. magistrate (_addressing the women_). i would ask you first why ye have barred our gates. lysistrata. to seize the treasury; no more money, no more war. magistrate. then money is the cause of the war? lysistrata. and of all our troubles. 'twas to find occasion to steal that pisander[ ] and all the other agitators were for ever raising revolutions. well and good! but they'll never get another drachma here. magistrate. what do you propose to do then, pray? lysistrata. you ask me that! why, we propose to administer the treasury ourselves. magistrate. _you_ do? lysistrata. what is there in that to surprise you? do we not administer the budget of household expenses? magistrate. but that is not the same thing. lysistrata how so--not the same thing? magistrate. it is the treasury supplies the expenses of the war. lysistrata. that's our first principle--no war! magistrate. what! and the safety of the city? lysistrata. we will provide for that. magistrate you? lysistrata yes, just we. magistrate. what a sorry business! lysistrata. yes, we're going to save you, whether you will or no. magistrate. oh! the impudence of the creatures! lysistrata. you seem annoyed! but there, you've got to come to it. magistrate. but 'tis the very height of iniquity! lysistrata. we're going to save you, my man. magistrate. but if i don't want to be saved? lysistrata. why, all the more reason! magistrate. but what a notion, to concern yourselves with questions of peace and war! lysistrata. we will explain our idea. magistrate. out with it then; quick, or ... (_threatening her_). lysistrata. listen, and never a movement, please! magistrate. oh! it is too much for me! i cannot keep my temper! a woman. then look out for yourself; you have more to fear than we have. magistrate. stop your croaking, old crow, you! (_to lysistrata._) now you, say your say. lysistrata. willingly. all the long time the war has lasted, we have endured in modest silence all you men did; we never allowed ourselves to open our lips. we were far from satisfied, for we knew how things were going; often in our homes we would hear you discussing, upside down and inside out, some important turn of affairs. then with sad hearts, but smiling lips, we would ask you: well, in to-day's assembly did they vote peace?--but, "mind your own business!" the husband would growl, "hold your tongue, do!" and i would say no more. a woman. i would not have held my tongue though, not i! magistrate. you would have been reduced to silence by blows then. lysistrata. well, for my part, i would say no more. but presently i would come to know you had arrived at some fresh decision more fatally foolish than ever. "ah! my dear man," i would say, "what madness next!" but he would only look at me askance and say: "just weave your web, do; else your cheeks will smart for hours. war is men's business!" magistrate. bravo! well said indeed! lysistrata. how now, wretched man? not to let us contend against your follies, was bad enough! but presently we heard you asking out loud in the open street: "is there never a man left in athens?" and, "no, not one, not one," you were assured in reply. then, then we made up our minds without more delay to make common cause to save greece. open your ears to our wise counsels and hold your tongues, and we may yet put things on a better footing. magistrate. _you_ put things indeed! oh! 'tis too much! the insolence of the creatures! silence, i say. lysistrata. silence yourself! magistrate. may i die a thousand deaths ere i obey one who wears a veil! lysistrata. if that's all that troubles you, here, take my veil, wrap it round your head, and hold your tongue. then take this basket; put on a girdle, card wool, munch beans. the war shall be women's business. chorus of women. lay aside your water-pots, we will guard them, we will help our friends and companions. for myself, i will never weary of the dance; my knees will never grow stiff with fatigue. i will brave everything with my dear allies, on whom nature has lavished virtue, grace, boldness, cleverness, and whose wisely directed energy is going to save the state. oh! my good, gallant lysistrata, and all my friends, be ever like a bundle of nettles; never let your anger slacken; the winds of fortune blow our way. lysistrata. may gentle love and the sweet cyprian queen shower seductive charms on our bosoms and all our person. if only we may stir so amorous a lust among the men that their tools stand stiff as sticks, we shall indeed deserve the name of peace-makers among the greeks. magistrate. how will that be, pray? lysistrata. to begin with, we shall not see you any more running like mad fellows to the market holding lance in fist. a woman. that will be something gained, anyway, by the paphian goddess, it will! lysistrata. now we see 'em, mixed up with saucepans and kitchen stuff, armed to the teeth, looking like wild corybantes![ ] magistrate. why, of course; that's how brave men should do. lysistrata. oh! but what a funny sight, to behold a man wearing a gorgon's-head buckler coming along to buy fish! a woman. 'tother day in the market i saw a phylarch[ ] with flowing ringlets; he was a-horseback, and was pouring into his helmet the broth he had just bought at an old dame's stall. there was a thracian warrior too, who was brandishing his lance like tereus in the play;[ ] he had scared a good woman selling figs into a perfect panic, and was gobbling up all her ripest fruit. magistrate. and how, pray, would you propose to restore peace and order in all the countries of greece? lysistrata. 'tis the easiest thing in the world! magistrate. come, tell us how; i am curious to know. lysistrata. when we are winding thread, and it is tangled, we pass the spool across and through the skein, now this way, now that way; even so, to finish off the war, we shall send embassies hither and thither and everywhere, to disentangle matters. magistrate. and 'tis with your yarn, and your skeins, and your spools, you think to appease so many bitter enmities, you silly women? lysistrata. if only you had common sense, you would always do in politics the same as we do with our yarn. magistrate. come, how is that, eh? lysistrata. first we wash the yarn to separate the grease and filth; do the same with all bad citizens, sort them out and drive them forth with rods--'tis the refuse of the city. then for all such as come crowding up in search of employments and offices, we must card them thoroughly; then, to bring them all to the same standard, pitch them pell-mell into the same basket, resident aliens or no, allies, debtors to the state, all mixed up together. then as for our colonies, you must think of them as so many isolated hanks; find the ends of the separate threads, draw them to a centre here, wind them into one, make one great hank of the lot, out of which the public can weave itself a good, stout tunic. magistrate. is it not a sin and a shame to see them carding and winding the state, these women who have neither art nor part in the burdens of the war? lysistrata. what! wretched man! why, 'tis a far heavier burden to us than to you. in the first place, we bear sons who go off to fight far away from athens. magistrate. enough said! do not recall sad and sorry memories![ ] lysistrata. then secondly, instead of enjoying the pleasures of love and making the best of our youth and beauty, we are left to languish far from our husbands, who are all with the army. but say no more of ourselves; what afflicts me is to see our girls growing old in lonely grief. magistrate. don't the men grow old too? lysistrata. that is not the same thing. when the soldier returns from the wars, even though he has white hair, he very soon finds a young wife. but a woman has only one summer; if she does not make hay while the sun shines, no one will afterwards have anything to say to her, and she spends her days consulting oracles, that never send her a husband. magistrate. but the old man who can still erect his organ ... lysistrata. but you, why don't you get done with it and die? you are rich; go buy yourself a bier, and i will knead you a honey-cake for cerberus. here, take this garland. (_drenching him with water._) first woman. and this one too. (_drenching him with water._) second woman. and these fillets. (_drenching him with water._) lysistrata. what do you lack more? step aboard the boat; charon is waiting for you, you're keeping him from pushing off. magistrate. to treat me so scurvily! what an insult! i will go show myself to my fellow-magistrates just as i am. lysistrata. what! are you blaming us for not having exposed you according to custom?[ ] nay, console yourself; we will not fail to offer up the third-day sacrifice for you, first thing in the morning.[ ] chorus of old men. awake, friends of freedom; let us hold ourselves aye ready to act. i suspect a mighty peril; i foresee another tyranny like hippias'.[ ] i am sore afraid the laconians assembled here with cleisthenes have, by a stratagem of war, stirred up these women, enemies of the gods, to seize upon our treasury and the funds whereby i lived.[ ] is it not a sin and a shame for them to interfere in advising the citizens, to prate of shields and lances, and to ally themselves with laconians, fellows i trust no more than i would so many famished wolves? the whole thing, my friends, is nothing else but an attempt to re-establish tyranny. but i will never submit; i will be on my guard for the future; i will always carry a blade hidden under myrtle boughs; i will post myself in the public square under arms, shoulder to shoulder with aristogiton;[ ] and now, to make a start, i must just break a few of that cursed old jade's teeth yonder. chorus of women. nay, never play the brave man, else when you go back home, your own mother won't know you. but, dear friends and allies, first let us lay our burdens down; then, citizens all, hear what i have to say. i have useful counsel to give our city, which deserves it well at my hands for the brilliant distinctions it has lavished on my girlhood. at seven years of age, i was bearer of the sacred vessels; at ten, i pounded barley for the altar of athené; next, clad in a robe of yellow silk, i was _little bear_ to artemis at the brauronia;[ ] presently, grown a tall, handsome maiden, they put a necklace of dried figs about my neck, and i was basket-bearer.[ ] so surely i am bound to give my best advice to athens. what matters that i was born a woman, if i can cure your misfortunes? i pay my share of tolls and taxes, by giving men to the state. but you, you miserable greybeards, you contribute nothing to the public charges; on the contrary, you have wasted the treasure of our forefathers, as it was called, the treasure amassed in the days of the persian wars.[ ] you pay nothing at all in return; and into the bargain you endanger our lives and liberties by your mistakes. have you one word to say for yourselves? ... ah! don't irritate me, you there, or i'll lay my slipper across your jaws; and it's pretty heavy. chorus of old men. outrage upon outrage! things are going from bad to worse. let us punish the minxes, every one of us that has a man's appendages to boast of. come, off with our tunics, for a man must savour of manhood; come, my friends, let us strip naked from head to foot. courage, i say, we who in our day garrisoned lipsydrion;[ ] let us be young again, and shake off eld. if we give them the least hold over us, 'tis all up! their audacity will know no bounds! we shall see them building ships, and fighting sea-fights, like artemisia;[ ] nay, if they want to mount and ride as cavalry, we had best cashier the knights, for indeed women excel in riding, and have a fine, firm seat for the gallop.[ ] just think of all those squadrons of amazons micon has painted for us engaged in hand-to-hand combat with men.[ ] come then, we must e'en fit collars to all these willing necks. chorus of women. by the blessed goddesses, if you anger me, i will let loose the beast of my evil passions, and a very hailstorm of blows will set you yelling for help. come, dames, off tunics, and quick's the word; women must scent the savour of women in the throes of passion.... now just you dare to measure strength with me, old greybeard, and i warrant you you'll never eat garlic or black beans more. no, not a word! my anger is at boiling point, and i'll do with you what the beetle did with the eagle's eggs.[ ] i laugh at your threats, so long as i have on my side lampito here, and the noble theban, my dear ismenia.... pass decree on decree, you can do us no hurt, you wretch abhorred of all your fellows. why, only yesterday, on occasion of the feast of hecaté, i asked my neighbours of boeotia for one of their daughters for whom my girls have a lively liking--a fine, fat eel to wit; and if they did not refuse, all along of your silly decrees! we shall never cease to suffer the like, till someone gives you a neat trip-up and breaks your neck for you! chorus of women (_addressing lysistrata_). you, lysistrata, you who are leader of our glorious enterprise, why do i see you coming towards me with so gloomy an air? lysistrata. 'tis the behaviour of these naughty women, 'tis the female heart and female weakness so discourages me. chorus of women. tell us, tell us, what is it? lysistrata. i only tell the simple truth. chorus of women. what has happened so disconcerting; come, tell your friends. lysistrata. oh! the thing is so hard to tell--yet so impossible to conceal. chorus of women. nay, never seek to hide any ill that has befallen our cause. lysistrata. to blurt it out in a word--we are in heat! chorus of women. oh! zeus, oh! zeus! lysistrata. what use calling upon zeus? the thing is even as i say. i cannot stop them any longer from lusting after the men. they are all for deserting. the first i caught was slipping out by the postern gate near the cave of pan; another was letting herself down by a rope and pulley; a third was busy preparing her escape; while a fourth, perched on a bird's back, was just taking wing for orsilochus' house,[ ] when i seized her by the hair. one and all, they are inventing excuses to be off home. look! there goes one, trying to get out! halloa there! whither away so fast? first woman. i want to go home; i have some miletus wool in the house, which is getting all eaten up by the worms. lysistrata. bah! you and your worms! go back, i say! first woman. i will return immediately, i swear i will by the two goddesses! i only have just to spread it out on the bed. lysistrata. you shall not do anything of the kind! i say, you shall not go. first woman. must i leave my wool to spoil then? lysistrata. yes, if need be. second woman. unhappy woman that i am! alas for my flax! i've left it at home unstript! lysistrata. so, here's another trying to escape to go home and strip her flax forsooth! second woman. oh! i swear by the goddess of light, the instant i have put it in condition i will come straight back. lysistrata. you shall do nothing of the kind! if once you began, others would want to follow suit. third woman. oh! goddess divine, ilithyia, patroness of women in labour, stay, stay the birth, till i have reached a spot less hallowed than athene's mount! lysistrata. what mean you by these silly tales? third woman. i am going to have a child--now, this minute. lysistrata. but you were not pregnant yesterday! third woman. well, i am to-day. oh! let me go in search of the midwife, lysistrata, quick, quick! lysistrata. what is this fable you are telling me? ah! what have you got there so hard? third woman. a male child. lysistrata. no, no, by aphrodité! nothing of the sort! why, it feels like something hollow--a pot or a kettle. oh! you baggage, if you have not got the sacred helmet of pallas--and you said you were with child! third woman. and so i am, by zeus, i am! lysistrata. then why this helmet, pray? third woman. for fear my pains should seize me in the acropolis; i mean to lay my eggs in this helmet, as the doves do. lysistrata. excuses and pretences every word! the thing's as clear as daylight. anyway, you must stay here now till the fifth day, your day of purification. third woman. i cannot sleep any more in the acropolis, now i have seen the snake that guards the temple. fourth woman. ah! and those confounded owls with their dismal hooting! i cannot get a wink of rest, and i'm just dying of fatigue. lysistrata. you wicked women, have done with your falsehoods! you want your husbands, that's plain enough. but don't you think they want you just as badly? they are spending dreadful nights, oh! i know that well enough. but hold out, my dears, hold out! a little more patience, and the victory will be ours. an oracle promises us success, if only we remain united. shall i repeat the words? first woman. yes, tell us what the oracle declares. lysistrata. silence then! now--"whenas the swallows, fleeing before the hoopoes, shall have all flocked together in one place, and shall refrain them from all amorous commerce, then will be the end of all the ills of life; yea, and zeus, which doth thunder in the skies, shall set above what was erst below...." chorus of women. what! shall the men be underneath? lysistrata. "but if dissension do arise among the swallows, and they take wing from the holy temple, 'twill be said there is never a more wanton bird in all the world." chorus of women. ye gods! the prophecy is clear. nay, never let us be cast down by calamity! let us be brave to bear, and go back to our posts. 'twere shameful indeed not to trust the promises of the oracle. chorus of old men. i want to tell you a fable they used to relate to me when i was a little boy. this is it: once upon a time there was a young man called melanion, who hated the thought of marriage so sorely that he fled away to the wilds. so he dwelt in the mountains, wove himself nets, kept a dog and caught hares. he never, never came back, he had such a horror of women. as chaste as melanion,[ ] we loathe the jades just as much as he did. an old man. you dear old woman, i would fain kiss you. a woman. i will set you crying without onions. old man. ... and give you a sound kicking. old woman. ah, ha! what a dense forest you have there! (_pointing._) old man. so was myronides one of the best-bearded of men o' this side; his backside was all black, and he terrified his enemies as much as phormio.[ ] chorus of women. i want to tell you a fable too, to match yours about melanion. once there was a certain man called timon,[ ] a tough customer, and a whimsical, a true son of the furies, with a face that seemed to glare out of a thorn-bush. he withdrew from the world because he couldn't abide bad men, after vomiting a thousand curses at 'em. he had a holy horror of ill-conditioned fellows, but he was mighty tender towards women. a woman. suppose i up and broke your jaw for you! an old man. i am not a bit afraid of you. a woman. suppose i let fly a good kick at you? old man. i should see your backside then. woman. you would see that, for all my age, it is very well attended to, and all fresh singed smooth. lysistrata. ho there! come quick, come quick! first woman. what is it? why these cries? lysistrata. a man! a man! i see him approaching all afire with the flames of love. oh! divine queen of cyprus, paphos and cythera, i pray you still be propitious to our emprise. first woman. where is he, this unknown foe? lysistrata. yonder--beside the temple of demeter. first woman. yes, indeed, i see him; but who is it? lysistrata. look, look! does any of you recognize him? first woman. i do, i do! 'tis my husband cinesias. lysistrata. to work then! be it your task to inflame and torture and torment him. seductions, caresses, provocations, refusals, try every means! grant every favour,--always excepting what is forbidden by our oath on the wine-bowl. myrrhinÉ. have no fear, i undertake the work. lysistrata. well, i will stay here to help you cajole the man and set his passions aflame. the rest of you, withdraw. cinesias. alas! alas! how i am tortured by spasm and rigid convulsion! oh! i am racked on the wheel! lysistrata. who is this that dares to pass our lines? cinesias. it is i. lysistrata. what, a man? cinesias. yes, no doubt about it, a man! lysistrata. begone! cinesias. but who are you that thus repulses me? lysistrata. the sentinel of the day. cinesias. by all the gods, call myrrhiné hither. lysistrata. call myrrhiné hither, quotha? and pray, who are you? cinesias. i am her husband, cinesias, son of peon. lysistrata. ah! good day, my dear friend. your name is not unknown amongst us. your wife has it for ever on her lips; and she never touches an egg or an apple without saying: "'twill be for cinesias." cinesias. really and truly? lysistrata. yes, indeed, by aphrodité! and if we fall to talking of men, quick your wife declares: "oh! all the rest, they're good for nothing compared with cinesias." cinesias. oh! i beseech you, go and call her to me. lysistrata. and what will you give me for my trouble? cinesias. this, if you like (_handling his tool_). i will give you what i have there! lysistrata. well, well, i will tell her to come. cinesias. quick, oh! be quick! life has no more charms for me since she left my house. i am sad, sad, when i go indoors; it all seems so empty; my victuals have lost their savour. desire is eating out my heart! myrrhinÉ. i love him, oh! i love him; but he won't let himself be loved. no! i shall not come. cinesias. myrrhiné, my little darling myrrhiné, what are you saying? come down to me quick. myrrhinÉ. no indeed, not i. cinesias. i call you, myrrhiné, myrrhiné; will you not come? myrrhinÉ. why should you call me? you do not want me. cinesias. not want you! why, my weapon stands stiff with desire! myrrhinÉ. good-bye. cinesias. oh! myrrhiné, myrrhiné, in our child's name, hear me; at any rate hear the child! little lad, call your mother. child. mammy, mammy, mammy! cinesias. there, listen! don't you pity the poor child? it's six days now you've never washed and never fed the child. myrrhinÉ. poor darling, your father takes mighty little care of you! cinesias. come down, dearest, come down for the child's sake. myrrhinÉ. ah! what a thing it is to be a mother! well, well, we must come down, i suppose. cinesias. why, how much younger and prettier she looks! and how she looks at me so lovingly! her cruelty and scorn only redouble my passion. myrrhinÉ. you are as sweet as your father is provoking! let me kiss you, my treasure, mother's darling! cinesias. ah! what a bad thing it is to let yourself be led away by other women! why give me such pain and suffering, and yourself into the bargain? myrrhinÉ. hands off, sir! cinesias. everything is going to rack and ruin in the house. myrrhinÉ. i don't care. cinesias. but your web that's all being pecked to pieces by the cocks and hens, don't you care for that? myrrhinÉ. precious little. cinesias. and aphrodite, whose mysteries you have not celebrated for so long? oh! won't you come back home? myrrhinÉ. no, at least, not till a sound treaty put an end to the war. cinesias. well, if you wish it so much, why, we'll make it, your treaty. myrrhinÉ. well and good! when that's done, i will come home. till then, i am bound by an oath. cinesias. at any rate, let's have a short time together. myrrhinÉ. no, no, no! ... all the same i cannot say i don't love you. cinesias. you love me? then why refuse what i ask, my little girl, my sweet myrrhiné. myrrhinÉ. you must be joking! what, before the child! cinesias. manes, carry the lad home. there, you see, the child is gone; there's nothing to hinder us; let us to work! myrrhinÉ. but, miserable man, where, where are we to do it? cinesias. in the cave of pan; nothing could be better. myrrhinÉ. but how to purify myself, before going back into the citadel? cinesias. nothing easier! you can wash at the clepsydra.[ ] myrrhinÉ. but my oath? do you want me to perjure myself? cinesias. i take all responsibility; never make yourself anxious. myrrhinÉ. well, i'll be off, then, and find a bed for us. cinesias. oh! 'tis not worth while; we can lie on the ground surely. myrrhinÉ. no, no! bad man as you are, i don't like your lying on the bare earth. cinesias. ah! how the dear girl loves me! myrrhinÉ (_coming back with a bed_). come, get to bed quick; i am going to undress. but, plague take it, we must get a mattress. cinesias. a mattress! oh! no, never mind! myrrhinÉ. no, by artemis! lie on the bare sacking, never! that were too squalid. cinesias. a kiss! myrrhinÉ. wait a minute! cinesias. oh! by the great gods, be quick back! myrrhinÉ (_coming back with a mattress_). here is a mattress. lie down, i am just going to undress. but, but you've got no pillow. cinesias. i don't want one, no, no. myrrhinÉ. but _i_ do. cinesias. oh! dear, oh, dear! they treat my poor penis for all the world like heracles.[ ] myrrhinÉ (_coming back with a pillow_). there, lift your head, dear! cinesias. that's really everything. myrrhinÉ. is it everything, i wonder. cinesias. come, my treasure. myrrhinÉ. i am just unfastening my girdle. but remember what you promised me about making peace; mind you keep your word. cinesias. yes, yes, upon my life i will. myrrhinÉ. why, you have no blanket. cinesias. great zeus! what matter of that? 'tis you i want to fuck. myrrhinÉ never fear--directly, directly! i'll be back in no time. cinesias. the woman will kill me with her blankets! myrrhinÉ (_coming back with a blanket_). now, get up for one moment. cinesias. but i tell you, our friend here is up--all stiff and ready! myrrhinÉ. would you like me to scent you? cinesias. no, by apollo, no, please! myrrhinÉ. yes, by aphrodité, but i will, whether you wish it or no. cinesias. ah! great zeus, may she soon be done! myrrhinÉ (_coming back with a flask of perfume_). hold out your hand; now rub it in. cinesias. oh! in apollo's name, i don't much like the smell of it; but perhaps 'twill improve when it's well rubbed in. it does not somehow smack of the marriage bed! myrrhinÉ. there, what a scatterbrain i am; if i have not brought rhodian perfumes![ ] cinesias. never mind, dearest, let be now. myrrhinÉ. you are joking! cinesias. deuce take the man who first invented perfumes, say i! myrrhinÉ (_coming back with another flask_). here, take this bottle. cinesias. i have a better all ready for your service, darling. come, you provoking creature, to bed with you, and don't bring another thing. myrrhinÉ. coming, coming; i'm just slipping off my shoes. dear boy, will you vote for peace? cinesias. i'll think about it. (_myrrhiné runs away._) i'm a dead man, she is killing me! she has gone, and left me in torment! i must have someone to fuck, i must! ah me! the loveliest of women has choused and cheated me. poor little lad (_addressing his penis_), how am i to give you what you want so badly? where is cynalopex? quick, man, get him a nurse, do![ ] chorus of old men. poor, miserable wretch, baulked in your amorousness! what tortures are yours! ah! you fill me with pity. could any man's back and loins stand such a strain? his organ stands stiff and rigid, and there's never a wench to help him! cinesias. ye gods in heaven, what pains i suffer! chorus of old men. well, there it is; 'tis her doing, that abandoned hussy! cinesias. nay, nay! rather say that sweetest, dearest darling. chorus of old men. that dearest darling? no, no, that hussy, say i! zeus, thou god of the skies, canst not let loose a hurricane, to sweep them all up into the air, and whirl 'em round, then drop 'em down crash! and impale them on the point of his weapon! a herald. say, where shall i find the senate and the prytanes? i am bearer of despatches. magistrate. but are you a man or a priapus, pray?[ ] herald. oh! but he's mighty simple. i am a herald, of course, i swear i am, and i come from sparta about making peace. magistrate. but look, you are hiding a lance under your clothes, surely. herald. no, nothing of the sort. magistrate. then why do you turn away like that, and hold your cloak out from your body? have you gotten swellings in the groin with your journey? herald. by the twin brethren! the man's an old maniac. magistrate. ah, ha! my fine lad, why i can see it standing, oh fie! herald. i tell you no! but enough of this foolery. magistrate. well, what is it you have there then? herald. a lacedaemonian 'skytalé.'[ ] magistrate. oh, indeed, a 'skytalé,' is it? well, well, speak out frankly; i know all about these matters. how are things going at sparta now? herald. why, everything is turned upside down at sparta; and all the allies are half dead with lusting. we simply must have pellené.[ ] magistrate. what is the reason of it all? is it the god pan's doing? herald. no, but lampito's and the spartan women's, acting at her instigation; they have denied the men all access to their cunts. magistrate. but whatever do you do? herald. we are at our wits' end; we walk bent double, just as if we were carrying lanterns in a wind. the jades have sworn we shall not so much as touch their cunts till we have all agreed to conclude peace. magistrate. ha, ha! so i see now, 'tis a general conspiracy embracing all greece. go you back to sparta and bid them send envoys with plenary powers to treat for peace. i will urge our senators myself to name plenipotentiaries from us; and to persuade them, why, i will show them this. (_pointing to his erect penis._) herald. what could be better? i fly at your command. chorus of old men. no wild beast is there, no flame of fire, more fierce and untameable than woman; the panther is less savage and shameless. chorus of women. and yet you dare to make war upon me, wretch, when you might have me for your most faithful friend and ally. chorus of old men. never, never can my hatred cease towards women. chorus of women. well, please yourself. still i cannot bear to leave you all naked as you are; folks would laugh at me. come, i am going to put this tunic on you. chorus of old men. you are right, upon my word! it was only in my confounded fit of rage i took it off. chorus of women. now at any rate you look like a man, and they won't make fun of you. ah! if you had not offended me so badly, i would take out that nasty insect you have in your eye for you. chorus of old men. ah! so that's what was annoying me so! look, here's a ring, just remove the insect, and show it me. by zeus! it has been hurting my eye this ever so long. chorus of women. well, i agree, though your manners are not over and above pleasant. oh! what a huge great gnat! just look! it's from tricorysus, for sure.[ ] chorus of old men. a thousand thanks! the creature was digging a regular well in my eye; now it's gone, my tears flow freely. chorus of women. i will wipe them for you--bad, naughty man though you are. now, just one kiss. chorus of old men. no--a kiss, certainly not! chorus of women. just one, whether you like it or not. chorus of old men. oh! those confounded women! how they do cajole us! how true the saying: "'tis impossible to live with the baggages, impossible to live without 'em"! come, let us agree for the future not to regard each other any more as enemies; and to clinch the bargain, let us sing a choric song. chorus of women. we desire, athenians, to speak ill of no man; but on the contrary to say much good of everyone, and to _do_ the like. we have had enough of misfortunes and calamities. is there any, man or woman, wants a bit of money--two or three minas or so;[ ] well, our purse is full. if only peace is concluded, the borrower will not have to pay back. also i'm inviting to supper a few carystian friends,[ ] who are excellently well qualified. i have still a drop of good soup left, and a young porker i'm going to kill, and the flesh will be sweet and tender. i shall expect you at my house to-day; but first away to the baths with you, you and your children; then come all of you, ask no one's leave, but walk straight up, as if you were at home; never fear, the door will be ... shut in your faces![ ] chorus of old men. ah! here come the envoys from sparta with their long flowing beards; why, you would think they wore a cage[ ] between their thighs. (_enter the lacedaemonian envoys._) hail to you, first of all, laconians; then tell us how you fare. a laconian. no need for many words; you see what a state we are in. chorus of old men. alas! the situation grows more and more strained! the intensity of the thing is just frightful. laconian. 'tis beyond belief. but to work! summon your commissioners, and let us patch up the best peace we may. chorus of old men. ah! our men too, like wrestlers in the arena, cannot endure a rag over their bellies; 'tis an athlete's malady, which only exercise can remedy. an athenian. can anybody tell us where lysistrata is? surely she will have some compassion on our condition. chorus of old men. look! 'tis the very same complaint. (_addressing the athenian._) don't you feel of mornings a strong nervous tension? athenian. yes, and a dreadful, dreadful torture it is! unless peace is made very soon, we shall find no resource but to fuck clisthenes.[ ] chorus of old men. take my advice, and put on your clothes again; one of the fellows who mutilated the hermae[ ] might see you. athenian. you are right. laconian. quite right. there, i will slip on my tunic. athenian. oh! what a terrible state we are in! greeting to you, laconian fellow-sufferers. laconian (_addressing one of his countrymen_). ah! my boy, what a thing it would have been if these fellows had seen us just now when our tools were on full stand! athenian. speak out, laconians, what is it brings you here? laconian. we have come to treat for peace. athenian. well said; we are of the same mind. better call lysistrata then; she is the only person will bring us to terms. laconian. yes, yes--and lysistratus into the bargain, if you will. chorus of old men. needless to call her; she has heard your voices, and here she comes. athenian. hail, boldest and bravest of womankind! the time is come to show yourself in turn uncompromising and conciliatory, exacting and yielding, haughty and condescending. call up all your skill and artfulness. lo! the foremost men in hellas, seduced by your fascinations, are agreed to entrust you with the task of ending their quarrels. lysistrata. 'twill be an easy task--if only they refrain from mutual indulgence in masculine love; if they do, i shall know the fact at once. now, where is the gentle goddess peace? lead hither the laconian envoys. but, look you, no roughness or violence; our husbands always behaved so boorishly.[ ] bring them to me with smiles, as women should. if any refuse to give you his hand, then catch him by the penis and draw him politely forward. bring up the athenians too; you may take them just how you will. laconians, approach; and you, athenians, on my other side. now hearken all! i am but a woman; but i have good common sense; nature has dowered me with discriminating judgment, which i have yet further developed, thanks to the wise teachings of my father and the elders of the city. first i must bring a reproach against you that applies equally to both sides. at olympia, and thermopylae, and delphi, and a score of other places too numerous to mention, you celebrate before the same altars ceremonies common to all hellenes; yet you go cutting each other's throats, and sacking hellenic cities, when all the while the barbarian is yonder threatening you! that is my first point. athenian. ah, ah! concupiscence is killing me! lysistrata. now 'tis to you i address myself, laconians. have you forgotten how periclides,[ ] your own countryman, sat a suppliant before our altars? how pale he was in his purple robes! he had come to crave an army of us; 'twas the time when messenia was pressing you sore, and the sea-god was shaking the earth. cimon marched to your aid at the head of four thousand hoplites, and saved lacedaemon. and, after such a service as that, you ravage the soil of your benefactors! athenian. they do wrong, very wrong, lysistrata. laconian. we do wrong, very wrong. ah! great gods! what lovely thighs she has! lysistrata. and now a word to the athenians. have you no memory left of how, in the days when ye wore the tunic of slaves, the laconians came, spear in hand, and slew a host of thessalians and partisans of hippias the tyrant? they, and they only, fought on your side on that eventful day; they delivered you from despotism, and thanks to them our nation could change the short tunic of the slave for the long cloak of the free man. laconian. i have never seen a woman of more gracious dignity. athenian. i have never seen a woman with a finer cunt! lysistrata. bound by such ties of mutual kindness, how can you bear to be at war? stop, stay the hateful strife, be reconciled; what hinders you? laconian. we are quite ready, if they will give us back our rampart. lysistrata. what rampart, my dear man? laconian. pylos, which we have been asking for and craving for ever so long. athenian. in the sea-god's name, you shall never have it! lysistrata. agree, my friends, agree. athenian. but then what city shall we be able to stir up trouble in? lysistrata. ask for another place in exchange. athenian. ah! that's the ticket! well, to begin with, give us echinus, the maliac gulf adjoining, and the two legs of megara.[ ] laconian. oh! surely, surely not all that, my dear sir. lysistrata. come to terms; never make a difficulty of two legs more or less! athenian. well, i'm ready now to off coat and cultivate my land. laconian. and i too, to dung it to start with. lysistrata. that's just what you shall do, once peace is signed. so, if you really want to make it, go consult your allies about the matter. athenian. what allies, i should like to know? why, we are _all_ on the stand; not one but is mad to be fucking. what we all want, is to be abed with our wives; how should our allies fail to second our project? laconian. and ours the same, for certain sure! athenians. the carystians first and foremost, by the gods! lysistrata. well said, indeed! now be off to purify yourselves for entering the acropolis, where the women invite you to supper; we will empty our provision baskets to do you honour. at table, you will exchange oaths and pledges; then each man will go home with his wife. athenian. come along then, and as quick as may be. laconian. lead on; i'm your man. athenian. quick, quick's the word, say i. chorus of women. embroidered stuffs, and dainty tunics, and flowing gowns, and golden ornaments, everything i have, i offer them you with all my heart; take them all for your children, for your girls, against they are chosen "basket-bearers" to the goddess. i invite you every one to enter, come in and choose whatever you will; there is nothing so well fastened, you cannot break the seals, and carry away the contents. look about you everywhere ... you won't find a blessed thing, unless you have sharper eyes than mine.[ ] and if any of you lacks corn to feed his slaves and his young and numerous family, why, i have a few grains of wheat at home; let him take what i have to give, a big twelve-pound loaf included. so let my poorer neighbours all come with bags and wallets; my man, manes, shall give them corn; but i warn them not to come near my door, or--beware the dog![ ] a market-lounger. i say, you, open the door! a slave. go your way, i tell you. why, bless me, they're sitting down now; i shall have to singe 'em with my torch to make 'em stir! what an impudent lot of fellows! market-lounger. i don't mean to budge. slave. well, as you _must_ stop, and i don't want to offend you--but you'll see some queer sights. market-lounger. well and good, i've no objection. slave. no, no, you must be off--or i'll tear your hair out, i will; be off, i say, and don't annoy the laconian envoys; they're just coming out from the banquet-hall. an athenian. such a merry banquet i've never seen before! the laconians were simply charming. after the drink is in, why, we're all wise men, all. it's only natural, to be sure, for sober, we're all fools. take my advice, my fellow-countrymen, our envoys should always be drunk. we go to sparta; we enter the city sober; why, we must be picking a quarrel directly. we don't understand what they say to us, we imagine a lot they don't say at all, and we report home all wrong, all topsy-turvy. but, look you, to-day it's quite different; we're enchanted whatever happens; instead of clitagoras, they might sing us telamon,[ ] and we should clap our hands just the same. a perjury or two into the bargain, la! what does that matter to merry companions in their cups? slave. but here they are back again! will you begone, you loafing scoundrels. market-lounger. ah ha! here's the company coming out already. a laconian. my dear, sweet friend, come, take your flute in hand; i would fain dance and sing my best in honour of the athenians and our noble selves. an athenian. yes, take your flute, i' the gods' name. what a delight to see him dance! chorus of laconians. oh mnemosyné! inspire these men, inspire my muse who knows our exploits and those of the athenians. with what a godlike ardour did they swoop down at artemisium[ ] on the ships of the medes! what a glorious victory was that! for the soldiers of leonidas,[ ] they were like fierce wild-boars whetting their tushes. the sweat ran down their faces, and drenched all their limbs, for verily the persians were as many as the sands of the seashore. oh! artemis, huntress queen, whose arrows pierce the denizens of the woods, virgin goddess, be thou favourable to the peace we here conclude; through thee may our hearts be long united! may this treaty draw close for ever the bonds of a happy friendship! no more wiles and stratagems! aid us, oh! aid us, maiden huntress! lysistrata. all is for the best; and now, laconians, take your wives away home with you, and you, athenians, yours. may husband live happily with wife, and wife with husband. dance, dance, to celebrate our bliss, and let us be heedful to avoid like mistakes for the future. chorus of athenians appear, appear, dancers, and the graces with you! let us invoke, one and all, artemis, and her heavenly brother, gracious apollo, patron of the dance, and dionysus, whose eye darts flame, as he steps forward surrounded by the maenad maids, and zeus, who wields the flashing lightning, and his august, thrice-blessed spouse, the queen of heaven! these let us invoke, and all the other gods, calling all the inhabitants of the skies to witness the noble peace now concluded under the fond auspices of aphrodité. io paean! io paean! dance, leap, as in honour of a victory won. evoé! evoé! and you, our laconian guests, sing us a new and inspiring strain! chorus of laconians. leave once more, oh! leave once more the noble height of taygetus, oh! muse of lacedaemon, and join us in singing the praises of apollo of amyclae, and athena of the brazen house, and the gallant twin sons of tyndarus, who practise arms on the banks of eurotas river.[ ] haste, haste hither with nimble-footed pace, let us sing sparta, the city that delights in choruses divinely sweet and graceful dances, when our maidens bound lightly by the river side, like frolicsome fillies, beating the ground with rapid steps and shaking their long locks in the wind, as bacchantes wave their wands in the wild revels of the wine-god. at their head, oh! chaste and beauteous goddess, daughter of latona, artemis, do thou lead the song and dance. a fillet binding thy waving tresses, appear in thy loveliness; leap like a fawn; strike thy divine hands together to animate the dance, and aid us to renown the valiant goddess of battles, great athené of the brazen house! * * * * * finis of "lysistrata" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] at athens more than anywhere the festivals of bacchus (dionysus) were celebrated with the utmost pomp--and also with the utmost licence, not to say licentiousness. pan---the rustic god and king of the satyrs; his feast was similarly an occasion of much coarse self-indulgence. aphrodité colias--under this name the goddess was invoked by courtesans as patroness of sensual, physical love. she had a temple on the promontory of colias, on the attic coast--whence the surname. the genetyllides were minor deities, presiding over the act of generation, as the name indicates. dogs were offered in sacrifice to them--presumably because of the lubricity of that animal. at the festivals of dionysus, pan and aphrodité women used to perform lascivious dances to the accompaniment of the beating of tambourines. lysistrata implies that the women she had summoned to council cared really for nothing but wanton pleasures. [ ] an obscene _double entendre_; calonicé understands, or pretends to understand, lysistrata as meaning a long and thick "membrum virile"! [ ] the eels from lake copaïs in boeotia were esteemed highly by epicures. [ ] this is the reproach demosthenes constantly levelled against his athenian fellow-countrymen--their failure to seize opportunity. [ ] an island of the saronic gulf, lying between magara and attica. it was separated by a narrow strait--scene of the naval battle of salamis, in which the athenians defeated xerxes--only from the attic coast, and was subject to athens. [ ] a deme, or township, of attica, lying five or six miles north of athens. the acharnians were throughout the most extreme partisans of the warlike party during the peloponnesian struggle. see 'the acharnians.' [ ] the precise reference is uncertain, and where the joke exactly comes in. the scholiast says theagenes was a rich, miserly and superstitious citizen, who never undertook any enterprise without first consulting an image of hecaté, the distributor of honour and wealth according to popular belief; and his wife would naturally follow her husband's example. [ ] a deme of attica, a small and insignificant community--a 'little pedlington' in fact. [ ] in allusion to the gymnastic training which was _de rigueur_ at sparta for the women no less than the men, and in particular to the dance of the lacedaemonian girls, in which the performer was expected to kick the fundament with the heels--always a standing joke among the athenians against their rivals and enemies the spartans. [ ] the allusion, of course, is to the 'garden of love,' the female parts, which it was the custom with the greek women, as it is with the ladies of the harem in turkey to this day, to depilate scrupulously, with the idea of making themselves more attractive to men. [ ] corinth was notorious in the ancient world for its prostitutes and general dissoluteness. [ ] an athenian general strongly suspected of treachery; aristophanes pretends his own soldiers have to see that he does not desert to the enemy. [ ] a town and fortress on the west coast of messenia, south-east part of peloponnese, at the northern extremity of the bay of sphacteria--the scene by the by of the modern naval battle of navarino--in lacedaemonian territory; it had been seized by the athenian fleet, and was still in their possession at the date, b.c., of the representation of the 'lysistrata,' though two years later, in the twenty-second year of the war, it was recovered by sparta. [ ] the athenian women, rightly or wrongly, had the reputation of being over fond of wine. aristophanes, here and elsewhere, makes many jests on this weakness of theirs. [ ] the lofty range of hills overlooking sparta from the west. [ ] in the original "we are nothing but poseidon and a boat"; the allusion is to a play of sophocles, now lost, but familiar to aristophanes' audience, entitled 'tyro,' in which the heroine, tyro, appears with poseidon, the sea-god, at the beginning of the tragedy, and at the close with the two boys she had had by him, whom she exposes in an open boat. [ ] "by the two goddesses,"--a woman's oath, which recurs constantly in this play; the two goddesses are always demeter and proserpine. [ ] one of the cyclades, between naxos and cos, celebrated, like the latter, for its manufacture of fine, almost transparent silks, worn in greece, and later at rome, by women of loose character. [ ] the proverb, quoted by pherecrates, is properly spoken of those who go out of their way to do a thing already done--"to kill a dead horse," but here apparently is twisted by aristophanes into an allusion to the leathern 'godemiche' mentioned a little above; if the worst comes to the worst, we must use artificial means. pherecrates was a comic playwright, a contemporary of aristophanes. [ ] literally "our scythian woman." at athens, policemen and ushers in the courts were generally scythians; so the revolting women must have _their_ scythian "usheress" too. [ ] in allusion to the oath which the seven allied champions before thebes take upon a buckler, in aeschylus' tragedy of 'the seven against thebes,' v. . [ ] a volcanic island in the northern part of the aegaean, celebrated for its vineyards. [ ] the old men are carrying faggots and fire to burn down the gates of the acropolis, and supply comic material by their panting and wheezing as they climb the steep approaches to the fortress and puff and blow at their fires. aristophanes gives them names, purely fancy ones--draces, strymodorus, philurgus, laches. [ ] cleomenes, king of sparta, had in the preceding century commanded a lacedaemonian expedition against athens. at the invitation of the alcmaeonidae, enemies of the sons of peisistratus, he seized the acropolis, but after an obstinately contested siege was forced to capitulate and retire. [ ] lemnos was proverbial with the greeks for chronic misfortune and a succession of horrors and disasters. can any good thing come out of _lemnos_? [ ] that is, a friend of the athenian people; samos had just before the date of the play re-established the democracy and renewed the old alliance with athens. [ ] a second chorus enters--of women who are hurrying up with water to extinguish the fire just started by the chorus of old men. nicodicé, calycé, crityllé, rhodippé, are fancy names the poet gives to different members of the band. another, stratyllis, has been stopped by the old men on her way to rejoin her companions. [ ] bupalus was a celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of clazomenae. the satiric poet hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having been portrayed by bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the latter hung himself in despair. apparently aristophanes alludes here to a verse in which hipponax threatened to beat bupalus. [ ] the heliasts at athens were the body of citizens chosen by lot to act as jurymen (or, more strictly speaking, as judges and jurymen, the dicast, or so-called judge, being merely president of the court, the majority of the heliasts pronouncing sentence) in the heliaia, or high court, where all offences liable to public prosecution were tried. they were in number, divided into ten panels of each, a thousand being held in reserve to supply occasional vacancies. each heliast was paid three obols for each day's attendance in court. [ ] women only celebrated the festivals of adonis. these rites were not performed in public, but on the terraces and flat roofs of the houses. [ ] the assembly, or ecclesia, was the general parliament of the athenian people, in which every adult citizen had a vote. it met on the pnyx hill, where the assembled ecclesiasts were addressed from the bema, or speaking-block. [ ] an orator and statesman who had first proposed the disastrous sicilian expedition, of - b.c. this was on the first day of the festival of adonis--ever afterwards regarded by the athenians as a day of ill omen. [ ] an island in the ionian sea, on the west of greece, near cephalenia, and an ally of athens during the peloponnesian war. [ ] cholozyges, a nickname for demostratus. [ ] the state treasure was kept in the acropolis, which the women had seized. [ ] the second (mythical) king of athens, successor of cecrops. [ ] the leader of the revolution which resulted in the temporary overthrow of the democracy at athens ( , b.c.), and the establishment of the oligarchy of the four hundred. [ ] priests of cybelé, who indulged in wild, frenzied dances, to the accompaniment of the clashing of cymbals, in their celebrations in honour of the goddess. [ ] captain of a cavalry division; they were chosen from amongst the _hippeis_, or 'knights' at athens. [ ] in allusion to a play of euripides, now lost, with this title. tereus was son of ares and king of the thracians in daulis. [ ] an allusion to the disastrous sicilian expedition ( - b.c.), in which many thousands of athenian citizens perished. [ ] the dead were laid out at athens before the house door. [ ] an offering made to the manes of the deceased on the third day after the funeral. [ ] hippias and hipparchus, the two sons of pisistratus, known as the pisistratidae, became tyrants of athens upon their father's death in b.c. in the latter was assassinated by the conspirators, harmodius and aristogiton, who took the opportunity of the panathenaic festival and concealed their daggers in myrtle wreaths. they were put to death, but four years later the surviving tyrant hippias was expelled, and the young and noble martyrs to liberty were ever after held in the highest honour by their fellow-citizens. their statues stood in the agora or public market-square. [ ] that is, the three obols paid for attendance as a heliast at the high court. [ ] see above, under note [ . transcriber.]. [ ] the origin of the name was this: in ancient days a tame bear consecrated to artemis, the huntress goddess, it seems, devoured a young girl, whose brothers killed the offender. artemis was angered and sent a terrible pestilence upon the city, which only ceased when, by direction of the oracle, a company of maidens was dedicated to the deity, to act the part of she-bears in the festivities held annually in her honour at the _brauronia_, her festival so named from the deme of brauron in attica. [ ] the basket-bearers, canephoroi, at athens were the maidens who, clad in flowing robes, carried in baskets on their heads the sacred implements and paraphernalia in procession at the celebrations in honour of demeter, dionysus and athené. [ ] a treasure formed by voluntary contributions at the time of the persian wars; by aristophanes' day it had all been dissipated, through the influence of successive demagogues, in distributions and gifts to the public under various pretexts. [ ] a town and fortress of southern attica, in the neighbourhood of marathon, occupied by the alcmaeonidae--the noble family or clan at athens banished from the city in b.c., restored , but again expelled by pisistratus--in the course of their contest with that tyrant. returning to athens on the death of hippias ( b.c.), they united with the democracy, and the then head of the family, cleisthenes, gave a new constitution to the city. [ ] queen of halicarnassus, in caria; an ally of the persian king xerxes in his invasion of greece; she fought gallantly at the battle of salamis. [ ] a _double entendre_--with allusion to the posture in sexual intercourse known among the greeks as [greek: hippos], in latin 'equus,' the horse, where the woman mounts the man in reversal of the ordinary position. [ ] micon, a famous athenian painter, decorated the walls of the poecilé stoa, or painted porch, at athens with a series of frescoes representing the battles of the amazons with theseus and the athenians. [ ] to avenge itself on the eagle, the beetle threw the former's eggs out of the nest and broke them. see the fables of aesop. [ ] keeper of a house of ill fame apparently. [ ] "as chaste as melanion" was a greek proverb. who melanion was is unknown. [ ] myronides and phormio were famous athenian generals. the former was celebrated for his conquest of all boeotia, except thebes, in b.c.; the latter, with a fleet of twenty triremes, equipped at his own cost, defeated a lacedaemonian fleet of forty-seven sail, in . [ ] timon, the misanthrope; he was an athenian and a contemporary of aristophanes. disgusted by the ingratitude of his fellow-citizens and sickened with repeated disappointments, he retired altogether from society, admitting no one, it is said, to his intimacy except the brilliant young statesman alcibiades. [ ] a spring so named within the precincts of the acropolis. [ ] the comic poets delighted in introducing heracles (hercules) on the stage as an insatiable glutton, whom the other characters were for ever tantalizing by promising toothsome dishes and then making him wait indefinitely for their arrival. [ ] the rhodian perfumes and unguents were less esteemed than the syrian. [ ] 'dog-fox,' nickname of a certain notorious philostratus, keeper of an athenian brothel of note in aristophanes' day. [ ] the god of gardens--and of lubricity; represented by a grotesque figure with an enormous penis. [ ] a staff in use among the lacedaemonians for writing cipher despatches. a strip of leather or paper was wound round the 'skytalé,' on which the required message was written lengthwise, so that when unrolled it became unintelligible; the recipient abroad had a staff of the same thickness and pattern, and so was enabled by rewinding the document to decipher the words. [ ] a city of achaia, the acquisition of which had long been an object of lacedaemonian ambition. to make the joke intelligible here, we must suppose pellené was also the name of some notorious courtesan of the day. [ ] a deme of attica, abounding in woods and marshes, where the gnats were particularly troublesome. there is very likely also an allusion to the spiteful, teasing character of its inhabitants. [ ] a mina was a little over £ ; minas made a talent. [ ] carystus was a city of euboea notorious for the dissoluteness of its inhabitants; hence the inclusion of these carystian youths in the women's invitation. [ ] a [greek: para prosdokian]; i.e. exactly the opposite of the word expected is used to conclude the sentence--to move the sudden hilarity of the audience as a finale to the scene. [ ] a wattled cage or pen for pigs. [ ] an effeminate, a pathic; failing women, they will have to resort to pederasty. [ ] these _hermae_ were half-length figures of the god hermes, which stood at the corners of streets and in public places at athens. one night, just before the sailing of the sicilian expedition, they were all mutilated--to the consternation of the inhabitants. alcibiades and his wild companions were suspected of the outrage. [ ] they had repeatedly dismissed with scant courtesy successive lacedaemonian embassies coming to propose terms of peace after the notable athenian successes at pylos, when the island of sphacteria was captured and spartan citizens brought prisoners to athens. this was in b.c., the seventh year of the war. [ ] chief of the lacedaemonian embassy which came to athens, after the earthquake of b.c., which almost annihilated the town of sparta, to invoke the help of the athenians against the revolted messenians and helots. [ ] echinus was a town on the thessalian coast, at the entrance to the maliac gulf, near thermopylae and opposite the northern end of the athenian island of euboea. by the "legs of megara" are meant the two "long walls" or lines of fortification connecting the city of megara with its seaport nisaea--in the same way as piraeus was joined to athens. [ ] examples of [greek: para prosdokian] again; see above. [ ] clitagoras was a composer of drinking songs, telamon of war songs. [ ] here, off the north coast of euboea, the greeks defeated the persians in a naval battle, b.c. [ ] the hero of thermopylae, where the athenians arrested the advance of the invading hosts of xerxes in the same year. [ ] amyclae, an ancient town on the eurotas within two or three miles of sparta, the traditional birthplace of castor and pollux; here stood a famous and magnificent temple of apollo. "of the brazen house," a surname of athené, from the temple dedicated to her worship at chalcis in euboea, the walls of which were covered with plates of brass. sons of tyndarus, that is, castor and pollux, "the great twin brethren," held in peculiar reverence at sparta. the clouds introduction the satire in this, one of the best known of all aristophanes' comedies, is directed against the new schools of philosophy, or perhaps we should rather say dialectic, which had lately been introduced, mostly from abroad, at athens. the doctrines held up to ridicule are those of the 'sophists'--such men as thrasymachus from chalcedon in bithynia, gorgias from leontini in sicily, protagoras from abdera in thrace, and other foreign scholars and rhetoricians who had flocked to athens as the intellectual centre of the hellenic world. strange to say, socrates of all people, the avowed enemy and merciless critic of these men and their methods, is taken as their representative, and personally attacked with pitiless raillery. presumably this was merely because he was the most prominent and noteworthy teacher and thinker of the day, while his grotesque personal appearance and startling eccentricities of behaviour gave a ready handle to caricature. neither the author nor his audience took the trouble, or were likely to take the trouble, to discriminate nicely; there was, of course, a general resemblance between the socratic 'elenchos' and the methods of the new practitioners of dialectic; and this was enough for stage purposes. however unjustly, socrates is taken as typical of the newfangled sophistical teachers, just as in 'the acharnians' lamachus, with his gorgon shield, is introduced as representative of the war party, though that general was not specially responsible for the continuance of hostilities more than anybody else. aristophanes' point of view, as a member of the aristocratical party and a fine old conservative, is that these sophists, as the professors of the new education had come to be called, and socrates as their protagonist, were insincere and dangerous innovators, corrupting morals, persuading young men to despise the old-fashioned, home-grown virtues of the state and teaching a system of false and pernicious tricks of verbal fence whereby anything whatever could be proved, and the worse be made to seem the better--provided always sufficient payment were forthcoming. true, socrates refused to take money from his pupils, and made it his chief reproach against the lecturing sophists that they received fees; but what of that? the comedian cannot pay heed to such fine distinctions, but belabours the whole tribe with indiscriminate raillery and scurrility. the play was produced at the great dionysia in b.c., but proved unsuccessful, cratinus and amipsias being awarded first and second prize. this is said to have been due to the intrigues and influence of alcibiades, who resented the caricature of himself presented in the sporting phidippides. a second edition of the drama was apparently produced some years later, to which the 'parabasis' of the play as we possess it must belong, as it refers to events subsequent to the date named. the plot is briefly as follows: strepsiades, a wealthy country gentleman, has been brought to penury and deeply involved in debt by the extravagance and horsy tastes of his son phidippides. having heard of the wonderful new art of argument, the royal road to success in litigation, discovered by the sophists, he hopes that, if only he can enter the 'phrontisterion,' or thinking-shop, of socrates, he will learn how to turn the tables on his creditors and avoid paying the debts which are dragging him down. he joins the school accordingly, but is found too old and stupid to profit by the lessons. so his son phidippides is substituted as a more promising pupil. the latter takes to the new learning like a duck to water, and soon shows what progress he has made by beating his father and demonstrating that he is justified by all laws, divine and human, in what he is doing. this opens the old man's eyes, who sets fire to the 'phrontisterion,' and the play ends in a great conflagration of this home of humbug. * * * * * the clouds dramatis personae strepsiades. phidippides. servant of strepsiades. socrates. disciples of socrates. just discourse. unjust discourse. pasias, a money-lender. pasias' witness. amynias, another money-lender. chaerephon. chorus of clouds. scene: a sleeping-room in strepsiades' house; then in front of socrates' house. * * * * * the clouds strepsiades.[ ] great gods! will these nights never end? will daylight never come? i heard the cock crow long ago and my slaves are snoring still! ah! 'twas not so formerly. curses on the war! has it not done me ills enough? now i may not even chastise my own slaves.[ ] again there's this brave lad, who never wakes the whole long night, but, wrapped in his five coverlets, farts away to his heart's content. come! let me nestle in well and snore too, if it be possible ... oh! misery, 'tis vain to think of sleep with all these expenses, this stable, these debts, which are devouring me, thanks to this fine cavalier, who only knows how to look after his long locks, to show himself off in his chariot and to dream of horses! and i, i am nearly dead, when i see the moon bringing the third decade in her train[ ] and my liability falling due.... slave! light the lamp and bring me my tablets. who are all my creditors? let me see and reckon up the interest. what is it i owe? ... twelve minae to pasias.... what! twelve minae to pasias? ... why did i borrow these? ah! i know! 'twas to buy that thoroughbred, which cost me so dear.[ ] how i should have prized the stone that had blinded him! phidippides (_in his sleep_). that's not fair, philo! drive your chariot straight,[ ] i say. strepsiades. 'tis this that is destroying me. he raves about horses, even in his sleep. phidippides (_still sleeping_). how many times round the track is the race for the chariots of war?[ ] strepsiades. 'tis your own father you are driving to death ... to ruin. come! what debt comes next, after that of pasias? ... three minae to amynias for a chariot and its two wheels. phidippides (_still asleep_). give the horse a good roll in the dust and lead him home. strepsiades. ah! wretched boy! 'tis my money that you are making roll. my creditors have distrained on my goods, and here are others again, who demand security for their interest. phidippides (_awaking_). what is the matter with you, father, that you groan and turn about the whole night through? strepsiades. i have a bum-bailiff in the bedclothes biting me. phidippides. for pity's sake, let me have a little sleep. strepsiades. very well, sleep on! but remember that all these debts will fall back on your shoulders. oh! curses on the go-between who made me marry your mother! i lived so happily in the country, a commonplace, everyday life, but a good and easy one--had not a trouble, not a care, was rich in bees, in sheep and in olives. then forsooth i must marry the niece of megacles, the son of megacles; i belonged to the country, she was from the town; she was a haughty, extravagant woman, a true coesyra.[ ] on the nuptial day, when i lay beside her, i was reeking of the dregs of the wine-cup, of cheese and of wool; she was redolent with essences, saffron, tender kisses, the love of spending, of good cheer and of wanton delights. i will not say she did nothing; no, she worked hard ... to ruin me, and pretending all the while merely to be showing her the cloak she had woven for me, i said, "wife, you go too fast about your work, your threads are too closely woven and you use far too much wool." a slave. there is no more oil in the lamp. strepsiades. why then did you light such a guzzling lamp? come here, i am going to beat you! slave. what for? strepsiades. because you have put in too thick a wick.... later, when we had this boy, what was to be his name? 'twas the cause of much quarrelling with my loving wife. she insisted on having some reference to a horse in his name, that he should be called xanthippus, charippus or callippides.[ ] i wanted to name him phidonides after his grandfather.[ ] we disputed long, and finally agreed to style him phidippides....[ ] she used to fondle and coax him, saying, "oh! what a joy it will be to me when you have grown up, to see you, like my father, megacles,[ ] clothed in purple and standing up straight in your chariot driving your steeds toward the town." and i would say to him, "when, like your father, you will go, dressed in a skin, to fetch back your goats from phelleus."[ ] alas! he never listened to me and his madness for horses has shattered my fortune. but by dint of thinking the livelong night, i have discovered a road to salvation, both miraculous and divine. if he will but follow it, i shall be out of my trouble! first, however, he must be awakened, but let it be done as gently as possible. how shall i manage it? phidippides! my little phidippides! phidippides. what is it, father! strepsiades. kiss me and give me your hand. phidippides. there! what's it all about? strepsiades. tell me! do you love me? phidippides. by posidon, the equestrian posidon! yes, i swear i do. strepsiades. oh, do not, i pray you, invoke this god of horses; 'tis he who is the cause of all my cares. but if you really love me, and with your whole heart, my boy, believe me. phidippides. believe you? about what? strepsiades. alter your habits forthwith and go and learn what i tell you. phidippides. say on, what are your orders? strepsiades. will you obey me ever so little? phidippides. by bacchus, i will obey you. strepsiades. very well then! look this way. do you see that little door and that little house?[ ] phidippides. yes, father. but what are you driving at? strepsiades. that is the school of wisdom. there, they prove that we are coals enclosed on all sides under a vast extinguisher, which is the sky.[ ] if well paid,[ ] these men also teach one how to gain law-suits, whether they be just or not. phidippides. what do they call themselves? strepsiades. i do not know exactly, but they are deep thinkers and most admirable people. phidippides. bah! the wretches! i know them; you mean those quacks with livid faces,[ ] those barefoot fellows, such as that miserable socrates and chaerephon.[ ] strepsiades. silence! say nothing foolish! if you desire your father not to die of hunger, join their company and let your horses go. phidippides. no, by bacchus! even though you gave me the pheasants that leogoras rears. strepsiades. oh! my beloved son, i beseech you, go and follow their teachings. phidippides. and what is it i should learn? strepsiades. 'twould seem they have two courses of reasoning, the true and the false, and that, thanks to the false, the worst law-suits can be gained. if then you learn this science, which is false, i shall not pay an obolus of all the debts i have contracted on your account. phidippides. no, i will not do it. i should no longer dare to look at our gallant horsemen, when i had so tarnished my fair hue of honour. strepsiades. well then, by demeter! i will no longer support you, neither you, nor your team, nor your saddle-horse. go and hang yourself, i turn you out of house and home. phidippides. my uncle megacles will not leave me without horses; i shall go to him and laugh at your anger. strepsiades. one rebuff shall not dishearten me. with the help of the gods i will enter this school and learn myself. but at my age, memory has gone and the mind is slow to grasp things. how can all these fine distinctions, these subtleties be learned? bah! why should i dally thus instead of rapping at the door? slave, slave! (_he knocks and calls._) a disciple. a plague on you! who are you? strepsiades. strepsiades, the son of phido, of the deme of cicynna. disciple. 'tis for sure only an ignorant and illiterate fellow who lets drive at the door with such kicks. you have brought on a miscarriage--of an idea! strepsiades. pardon me, pray; for i live far away from here in the country. but tell me, what was the idea that miscarried? disciple. i may not tell it to any but a disciple. strepsiades. then tell me without fear, for i have come to study among you. disciple. very well then, but reflect, that these are mysteries. lately, a flea bit chaerephon on the brow and then from there sprang on to the head of socrates. socrates asked chaerephon, "how many times the length of its legs does a flea jump?" strepsiades. and how ever did he set about measuring it? disciple. oh! 'twas most ingenious! he melted some wax, seized the flea and dipped its two feet in the wax, which, when cooled, left them shod with true persian buskins.[ ] these he slipped off and with them measured the distance. strepsiades. ah! great zeus! what a brain! what subtlety! disciple. i wonder what then would you say, if you knew another of socrates' contrivances? strepsiades. what is it? pray tell me. disciple. chaerephon of the deme of sphettia asked him whether he thought a gnat buzzed through its proboscis or through its rear. strepsiades. and what did he say about the gnat? disciple. he said that the gut of the gnat was narrow, and that, in passing through this tiny passage, the air is driven with force towards the breech; then after this slender channel, it encountered the rump, which was distended like a trumpet, and there it resounded sonorously. strepsiades. so the rear of a gnat is a trumpet. oh! what a splendid discovery! thrice happy socrates! 'twould not be difficult to succeed in a law-suit, knowing so much about the gut of a gnat! disciple. not long ago a lizard caused him the loss of a sublime thought. strepsiades. in what way, an it please you? disciple. one night, when he was studying the course of the moon and its revolutions and was gazing open-mouthed at the heavens, a lizard shitted upon him from the top of the roof. strepsiades. this lizard, that relieved itself over socrates, tickles me. disciple. yesternight we had nothing to eat. strepsiades. well! what did he contrive, to secure you some supper? disciple. he spread over the table a light layer of cinders, bending an iron rod the while; then he took up a pair of compasses and at the same moment unhooked a piece of the victim which was hanging in the palaestra.[ ] strepsiades. and we still dare to admire thales![ ] open, open this home of knowledge to me quickly! haste, haste to show me socrates; i long to become his disciple. but do, do open the door. (_the disciple admits strepsiades._) ah! by heracles! what country are those animals from? disciple. why, what are you astonished at? what do you think they resemble? strepsiades. the captives of pylos.[ ] but why do they look so fixedly on the ground? disciple. they are seeking for what is below the ground. strepsiades. ah! 'tis onions they are seeking. do not give yourselves so much trouble; i know where there are some, fine and large ones. but what are those fellows doing, who are bent all double? disciple. they are sounding the abysses of tartarus.[ ] strepsiades. and what is their rump looking at in the heavens? disciple. it is studying astronomy on its own account. but come in; so that the master may not find us here. strepsiades. not yet, not yet; let them not change their position. i want to tell them my own little matter. disciple. but they may not stay too long in the open air and away from school. strepsiades. in the name of all the gods, what is that? tell me. (_pointing to a celestial globe._) disciple. that is astronomy. strepsiades. and that? (_pointing to a map._) disciple. geometry. strepsiades. what is that used for? disciple. to measure the land. strepsiades. but that is apportioned by lot.[ ] disciple. no, no, i mean the entire earth. strepsiades. ah! what a funny thing! how generally useful indeed is this invention! disciple. there is the whole surface of the earth. look! here is athens. strepsiades. athens! you are mistaken; i see no courts sitting.[ ] disciple. nevertheless it is really and truly the attic territory. strepsiades. and where are my neighbours of cicynna? disciple. they live here. this is euboea; you see this island, that is so long and narrow. strepsiades. i know. 'tis we and pericles, who have stretched it by dint of squeezing it.[ ] and where is lacedaemon? disciple. lacedaemon? why, here it is, look. strepsiades. how near it is to us! think it well over, it must be removed to a greater distance. disciple. but, by zeus, that is not possible. strepsiades. then, woe to you! and who is this man suspended up in a basket? disciple. 'tis _he himself_. strepsiades. who himself? disciple. socrates. strepsiades. socrates! oh! i pray you, call him right loudly for me. disciple. call him yourself; i have no time to waste. strepsiades. socrates! my little socrates! socrates. mortal, what do you want with me? strepsiades. first, what are you doing up there? tell me, i beseech you. socrates. i traverse the air and contemplate the sun. strepsiades. thus 'tis not on the solid ground, but from the height of this basket, that you slight the gods, if indeed....[ ] socrates. i have to suspend my brain and mingle the subtle essence of my mind with this air, which is of the like nature, in order to clearly penetrate the things of heaven.[ ] i should have discovered nothing, had i remained on the ground to consider from below the things that are above; for the earth by its force attracts the sap of the mind to itself. 'tis just the same with the water-cress.[ ] strepsiades. what? does the mind attract the sap of the water-cress? ah! my dear little socrates, come down to me! i have come to ask you for lessons. socrates. and for what lessons? strepsiades. i want to learn how to speak. i have borrowed money, and my merciless creditors do not leave me a moment's peace; all my goods are at stake. socrates. and how was it you did not see that you were getting so much into debt? strepsiades. my ruin has been the madness for horses, a most rapacious evil; but teach me one of your two methods of reasoning, the one whose object is not to repay anything, and, may the gods bear witness, that i am ready to pay any fee you may name. socrates. by which gods will you swear? to begin with, the gods are not a coin current with us. strepsiades. but what do you swear by then? by the iron money of byzantium?[ ] socrates. do you really wish to know the truth of celestial matters? strepsiades. why, truly, if 'tis possible. socrates. ... and to converse with the clouds, who are our genii? strepsiades. without a doubt. socrates. then be seated on this sacred couch. strepsiades. i am seated. socrates. now take this chaplet. strepsiades. why a chaplet? alas! socrates, would you sacrifice me, like athamas?[ ] socrates. no, these are the rites of initiation. strepsiades. and what is it i am to gain? socrates. you will become a thorough rattle-pate, a hardened old stager, the fine flour of the talkers.... but come, keep quiet. strepsiades. by zeus! you lie not! soon i shall be nothing but wheat-flour, if you powder me in this fashion.[ ] socrates. silence, old man, give heed to the prayers.... oh! most mighty king, the boundless air, that keepest the earth suspended in space, thou bright aether and ye venerable goddesses, the clouds, who carry in your loins the thunder and the lightning, arise, ye sovereign powers and manifest yourselves in the celestial spheres to the eyes of the sage. strepsiades. not yet! wait a bit, till i fold my mantle double, so as not to get wet. and to think that i did not even bring my travelling cap! what a misfortune! socrates. come, oh! clouds, whom i adore, come and show yourselves to this man, whether you be resting on the sacred summits of olympus, crowned with hoar-frost, or tarrying in the gardens of ocean, your father, forming sacred choruses with the nymphs; whether you be gathering the waves of the nile in golden vases or dwelling in the maeotic marsh or on the snowy rocks of mimas, hearken to my prayer and accept my offering. may these sacrifices be pleasing to you. chorus. eternal clouds, let us appear, let us arise from the roaring depths of ocean, our father; let us fly towards the lofty mountains, spread our damp wings over their forest-laden summits, whence we will dominate the distant valleys, the harvest fed by the sacred earth, the murmur of the divine streams and the resounding waves of the sea, which the unwearying orb lights up with its glittering beams. but let us shake off the rainy fogs, which hide our immortal beauty and sweep the earth from afar with our gaze. socrates. oh, venerated goddesses, yes, you are answering my call! (_to strepsiades._) did you hear their voices mingling with the awful growling of the thunder? strepsiades. oh! adorable clouds, i revere you and i too am going to let off _my_ thunder, so greatly has your own affrighted me. faith! whether permitted or not, i must, i must shit! socrates. no scoffing; do not copy those accursed comic poets. come, silence! a numerous host of goddesses approaches with songs. chorus. virgins, who pour forth the rains, let us move toward attica, the rich country of pallas, the home of the brave; let us visit the dear land of cecrops, where the secret rites[ ] are celebrated, where the mysterious sanctuary flies open to the initiate.... what victims are offered there to the deities of heaven! what glorious temples! what statues! what holy prayers to the rulers of olympus! at every season nothing but sacred festivals, garlanded victims, are to be seen. then spring brings round again the joyous feasts of dionysus, the harmonious contests of the choruses and the serious melodies of the flute. strepsiades. by zeus! tell me, socrates, i pray you, who are these women, whose language is so solemn; can they be demigoddesses? socrates. not at all. they are the clouds of heaven, great goddesses for the lazy; to them we owe all, thoughts, speeches, trickery, roguery, boasting, lies, sagacity. strepsiades. ah! that was why, as i listened to them, my mind spread out its wings; it burns to babble about trifles, to maintain worthless arguments, to voice its petty reasons, to contradict, to tease some opponent. but are they not going to show themselves? i should like to see them, were it possible. socrates. well, look this way in the direction of parnes;[ ] i already see those who are slowly descending. strepsiades. but where, where? show them to me. socrates. they are advancing in a throng, following an oblique path across the dales and thickets. strepsiades. 'tis strange! i can see nothing. socrates. there, close to the entrance. strepsiades. hardly, if at all, can i distinguish them. socrates. you _must_ see them clearly now, unless your eyes are filled with gum as thick as pumpkins. strepsiades. aye, undoubtedly! oh! the venerable goddesses! why, they fill up the entire stage. socrates. and you did not know, you never suspected, that they were goddesses? strepsiades. no, indeed; methought the clouds were only fog, dew and vapour. socrates. but what you certainly do not know is that they are the support of a crowd of quacks, both the diviners, who were sent to thurium,[ ] the notorious physicians, the well-combed fops, who load their fingers with rings down to the nails, and the baggarts, who write dithyrambic verses, all these are idlers whom the clouds provide a living for, because they sing them in their verses. strepsiades. 'tis then for this that they praise "the rapid flight of the moist clouds, which veil the brightness of day" and "the waving locks of the hundred-headed typho" and "the impetuous tempests, which float through the heavens, like birds of prey with aerial wings, loaded with mists" and "the rains, the dew, which the clouds outpour."[ ] as a reward for these fine phrases they bolt well-grown, tasty mullet and delicate thrushes. socrates. yes, thanks to these. and is it not right and meet? strepsiades. tell me then why, if these really are the clouds, they so very much resemble mortals. this is not their usual form. socrates. what are they like then? strepsiades. i don't know exactly; well, they are like great packs of wool, but not like women--no, not in the least.... and these have noses. socrates. answer my questions. strepsiades. willingly! go on, i am listening. socrates. have you not sometimes seen clouds in the sky like a centaur, a leopard, a wolf or a bull? strepsiades. why, certainly i have, but what then? socrates. they take what metamorphosis they like. if they see a debauchee with long flowing locks and hairy as a beast, like the son of xenophantes,[ ] they take the form of a centaur[ ] in derision of his shameful passion. strepsiades. and when they see simon, that thiever of public money, what do they do then? socrates. to picture him to the life, they turn at once into wolves. strepsiades. so that was why yesterday, when they saw cleonymus,[ ] who cast away his buckler because he is the veriest poltroon amongst men, they changed into deer. socrates. and to-day they have seen clisthenes;[ ] you see ... they are women. strepsiades. hail, sovereign goddesses, and if ever you have let your celestial voice be heard by mortal ears, speak to me, oh! speak to me, ye all-powerful queens. chorus. hail! veteran of the ancient times, you who burn to instruct yourself in fine language. and you, great high-priest of subtle nonsense, tell us your desire. to you and prodicus[ ] alone of all the hollow orationers of to-day have we lent an ear--to prodicus, because of his knowledge and his great wisdom, and to you, because you walk with head erect, a confident look, barefooted, resigned to everything and proud of our protection. strepsiades. oh! earth! what august utterances! how sacred! how wondrous! socrates. that is because these are the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth. strepsiades. but by the earth! is our father, zeus, the olympian, not a god? socrates. zeus! what zeus? are you mad? there is no zeus. strepsiades. what are you saying now? who causes the rain to fall? answer me that! socrates. why, 'tis these, and i will prove it. have you ever seen it raining without clouds? let zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence! strepsiades. by apollo! that is powerfully argued! for my own part, i always thought it was zeus pissing into a sieve. but tell me, who is it makes the thunder, which i so much dread? socrates. 'tis these, when they roll one over the other. strepsiades. but how can that be? you most daring among men! socrates. being full of water, and forced to move along, they are of necessity precipitated in rain, being fully distended with moisture from the regions where they have been floating; hence they bump each other heavily and burst with great noise. strepsiades. but is it not zeus who forces them to move? socrates. not at all; 'tis aerial whirlwind. strepsiades. the whirlwind! ah! i did not know that. so zeus, it seems, has no existence, and 'tis the whirlwind that reigns in his stead? but you have not yet told me what makes the roll of the thunder? socrates. have you not understood me then? i tell you, that the clouds, when full of rain, bump against one another, and that, being inordinately swollen out, they burst with a great noise. strepsiades. how can you make me credit that? socrates. take yourself as an example. when you have heartily gorged on stew at the panathenaea, you get throes of stomach-ache and then suddenly your belly resounds with prolonged growling. strepsiades. yes, yes, by apollo! i suffer, i get colic, then the stew sets a-growling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. at first, 'tis but a little gurgling _pappax, pappax_! then it increases, _papapappax!_ and when i seek relief, why, 'tis thunder indeed, _papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!!_ just like the clouds. socrates. well then, reflect what a noise is produced by your belly, which is but small. shall not the air, which is boundless, produce these mighty claps of thunder? strepsiades. but tell me this. whence comes the lightning, the dazzling flame, which at times consumes the man it strikes, at others hardly singes him. is it not plain, that 'tis zeus hurling it at the perjurers? socrates. out upon the fool! the driveller! he still savours of the golden age! if zeus strikes at the perjurers, why has he not blasted simon, cleonymus and theorus?[ ] of a surety, greater perjurers cannot exist. no, he strikes his own temple, and sunium, the promontory of athens,[ ] and the towering oaks. now, why should he do that? an oak is no perjurer. strepsiades. i cannot tell, but it seems to me well argued. what is the thunder then? socrates. when a dry wind ascends to the clouds and gets shut into them, it blows them out like a bladder; finally, being too confined, it bursts them, escapes with fierce violence and a roar to flash into flame by reason of its own impetuosity. strepsiades. forsooth, 'tis just what happened to me one day. 'twas at the feast of zeus! i was cooking a sow's belly for my family and i had forgotten to slit it open. it swelled out and, suddenly bursting, discharged itself right into my eyes and burnt my face. chorus. oh, mortal! you, who desire to instruct yourself in our great wisdom, the athenians, the greeks will envy you your good fortune. only you must have the memory and ardour for study, you must know how to stand the tests, hold your own, go forward without feeling fatigue, caring but little for food, abstaining from wine, gymnastic exercises and other similar follies, in fact, you must believe as every man of intellect should, that the greatest of all blessings is to live and think more clearly than the vulgar herd, to shine in the contests of words. strepsiades. if it be a question of hardiness for labour, of spending whole nights at work, of living sparingly, of fighting my stomach and only eating chick-pease, rest assured, i am as hard as an anvil. socrates. henceforward, following our example, you will recognize no other gods but chaos, the clouds and the tongue, these three alone. strepsiades. i would not speak to the others, even if i should meet them in the street; not a single sacrifice, not a libation, not a grain of incense for them! chorus. tell us boldly then what you want of us; you cannot fail to succeed, if you honour and revere us and if you are resolved to become a clever man. strepsiades. oh, sovereign goddesses, 'tis but a very small favour that i ask of you; grant that i may distance all the greeks by a hundred stadia in the art of speaking. chorus. we grant you this, and henceforward no eloquence shall more often succeed with the people than your own. strepsiades. may the god shield me from possessing great eloquence! 'tis not what i want. i want to be able to turn bad lawsuits to my own advantage and to slip through the fingers of my creditors. chorus. it shall be as you wish, for your ambitions are modest. commit yourself fearlessly to our ministers, the sophists. strepsiades. this will i do, for i trust in you. moreover there is no drawing back, what with these cursed horses and this marriage, which has eaten up my vitals. so let them do with me as they will; i yield my body to them. come blows, come hunger, thirst, heat or cold, little matters it to me; they may flay me, if i only escape my debts, if only i win the reputation of being a bold rascal, a fine speaker, impudent, shameless, a braggart, and adept at stringing lies, an old stager at quibbles, a complete table of the laws, a thorough rattle, a fox to slip through any hole; supple as a leathern strap, slippery as an eel, an artful fellow, a blusterer, a villain; a knave with a hundred faces, cunning, intolerable, a gluttonous dog. with such epithets do i seek to be greeted; on these terms, they can treat me as they choose, and, if they wish, by demeter! they can turn me into sausages and serve me up to the philosophers. chorus. here have we a bold and well-disposed pupil indeed. when we shall have taught you, your glory among the mortals will reach even to the skies. strepsiades. wherein will that profit me? chorus. you will pass your whole life among us and will be the most envied of men. strepsiades. shall i really ever see such happiness? chorus. clients will be everlastingly besieging your door in crowds, burning to get at you, to explain their business to you and to consult you about their suits, which, in return for your ability, will bring you in great sums. but, socrates, begin the lessons you want to teach this old man; rouse his mind, try the strength of his intelligence. socrates. come, tell me the kind of mind you have; 'tis important i know this, that i may order my batteries against you in a new fashion. strepsiades. eh, what! in the name of the gods, are you purposing to assault me then? socrates. no. i only wish to ask you some questions. have you any memory? strepsiades. that depends: if anything is owed me, my memory is excellent, but if i owe, alas! i have none whatever. socrates. have you a natural gift for speaking? strepsiades. for speaking, no; for cheating, yes. socrates. how will you be able to learn then? strepsiades. very easily, have no fear. socrates. thus, when i throw forth some philosophical thought anent things celestial, you will seize it in its very flight? strepsiades. then i am to snap up wisdom much as a dog snaps up a morsel? socrates. oh! the ignoramus! the barbarian! i greatly fear, old man, 'twill be needful for me to have recourse to blows. now, let me hear what you do when you are beaten. strepsiades. i receive the blow, then wait a moment, take my witnesses and finally summon my assailant at law. socrates. come, take off your cloak. strepsiades. have i robbed you of anything? socrates. no, but 'tis usual to enter the school without your cloak. strepsiades. but i am not come here to look for stolen goods. socrates. off with it, fool! strepsiades. tell me, if i prove thoroughly attentive and learn with zeal, which of your disciples shall i resemble, do you think? socrates. you will be the image of chaerephon. strepsiades. ah! unhappy me! i shall then be but half alive? socrates. a truce to this chatter! follow me and no more of it. strepsiades. first give me a honey-cake, for to descend down there sets me all a-tremble; meseems 'tis the cave of trophonius. socrates. but get in with you! what reason have you for thus dallying at the door? chorus. good luck! you have courage; may you succeed, you, who, though already so advanced in years, wish to instruct your mind with new studies and practise it in wisdom! chorus (_parabasis_). spectators! by bacchus, whose servant i am, i will frankly tell you the truth. may i secure both victory and renown as certainly as i hold you for adept critics and as i regard this comedy as my best. i wished to give you the first view of a work, which had cost me much trouble, but i withdrew, unjustly beaten by unskilful rivals.[ ] 'tis you, oh, enlightened public, for whom i have prepared my piece, that i reproach with this. nevertheless i shall never willingly cease to seek the approval of the discerning. i have not forgotten the day, when men, whom one is happy to have for an audience, received my 'young man' and my 'debauchee'[ ] with so much favour in this very place. then as yet virgin, my muse had not attained the legal age for maternity;[ ] she had to expose her first-born for another to adopt, and it has since grown up under your generous patronage. ever since you have as good as sworn me your faithful alliance. thus, like electra[ ] of the poets, my comedy has come to seek you to-day, hoping again to encounter such enlightened spectators. as far away as she can discern her orestes, she will be able to recognize him by his curly head. and note her modest demeanour! she has not sewn on a piece of hanging leather, thick and reddened at the end,[ ] to cause laughter among the children; she does not rail at the bald, neither does she dance the cordax;[ ] no old man is seen, who, while uttering his lines, batters his questioner with a stick to make his poor jests pass muster.[ ] she does not rush upon the scene carrying a torch and screaming, 'la, la! la, la!' no, she relies upon herself and her verses.... my value is so well known, that i take no further pride in it. i do not seek to deceive you, by reproducing the same subjects two or three times; i always invent fresh themes to present before you, themes that have no relation to each other and that are all clever. i attacked cleon[ ] to his face and when he was all-powerful; but he has fallen, and now i have no desire to kick him when he is down. my rivals, on the contrary, once that this wretched hyperbolus has given them the cue, have never ceased setting upon both him and his mother. first eupolis presented his 'maricas';[ ] this was simply my 'knights,' whom this plagiarist had clumsily furbished up again by adding to the piece an old drunken woman, so that she might dance the cordax. 'twas an old idea, taken from phrynichus, who caused his old hag to be devoured by a monster of the deep.[ ] then hermippus[ ] fell foul of hyperbolus and now all the others fall upon him and repeat my comparison of the eels. may those who find amusement in their pieces not be pleased with mine, but as for you, who love and applaud my inventions, why, posterity will praise your good taste. oh, ruler of olympus, all-powerful king of the gods, great zeus, it is thou whom i first invoke; protect this chorus; and thou too, posidon, whose dread trident upheaves at the will of thy anger both the bowels of the earth and the salty waves of the ocean. i invoke my illustrious father, the divine aether, the universal sustainer of life, and phoebus, who, from the summit of his chariot, sets the world aflame with his dazzling rays, phoebus, a mighty deity amongst the gods and adored amongst mortals. most wise spectators, lend us all your attention. give heed to our just reproaches. there exist no gods to whom this city owes more than it does to us, whom alone you forget. not a sacrifice, not a libation is there for those who protect you! have you decreed some mad expedition? well! we thunder or we fall down in rain. when you chose that enemy of heaven, the paphlagonian tanner,[ ] for a general, we knitted our brow, we caused our wrath to break out; the lightning shot forth, the thunder pealed, the moon deserted her course and the sun at once veiled his beam threatening no longer to give you light, if cleon became general. nevertheless you elected him; 'tis said, athens never resolves upon some fatal step but the gods turn these errors into her greatest gain. do you wish that this election should even now be a success for you? 'tis a very simple thing to do; condemn this rapacious gull named cleon[ ] for bribery and extortion, fit a wooden collar tight round his neck, and your error will be rectified and the commonweal will at once regain its old prosperity. aid me also, phoebus, god of delos, who reignest on the cragged peaks of cynthia;[ ] and thou, happy virgin,[ ] to whom the lydian damsels offer pompous sacrifice in a temple of gold; and thou, goddess of our country, athené, armed with the aegis, the protectress of athens; and thou, who, surrounded by the bacchanals of delphi, roamest over the rocks of parnassus shaking the flame of thy resinous torch, thou, bacchus, the god of revel and joy. as we were preparing to come here, we were hailed by the moon and were charged to wish joy and happiness both to the athenians and to their allies; further, she said that she was enraged and that you treated her very shamefully, her, who does not pay you in words alone, but who renders you all real benefits. firstly, thanks to her, you save at least a drachma each month for lights, for each, as he is leaving home at night, says, "slave, buy no torches, for the moonlight is beautiful,"--not to name a thousand other benefits. nevertheless you do not reckon the days correctly and your calendar is naught but confusion.[ ] consequently the gods load her with threats each time they get home and are disappointed of their meal, because the festival has not been kept in the regular order of time. when you should be sacrificing, you are putting to the torture or administering justice. and often, we others, the gods, are fasting in token of mourning for the death of memnon or sarpedon,[ ] while you are devoting yourselves to joyous libations. 'tis for this, that last year, when the lot would have invested hyperbolus[ ] with the duty of amphictyon, we took his crown from him, to teach him that time must be divided according to the phases of the moon. socrates. by respiration, the breath of life! by chaos! by the air! i have never seen a man so gross, so inept, so stupid, so forgetful. all the little quibbles, which i teach him, he forgets even before he has learnt them. yet i will not give it up, i will make him come out here into the open air. where are you, strepsiades? come, bring your couch out here. strepsiades. but the bugs will not allow me to bring it. socrates. have done with such nonsense! place it there and pay attention. strepsiades. well, here i am. socrates. good! which science of all those you have never been taught, do you wish to learn first? the measures, the rhythms or the verses? strepsiades. why, the measures; the flour dealer cheated me out of two _choenixes_ the other day. socrates. 'tis not about that i ask you, but which, according to you, is the best measure, the trimeter or the tetrameter?[ ] strepsiades. the one i prefer is the semisextarius. socrates. you talk nonsense, my good fellow. strepsiades. i will wager your tetrameter is the semisextarius.[ ] socrates. plague seize the dunce and the fool! come, perchance you will learn the rhythms quicker. strepsiades. will the rhythms supply me with food? socrates. first they will help you to be pleasant in company, then to know what is meant by oenoplian rhythm[ ] and what by the dactylic.[ ] strepsiades. of the dactyl? i know that quite well. socrates. what is it then? strepsiades. why, 'tis this finger; formerly, when a child, i used this one.[ ] socrates. you are as low-minded as you are stupid. strepsiades. but, wretched man, i do not want to learn all this. socrates. then what _do_ you want to know? strepsiades. not that, not that, but the art of false reasoning. socrates. but you must first learn other things. come, what are the male quadrupeds? strepsiades. oh! i know the males thoroughly. do you take me for a fool then? the ram, the buck, the bull, the dog, the pigeon. socrates. do you see what you are doing; is not the female pigeon called the same as the male? strepsiades. how else? come now? socrates. how else? with you then 'tis pigeon and pigeon! strepsiades. 'tis true, by posidon! but what names do you want me to give them? socrates. term the female pigeonnette and the male pigeon. strepsiades. pigeonnette! hah! by the air! that's splendid! for that lesson bring out your kneading-trough and i will fill him with flour to the brim. socrates. there you are wrong again; you make _trough_ masculine and it should be feminine. strepsiades. what? if i say _him_, do i make the _trough_ masculine? socrates. assuredly! would you not say him for cleonymus? strepsiades. well? socrates. then trough is of the same gender as cleonymus? strepsiades. oh! good sir! cleonymus never had a kneading-trough;[ ] he used a round mortar for the purpose. but come, tell me what i _should_ say? socrates. for trough you should say _her_ as you would for sostraté.[ ] strepsiades. _her_? socrates. in this manner you make it truly female. strepsiades. that's it! _her_ for trough and _her_ for cleonymus.[ ] socrates. now i must teach you to distinguish the masculine proper names from those that are feminine. strepsiades. ah! i know the female names well. socrates. name some then. strepsiades. lysilla, philinna, clitagora, demetria. socrates. and what are masculine names? strepsiades. they are countless--philoxenus, melesias, amynias. socrates. but, wretched man, the last two are not masculine. strepsiades. you do not reckon them masculine? socrates. not at all. if you met amynias, how would you hail him? strepsiades. how? why, i should shout, "hi! hither, amyni_a_!"[ ] socrates. do you see? 'tis a female name that you give him. strepsiades. and is it not rightly done, since he refuses military service? but what use is there in learning what we all know? socrates. you know nothing about it. come, lie down there. strepsiades. what for? socrates. ponder awhile over matters that interest you. strepsiades. oh! i pray you, not there! but, if i must lie down and ponder, let me lie on the ground. socrates. 'tis out of the question. come! on to the couch! strepsiades. what cruel fate! what a torture the bugs will this day put me to! socrates. ponder and examine closely, gather your thoughts together, let your mind turn to every side of things; if you meet with a difficulty, spring quickly to some other idea; above all, keep your eyes away from all gentle sleep. strepsiades. oh, woe, woe! oh, woe, woe! socrates. what ails you? why do you cry so? strepsiades. oh! i am a dead man! here are these cursed corinthians[ ] advancing upon me from all corners of the couch; they are biting me, they are gnawing at my sides, they are drinking all my blood, they are twitching off my testicles, they are exploring all up my back, they are killing me! socrates. not so much wailing and clamour, if you please. strepsiades. how can i obey? i have lost my money and my complexion, my blood and my slippers, and to cap my misery, i must keep awake on this couch, when scarce a breath of life is left in me. socrates. well now! what are you doing? are you reflecting? strepsiades. yes, by posidon! socrates. what about? strepsiades. whether the bugs will not entirely devour me. socrates. may death seize you, accursed man! strepsiades. ah! it has already. socrates. come, no giving way! cover up your head; the thing to do is to find an ingenious alternative. strepsiades. an alternative! ah! i only wish one would come to me from within these coverlets! socrates. hold! let us see what our fellow is doing. ho! you! are you asleep? strepsiades. no, by apollo! socrates. have you got hold of anything? strepsiades. no, nothing whatever. socrates. nothing at all! strepsiades. no, nothing but my tool, which i've got in my hand. socrates. are you not going to cover your head immediately and ponder? strepsiades. over what? come, socrates, tell me. socrates. think first what you want, and then tell me. strepsiades. but i have told you a thousand times what i want. 'tis not to pay any of my creditors. socrates. come, wrap yourself up; concentrate your mind, which wanders too lightly, study every detail, scheme and examine thoroughly. strepsiades. oh, woe! woe! oh dear! oh dear! socrates. keep yourself quiet, and if any notion troubles you, put it quickly aside, then resume it and think over it again. strepsiades. my dear little socrates! socrates. what is it, old greybeard? strepsiades. i have a scheme for not paying my debts. socrates. let us hear it. strepsiades. tell me, if i purchased a thessalian witch, i could make the moon descend during the night and shut it, like a mirror, into a round box and there keep it carefully.... socrates. how would you gain by that? strepsiades. how? why, if the moon did not rise, i would have no interest to pay. socrates. why so? strepsiades. because money is lent by the month. socrates. good! but i am going to propose another trick to you. if you were condemned to pay five talents, how would you manage to quash that verdict? tell me. strepsiades. how? how? i don't know, i must think. socrates. do you always shut your thoughts within yourself. let your ideas fly in the air, like a may-bug, tied by the foot with a thread. strepsiades. i have found a very clever way to annul that conviction; you will admit that much yourself. socrates. what is it? strepsiades. have you ever seen a beautiful, transparent stone at the druggists, with which you may kindle fire? socrates. you mean a crystal lens.[ ] strepsiades. yes. socrates. well, what then? strepsiades. if i placed myself with this stone in the sun and a long way off from the clerk, while he was writing out the conviction, i could make all the wax, upon which the words were written, melt. socrates. well thought out, by the graces! strepsiades. ah! i am delighted to have annulled the decree that was to cost me five talents. socrates. come, take up this next question quickly. strepsiades. which? socrates. if, when summoned to court, you were in danger of losing your case for want of witnesses, how would you make the conviction fall upon your opponent? strepsiades. 'tis very simple and most easy. socrates. let me hear. strepsiades. this way. if another case had to be pleaded before mine was called, i should run and hang myself. socrates. you talk rubbish! strepsiades. not so, by the gods! if i was dead, no action could lie against me. socrates. you are merely beating the air. begone! i will give you no more lessons. strepsiades. why not? oh! socrates! in the name of the gods! socrates. but you forget as fast as you learn. come, what was the thing i taught you first? tell me. strepsiades. ah! let me see. what was the first thing? what was it then? ah! that thing in which we knead the bread, oh! my god! what do you call it? socrates. plague take the most forgetful and silliest of old addlepates! strepsiades. alas! what a calamity! what will become of me? i am undone if i do not learn how to ply my tongue. oh! clouds! give me good advice. chorus. old man, we counsel you, if you have brought up a son, to send him to learn in your stead. strepsiades. undoubtedly i have a son, as well endowed as the best, but he is unwilling to learn. what will become of me? chorus. and you don't make him obey you? strepsiades. you see, he is big and strong; moreover, through his mother he is a descendant of those fine birds, the race of coesyra.[ ] nevertheless, i will go and find him, and if he refuses, i will turn him out of the house. go in, socrates, and wait for me awhile. chorus (_to socrates_). do you understand, that, thanks to us, you will be loaded with benefits? here is a man, ready to obey you in all things. you see how he is carried away with admiration and enthusiasm. profit by it to clip him as short as possible; fine chances are all too quickly gone. strepsiades. no, by the clouds! you stay no longer here; go and devour the ruins of your uncle megacles' fortune. phidippides. oh! my poor father! what has happened to you? by the olympian zeus! you are no longer in your senses! strepsiades. see! see! "the olympian zeus." oh! the fool! to believe in zeus at your age! phidippides. what is there in that to make you laugh? strepsiades. you are then a tiny little child, if you credit such antiquated rubbish! but come here, that i may teach you; i will tell you something very necessary to know to be a man; but you will not repeat it to anybody. phidippides. come, what is it? strepsiades. just now you swore by zeus. phidippides. aye, that i did. strepsiades. do you see how good it is to learn? phidippides, there is no zeus. phidippides. what is there then? strepsiades. 'tis the whirlwind, that has driven out jupiter and is king now. phidippides. go to! what drivel! strepsiades. know it to be the truth. phidippides. and who says so? strepsiades. 'tis socrates, the melian,[ ] and chaerephon, who knows how to measure the jump of a flea. phidippides. have you reached such a pitch of madness that you believe those bilious fellows? strepsiades. use better language, and do not insult men who are clever and full of wisdom, who, to economize, are never shaved, shun the gymnasia and never go to the baths, while you, you only await my death to eat up my wealth. but come, come as quickly as you can to learn in my stead. phidippides. and what good can be learnt of them? strepsiades. what good indeed? why, all human knowledge. firstly, you will know yourself grossly ignorant. but await me here awhile. phidippides. alas! what is to be done? my father has lost his wits. must i have him certificated for lunacy, or must i order his coffin? strepsiades. come! what kind of bird is this? tell me. phidippides. a pigeon. strepsiades. good! and this female? phidippides. a pigeon. strepsiades. the same for both? you make me laugh! for the future you will call this one a pigeonnette and the other a pigeon. phidippides. a pigeonnette! these then are the fine things you have just learnt at the school of these sons of the earth![ ] strepsiades. and many others; but what i learnt i forgot at once, because i am too old. phidippides. so this is why you have lost your cloak? strepsiades. i have not lost it, i have consecrated it to philosophy. phidippides. and what have you done with your sandals, you poor fool? strepsiades. if i have lost them, it is for what was necessary, just as pericles did.[ ] but come, move yourself, let us go in; if necessary, do wrong to obey your father. when you were six years old and still lisped, 'twas i who obeyed you. i remember at the feasts of zeus you had a consuming wish for a little chariot and i bought it for you with the first obolus which i received as a juryman in the courts. phidippides. you will soon repent of what you ask me to do. strepsiades. oh! now i am happy! he obeys. here, socrates, here! come out quick! here i am bringing you my son; he refused, but i have persuaded him. socrates. why, he is but a child yet. he is not used to these baskets, in which we suspend our minds.[ ] phidippides. to make you better used to them, i would you were hung. strepsiades. a curse upon you! you insult your master! socrates. "i would you were hung!" what a stupid speech! and so emphatically spoken! how can one ever get out of an accusation with such a tone, summon witnesses or touch or convince? and yet when we think, hyperbolus learnt all this for one talent! strepsiades. rest undisturbed and teach him. 'tis a most intelligent nature. even when quite little he amused himself at home with making houses, carving boats, constructing little chariots of leather, and understood wonderfully how to make frogs out of pomegranate rinds. teach him both methods of reasoning, the strong and also the weak, which by false arguments triumphs over the strong; if not the two, at least the false, and that in every possible way. socrates. 'tis just and unjust discourse themselves that shall instruct him.[ ] strepsiades. i go, but forget it not, he must always, always be able to confound the true. just discourse. come here! shameless as you may be, will you dare to show your face to the spectators? unjust discourse. take me where you list. i seek a throng, so that i may the better annihilate you. just discourse. annihilate me! do you forget who you are? unjust discourse. i am reasoning. just discourse. yes, the weaker reasoning.[ ] unjust discourse. but i triumph over you, who claim to be the stronger. just discourse. by what cunning shifts, pray? unjust discourse. by the invention of new maxims. just discourse. ... which are received with favour by these fools. unjust discourse. say rather, by these wiseacres. just discourse. i am going to destroy you mercilessly. unjust discourse. how pray? let us see you do it. just discourse. by saying what is true. unjust discourse. i shall retort and shall very soon have the better of you. first, i maintain that justice has no existence. just discourse. has no existence? unjust discourse. no existence! why, where are they? just discourse. with the gods. unjust discourse. how then, if justice exists, was zeus not put to death for having put his father in chains? just discourse. bah! this is enough to turn my stomach! a basin, quick! unjust discourse. you are an old driveller and stupid withal. just discourse. and you a debauchee and a shameless fellow. unjust discourse. hah! what sweet expressions! just discourse. an impious buffoon! unjust discourse. you crown me with roses and with lilies. just discourse. a parricide. unjust discourse. why, you shower gold upon me. just discourse. formerly, 'twas a hailstorm of blows. unjust discourse. i deck myself with your abuse. just discourse. what impudence! unjust discourse. what tomfoolery! just discourse. 'tis because of you that the youth no longer attends the schools. the athenians will soon recognize what lessons you teach those who are fools enough to believe you. unjust discourse. you are overwhelmed with wretchedness. just discourse. and you, you prosper. yet you were poor when you said, "i am the mysian telephus,"[ ] and used to stuff your wallet with maxims of pandeletus[ ] to nibble at. unjust discourse. oh! the beautiful wisdom, of which you are now boasting! just discourse. madman! but yet madder the city that keeps you, you, the corrupter of its youth! unjust discourse. 'tis not you who will teach this young man; you are as old and out of date as saturn. just discourse. nay, it will certainly be i, if he does not wish to be lost and to practise verbosity only. unjust discourse (_to phidippides_). come hither and leave him to beat the air. just discourse (_to unjust discourse_). evil be unto you, if you touch him. chorus. a truce to your quarrellings and abuse! but expound, you, what you taught us formerly, and you, your new doctrine. thus, after hearing each of you argue, he will be able to choose betwixt the two schools. just discourse. i am quite agreeable. unjust discourse. and i too. chorus. who is to speak first? unjust discourse. let it be my opponent, he has my full consent; then i will follow upon the very ground he shall have chosen and shall shatter him with a hail of new ideas and subtle fancies; if after that he dares to breathe another word, i shall sting him in the face and in the eyes with our maxims, which are as keen as the sting of a wasp, and he will die. chorus. here are two rivals confident in their powers of oratory and in the thoughts over which they have pondered so long. let us see which will come triumphant out of the contest. this wisdom, for which my friends maintain such a persistent fight, is in great danger. come then, you, who crowned men of other days with so many virtues, plead the cause dear to you, make yourself known to us. just discourse. very well, i will tell you what was the old education, when i used to teach justice with so much success and when modesty was held in veneration. firstly, it was required of a child, that it should not utter a word. in the street, when they went to the music-school, all the youths of the same district marched lightly clad and ranged in good order, even when the snow was falling in great flakes. at the master's house they had to stand, their legs apart, and they were taught to sing either, "pallas, the terrible, who overturneth cities," or "a noise resounded from afar"[ ] in the solemn tones of the ancient harmony. if anyone indulged in buffoonery or lent his voice any of the soft inflexions, like those which to-day the disciples of phrynis[ ] take so much pains to form, he was treated as an enemy of the muses and belaboured with blows. in the wrestling school they would sit with outstretched legs and without display of any indecency to the curious. when they rose, they would smooth over the sand, so as to leave no trace to excite obscene thoughts. never was a child rubbed with oil below the belt; the rest of their bodies thus retained its fresh bloom and down, like a velvety peach. they were not to be seen approaching a lover and themselves rousing his passion by soft modulation of the voice and lustful gaze. at table, they would not have dared, before those older than themselves, to have taken a radish, an aniseed or a leaf of parsley, and much less eat fish or thrushes or cross their legs. unjust discourse. what antiquated rubbish! have we got back to the days of the festivals of zeus polieus,[ ] to the buphonia, to the time of the poet cecydes[ ] and the golden cicadas?[ ] just discourse. 'tis nevertheless by suchlike teaching i built up the men of marathon. but you, you teach the children of to-day to bundle themselves quickly into their clothes, and i am enraged when i see them at the panathenaea forgetting athené while they dance, and covering themselves with their bucklers. hence, young man, dare to range yourself beside me, who follow justice and truth; you will then be able to shun the public place, to refrain from the baths, to blush at all that is shameful, to fire up if your virtue is mocked at, to give place to your elders, to honour your parents, in short, to avoid all that is evil. be modesty itself, and do not run to applaud the dancing girls; if you delight in such scenes, some courtesan will cast you her apple and your reputation will be done for. do not bandy words with your father, nor treat him as a dotard, nor reproach the old man, who has cherished you, with his age. unjust discourse. if you listen to him, by bacchus! you will be the image of the sons of hippocrates[ ] and will be called _mother's great ninny_. just discourse. no, but you will pass your days at the gymnasia, glowing with strength and health; you will not go to the public place to cackle and wrangle as is done nowadays; you will not live in fear that you may be dragged before the courts for some trifle exaggerated by quibbling. but you will go down to the academy[ ] to run beneath the sacred olives with some virtuous friend of your own age, your head encircled with the white reed, enjoying your ease and breathing the perfume of the yew and of the fresh sprouts of the poplar, rejoicing in the return of springtide and gladly listening to the gentle rustle of the plane-tree and the elm. if you devote yourself to practising my precepts, your chest will be stout, your colour glowing, your shoulders broad, your tongue short, your hips muscular, but your penis small. but if you follow the fashions of the day, you will be pallid in hue, have narrow shoulders, a narrow chest, a long tongue, small hips and a big tool; you will know how to spin forth long-winded arguments on law. you will be persuaded also to regard as splendid everything that is shameful and as shameful everything that is honourable; in a word, you will wallow in debauchery like antimachus.[ ] chorus. how beautiful, high-souled, brilliant is this wisdom that you practise! what a sweet odour of honesty is emitted by your discourse! happy were those men of other days who lived when you were honoured! and you, seductive talker, come, find some fresh arguments, for your rival has done wonders. bring out against him all the battery of your wit, if you desire to beat him and not to be laughed out of court. unjust discourse. at last! i was choking with impatience, i was burning to upset all his arguments! if i am called the weaker reasoning in the schools, 'tis precisely because i was the first before all others to discover the means to confute the laws and the decrees of justice. to invoke solely the weaker arguments and yet triumph is a talent worth more than a hundred thousand drachmae. but see how i shall batter down the sort of education of which he is so proud. firstly, he forbids you to bathe in hot water. what grounds have you for condemning hot baths? just discourse. because they are baneful and enervate men. unjust discourse. enough said! oh! you poor wrestler! from the very outset i have seized you and hold you round the middle; you cannot escape me. tell me, of all the sons of zeus, who had the stoutest heart, who performed the most doughty deeds? just discourse. none, in my opinion, surpassed heracles. unjust discourse. where have you ever seen cold baths called 'baths of heracles'?[ ] and yet who was braver than he? just discourse. 'tis because of such quibbles, that the baths are seen crowded with young folk, who chatter there the livelong day while the gymnasia remain empty. unjust discourse. next you condemn the habit of frequenting the market-place, while i approve this. if it were wrong homer would never have made nestor[ ] speak in public as well as all his wise heroes. as for the art of speaking, he tells you, young men should not practise it; i hold the contrary. furthermore he preaches chastity to them. both precepts are equally harmful. have you ever seen chastity of any use to anyone? answer and try to confute me. just discourse. to many; for instance, peleus won a sword thereby.[ ] unjust discourse. a sword! ah! what a fine present to make him! poor wretch! hyperbolus, the lamp-seller, thanks to his villainy, has gained more than ... i do not know how many talents, but certainly no sword. just discourse. peleus owed it to his chastity that he became the husband of thetis.[ ] unjust discourse. ... who left him in the lurch, for he was not the most ardent; in those nocturnal sports between two sheets, which so please women, he possessed but little merit. get you gone, you are but an old fool. but you, young man, just consider a little what this temperance means and the delights of which it deprives you--young fellows, women, play, dainty dishes, wine, boisterous laughter. and what is life worth without these? then, if you happen to commit one of these faults inherent in human weakness, some seduction or adultery, and you are caught in the act, you are lost, if you cannot speak. but follow my teaching and you will be able to satisfy your passions, to dance, to laugh, to blush at nothing. are you surprised in adultery? then up and tell the husband you are not guilty, and recall to him the example of zeus, who allowed himself to be conquered by love and by women. being but a mortal, can you be stronger than a god? just discourse. and if your pupil gets impaled, his hairs plucked out, and he is seared with a hot ember,[ ] how are you going to prove to him that he is not a filthy debauchee? unjust discourse. and wherein lies the harm of being so? just discourse. is there anything worse than to have such a character? unjust discourse. now what will you say, if i beat you even on this point? just discourse. i should certainly have to be silent then. unjust discourse. well then, reply! our advocates, what are they? just discourse. low scum. unjust discourse. nothing is more true. and our tragic poets? just discourse. low scum. unjust discourse. well said again. and our demagogues? just discourse. low scum. unjust discourse. you admit that you have spoken nonsense. and the spectators, what are they for the most part? look at them. just discourse. i am looking at them. unjust discourse. well! what do you see? just discourse. by the gods, they are nearly all low scum. see, this one i know to be such and that one and that other with the long hair. unjust discourse. what have you to say, then? just discourse. i am beaten. debauchees! in the name of the gods, receive my cloak;[ ] i pass over to your ranks. socrates. well then! do you take away your son or do you wish me to teach him how to speak? strepsiades. teach him, chastise him and do not fail to sharpen his tongue well, on one side for petty law-suits and on the other for important cases. socrates. make yourself easy, i shall return to you an accomplished sophist. phidippides. very pale then and thoroughly hang-dog-looking. strepsiades. take him with you. phidippides. i do assure you, you will repent it. chorus. judges, we are all about to tell you what you will gain by awarding us the crown as equity requires of you. in spring, when you wish to give your fields the first dressing, we will rain upon you first; the others shall wait. then we will watch over your corn and over your vine-stocks; they will have no excess to fear, neither of heat nor of wet. but if a mortal dares to insult the goddesses of the clouds, let him think of the ills we shall pour upon him. for him neither wine nor any harvest at all! our terrible slings will mow down his young olive plants and his vines. if he is making bricks, it will rain, and our round hailstones will break the tiles of his roof. if he himself marries or any of his relations or friends, we shall cause rain to fall the whole night long. verily, he would prefer to live in egypt[ ] than to have given this iniquitous verdict. strepsiades. another four, three, two days, then the eve, then the day, the fatal day of payment! i tremble, i quake, i shudder, for 'tis the day of the old moon and the new.[ ] then all my creditors take the oath, pay their deposits,[ ] swear my downfall and my ruin. as for me, i beseech them to be reasonable, to be just, "my friend, do not demand this sum, wait a little for this other and give me time for this third one." then they will pretend that at this rate they will never be repaid, will accuse me of bad faith and will threaten me with the law. well then, let them sue me! i care nothing for that, if only phidippides has learnt to speak fluently. i go to find out, let me knock at the door of the school.... ho! slave, slave! socrates. welcome! strepsiades! strepsiades. welcome! socrates! but first take this sack (_offers him a sack of flour_); it is right to reward the master with some present. and my son, whom you took off lately, has he learnt this famous reasoning, tell me. socrates. he has learnt it. strepsiades. what a good thing! oh! thou divine knavery! socrates. you will win just as many causes as you choose. strepsiades. even if i have borrowed before witnesses? socrates. so much the better, even if there are a thousand of 'em! strepsiades. then i am going to shout with all my might. "woe to the usurers, woe to their capital and their interest and their compound interest! you shall play me no more bad turns. my son is being taught there, his tongue is being sharpened into a double-edged weapon; he is my defender, the saviour of my house, the ruin of my foes! his poor father was crushed down with misfortune and he delivers him." go and call him to me quickly. oh! my child! my dear little one! run forward to your father's voice! socrates. here he is. strepsiades. oh, my friend, my dearest friend! socrates. take your son, and get you gone. strepsiades. oh, my son! oh! oh! what a pleasure to see your pallor! you are ready first to deny and then to contradict; 'tis as clear as noon. what a child of your country you are! how your lips quiver with the famous, "what have you to say now?" how well you know, i am certain, to put on the look of a victim, when it is you who are making both victims and dupes! and what a truly attic glance! come, 'tis for you to save me, seeing it is you who have ruined me. phidippides. what is it you fear then? strepsiades. the day of the old and the new. phidippides. is there then a day of the old and the new? strepsiades. the day on which they threaten to pay deposit against me. phidippides. then so much the worse for those who have deposited! for 'tis not possible for one day to be two. strepsiades. what? phidippides. why, undoubtedly, unless a woman can be both old and young at the same time. strepsiades. but so runs the law. phidippides. i think the meaning of the law is quite misunderstood. strepsiades. what does it mean? phidippides. old solon loved the people. strepsiades. what has that to do with the old day and the new? phidippides. he has fixed two days for the summons, the last day of the old moon and the first day of the new; but the deposits must only be paid on the first day of the new moon. strepsiades. and why did he also name the last day of the old? phidippides. so, my dear sir, that the debtors, being there the day before, might free themselves by mutual agreement, or that else, if not, the creditor might begin his action on the morning of the new moon. strepsiades. why then do the magistrates have the deposits paid on the last of the month and not the next day? phidippides. i think they do as the gluttons do, who are the first to pounce upon the dishes. being eager to carry off these deposits, they have them paid in a day too soon. strepsiades. splendid! ah! poor brutes,[ ] who serve for food to us clever folk! you are only down here to swell the number, true blockheads, sheep for shearing, heap of empty pots! hence i will sound the note of victory for my son and myself. "oh! happy, strepsiades! what cleverness is thine! and what a son thou hast here!" thus my friends and my neighbours will say, jealous at seeing me gain all my suits. but come in, i wish to regale you first. pasias (_to his witness_). a man should never lend a single obolus. 'twould be better to put on a brazen face at the outset than to get entangled in such matters. i want to see my money again and i bring you here to-day to attest the loan. i am going to make a foe of a neighbour; but, as long as i live, i do not wish my country to have to blush for me. come, i am going to summon strepsiades. strepsiades. who is this? pasias. ... for the old day and the new. strepsiades. i call you to witness, that he has named two days. what do you want of me? pasias. i claim of you the twelve minae, which you borrowed from me to buy the dapple-grey horse. strepsiades. a horse! do you hear him? i, who detest horses, as is well known. pasias. i call zeus to witness, that you swore by the gods to return them to me. strepsiades. because at that time, by zeus! phidippides did not yet know the irrefutable argument. pasias. would you deny the debt on that account? strepsiades. if not, what use is his science to me? pasias. will you dare to swear by the gods that you owe me nothing? strepsiades. by which gods? pasias. by zeus, hermes and posidon! strepsiades. why, i would give three obols for the pleasure of swearing by them. pasias. woe upon you, impudent knave! strepsiades. oh! what a fine wine-skin you would make if flayed! pasias. heaven! he jeers at me! strepsiades. it would hold six gallons easily. pasias. by great zeus! by all the gods! you shall not scoff at me with impunity. strepsiades. ah! how you amuse me with your gods! how ridiculous it seems to a sage to hear zeus invoked. pasias. your blasphemies will one day meet their reward. but, come, will you repay me my money, yes or no? answer me, that i may go. strepsiades. wait a moment, i am going to give you a distinct answer. (_goes indoors and returns immediately with a kneading-trough._) pasias. what do you think he will do? witness. he will pay the debt. strepsiades. where is the man who demands money? tell me, what is this? pasias. him? why he is your kneading-trough. strepsiades. and you dare to demand money of me, when you are so ignorant? i will not return an obolus to anyone who says _him_ instead of _her_ for a kneading-trough. pasias. you will not repay? strepsiades. not if i know it. come, an end to this, pack off as quick as you can. pasias. i go, but, may i die, if it be not to pay my deposit for a summons. strepsiades. very well! 'twill be so much more to the bad to add to the twelve minae. but truly it makes me sad, for i do pity a poor simpleton who says _him_ for a kneading-trough. amynias. woe! ah woe is me! strepsiades. hold! who is this whining fellow? can it be one of the gods of carcinus?[ ] amynias. do you want to know who i am? i am a man of misfortune! strepsiades. get on your way then. amynias. oh! cruel god! oh fate, who hath broken the wheels of my chariot! oh, pallas, thou hast undone me![ ] strepsiades. what ill has tlepolemus done you? amynias. instead of jeering me, friend, make your son return me the money he has had of me; i am already unfortunate enough. strepsiades. what money? amynias. the money he borrowed of me. strepsiades. you have indeed had misfortune, it seems to me. amynias. yes, by the gods! i have been thrown from a chariot. strepsiades. why then drivel as if you had fallen from an ass?[ ] amynias. am i drivelling because i demand my money? strepsiades. no, no, you cannot be in your right senses. amynias. why? strepsiades. no doubt your poor wits have had a shake. amynias. but by hermes! i will sue you at law, if you do not pay me. strepsiades. just tell me; do you think it is always fresh water that zeus lets fall every time it rains, or is it always the same water that the sun pumps over the earth? amynias. i neither know, nor care. strepsiades. and actually you would claim the right to demand your money, when you know not a syllable of these celestial phenomena? amynias. if you are short, pay me the interest, at any rate. strepsiades. what kind of animal is interest? amynias. what? does not the sum borrowed go on growing, growing every month, each day as the time slips by? strepsiades. well put. but do you believe there is more water in the sea now than there was formerly? amynias. no, 'tis just the same quantity. it cannot increase. strepsiades. thus, poor fool, the sea, that receives the rivers, never grows, and yet you would have your money grow? get you gone, away with you, quick! ho! bring me the ox-goad! amynias. hither! you witnesses there! strepsiades. come, what are you waiting for? will you not budge, old nag! amynias. what an insult! strepsiades. unless you get a-trotting, i shall catch you and prick up your behind, you sorry packhorse! ah! you start, do you? i was about to drive you pretty fast, i tell you--you and your wheels and your chariot! chorus. whither does the passion of evil lead! here is a perverse old man, who wants to cheat his creditors; but some mishap, which will speedily punish this rogue for his shameful schemings, cannot fail to overtake him from to-day. for a long time he has been burning to have his son know how to fight against all justice and right and to gain even the most iniquitous causes against his adversaries every one. i think this wish is going to be fulfilled. but mayhap, mayhap, he will soon wish his son were dumb rather! strepsiades. oh! oh! neighbours, kinsmen, fellow-citizens, help! help! to the rescue, i am being beaten! oh! my head! oh! my jaw! scoundrel! do you beat your own father! phidippides. yes, father, i do. strepsiades. see! he admits he is beating me. phidippides. undoubtedly i do. strepsiades. you villain, you parricide, you gallows-bird! phidippides. go on, repeat your epithets, call me a thousand other names, an it please you. the more you curse, the greater my amusement! strepsiades. oh! you infamous cynic! phidippides. how fragrant the perfume breathed forth in your words. strepsiades. do you beat your own father? phidippides. aye, by zeus! and i am going to show you that i do right in beating you. strepsiades. oh, wretch! can it be right to beat a father? phidippides. i will prove it to you, and you shall own yourself vanquished. strepsiades. own myself vanquished on a point like this? phidippides. 'tis the easiest thing in the world. choose whichever of the two reasonings you like. strepsiades. of which reasonings? phidippides. the stronger and the weaker. strepsiades. miserable fellow! why, 'tis i who had you taught how to refute what is right, and now you would persuade me it is right a son should beat his father. phidippides. i think i shall convince you so thoroughly that, when you have heard me, you will not have a word to say. strepsiades. well, i am curious to hear what you have to say. chorus. consider well, old man, how you can best triumph over him. his brazenness shows me that he thinks himself sure of his case; he has some argument which gives him nerve. note the confidence in his look! but how did the fight begin? tell the chorus; you cannot help doing that much. strepsiades. i will tell you what was the start of the quarrel. at the end of the meal you wot of, i bade him take his lyre and sing me the air of simonides, which tells of the fleece of the ram.[ ] he replied bluntly, that it was stupid, while drinking, to play the lyre and sing, like a woman when she is grinding barley. phidippides. why, by rights i ought to have beaten and kicked you the very moment you told me to sing! strepsiades. that is just how he spoke to me in the house, furthermore he added, that simonides was a detestable poet. however, i mastered myself and for a while said nothing. then i said to him, 'at least, take a myrtle branch and recite a passage from aeschylus to me.'--'for my own part,' he at once replied, 'i look upon aeschylus as the first of poets, for his verses roll superbly; 'tis nothing but incoherence, bombast and turgidness.' yet still i smothered my wrath and said, 'then recite one of the famous pieces from the modern poets.' then he commenced a piece in which euripides shows, oh! horror! a brother, who violates his own uterine sister.[ ] then i could no longer restrain myself, and attacked him with the most injurious abuse; naturally he retorted; hard words were hurled on both sides, and finally he sprang at me, broke my bones, bore me to earth, strangled and started killing me! phidippides. i was right. what! not praise euripides, the greatest of our poets! strepsiades. he the greatest of our poets! ah! if i but dared to speak! but the blows would rain upon me harder than ever. phidippides. undoubtedly, and rightly too. strepsiades. rightly! oh! what impudence! to me, who brought you up! when you could hardly lisp, i guessed what you wanted. if you said _broo, broo_, well, i brought you your milk; if you asked for _mam mam_, i gave you bread; and you had no sooner said, _caca_, than i took you outside and held you out. and just now, when you were strangling me, i shouted, i bellowed that i would let all go; and you, you scoundrel, had not the heart to take me outside, so that here, though almost choking, i was compelled to ease myself. chorus. young men, your hearts must be panting with impatience. what is phidippides going to say? if, after such conduct, he proves he has done well, i would not give an obolus for the hide of old men. come, you, who know how to brandish and hurl the keen shafts of the new science, find a way to convince us, give your language an appearance of truth. phidippides. how pleasant it is to know these clever new inventions and to be able to defy the established laws! when i thought only about horses, i was not able to string three words together without a mistake, but now that the master has altered and improved me and that i live in this world of subtle thought, of reasoning and of meditation, i count on being able to prove satisfactorily that i have done well to thrash my father. strepsiades. mount your horse! by zeus! i would rather defray the keep of a four-in-hand team than be battered with blows. phidippides. i revert to what i was saying when you interrupted me. and first, answer me, did you beat me in my childhood? strepsiades. why, assuredly, for your good and in your own best interest. phidippides. tell me, is it not right, that in turn i should beat you for your good? since it is for a man's own best interest to be beaten. what! must your body be free of blows, and not mine? am i not free-born too? the children are to weep and the fathers go free? strepsiades. but... phidippides. you will tell me, that according to the law, 'tis the lot of children to be beaten. but i reply that the old men are children twice over and that it is far more fitting to chastise them than the young, for there is less excuse for their faults. strepsiades. but the law nowhere admits that fathers should be treated thus. phidippides. was not the legislator who carried this law a man like you and me? in those days he got men to believe him; then why should not i too have the right to establish for the future a new law, allowing children to beat their fathers in turn? we make you a present of all the blows which were received before this law, and admit that you thrashed us with impunity. but look how the cocks and other animals fight with their fathers; and yet what difference is there betwixt them and ourselves, unless it be that they do not propose decrees? strepsiades. but if you imitate the cocks in all things, why don't you scratch up the dunghill, why don't you sleep on a perch? phidippides. that has no bearing on the case, good sir; socrates would find no connection, i assure you. strepsiades. then do not beat at all, for otherwise you have only yourself to blame afterwards. phidippides. what for? strepsiades. i have the right to chastise you, and you to chastise your son, if you have one. phidippides. and if i have not, i shall have cried in vain, and you will die laughing in my face. strepsiades. what say you, all here present? it seems to me that he is right, and i am of opinion that they should be accorded their right. if we think wrongly, 'tis but just we should be beaten. phidippides. again, consider this other point. strepsiades. 'twill be the death of me. phidippides. but you will certainly feel no more anger because of the blows i have given you. strepsiades. come, show me what profit i shall gain from it. phidippides. i shall beat my mother just as i have you. strepsiades. what do you say? what's that you say? hah! this is far worse still. phidippides. and what if i prove to you by our school reasoning, that one ought to beat one's mother? strepsiades. ah! if you do that, then you will only have to throw yourself along with socrates and his reasoning, into the barathrum.[ ] oh! clouds! all our troubles emanate from you, from you, to whom i entrusted myself, body and soul. chorus. no, you alone are the cause, because you have pursued the path of evil. strepsiades. why did you not say so then, instead of egging on a poor ignorant old man? chorus. we always act thus, when we see a man conceive a passion for what is evil; we strike him with some terrible disgrace, so that he may learn to fear the gods. strepsiades. alas! oh clouds! 'tis hard indeed, but 'tis just! i ought not to have cheated my creditors.... but come, my dear son, come with me to take vengeance on this wretched chaerephon and on socrates, who have deceived us both. phidippides. i shall do nothing against our masters. strepsiades. oh! show some reverence for ancestral zeus! phidippides. mark him and his ancestral zeus! what a fool you are! does any such being as zeus exist? strepsiades. why, assuredly. phidippides. no, a thousand times no! the ruler of the world is the whirlwind, that has unseated zeus. strepsiades. he has not dethroned him. i believed it, because of this whirligig here. unhappy wretch that i am! i have taken a piece of clay to be a god. phidippides. very well! keep your stupid nonsense for your own consumption. (_exit_.) strepsiades. oh! what madness! i had lost my reason when i threw over the gods through socrates' seductive phrases. oh! good hermes, do not destroy me in your wrath. forgive me; their babbling had driven me crazy. be my councillor. shall i pursue them at law or shall i...? order and i obey.--you are right, no law-suit; but up! let us burn down the home of those praters. here, xanthias, here! take a ladder, come forth and arm yourself with an axe; now mount upon the school, demolish the roof, if you love your master, and may the house fall in upon them, ho! bring me a blazing torch! there is more than one of them, arch-impostors as they are, on whom i am determined to have vengeance. a disciple. oh! oh! strepsiades. come, torch, do your duty! burst into full flame! disciple. what are you up to? strepsiades. what am i up to? why, i am entering upon a subtle argument with the beams of the house. second disciple. hullo! hullo! who is burning down our house? strepsiades. the man whose cloak you have appropriated. second disciple. but we are dead men, dead men! strepsiades. that is just exactly what i hope, unless my axe plays me false, or i fall and break my neck. socrates. hi! you fellow on the roof, what are you doing up there? strepsiades. i traverse the air and contemplate the sun.[ ] socrates. ah! ah! woe is upon me! i am suffocating! chaerephon. ah! you insulted the gods! ah! you studied the face of the moon! chase them, strike and beat them down! forward! they have richly deserved their fate--above all, by reason of their blasphemies. chorus. so let the chorus file off the stage. its part is played. * * * * * finis of "the clouds" * * * * * footnotes: [ ] he is in one bed and his son is in another; slaves are sleeping near them. it is night-time. [ ] the punishment most frequently inflicted upon slaves in the towns was to send them into the country to work in the fields, but at the period when the 'clouds' was presented, b.c., the invasions of the peloponnesians forbade the pursuit of agriculture. moreover, there existed the fear, that if the slaves were punished too harshly, they might go over to the enemy. [ ] among the greeks, each month was divided into three decades. the last of the month was called [greek: en_e kai nea], the day of the old and the new or the day of the new moon, and on that day interest, which it was customary to pay monthly, became due. [ ] literally, the horse marked with the [greek: koppa] ([symbol: letter 'koppa']), a letter of the older greek alphabet, afterwards disused, which distinguished the thoroughbreds. [ ] phidippides dreams that he is driving in a chariot race, and that an opponent is trying to cut into his track. [ ] there was a prize specially reserved for war-chariots in the games of the athenian hippodrome; being heavier than the chariots generally used, they doubtless had to cover a lesser number of laps, which explains phidippides' question. [ ] the wife of alcmaeon, a descendant of nestor, who, driven from messenia by the heraclidae, came to settle in athens in the twelfth century, and was the ancestor of the great family of the alcmaeonidae, pericles and alcibiades belonged to it. [ ] the greek word for horse is [greek: hippos]. [ ] derived from [greek: pheidesthai], to save. [ ] the name phidippides contains both words, [greek: hippos], horse, and [greek: pheidesthai], to save, and was therefore a compromise arrived at between the two parents. [ ] the heads of the family of the alcmaeonidae bore the name of megacles from generation to generation. [ ] a mountain in attica. [ ] aristophanes represents everything belonging to socrates as being mean, even down to his dwelling. [ ] crates ascribes the same doctrine in one of his plays to the pythagorean hippo, of samos. [ ] this is pure calumny. socrates accepted no payment. [ ] here the poet confounds socrates' disciples with the stoics. contrary to the text, socrates held that a man should care for his bodily health. [ ] one of socrates' pupils. [ ] female footwear. they were a sort of light slipper and white in colour. [ ] he calls off their attention by pretending to show them a geometrical problem and seizes the opportunity to steal something for supper. the young men who gathered together in the palaestra, or gymnastic school, were wont there to offer sacrifices to the gods before beginning the exercises. the offerings consisted of smaller victims, such as lambs, fowl, geese, etc., and the flesh afterwards was used for their meal (_vide_ plato in the 'lysias'). it is known that socrates taught wherever he might happen to be, in the palaestra as well as elsewhere. [ ] the first of the seven sages, born at miletus. [ ] because of their wretched appearance. the laconians, blockaded in sphacteria, had suffered sorely from famine. [ ] in fact, this was one of the chief accusations brought against socrates by miletus and anytus; he was reproached for probing into the mysteries of nature. [ ] when the athenians captured a town, they divided its lands by lot among the poorer athenian citizens. [ ] an allusion to the athenian love of law-suits and litigation. [ ] when originally conquered by pericles, the island of euboea, off the coasts of boeotia and attica, had been treated with extreme harshness. [ ] is about to add, "you believe in them at all," but checks himself. [ ] this was the doctrine of anaximenes. [ ] the scholiast explains that water-cress robs all plants that grow in its vicinity of their moisture and that they consequently soon wither and die. [ ] in the other greek towns, the smaller coins were of copper. [ ] athamas, king of thebes. an allusion to a tragedy by sophocles, in which athamas is dragged before the altar of zeus with his head circled with a chaplet, to be there sacrificed; he is, however, saved by heracles. [ ] no doubt socrates sprinkled flour over the head of strepsiades in the same manner as was done with the sacrificial victims. [ ] the mysteries of eleusis celebrated in the temple of demeter. [ ] a mountain of attica, north of athens. [ ] sybaris, a town of magna graecia (lucania), destroyed by the crotoniates in b.c., was rebuilt by the athenians under the name of thurium in b.c. ten diviners had been sent with the athenian settlers. [ ] a parody of the dithyrambic style. [ ] hieronymus, a dithyrambic poet and reputed an infamous pederast. [ ] when guests at the nuptials of pirithous, king of the lapithae, and hippodamia, they wanted to carry off and violate the bride. that, according to legend, was the origin of their war against the lapithae. hieronymus is likened to the centaurs on account of his bestial passion. [ ] a general, incessantly scoffed at by aristophanes because of his cowardice. [ ] aristophanes frequently mentions him as an effeminate and debauched character. [ ] a celebrated sophist, born at ceos, and a disciple of protagoras. when sent on an embassy by his compatriots to athens, he there publicly preached on eloquence, and had for his disciples euripides, isocrates and even socrates. his "fifty drachmae lecture" has been much spoken of; that sum had to be paid to hear it. [ ] these three men have already been referred to. [ ] a promontory of attica (the modern cape colonna) about fifty miles from the piraeus. here stood a magnificent temple, dedicated to athené. [ ] the opening portion of the parabasis belongs to a second edition of the 'clouds.' aristophanes had been defeated by cratinus and amipsias, whose pieces, called the 'bottle' and 'connus,' had been crowned in preference to the 'clouds,' which, it is said, was not received any better at its second representation. [ ] two characters introduced into the 'daedalians' by aristophanes in strong contrast to each other. some fragments only of this piece remain to us. [ ] it was only at the age of thirty, according to some, of forty, according to others, that a man could present a piece in his own name. the 'daedalians' had appeared under the auspices of cleonides and chalistrates, whom we find again later as actors in aristophanes' pieces. [ ] allusion to the recognition of orestes by electra at her brother's tomb. (_see_ the 'choëphorae' of aeschylus.) [ ] an image of the penis, drooping in this case, instead of standing, carried as a phallic emblem in the dionysiac processions. [ ] a licentious dance. [ ] this coarse way of exciting laughter, says the scholiast, had been used by eupolis, the comic writer, a rival of aristophanes. [ ] in the 'knights.' [ ] presented in b.c. the 'clouds' having been played a second time in b.c., one may conclude that this piece had appeared a third time on the athenian stage. [ ] doubtless a parody of the legend of andromeda. [ ] a poet of the older comedy, who had written forty plays. it is said that he dared to accuse aspasia, the mistress of pericles, of impiety and the practice of prostitution. [ ] cleon. [ ] this part of the parabasis belongs to the first edition of the 'clouds,' since aristophanes here speaks of cleon as alive. [ ] a mountain in delos, dedicated to apollo and diana. [ ] artemis. [ ] an allusion to the reform, which the astronomer meton had wanted to introduce into the calendar. cleostratus of tenedos, at the beginning of the fifth century, had devised the _octaeteris_, or cycle of eight years, and this had been generally adopted. this is how this system arrived at an agreement between the solar and the lunar periods: solar years containing days, while lunar years only contain days, there was a difference of days, for which cleostratus compensated by intercalating months of days each, which were placed after the third, fifth and eighth year of the cycle. hence these years had an extra month each. but in this system, the lunar months had been reckoned as days, whereas they are really days, hours, minutes. to rectify this minor error meton invented a cycle of years, which bears his name. this new system which he tried to introduce naturally caused some disturbance in the order of the festivals, and for this or some other reason his system was not adopted. the octaeteris continued to be used for all public purposes, the only correction being, that three extra days were added to every second octaeteris. [ ] both sons of zeus. [ ] hyperbolus had supported meton in his desire for reform. having been sent as the athenian deputy to the council of the amphictyons, he should, like his colleagues, have returned to athens with his head wreathed with laurel. it is said the wind took this from him; the clouds boast of the achievement. [ ] these are poetical measures; strepsiades thinks measures of capacity are meant. [ ] containing four _choenixes_. [ ] so called from its stirring, warlike character; it was composed of two dactyls and a spondee, followed again by two dactyls and a spondee. [ ] composed of dactyls and anapaests. [ ] [greek: daktylos] means, of course, both _dactyl_, name of a metrical foot, and finger. strepsiades presents his middle finger, with the other fingers and thumb bent under in an indecent gesture meant to suggest the penis and testicles. the romans for this reason called the middle finger 'digitus infamis,' the _unseemly finger_. the emperor nero is said to have offered his hand to courtiers to kiss sometimes in this indecent way. [ ] meaning he was too poor, aristophanes represents him as a glutton and a parasite. [ ] a woman's name. [ ] he is classed as a woman because of his cowardice and effeminacy. [ ] in greek, the vocative of amynias is amynia; thus it has a feminine termination. [ ] the corinthians, the allies of sparta, ravaged attica. [greek: kor], the first portion of the greek word, is the root of the word which means a bug in the same language. [ ] mirrors, or burning glasses, are meant, such as those used by archimedes two centuries later at the siege of syracuse, when he set the roman fleet on fire from the walls of the city. [ ] that is, the family of the alcmaeonidae; coesyra was wife of alcmaeon. [ ] socrates was an athenian; but the atheist diagoras, known as 'the enemy of the gods' hailed from the island of melos. strepsiades, crediting socrates with the same incredulity, assigns him the same birthplace. [ ] i.e. the enemies of the gods. an allusion to the giants, the sons of earth, who had endeavoured to scale heaven. [ ] pericles had squandered all the wealth accumulated in the acropolis upon the war. when he handed in his accounts, he refused to explain the use of a certain twenty talents and simply said, "_i spent them on what was necessary_." upon hearing of this reply, the lacedaemonians, who were already discontented with their kings, cleandrides and plistoanax, whom they accused of carrying on the war in attica with laxness, exiled the first-named and condemned the second to payment of a fine of fifteen talents for treachery. in fact, the spartans were convinced that pericles had kept silent as to what he had done with the twenty talents, because he did not want to say openly, "_i gave this sum to the kings of lacedaemon_." [ ] the basket in which aristophanes shows us socrates suspended to bring his mind nearer to the subtle regions of air. [ ] the scholiast tells us that just discourse and unjust discourse were brought upon the stage in cages, like cocks that are going to fight. perhaps they were even dressed up as cocks, or at all events wore cocks' heads as their masks. [ ] in the language of the schools of philosophy just reasoning was called 'the stronger'--[greek: ho kreitt_on logos], unjust reasoning, 'the weaker'--[greek: ho h_ett_on logos]. [ ] a character in one of the tragedies of aeschylus, a beggar and a clever, plausible speaker. [ ] a sycophant and a quibbler, renowned for his unparalleled bad faith in the law-suits he was perpetually bringing forward. [ ] the opening words of two hymns, attributed to lamprocles, an ancient lyric poet, the son or the pupil of medon. [ ] a poet and musician of mitylené, who gained the prize of the lyre at the panathenaea in b.c. he lived at the court of hiero, where, suidas says, he was at first a slave and the cook. he added two strings to the lyre, which hitherto had had only seven. he composed effeminate airs of a style unknown before his day. [ ] zeus had a temple in the citadel of athens under the name of polieus or protector of the city; bullocks were sacrificed to him (buphonia). in the days of aristophanes, these feasts had become neglected. [ ] one of the oldest of the dithyrambic poets. [ ] used by the ancient athenians to keep their hair in place. the custom was said to have a threefold significance; by it the athenians wanted to show that they were musicians, autochthons (i.e. indigenous to the country) and worshippers of apollo. indeed, grasshoppers were considered to sing with harmony; they swarmed on attic soil and were sacred to phoebus, the god of music. [ ] telesippus, demophon and pericles by name; they were a byword at athens for their stupidity. hippocrates was a general. [ ] the famous gardens of the academia, just outside the walls of athens; they included gymnasia, lecture halls, libraries and picture galleries. near by was a wood of sacred olives. [ ] apparently the historian of that name is meant; in any case it cannot refer to the celebrated epic poet, author of the 'thebaïs.' [ ] among the greeks, hot springs bore the generic name of 'baths of heracles.' a legend existed that these had gushed forth spontaneously beneath the tread of the hero, who would plunge into them and there regain fresh strength to continue his labours. [ ] king of pylos, according to homer, the wisest of all the greeks. [ ] peleus, son of aeacus, having resisted the appeals of astydamia, the wife of acastus, king of iolchos, was denounced to her husband by her as having wished to seduce her, so that she might be avenged for his disdain. acastus in his anger took peleus to hunt with him on mount pelion, there deprived him of his weapons and left him a prey to wild animals. he was about to die, when hermes brought him a sword forged by hephaestus. [ ] thetis, to escape the solicitations of peleus, assumed in turn the form of a bird, of a tree, and finally of a tigress; but peleus learnt of proteus the way of compelling thetis to yield to his wishes. the gods were present at his nuptials and made the pair rich presents. [ ] according to the scholiast, an adulterer was punished in the following manner: a radish was forced up his rectum, then every hair was torn out round that region, and the portion so treated was then covered with burning embers. [ ] having said this, just discourse threw his cloak into the amphitheatre and took a seat with the spectators. [ ] because it never rains there; for all other reasons residence in egypt was looked upon as undesirable. [ ] that is, the last day of the month. [ ] by athenian law, if anyone summoned another to appear before the courts, he was obliged to deposit a sum sufficient to cover the costs of procedure. [ ] he points to an earthenware sphere, placed at the entrance of socrates' dwelling, and which was intended to represent the whirlwind, the deity of the philosophers. this sphere took the place of the column which the athenians generally dedicated to apollo, and which stood in the vestibule of their houses. [ ] an athenian poet, who is said to have left one hundred and sixty tragedies behind him; he only once carried off the prize. doubtless he had introduced gods or demi-gods bewailing themselves into one of his tragedies. [ ] this exclamation, "oh! pallas, thou hast undone me!" and the reply of strepsiades are borrowed, says the scholiast, from a tragedy by xenocles, the son of carcinus. alcmena is groaning over the death of her brother, licymnius, who had been killed by tlepolemus. [ ] a proverb, applied to foolish people. [ ] the ram of phryxus, the golden fleece of which was hung up on a beech tree in a field dedicated to ares in colchis. [ ] the subject of euripides' 'aeolus.' since among the athenians it was lawful to marry a half-sister, if not born of the same mother, strepsiades mentions here that it was his _uterine_ sister, whom macareus dishonoured, thus committing both rape and incest. [ ] a cleft in the rocks at the back of the acropolis at athens, into which criminals were hurled. [ ] he repeats the words of socrates at their first interview, in mockery. index a academia, gardens of acharnae, hostages of --inhabitants of --township of acharnians, date fixed --date of adonis, festivals of adultery, punishment of aegaean, islands of aegeus, a mythical king aeschylus, character from --plays after death aesop, fable of aetolian, meaning of age fixed for playwrights agoracritus, crime imputed --meaning of alcibiades, his father amorgos silks amphitheus, play on word amyclae, town near sparta anagyra, town, an obstacle anapaests, reference to anaximenes, doctrine of andromeda, legend parodied anthesteria. see dionysia antimachus, the historian apaturia, a feast --festival of aphrodité colias, the goddess of sensual love archeptolemus, treatment of archers, as policemen archilochus, singer of his own shame archimedes, fires roman fleet argives (the), their misfortune army, athenian artemesia, the queen artemis, the huntress artemisium, naval battle of artichokes, to make tender arignotus, a soothsayer ariphrades, obscene habits --a flute-player aristogiton, a conspirator aristophanes, anonymity of --bald --defeated --land-owner assemblies, forced attendance of citizens athamas, a condemned king athené, the goddess --protection claimed --seen in dream athenian women, fond of wine b "babylonians," (the), a lost play bacchus, festivals of bacis, a soothsayer bagpipes, ancient barathrum, cleft of rock --place of execution basket-bearers, the baths of heracles beans, used for voting beetle, flying on a beetles, names of boats blackmail blankets, soiled with urine blood, unspilled in sacrifice boasting derided boeotians, the boulomachus, meaning of boy's name, dispute over brasidas, fell in thrace brauron, its temple "brazen house," the bread, used for finger-wiping buckler, swearing over bucklers, as trophies bupalus, the sculptor byrsina, why hateful c cabirian gods, mysteries of caesyra, an orator cage (a) for pigs calendar, reform of captives of pylos captured towns carcinus, a fecund poet carcinus and sons, literary insufficiency of caria, situation of carystus, dissolute city catamite, faeces of cecrops, legend of cecydes, ancient poet centaur, legend of cephisodemus, an advocate ceramicus, burial-place ceremonies (sacred) personified ceres, sacrificed pigs chaerephon, disciple of socrates chaeris, musician ridiculed chalcedon, situation of --the town of chaonian, obscene allusion chargers, praise of their exploits charybdis, the whirlpool chastity, reward of cheese, as an emblem chersonese, towns of chians, obscene name of children, in procession chimney, obscene sense cholozyges, mad ox chorus (the) protects agoracritus cicadas, use and significance cillicon, a traitor circus-races, terms of citizens (athenian), four classes of clausimachus, meaning of cleaenetus, the law as to feeding cleomenes, king of sparta cleon, allusion to treachery of --dead --disgorges tribute --exhortation of --foe of the aristocrats --his former calling --his retort --ill results of reign --leather-smelling --mentioned --the author of woe --the rôle of --the use of oracles --unpaid sailors' wages --vote of people cleonymus --classed as a woman --glutton and parasite --ill-famed --a general clepsydra, a spring clisthenes, a debauchee --an effeminate --an ill-famed orator --a low personage clitagoras, song writer clopidian, meaning of cock-fighting, allusion to coesyra, wife of alcmaeon collar (iron) for torturing connas, a poet copper-coins cordax (the), licentious dance corinth, nickname of --mentioned corinthians, allies of sparta corybantes, priests cottabos, a favourite game country-home, ousted from crab, nickname of corinth cranaus, citadel of --the king crates, a comic poet, character of cratinus, a bad living poet --first lines of poems --poet and lover of wine --reference to --rival to aristophanes 'clouds,' the first edition crows, go to the, explained ctesias, an informer cunnilingue, vice of cyclocorus, a torrent cynecephalus, species of ape cynna, a courtesan --famous courtesan cynthia, a mountain d dactyl, the double meaning of 'daedalians,' a lost play dance, an obscene --the kick dances, lascivious dawn, the, time for love dead (the), a custom demagogues, secret of power demos, double meaning of demosthenes, a reproach of demostratus, a statesman depilation, referred to diagoras, the atheist dicaeopolis, meaning of dionysia, feasts --the basket-bearer dionysus, statue of, place of honour diopithes, a bribe-taker discourse, just and unjust dog, a skinned, proverb "dog-fox," a brothel-keeper --meaning of dogs, lubricity of dolphins, where worshipped double meanings, obscene dream, a drunken habits, results of e eagle and beetle, a fable earth, sons of the earthquakes, sparta menaced ecbatana, king's residence ecclesia, the, or parliament ecclesiasts, their salary echinus, town of eclipses, allusion to eels, certain, esteemed --with beet egypt, residence in election, character of electra, reference to eleusis, mysteries of elymnium, a temple embassies, dismissed erectheus, identity of eucrates, athenian general --hiding-place of --statesman euminides, temples of refuge eupolis, a comic writer euripides, a line from --"aeolus," subject of --his mother --his talent --lost tragedy of --parodied --satirised --verse from expedition, starting on f fear, colour of feast of cups fellation, alluded to festivals, three days fine, fixed by plaintiff finger, the, obscene allusion fleet (the), counsel concerning formula, a sacred g gallop (the), in sexual intercourse games, war chariots in "garden of love," weeded garlic, an emblem --for game-cocks --the smell of genetyllides, minor deities genius, good, explained glanis, invented name "goddesses (by the two)" _godemiché_, alluded to gods, the, belief in gorgon's head gorgons (the), name for gluttons grasshoppers greek stage, device of greenstuff, offered to gods gryttus, an orator gull, allusion to cleon h harmodius, assassin esteemed --song in honour harpies (the), symbol of voracity heliasts, the, at athens --tribunal of hermippus, celebrated comic poet hephaestus, sword of heracles, as a glutton _hermae_, figures of the god hermes, conducts dead souls --god of chance, and thieves promised worship hieronymus, an obscure poet --poet and pederast hippias, the tyranny of hippocrates, sons of the general hipponax, satiric poet, ugliness of homeric verses, adapted hippo of samos, doctrine honey, emblem of honey horse, marking of horses, good breed hyperbolus, a demagogue --a general i iliad, the, verses from incest with rape informers warned off initiated (the), after death invasion, result of iolas, a theban hero ion (of chios), a successful poet ionians, meaning isthmus, obscene pun j jargon, meaningless jest, an obscene _judicatum solvi_ at athens julius, a miser k kneaded (to be), obscene "knockabouts," ancient l lacratides, archon lamachus, a brave general lame heroes, in plays lamprocles, a lyric poet language, used by orators laurel, the, carried off by wind law-costs, defendants' lawsuit against aliens lawsuits, athenians' love of --pretexts for leather, dominated by --the market lemnos, ominous of misfortune lenaea. see dionysia leonidas, hero of thermopylae "let us drink," a song lipsydrion, fortified town loaves, boeotian "_love and lewdness_" lyceum (the) lysicles, dealer in sheep --husband of aspasia lysimacha, derivation of lysistratus, a debauchee --poverty of m macareus rapes sister _mad ox_, a nickname magnes, the comic poet male sexual organ, pun on "_many good men_" "maricas," play by eupolis marpsias, an orator medimni, a measure megacles, family name megara, ally to sparta megarians, boycotted --(the), their sufferings melanion, chaste as melanthius, "medea," tragedy by --poet and gourmand _membrum virile_, punned upon micon, famous painter mice (the), a play mina, value of mines (silver), source of wealth mirrors, or burning glasses mitylené, city of modes of love, allusions to different month (the), how divided moon, the old and new mothon, an obscene dance morsimus, the poet morychus of athens mountains, the golden mount taygetus myronides, famous general mysian telephus (the) n names, fancy navarino, battle of nero, emperor, his finger nestor, the wise king nicarchus, an informer nicias, greek general, satire on courage of o oath, over a buckler obolus, "the honest penny" odomanti, a tribe offering, the priest's part old men, ridiculed olive branches, when carried olympus, a musician omens, their effect opora, the goddess opportunity, neglected opposite (the) to word expected oracles, belief in --obscurity satirised orators, pederastic habits of orestes, symbol of rage oreus, a town orsilochus, brothel-keeper orthian mode, described p pan, king of the satyrs panathenaea, a festival --(the), promised to hermes pandeletus, renowned quibbler pandion, statue of paphlagonian tanner --meaning of parabis, character of parliament (the), athenian parnes, mountain of pauson, a painter peace, efforts for pederasty, school for oratory pegasus, in euripides --steed of perseus peleus, accused of seduction pellené, a city, also name of courtesan penis, the drooping, as emblem penny royal, effect on fruit-eating peplus, the sacred, uses of pericles, maltreats conquered people --squanders wealth periclides, chief of embassy persian buskins persians, alliance with spartans perfumes, rhodian pergasae phales, god of generation phallus (the), an emblem phallics. see phallus phayllus, an athlete pheax, special pleader phelleus, a mountain pherecrates, playwright phidias, reward of work philocles, sons of philostratus, identity lost phormio, a great general --a successful general --famous admiral phrynis, poet and musician phryxus, ram of phylarch, cavalry captain phylé, a fortress of attica pigs immolated pillar, used for treaties pimples, a swinish disease pindar, borrowed from piraeus, the pisander, a braggart captain --revolutionary leader pittalus, a physician pleasures, wanton pnyx, purpose used for poetry, measures of poets, seduce young men --supply theatrical gear "_poseidon and boat_" posidon, god of earthquakes potidaea, a tributary town pramnium, wine or prasiae, a town prepis, a vile pathic priapus, god of gardens prisoners, objects of sale prisoners, spartan processions, barred to married women prodicus, celebrated sophist prytanes, duties of --(the), their functions prytaneum, meals, why given pseudartabas, the king's eye pun, far-fetched --of ill omen --on "father" and cowardice --on word pylos punishment (of slaves) pyanepsia, a festival pylos, history of --barley, meaning --the affair of --towns of pyrrandrus, origin of name pythagorean doctrine q question before sacrificing r radishes, used as punishment rape and incest reasoning, names for s salabaccha, famous courtesan salamis, the island of samos, friend to athens samothrace, the island of samphoras, mark of horses "scythian woman" semi-sextarius, the senate, admission to --how composed seriphian, island of sesame-cake, emblem of fecundity shoes, taken off sibyrtius, the son of sicilian expedition (the) sicily, towns of sicyonians, blood in sacrifice silphium, a plant simonides, a timeserver --song-writer sisters, marriage of half- sisyphus, his cunning sitalces, a king _skytalé_, used for despatches slaves, names of smicythes, the king socrates, basket used for meditation --calumniated --chief accusation against --his birthplace --his meanness --taught everywhere --teaching _re_ bodily health --sprinkles flour --words mocked at soldiers, inexpert at speaking soldier's nation sophocles, writing for gain sow, obscene pun on word spartans (the), prisoners --malicious speeches, limited by clocks sphere, earthenware stage (the greek), contrivance of --(the), of theatre state treasure stealing, under pretence of teaching steeds, exploits of stilbides, a diviner stone seats, where used strangers, at athens strategi (the) strato, orator of ill-fame stupidity, in government suidas, referred to sunium, temple of sybaris, a town sybil (the), of delphi syrmaea, a purgative t tail, when burning tails, animals without tambourines, with lewd dancing telamon, war-song writer --"telephus," a lost play --tents at olympic games "tereus," a lost play thales, mentioned thasian wine theagenes, an evil liver --wife themistocles, work for athens --death, theognis, a poet sans life theophanes, identity of theoria, why in care of senate thetis, solicited by peleus thucydides, references to thumantis unhoused timocreon, song of timon, the misanthrope toad-eaters, orators treachery, reward of tributes, paid to athens trierarch, duties of tricorysus, gnat-haunted truces, how personified tyndarus, sons of v vegetables, at feast of dionysia vessels (grecian), allusion to crew vintages, result of peace violation of brides, origin of war vocative (the), in ionic w wages of rowers, how avoided war-chariots, prize for war, hardships --results of, peloponnesian "wasps (the)," verses from water-cress, depredations of wealth, given to traitors whirlwind, the, as deity "_who is here?_" wind, the, snatches off laurel wine, water in wines, symbolic women, athenian, love of wine --lascivious dancing women, loose, wear silk wrestling school, place of pederasty x _xenocles_, a line from z zacynthus, an island zeus, appealed to --sons of zeus polieus zeuxis, the painter athens: its rise and fall by edward bulwer lytton dedication. to henry fynes clinton, esq., etc., etc. author of "the fasti hellenici." my dear sir, i am not more sensible of the distinction conferred upon me when you allowed me to inscribe this history with your name, than pleased with an occasion to express my gratitude for the assistance i have derived throughout the progress of my labours from that memorable work, in which you have upheld the celebrity of english learning, and afforded so imperishable a contribution to our knowledge of the ancient world. to all who in history look for the true connexion between causes and effects, chronology is not a dry and mechanical compilation of barren dates, but the explanation of events and the philosophy of facts. and the publication of the fasti hellenici has thrown upon those times, in which an accurate chronological system can best repair what is deficient, and best elucidate what is obscure in the scanty authorities bequeathed to us, all the light of a profound and disciplined intellect, applying the acutest comprehension to the richest erudition, and arriving at its conclusions according to the true spirit of inductive reasoning, which proportions the completeness of the final discovery to the caution of the intermediate process. my obligations to that learning and to those gifts which you have exhibited to the world are shared by all who, in england or in europe, study the history or cultivate the literature of greece. but, in the patient kindness with which you have permitted me to consult you during the tedious passage of these volumes through the press--in the careful advice--in the generous encouragement--which have so often smoothed the path and animated the progress--there are obligations peculiar to myself; and in those obligations there is so much that honours me, that, were i to enlarge upon them more, the world might mistake an acknowledgment for a boast. with the highest consideration and esteem, believe me, my dear sir, most sincerely and gratefully yours, edward lytton bulwer london, march, . advertisement. the work, a portion of which is now presented to the reader, has occupied me many years--though often interrupted in its progress, either by more active employment, or by literary undertakings of a character more seductive. these volumes were not only written, but actually in the hands of the publisher before the appearance, and even, i believe, before the announcement of the first volume of mr. thirlwall's history of greece, or i might have declined going over any portion of the ground cultivated by that distinguished scholar [ ]. as it is, however, the plan i have pursued differs materially from that of mr. thirlwall, and i trust that the soil is sufficiently fertile to yield a harvest to either labourer. since it is the letters, yet more than the arms or the institutions of athens, which have rendered her illustrious, it is my object to combine an elaborate view of her literature with a complete and impartial account of her political transactions. the two volumes now published bring the reader, in the one branch of my subject, to the supreme administration of pericles; in the other, to a critical analysis of the tragedies of sophocles. two additional volumes will, i trust, be sufficient to accomplish my task, and close the records of athens at that period when, with the accession of augustus, the annals of the world are merged into the chronicle of the roman empire. in these latter volumes it is my intention to complete the history of the athenian drama--to include a survey of the athenian philosophy--to describe the manners, habits, and social life of the people, and to conclude the whole with such a review of the facts and events narrated as may constitute, perhaps, an unprejudiced and intelligible explanation of the causes of the rise and fall of athens. as the history of the greek republics has been too often corruptly pressed into the service of heated political partisans, may i be pardoned the precaution of observing that, whatever my own political code, as applied to england, i have nowhere sought knowingly to pervert the lessons of a past nor analogous time to fugitive interests and party purposes. whether led sometimes to censure, or more often to vindicate the athenian people, i am not conscious of any other desire than that of strict, faithful, impartial justice. restlessly to seek among the ancient institutions for illustrations (rarely apposite) of the modern, is, indeed, to desert the character of a judge for that of an advocate, and to undertake the task of the historian with the ambition of the pamphleteer. though designing this work not for colleges and cloisters, but for the general and miscellaneous public, it is nevertheless impossible to pass over in silence some matters which, if apparently trifling in themselves, have acquired dignity, and even interest, from brilliant speculations or celebrated disputes. in the history of greece (and athenian history necessarily includes nearly all that is valuable in the annals of the whole hellenic race) the reader must submit to pass through much that is minute, much that is wearisome, if he desire to arrive at last at definite knowledge and comprehensive views. in order, however, to interrupt as little as possible the recital of events, i have endeavoured to confine to the earlier portion of the work such details of an antiquarian or speculative nature as, while they may afford to the general reader, not, indeed, a minute analysis, but perhaps a sufficient notion of the scholastic inquiries which have engaged the attention of some of the subtlest minds of germany and england, may also prepare him the better to comprehend the peculiar character and circumstances of the people to whose history he is introduced: and it may be well to warn the more impatient that it is not till the second book (vol. i., p. ) that disquisition is abandoned for narrative. there yet remain various points on which special comment would be incompatible with connected and popular history, but on which i propose to enlarge in a series of supplementary notes, to be appended to the concluding volume. these notes will also comprise criticisms and specimens of greek writers not so intimately connected with the progress of athenian literature as to demand lengthened and elaborate notice in the body of the work. thus, when it is completed, it is my hope that this book will combine, with a full and complete history of athens, political and moral, a more ample and comprehensive view of the treasures of the greek literature than has yet been afforded to the english public. i have ventured on these remarks because i thought it due to the reader, no less than to myself, to explain the plan and outline of a design at present only partially developed. london, march, . contents. book i chapter i situation and soil of attica.--the pelasgians its earliest inhabitants.--their race and language akin to the grecian.-- their varying civilization and architectural remains.-- cecrops.--were the earliest civilizers of greece foreigners or greeks?--the foundation of athens.--the improvements attributed to cecrops.--the religion of the greeks cannot be reduced to a simple system.--its influence upon their character and morals, arts and poetry.--the origin of slavery and aristocracy. ii the unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission that cecrops might be egyptian.--attic kings before theseus.--the hellenes.--their genealogy.--ionians and achaeans pelasgic.--contrast between dorians and ionians.-- amphictyonic league. iii the heroic age.--theseus.--his legislative influence upon athens.--qualities of the greek heroes.--effect of a traditional age upon the character of a people. iv the successors of theseus.--the fate of codrus.--the emigration of nileus.--the archons.--draco. v a general survey of greece and the east previous to the time of solon.--the grecian colonies.--the isles.--brief account of the states on the continent.--elis and the olympic games. vi return of the heraclidae.--the spartan constitution and habits.--the first and second messenian war. vii governments in greece. viii brief survey of arts, letters, and philosophy in greece, prior to the legislation of solon. book ii chapter i the conspiracy of cylon.--loss of salamis.--first appearance of solon.--success against the megarians in the struggle for salamis.--cirrhaean war.--epimenides.--political state of athens.--character of solon.--his legislation.--general view of the athenian constitution. ii the departure of solon from athens.--the rise of pisistratus. --return of solon.--his conduct and death.--the second and third tyranny of pisistratus.--capture of sigeum.--colony in the chersonesus founded by the first miltiades.--death of pisistratus. iii the administration of hippias.--the conspiracy of harmodius and aristogiton.--the death of hipparchus.--cruelties of hippias.--the young miltiades sent to the chersonesus.--the spartans combine with the alcmaeonidae against hippias.--the fall of the tyranny.--the innovations of clisthenes.--his expulsion and restoration.--embassy to the satrap of sardis. --retrospective view of the lydian, medean, and persian monarchies.--result of the athenian embassy to sardis.-- conduct of cleomenes.--victory of the athenians against the boeotians and chalcidians.--hippias arrives at sparta.--the speech of sosicles the corinthian.--hippias retires to sardis. iv histiaeus, tyrant of miletus, removed to persia.--the government of that city deputed to aristagoras, who invades naxos with the aid of the persians.--ill success of that expedition.--aristagoras resolves upon revolting from the persians.--repairs to sparta and to athens.--the athenians and eretrians induced to assist the ionians.--burning of sardis.--the ionian war.--the fate of aristagoras.--naval battle of lade.--fall of miletus.--reduction of ionia.-- miltiades.--his character.--mardonius replaces artaphernes in the lydian satrapy.--hostilities between aegina and athens.--conduct of cleomenes.--demaratus deposed.--death of cleomenes.--new persian expedition. v the persian generals enter europe.--invasion of naxos, carystus, eretria.--the athenians demand the aid of sparta. --the result of their mission and the adventure of their messenger.--the persians advance to marathon.--the plain described.--division of opinion in the athenian camp.--the advice of miltiades prevails.--the drear of hippias.--the battle of marathon. book iii chapter i the character and popularity of miltiades.--naval expedition. --siege of paros.--conduct of miltiades.--he is accused and sentenced.--his death. ii the athenian tragedy.--its origin.--thespis.--phrynichus.-- aeschylus.--analysis of the tragedies of aeschylus. iii aristides.--his character and position.--the rise of themistocles.--aristides is ostracised.--the ostracism examined.--the influence of themistocles increases.--the silver--mines of laurion.--their product applied by themistocles to the increase of the navy.--new direction given to the national character. iv the preparations of darius.--revolt of egypt.--dispute for the succession to the persian throne.--death of darius.-- brief review of the leading events and characteristics of his reign. v xerxes conducts an expedition into egypt.--he finally resolves on the invasion of greece.--vast preparations for the conquest of europe.--xerxes arrives at sardis.--despatches envoys to the greek states, demanding tribute.--the bridge of the hellespont.--review of the persian armament at abydos.--xerxes encamps at therme. vi the conduct of the greeks.--the oracle relating to salamis.-- art of themistocles.--the isthmian congress.--embassies to argos, crete, corcyra, and syracuse.--their ill success.-- the thessalians send envoys to the isthmus.--the greeks advance to tempe, but retreat.--the fleet despatched to artemisium, and the pass of thermopylae occupied.--numbers of the grecian fleet.--battle of thermopylae. vii the advice of demaratus to xerxes.--themistocles.--actions off artemisium.--the greeks retreat.--the persians invade delphi, and are repulsed with great loss.--the athenians, unaided by their allies, abandon athens, and embark for salamis.--the irresolute and selfish policy of the peloponnesians.--dexterity and firmness of themistocles.-- battle of salamis.--andros and carystus besieged by the greeks.--anecdotes of themistocles.--honours awarded to him in sparta.--xerxes returns to asia.--olynthus and potidaea besieged by artabazus.--the athenians return home.--the ostracism of aristides is repealed. viii embassy of alexander of macedon to athens.--the result of his proposals.--athenians retreat to salamis.--mardonius occupies athens.--the athenians send envoys to sparta.-- pausanias succeeds cleombrotus as regent of sparta.--battle of plataea.--thebes besieged by the athenians.--battle of mycale.--siege of sestos.--conclusion of the persian war. book iv chapter i remarks on the effects of war.--state of athens.--interference of sparta with respect to the fortifications of athens.-- dexterous conduct of themistocles.--the new harbour of the piraeus.--proposition of the spartans in the amphictyonic council defeated by themistocles.--allied fleet at cyprus and byzantium.--pausanias.--alteration in his character.-- his ambitious views and treason.--the revolt of the ionians from the spartan command.--pausanias recalled.--dorcis replaces him.--the athenians rise to the head of the ionian league.--delos made the senate and treasury of the allies.-- able and prudent management of aristides.--cimon succeeds to the command of the fleet.--character of cimon.--eion besieged.--scyros colonized by atticans.--supposed discovery of the bones of theseus.--declining power of themistocles. --democratic change in the constitution.--themistocles ostracised.--death of aristides. ii popularity and policy of cimon.--naxos revolts from the ionian league.--is besieged by cimon.--conspiracy and fate of pausanias.--flight and adventures of themistocles. --his death. iii reduction of naxos.--actions off cyprus.--manners of cimon.--improvements in athens.--colony at the nine ways. --siege of thasos.--earthquake in sparta.--revolt of helots, occupation of ithome, and third messenian war.--rise and character of pericles.--prosecution and acquittal of cimon. --the athenians assist the spartans at ithome.--thasos surrenders.--breach between the athenians and spartans.-- constitutional innovations at athens.--ostracism of cimon. iv war between megara and corinth.--megara and pegae garrisoned by athenians.--review of affairs at the persian court.-- accession of artaxerxes.--revolt of egypt under inarus.-- athenian expedition to assist inarus.--aegina besieged.--the corinthians defeated.--spartan conspiracy with the athenian oligarchy.--battle of tanagra.--campaign and successes of myronides.--plot of the oligarchy against the republic.-- recall of cimon.--long walls completed.--aegina reduced.-- expedition under tolmides.--ithome surrenders.--the insurgents are settled at naupactus.--disastrous termination of the egyptian expedition.--the athenians march into thessaly to restore orestes the tagus.--campaign under pericles.--truce of five years with the peloponnesians.-- cimon sets sail for cyprus.--pretended treaty of peace with persia.--death of cimon. v change of manners in athens.--begun under the pisistratidae.-- effects of the persian war, and the intimate connexion with ionia.--the hetaerae.--the political eminence lately acquired by athens.--the transfer of the treasury from delos to athens.--latent dangers and evils.--first, the artificial greatness of athens not supported by natural strength.-- secondly, her pernicious reliance on tribute.--thirdly, deterioration of national spirit commenced by cimon in the use of bribes and public tables.--fourthly, defects in popular courts of law.--progress of general education.-- history.--its ionian origin.--early historians.--acusilaus. --cadmus.--eugeon.--hellanicus.--pherecides.--xanthus.--view of the life and writings of herodotus.--progress of philosophy since thales.--philosophers of the ionian and eleatic schools.--pythagoras.--his philosophical tenets and political influence.--effect of these philosophers on athens.--school of political philosophy continued in athens from the time of solon.--anaxagoras.--archelaus.--philosophy not a thing apart from the ordinary life of the athenians. book v chapter i thucydides chosen by the aristocratic party to oppose pericles.--his policy.--munificence of pericles.--sacred war.--battle of coronea.--revolt of euboea and megara-- invasion and retreat of the peloponnesians.--reduction of euboea.--punishment of histiaea.--a thirty years' truce concluded with the peloponnesians.--ostracism of thucydides. ii causes of the power of pericles.--judicial courts of the dependant allies transferred to athens.--sketch of the athenian revenues.--public buildings the work of the people rather than of pericles.--vices and greatness of athens had the same sources.--principle of payment characterizes the policy of the period.--it is the policy of civilization.-- colonization, cleruchia. iii revision of the census.--samian war.--sketch of the rise and progress of the athenian comedy to the time of aristophanes. iv the tragedies of sophocles. athens: its rise and fall book i. chapter i. situation and soil of attica.--the pelasgians its earliest inhabitants.--their race and language akin to the grecian.--their varying civilization and architectural remains.--cecrops.--were the earliest civilizers of greece foreigners or greeks?--the foundation of athens.--the improvements attributed to cecrops.--the religion of the greeks cannot be reduced to a simple system.--its influence upon their character and morals, arts and poetry.--the origin of slavery and aristocracy. i. to vindicate the memory of the athenian people, without disguising the errors of athenian institutions;--and, in narrating alike the triumphs and the reverses--the grandeur and the decay--of the most eminent of ancient states, to record the causes of her imperishable influence on mankind, not alone in political change or the fortunes of fluctuating war, but in the arts, the letters, and the social habits, which are equal elements in the history of a people;--this is the object that i set before me;--not unreconciled to the toil of years, if, serving to divest of some party errors, and to diffuse through a wider circle such knowledge as is yet bequeathed to us of a time and land, fertile in august examples and in solemn warnings--consecrated by undying names and memorable deeds. ii. in that part of earth termed by the greeks hellas, and by the romans graecia [ ], a small tract of land known by the name of attica, extends into the aegaean sea--the southeast peninsula of greece. in its greatest length it is about sixty, in its greatest breadth about twenty-four, geographical miles. in shape it is a rude triangle,--on two sides flows the sea--on the third, the mountain range of parnes and cithaeron divides the attic from the boeotian territory. it is intersected by frequent but not lofty hills, and, compared with the rest of greece, its soil, though propitious to the growth of the olive, is not fertile or abundant. in spite of painful and elaborate culture, the traces of which are yet visible, it never produced a sufficiency of corn to supply its population; and this, the comparative sterility of the land, may be ranked among the causes which conduced to the greatness of the people. the principal mountains of attica are, the cape of sunium, hymettus, renowned for its honey, and pentelicus for its marble; the principal streams which water the valleys are the capricious and uncertain rivulets of cephisus and ilissus [ ],--streams breaking into lesser brooks, deliciously pure and clear. the air is serene--the climate healthful --the seasons temperate. along the hills yet breathe the wild thyme, and the odorous plants which, everywhere prodigal in greece, are more especially fragrant in that lucid sky;--and still the atmosphere colours with peculiar and various taints the marble of the existent temples and the face of the mountain landscapes. iii. i reject at once all attempt to penetrate an unfathomable obscurity for an idle object. i do not pause to inquire whether, after the destruction of babel, javan was the first settler in attica, nor is it reserved for my labours to decide the solemn controversy whether ogyges was the contemporary of jacob or of moses. neither shall i suffer myself to be seduced into any lengthened consideration of those disputes, so curious and so inconclusive, relative to the origin of the pelasgi (according to herodotus the earliest inhabitants of attica), which have vainly agitated the learned. it may amuse the antiquary to weigh gravely the several doubts as to the derivation of their name from pelasgus or from peleg--to connect the scattered fragments of tradition--and to interpret either into history or mythology the language of fabulous genealogies. but our subtlest hypotheses can erect only a fabric of doubt, which, while it is tempting to assault, it is useless to defend. all that it seems to me necessary to say of the pelasgi is as follows:--they are the earliest race which appear to have exercised a dominant power in greece. their kings can be traced by tradition to a time long prior to the recorded genealogy of any other tribe, and inachus, the father of the pelasgian phoroneus, is but another name for the remotest era to which grecian chronology can ascend [ ]. whether the pelasgi were anciently a foreign or a grecian tribe, has been a subject of constant and celebrated discussion. herodotus, speaking of some settlements held to be pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms their language "barbarous;" but mueller, nor with argument insufficient, considers that the expression of the historian would apply only to a peculiar dialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage in herodotus, in which he applies to certain ionian dialects the same term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the pelasgic settlements. in corroboration of mueller's opinion we may also observe, that the "barbarous-tongued" is an epithet applied by homer to the carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as denoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. nor when the agamemnon of sophocles upbraids teucer with "his barbarous tongue," [ ] would any scholar suppose that teucer is upbraided with not speaking greek; he is upbraided with speaking greek inelegantly and rudely. it is clear that they who continued with the least adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern construction. and, no doubt, could we meet with a tribe retaining the english of the thirteenth century, the language of our ancestors would be to most of us unintelligible, and seem to many of us foreign. but, however the phrase of herodotus be interpreted, it would still be exceedingly doubtful whether the settlements he refers to were really and originally pelasgic, and still more doubtful whether, if pelasgia they had continued unalloyed and uncorrupted their ancestral language. i do not, therefore, attach any importance to the expression of herodotus. i incline, on the contrary, to believe, with the more eminent of english scholars, that the language of the pelasgi contained at least the elements of that which we acknowledge as the greek;--and from many arguments i select the following: st. because, in the states which we know to have been peopled by the pelasgi (as arcadia and attica), and whence the population were not expelled by new tribes, the language appears no less greek than that of those states from which the pelasgi were the earliest driven. had they spoken a totally different tongue from later settlers, i conceive that some unequivocal vestiges of the difference would have been visible even to the historical times. dly. because the hellenes are described as few at first--their progress is slow--they subdue, but they do not extirpate; in such conquests--the conquests of the few settled among the many--the language of the many continues to the last; that of the few would influence, enrich, or corrupt, but never destroy it. dly. because, whatever of the grecian language pervades the latin [ ], we can only ascribe to the pelasgic colonizers of italy. in this, all ancient writers, greek and latin, are agreed. the few words transmitted to us as pelasgic betray the grecian features, and the lamina borgiana (now in the borgian collection of naples, and discovered in ) has an inscription relative to the siculi or sicani, a people expelled from their italian settlements before any received date of the trojan war, of which the character is pelasgic-- the language greek. iv. of the moral state of the pelasgi our accounts are imperfect and contradictory. they were not a petty horde, but a vast race, doubtless divided, like every migratory people, into numerous tribes, differing in rank, in civilization [ ], and in many peculiarities of character. the pelasgi in one country might appear as herdsmen or as savages; in another, in the same age, they might appear collected into cities and cultivating the arts. the history of the east informs us with what astonishing rapidity a wandering tribe, once settled, grew into fame and power; the camp of to-day--the city of to-morrow--and the "dwellers in the wilderness setting up the towers and the palaces thereof." [ ] thus, while in greece this mysterious people are often represented as the aboriginal race, receiving from phoenician and egyptian settlers the primitive blessings of social life, in italy we behold them the improvers in agriculture [ ] and first teachers of letters. [ ] even so early as the traditional appearance of cecrops among the savages of attica, the pelasgians in arcadia had probably advanced from the pastoral to the civil life; and this, indeed, is the date assigned by pausanias to the foundation of that ancestral lycosura, in whose rude remains (by the living fountain and the waving oaks of the modern diaphorte) the antiquary yet traces the fortifications of "the first city which the sun beheld." [ ] it is in their buildings that the pelasgi have left the most indisputable record of their name. their handwriting is yet upon their walls! a restless and various people--overrunning the whole of greece, found northward in dacia, illyria, and the country of the getae, colonizing the coasts of ionia, and long the master-race of the fairest lands of italy,--they have passed away amid the revolutions of the elder earth, their ancestry and their descendants alike unknown;--yet not indeed the last, if my conclusions are rightly drawn: if the primitive population of greece-- themselves greek--founding the language, and kindred with the blood, of the later and more illustrious hellenes--they still made the great bulk of the people in the various states, and through their most dazzling age: enslaved in laconia--but free in athens--it was their posterity that fought the mede at marathon and plataea,--whom miltiades led,--for whom solon legislated,--for whom plato thought,-- whom demosthenes harangued. not less in italy than in greece the parents of an imperishable tongue, and, in part, the progenitors of a glorious race, we may still find the dim track of their existence wherever the classic civilization flourished,--the classic genius breathed. if in the latin, if in the grecian tongue, are yet the indelible traces of the language of the pelasgi, the literature of the ancient, almost of the modern world, is their true descendant! v. despite a vague belief (referred to by plato) of a remote and perished era of civilization, the most popular tradition asserts the pelasgic inhabitants of attica to have been sunk into the deepest ignorance of the elements of social life, when, either from sais, an egyptian city, as is commonly supposed, or from sais a province in upper egypt, an egyptian characterized to posterity by the name of cecrops is said to have passed into attica with a band of adventurous emigrants. the tradition of this egyptian immigration into attica was long implicitly received. recently the bold skepticism of german scholars --always erudite--if sometimes rash--has sufficed to convince us of the danger we incur in drawing historical conclusions from times to which no historical researches can ascend. the proofs upon which rest the reputed arrival of egyptian colonizers, under cecrops, in attica, have been shown to be slender--the authorities for the assertion to be comparatively modern--the arguments against the probability of such an immigration in such an age, to be at least plausible and important. not satisfied, however, with reducing to the uncertainty of conjecture what incautiously had been acknowledged as fact, the assailants of the egyptian origin of cecrops presume too much upon their victory, when they demand us to accept as a counter fact, what can be, after all, but a counter conjecture. to me, impartially weighing the arguments and assertions on either side, the popular tradition of cecrops and his colony appears one that can neither be tacitly accepted as history, nor contemptuously dismissed as invention. it would be, however, a frivolous dispute, whether cecrops were egyptian or attican, since no erudition can ascertain that cecrops ever existed, were it not connected with a controversy of some philosophical importance, viz., whether the early civilizers of greece were foreigners or greeks, and whether the egyptians more especially assisted to instruct the ancestors of a race that have become the teachers and models of the world, in the elements of religion, of polity, and the arts. without entering into vain and futile reasonings, derived from the scattered passages of some early writers, from the ambiguous silence of others--and, above all, from the dreams of etymological analogy or mythological fable, i believe the earliest civilizers of greece to have been foreign settlers; deducing my belief from the observations of common sense rather than from obscure and unsatisfactory research. i believe it, first--because, what is more probable than that at very early periods the more advanced nations of the east obtained communication with the grecian continent and isles? what more probable than that the maritime and roving phoenicians entered the seas of greece, and were tempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains, which afforded a fastness? possessed of a superior civilization to the hordes they found, they would meet rather with veneration than resistance, and thus a settlement would be obtained by an inconsiderable number, more in right of intelligence than of conquest. but, though this may be conceded with respect to the phoenicians, it is asserted that the egyptians at least were not a maritime or colonizing people: and we are gravely assured, that in those distant times no egyptian vessel had entered the grecian seas. but of the remotest ages of egyptian civilization we know but little. on their earliest monuments (now their books!) we find depicted naval as well as military battles, in which the vessels are evidently those employed at sea. according to their own traditions, they colonized in a remote age. they themselves laid claim to danaus: and the mythus of the expedition of osiris is not improbably construed into a figurative representation of the spread of egyptian civilization by the means of colonies. besides, egypt was subjected to more than one revolution, by which a large portion of her population was expelled the land, and scattered over the neighbouring regions [ ]. and even granting that egyptians fitted out no maritime expedition--they could easily have transplanted themselves in phoenician vessels, or grecian rafts--from asia into greece. nor can we forget that egypt [ ] for a time was the habitation, and thebes the dominion, of the phoenicians, and that hence, perhaps, the origin of the dispute whether certain of the first foreign civilizers of greece were phoenicians or egyptians: the settlers might come from egypt, and be by extraction phoenicians: or egyptian emigrators might well have accompanied the phoenician. [ ] dly. by the evidence of all history, savage tribes appear to owe their first enlightenment to foreigners: to be civilized, they conquer or are conquered--visit or are visited. for a fact which contains so striking a mystery, i do not attempt to account. i find in the history of every other part of the world, that it is by the colonizer or the conqueror that a tribe neither colonizing nor conquering is redeemed from a savage state, and i do not reject so probable an hypothesis for greece. dly. i look to the various arguments of a local or special nature, by which these general probabilities may be supported, and i find them unusually strong: i cast my eyes on the map of greece, and i see that it is almost invariably on the eastern side that these eastern colonies are said to have been founded: i turn to chronology, and i find the revolutions in the east coincide in point of accredited date with the traditional immigrations into greece: i look to the history of the greeks, and i find the greeks themselves (a people above all others vain of aboriginal descent, and contemptuous of foreign races) agreed in according a general belief to the accounts of their obligations to foreign settlers; and therefore (without additional but doubtful arguments from any imaginary traces of eastern, egyptian, phoenician rites and fables in the religion or the legends of greece in her remoter age) i see sufficient ground for inclining to the less modern, but mere popular belief, which ascribes a foreign extraction to the early civilizers of greece: nor am i convinced by the reasonings of those who exclude the egyptians from the list of these primitive benefactors. it being conceded that no hypothesis is more probable than that the earliest civilizers of greece were foreign, and might be egyptian, i do not recognise sufficient authority for rejecting the attic traditions claiming egyptian civilizers for the attic soil, in arguments, whether grounded upon the fact that such traditions, unreferred to by the more ancient, were collected by the more modern, of grecian writers--or upon plausible surmises as to the habits of the egyptians in that early age. whether cecrops were the first--whether he were even one--of these civilizers, is a dispute unworthy of philosophical inquirers [ ]. but as to the time of cecrops are referred, both by those who contend for his egyptian, and those who assert his attic origin, certain advances from barbarism, and certain innovations in custom, which would have been natural to a foreigner, and almost miraculous in a native, i doubt whether it would not be our wiser and more cautious policy to leave undisturbed a long accredited conjecture, rather than to subscribe to arguments which, however startling and ingenious, not only substitute no unanswerable hypothesis, but conduce to no important result. [ ] vi. if cecrops were really the leader of an egyptian colony, it is more than probable that he obtained the possession of attica by other means than those of force. to savage and barbarous tribes, the first appearance of men, whose mechanical inventions, whose superior knowledge of the arts of life--nay, whose exterior advantages of garb and mien [ ] indicate intellectual eminence, till then neither known nor imagined, presents a something preternatural and divine. the imagination of the wild inhabitants is seduced, their superstitions aroused, and they yield to a teacher--not succumb to an invader. it was probably thus, then, that cecrops with his colonists would have occupied the attic plain--conciliated rather than subdued the inhabitants, and united in himself the twofold authority exercised by primeval chiefs--the dignity of the legislator, and the sanctity of the priest. it is evident that none of the foreign settlers brought with them a numerous band. the traditions speak of them with gratitude as civilizers, not with hatred as conquerors. and they did not leave any traces in the establishment of their language:--a proof of the paucity of their numbers, and the gentle nature of their influence--the phoenician cadmus, the egyptian cecrops, the phrygian pelops, introduced no separate and alien tongue. assisting to civilize the greeks, they then became greeks; their posterity merged and lost amid the native population. vii. perhaps, in all countries, the first step to social improvement is in the institution of marriage, and the second is the formation of cities. as menes in egypt, as fohi in china, so cecrops at athens is said first to have reduced into sacred limits the irregular intercourse of the sexes [ ], and reclaimed his barbarous subjects from a wandering and unprovidential life, subsisting on the spontaneous produce of no abundant soil. high above the plain, and fronting the sea, which, about three miles distant on that side, sweeps into a bay peculiarly adapted for the maritime enterprises of an earlier age, we still behold a cragged and nearly perpendicular rock. in length its superficies is about eight hundred, in breadth about four hundred, feet [ ]. below, on either side, flow the immortal streams of the ilissus and cephisus. from its summit you may survey, here, the mountains of hymettus, pentelicus, and, far away, "the silver-bearing laurium;" below, the wide plain of attica, broken by rocky hills--there, the islands of salamis and aegina, with the opposite shores of argolis, rising above the waters of the saronic bay. on this rock the supposed egyptian is said to have built a fortress, and founded a city [ ]; the fortress was in later times styled the acropolis, and the place itself, when the buildings of athens spread far and wide beneath its base, was still designated polis, or the city. by degrees we are told that he extended, from this impregnable castle and its adjacent plain, the limit of his realm, until it included the whole of attica, and perhaps boeotia [ ]. it is also related that he established eleven other towns or hamlets, and divided his people into twelve tribes, to each of which one of the towns was apportioned--a fortress against foreign invasion, and a court of justice in civil disputes. if we may trust to the glimmering light which, resting for a moment, uncertain and confused, upon the reign of cecrops, is swallowed up in all the darkness of fable during those of his reputed successors,--it is to this apocryphal personage that we must refer the elements both of agriculture and law. he is said to have instructed the athenians to till the land, and to watch the produce of the seasons; to have imported from egypt the olive-tree, for which the attic soil was afterward so celebrated, and even to have navigated to sicily and to africa for supplies of corn. that such advances from a primitive and savage state were not made in a single generation, is sufficiently clear. with more probability, cecrops is reputed to have imposed upon the ignorance of his subjects and the license of his followers the curb of impartial law, and to have founded a tribunal of justice (doubtless the sole one for all disputes), in which after times imagined to trace the origin of the solemn areopagus. viii. passing from these doubtful speculations on the detailed improvements effected by cecrops in the social life of the attic people, i shall enter now into some examination of two subjects far more important. the first is the religion of the athenians in common with the rest of greece; and the second the origin of the institution of slavery. the origin of religion in all countries is an inquiry of the deepest interest and of the vaguest result. for, the desire of the pious to trace throughout all creeds the principles of the one they themselves profess--the vanity of the learned to display a various and recondite erudition--the passion of the ingenious to harmonize conflicting traditions--and the ambition of every speculator to say something new upon an ancient but inexhaustible subject, so far from enlightening, only perplex our conjectures. scarcely is the theory of to-day established, than the theory of to-morrow is invented to oppose it. with one the religion of the greeks is but a type of the mysteries of the jews, the event of the deluge, and the preservation of the ark; with another it is as entirely an incorporation of the metaphysical solemnities of the egyptian;--now it is the crafty device of priests, now the wise invention of sages. it is not too much to say, that after the profoundest labours and the most plausible conjectures of modern times, we remain yet more uncertain and confused than we were before. it is the dark boast of every pagan mythology, as one of the eldest of the pagan deities, that "none among mortals hath lifted up its veil!" after, then, some brief and preliminary remarks, tending to such hypotheses as appear to me most probable and simple, i shall hasten from unprofitable researches into the unknown, to useful deductions from what is given to our survey--in a word, from the origin of the grecian religion to its influence and its effects; the first is the province of the antiquary and the speculator; the last of the historian and the practical philosopher. ix. when herodotus informs us that egypt imparted to greece the names of almost all her deities, and that his researches convinced him that they were of barbarous origin, he exempts from the list of the egyptian deities, neptune, the dioscuri, juno, vesta, themis, the graces, and the nereids [ ]. from africa, according to herodotus, came neptune, from the pelasgi the rest of the deities disclaimed by egypt. according to the same authority, the pelasgi learned not their deities, but the names of their deities (and those at a later period), from the egyptians [ ]. but the pelasgi were the first known inhabitants of greece--the first known inhabitants of greece had therefore their especial deities, before any communication with egypt. for the rest we must accept the account of the simple and credulous herodotus with considerable caution and reserve. nothing is more natural--perhaps more certain--than that every tribe [ ], even of utter savages, will invent some deities of their own; and as these deities will as naturally be taken from external objects, common to all mankind, such as the sun or the moon, the waters or the earth, and honoured with attributes formed from passions and impressions no less universal;--so the deities of every tribe will have something kindred to each other, though the tribes themselves may never have come into contact or communication. the mythology of the early greeks may perhaps be derived from the following principal sources:--first, the worship of natural objects;-- and of divinities so formed, the most unequivocally national will obviously be those most associated with their mode of life and the influences of their climate. when the savage first intrusts the seed to the bosom of the earth--when, through a strange and unaccountable process, he beholds what he buried in one season spring forth the harvest of the next--the earth itself, the mysterious garner, the benign, but sometimes the capricious reproducer of the treasures committed to its charge--becomes the object of the wonder, the hope, and the fear, which are the natural origin of adoration and prayer. again, when he discovers the influence of the heaven upon the growth of his labour--when, taught by experience, he acknowledges its power to blast or to mellow--then, by the same process of ideas, the heaven also assumes the character of divinity, and becomes a new agent, whose wrath is to be propitiated, whose favour is to be won. what common sense thus suggests to us, our researches confirm, and we find accordingly that the earth and the heaven are the earliest deities of the agricultural pelasgi. as the nile to the fields of the egyptian-- earth and heaven to the culture of the greek. the effects of the sun upon human labour and human enjoyment are so sensible to the simplest understanding, that we cannot wonder to find that glorious luminary among the most popular deities of ancient nations. why search through the east to account for its worship in greece? more easy to suppose that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured-- saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon that remoter shore, whence was transplanted a deity, whose effects were so benignant, whose worship was so natural, to the greeks. and in the more plain belief we are also borne out by the more sound inductions of learning. for it is noticeable that neither the moon nor the stars--favourite divinities with those who enjoyed the serene nights, or inhabited the broad plains of the east--were (though probably admitted among the pelasgic deities) honoured with that intense and reverent worship which attended them in asia and in egypt. to the pelasgi, not yet arrived at the intellectual stage of philosophical contemplation, the most sensible objects of influence would be the most earnestly adored. what the stars were to the east, their own beautiful aurora, awaking them to the delight of their genial and temperate climate, was to the early greeks. of deities, thus created from external objects, some will rise out (if i may use the expression) of natural accident and local circumstance. an earthquake will connect a deity with the earth--an inundation with the river or the sea. the grecian soil bears the marks of maritime revolution; many of the tribes were settled along the coast, and perhaps had already adventured their rafts upon the main. a deity of the sea (without any necessary revelation from africa) is, therefore, among the earliest of the grecian gods. the attributes of each deity will be formed from the pursuits and occupations of the worshippers-- sanguinary with the warlike--gentle with the peaceful. the pastoral pelasgi of arcadia honoured the pastoral pan for ages before he was received by their pelasgic brotherhood of attica. and the agricultural demeter or ceres will be recognised among many tribes of the agricultural pelasgi, which no egyptian is reputed, even by tradition [ ], to have visited. the origin of prayer is in the sense of dependance, and in the instinct of self-preservation or self-interest. the first objects of prayer to the infant man will be those on which by his localities he believes himself to be most dependant for whatever blessing his mode of life inclines him the most to covet, or from which may come whatever peril his instinct will teach him the most to deprecate and fear. it is this obvious truth which destroys all the erudite systems that would refer the different creeds of the heathen to some single origin. till the earth be the same in each region--till the same circumstances surround every tribe--different impressions, in nations yet unconverted and uncivilized, produce different deities. nature suggests a god, and man invests him with attributes. nature and man, the same as a whole, vary in details; the one does not everywhere suggest the same notions--the other cannot everywhere imagine the same attributes. as with other tribes, so with the pelasgi or primitive greeks, their early gods were the creatures of their own early impressions. as one source of religion was in external objects, so another is to be found in internal sensations and emotions. the passions are so powerful in their effects upon individuals and nations, that we can be little surprised to find those effects attributed to the instigation and influence of a supernatural being. love is individualized and personified in nearly all mythologies; and love therefore ranks among the earliest of the grecian gods. fear or terror, whose influence is often so strange, sudden, and unaccountable--seizing even the bravest --spreading through numbers with all the speed of an electric sympathy --and deciding in a moment the destiny of an army or the ruin of a tribe--is another of those passions, easily supposed the afflatus of some preternatural power, and easily, therefore, susceptible of personification. and the pride of men, more especially if habitually courageous and warlike, will gladly yield to the credulities which shelter a degrading and unwonted infirmity beneath the agency of a superior being. terror, therefore, received a shape and found an altar probably as early at least as the heroic age. according to plutarch, theseus sacrificed to terror previous to his battle with the amazons;--an idle tale, it is true, but proving, perhaps, the antiquity of a tradition. as society advanced from barbarism arose more intellectual creations--as cities were built, and as in the constant flux and reflux of martial tribes cities were overthrown, the elements of the social state grew into personification, to which influence was attributed and reverence paid. thus were fixed into divinity and shape, order, peace, justice, and the stern and gloomy orcos [ ], witness of the oath, avenger of the perjury. this, the second source of religion, though more subtle and refined in its creations, had still its origin in the same human causes as the first, viz., anticipation of good and apprehension of evil. of deities so created, many, however, were the inventions of poets-- (poetic metaphor is a fruitful mother of mythological fable)--many also were the graceful refinements of a subsequent age. but some (and nearly all those i have enumerated) may be traced to the earliest period to which such researches can ascend. it is obvious that the eldest would be connected with the passions--the more modern with the intellect. it seems to me apparent that almost simultaneously with deities of these two classes would arise the greater and more influential class of personal divinities which gradually expanded into the heroic dynasty of olympus. the associations which one tribe, or one generation, united with the heaven, the earth, or the sun, another might obviously connect, or confuse, with a spirit or genius inhabiting or influencing the element or physical object which excited their anxiety or awe: and, this creation effected--so what one tribe or generation might ascribe to the single personification of a passion, a faculty, or a moral and social principle, another would just as naturally refer to a personal and more complex deity:--that which in one instance would form the very nature of a superior being, in the other would form only an attribute--swell the power and amplify the character of a jupiter, a mars, a venus, or a pan. it is in the nature of man, that personal divinities once created and adored, should present more vivid and forcible images to his fancy than abstract personifications of physical objects and moral impressions. thus, deities of this class would gradually rise into pre-eminence and popularity above those more vague and incorporeal--and (though i guard myself from absolutely solving in this manner the enigma of ancient theogonies) the family of jupiter could scarcely fail to possess themselves of the shadowy thrones of the ancestral earth and the primeval heaven. a third source of the grecian, as of all mythologies, was in the worship of men who had actually existed, or been supposed to exist. for in this respect errors might creep into the calendar of heroes, as they did into the calendar of saints (the hero-worship of the moderns), which has canonized many names to which it is impossible to find the owners. this was probably the latest, but perhaps in after-times the most influential and popular addition to the aboriginal faith. the worship of dead men once established, it was natural to a people so habituated to incorporate and familiarize religious impressions--to imagine that even their primary gods, first formed from natural impressions (and, still more, those deities they had borrowed from stranger creeds)--should have walked the earth. and thus among the multitude in the philosophical ages, even the loftiest of the olympian dwellers were vaguely supposed to have known humanity;--their immortality but the apotheosis of the benefactor or the hero. x. the pelasgi, then, had their native or aboriginal deities (differing in number and in attributes with each different tribe), and with them rests the foundation of the greek mythology. they required no egyptian wisdom to lead them to believe in superior powers. nature was their primeval teacher. but as intercourse was opened with the east from the opposite asia--with the north from the neighbouring thrace, new deities were transplanted and old deities received additional attributes and distinctions, according as the fancy of the stranger found them assimilate to the divinities he had been accustomed to adore. it seems to me, that in saturn we may trace the popular phoenician deity--in the thracian mars, the fierce war-god of the north. but we can scarcely be too cautious how far we allow ourselves to be influenced by resemblance, however strong, between a grecian and an alien deity. such a resemblance may not only be formed by comparatively modern innovations, but may either be resolved to that general likeness which one polytheism will ever bear towards another, or arise from the adoption of new attributes and strange traditions;--so that the deity itself may be homesprung and indigenous, while bewildering the inquirer with considerable similitude to other gods, from whose believers the native worship merely received an epithet, a ceremony, a symbol, or a fable. and this necessity of caution is peculiarly borne out by the contradictions which each scholar enamoured of a system gives to the labours of the speculator who preceded him. what one research would discover to be egyptian, another asserts to be phoenician; a third brings from the north; a fourth from the hebrews; and a fifth, with yet wilder imagination, from the far and then unpenetrated caves and woods of india. accept common sense as our guide, and the contradictions are less irreconcilable--the mystery less obscure. in a deity essentially greek, a phoenician colonist may discover something familiar, and claim an ancestral god. he imparts to the native deity some phoenician features--an egyptian or an asiatic succeeds him--discovers a similar likeness--introduces similar innovations. the lively greek receives--amalgamates--appropriates all: but the aboriginal deity is not the less greek. each speculator may be equally right in establishing a partial resemblance, precisely because all speculators are wrong in asserting a perfect identity. it follows as a corollary from the above reasonings, that the religion of greece was much less uniform than is popularly imagined; st, because each separate state or canton had its own peculiar deity; dly, because, in the foreign communication of new gods, each stranger would especially import the deity that at home he had more especially adored. hence to every state its tutelary god--the founder of its greatness, the guardian of its renown. even in the petty and limited territory of attica, each tribe, independent of the public worship, had its peculiar deities, honoured by peculiar rites. the deity said to be introduced by cecrops is neith, or more properly naith [ ]--the goddess of sais, in whom we are told to recognise the athene, or minerva of the greeks. i pass over as palpably absurd any analogy of names by which the letters that compose the word keith are inverted to the word athene. the identity of the two goddesses must rest upon far stronger proof. but, in order to obtain this proof, we must know with some precision the nature and attributes of the divinity of sais--a problem which no learning appears to me satisfactorily to have solved. it would be a strong, and, i think, a convincing argument, that athene is of foreign origin, could we be certain that her attributes, so eminently intellectual, so thoroughly out of harmony with the barbarism of the early greeks, were accorded to her at the commencement of her worship. but the remotest traditions (such as her contest with neptune for the possession of the soil), if we take the more simple interpretation, seem to prove her to have been originally an agricultural deity, the creation of which would have been natural enough to the agricultural pelasgi;--while her supposed invention of some of the simplest and most elementary arts are sufficiently congenial to the notions of an unpolished and infant era of society. nor at a long subsequent period is there much resemblance between the formal and elderly goddess of daedalian sculpture and the glorious and august glaucopis of homer--the maiden of celestial beauty as of unrivalled wisdom. i grant that the variety of her attributes renders it more than probable that athene was greatly indebted, perhaps to the "divine intelligence," personified in the egyptian naith--perhaps also, as herodotus asserts, to the warlike deity of libya--nor less, it may be, to the onca of the phoenicians [ ], from whom in learning certain of the arts, the greeks might simultaneously learn the name and worship of the phoenician deity, presiding over such inventions. still an aboriginal deity was probably the nucleus, round which gradually gathered various and motley attributes. and certain it is, that as soon as the whole creation rose into distinct life, the stately and virgin goddess towers, aloof and alone, the most national, the most majestic of the grecian deities--rising above all comparison with those who may have assisted to decorate and robe her, embodying in a single form the very genius, multiform, yet individual as it was, of the grecian people--and becoming among all the deities of the heathen heaven what the athens she protected became upon the earth. xi. it may be said of the greeks, that there never was a people who so completely nationalized all that they borrowed from a foreign source. and whatever, whether in a remoter or more recent age, it might have appropriated from the creed of isis and osiris, one cause alone would have sufficed to efface from the grecian the peculiar character of the egyptian mythology. the religion of egypt, as a science, was symbolical--it denoted elementary principles of philosophy; its gods were enigmas. it has been asserted (on very insufficient data) that in the earliest ages of the world, one god, of whom the sun was either the emblem or the actual object of worship, was adored universally throughout the east, and that polytheism was created by personifying the properties and attributes of the single deity: "there being one god," says aristotle, finely, "called by many names, from the various effects which his various power produces." [ ] but i am far from believing that a symbolical religion is ever the earliest author of polytheism; for a symbolical religion belongs to a later period of civilization, when some men are set apart in indolence to cultivate their imagination, in order to beguile or to instruct the reason of the rest. priests are the first philosophers--a symbolical religion the first philosophy. but faith precedes philosophy. i doubt not, therefore, that polytheism existed in the east before that age when the priests of chaldea and of egypt invested it with a sublimer character by summoning to the aid of invention a wild and speculative wisdom--by representing under corporeal tokens the revolutions of the earth, the seasons, and the stars, and creating new (or more probably adapting old and sensual) superstitions, as the grosser and more external types of a philosophical creed [ ]. but a symbolical worship--the creation of a separate and established order of priests--never is, and never can be, the religion professed, loved, and guarded by a people. the multitude demand something positive and real for their belief--they cannot worship a delusion--their reverence would be benumbed on the instant if they could be made to comprehend that the god to whom they sacrificed was no actual power able to effect evil and good, but the type of a particular season of the year, or an unwholesome principle in the air. hence, in the egyptian religion, there was one creed for the vulgar and another for the priests. again, to invent and to perpetuate a symbolical religion (which is, in fact, an hereditary school of metaphysics) requires men set apart for the purpose, whose leisure tempts them to invention, whose interest prompts them to imposture. a symbolical religion is a proof of a certain refinement in civilization--the refinement of sages in the midst of a subservient people; and it absorbs to itself those meditative and imaginative minds which, did it not exist, would be devoted to philosophy. now, even allowing full belief to the legends which bring the egyptian colonists into greece, it is probable that few among them were acquainted with the secrets of the symbolical mythology they introduced. nor, if they were so, is it likely that they would have communicated to a strange and a barbarous population the profound and latent mysteries shrouded from the great majority of egyptians themselves. thus, whatever the egyptian colonizers might have imported of a typical religion, the abstruser meaning would become, either at once or gradually, lost. nor can we--until the recent age of sophists and refiners--clearly ascertain any period in which did not exist the indelible distinction between the grecian and egyptian mythology: viz.--that the first was actual, real, corporeal, household; the second vague, shadowy, and symbolical. this might not have been the case had there been established in the grecian, as in the egyptian cities, distinct and separate colleges of priests, having in their own hands the sole care of the religion, and forming a privileged and exclusive body of the state. but among the greeks (and this should be constantly borne in mind) there never was, at any known historical period, a distinct caste of priests [ ]. we may perceive, indeed, that the early colonizers commenced with approaches to that principle, but it was not prosecuted farther. there were sacred families in athens from which certain priesthoods were to be filled-- but even these personages were not otherwise distinguished; they performed all the usual offices of a citizen, and were not united together by any exclusiveness of privilege or spirit of party. among the egyptian adventurers there were probably none fitted by previous education for the sacred office; and the chief who had obtained the dominion might entertain no irresistible affection for a caste which in his own land he had seen dictating to the monarch and interfering with the government. [ ] thus, among the early greeks, we find the chiefs themselves were contented to offer the sacrifice and utter the prayer; and though there were indeed appointed and special priests, they held no imperious or commanding authority. the areopagus at athens had the care of religion, but the areopagites were not priests. this absence of a priestly caste had considerable effect upon the flexile and familiar nature of the grecian creed, because there were none professionally interested in guarding the purity of the religion, in preserving to what it had borrowed, symbolical allusions, and in forbidding the admixture of new gods and heterogeneous creeds. the more popular a religion, the more it seeks corporeal representations, and avoids the dim and frigid shadows of a metaphysical belief. [ ] the romantic fables connected with the grecian mythology were, some home-sprung, some relating to native heroes, and incorporating native legends, but they were also, in great measure, literal interpretations of symbolical types and of metaphorical expressions, or erroneous perversions of words in other tongues. the craving desire to account for natural phenomena, common to mankind--the wish to appropriate to native heroes the wild tales of mariners and strangers natural to a vain and a curious people--the additions which every legend would receive in its progress from tribe to tribe--and the constant embellishments the most homely inventions would obtain from the competition of rival poets, rapidly served to swell and enrich these primary treasures of grecian lore--to deduce a history from an allegory--to establish a creed in a romance. thus the early mythology of greece is to be properly considered in its simple and outward interpretations. the greeks, as yet in their social infancy, regarded the legends of their faith as a child reads a fairy tale, credulous of all that is supernatural in the agency--unconscious of all that may be philosophical in the moral. it is true, indeed, that dim associations of a religion, sabaean and elementary, such as that of the pelasgi (but not therefore foreign and philosophical), with a religion physical and popular, are, here and there, to be faintly traced among the eldest of the grecian authors. we may see that in jupiter they represented the ether, and in apollo, and sometimes even in hercules, the sun. but these authors, while, perhaps unconsciously, they hinted at the symbolical, fixed, by the vitality and nature of their descriptions, the actual images of the gods and, reversing the order of things, homer created jupiter! [ ] but most of the subtle and typical interpretations of the grecian mythology known to us at present were derived from the philosophy of a later age. the explanations of religious fables--such, for instance, as the chaining of saturn by jupiter, and the rape of proserpine by pluto, in which saturn is made to signify the revolution of the seasons, chained to the courses of the stars, to prevent too immoderate a speed, and the rape of proserpine is refined into an allegory that denotes the seeds of corn that the sovereign principle of the earth receives and sepulchres [ ];--the moral or physical explanation of legends like these was, i say, the work of the few, reduced to system either from foreign communication or acute invention. for a symbolical religion, created by the priests of one age, is reinstated or remodelled after its corruption by the philosophers of another. xii. we may here pause a moment to inquire whence the greeks derived the most lovely and fascinating of their mythological creations--those lesser and more terrestrial beings--the spirits of the mountain, the waters, and the grove. throughout the east, from the remotest era, we find that mountains were nature's temples. the sanctity of high places is constantly recorded in the scriptural writings. the chaldaean, the egyptian, and the persian, equally believed that on the summit of mountains they approached themselves nearer to the oracles of heaven. but the fountain, the cavern, and the grove, were no less holy than the mountain-top in the eyes of the first religionists of the east. streams and fountains were dedicated to the sun, and their exhalations were supposed to inspire with prophecy, and to breathe of the god. the gloom of caverns, naturally the brooding-place of awe, was deemed a fitting scene for diviner revelations--it inspired unearthly contemplation and mystic revery. zoroaster is supposed by porphyry (well versed in all pagan lore, though frequently misunderstanding its proper character) to have first inculcated the worship of caverns [ ]; and there the early priests held a temple, and primeval philosophy its retreat [ ]. groves, especially those in high places, or in the neighbourhood of exhaling streams, were also appropriate to worship, and conducive to the dreams of an excited and credulous imagination; and pekah, the son of remaliah, burnt incense, not only on the hills, but "under every green tree." [ ] these places, then--the mountain, the forest, the stream, and the cavern, were equally objects of sanctity and awe among the ancient nations. but we need not necessarily suppose that a superstition so universal was borrowed, and not conceived, by the early greeks. the same causes which had made them worship the earth and the sea, extended their faith to the rivers and the mountains, which in a spirit of natural and simple poetry they called "the children" of those elementary deities. the very soil of greece, broken up and diversified by so many inequalities, stamped with volcanic features, profuse in streams and mephitic fountains, contributed to render the feeling of local divinity prevalent and intense. each petty canton had its own nile, whose influence upon fertility and culture was sufficient to become worthy to propitiate, and therefore to personify. had greece been united under one monarchy, and characterized by one common monotony of soil, a single river, a single mountain, alone might have been deemed divine. it was the number of its tribes--it was the variety of its natural features, which produced the affluence and prodigality of its mythological creations. nor can we omit from the causes of the teeming, vivid, and universal superstition of greece, the accidents of earthquake and inundation, to which the land appears early and often to have been exposed. to the activity and caprice of nature--to the frequent operation of causes, unrecognised, unforeseen, unguessed, the greeks owed much of their disposition to recur to mysterious and superior agencies--and that wonderful poetry of faith which delighted to associate the visible with the unseen. the peculiar character not only of a people, but of its earlier poets--not only of its soil, but of its air and heaven, colours the superstition it creates: and most of the terrestrial demons which the gloomier north clothed with terror and endowed with malice, took from the benignant genius and the enchanting climes of greece the gentlest offices and the fairest forms;--yet even in greece itself not universal in their character, but rather the faithful reflections of the character of each class of worshippers: thus the graces [ ], whose "eyes" in the minstrelsey of hesiod "distilled care-beguiling love," in lacedaemon were the nymphs of discipline and war! in quitting this subject, be one remark permitted in digression: the local causes which contributed to superstition might conduct in after times to science. if the nature that was so constantly in strange and fitful action, drove the greeks in their social infancy to seek agents for the action and vents for their awe, so, as they advanced to maturer intellect, it was in nature herself that they sought the causes of effects that appeared at first preternatural. and, in either stage, their curiosity and interest aroused by the phenomena around them--the credulous inventions of ignorance gave way to the eager explanations of philosophy. often, in the superstition of one age, lies the germe that ripens into the inquiry of the next. xiii. pass we now to some examination of the general articles of faith among the greeks; their sacrifices and rites of worship. in all the more celebrated nations of the ancient world, we find established those twin elements of belief by which religion harmonizes and directs the social relations of life, viz., a faith in a future state, and in the providence of superior powers, who, surveying as judges the affairs of earth, punish the wicked and reward the good [ ]. it has been plausibly conjectured that the fables of elysium, the slow cocytus, and the gloomy hades, were either invented or allegorized from the names of egyptian places. diodorus assures us that by the vast catacombs of egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead-- were the temple and stream, both called cocytus, the foul canal of acheron, and the elysian plains [ ]; and, according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed charon in the egyptian tongue. but, previous to the embarcation, appointed judges on the margin of the acheron listened to whatever accusations were preferred by the living against the deceased, and if convinced of his misdeeds, deprived him of the rites of sepulture. hence it was supposed that orpheus transplanted into greece the fable of the infernal regions. but there is good reason to look on this tale with distrust, and to believe that the doctrine of a future state was known to the greeks without any tuition from egypt;--while it is certain that the main moral of the egyptian ceremony, viz., the judgment of the dead, was not familiar to the early doctrine of the greeks. they did not believe that the good were rewarded and the bad punished in that dreary future, which they imbodied in their notions of the kingdom of the shades. [ ] xiv. less in the grecian deities than in the customs in their honour, may we perceive certain traces of oriental superstition. we recognise the usages of the elder creeds in the chosen sites of their temples-- the habitual ceremonies of their worship. it was to the east that the supplicator turned his face, and he was sprinkled, as a necessary purification, with the holy water often alluded to by sacred writers as well as profane--a typical rite entailed from paganism on the greater proportion of existing christendom. nor was any oblation duly prepared until it was mingled with salt--that homely and immemorial offering, ordained not only by the priests of the heathen idols, but also prescribed by moses to the covenant of the hebrew god. [ ] xv. we now come to those sacred festivals in celebration of religious mysteries, which inspire modern times with so earnest an interest. perhaps no subject connected with the religion of the ancients has been cultivated with more laborious erudition, attended with more barren result. and with equal truth and wit, the acute and searching lobeck has compared the schools of warburton and st. croix to the sabines, who possessed the faculty of dreaming what they wished. according to an ancient and still popular account, the dark enigmas of eleusis were borrowed from egypt;--the drama of the anaglyph [ ]. but, in answer to this theory, we must observe, that even if really, at their commencement, the strange and solemn rites which they are asserted to have been--mystical ceremonies grow so naturally out of the connexion between the awful and the unknown--were found so generally among the savages of the ancient world--howsoever dispersed --and still so frequently meet the traveller on shores to which it is indeed a wild speculation to assert that the oriental wisdom ever wandered, that it is more likely that they were the offspring of the native ignorance [ ], than the sublime importation of a symbolical philosophy utterly ungenial to the tribes to which it was communicated, and the times to which the institution is referred. and though i would assign to the eleusinian mysteries a much earlier date than lobeck is inclined to affix [ ], i search in vain for a more probable supposition of the causes of their origin than that which he suggests, and which i now place before the reader. we have seen that each grecian state had its peculiar and favourite deities, propitiated by varying ceremonies. the early greeks imagined that their gods might be won from them by the more earnest prayers and the more splendid offerings of their neighbours; the homeric heroes found their claim for divine protection on the number of the offerings they have rendered to the deity they implore. and how far the jealous desire to retain to themselves the favour of tutelary gods was entertained by the greeks, may be illustrated by the instances specially alluding to the low and whispered voice in which prayers were addressed to the superior powers, lest the enemy should hear the address, and vie with interested emulation for the celestial favour. the eleusinians, in frequent hostilities with their neighbours, the athenians, might very reasonably therefore exclude the latter from the ceremonies instituted in honour of their guardian divinities, demeter and persephone (i. e., ceres and proserpine). and we may here add, that secrecy once established, the rites might at a very early period obtain, and perhaps deserve, an enigmatic and mystic character. but when, after a signal defeat of the eleusinians, the two states were incorporated, the union was confirmed by a joint participation in the ceremony [ ] to which a political cause would thus give a more formal and solemn dignity. this account of the origin of the eleusinian mysteries is not indeed capable of demonstration, but it seems to me at least the most probable in itself, and the most conformable to the habits of the greeks, as to those of all early nations. certain it is that for a long time the celebration of the eleusinian ceremonies was confined to these two neighbouring states, until, as various causes contributed to unite the whole of greece in a common religion and a common name, admission was granted all greeks of all ranks, male and female,--provided they had committed no inexpiable offence, performed the previous ceremonies required, and were introduced by an athenian citizen. with the growing flame and splendour of athens, this institution rose into celebrity and magnificence, until it appears to have become the most impressive spectacle of the heathen world. it is evident that a people so imitative would reject no innovations or additions that could increase the interest or the solemnity of exhibition; and still less such as might come (through whatsoever channel) from that antique and imposing egypt, which excited so much of their veneration and wonder. nor do i think it possible to account for the great similarity attested by herodotus and others, between the mysteries of isis and those of ceres, as well as for the resemblance in less celebrated ceremonies between the rites of egypt and of greece, without granting at once, that mediately, or even immediately, the superstitious of the former exercised great influence upon, and imparted many features to, those of the latter. but the age in which this religious communication principally commenced has been a matter of graver dispute than the question merits. a few solitary and scattered travellers and strangers may probably have given rise to it at a very remote period; but, upon the whole, it appears to me that, with certain modifications, we must agree with lobeck, and the more rational schools of inquiry, that it was principally in the interval between the homeric age and the persian war that mysticism passed into religion--that superstition assumed the attributes of a science--and that lustrations, auguries, orgies, obtained method and system from the exuberant genius of poetical fanaticism. that in these august mysteries, doctrines contrary to the popular religion were propounded, is a theory that has, i think, been thoroughly overturned. the exhibition of ancient statues, relics, and symbols, concealed from daily adoration (as in the catholic festivals of this day), probably, made a main duty of the hierophant. but in a ceremony in honour of ceres, the blessings of agriculture, and its connexion with civilization, were also very naturally dramatized. the visit of the goddess to the infernal regions might form an imposing part of the spectacle: spectral images--alternations of light and darkness--all the apparitions and effects that are said to have imparted so much awe to the mysteries, may well have harmonized with, not contravened, the popular belief. and there is no reason to suppose that the explanations given by the priests did more than account for mythological stories, agreeably to the spirit and form of the received mythology, or deduce moral maxims from the representation, as hackneyed, as simple, and as ancient, as the generality of moral aphorisms are. but, as the intellectual progress of the audience advanced, philosophers, skeptical of the popular religion, delighted to draw from such imposing representations a thousand theories and morals utterly unknown to the vulgar; and the fancies and refinements of later schoolmen have thus been mistaken for the notions of an early age and a promiscuous multitude. the single fact (so often insisted upon), that all greeks were admissible, is sufficient alone to prove that no secrets incompatible with the common faith, or very important in themselves, could either have been propounded by the priests or received by the audience. and it may be further observed, in corroboration of so self-evident a truth, that it was held an impiety to the popular faith to reject the initiation of the mysteries--and that some of the very writers, most superstitious with respect to the one, attach the most solemnity to the ceremonies of the other. xvi. sanchoniathon wrote a work, now lost, on the worship of the serpent. this most ancient superstition, found invariably in egypt and the east, is also to be traced through many of the legends and many of the ceremonies of the greeks. the serpent was a frequent emblem of various gods--it was often kept about the temples--it was introduced in the mysteries--it was everywhere considered sacred. singular enough, by the way, that while with us the symbol of the evil spirit, the serpent was generally in the east considered a benefactor. in india, the serpent with a thousand heads; in egypt, the serpent crowned with the lotos-leaf, is a benign and paternal deity. it was not uncommon for fable to assert that the first civilizers of earth were half man, half serpent. thus was fohi of china [ ] represented, and thus cecrops of athens. xvii. but the most remarkable feature of the superstition of greece was her sacred oracles. and these again bring our inquiries back to egypt. herodotus informs us that the oracle of dodona was by far the most ancient in greece [ ], and he then proceeds to inform us of its origin, which he traces to thebes in egypt. but here we are beset by contradictions: herodotus, on the authority of the egyptian priests, ascribes the origin of the dodona and lybian oracles to two priestesses of the theban jupiter--stolen by phoenician pirates--one of whom, sold into greece, established at dodona an oracle similar to that which she had served at thebes. but in previous passages herodotus informs us, st, that in egypt, no priestesses served the temples of any deity, male or female; and dly, that when the egyptians imparted to the pelasgi the names of their divinities, the pelasgi consulted the oracle of dodona on the propriety of adopting them; so that that oracle existed before even the first and fundamental revelations of egyptian religion. it seems to me, therefore, a supposition that demands less hardy assumption, and is equally conformable with the universal superstitions of mankind (since similar attempts at divination are to be found among so many nations similarly barbarous) to believe that the oracle arose from the impressions of the pelasgi [ ] and the natural phenomena of the spot; though at a subsequent period the manner of the divination was very probably imitated from that adopted by the theban oracle. and in examining the place it indeed seems as if nature herself had been the egyptian priestess! through a mighty grove of oaks there ran a stream, whose waters supplied a fountain that might well appear, to ignorant wonder, endowed with preternatural properties. at a certain hour of noon it was dry, and at midnight full. such springs have usually been deemed oracular, not only in the east, but in almost every section of the globe. at first, by the murmuring of waters, and afterward by noises among the trees, the sacred impostors interpreted the voice of the god. it is an old truth, that mystery is always imposing and often convenient. to plain questions were given dark answers, which might admit of interpretation according to the event. the importance attached to the oracle, the respect paid to the priest, and the presents heaped on the altar, indicated to craft and ambition a profitable profession. and that profession became doubly alluring to its members, because it proffered to the priests an authority in serving the oracles which they could not obtain in the general religion of the people. oracles increased then, at first slowly, and afterward rapidly, until they grew so numerous that the single district of boeotia contained no less than twenty-five. the oracle of dodona long, however, maintained its pre-eminence over the rest, and was only at last eclipsed by that of delphi [ ], where strong and intoxicating exhalations from a neighbouring stream were supposed to confer prophetic phrensy. experience augmented the sagacity of the oracles, and the priests, no doubt, intimately acquainted with all the affairs of the states around, and viewing the living contests of action with the coolness of spectators, were often enabled to give shrewd and sensible admonitions,--so that the forethought of wisdom passed for the prescience of divinity. hence the greater part of their predictions were eminently successful; and when the reverse occurred, the fault was laid on the blind misconstruction of the human applicant. thus no great design was executed, no city founded, no colony planted, no war undertaken, without the advice of an oracle. in the famine, the pestilence, and the battle, the divine voice was the assuager of terror and the inspirer of hope. all the instincts of our frailer nature, ever yearning for some support that is not of the world, were enlisted in behalf of a superstition which proffered solutions to doubt, and remedies to distress. besides this general cause for the influence of oracles, there was another cause calculated to give to the oracles of greece a marked and popular pre-eminence over those in egypt. a country divided into several small, free, and warlike states, would be more frequently in want of the divine advice, than one united under a single monarchy, or submitted to the rigid austerity of castes and priestcraft; and in which the inhabitants felt for political affairs all the languid indifference habitual to the subjects of a despotic government. half a century might pass in egypt without any political event that would send anxious thousands to the oracle; but in the wonderful ferment, activity, and restlessness of the numerous grecian towns, every month, every week, there was some project or some feud for which the advice of a divinity was desired. hence it was chiefly to a political cause that the immortal oracle of delphi owed its pre-eminent importance. the dorian worshippers of apollo (long attached to that oracle, then comparatively obscure), passing from its neighbourhood and befriended by its predictions, obtained the mastership of the peloponnesus;-- their success was the triumph of the oracle. the dorian sparta (long the most powerful of the grecian states), inviolably faithful to the delphian god, upheld his authority, and spread the fame of his decrees. but in the more polished and enlightened times, the reputation of the oracle gradually decayed; it shone the brightest before and during the persian war;--the appropriate light of an age of chivalry fading slowly as philosophy arose! xviii. but the practice of divination did not limit itself to these more solemn sources--its enthusiasm was contagious--its assistance was ever at hand [ ]. enthusiasm operated on the humblest individuals. one person imagined himself possessed by a spirit actually passing into his soul--another merely inspired by the divine breath--a third was cast into supernatural ecstasies, in which he beheld the shadow of events, or the visions of a god--a threefold species of divine possession, which we may still find recognised by the fanatics of a graver faith! nor did this suffice: a world of omens surrounded every man. there were not only signs and warnings in the winds, the earthquake, the eclipse of the sun or moon, the meteor, or the thunderbolt--but dreams also were reduced to a science [ ]; the entrails of victims were auguries of evil or of good; the flights of birds, the motions of serpents, the clustering of bees, had their mystic and boding interpretations. even hasty words, an accident, a fall on the earth, a sneeze (for which we still invoke the ancient blessing), every singular or unwonted event, might become portentous, and were often rendered lucky or unlucky according to the dexterity or disposition of the person to whom they occurred. and although in later times much of this more frivolous superstition passed away--although theophrastus speaks of such lesser omens with the same witty disdain as that with which the spectator ridicules our fears at the upsetting of a salt-cellar, or the appearance of a winding-sheet in a candle,--yet, in the more interesting period of greece, these popular credulities were not disdained by the nobler or wiser few, and to the last they retained that influence upon the mass which they lost with individuals. and it is only by constantly remembering this universal atmosphere of religion, that we can imbue ourselves with a correct understanding of the character of the greeks in their most grecian age. their faith was with them ever--in sorrow or in joy--at the funeral or the feast--in their uprisings and their downsittings--abroad and at home--at the hearth and in the market-place--in the camp or at the altar. morning and night all the greater tribes of the elder world offered their supplications on high: and plato has touchingly insisted on this sacred uniformity of custom, when he tells us that at the rising of the moon and at the dawning of the sun, you may behold greeks and barbarians--all the nations of the earth--bowing in homage to the gods. xix. to sum up, the above remarks conduce to these principal conclusions; first, that the grecian mythology cannot be moulded into any of the capricious and fantastic systems of erudite ingenuity: as a whole, no mythology can be considered more strikingly original, not only because its foundations appear indigenous, and based upon the character and impressions of the people--not only because at no one period, from the earliest even to the latest date, whatever occasional resemblances may exist, can any identify be established between its most popular and essential creations, and those of any other faith; but because, even all that it borrowed it rapidly remodelled and naturalized, growing yet more individual from its very complexity, yet more original from the plagiarisms which it embraced; secondly, that it differed in many details in the different states, but under the development of a general intercourse, assisted by a common language, the plastic and tolerant genius of the people harmonized all discords --until (catholic in its fundamental principles) her religion united the whole of greece in indissoluble bonds of faith and poetry--of daily customs and venerable traditions; thirdly, that the influence of other creeds, though by no means unimportant in amplifying the character, and adding to the list of the primitive deities, appears far more evident in the ceremonies and usages than the personal creations of the faith. we may be reasonably skeptical as to what herodotus heard of the origin of rites or gods from egyptian priests; but there is no reason to disbelieve the testimony of his experience, when he asserts, that the forms and solemnities of one worship closely resemble those of another; the imitation of a foreign ceremony is perfectly compatible with the aboriginal invention of a national god. for the rest, i think it might be (and by many scholars appears to me to have been) abundantly shown, that the phoenician influences upon the early mythology of the greeks were far greater than the egyptian, though by degrees, and long after the heroic age, the latter became more eagerly adopted and more superficially apparent. in quitting this part of our subject, let it be observed, as an additional illustration of the remarkable nationality of the grecian mythology, that our best light to the manners of the homeric men, is in the study of the homeric gods. in homer we behold the mythology of an era, for analogy to which we search in vain the records of the east--that mythology is inseparably connected with the constitution of limited monarchies,--with the manners of an heroic age:--the power of the sovereign of the aristocracy of heaven is the power of a grecian king over a grecian state:--the social life of the gods is the life most coveted by the grecian heroes;--the uncertain attributes of the deities, rather physical or intellectual than moral--strength and beauty, sagacity mixed with cunning--valour with ferocity--inclination to war, yet faculties for the inventions of peace; such were the attributes most honoured among men, in the progressive, but still uncivilized age which makes the interval so pre-eminently grecian-- between the mythical and historic times. vain and impotent are all attempts to identify that religion of achaian warriors with the religion of oriental priests. it was indeed symbolical--but of the character of its believers; typical--but of the restless, yet poetical, daring, yet graceful temperament, which afterward conducted to great achievements and imperishable arts: the coming events of glory cast their shadows before, in fable. xx. there now opens to us a far more important inquiry than that into the origin and form of the religion of the greeks; namely, the influences of that religion itself upon their character--their morals --their social and intellectual tendencies. the more we can approach the deity to ourselves--the more we can invest him with human attributes--the more we can connect him with the affairs and sympathies of earth, the greater will be his influence upon our conduct--the more fondly we shall contemplate his attributes, the more timidly we shall shrink from his vigilance, the more anxiously we shall strive for his approval. when epicurus allowed the gods to exist, but imagined them wholly indifferent to the concerns of men, contemplating only their own happiness, and regardless alike of our virtues or our crimes;--with that doctrine he robbed man of the divinity, as effectually as if he had denied his existence. the fear of the gods could not be before the eyes of votaries who believed that the gods were utterly careless of their conduct; and not only the awful control of religion was removed from their passions, but the more beautiful part of its influence, resulting not from terror but from hope, was equally blasted and destroyed: for if the fear of the divine power serves to restrain the less noble natures, so, on the other hand, with such as are more elevated and generous, there is no pleasure like the belief that we are regarded with approbation and love by a being of ineffable majesty and goodness--who compassionates our misfortunes--who rewards our struggles with ourselves. it is this hope which gives us a pride in our own natures, and which not only restrains us from vice, but inspires us with an emulation to arouse within us all that is great and virtuous, in order the more to deserve his love, and feel the image of divinity reflected upon the soul. it is for this reason that we are not contented to leave the character of a god uncertain and unguessed, shrouded in the darkness of his own infinite power; we clothe him with the attributes of human excellence, carried only to an extent beyond humanity; and cannot conceive a deity not possessed of the qualities--such as justice, wisdom, and benevolence--which are most venerated among mankind. but if we believe that he has passed to earth--that he has borne our shape, that he has known our sorrows--the connexion becomes yet more intimate and close; we feel as if he could comprehend us better, and compassionate more benignly our infirmities and our griefs. the christ that has walked the earth, and suffered on the cross, can be more readily pictured to our imagination, and is more familiarly before us, than the dread eternal one, who hath the heaven for his throne, and the earth only for his footstool [ ]. and it is this very humanness of connexion, so to speak, between man and the saviour, which gives to the christian religion, rightly embraced, its peculiar sentiment of gentleness and of love. but somewhat of this connexion, though in a more corrupt degree, marked also the religion of the greeks; they too believed (at least the multitude) that most of the deities had appeared on earth, and been the actual dispensers of the great benefits of social life. transferred to heaven, they could more readily understand that those divinities regarded with interest the nations to which they had been made visible, and exercised a permanent influence over the earth, which had been for a while their home. retaining the faith that the deities had visited the world, the greeks did not however implicitly believe the fables which degraded them by our weaknesses and vices. they had, as it were--and this seems not to have been rightly understood by the moderns--two popular mythologies-- the first consecrated to poetry, and the second to actual life. if a man were told to imitate the gods, it was by the virtues of justice, temperance, and benevolence [ ]; and had he obeyed the mandate by emulating the intrigues of jupiter, or the homicides of mars, he would have been told by the more enlightened that those stories were the inventions of the poets; and by the more credulous that gods might be emancipated from laws, but men were bound by them--"superis sea jura" [ ]--their own laws to the gods! it is true, then, that those fables were preserved--were held in popular respect, but the reverence they excited among the greeks was due to a poetry which flattered their national pride and enchained their taste, and not to the serious doctrines of their religion. constantly bearing this distinction in mind, we shall gain considerable insight, not only into their religion, but into seeming contradictions in their literary history. they allowed aristophanes to picture bacchus as a buffoon, and hercules as a glutton, in the same age in which they persecuted socrates for neglect of the sacred mysteries and contempt of the national gods. to that part of their religion which belonged to the poets they permitted the fullest license; but to the graver portion of religion--to the existence of the gods--to a belief in their collective excellence, and providence, and power--to the sanctity of asylums--to the obligation of oaths--they showed the most jealous and inviolable respect. the religion of the greeks, then, was a great support and sanction to their morals; it inculcated truth, mercy, justice, the virtues most necessary to mankind, and stimulated to them by the rigid and popular belief that excellence was approved and guilt was condemned by the superior powers [ ]. and in that beautiful process by which the common sense of mankind rectifies the errors of imagination--those fables which subsequent philosophers rightly deemed dishonourable to the gods, and which the superficial survey of modern historians has deemed necessarily prejudicial to morals--had no unworthy effect upon the estimate taken by the greeks whether of human actions or of heavenly natures. xxi. for a considerable period the greeks did not carry the notion of divine punishment beyond the grave, except in relation to those audacious criminals who had blasphemed or denied the gods; it was by punishments in this world that the guilty were afflicted. and this doctrine, if less sublime than that of eternal condemnation, was, i apprehend, on regarding the principles of human nature, equally effective in restraining crime: for our human and short-sighted minds are often affected by punishments, in proportion as they are human and speedy. a penance in the future world is less fearful and distinct, especially to the young and the passionate, than an unavoidable retribution in this. man, too fondly or too vainly, hopes, by penitence at the close of life, to redeem the faults of the commencement, and punishment deferred loses more than half its terrors, and nearly all its certainty. as long as the greeks were left solely to their mythology, their views of a future state were melancholy and confused. death was an evil, not a release. even in their elysium, their favourite heroes seem to enjoy but a frigid and unenviable immortality. yet this saddening prospect of the grave rather served to exhilarate life, and stimulate to glory:--"make the most of existence," say their early poets, "for soon comes the dreary hades!" and placed beneath a delightful climate, and endowed with a vivacious and cheerful temperament, they yielded readily to the precept. their religion was eminently glad and joyous; even the stern spartans lost their austerity in their sacred rites, simple and manly though they were--and the gayer athenians passed existence in an almost perpetual circle of festivals and holydays. this uncertainty of posthumous happiness contributed also to the desire of earthly fame. for below at least, their heroes taught them, immortality was not impossible. bounded by impenetrable shadows to this world, they coveted all that in this world was most to be desired [ ]. a short life is acceptable to achilles, not if it lead to elysium, but if it be accompanied with glory. by degrees, however, prospects of a future state, nobler and more august, were opened by their philosophers to the hopes of the greeks. thales was asserted to be the first greek who maintained the immortality of the soul, and that sublime doctrine was thus rather established by the philosopher than the priest. [ ] xxii. besides the direct tenets of religion, the mysteries of the greeks exercised an influence on their morals, which, though greatly exaggerated by modern speculators, was, upon the whole, beneficial, though not from the reasons that have been assigned. as they grew up into their ripened and mature importance--their ceremonial, rather than their doctrine, served to deepen and diffuse a reverence for religious things. whatever the licentiousness of other mysteries (especially in italy), the eleusinian rites long retained their renown for purity and decorum; they were jealously watched by the athenian magistracy, and one of the early athenian laws enacted that the senate should assemble the day after their celebration to inquire into any abuse that might have sullied their sacred character. nor is it, perhaps, without justice in the later times, that isocrates lauds their effect on morality, and cicero their influence on civilization and the knowledge of social principles. the lustrations and purifications, at whatever period their sanctity was generally acknowledged, could scarcely fail of salutary effects. they were supposed to absolve the culprit from former crimes, and restore him, a new man, to the bosom of society. this principle is a great agent of morality, and was felt as such in the earlier era of christianity: no corrupter is so deadly as despair; to reconcile a criminal with self-esteem is to readmit him, as it were, to virtue. even the fundamental error of the religion in point of doctrine, viz., its polytheism, had one redeeming consequence in the toleration which it served to maintain--the grave evils which spring up from the fierce antagonism of religious opinions, were, save in a few solitary and dubious instances, unknown to the greeks. and this general toleration, assisted yet more by the absence of a separate caste of priests, tended to lead to philosophy through the open and unchallenged portals of religion. speculations on the gods connected themselves with bold inquiries into nature. thought let loose in the wide space of creation--no obstacle to its wanderings--no monopoly of its commerce--achieved, after many a wild and fruitless voyage, discoveries unknown to the past--of imperishable importance to the future. the intellectual adventurers of greece planted the first flag upon the shores of philosophy; for the competition of errors is necessary to the elucidation of truths; and the imagination indicates the soil which the reason is destined to culture and possess. xxiii. while such was the influence of their religion on the morals and the philosophy of the greeks, what was its effect upon their national genius? we must again remember that the greeks were the only nation among the more intellectual of that day, who stripped their deities of symbolical attributes, and did not aspire to invent for gods shapes differing (save in loftier beauty) from the aspect and form of man. and thus at once was opened to them the realm of sculpture. the people of the east, sometimes indeed depicting their deities in human forms, did not hesitate to change them into monsters, if the addition of another leg or another arm, a dog's head or a serpent's tail, could better express the emblem they represented. they perverted their images into allegorical deformities; and receded from the beautiful in proportion as they indulged their false conceptions of the sublime. besides, a painter or a sculptor must have a clear idea presented to him, to be long cherished and often revolved, if we desire to call forth all the inspiration of which his genius may be capable; but how could the eastern artist form a clear idea of an image that should represent the sun entering aries, or the productive principle of nature? such creations could not fail of becoming stiff or extravagant, deformed or grotesque. but to the greek, a god was something like the most majestic or the most beautiful of his own species. he studied the human shape for his conceptions of the divine. intent upon the natural, he ascended to the ideal. [ ] if such the effect of the grecian religion upon sculpture, similar and equal its influence upon poetry. the earliest verses of the greeks appear to have been of a religious, though i see no sufficient reason for asserting that they were therefore of a typical and mystic, character. however that be, the narrative succeeding to the sacred poetry materialized all it touched. the shadows of olympus received the breath of homer, and the gods grew at once life-like and palpable to men. the traditions which connected the deities with humanity--the genius which divested them of allegory--gave at once to the epic and the tragic poet the supernatural world. the inhabitants of heaven itself became individualized--bore each a separate character--could be rendered distinct, dramatic, as the creatures of daily life. thus--an advantage which no moderns ever have possessed--with all the ineffable grandeur of deities was combined all the familiar interest of mortals; and the poet, by preserving the characteristics allotted to each god, might make us feel the associations and sympathies of earth, even when he bore us aloft to the unknown olympus, or plunged below amid the shades of orcus. the numerous fables mixed with the grecian creed, sufficiently venerable, as we have seen, not to be disdained, but not so sacred as to be forbidden, were another advantage to the poet. for the traditions of a nation are its poetry! and if we moderns, in the german forest, or the scottish highlands, or the green english fields, yet find inspiration in the notions of fiend, and sprite, and fairy, not acknowledged by our religion, not appended as an apocryphal adjunct to our belief, how much more were those fables adapted to poetry, which borrowed not indeed an absolute faith, but a certain shadow, a certain reverence and mystery, from religion! hence we find that the greatest works of imagination which the greeks have left us, whether of homer, of aeschylus, or of sophocles, are deeply indebted to their mythological legends. the grecian poetry, like the grecian religion, was at once half human, half divine--majestic, vast, august --household, homely, and familiar. if we might borrow an illustration from the philosophy of democritus, its earthlier dreams and divinations were indeed the impressions of mighty and spectral images inhabiting the air. [ ] xxiv. of the religion of greece, of its rites and ceremonies, and of its influence upon the moral and intellectual faculties--this-- already, i fear, somewhat too prolixly told--is all that at present i deem it necessary to say. [ ] we have now to consider the origin of slavery in greece, an inquiry almost equally important to our accurate knowledge of her polity and manners. xxv. wherever we look--to whatsoever period of history--conquest, or the settlement of more enlightened colonizers amid a barbarous tribe, seems the origin of slavery--modified according to the spirit of the times, the humanity of the victor, or the policy of the lawgiver. the aboriginals of greece were probably its earliest slaves [ ],--yet the aboriginals might be also its earliest lords. suppose a certain tribe to overrun a certain country--conquer and possess it: new settlers are almost sure to be less numerous than the inhabitants they subdue; in proportion as they are the less powerful in number are they likely to be the more severe in authority: they will take away the arms of the vanquished--suppress the right of meetings--make stern and terrible examples against insurgents--and, in a word, quell by the moral constraint of law those whom it would be difficult to control merely by, physical force;--the rigidity of the law being in ratio to the deficiency of the force. in times semi-civilized, and even comparatively enlightened, conquerors have little respect for the conquered--an immense and insurmountable distinction is at once made between the natives and their lords. all ancient nations seem to have considered that the right of conquest gave a right to the lands of the conquered country. william dividing england among his normans is but an imitator of every successful invader of ancient times. the new-comers having gained the land of a subdued people, that people, in order to subsist, must become the serfs of the land [ ]. the more formidable warriors are mostly slain, or exiled, or conciliated by some remains of authority and possessions; the multitude remain the labourers of the soil, and slight alterations of law will imperceptibly convert the labourer into the slave. the earliest slaves appear chiefly to have been the agricultural population. if the possession of the government were acquited by colonizers [ ],-- not so much by the force of arms as by the influence of superior arts --the colonizers would in some instances still establish servitude for the multitude, though not under so harsh a name. the laws they would frame for an uncultured and wretched population, would distinguish between the colonizers and the aboriginals (excepting perhaps only the native chiefs, accustomed arbitrarily to command, though not systematically to enslave the rest). the laws for the aboriginal population would still be an improvement on their previous savage and irregulated state--and generations might pass before they would attain a character of severity, or before they made the final and ineffaceable distinction between the freeman and the slave. the perturbed restlessness and constant migration of tribes in greece, recorded both by tradition and by history, would consequently tend at a very remote period to the institution and diffusion of slavery and the pelasgi of one tribe would become the masters of the pelasgi of another. there is, therefore, no necessity to look out of greece for the establishment of servitude in that country by conquest and war. but the peaceful colonization of foreign settlers would (as we have seen) lead to it by slower and more gentle degrees. and the piracies of the phoenicians, which embraced the human species as an article of their market, would be an example, more prevalent and constant than their own, to the piracies of the early greeks. the custom of servitude, thus commenced, is soon fed by new sources. prisoners of war are enslaved, or, at the will of the victor, exchanged as an article of commerce. before the interchange of money, we have numerous instances of the barter of prisoners for food and arms. and as money became the medium of trade, so slaves became a regular article of sale and purchase. hence the origin of the slave-market. luxury increasing slaves were purchased not merely for the purposes of labour, but of pleasure. the accomplished musician of the beautiful virgin was an article of taste or a victim of passion. thus, what it was the tendency of barbarism to originate, it became the tendency of civilization to increase. slavery, then, originated first in conquest and war, piracy, or colonization: secondly, in purchase. there were two other and subordinate sources of the institution--the first was crime, the second poverty. if a free citizen committed a heinous offence, he could be degraded into a slave--if he were unable to pay his debts, the creditor could claim his person. incarceration is merely a remnant and substitute of servitude. the two latter sources failed as nations became more free. but in attica it was not till the time of solon, several centuries after the institution of slavery at athens, that the right of the creditor to the personal services of the debtor was formally abolished. a view of the moral effects of slavery--of the condition of the slaves at athens--of the advantages of the system and its evils--of the light in which it was regarded by the ancients themselves, other and more fitting opportunities will present to us. xxvi. the introduction of an hereditary aristocracy into a particular country, as yet uncivilized, is often simultaneous with that of slavery. a tribe of warriors possess and subdue a territory;--they share its soil with the chief in proportion to their connexion with his person, or their military services and repute--each becomes the lord of lands and slaves--each has privileges above the herd of the conquered population. suppose again, that the dominion is acquired by colonizers rather than conquerors; the colonizers, superior in civilization to the natives,--and regarded by the latter with reverence and awe, would become at once a privileged and noble order. hence, from either source, an aristocracy permanent and hereditary [ ]. if founded on conquest, in proportion to the number of the victors, is that aristocracy more or less oligarchical. the extreme paucity of force with which the dorians conquered their neighbours, was one of the main causes why the governments they established were rigidly oligarchical. xxvii. proceeding onward, we find that in this aristocracy, are preserved the seeds of liberty and the germe of republicanism. these conquerors, like our feudal barons, being sharers of the profit of the conquest and the glory of the enterprise, by no means allow undivided and absolute authority to their chiefs. governed by separate laws-- distinguished by separate privileges from the subdued community, they are proud of their own freedom, the more it is contrasted with the servitude of the population: they preserve liberty for themselves-- they resist the undue assumptions of the king [ ]--and keep alive that spirit and knowledge of freedom which in after times (as their numbers increase, and they become a people, distinct still from the aboriginal natives, who continue slaves) are transfused from the nobles to the multitude. in proportion as the new race are warlike will their unconscious spirit be that of republicanism; the connexion between martial and republican tendencies was especially recognised by all ancient writers: and the warlike habits of the hellenes were the cradle of their political institutions. thus, in conquest (or sometimes in immigration) we may trace the origin of an aristocracy [ ], as of slavery, and thus, by a deeper inquiry, we may find also that the slavery of a population and the freedom of a state have their date, though dim and undeveloped, in the same epoch. xxviii. i have thought that the supposed egyptian colonization of attica under cecrops afforded the best occasion to treat of the above matters, not so much in reference to cecrops himself as to the migration of eastern and egyptian adventurers. of such migrations the dates may be uncertain--of such adventurers the names may be unknown. but it seems to me impossible to deny the fact of foreign settlements in greece, in her remoter and more barbarous era, though we may dispute as to the precise amount of the influence they exercised, and the exact nature of the rites and customs they established. a belief in the early connexion between the egyptians and athenians, encouraged by the artful vanity of the one, was welcomed by the lively credulity of the other. many ages after the reputed sway of the mythical cecrops, it was fondly imagined that traces of their origin from the solemn egypt [ ] were yet visible among the graceful and versatile people, whose character was as various, yet as individualized, as their religion--who, viewed in whatsoever aspect of their intellectual history, may appear constantly differing, yet remain invariably athenian. whether clamouring in the agora--whether loitering in the academe--whether sacrificing to hercules in the temple--whether laughing at hercules on the stage--whether with miltiades arming against the mede--whether with demosthenes declaiming against the macedonian--still unmistakeable, unexampled, original, and alone--in their strength or their weakness, their wisdom or their foibles their turbulent action, their cultivated repose. chapter ii. the unimportant consequences to be deduced from the admission that cecrops might be egyptian.--attic kings before theseus.--the hellenes.--their genealogy.--ionians and achaeans pelasgic.--contrast between dorians and ionians.--amphictyonic league. i. in allowing that there does not appear sufficient evidence to induce us to reject the tale of the egyptian origin of cecrops, it will be already observed, that i attach no great importance to the dispute: and i am not inclined reverently to regard the innumerable theories that have been built on so uncertain a foundation. an egyptian may have migrated to attica, but egyptian influence in attica was faint and evanescent;--arrived at the first dawn of historical fact, it is with difficulty that we discover the most dubious and shadowy vestiges of its existence. neither cecrops nor any other egyptian in those ages is recorded to have founded a dynasty in attica--it is clear that none established a different language--and all the boasted analogies of religion fade, on a close examination, into an occasional resemblance between the symbols and attributes of egyptian and grecian deities, or a similarity in mystic ceremonies and solemn institutions, which, for the most part, was almost indisputably formed by intercourse between greece and egypt in a far later age. taking the earliest epoch at which history opens, and comparing the whole character of the athenian people--moral, social, religious, and political--with that of any egyptian population, it is not possible to select a more startling contrast, or one in which national character seems more indelibly formed by the early and habitual adoption of utterly opposite principles of thought and action. [ ] i said that cecrops founded no dynasty: the same traditions that bring him from egypt give him cranaus, a native, for his successor. the darkness of fable closes over the interval between the reign of cranaus and the time of theseus: if tradition be any guide whatsoever, the history of that period was the history of the human race--it was the gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn of civilization--and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautiful fictions round every landmark in their slow and encumbered progress. it would be very possible, by a little ingenious application of the various fables transmitted to us, to construct a history of imagined conquests and invented revolutions; and thus to win the unmerited praise of throwing a new light upon those remote ages. but when fable is our only basis--no fabric we erect, however imposing in itself, can be rightly entitled to the name of history. and, as in certain ancient chronicles it is recorded merely of undistinguished monarchs that they "lived and died," so such an assertion is precisely that which it would be the most presumptuous to make respecting the shadowy kings who, whether in eusebius or the parian marble, give dates and chronicles to the legendary gloom which preceded the heroic age. the principal event recorded in these early times, for which there seems some foundation, is a war between erechtheus of athens and the eleusinians;--the last assisted or headed by the thracian eumolpus. erechtheus is said to have fallen a victim in this contest. but a treaty afterward concluded with the eleusinians confirmed the ascendency of athens, and, possibly, by a religious ceremonial, laid the foundation of the eleusinian mysteries. in this contest is introduced a very doubtful personage, under the appellation of ion (to whom i shall afterward recur), who appears on the side of the athenians, and who may be allowed to have exercised a certain influence over them, whether in religious rites or political institutions, though he neither attained to the throne, nor seems to have exceeded the peaceful authority of an ally. upon the dim and confused traditions relative to ion, the wildest and most luxuriant speculations have been grafted--prolix to notice, unnecessary to contradict. ii. during this period there occurred--not rapidly, but slowly--the most important revolution of early greece, viz., the spread of that tribe termed the hellenes, who gradually established their predominance throughout the land, impressed indelible traces on the national character, and finally converted their own into the national name. i have already expressed my belief that the pelasgi were not a barbarous race, speaking a barbarous tongue, but that they were akin to the hellenes, who spoke the grecian language, and are considered the proper grecian family. even the dubious record of genealogy (which, if fabulous in itself, often under the names of individuals typifies the affinity of tribes) makes the hellenes kindred to the pelasgi. deucalion, the founder of the hellenes, was of pelasgic origin--son of prometheus, and nephew of atlas, king of the pelasgic arcadia. however this may be, we find the hellenes driven from phocis, their earliest recorded seat, by a flood in the time of deucalion. migrating into thessaly, they expelled the pelasgi; and afterward spreading themselves through greece, they attained a general ascendency over the earlier habitants, enslaving, doubtless, the bulk of the population among which they formed a settlement, but ejecting numbers of the more resolute or the more noble families, and causing those celebrated migrations by which the pelasgi carried their name and arts into italy, as well as into crete and various other isles. on the continent of greece, when the revolution became complete, the pelasgi appear to have retained only arcadia, the greater part of thessaly [ ], the land of dodona, and attica. there is no reason to suppose the hellenes more enlightened and civilized than the pelasgi; but they seem, if only by the record of their conquests, to have been a more stern, warlike, and adventurous branch of the grecian family. i conclude them, in fact, to have been that part of the pelasgic race who the longest retained the fierce and vigorous character of a mountain tribe, and who found the nations they invaded in that imperfect period of civilization which is so favourable to the designs of a conqueror--when the first warlike nature of a predatory tribe is indeed abandoned--but before the discipline, order, and providence of a social community are acquired. like the saxons into britain, the hellenes were invited [ ] by the different pelasgic chiefs as auxiliaries, and remained as conquerors. but in other respects they rather resembled the more knightly and energetic race by whom in britain the saxon dynasty was overturned:-- the hellenes were the normans of antiquity. it is impossible to decide the exact date when the hellenes obtained the general ascendency or when the greeks received from that thessalian tribe their common appellation. the greeks were not termed hellenes in the time in which the iliad was composed--they were so termed in the time of hesiod. but even in the iliad, the word panhellenes, applied to the greeks, testifies the progress of the revolution [ ], and in the odyssey, the hellenic name is no longer limited to the dominion of achilles. iii. the hellenic nation became popularly subdivided into four principal families, viz., the dorians, the aeolians, the ionians, and achaeans, of which i consider the former two alone genuinely hellenic. the fable which makes dorus, aeolus, and xuthus, the sons of helen, declares that while dorus was sent forth to conquer other lands, aeolus succeeded to the domain of phthiotis, and records no conquests of his own; but attributes to his sons the origin of most of the principal families of greece. if rightly construed, this account would denote that the aeolians remained for a generation at least subsequent to the first migration of the dorians, in their thessalian territories; and thence splitting into various hordes, descended as warriors and invaders upon the different states of greece. they appear to have attached themselves to maritime situations, and the wealth of their early settlements is the theme of many a legend. the opulence of orchomenus is compared by homer to that of egyptian thebes. and in the time of the trojan war, corinth was already termed "the wealthy." by degrees the aeolians became in a great measure blended and intermingled with the dorians. yet so intimately connected are the hellenes and pelasgi, that even these, the lineal descendants of helen through the eldest branch, are no less confounded with the pelasgic than the dorian race. strabo and pausanias alike affirm the aeolians to be pelasgic, and in the aeolic dialect we approach to the pelasgic tongue. the dorians, first appearing in phthiotis, are found two generations afterward in the mountainous district of histiaeotis, comprising within their territory, according to herodotus, the immemorial vale of tempe. neighboured by warlike hordes, more especially the heroic lapithae, with whom their earliest legends record fierce and continued war, this mountain tribe took from nature and from circumstance their hardy and martial character. unable to establish secure settlements in the fertile thessalian plains, and ranging to the defiles through which the romantic peneus winds into the sea, several of the tribe migrated early into crete, where, though forming only a part of the population of the isle, they are supposed by some to have established the doric constitution and customs, which in their later settlements served them for a model. other migrations marked their progress to the foot of mount pindus; thence to dryopis, afterward called doris; and from dryopis to the peloponnesus; which celebrated migration, under the name of the "return of the heraclidae," i shall hereafter more especially describe. i have said that genealogy attributes the origin of the dorians and that of the aeolians to dorus and aeolus, sons of helen. this connects them with the hellenes and with each other. the adventures of xuthus, the third son of helen, are not recorded by the legends of thessaly, and he seems merely a fictitious creation, invented to bring into affinity with the hellenes the families, properly pelasgic, of the achaeans and ionians. it is by writers comparatively recent that we are told that xuthus was driven from thessaly by his brothers--that he took refuge in attica, and on the plains of marathon built four towns--oenoe, marathon, probalinthus, and tricorythus [ ], and that he wedded creusa, daughter of erechtheus, king of attica, and that by her he had two sons, achaeus and ion. by some we are told that achaeus, entering the eastern side of peloponnesus, founded a dominion in laconia and argolis; by others, on the contrary, that he conducted a band, partly athenian, into thessaly, and recovered the domains of which his father had been despoiled [ ]. both these accounts of achaeus, as the representative of the achaeans, are correct in this, that the achaeans, had two settlements from remote periods--the one in the south of thessaly--the other in the peloponnesus. the achaeans were long the most eminent of the grecian tribes. possessed of nearly the whole of the peloponnesus, except, by a singular chance, that part which afterward bore their name, they boasted the warlike fame of the opulent menelaus and the haughty agamemnon, the king of men. the dominant tribe of the heroic age, the achaeans form the kindred link between the several epochs of the pelasgic and hellenic sway--their character indeed hellenic, but their descent apparently pelasgic. dionysius of halicarnassus derives them from pelasgus himself, and they existed as achaeans before the hellenic xuthus was even born. the legend which makes achaeus the brother of ion, tends likewise to prove, that if the ionians were originally pelasgic, so also were the achaeans. let us then come to ion. although ion is said to have given the name of ionians to the atticans, yet long before his time the iaones were among the ancient inhabitants of the country; and herodotus (the best authority on the subject) declares that the ionians were pelasgic and indigenous. there is not sufficient reason to suppose, therefore, that they were hellenic conquerors or hellenic settlers. they appear, on the contrary, to have been one of the aboriginal tribes of attica:--a part of them proceeded into the peloponnesus (typified under the migration thither of xuthus), and these again returning (as typified by the arrival of ion at athens), in conjunction with such of their fraternity as had remained in their native settlement, became the most powerful and renowned of the several divisions of the attic population. their intercourse with the peloponnesians would lead the ionians to establish some of the political institutions and religious rites they had become acquainted with in their migration; and thus may we most probably account for the introduction of the worship of apollo into attica, and for that peaceful political influence which the mythical ion is said to have exercised over his countrymen. at all events, we cannot trace, any distinct and satisfactory connexion between this, the most intellectual and brilliant tribe of the grecian family, and that roving and fortunate thessalian horde to which the hellenes gave the general name, and of which the dorians were the fittest representative and the most powerful section. nor, despite the bold assumptions of mueller, is there any evidence of a hellenic conquest in attica. [ ] and that land which, according to tradition and to history, was the early refuge of exiles, derived from the admission and intercourse of strangers and immigrants those social and political improvements which in other states have been wrought by conquest. iv. after the dorians obtained possession of the peloponnesus, the whole face of greece was gradually changed. the return of the heraclidae was the true consummation of the hellenic revolution. the tribes hitherto migratory became fixed in the settlements they acquired. the dorians rose to the rank of the most powerful race of greece: and the ionians, their sole rivals, possessed only on the continent the narrow soil of attica, though their colonies covered the fertile coast of asia minor. greece thus reduced to two main tribes, the doric and the ionian, historians have justly and generally concurred in noticing between them the strongest and most marked distinctions,--the dorians grave, inflexible, austere,--the ionians lively, versatile, prone to change. the very dialect of the one was more harsh and masculine than that of the other; and the music, the dances of the dorians, bore the impress of their severe simplicity. the sentiment of veneration which pervaded their national character taught the dorians not only, on the one hand, the firmest allegiance to the rites of religion--and a patriarchal respect for age--but, on the other hand, a blind and superstitious attachment to institutions merely on account of their antiquity--and an almost servile regard for birth, producing rather the feelings of clanship than the sympathy of citizens. we shall see hereafter, that while athens established republics, sparta planted oligarchies. the dorians were proud of independence, but it was the independence of nobles rather than of a people. their severity preserved them long from innovation--no less by what was vicious in its excess than by what was wise in its principle. with many great and heroic qualities, they were yet harsh to enemies--cruel to dependants--selfish to allies. their whole policy was to preserve themselves as they were; if they knew not the rash excesses, neither were they impelled by the generous emotions, which belong to men whose constant aspirations are to be better and to be greater;--they did not desire to be better or to be greater; their only wish was not to be different. they sought in the future nothing but the continuance of the past; and to that past they bound themselves with customs and laws of iron. the respect in which they held their women, as well as their disdain of pleasure, preserved them in some measure from the licentiousness common to states in which women are despised; but the respect had little of the delicacy and sentiment of individual attachment--attachment was chiefly for their own sex [ ]. the ionians, on the contrary, were susceptible, flexile, and more characterized by the generosity of modern knighthood than the sternness of ancient heroism. them, not the past, but the future, charmed. ever eager to advance, they were impatient even of the good, from desire of the better. once urged to democracy-- democracy fixed their character, as oligarchy fixed the spartan. for, to change is the ambition of a democracy--to conserve of an oligarchy. the taste, love, and intuition of the beautiful stamped the greeks above all nations, and the ionians above all the greeks. it was not only that the ionians were more inventive than their neighbours, but that whatever was beautiful in invention they at once seized and appropriated. restless, inquisitive, ardent, they attempted all things, and perfected art--searched into all things, and consummated philosophy. the ionic character existed everywhere among ionians, but the doric was not equally preserved among the dorians. the reason is evident. the essence of the ionian character consisted in the spirit of change --that of the dorian in resistance to innovation. when any doric state abandoned its hereditary customs and institutions, it soon lost the doric character--became lax, effeminate, luxurious--a corruption of the character of the ionians; but no change could assimilate the ionian to the doric; for they belonged to different eras of civilization--the doric to the elder, the ionian to the more advanced. the two races of scotland have become more alike than heretofore; but it is by making the highlander resemble the lowlander--and not by converting the lowland citizen into the mountain gael. the habits of commerce, the substitution of democratic for oligarchic institutions, were sufficient to alter the whole character of the dorians. the voluptuous corinth--the trading aegina (doric states)--infinitely more resembled athens than sparta. it is, then, to sparta, that in the historical times we must look chiefly for the representative of the doric tribe, in its proper and elementary features; and there, pure, vigorous, and concentrated, the doric character presents a perpetual contrast to the athenian. this contrast continued so long as either nation retained a character to itself;--and (no matter what the pretences of hostility) was the real and inevitable cause of that enmity between athens and sparta, the results of which fixed the destiny of greece. yet were the contests of that enmity less the contests between opposing tribes than between those opposing principles which every nation may be said to nurse within itself; viz., the principle to change, and the principle to preserve; the principle to popularize, and the principle to limit the governing power; here the genius of an oligarchy, there of a people; here adherence to the past, there desire of the future. each principle produced its excesses, and furnishes a salutary warning. the feuds of sparta and athens may be regarded as historical allegories, clothing the moral struggles, which, with all their perils and all their fluctuations, will last to the end of time. v. this period is also celebrated for the supposed foundation of that assembly of the grecian states, called the amphictyonic confederacy. genealogy attributes its origin to a son of deucalion, called amphictyon. [ ] this fable would intimate a hellenic origin, since deucalion is the fabled founder of the hellenes; but out of twelve tribes which composed the confederacy, only three were hellenic, and the rest pelasgic. but with the increasing influence of the dorian oracle of delphi, with which it was connected, it became gradually considered a hellenic institution. it is not possible to decipher the first intention of this league. the meeting was held at two places, near anthela, in the pass of thermopylae, and delphi; at the latter place in the spring, at the former in the autumn. if tradition imputed to amphictyon the origin of the council, it ascribed to acrisius, king of argos [ ], the formation of its proper power and laws. he is said to have founded one of the assemblies, either that in delphi or thermopylae (accounts vary), and to have combined the two, increased the number of the members, and extended the privileges of the body. we can only interpret this legend by the probable supposition, that the date of holding the same assembly at two different places, at different seasons of the year, marks the epoch of some important conjunction of various tribes, and, it may be, of deities hitherto distinct. it might be an attempt to associate the hellenes with the pelasgi, in the early and unsettled power of the former race: and this supposition is rendered the more plausible by the evident union of the worship of the dorian apollo at delphi with that of the pelasgian ceres at thermopylae [ ]. the constitution of the league was this-- each city belonging to an amphictyonic state sent usually two deputies--the one called pylagoras, the other hieromnemon. the functions of the two deputies seem to have differed, and those of the latter to have related more particularly to whatsoever appertained to religion. on extraordinary occasions more than one pylagoras was deputed--athens at one time sent no less than three. but the number of deputies sent did not alter the number of votes in the council. each city had two votes and no more, no matter how many delegates it employed. all the deputies assembled,--solemn sacrifices were offered at delphi to apollo, diana, latona, and minerva; at thermopylae to ceres. an oath was then administered, the form of which is preserved to us by aeschines. "i swear," runs the oath, "never to subvert any amphictyonic city-- never to stop the courses of its waters in peace or in war. those who attempt such outrages i will oppose by arms; and the cities that so offend i will destroy. if any ravages be committed in the territory of the god, if any connive at such a crime, if any conceive a design hostile to the temple, against them will i use my hands, my feet, my whole power and strength, so that the offenders may be brought to punishment." fearful and solemn imprecations on any violation of this engagement followed the oath. these ceremonies performed, one of the hieromnemons [ ] presided over the council; to him were intrusted the collecting the votes, the reporting the resolutions, and the power of summoning the general assembly, which was a convention separate from the council, held only on extraordinary occasions, and composed of residents and strangers, whom the solemnity of the meeting congregated in the neighbourhood. vi. throughout the historical times we can trace in this league no attempt to combine against the aggression of foreign states, except for the purposes of preserving the sanctity of the temple. the functions of the league were limited to the amphictyonic tribes and whether or not its early, and undefined, and obscure purpose, was to check wars among the confederate tribes, it could not attain even that object. its offices were almost wholly confined to religion. the league never interfered when one amphictyonic state exercised the worst severities against the other, curbing neither the ambition of the athenian fleet nor the cruelties of the spartan sword. but, upon all matters relative to religion, especially to the worship of apollo, the assembly maintained an authority in theory supreme--in practice, equivocal and capricious. as a political institution, the league contained one vice which could not fail to destroy its power. each city in the twelve amphictyonic tribes, the most unimportant as the most powerful, had the same number of votes. this rendered it against the interest of the greater states (on whom its consideration necessarily depended) to cement or increase its political influence and thus it was quietly left to its natural tendency to sacred purposes. like all institutions which bestow upon man the proper prerogative of god, and affect authority over religious and not civil opinions, the amphictyonic council was not very efficient in good: even in its punishment of sacrilege, it was only dignified and powerful whenever the interests of the delphic temple were at stake. its most celebrated interference was with the town of crissa, against which the amphictyons decreed war b. c. ; the territory of crissa was then dedicated to the god of the temple. vii. but if not efficient in good, the amphictyonic council was not active in evil. many causes conspired to prevent the worst excesses to which religious domination is prone,--and this cause in particular. it was not composed of a separate, interested, and permanent class, but of citizens annually chosen from every state, who had a much greater interest in the welfare of their own state than in the increased authority of the amphictyonic council [ ]. they were priests but for an occasion--they were citizens by profession. the jealousies of the various states, the constant change in the delegates, prevented that energy and oneness necessary to any settled design of ecclesiastical ambition. hence, the real influence of the amphictyonic council was by no means commensurate with its grave renown; and when, in the time of philip, it became an important political agent, it was only as the corrupt and servile tool of that able monarch. still it long continued, under the panoply of a great religious name, to preserve the aspect of dignity and power, until, at the time of constantine, it fell amid the ruins of the faith it had aspired to protect. the creed that became the successor of the religion of delphi found a mightier amphictyonic assembly in the conclaves of rome. the papal institution possessed precisely those qualities for directing the energies of states, for dictating to the ambition of kings, for obtaining temporal authority under spiritual pretexts--which were wanting to the pagan. chapter iii. the heroic age.--theseus.--his legislative influence upon athens.-- qualities of the greek heroes.--effect of a traditional age upon the character of a people. i. as one who has been journeying through the dark [ ] begins at length to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that the forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,--so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline of the heroic age. the careful and skeptical thucydides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the possessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law and indistinct control;--of adventure--of excitement;--of daring qualities and lofty crime. we recognise in the picture features familiar to the north: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas, descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder a profession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the scandinavian her-kongr, and the boding banners of the dane. the seas of greece tempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their winding bays, and wood-clad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold-- ample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for the inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. in early ages, valour is the true virtue--it dignifies the pursuits in which it is engaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourable in the aegean as among the bold rovers of the scandinavian race [ ]. if the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neither were the interior recesses of the country more protected from the violence of marauders. the various tribes that passed into greece, to colonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of the inhabitants, who, retreating up the country, maintained themselves by plunder, or avenged themselves by outrage. the many crags and mountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautiful land of greece, afforded their natural fortresses to these barbarous hordes. the chief who had committed a murder, or aspired unsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with his friends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on the surrounding villages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust or want excited to the enterprise. no home was safe, no journey free from peril, and the greeks passed their lives in armour. thus, gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itself throughout greece, until the evil became insufferable--until the public opinion of all the states and tribes, in which society had established laws, was enlisted against the freebooter--until it grew an object of ambition to rid the neighbourhood of a scourge--and the success of the attempt made the glory of the adventurer. then naturally arose the race of heroes--men who volunteered to seek the robber in his hold--and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courage of the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity of the demigod. at that time, too, internal circumstances in the different states-- whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlike hellenes, had gradually conspired to raise a military and fierce aristocracy above the rest of the population; and as arms became the instruments of renown and power, so the wildest feats would lead to the most extended fame. ii. the woods and mountains of greece were not then cleared of the first rude aboriginals of nature--wild beasts lurked within its caverns;--wolves abounded everywhere--herds of wild bulls, the large horns of which herodotus names with admiration, were common; and even the lion himself, so late as the invasion of xerxes, was found in wide districts from the thracian abdera to the acarnanian achelous. thus, the feats of the early heroes appear to have been mainly directed against the freebooter or the wild beast; and among the triumphs of hercules are recorded the extermination of the lydian robbers, the death of cacus, and the conquest of the lion of nemea and the boar of erymanthus. hercules himself shines conspicuously forth the great model of these useful adventurers. there is no doubt that a prince [ ], so named, actually existed in greece; and under the title of the theban hercules, is to be carefully distinguished, both from the god of egypt and the peaceful hercules of phoenicia [ ], whose worship was not unknown to the greeks previous to the labours of his namesake. as the name of hercules was given to the theban hero (originally called alcaeus), in consequence of his exploits, it may be that his countrymen recognised in his character or his history something analogous to the traditional accounts of the eastern god. it was the custom of the early greeks to attribute to one man the actions which he performed in concert with others, and the reputation of hercules was doubtless acquired no less as the leader of an army than by the achievements of his personal prowess. his fame and his success excited the emulation of his contemporaries, and pre-eminent among these ranks the athenian theseus. iii. in the romance which plutarch has bequeathed to us, under the title of a "history of theseus," we seem to read the legends of our own fabulous days of chivalry. the adventures of an amadis or a palmerin are not more knightly nor more extravagant. according to plutarch, aegeus, king of athens, having no children, went to delphi to consult the oracle how that misfortune might be repaired. he was commanded not to approach any woman till he returned to athens; but the answer was couched in mystic and allegorical terms, and the good king was rather puzzled than enlightened by the reply. he betook himself therefore to troezene, a small town in peloponnesus, founded by pittheus, of the race of pelops, a man eminent in that day for wisdom and sagacity. he communicated to him the oracle, and besought his interpretation. something there was in the divine answer which induced pittheus to draw the athenian king into an illicit intercourse with his own daughter, aethra. the princess became with child; and, before his departure from troezene, aegeus deposited a sword and a pair of sandals in a cavity concealed by a huge stone [ ], and left injunctions with aethra that, should the fruit of their intercourse prove a male child, and able, when grown up, to remove the stone, she should send him privately to athens with the sword and sandals in proof of his birth; for aegeus had a brother named pallas, who, having a large family of sons, naturally expected, from the failure of the direct line, to possess himself or his children of the athenian throne; and the king feared, should the secret of his intercourse with aethra be discovered before the expected child had arrived to sufficient strength to protect himself, that either by treason or assassination the sons of pallas would despoil the rightful heir of his claim to the royal honours. aethra gave birth to theseus, and pittheus concealed the dishonour of his family by asserting that neptune, the god most honoured at troezene, had condescended to be the father of the child:--the gods were very convenient personages in those days. as the boy grew up, he evinced equal strength of body and nobleness of mind; and at length the time arrived when aethra communicated to him the secret of his birth, and led him to the stone which concealed the tokens of his origin. he easily removed it, and repaired by land to athens. at that time, as i have before stated, greece was overrun by robbers: hercules had suppressed them for awhile; but the theban hero was now at the feet of the lydian omphale, and the freebooters had reappeared along the mountainous recesses of the peloponnesus; the journey by land was therefore not only longer, but far more perilous, than a voyage by sea, and pittheus earnestly besought his grandson to prefer the latter. but it was the peril of the way that made its charm in the eyes of the young hero, and the fame of hercules had long inspired his dreams by night [ ], and his thoughts by day. with his father's sword, then, he repaired to athens. strange and wild were the adventures that befell him. in epidauria he was attacked by a celebrated robber, whom he slew, and whose club he retained as his favourite weapon. in the isthmus, sinnis, another bandit, who had been accustomed to destroy the unfortunate travellers who fell in his way by binding them to the boughs of two pine trees (so that when the trees, released, swung back to their natural position, the victim was torn asunder, limb by limb), was punished by the same death he had devised for others; and here occurs one of those anecdotes illustrative of the romance of the period, and singularly analogous to the chivalry of northern fable, which taught deference to women, and rewarded by the smiles of the fair the exploits of the bold. sinnis, "the pine bender," had a daughter remarkable for beauty, who concealed herself amid the shrubs and rushes in terror of the victor. theseus discovered her, praying, says plutarch, in childish innocence or folly, to the plants and bushes, and promising, if they would shelter her, never to destroy or burn them. a graceful legend, that reminds us of the rich inventions of spenser. but theseus, with all gentle words and soothing vows, allured the maiden from her retreat, and succeeded at last in obtaining her love and its rewards. continued adventures--the conquest of phaea, a wild sow (or a female robber, so styled from the brutality of her life)--the robber sciron cast headlong from a precipice--procrustes stretched on his own bed-- attested the courage and fortune of the wanderer, and at length he arrived at the banks of the cephisus. here he was saluted by some of the phytalidae, a sacred family descended from phytalus, the beloved of ceres, and was duly purified from the blood of the savages he had slain. athens was the first place at which he was hospitably entertained. he arrived at an opportune moment; the colchian medea, of evil and magic fame, had fled from corinth and taken refuge with aegeus, whose affections she had insnared. by her art she promised him children to supply his failing line, and she gave full trial to the experiment by establishing herself the partner of the royal couch. but it was not likely that the numerous sons of pallas would regard this connexion with indifference, and faction and feud reigned throughout the city. medea discovered the secret of the birth of theseus; and, resolved by poison to rid herself of one who would naturally interfere with her designs on aegeus, she took advantage of the fear and jealousies of the old king, and persuaded him to become her accomplice in the premeditated crime. a banquet, according to the wont of those hospitable times, was given to the stranger. the king was at the board, the cup of poison at hand, when theseus, wishing to prepare his father for the welcome news he had to divulge, drew the sword or cutlass which aegeus had made the token of his birth, and prepared to carve with it the meat that was set before him. the sword caught the eye of the king--he dashed the poison to the ground, and after a few eager and rapid questions, recognised his son in his intended victim. the people were assembled--theseus was acknowledged by the king, and received with joy by the multitude, who had already heard of the feats of the hero. the traditionary place where the poison fell was still shown in the time of plutarch. the sons of pallas ill brooked the arrival and acknowledgment of this unexpected heir to the throne. they armed themselves and their followers, and prepared for war. but one half of their troops, concealed in ambush, were cut off by theseus (instructed in their movements by the treachery of a herald), and the other half, thus reduced, were obliged to disperse. so theseus remained the undisputed heir to the athenian throne. iv. it would be vain for the historian, but delightful for the poet, to follow at length this romantic hero through all his reputed enterprises. i can only rapidly sketch the more remarkable. i pass, then, over the tale how he captured alive the wild bull of marathon, and come at once to that expedition to crete, which is indissolubly intwined with immortal features of love and poetry. it is related that androgeus, a son of minos, the celebrated king of crete, and by his valour worthy of such a sire, had been murdered in attica; some suppose by the jealousies of aegeus, who appears to have had a singular distrust of all distinguished strangers. minos retaliated by a war which wasted attica, and was assisted in its ravages by the pestilence and the famine. the oracle of apollo, which often laudably reconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest by enjoining the athenians to appease the just indignation of minos. they despatched, therefore, ambassadors to crete, and consented, in token of submission, to send every ninth year a tribute of seven virgins and seven young men. the little intercourse that then existed between states, conjoined with the indignant grief of the parents at the loss of their children, exaggerated the evil of the tribute. the hostages were said by the athenians to be exposed in an intricate labyrinth, and devoured by a monster, the creature of unnatural intercourse, half man half bull; but the cretans, certainly the best authority in the matter, stripped the account of the fable, and declared that the labyrinth was only a prison in which the youths and maidens were confined on their arrival--that minos instituted games in honour of androgeus, and that the athenian captives were the prize of the victors. the first victor was the chief of the cretan army, named taurus, and he, being fierce and unmerciful, treated the slaves he thus acquired with considerable cruelty. hence the origin of the labyrinth and the minotaur. and plutarch, giving this explanation of the cretans, cites aristotle to prove that the youths thus sent were not put to death by minos, but retained in servile employments, and that their descendants afterward passed into thrace, and were called bottiaeans. we must suppose, therefore, in consonance not only with these accounts, but the manners of the age, that the tribute was merely a token of submission, and the objects of it merely considered as slaves. [ ] of minos himself all accounts are uncertain. there seems no sufficient ground to doubt, indeed, his existence, nor the extended power which, during his reign, crete obtained in greece. it is most probable that it was under phoenician influence that crete obtained its maritime renown; but there is no reason to suppose minos himself phoenician. after the return of theseus, the time came when the tribute to crete was again to be rendered. the people murmured their dissatisfaction. "it was the guilt of aegeus," said they, "which caused the wrath of minos, yet aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful children were sacrificed to the cretan barbarity, but the doubtful and illegitimate stranger, whom aegeus had adopted, went safe and free." theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted on being himself included in the seven. v. twice before had this human tribute been sent to crete; and in token of the miserable and desperate fate which, according to vulgar belief, awaited the victims, a black sail had been fastened to the ship. but this time, aegeus, inspired by the cheerful confidence of his son, gave the pilot a white sail, which he was to hoist, if, on his return, he bore back theseus in safety: if not, the black was once more to be the herald of an unhappier fate. it is probable that theseus did not esteem this among the most dangerous of his adventures. at the court of the wise pittheus, or in the course of his travels, he had doubtless heard enough of the character of minos, the greatest and most sagacious monarch of his time, to be convinced that the son of the athenian king would have little to fear from his severity. he arrived at crete, and obtained the love of ariadne, the daughter of minos. now follows a variety of contradictory accounts, the most probable and least poetical of which are given by plutarch; but as he concludes them all by the remark that none are of certainty, it is a needless task to repeat them: it suffices to relate, that either with or without the consent of minos, theseus departed from crete, in company with ariadne, and that by one means or the other he thenceforth freed the athenians from the payment of the accustomed tribute. as it is obvious that with the petty force with which, by all accounts, he sailed to crete, he could not have conquered the powerful minos in his own city, so it is reasonable to conclude, as one of the traditions hath it, that the king consented to his alliance with his daughter, and, in consequence of that marriage, waived all farther claim to the tribute of the athenians. [ ] equal obscurity veils the fate of the loving ariadne; but the supposition which seems least objectionable is, that theseus was driven by storm either on cyprus or naxos, and ariadne being then with child, and rendered ill by the violence of the waves, was left on shore by her lover while he returned to take charge of his vessel; that she died in childbed, and that theseus, on his return, was greatly afflicted, and instituted an annual festival in her honour. while we adopt the story most probable in itself, and most honourable to the character of the athenian hero, we cannot regret the various romance which is interwoven with the tale of the unfortunate cretan, since it has given us some of the most beautiful inventions of poetry;--the labyrinth love-lighted by ariadne--the cretan maid deserted by the stranger with whom she fled--left forlorn and alone on the naxian shore--and consoled by bacchus and his satyr horde. vi. before he arrived at athens, theseus rested at delos, where he is said to have instituted games, and to have originated the custom of crowning the victor with the palm. meanwhile aegeus waited the return of his son. on the cecropian rock that yet fronts the sea, he watched the coming of the vessel and the waving of the white sail: the masts appeared--the ship approached--the white sail was not visible: in the joy and the impatience of the homeward crew, the pilot had forgotten to hoist the appointed signal, and the old man in despair threw himself from the rock and was dashed to pieces. theseus received the news of his father's death with sorrow and lamentation. his triumph and return were recorded by periodical festivals, in which the fate of aegeus was typically alluded to, and the vessel of thirty oars with which he had sailed to crete was preserved by the athenians to the times of demetrius the phalerean--so often new-pieced and repaired, that it furnished a favourite thesis to philosophical disputants, whether it was or was not the same vessel which theseus had employed. vii. possessed of the supreme power, theseus now bent his genius to the task of legislation, and in this part of his life we tread upon firmer ground, because the most judicious of the ancient historians [ ] expressly attributes to the son of aegeus those enactments which so mainly contributed to consolidate the strength and union of the athenian people. although cecrops is said to have brought the tribes of attica under one government, yet it will be remembered that he had divided the territory into twelve districts, with a fortress or capital to each. by degrees these several districts had become more and more distinct from each other, and in many cases of emergency it was difficult to obtain a general assembly or a general concurrence of the people; nay, differences had often sprung up between the tribes, which had been adjusted, not as among common citizens, by law, but as among jealous enemies, by arms and bloodshed. it was the master policy of theseus to unite these petty commonwealths in one state. he applied in person, and by all the arte of persuasion, to each tribe: the poor he found ready enough to listen to an invitation which promised them the shelter of a city, and the protection of a single government from the outrage of many tyrants: the rich and the powerful were more jealous of their independent, scattered, and, as it were, feudal life. but these he sought to conciliate by promises that could not but flatter that very prejudice of liberty which naturally at first induced them to oppose his designs. he pledged his faith to a constitution which should leave the power in the hands of the many. he himself, as monarch, desired only the command in war, and in peace the guardianship of laws he was equally bound to obey. some were induced by his persuasions, others by the fear of his power, until at length he obtained his object. by common consent he dissolved the towns'-corporations and councils in each separate town, and built in athens one common prytaneum or council-hall, existent still in the time of plutarch. he united the scattered streets and houses of the citadel, and the new town that had grown up along the plain, by the common name of "athens," and instituted the festival of the panathenaea, in honour of the guardian goddess of the city, and as a memorial of the confederacy. adhering then to his promises, he set strict and narrow limits to the regal power, created, under the name of eupatrids or well-born, an hereditary nobility, and divided into two orders (the husbandmen and mechanics) the remainder of the people. the care of religion, the explanation of the laws, and the situations of magistrates, were the privilege of the nobles. he thus laid the foundation of a free, though aristocratic constitution--according to aristotle, the first who surrendered the absolute sway of royalty, and receiving from the rhetorical isocrates the praise that it was a contest which should give most, the people of power, or the king of freedom. as an extensive population was necessary to a powerful state, so theseus invited to athens all strangers willing to share in the benefits of its protection, granting them equal security of life and law; and he set a demarcation to the territory of the state by the boundary of a pillar erected in the isthmus, dividing ionia from peloponnesus. the isthmian games in honour of neptune were also the invention of theseus. viii. such are the accounts of the legislative enactments of theseus. but of these we must reject much. we may believe from the account of thucydides that jealousies among some attic towns--which might either possess, or pretend to, an independence never completely annihilated by cecrops and his successors, and which the settlement of foreigners of various tribes and habits would have served to increase--were so far terminated as to induce submission to the acknowledged supremacy of athens as the attic capital; and that the right of justice, and even of legislation, which had before been the prerogative of each separate town (to the evident weakening of the supreme and regal authority), was now concentrated in the common council-house of athens. to athens, as to a capital, the eupatrids of attica would repair as a general residence [ ]. the city increased in population and importance, and from this period thucydides dates the enlargement of the ancient city, by the addition of the lower town. that theseus voluntarily lessened the royal power, it is not necessary to believe. in the heroic age a warlike race had sprung up, whom no grecian monarch appears to have attempted to govern arbitrarily in peace, though they yielded implicitly to his authority in war. himself on a newly-won and uncertain throne, it was the necessity as well as the policy of theseus to conciliate the most powerful of his subjects. it may also be conceded, that he more strictly defined the distinctions between the nobles and the remaining classes, whether yeomen or husbandmen, mechanics or strangers; and it is recorded that the honours and the business of legislation were the province of the eupatrids. it is possible that the people might be occasionally convened--but it is clear that they had little, if any, share in the government of the state. but the mere establishment and confirmation of a powerful aristocracy, and the mere collection of the population into a capital, were sufficient to prepare the way for far more democratic institutions than theseus himself contemplated or designed. for centuries afterward an oligarchy ruled in athens; but, free itself, that oligarchy preserved in its monopoly the principles of liberty, expanding in their influence with the progress of society. the democracy of athens was not an ancient, yet not a sudden, constitution. it developed itself slowly, unconsciously, continuously--passing the allotted orbit of royalty, oligarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, tyranny, till at length it arrived at its dazzling zenith, blazed--waned--and disappeared. after the successful issue of his legislative attempts, we next hear of theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song. on these later traditions, which belong to fable, it is not necessary to dwell. our own coeur de lion suggests no improbable resemblance to a spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and without seeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, of each legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that theseus really departed in quest of adventure from a dominion that afforded no scope for a desultory and eager ambition; and that something of truth lurks beneath many of the rich embellishments which his wanderings and exploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibility of the age. during his absence, menestheus, of the royal race of attica, who, plutarch simply tells us, was the first of mankind that undertook the profession of a demagogue, ingratiated himself with the people, or rather with the nobles. the absence of a king is always the nurse of seditions, and menestheus succeeded in raising so powerful a faction against the hero, that on his return theseus was unable to preserve himself in the government, and, pouring forth a solemn curse on the athenians, departed to scyros, where he either fell by accident from a precipice, or was thrown down by the king. his death at first was but little regarded; in after-times, to appease his ghost and expiate his curse, divine honours were awarded to his memory; and in the most polished age of his descendants, his supposed remains, indicated by an eagle in the skeleton of a man of giant stature, with a lance of brass and a sword by his side, were brought to athens in the galley of cimon, hailed by the shouts of a joyous multitude, "as if the living theseus were come again." x. i have not altogether discarded, while i have abridged, the legends relating to a hero who undoubtedly exercised considerable influence over his country and his time, because in those legends we trace, better than we could do by dull interpretations equally unsatisfactory though more prosaic, the effigy of the heroic age--not unillustrative of the poetry and the romance which at once formed and indicated important features in the character of the athenians. much of the national spirit of every people, even in its most civilized epochs, is to be traced to the influence of that age which may be called the heroic. the wild adventurers of the early greece tended to humanize even in their excesses. it is true that there are many instances of their sternness, ferocity, and revenge;--they were insolent from the consciousness of surpassing strength;--often cruel from that contempt of life common to the warlike. but the darker side of their character is far less commonly presented to us than the brighter--they seem to have been alive to generous emotions more readily than any other race so warlike in an age so rude--their affections were fervid as their hatreds--their friendships more remarkable than their feuds. even their ferocity was not, as with the scandinavian heroes, a virtue and a boast--their public opinion honoured the compassionate and the clement. thus hercules is said first to have introduced the custom of surrendering to the enemy the corpses of their slain; and mildness, justice, and courtesy are no less his attributes than invincible strength and undaunted courage. traversing various lands, these paladins of an elder chivalry acquired an experience of different governments and customs, which assisted on their return to polish and refine the admiring tribes which their achievements had adorned. like the knights of a northern mythus, their duty was to punish the oppressor and redress the wronged, and they thus fixed in the wild elements of unsettled opinion a recognised standard of generosity and of justice. their deeds became the theme of the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuate their offences. thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure or excellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble a national character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring and the young:--and the traditional fame of a hercules or a theseus assisted to inspire the souls of those who, ages afterward, broke the mede at marathon, and arrested the persian might in the pass of thermopylae. for, as the spirit of a poet has its influence on the destiny and character of nations, so time itself hath his own poetry, preceding and calling forth the poetry of the human genius, and breathing inspirations, imaginative and imperishable, from the great deeds and gigantic images of an ancestral and traditionary age. chapter iv. the successors of theseus.--the fate of codrus.--the emigration of nileus.--the archons.--draco. i. the reputed period of the trojan war follows close on the age of hercules and theseus; and menestheus, who succeeded the latter hero on the throne of athens, led his countrymen to the immortal war. plutarch and succeeding historians have not failed to notice the expression of homer, in which he applies the word demus or "people" to the athenians, as a proof of the popular government established in that state. but while the line has been considered an interpolation, as late at least as the time of solon, we may observe that it was never used by homer in the popular and political sense it afterward received. and he applies it not only to the state of athens, but to that of ithaca, certainly no democracy. [ ] the demagogue king appears to have been a man of much warlike renown and skill, and is mentioned as the first who marshalled an army in rank and file. returning from troy, he died in the isle of melos, and was succeeded by demophoon, one of the sons of theseus, who had also fought with the grecian army in the trojan siege. in his time a dispute between the athenians and argives was referred to fifty arbiters of each nation, called ephetae, the origin of the court so styled, and afterward re-established with new powers by draco. to demophoon succeeded his son oxyntes, and to oxyntes, aphidas, murdered by his bastard brother thymaetes. thymaetes was the last of the race of theseus who reigned in athens. a dispute arose between the boeotians and the athenians respecting the confines of their several territories; it was proposed to decide the difference by a single combat between thymaetes and the king of the boeotians. thymaetes declined the contest. a messenian exile, named melanthus, accepted it, slew his antagonist by a stratagem, and, deposing the cowardly athenian, obtained the sovereignty of athens. with melanthus, who was of the race of nestor, passed into athens two nobles of the same house, paeon and alcmaeon, who were the founders of the paeonids and alcmaeonids, two powerful families, whose names often occur in the subsequent history of athens, and who, if they did not create a new order of nobility, at least sought to confine to their own families the chief privileges of that which was established. ii. melanthus was succeeded by his son codrus, a man whose fame finds more competitors in roman than grecian history. during his reign the dorians invaded attica. they were assured of success by the delphian oracle, on condition that they did not slay the athenian king. informed of the response, codrus disguised himself as a peasant, and, repairing to the hostile force, sought a quarrel with some of the soldiers, and was slain by them not far from the banks of the ilissus [ ]. the athenians sent to demand the body of their king; and the dorians, no longer hoping of success, since the condition of the oracle was thus violated, broke up their encampment and relinquished their design. some of the dorians had already by night secretly entered the city and concealed themselves within its walls; but, as the day dawned, and they found themselves abandoned by their associates and surrounded by the foe, they fled to the areopagus and the altars of the furies; the refuge was deemed inviolable, and the dorians were dismissed unscathed--a proof of the awe already attached to the rites of sanctuary [ ]. still, however, this invasion was attended with the success of what might have been the principal object of the invaders. megara [ ], which had hitherto been associated with attica, was now seized by the dorians, and became afterward a colony of corinth. this gallant but petty state had considerable influence on some of the earlier events of athenian history. iii. codrus was the last of the athenian kings. the athenians affected the motives of reverence to his memory as an excuse for forbidding to the illustrious martyr the chance of an unworthy successor. but the aristocratic constitution had been morally strengthened by the extinction of the race of theseus and the jealousy of a foreign line; and the abolition of the monarchy was rather caused by the ambition of the nobles than the popular veneration for the patriotism of codrus. the name of king was changed into that of archon (magistrate or governor); the succession was still made hereditary, but the power of the ruler was placed under new limits, and he was obliged to render to the people, or rather to the eupatrids, an account of his government whenever they deemed it advisable to demand it. iv. medon, the son of codrus, was the first of these perpetual archons. in that age bodily strength was still deemed an essential virtue in a chief; and nileus, a younger brother of medon, attempted to depose the archon on no other pretence than that of his lameness. a large portion of the people took advantage of the quarrel between the brothers to assert that they would have no king but jupiter. at length medon had recourse to the oracle, which decided in his favour; and nileus, with all the younger sons of codrus, and accompanied by a numerous force, departed from athens, and colonized that part of asia minor celebrated in history under the name of ionia. the rise, power, and influence of these asiatic colonies we shall find a more convenient opportunity to notice. medon's reign, thus freed from the more stirring spirits of his time, appears to have been prosperous and popular; it was an era in the ancient world, when the lameness of a ruler was discovered to be unconnected with his intellect! then follows a long train of archons--peaceable and obscure. during a period estimated at three hundred years, the athenians performed little that has descended to posterity--brief notices of petty skirmishes, and trivial dissensions with their neighbours, alone diversify that great interval. meanwhile, the ionian colonies rise rapidly into eminence and power. at length, on the death of alcmaeon --the thirteenth and last perpetual archon--a new and more popular change was introduced into the government. the sway of the archon was limited to ten years. this change slowly prepared the way to changes still more important. hitherto the office had been confined to the two neleid houses of codrus and alcmaeon;--in the archonship of hippomenes it was thrown open to other distinguished families; and at length, on the death of eryxias, the last of the race of codrus, the failure of that ancient house in its direct line (indirectly it still continued, and the blood of codrus flowed through the veins of solon) probably gave excuse and occasion for abolishing the investment of the supreme power in one magistrate; nine were appointed, each with the title of archon (though the name was more emphatically given to the chief of the number), and each with separate functions. this institution continued to the last days of athenian freedom. this change took place in the th olympiad. v. in the th olympiad, draco, being chief archon, was deputed to institute new laws in b. c. . he was a man concerning whom history is singularly brief; we know only that he was of a virtuous and austere renown--that he wrote a great number of verses, as little durable as his laws [ ]. as for the latter--when we learn that they were stern and bloody beyond precedent--we have little difficulty in believing that they were inefficient. vi. i have hastened over this ambiguous and uninteresting period with a rapidity i trust all but antiquaries will forgive. hitherto we have been in the land of shadow--we approach the light. the empty names of apocryphal beings which we have enumerated are for the most part as spectres, so dimly seen as to be probably delusions--invoked to please a fanciful curiosity, but without an object to satisfy the reason or excuse the apparition. if i am blamed for not imitating those who have sought, by weaving together disconnected hints and subtle conjectures, to make a history from legends, to overturn what has been popularly believed, by systems equally contradictory, though more learnedly fabricated;--if i am told that i might have made the chronicle thus briefly given extend to a greater space, and sparkle with more novel speculation, i answer that i am writing the history of men and not of names--to the people and not to scholars--and that no researches however elaborate, no conjectures however ingenious, could draw any real or solid moral from records which leave us ignorant both of the characters of men and the causes of events. what matters who was ion, or whence the first worship of apollo? what matter revolutions or dynasties, ten or twelve centuries before athens emerged from a deserved obscurity?--they had no influence upon her after greatness; enigmas impossible to solve--if solved, but scholastic frivolities. fortunately, as we desire the history of a people, so it is when the athenians become a people, that we pass at once from tradition into history. i pause to take a brief survey of the condition of the rest of greece prior to the age of solon. chapter v. a general survey of greece and the east previous to the time of solon.--the grecian colonies.--the isles.--brief account of the states on the continent.--elis and the olympic games. i. on the north, greece is separated from macedonia by the cambunian mountains; on the west spreads the ionian, on the south and east the aegean sea. its greatest length is two hundred and twenty geographical miles; its greatest width one hundred and forty. no contrast can be more startling than the speck of earth which greece occupies in the map of the world, compared to the space claimed by the grecian influences in the history of the human mind. in that contrast itself is the moral which greece has left us--nor can volumes more emphatically describe the triumph of the intellectual over the material. but as nations, resembling individuals, do not become illustrious from their mere physical proportions; as in both, renown has its moral sources; so, in examining the causes which conduced to the eminence of greece, we cease to wonder at the insignificance of its territories or the splendour of its fame. even in geographical circumstance nature had endowed the country of the hellenes with gifts which amply atoned the narrow girth of its confines. the most southern part of the continent of europe, it contained within itself all the advantages of sea and land; its soil, though unequal in its product, is for the most part fertile and abundant; it is intersected by numerous streams, and protected by chains of mountains; its plains and valleys are adapted to every product most necessary to the support of the human species; and the sun that mellows the fruits of nature is sufficiently tempered not to relax the energies of man. bordered on three sides by the sea, its broad and winding extent of coast early conduced to the spirit of enterprise; and, by innumerable bays and harbours, proffered every allurement to that desire of gain which is the parent of commerce and the basis of civilization. at the period in which greece rose to eminence it was in the very centre of the most advanced and flourishing states of europe and of asia. the attention of its earlier adventurers was directed not only to the shores of italy, but to the gorgeous cities of the east, and the wise and hoary institutions of egypt. if from other nations they borrowed less than has been popularly supposed, the very intercourse with those nations alone sufficed to impel and develop the faculties of an imitative and youthful people;--while, as the spirit of liberty broke out in all the grecian states, producing a restless competition both among the citizens in each city and the cities one with another, no energy was allowed to sleep until the operations of an intellect, perpetually roused and never crippled, carried the universal civilization to its height. nature herself set the boundaries of the river and the mountain to the confines of the several states--the smallness of each concentrated power into a focus--the number of all heightened emulation to a fever. the greek cities had therefore, above all other nations, the advantage of a perpetual collision of mind--a perpetual intercourse with numerous neighbours, with whom intellect was ever at work--with whom experiment knew no rest. greece, taken collectively, was the only free country (with the exception of phoenician states and colonies perhaps equally civilized) in the midst of enlightened despotisms; and in the ancient world, despotism invented and sheltered the arts which liberty refined and perfected [ ]: thus considered, her greatness ceases to be a marvel--the very narrowness of her dominions was a principal cause of it--and to the most favourable circumstances of nature were added circumstances the most favourable of time. if, previous to the age of solon, we survey the histories of asia, we find that quarter of the globe subjected to great and terrible revolutions, which confined and curbed the power of its various despotisms. its empires for the most part built up by the successful invasions of nomad tribes, contained in their very vastness the elements of dissolution. the assyrian nineveh had been conquered by the babylonians and the medes (b. c. ); and babylon, under the new chaldaean dynasty, was attaining the dominant power of western asia. the median monarchy was scarce recovering from the pressure of barbarian foes, and cyrus had not as yet arisen to establish the throne of persia. in asia minor, it is true, the lydian empire had attained to great wealth and luxury, and was the most formidable enemy of the asiatic greeks, yet it served to civilize them even while it awed. the commercial and enterprising phoenicians, now foreboding the march of the babylonian king, who had "taken counsel against tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth," at all times were precluded from the desire of conquest by their divided states [ ], formidable neighbours, and trading habits. in egypt a great change had operated upon the ancient character; the splendid dynasty of the pharaohs was no more. the empire, rent into an oligarchy of twelve princes, had been again united under the sceptre of one by the swords of grecian mercenaries (b. c. ); and neco, the son of the usurper--a man of mighty intellect and vast designs--while he had already adulterated the old egyptian customs with the spirit of phoenician and greek adventure, found his field of action only in the east (defeats josiah b. c. ). as yet, then, no foreign enemy had disturbed the early rise of the several states of greece; they were suffered to form their individual demarcations tranquilly and indelibly; and to progress to that point between social amenities and chivalric hardihood, when, while war is the most sternly encountered, it the most rapidly enlightens. the peace that follows the first war of a half-civilized nation is usually the great era of its intellectual eminence. ii. at this time the colonies in asia minor were far advanced in civilization beyond the grecian continent. along the western coast of that delicious district--on a shore more fertile, under a heaven more bright, than those of the parent states--the aeolians, ionians, and dorians, in a remoter age, had planted settlements and founded cities (probably commenced under penthilus, son of orestes, about b. c. ). the aeolian colonies (the result of the dorian immigrations) [ ] occupied the coasts of commenced mysia and caria--on the mainland twelve cities--the most renowned of which were cyme and smyrna; and the islands of the heccatonnesi, tenedos, and lesbos, the last illustrious above the rest, and consecrated by the muses of sappho and alcaeus. they had also settlements about mount ida. their various towns were independent of each other; but mitylene, in the isle of lesbos, was regarded as their common capital. the trade of mitylene was extensive--its navy formidable. the ionian colonies (probably commenced about b. c.), founded subsequently to the aeolian, but also (though less immediately) a consequence of the dorian revolution, were peopled not only by ionians, but by various nations, led by the sons of codrus. in the islands of samos and chios, on the southern coast of lydia, where caria stretches to the north, they established their voluptuous settlements known by the name "ionia." theirs were the cities of myus, and priene, colophon, ephesus, lebedus, teos, clazomene, erythrae, phocae, and miletus:--in the islands of samos and chios were two cities of the same name as the isles themselves. the chief of the ionian cities at the time on which we enter, and second perhaps in trade and in civilization to none but the great phoenician states, was the celebrated miletus--founded first by the carians--exalted to her renown by the ionians (naval dominion of miletus commenced b. c. ). her streets were the mart of the world; along the euxine and the palus maeotis, her ships rode in the harbours of a hundred of her colonies. here broke the first light of the greek philosophy. but if inferior to this, their imperial city, each of the ionian towns had its title to renown. here flourished already music, and art, and song. the trade of phocae extended to the coasts of italy and gaul. ephesus had not yet risen to its meridian--it was the successor of miletus and phocaea. these ionian states, each independent of the other, were united by a common sanctuary--the panionium (temple of neptune), which might be seen far off on the headland of that mycale afterward the witness of one of the proudest feats of grecian valour. long free, ionia became tributary to the lydian kings, and afterward to the great persian monarchy. in the islands of cos and rhodes, and on the southern shores of caria, spread the dorian colonies--planted subsequently to the ionian by gradual immigrations. if in importance and wealth the aeolian were inferior to the ionian colonies, so were the dorian colonies to the aeolian. six cities (ialyssus, camirus, and lindus, in rhodes; in cos, a city called from the island; cnidus and halicarnassus, on the mainland) were united, like the ionians, by a common sanctuary--the temple of apollo triopius. besides these colonies--the black sea, the palus maeotis, the propontis, the coasts of lower italy, the eastern and southern shores of sicily [ ], syracuse, the mightiest of grecian offspring, and the daughter of corinth,--the african cyrene,--not enumerating settlements more probably referable to a later date, attested the active spirit and extended navigation of early greece. the effect of so vast and flourishing a colonization was necessarily prodigious upon the moral and intellectual spirit of the mother land. the seeds scattered over the earth bore their harvests to her garner. iii. among the grecian isles, the glory of minos had long passed from crete (about b. c.). the monarchical form of government had yielded to the republican, but in its worst shape--the oligarchic. but the old cretan institutions still lingered in the habits of private life;--while the jealousies and commotions of its several cities, each independent, exhausted within itself those powers which, properly concentrated and wisely directed, might have placed crete at the head of greece. cyprus, equally favoured by situation with crete, and civilized by the constant influence of the phoenicians, once its masters, was attached to its independence, but not addicted to warlike enterprise. it was, like crete, an instance of a state which seemed unconscious of the facilities for command and power which it had received from nature. the island of corcyra (a corinthian colony) had not yet arrived at its day of power. this was reserved for that period when, after the persian war, it exchanged an oligarchic for a democratic action, which wore away, indeed, the greatness of the country in its struggles for supremacy, obstinately and fatally resisted by the antagonist principle. of the cyclades--those beautiful daughters of crete--delos, sacred to apollo, and possessed principally by the ionians, was the most eminent. but paros boasted not only its marble quarries, but the valour of its inhabitants, and the vehement song of archilochus. euboea, neighbouring attica, possessed two chief cities, eretria and chalcis, governed apparently by timocracies, and frequently at war with each other. though of importance as connected with the subsequent history of athens, and though the colonization of chalcis was considerable, the fame of euboea was scarcely proportioned to its extent as one of the largest islands of the aegean; and was far outshone by the small and rocky aegina--the rival of athens, and at this time her superior in maritime power and commercial enterprise. colonized by epidaurus, aegina soon became independent; but the violence of party, and the power of the oligarchy, while feeding its energies, prepared its downfall. iv. as i profess only to delineate in this work the rise and fall of the athenians, so i shall not deem it at present necessary to do more than glance at the condition of the continent of greece previous to the time of solon. sparta alone will demand a more attentive survey. taking our station on the citadel of athens, we behold, far projecting into the sea, the neighbouring country of megaris, with megara for its city. it was originally governed by twelve kings; the last, hyperion, being assassinated, its affairs were administered by magistrates, and it was one of the earliest of the countries of greece which adopted republican institutions. nevertheless, during the reigns of the earlier kings of attica, it was tributary to them [ ]. we have seen how the dorians subsequently wrested it from the athenians [ ]; and it underwent long and frequent warfare for the preservation of its independence from the dorians of corinth. about the year , a powerful citizen named theagenes wrested the supreme power from the stern aristocracy which the dorian conquest had bequeathed, though the yoke of corinth was shaken off. the tyrant--for such was the appellation given to a successful usurper--was subsequently deposed, and the democratic government restored; and although that democracy was one of the most turbulent in greece, it did not prevent this little state from ranking among the most brilliant actors in the persian war. v. between attica and megaris we survey the isle of salamis--the right to which we shall find contested both by athens and the megarians. vi. turning our eyes now to the land, we may behold, bordering attica--from which a mountainous tract divides it--the mythological boeotia, the domain of the phoenician cadmus, and the birthplace of polynices and oedipus. here rise the immemorial mountains of helicon and cithaeron--the haunt of the muses; here pentheus fell beneath the raging bands of the bacchanals, and actaeon endured the wrath of the goddess of the woods; here rose the walls of thebes to the harmony of amphion's lyre--and still, in the time of pausanias, the thebans showed, to the admiration of the traveller, the place where cadmus sowed the dragon-seed--the images of the witches sent by juno to lengthen the pains of alcmena--the wooden statue wrought by daedalus-- and the chambers of harmonia and of semele. no land was more sanctified by all the golden legends of poetry--and of all greece no people was less alive to the poetical inspiration. devoted, for the most part, to pastoral pursuits, the boeotians were ridiculed by their lively neighbours for an inert and sluggish disposition--a reproach which neither the song of hesiod and pindar, nor the glories of thebes and plataea, were sufficient to repel. as early as the twelfth century (b. c.) royalty was abolished in boeotia--its territory was divided into several independent states, of which thebes was the principal, and plataea and cheronaea among the next in importance. each had its own peculiar government; and, before the persian war, oligarchies had obtained the ascendency in these several states. they were united in a league, of which thebes was the head; but the ambition and power of that city kept the rest in perpetual jealousy, and weakened, by a common fear and ill-smothered dissensions, a country otherwise, from the size of its territories [ ] and the number of its inhabitants, calculated to be the principal power of greece. its affairs were administered by eleven magistrates, or boeotarchs, elected by four assemblies held in the four districts into which boeotia was divided. vii. beyond boeotia lies phocis, originally colonized, according to the popular tradition, by phocus from corinth. shortly after the dorian irruption, monarchy was abolished and republican institutions substituted. in phocis were more than twenty states independent of the general phocian government, but united in a congress held at stated times on the road between daulis and delphi. phocis contained also the city of crissa, with its harbour and the surrounding territory inhabited by a fierce and piratical population, and the sacred city of delphi, on the southwest of parnassus. viii. of the oracle of delphi i have before spoken--it remains only now to point out to the reader the great political cause of its rise into importance. it had been long established, but without any brilliant celebrity, when happened that dorian revolution which is called the "return of the heraclidae." the dorian conquerors had early steered their course by the advice of the delphian oracle, which appeared artfully to favour their pretensions, and which, adjoining the province of doris, had imposed upon them the awe, and perhaps felt for them the benevolence, of a sacred neighbour. their ultimate triumph not only gave a striking and supreme repute to the oracle, but secured the protection and respect of a race now become the most powerful of greece. from that time no dorian city ever undertook an enterprise without consulting the pythian voice; the example became general, and the shrine of the deity was enriched by offerings not only from the piety of greece, but the credulous awe of barbarian kings. perhaps, though its wealth was afterward greater, its authority was never so unquestioned as for a period dating from about a century preceding the laws of solon to the end of the persian war. delphi was wholly an independent state, administered by a rigid aristocracy [ ]; and though protected by the amphictyonic council, received from its power none of those haughty admonitions with which the defenders of a modern church have often insulted their charge. the temple was so enriched by jewels, statues, and vessels of gold, that at the time of the invasion of xerxes its wealth was said to equal in value the whole of the persian armament and so wonderful was its magnificence, that it appeared more like the olympus of the gods than a human temple in their honour. on the ancient delphi stands now the monastery of kastri. but still you discover the terraces once crowded by fans--still, amid gloomy chasms, bubbles the castalian spring--and yet permitted to the pilgrim's gaze is the rocky bath of the pythia, and the lofty halls of the corycian cave. ix. beyond phocis lies the country of the locrians, divided into three tribes independent of each other--the locri ozolae, the locri opuntii, the locri epicnemidii. the locrians (undistinguished in history) changed in early times royal for aristocratic institutions. the nurse of the dorian race--the small province of doris--borders the locrian territory to the south of mount oeta; while to the west of locris spreads the mountainous aetolia, ranging northward from pindus to the ambracian bay. aetolia gave to the heroic age the names of meleager and diomed, but subsequently fell into complete obscurity. the inhabitants were rude and savage, divided into tribes, nor emerged into importance until the latest era of the grecian history. the political constitution of aetolia, in the time referred to, is unknown. x. acarnania, the most western country of central greece, appears little less obscure at this period than aetolia, on which it borders; with aetolia it arose into eminence in the macedonian epoch of greek history. xi. northern greece contains two countries--thessaly and epirus. in thessaly was situated the long and lofty mountain of the divine olympus, and to the more southern extreme rose pindus and oeta. its inhabitants were wild and hardy, and it produced the most celebrated breed of horses in greece. it was from thessaly that the hellenes commenced their progress over greece--it was in the kingdoms of thessaly that the race of achilles held their sway; but its later history was not calculated to revive the fame of the homeric hero; it appears to have shared but little of the republican spirit of the more famous states of greece. divided into four districts (thessaliotis, pelasgiotis, phthiotis, and hestiaeotis), the various states of thessaly were governed either by hereditary princes or nobles of vast possessions. an immense population of serfs, or penestae, contributed to render the chiefs of thessaly powerful in war and magnificent in peace. their common country fell into insignificance from the want of a people--but their several courts were splendid from the wealth of a nobility. xii. epirus was of somewhat less extent than thessaly, and far less fertile; it was inhabited by various tribes, some greek, some barbarian, the chief of which was the molossi, governed by kings who boasted their descent from achilles. epirus has little importance or interest in history until the sun of athens had set, during the ascendency of the macedonian kings. it contained the independent state of ambracia, peopled from corinth, and governed by republican institutions. here also were the sacred oaks of the oracular dodona. xiii. we now come to the states of the peloponnesus, which contained eight countries. beyond megaris lay the territory of corinth: its broad bay adapted it for commerce, of which it availed itself early; even in the time of homer it was noted for its wealth. it was subdued by the dorians, and for five generations the royal power rested with the descendants of aletes [ ], of the family of the heraclidae. by a revolution, the causes of which are unknown to us, the kingdom then passed to bacchis, the founder of an illustrious race (the bacchiadae), who reigned first as kings, and subsequently as yearly magistrates, under the name of prytanes. in the latter period the bacchiadae were certainly not a single family, but a privileged class--they intermarried only with each other,--the administrative powers were strictly confined to them --and their policy, if exclusive, seems to have been vigorous and brilliant. this government was destroyed, as under its sway the people increased in wealth and importance; a popular movement, headed by cypselus, a man of birth and fortune, replaced an able oligarchy by an abler demagogue (b. c. ). cypselus was succeeded by the celebrated heriander (b. c. ), a man, whose vices were perhaps exaggerated, whose genius was indisputable. under his nephew psammetichus, corinth afterward regained its freedom. the corinthians, in spite of every change in the population, retained their luxury to the last, and the epistles of alciphron, in the second century after christ, note the ostentation of the few and the poverty of the many. at the time now referred to, corinth--the genoa of greece--was high in civilization, possessed of a considerable naval power, and in art and commerce was the sole rival on the grecian continent to the graceful genius and extensive trade of the ionian colonies. xiv. stretching from corinth along the coast opposite attica, we behold the ancient argolis. its three principal cities were argos, mycenae, and epidaurus. mycenae, at the time of the trojan war, was the most powerful of the states of greece; and argos, next to sicyori, was reputed the most ancient. argolis suffered from the dorian revolution, and shortly afterward the regal power, gradually diminishing, lapsed into republicanism [ ]. argolis contained various independent states--one to every principal city. xv. on the other side of corinth, almost opposite argolis, we find the petty state of sicyon. this was the most ancient of the grecian states, and was conjoined to the kingdom of agamemnon at the trojan war. at first it was possessed by ionians, expelled subsequently by the dorians, and not long after seems to have lapsed into a democratic republic. a man of low birth, orthagoras, obtained the tyranny, and it continued in his family for a century, the longest tyranny in greece, because the gentlest. sicyon was of no marked influence at the period we are about to enter, though governed by an able tyrant, clisthenes, whose policy it was to break the dorian nobility, while uniting, as in a common interest, popular laws and regal authority. xvi. beyond sicyon we arrive at achaia. we have already seen that this district was formerly possessed by the ionians, who were expelled by some of the achaeans who escaped the dorian yoke. governed first by a king, it was afterward divided into twelve republics, leagued together. it was long before achaia appeared on that heated stage of action, which allured the more restless spirits of athens and lacedaemon. xvii. we now pause at elis, which had also felt the revolution of the heraclidae, and was possessed by their comrades the aetolians. the state of elis underwent the general change from monarchy to republicanism; but republicanism in its most aristocratic form;-- growing more popular at the period of the persian wars, but, without the convulsions which usually mark the progress of democracy. the magistrates of the commonwealth were the superintendents of the sacred games. and here, diversifying this rapid, but perhaps to the general reader somewhat tedious survey of the political and geographical aspect of the states of greece, we will take this occasion to examine the nature and the influence of those celebrated contests, which gave to elis its true title to immortality. xviii. the origin of the olympic games is lost in darkness. the legends which attribute their first foundation to the times of demigods and heroes, are so far consonant with truth, that exhibitions of physical strength made the favourite diversion of that wild and barbarous age which is consecrated to the heroic. it is easy to perceive that the origin of athletic games preceded the date of civilization; that, associated with occasions of festival, they, like festivals, assumed a sacred character, and that, whether first instituted in honour of a funeral, or in celebration of a victory, or in reverence to a god,--religion combined with policy to transmit an inspiring custom to a more polished posterity. and though we cannot literally give credit to the tradition which assigns the restoration of these games to lycurgus, in concert with iphitus, king of elis, and cleosthenes of pisa, we may suppose at least that to elis, to pisa, and to sparta, the institution was indebted for its revival. the dorian oracle of delphi gave its sanction to a ceremony, the restoration of which was intended to impose a check upon the wars and disorders of the peloponnesus. thus authorized, the festival was solemnized at the temple of jupiter, at olympia, near pisa, a town in elis. it was held every fifth year; it lasted four days. it consisted in the celebration of games in honour of jupiter and hercules. the interval between each festival was called, an olympiad. after the fiftieth olympiad (b. c. ), the whole management of the games, and the choice of the judges, were monopolized by the eleans. previous to each festival, officers, deputed by the eleans, proclaimed a sacred truce. whatever hostilities were existent in greece, terminated for the time; sufficient interval was allowed to attend and to return from the games. [ ] during this period the sacred territory of elis was regarded as under the protection of the gods--none might traverse it armed. the eleans arrogated indeed the right of a constant sanctity to perpetual peace; and the right, though sometimes invaded, seems generally to have been conceded. the people of this territory became, as it were, the guardians of a sanctuary; they interfered little in the turbulent commotions of the rest of greece; they did not fortify their capital; and, the wealthiest people of the peloponnesus, they enjoyed their opulence in tranquillity;--their holy character contenting their ambition. and a wonderful thing it was in the midst of those warlike, stirring, restless tribes--that solitary land, with its plane grove bordering the alpheus, adorned with innumerable and hallowed monuments and statues--unvisited by foreign wars and civil commotion--a whole state one temple! at first only the foot-race was exhibited; afterward were added wrestling, leaping, quoiting, darting, boxing, a more complicated species of foot-race (the diaulus and dolichus), and the chariot and horse-races. the pentathlon was a contest of five gymnastic exercises combined. the chariot-races [ ] preceded those of the riding horses, as in grecian war the use of chariots preceded the more scientific employment of cavalry, and were the most attractive and splendid part of the exhibition. sometimes there were no less than forty chariots on the ground. the rarity of horses, and the expense of their training, confined, without any law to that effect, the chariot-race to the highborn and the wealthy. it was consistent with the vain alcibiades to decline the gymnastic contests in which his physical endowments might have ensured him success, because his competitors were not the equals to the long-descended heir of the alcmaeonidae. in the equestrian contests his success was unprecedented. he brought seven chariots into the field, and bore off at the same time the first, second, and fourth prize [ ]. although women [ ], with the exception of the priestesses of the neighbouring fane of ceres, were not permitted to witness the engagements, they were yet allowed to contend by proxy in the chariot-races; and the ladies of macedon especially availed themselves of the privilege. no sanguinary contest with weapons, no gratuitous ferocities, no struggle between man and beast (the graceless butcheries of rome), polluted the festival dedicated to the olympian god. even boxing with the cestus was less esteemed than the other athletic exercises, and was excluded from the games exhibited by alexander in his asiatic invasions [ ]. neither did any of those haughty assumptions of lineage or knightly blood, which characterize the feudal tournament, distinguish between greek and greek. the equestrian contests were indeed, from their expense, limited to the opulent, but the others were impartially free to the poor as to the rich, the peasant as the noble,--the greeks forbade monopoly in glory. but although thus open to all greeks, the stadium was impenetrably closed to barbarians. taken from his plough, the boor obtained the garland for which the monarchs of the east were held unworthy to contend, and to which the kings of the neighbouring macedon were forbidden to aspire till their hellenic descent had been clearly proved [ ]. thus periodically were the several states reminded of their common race, and thus the national name and character were solemnly preserved: yet, like the amphictyonic league, while the olympic festival served to maintain the great distinction between foreigners and greeks, it had but little influence in preventing the hostile contests of greeks themselves. the very emulation between the several states stimulated their jealousy of each other: and still, if the greeks found their countrymen in greeks they found also in greeks their rivals. we can scarcely conceive the vast importance attached to victory in these games [ ]; it not only immortalized the winner, it shed glory upon his tribe. it is curious to see the different honours characteristically assigned to the conqueror in different states. if athenian, he was entitled to a place by the magistrates in the prytaneum; if a spartan, to a prominent station in the field. to conquer at elis was renown for life, "no less illustrious to a greek than consulship to a roman!" [ ] the haughtiest nobles, the wealthiest princes, the most successful generals, contended for the prize [ ]. and the prize (after the seventh olympiad) was a wreath of the wild olive! numerous other and similar games were established throughout greece. of these, next to the olympic, the most celebrated, and the only national ones, were the pythian at delphi, the nemean in argolis, the isthmian in corinth; yet elsewhere the prize was of value; at all the national ones it was but a garland--a type of the eternal truth, that praise is the only guerdon of renown. the olive-crown was nothing!-- the shouts of assembled greece--the showers of herbs and flowers--the banquet set apart for the victor--the odes of imperishable poets--the public register which transmitted to posterity his name--the privilege of a statue in the altis--the return home through a breach in the walls (denoting by a noble metaphor, "that a city which boasts such men has slight need of walls" [ ]), the first seat in all public spectacles; the fame, in short, extended to his native city-- bequeathed to his children--confirmed by the universal voice wherever the greek civilization spread; this was the true olive-crown to the olympic conqueror! no other clime can furnish a likeness to these festivals: born of a savage time, they retained the vigorous character of an age of heroes, but they took every adjunct from the arts and the graces of civilization. to the sacred ground flocked all the power, and the rank, and the wealth, and the intellect, of greece. to that gorgeous spectacle came men inspired by a nobler ambition than that of the arena. here the poet and the musician could summon an audience to their art. if to them it was not a field for emulation [ ], it was at least a theatre of display. xix. the uses of these games were threefold;-- st, the uniting all greeks by one sentiment of national pride, and the memory of a common race; dly, the inculcation of hardy discipline--of physical education throughout every state, by teaching that the body had its honours as well as the intellect--a theory conducive to health in peace--and in those ages when men fought hand to hand, and individual strength and skill were the nerves of the army, to success in war; but, dly, and principally, its uses were in sustaining and feeding as a passion, as a motive, as an irresistible incentive--the desire of glory! that desire spread through all classes--it animated all tribes--it taught that true rewards are not in gold and gems, but in men's opinions. the ambition of the altis established fame as a common principle of action. what chivalry did for the few, the olympic contests effected for the many--they made a knighthood of a people. if, warmed for a moment from the gravity of the historic muse, we might conjure up the picture of this festival, we would invoke the imagination of the reader to that sacred ground decorated with the profusest triumphs of grecian art--all greece assembled from her continent, her colonies, her isles--war suspended--a sabbath of solemnity and rejoicing--the spartan no longer grave, the athenian forgetful of the forum--the highborn thessalian, the gay corinthian-- the lively gestures of the asiatic ionian;--suffering the various events of various times to confound themselves in one recollection of the past, he may see every eye turned from the combatants to one majestic figure--hear every lip murmuring a single name [ ]-- glorious in greater fields: olympia itself is forgotten. who is the spectacle of the day? themistocles, the conqueror of salamis, and the saviour of greece! again--the huzzas of countless thousands following the chariot-wheels of the competitors--whose name is shouted forth, the victor without a rival!--it is alcibiades, the destroyer of athens! turn to the temple of the olympian god, pass the brazen gates, proceed through the columned aisles [ ], what arrests the awe and wonder of the crowd! seated on a throne of ebon and of ivory, of gold and gems--the olive-crown on his head, in his right hand the statue of victory, in his left; wrought of all metals, the cloud-compelling sceptre, behold the colossal masterpiece of phidias, the homeric dream imbodied [ ]--the majesty of the olympian jove! enter the banquet-room of the conquerors--to whose verse, hymned in a solemn and mighty chorus, bends the listening spartan--it is the verse of the dorian pindar! in that motley and glittering space (the fair of olympia, the mart of every commerce, the focus of all intellect), join the throng, earnest and breathless, gathered round that sunburnt traveller;--now drinking in the wild account of babylonian gardens, or of temples whose awful deity no lip may name--now, with clinched hands and glowing cheeks, tracking the march of xerxes along exhausted rivers, and over bridges that spanned the sea--what moves, what hushes that mighty audience? it is herodotus reading his history! [ ] let us resume our survey. xx. midland, in the peloponnesus, lies the pastoral arcady. besides the rivers of alpheus and erymanthus, it is watered by the gloomy stream of styx; and its western part, intersected by innumerable brooks, is the land of pan. its inhabitants were long devoted to the pursuits of the herdsman and the shepherd, and its ancient government was apparently monarchical. the dorian irruption spared this land of poetical tradition, which the oracle of delphi took under no unsuitable protection, and it remained the eldest and most unviolated sanctuary of the old pelasgic name. but not very long after the return of the heraclidae, we find the last king stoned by his subjects, and democratic institutions established. it was then parcelled out into small states, of which tegea and mantinea were the chief. xxi. messenia, a fertile and level district, which lies to the west of sparta, underwent many struggles with the latter power; and this part of its history, which is full of interest, the reader will find briefly narrated in that of the spartans, by whom it was finally subdued. being then incorporated with that country, we cannot, at the period of history we are about to enter, consider messenia as a separate and independent state. [ ] and now, completing the survey of the peloponnesus, we rest at laconia, the country of the spartans. chapter vi. return of the heraclidae.--the spartan constitution and habits.--the first and second messenian war. i. we have already seen, that while the dorians remained in thessaly, the achaeans possessed the greater part of the peloponnesus. but, under the title of the return of the heraclidae (or the descendants of hercules), an important and lasting revolution established the dorians in the kingdoms of agamemnon and menelaus. the true nature of this revolution has only been rendered more obscure by modern ingenuity, which has abandoned the popular accounts for suppositions still more improbable and romantic. the popular accounts run thus:--persecuted by eurystheus, king of argos, the sons of hercules, with their friends and followers, are compelled to take refuge in attica. assisted by the athenians, they defeat and slay eurystheus, and regain the peloponnesus. a pestilence, regarded as an ominous messenger from offended heaven, drives them again into attica. an oracle declares that they shall succeed after the third fruit by the narrow passage at sea. wrongly interpreting the oracle, in the third year they make for the corinthian isthmus. at the entrance of the peloponnesus they are met by the assembled arms of the achaeans, ionians, and arcadians. hyllus, the eldest son of hercules, proposes the issue of a single combat. echemus, king of tegea, is selected by the peloponnesians. he meets and slays hyllus, and the heraclidae engage not to renew the invasion for one hundred years. nevertheless, cleodaeus, the son, and aristomachus, the grandson, of hyllus, successively attempt to renew the enterprise, and in vain. the three sons of aristomachus (aristodemus, temenus, and cresphontes), receive from apollo himself the rightful interpretation of the oracle. it was by the straits of rhium, across a channel which rendered the distance between the opposing shores only five stadia, that they were ordained to pass; and by the return of the third fruit, the third generation was denoted. the time had now arrived:--with the assistance of the dorians, the aetolians, and the locrians, the descendants of hercules crossed the strait, and established their settlement in peloponnesus (b. c. ). ii. whether in the previous expeditions the dorians had assisted the heraclidae, is a matter of dispute--it is not a matter of importance. whether these heraclidae were really descendants of the achaean prince, and the rightful heritors of a peloponnesian throne, is a point equally contested and equally frivolous. it is probable enough that the bold and warlike tribe of thessaly might have been easily allured, by the pretext of reinstating the true royal line, into an enterprise which might plant them in safer and more wide domains, and that while the prince got the throne, the confederates obtained the country [ ]. all of consequence to establish is, that the dorians shared in the expedition, which was successful--that by time and valour they obtained nearly the whole of the peloponnesus--that they transplanted the doric character and institutions to their new possessions, and that the return of the heraclidae is, in fact, the popular name for the conquest of the dorians. whatever distinction existed between the achaean heraclidae and the doric race, had probably been much effaced during the long absence of the former among foreign tribes, and after their establishment in the peloponnesus it soon became entirely lost. but still the legend that assigned the blood of hercules to the royalty of sparta received early and implicit credence, and cleomenes, king of that state, some centuries afterward, declared himself not doric, but achaean. of the time employed in consummating the conquest of the invaders we are unable to determine--but, by degrees, sparta, argos, corinth, and messene, became possessed by the dorians; the aetolian confederates obtained elis. some of the achaeans expelled the ionians from the territory they held in the peloponnesus, and gave to it the name it afterward retained, of achaia. the expelled ionians took refuge with the athenians, their kindred race. the fated house of pelops swept away by this irruption, sparta fell to the lot of procles and eurysthenes [ ], sons of aristodemus, fifth in descent from hercules; between these princes the royal power was divided, so that the constitution always acknowledged two kings--one from each of the heracleid families. the elder house was called the agids, or descendants of agis, son of eurysthenes; the latter, the eurypontids, from eurypon, descendant of procles. although sparta, under the new dynasty, appears to have soon arrogated the pre-eminence over the other states of the peloponnesus, it was long before she achieved the conquest even of the cities in her immediate neighbourhood. the achaeans retained the possession of amyclae, built upon a steep rock, and less than three miles from sparta, for more than two centuries and a half after the first invasion of the dorians. and here the achaeans guarded the venerable tombs of cassandra and agamemnon. iii. the consequences of the dorian invasion, if slowly developed, were great and lasting. that revolution not only changed the character of the peloponnesus--it not only called into existence the iron race of sparta--but the migrations which it caused made the origin of the grecian colonies in asia minor. it developed also those seeds of latent republicanism which belonged to the dorian aristocracies, and which finally supplanted the monarchical government--through nearly the whole of civilized greece. the revolution once peacefully consummated, migrations no longer disturbed to any extent the continent of greece, and the various tribes became settled in their historic homes. iv. the history of sparta, till the time of lycurgus, is that of a state maintaining itself with difficulty amid surrounding and hostile neighbours; the power of the chiefs diminished the authority of the kings; and while all without was danger, all within was turbulence. still the very evils to which the spartans were subjected--their paucity of numbers--their dissensions with their neighbours--their pent up and encompassed situation in their mountainous confines--even the preponderating power of the warlike chiefs, among whom the unequal divisions of property produced constant feuds--served to keep alive the elements of the great doric character; and left it the task of the first legislative genius rather to restore and to harmonize, than to invent and create. as i am writing the history, not of greece, but of athens, i do not consider it necessary that i should detail the legendary life of lycurgus. modern writers have doubted his existence, but without sufficient reason:--such assaults on our belief are but the amusements of skepticism. all the popular accounts of lycurgus agree in this-- that he was the uncle of the king (charilaus, an infant), and held the rank of protector--that unable successfully to confront a powerful faction raised against him, he left sparta and travelled into crete, where all the ancient doric laws and manners were yet preserved, vigorous and unadulterated. there studying the institutions of minos, he beheld the model for those of sparta. thence he is said to have passed into asia minor, and to have been the first who collected and transported to greece the poems of homer [ ], hitherto only partially known in that country. according to some writers, he travelled also into egypt; and could we credit one authority, which does not satisfy even the credulous plutarch, he penetrated into spain and libya, and held converse with the gymnosophists of india. returned to sparta, after many solicitations, he found the state in disorder: no definite constitution appears to have existed; no laws were written. the division of the regal authority between two kings must have produced jealousy--and jealousy, faction. and the power so divided weakened the monarchic energy without adding to the liberties of the people. a turbulent nobility--rude, haughty mountain chiefs-- made the only part of the community that could benefit by the weakness of the crown, and feuds among themselves prevented their power from becoming the regular and organized authority of a government [ ]. such disorders induced prince and people to desire a reform; the interference of lycurgus was solicited; his rank and his travels gave him importance; and he had the wisdom to increase it by obtaining from delphi (the object of the implicit reverence of the dorians) an oracle in his favour. thus called upon and thus encouraged, lycurgus commenced his task. i enter not into the discussion whether he framed an entirely new constitution, or whether he restored the spirit of one common to his race and not unfamiliar to sparta. common sense seems to me sufficient to assure us of the latter. let those who please believe that one man, without the intervention of arms--not as a conqueror, but a friend--could succeed in establishing a constitution, resting not upon laws, but manners--not upon force, but usage--utterly hostile to all the tastes, desires, and affections of human nature: moulding every the minutest detail of social life into one system--that system offering no temptation to sense, to ambition, to the desire of pleasure, or the love of gain, or the propensity to ease--but painful, hard, steril, and unjoyous;--let those who please believe that a system so created could at once be received, be popularly embraced, and last uninterrupted, unbroken, and without exciting even the desire of change for four hundred years, without having had any previous foundation in the habits of a people--without being previously rooted by time, custom, superstition, and character into their breasts. for my part, i know that all history furnishes no other such example; and i believe that no man was ever so miraculously endowed with the power to conquer nature. [ ] but we have not the smallest reason, the slightest excuse, for so pliant a credulity. we look to crete, in which, previous to lycurgus, the dorians had established their laws and customs, and we see at once the resemblance to the leading features of the institutions of lycurgus; we come with aristotle to the natural conclusion, that what was familiar to the dorian crete was not unknown to the dorian sparta, and that lycurgus did not innovate, but restore and develop, the laws and the manners which, under domestic dissensions, might have undergone a temporary and superficial change, but which were deeply implanted in the national character and the doric habits. that the regulations of lycurgus were not regarded as peculiar to sparta, but as the most perfect development of the dorian constitution, we learn from pindar [ ], when he tells us that "the descendants of pamphylus and of the heraclidae wish always to retain the doric institutions of aegimius." thus regarded, the legislation of lycurgus loses its miraculous and improbable character, while we still acknowledge lycurgus himself as a great and profound statesman, adopting the only theory by which reform can be permanently wrought, and suiting the spirit of his laws to the spirit of the people they were to govern. when we know that his laws were not written, that he preferred engraving them only on the hearts of his countrymen, we know at once that he must have legislated in strict conformity to their early prepossessions and favourite notions. that the laws were unwritten would alone be a proof how little he introduced of what was alien and unknown. v. i proceed to give a brief, but i trust a sufficient outline, of the spartan constitution, social and political, without entering into prolix and frivolous discussions as to what was effected or restored by lycurgus--what by a later policy. there was at sparta a public assembly of the people (called alia), as common to other doric states, which usually met every full moon--upon great occasions more often. the decision of peace and war--the final ratification of all treaties with foreign powers--the appointment to the office of counsellor, and other important dignities--the imposition of new laws--a disputed succession to the throne,--were among those matters which required the assent of the people. thus there was the show and semblance of a democracy, but we shall find that the intention and origin of the constitution were far from democratic. "if the people should opine perversely, the elders and the princes shall dissent." such was an addition to the rhetra of lycurgus. the popular assembly ratified laws, but it could propose none--it could not even alter or amend the decrees that were laid before it. it appears that only the princes, the magistrates, and foreign ambassadors had the privilege to address it. the main business of the state was prepared by the gerusia, or council of elders, a senate consisting of thirty members, inclusive of the two kings, who had each but a simple vote in the assembly. this council was in its outline like the assemblies common to every dorian state. each senator was required to have reached the age of sixty; he was chosen by the popular assembly, not by vote, but by acclamation. the mode of election was curious. the candidates presented themselves successively before the assembly, while certain judges were enclosed in an adjacent room where they could hear the clamour of the people without seeing the person, of the candidate. on him whom they adjudged to have been most applauded the election fell. a mode of election open to every species of fraud, and justly condemned by aristotle as frivolous and puerile [ ]. once elected, the senator retained his dignity for life: he was even removed from all responsibility to the people. that mueller should consider this an admirable institution, "a splendid monument of early grecian customs," seems to me not a little extraordinary. i can conceive no elective council less practically good than one to which election is for life, and in which power is irresponsible. that the institution was felt to be faulty is apparent, not because it was abolished, but because its more important functions became gradually invaded and superseded by a third legislative power, of which i shall speak presently. the original duties of the gerusia were to prepare the decrees and business to be submitted to the people; they had the power of inflicting death or degradation without written laws, they interpreted custom, and were intended to preserve and transmit it. the power of the kings may be divided into two heads--power at home--power abroad: power as a prince--power as a general. in the first it was limited and inconsiderable. although the kings presided over a separate tribunal, the cases brought before their court related only to repairs of roads, to the superintendence of the intercourse with other states, and to questions of inheritance and adoption. when present at the council they officiated as presidents, but without any power of dictation; and, if absent, their place seems easily to have been supplied. they united the priestly with the regal character; and to the descendants of a demigod a certain sanctity was attached, visible in the ceremonies both at demise and at the accession to the throne, which appeared to herodotus to savour rather of oriental than hellenic origin. but the respect which the spartan monarch received neither endowed him with luxury nor exempted him from control. he was undistinguished by his garb--his mode of life, from the rest of the citizens. he was subjected to other authorities, could be reprimanded, fined, suspended, exiled, put to death. if he went as ambassador to foreign states, spies were not unfrequently sent with him, and colleagues the most avowedly hostile to his person associated in the mission. thus curbed and thus confined was his authority at home, and his prerogative as a king. but by law he was the leader of the spartan armies. he assumed the command--he crossed the boundaries, and the limited magistrate became at once an imperial despot! [ ] no man could question--no law circumscribed his power. he raised armies, collected money in foreign states, and condemned to death without even the formality of a trial. nothing, in short, curbed his authority, save his responsibility on return. he might be a tyrant as a general; but he was to account for the tyranny when he relapsed into a king. but this distinction was one of the wisest parts of the spartan system; for war requires in a leader all the license of a despot; and triumph, decision, and energy can only be secured by the unfettered exercise of a single will. nor did early rome owe the extent of her conquests to any cause more effective than the unlicensed discretion reposed by the senate in the general. [ ] vi. we have now to examine the most active and efficient part of the government, viz., the institution of the ephors. like the other components of the spartan constitution, the name and the office of ephor were familiar to other states in the great dorian family; but in sparta the institution soon assumed peculiar features, or rather, while the inherent principles of the monarchy and the gerusia remained stationary, those of the ephors became expanded and developed. it is clear that the later authority of the ephors was never designed by lycurgus or the earlier legislators. it is entirely at variance with the confined aristocracy which was the aim of the spartan, and of nearly every genuine doric [ ] constitution. it made a democracy as it were by stealth. this powerful body consisted of five persons, chosen annually by the people. in fact, they may be called the representatives of the popular will--the committee, as it were, of the popular council. their original power seems to have been imperfectly designed; it soon became extensive and encroaching. at first the ephoralty was a tribunal for civil, as the gerusia was for criminal, causes; it exercised a jurisdiction over the helots and perioeci, over the public market, and the public revenue. but its character consisted in this:--it was strictly a popular body, chosen by the people for the maintenance of their interests. agreeably to this character, it soon appears arrogating the privilege of instituting an inquiry into the conduct of all officials except the counsellors. every eighth year, selecting a dark night when the moon withheld her light, the ephors watched the aspect of the heavens, and if any shooting star were visible in the expanse, the kings were adjudged to have offended the deity and were suspended from their office until acquitted of their guilt by the oracle of delphi or the priests at olympia. nor was this prerogative of adjudging the descendants of hercules confined to a superstitious practice: they summoned the king before them, no less than the meanest of the magistrates, to account for imputed crimes. in a court composed of the counsellors (or gerusia), and various other magistrates, they appeared at once as accusers and judges; and, dispensing with appeal to a popular assembly, subjected even royalty to a trial of life and death. before the persian war they sat in judgment on the king cleomenes for an accusation of bribery;--just after the persian war, they resolved upon the execution of the regent pausanias. in lesser offences they acted without the formality of this council, and fined or reprimanded their kings for the affability of their manners, or the size [ ] of their wives. over education--over social habits-over the regulations relative to ambassadors and strangers--over even the marshalling of armies and the number of troops, they extended their inquisitorial jurisdiction. they became, in fact, the actual government of the state. it is easy to perceive that it was in the nature of things that the institution of the ephors should thus encroach until it became the prevalent power. its influence was the result of the vicious constitution of the gerusia, or council. had that assembly been properly constituted, there would have been no occasion for the ephors. the gerusia was evidently meant, by the policy of lycurgus, and by its popular mode of election, for the only representative assembly. but the absurdity of election for life, with irresponsible powers, was sufficient to limit its acceptation among the people. of two assemblies--the ephors and the gerusia--we see the one elected annually, the other for life--the one responsible to the people, the other not--the one composed of men, busy, stirring, ambitious, in the vigour of life--the other of veterans, past the ordinary stimulus of exertion, and regarding the dignity of office rather as the reward of a life than the opening to ambition. of two such assemblies it is easy to foretell which would lose, and which would augment, authority. it is also easy to see, that as the ephors increased in importance, they, and not the gerusia, would become the check to the kingly authority. to whom was the king accountable? to the people:--the ephors were the people's representatives! this part of the spartan constitution has not, i think, been sufficiently considered in what seems to me its true light; namely, that of a representative government. the ephoralty was the focus of the popular power. like an american congress or an english house of commons, it prevented the action of the people by acting in behalf of the people. to representatives annually chosen, the multitude cheerfully left the management of their interests [ ]. thus it was true that the ephors prevented the encroachments of the popular assembly;--but how? by encroaching themselves, and in the name of the people! when we are told that sparta was free from those democratic innovations constant in ionian states, we are not told truly. the spartan populace was constantly innovating, not openly, as in the noisy agora of athens, but silently and ceaselessly, through their delegated ephors. and these dread and tyrant five--an oligarchy constructed upon principles the most liberal--went on increasing their authority, as civilization, itself increasing, rendered the public business more extensive and multifarious, until they at length became the agents of that fate which makes the principle of change at once the vital and the consuming element of states. the ephors gradually destroyed the constitution of sparta; but, without the ephors, it may be reasonably doubted whether the constitution would have survived half as long. aristotle (whose mighty intellect is never more luminously displayed than when adjudging the practical workings of various forms of government) paints the evils of the ephoral magistrature, but acknowledges that it gave strength and durability to the state. "for," [ ] he says, "the people were contented on account of their ephors, who were chosen from the whole body." he might have added, that men so chosen, rarely too selected from the chiefs, but often from the lower ranks, were the ablest and most active of the community, and that the fewness of their numbers gave energy and unity to their councils. had the other part of the spartan constitution (absurdly panegyrized) been so formed as to harmonize with, even in checking, the power of the ephors; and, above all, had it not been for the lamentable errors of a social system, which, by seeking to exclude the desire of gain, created a terrible reaction, and made the spartan magistrature the most venal and corrupt in greece--the ephors might have sufficed to develop all the best principles of government. for they went nearly to recognise the soundest philosophy of the representative system, being the smallest number of representatives chosen, without restriction, from the greatest number of electors, for short periods, and under strong responsibilities. [ ] i pass now to the social system of the spartans. vii. if we consider the situation of the spartans at the time of lycurgus, and during a long subsequent period, we see at once that to enable them to live at all, they must be accustomed to the life of a camp;--they were a little colony of soldiers, supporting themselves, hand and foot, in a hostile country, over a population that detested them. in such a situation certain qualities were not praiseworthy alone--they were necessary. to be always prepared for a foe--to be constitutionally averse to indolence--to be brave, temperate, and hardy, were the only means by which to escape the sword of the messenian and to master the hatred of the helot. sentinels they were, and they required the virtues of sentinels: fortunately, these necessary qualities were inherent in the bold mountain tribes that had long roved among the crags of thessaly, and wrestled for life with the martial lapithae. but it now remained to mould these qualities into a system, and to educate each individual in the habits which could best preserve the community. accordingly the child was reared, from the earliest age, to a life of hardship, discipline, and privation; he was starved into abstinence;--he was beaten into fortitude;--he was punished without offence, that he might be trained to bear without a groan;--the older he grew, till he reached manhood, the severer the discipline he underwent. the intellectual education was little attended to: for what had sentinels to do with the sciences or the arts? but the youth was taught acuteness, promptness, and discernment--for such are qualities essential to the soldier. he was stimulated to condense his thoughts, and to be ready in reply; to say little, and to the point. an aphorism bounded his philosophy. such an education produced its results in an athletic frame, in simple and hardy habits--in indomitable patience--in quick sagacity. but there were other qualities necessary to the position of the spartan, and those scarce so praiseworthy--viz., craft and simulation. he was one of a scanty, if a valiant, race. no single citizen could be spared the state: it was often better to dupe than to fight an enemy. accordingly, the boy was trained to cunning as to courage. he was driven by hunger, or the orders of the leader over him, to obtain his food, in house or in field, by stealth;--if undiscovered, he was applauded; if detected, punished. two main-springs of action were constructed within him--the dread of shame and the love of country. these were motives, it is true, common to all the grecian states, but they seem to have been especially powerful in sparta. but the last produced its abuse in one of the worst vices of the national character. the absorbing love for his native sparta rendered the citizen singularly selfish towards other states, even kindred to that which he belonged to. fearless as a spartan,--when sparta was unmenaced he was lukewarm as a greek. and this exaggerated yet sectarian patriotism, almost peculiar to sparta, was centred, not only in the safety and greatness of the state, but in the inalienable preservation of its institutions;--a feeling carefully sustained by a policy exceedingly jealous of strangers [ ]. spartans were not permitted to travel. foreigners were but rarely permitted a residence within the city: and the spartan dislike to athens arose rather from fear of the contamination of her principles than from envy at the lustre of her fame. when we find (as our history proceeds) the spartans dismissing their athenian ally from the siege of ithome, we recognise their jealousy of the innovating character of their brilliant neighbour;--they feared the infection of the democracy of the agora. this attachment to one exclusive system of government characterized all the foreign policy of sparta, and crippled the national sense by the narrowest bigotry and the obtusest prejudice. wherever she conquered, she enforced her own constitution, no matter how inimical to the habits of the people, never dreaming that what was good for sparta might be bad for any other state. thus, when she imposed the thirty tyrants on athens, she sought, in fact, to establish her own gerusia; and, no doubt, she imagined it would become, not a curse, but a blessing to a people accustomed to the wildest freedom of a popular assembly. though herself, through the tyranny of the ephors, the unconscious puppet of the democratic action, she recoiled from all other and more open forms of democracy as from a pestilence. the simple habits of the spartan life assisted to confirm the spartan prejudices. a dinner, a fine house, these sturdy dorians regarded as a pitiable sign of folly. they had no respect for any other cultivation of the mind than that which produced bold men and short sentences. them, nor the science of aristotle, nor the dreams of plato were fitted to delight. music and dancing were indeed cultivated among them, and with success and skill; but the music and the dance were always of one kind--it was a crime to vary an air [ ] or invent a measure. a martial, haughty, and superstitious tribe can scarcely fail to be attached to poetry,--war is ever the inspiration of song,--and the eve of battle to a spartan was the season of sacrifice to the muses. the poetical temperament seems to have been common among this singular people. but the dread of innovation, when carried to excess, has even worse effect upon literary genius than legislative science; and though sparta produced a few poets gifted, doubtless, with the skill to charm the audience they addressed, not a single one of the number has bequeathed to us any other memorial than his name. greece, which preserved, as in a common treasury, whatever was approved by her unerring taste, her wonderful appreciation of the beautiful, regarded the spartan poetry with an indifference which convinces us of its want of value. thebes, and not sparta, has transmitted to us the dorian spirit in its noblest shape: and in pindar we find how lofty the verse that was inspired by its pride, its daring, and its sublime reverence for glory and the gods. as for commerce, manufactures, agriculture,--the manual arts--such peaceful occupations were beneath the dignity of a spartan--they were strictly prohibited by law as by pride, and were left to the perioeci or the helots. viii. it was evidently necessary to this little colony to be united. nothing unites men more than living together in common. the syssitia, or public tables, an institution which was common in crete, in corinth [ ], and in megara, effected this object in a mode agreeable to the dorian manners. the society at each table was composed of men belonging to the same tribe or clan. new members could only be elected by consent of the rest. each head of a family in sparta paid for his own admission and that of the other members of his house. men only belonged to them. the youths and boys had their own separate table. the young children, however, sat with their parents on low stools, and received a half share. women were excluded. despite the celebrated black broth, the table seems to have been sufficiently, if not elegantly, furnished. and the second course, consisting of voluntary gifts, which was supplied by the poorer members from the produce of the chase--by the wealthier from their flocks, orchards, poultry, etc., furnished what by spartans were considered dainties. conversation was familiar, and even jocose, and relieved by songs. thus the public tables (which even the kings were ordinarily obliged to attend) were rendered agreeable and inviting by the attractions of intimate friendship and unrestrained intercourse. ix. the obscurest question relative to the spartan system is that connected with property. it was evidently the intention of lycurgus or the earlier legislators to render all the divisions of land and wealth as equal as possible. but no law can effect what society forbids. the equality of one generation cannot be transmitted to another. it may be easy to prevent a great accumulation of wealth, but what can prevent poverty? while the acquisition of lands by purchase was forbidden, no check was imposed on its acquisition by gift or testament; and in the time of aristotle land had become the monopoly of the few. sparta, like other states, had consequently her inequalities--her comparative rich and her positive poor--from an early period in her known history. as land descended to women, so marriages alone established great disparities of property. "were the whole territory," says aristotle, "divided into five portions, two would belong to the women." the regulation by which the man who could not pay his quota to the syssitia was excluded from the public tables, proves that it was not an uncommon occurrence to be so excluded; and indeed that exclusion grew at last so common, that the public tables became an aristocratic instead of a democratic institution. aristotle, in later times, makes it an objection to the ephoral government that poor men were chosen ephors, and that their venality arose from their indigence--a moral proof that poverty in sparta must have been more common than has generally been supposed [ ];--men of property would not have chosen their judges and dictators in paupers. land was held and cultivated by the helots, who paid a certain fixed proportion of the produce to their masters. it is said that lycurgus forbade the use of gold and silver, and ordained an iron coinage; but gold and silver were at that time unknown as coins in sparta, and iron was a common medium of exchange throughout greece. the interdiction of the precious metals was therefore of later origin. it seems to have only related to private spartans. for those who, not being spartans of the city--that is to say, for the laconians or perioeci-- engaged in commerce, the interdiction could not have existed. a more pernicious regulation it is impossible to conceive. while it effectually served to cramp the effects of emulation--to stint the arts--to limit industry and enterprise--it produced the direct object it was intended to prevent;--it infected the whole state with the desire of gold--it forbade wealth to be spent, in order that wealth might be hoarded; every man seems to have desired gold precisely because he could make very little use of it! from the king to the helot [ ], the spirit of covetousness spread like a disease. no state in greece was so open to bribery--no magistracy so corrupt as the ephors. sparta became a nation of misers precisely because it could not become a nation of spendthrifts. such are the results which man produces when his legislation deposes nature! x. in their domestic life the spartans, like the rest of the greeks, had but little pleasure in the society of their wives. at first the young husband only visited his bride by stealth--to be seen in company with her was a disgrace. but the women enjoyed a much greater freedom and received a higher respect in sparta than elsewhere; the soft asiatic distinctions in dignity between the respective sexes did not reach the hardy mountaineers of lacedaemon; the wife was the mother of men! brought up in robust habits, accustomed to athletic exercises, her person exposed in public processions and dances, which, but for the custom that made decorous even indecency itself, would have been indeed licentious, the spartan maiden, strong, hardy, and half a partaker in the ceremonies of public life, shared the habits, aided the emulation, imbibed the patriotism, of her future consort. and, by her sympathy with his habits and pursuits, she obtained an influence and ascendency over him which was unknown in the rest of greece. dignified on public occasions, the spartan matron was deemed, however, a virago in private life; and she who had no sorrow for a slaughtered son, had very little deference for a living husband. her obedience to her spouse appears to have been the most cheerfully rendered upon those delicate emergencies when the service of the state required her submission to the embraces of another! [ ] xi. we now come to the most melancholy and gloomy part of the spartan system--the condition of the helots. the whole fabric of the spartan character rested upon slavery. if it were beneath a spartan to labour--to maintain himself--to cultivate land--to build a house--to exercise an art;--to do aught else than to fight an enemy--to choose an ephor--to pass from the chase or the palaestra to the public tables--to live a hero in war--an aristocrat in peace,--it was clearly a supreme necessity to his very existence as a citizen, and even as a human being, that there should be a subordinate class of persons employed in the occupations rejected by himself, and engaged in providing for the wants of this privileged citizen. without helots the spartan was the most helpless of human beings. slavery taken from the spartan state, the state would fall at once! it is no wonder, therefore, that this institution should have been guarded with an extraordinary jealousy--nor that extraordinary jealousy should have produced extraordinary harshness. it is exactly in proportion to the fear of losing power that men are generally tyrannical in the exercise of it. nor is it from cruelty of disposition, but from the anxious curse of living among men whom social circumstances make his enemies because his slaves, that a despot usually grows ferocious, and that the urgings of suspicion create the reign of terror. besides the political necessity of a strict and unrelaxed slavery, a spartan would also be callous to the sufferings, from his contempt for the degradation, of the slave; as he despised the employments abandoned to the helot, even so would he despise the wretch that exercised them. thus the motives that render power most intolerant combined in the spartan in his relations to the helot--viz., st, necessity for his services, lost perhaps if the curb were ever relaxed-- dly, consummate contempt for the individual he debased. the habit of tyranny makes tyranny necessary. when the slave has been long maddened by your yoke, if you lighten it for a moment he rebels. he has become your deadliest foe, and self-preservation renders it necessary that him whom you provoke to vengeance you should crush to impotence. the longer, therefore, the spartan government endured, the more cruel became the condition of the helots. not in sparta were those fine distinctions of rank which exist where slavery is unknown, binding class with class by ties of mutual sympathy and dependance--so that poverty itself may be a benefactor to destitution. even among the poor the helot had no brotherhood! he was as necessary to the meanest as to the highest spartan--his wrongs gave its very existence to the commonwealth. we cannot, then, wonder at the extreme barbarity with which the spartans treated this miserable race; and we can even find something of excuse for a cruelty which became at last the instinct of self-preservation. revolt and massacre were perpetually before a spartan's eyes; and what man will be gentle and unsuspecting to those who wait only the moment to murder him? xii. the origin of the helot race is not clearly ascertained: the popular notion that they were the descendants of the inhabitants of helos, a maritime town subdued by the spartans, and that they were degraded to servitude after a revolt, is by no means a conclusive account. whether, as mueller suggests, they were the original slave population of the achaeans, or whether, as the ancient authorities held, they were such of the achaeans themselves as had most obstinately resisted the spartan sword, and had at last surrendered without conditions, is a matter it is now impossible to determine. for my own part, i incline to the former supposition, partly because of the wide distinction between the enslaved helots and the (merely) inferior perioeci, who were certainly achaeans; a distinction which i do not think the different manner in which the two classes were originally subdued would suffice to account for; partly because i doubt whether the handful of dorians who first fixed their dangerous settlement in laconia could have effectually subjugated the helots, if the latter had not previously been inured to slavery. the objection to this hypothesis--that the helots could scarcely have so hated the spartans if they had merely changed masters, does not appear to me very cogent. under the mild and paternal chiefs of the homeric age [ ], they might have been subjected to a much gentler servitude. accustomed to the manners and habits of their achaean lords, they might have half forgotten their condition; and though governed by spartans in the same external relations, it was in a very different spirit. the sovereign contempt with which the spartans regarded the helots, they would scarcely have felt for a tribe distinguished from the more honoured perioeci only by a sterner valour and a greater regard for freedom; while that contempt is easily accounted for, if its objects were the previously subdued population of a country the spartans themselves subdued. the helots were considered the property of the state--but they were intrusted and leased, as it were, to individuals; they were bound to the soil; even the state did not arrogate the power of selling them out of the country; they paid to their masters a rent in corn--the surplus profits were their own. it was easier for a helot than for a spartan to acquire riches--but riches were yet more useless to him. some of the helots attended their masters at the public tables, and others were employed in all public works: they served in the field as light-armed troops: they were occasionally emancipated, but there were several intermediate grades between the helot and the freeman; their nominal duties were gentle indeed when compared with the spirit in which they were regarded and the treatment they received. that much exaggeration respecting the barbarity of their masters existed is probable enough; but the exaggeration itself, among writers accustomed to the institution of slavery elsewhere, and by no means addicted to an overstrained humanity, is a proof of the manner in which the treatment of the helots was viewed by the more gentle slave-masters of the rest of greece. they were branded with ineffaceable dishonour: no helot might sing a spartan song; if he but touched what belonged to a spartan it was profaned--he was the pariah of greece. the ephors--the popular magistrates--the guardians of freedom--are reported by aristotle to have entered office in making a formal declaration of war against the helots--probably but an idle ceremony of disdain and insult. we cannot believe with plutarch, that the infamous cryptia was instituted for the purpose he assigns--viz., that it was an ambuscade of the spartan youths, who dispersed themselves through the country, and by night murdered whomsoever of the helots they could meet. but it is certain that a select portion of the younger spartans ranged the country yearly, armed with daggers, and that with the object of attaining familiarity with military hardships was associated that of strict, stern, and secret surveillance over the helot population. no helot, perhaps, was murdered from mere wantonness; but who does not see how many would necessarily have been butchered at the slightest suspicion of disaffection, or for the faintest utility of example? these miserable men were the objects of compassion to all greece. "it was the common opinion," says aelian, "that the earthquake in sparta was a judgment from the gods upon the spartan inhumanity to the helots." and perhaps in all history (not even excepting that awful calmness with which the italian historians narrate the cruelties of a paduan tyrant or a venetian oligarchy) there is no record of crime more thrilling than that dark and terrible passage in thucydides which relates how two thousand helots, the best and bravest of their tribe, were selected as for reward and freedom, how they were led to the temples in thanksgiving to the gods--and how they disappeared, their fate notorious--the manner of it a mystery! xiii. besides the helots, the spartans exercised an authority over the intermediate class called the perioeci. these were indubitably the old achaean race, who had been reduced, not to slavery, but to dependance. they retained possession of their own towns, estimated in number, after the entire conquest of messenia, at one hundred. they had their own different grades and classes, as the saxons retained theirs after the conquest of the normans. among these were the traders and manufacturers of laconia; and thus whatever art attained of excellence in the dominions of sparta was not spartan but achaean. they served in the army, sometimes as heavy-armed, sometimes as light-armed soldiery, according to their rank or callings; and one of the perioeci obtained the command at sea. they appear, indeed, to have been universally acknowledged throughout greece as free citizens, yet dependant subjects. but the spartans jealously and sternly maintained the distinction between exemption from the servitude of a helot, and participation in the rights of a dorian: the helot lost his personal liberty--the perioecus his political. xiv. the free or purely spartan population (as not improbably with every doric state) was divided into three generic tribes--the hyllean, the dymanatan, and the pamphylian: of these the hyllean (the reputed descendants of the son of hercules) gave to sparta both her kings. besides these tribes of blood or race, there were also five local tribes, which formed the constituency of the ephors, and thirty subdivisions called obes--according to which the more aristocratic offices appear to have been elected. there were also recognised in the spartan constitution two distinct classes--the equals and the inferiors. though these were hereditary divisions, merit might promote a member of the last--demerit degrade a member of the first. the inferiors, though not boasting the nobility of the equals, often possessed men equally honoured and powerful: as among the commoners of england are sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important station than among the peers--(a term somewhat synonymous with that of equal.) but the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which we can but obscurely trace [ ]. forming an assembly among themselves, it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they were also distinguished by some peculiarities of education--an assertion made by mr. mueller, but not to my mind sufficiently established. with respect to the origin of this distinction between the inferiors and the equals, my own belief is, that it took place at some period (possibly during the messenian wars) when the necessities of a failing population induced the spartans to increase their number by the admixture either of strangers, but (as that hypothesis is scarce agreeable to spartan manners) more probably of the perioeci; the new citizens would thus be the inferiors. among the greek settlements in italy, it was by no means uncommon for a colony, once sufficiently established, only to admit new settlers even from the parent state upon inferior terms; and in like manner in venice arose the distinction between the gentlemen and the citizens; for when to that sea-girt state many flocked for security and refuge, it seemed but just to give to the prior inhabitants the distinction of hosts, and to consider the immigrators as guests;--to the first a share in the administration and a superior dignity--to the last only shelter and repose. xv. such are the general outlines of the state and constitution of sparta--the firmest aristocracy that perhaps ever existed, for it was an aristocracy on the widest base. if some spartans were noble, every spartan boasted himself gentle. his birth forbade him to work, and his only profession was the sword. the difference between the meanest spartan and his king was not so great as that between a spartan and a perioecus. not only the servitude of the helots, but the subjection of the perioeci, perpetually nourished the pride of the superior race; and to be born a spartan was to be born to power. the sense of superiority and the habit of command impart a certain elevation to the manner and the bearing. there was probably more of dignity in the poorest spartan citizen than in the wealthiest noble of corinth--the most voluptuous courtier of syracuse. and thus the reserve, the decorum, the stately simplicity of the spartan mien could not but impose upon the imagination of the other greeks, and obtain the credit for correspondent qualities which did not always exist beneath that lofty exterior. to lively nations, affected by externals, there was much in that sedate majesty of demeanour; to gallant nations, much in that heroic valour; to superstitious nations, much in that proverbial regard to religious rites, which characterized the spartan race. declaimers on luxury admired their simplicity--the sufferers from innovation, their adherence to ancient manners. many a victim of the turbulence of party in athens sighed for the repose of the lacedaemonian city; and as we always exaggerate the particular evils we endure, and admire most blindly the circumstances most opposite to those by which we are affected, so it was often the fashion of more intellectual states to extol the institutions of which they saw only from afar and through a glass the apparent benefits, without examining the concomitant defects. an athenian might laud the spartan austerity, as tacitus might laud the german barbarism; it was the panegyric of rhetoric and satire, of wounded patriotism or disappointed ambition. although the ephors made the government really and latently democratic, yet the concentration of its action made it seemingly oligarchic; and in its secrecy, caution, vigilance, and energy, it exhibited the best of the oligarchic features. whatever was democratic by law was counteracted in its results by all that was aristocratic in custom. it was a state of political freedom, but of social despotism. this rigidity of ancient usages was binding long after its utility was past. for what was admirable at one time became pernicious at another; what protected the infant state from dissension, stinted all luxuriance of intellect in the more matured community. it is in vain that modern writers have attempted to deny this fact--the proof is before us. by her valour sparta was long the most eminent state of the most intellectual of all countries; and when we ask what she has bequeathed to mankind--what she has left us in rivalry to that athens, whose poetry yet animates, whose philosophy yet guides, whose arts yet inspire the world--we find only the names of two or three minor poets, whose works have perished, and some half a dozen pages of pithy aphorisms and pointed repartees! xvi. my object in the above sketch has been to give a general outline of the spartan character and the spartan system during the earlier and more brilliant era of athenian history, without entering into unnecessary conjectures as to the precise period of each law and each change. the social and political state of sparta became fixed by her conquest of messenia. it is not within the plan of my undertaking to retail at length the legendary and for the most part fabulous accounts of the first and second messenian wars. the first was dignified by the fate of the messenian hero aristodemus, and the fall of the rocky fortress of ithome; its result was the conquest of messenia (probably begun b. c., ended ); the inhabitants were compelled to an oath of submission, and to surrender to sparta half their agricultural produce. after the first messenian war, tarentum was founded by a spartan colony, composed, it is said, of youths [ ], the offspring of spartan women and laconian men, who were dissatisfied with their exclusion from citizenship, and by whom the state was menaced with a formidable conspiracy shared by the helots. meanwhile, the messenians, if conquered, were not subdued. years rolled away, and time had effaced the remembrance of the past sufferings, but not of the ancient [ ] liberties. it was among the youth of messenia that the hope of the national deliverance was the most intensely cherished. at length, in andania, the revolt broke forth. a young man, pre-eminent above the rest for birth, for valour, and for genius, was the head and the soul of the enterprise (probably b. c. ). his name was aristomenes. forming secret alliances with the argives and arcadians, he at length ventured to raise his standard, and encountered at dera, on their own domains, the spartan force. the issue of the battle was indecisive; still, however, it seems to have seriously aroused the fears of sparta: no further hostilities took place till the following year; the oracle at delphi was solemnly consulted, and the god ordained the spartans to seek their adviser in an athenian. they sent to athens and obtained tyrtaeus. a popular but fabulous account [ ] describes him as a lame teacher of grammar, and of no previous repute. his songs and his exhortations are said to have produced almost miraculous effects. i omit the romantic adventures of the hero aristomenes, though it may be doubted whether all grecian history can furnish passages that surpass the poetry of his reputed life. i leave the reader to learn elsewhere how he hung at night a shield in the temple of chalcioecus, in the very city of the foe, with the inscription, that aristomenes dedicated to the goddess that shield from the spoils of the spartans--how he penetrated the secret recesses of trophonius--how he was deterred from entering sparta by the spectres of helen and the dioscuri--how, taken prisoner in an attempt to seize the women of aegila, he was released by the love of the priestess of ceres--how, again made captive, and cast into a deep pit with fifty of his men, he escaped by seizing hold of a fox (attracted thither by the dead bodies), and suffering himself to be drawn by her through dark and scarce pervious places to a hole that led to the upper air. these adventures, and others equally romantic, i must leave to the genius of more credulous historians. all that seems to me worthy of belief is, that after stern but unavailing struggles, the messenians abandoned andania, and took their last desperate station at ira, a mountain at whose feet flows the river neda, separating messenia from triphylia. here, fortified alike by art and nature, they sustained a siege of eleven years. but with the eleventh the term of their resistance was completed. the slave of a spartan of rank had succeeded in engaging the affections of a messenian woman who dwelt without the walls of the mountain fortress. one night the guilty pair were at the house of the adulteress--the husband abruptly returned--the slave was concealed, and overheard that, in consequence of a violent and sudden storm, the messenian guard had deserted the citadel, not fearing attack from the foe on so tempestuous a night, and not anticipating the inspection of aristomenes, who at that time was suffering from a wound. the slave overheard--escaped--reached the spartan camp--apprized his master emperamus (who, in the absence of the kings, headed the troops) of the desertion of the guard:--an assault was agreed on: despite the darkness of the night, despite the violence of the rain, the spartans marched on:--scaled the fortifications:--were within the walls. the fulfilment of dark prophecies had already portended the fate of the besieged; and now the very howling of the dogs in a strange and unwonted manner was deemed a prodigy. alarmed, aroused, the messenians betook themselves to the nearest weapons within their reach. aristomenes, his son gorgus, theoclus, the guardian prophet of his tribe (whose valour was equal to his science), were among the first to perceive the danger. night passed in tumult and disorder. day dawned, but rather to terrify than encourage--the storm increased --the thunder burst--the lightning glared. what dismayed the besieged encouraged the besiegers. still, with all the fury of despair, the messenians fought on: the very women took part in the contest; death was preferable, even in their eyes, to slavery and dishonour. but the spartans were far superior in number, and, by continual reliefs, the fresh succeeded to the weary. in arms for three days and three nights without respite, worn out with watching, with the rage of the elements, with cold, with hunger, and with thirst, no hope remained for the messenians: the bold prophet declared to aristomenes that the gods had decreed the fall of messene, that the warning oracles were fulfilled. "preserve," he cried, "what remain of your forces--save yourselves. me the gods impel to fall with my country!" thus saying, the soothsayer rushed on the enemy, and fell at last covered with wounds and satiated with the slaughter himself had made. aristomenes called the messenians round him; the women and the children were placed in the centre of the band, guarded by his own son and that of the prophet. heading the troop himself, he rushed on the foe, and by his gestures and the shaking of his spear announced his intention to force a passage, and effect escape. unwilling yet more to exasperate men urged to despair, the spartans made way for the rest of the besieged. so fell ira! (probably b. c. ). [ ] the brave messenians escaped to mount lyceum in arcadia, and afterward the greater part, invited by anaxilaus, their own countryman, prince of the dorian colony at rhegium in italy, conquered with him the zanclaeans of sicily, and named the conquered town messene. it still preserves the name [ ]. but aristomenes, retaining indomitable hatred to sparta, refused to join the colony. yet hoping a day of retribution, he went to delphi. what counsel he there received is unrecorded. but the deity ordained to damagetes, prince of jalysus in rhodes, to marry the daughter of the best man of greece. such a man the prince esteemed the hero of the messenians, and wedded the third daughter of aristomenes. still bent on designs against the destroyers of his country, the patriot warrior repaired to rhodes, where death delivered the spartans from the terror of his revenge. a monument was raised to his memory, and that memory, distinguished by public honours, long made the boast of the messenians, whether those in distant exile, or those subjected to the spartan yoke. thus ended the second messenian war. such of the messenians as had not abandoned their country were reduced to helotism. the spartan territory extended, and the spartan power secured, that haughty state rose slowly to pre-eminence over the rest of greece; and preserved, amid the advancing civilization and refinement of her neighbours, the stern and awing likeness of the heroic age:--in the mountains of the peloponnesus, the polished and luxurious greeks beheld, retained from change as by a spell, the iron images of their homeric ancestry! chapter vii. governments in greece. i. the return of the heraclidae occasioned consequences of which the most important were the least immediate. whenever the dorians forced a settlement, they dislodged such of the previous inhabitants as refused to succumb. driven elsewhere to seek a home, the exiles found it often in yet fairer climes, and along more fertile soils. the example of these involuntary migrators became imitated wherever discontent prevailed or population was redundant: and hence, as i have already recorded, first arose those numerous colonies, which along the asiatic shores, in the grecian isles, on the plains of italy, and even in libya and in egypt, were destined to give, as it were, a second youth to the parent states. ii. the ancient greek constitution was that of an aristocracy, with a prince at the head. suppose a certain number of men, thus governed, to be expelled their native soil, united by a common danger and common suffering, to land on a foreign shore, to fix themselves with pain and labour in a new settlement--it is quite clear that a popular principle would insensibly have entered the forms of the constitution they transplanted. in the first place, the power of the prince would be more circumscribed--in the next place, the free spirit of the aristocracy would be more diffused: the first, because the authority of the chief would rarely be derived from royal ancestry, or hallowed by prescriptive privilege; in most cases he was but a noble, selected from the ranks, and crippled by the jealousies, of his order: the second, because all who shared in the enterprise would in one respect rise at once to an aristocracy--they would be distinguished from the population of the state they colonized. misfortune, sympathy, and change would also contribute to sweep away many demarcations; and authority was transmuted from a birthright into a trust, the moment it was withdrawn from the shelter of ancient custom, and made the gift of the living rather than a heritage from the dead. it was probable, too, that many of such colonies were founded by men, among whom was but little disparity of rank: this would be especially the case with those which were the overflow of a redundant population; the great and the wealthy are never redundant!--the mass would thus ordinarily be composed of the discontented and the poor, and even where the aristocratic leaven was most strong, it was still the aristocracy of some defeated and humbled faction. so that in the average equality of the emigrators were the seeds of a new constitution; and if they transplanted the form of monarchy, it already contained the genius of republicanism. hence, colonies in the ancient, as in the modern world, advanced by giant strides towards popular principles. maintaining a constant intercourse with their father-land, their own constitutions became familiar and tempting to the population of the countries they had abandoned; and much of whatsoever advantages were derived from the soil they selected, and the commerce they found within their reach, was readily attributed only to their more popular constitutions; as, at this day, we find american prosperity held out to our example, not as the result of local circumstances, but as the creature of political institutions. one principal cause of the republican forms of government that began (as, after the dorian migration, the different tribes became settled in those seats by which they are historically known) to spread throughout greece, was, therefore, the establishment of colonies retaining constant intercourse with the parent states. a second cause is to be found in the elements of the previous constitutions of the grecian states themselves, and the political principles which existed universally, even in the heroic ages: so that, in fact, the change from monarchy to republicanism was much less violent than at the first glance it would seem to our modern notions. the ancient kings, as described by homer, possessed but a limited authority, like that of the spartan kings--extensive in war, narrow in peace. it was evidently considered that the source of their authority was in the people. no notion seems to have been more universal among the greeks than that it was for the community that all power was to be exercised. in homer's time popular assemblies existed, and claimed the right of conferring privileges on rank. the nobles were ever jealous of the prerogative of the prince, and ever encroaching on his accidental weakness. in his sickness, his age, or his absence, the power of the state seems to have been wrested from his hands--the prey of the chiefs, or the dispute of contending factions. nor was there in greece that chivalric fealty to a person which characterizes the north. from the earliest times it was not the monarch, that called forth the virtue of devotion, and inspired the enthusiasm of loyalty. thus, in the limited prerogative of royalty, in the jealousy of the chiefs, in the right of popular assemblies, and, above all, in the silent and unconscious spirit of political theory, we may recognise in the early monarchies of greece the germes of their inevitable dissolution. another cause was in that singular separation of tribes, speaking a common language, and belonging to a common race, which characterized the greeks. instead of overrunning a territory in one vast irruption, each section seized a small district, built a city, and formed an independent people. thus, in fact, the hellenic governments were not those of a country, but of a town; and the words "state" and "city" were synonymous [ ]. municipal constitutions, in their very nature, are ever more or less republican; and, as in the italian states, the corporation had only to shake off some power unconnected with, or hostile to it, to rise into a republic. to this it may be added, that the true republican spirit is more easily established among mountain tribes imperfectly civilized, and yet fresh from the wildness of the natural life, than among old states, where luxury leaves indeed the desire, but has enervated the power of liberty, "as the marble from the quarry may be more readily wrought into the statue, than that on which the hand of the workman has already been employed." [ ] iii. if the change from monarchy to republicanism was not very violent in itself, it appears to have been yet more smoothed away by gradual preparations. monarchy was not abolished, it declined. the direct line was broken, or some other excuse occurred for exchanging an hereditary for an elective monarchy; then the period of power became shortened, and from monarchy for life it was monarchy only for a certain number of years: in most cases the name too (and how much is there in names!) was changed, and the title of ruler or magistrate substituted for that of king. thus, by no sudden leap of mind, by no vehement and short-lived revolutions, but gradually, insensibly, and permanently, monarchy ceased--a fashion, as it were, worn out and obsolete--and republicanism succeeded. but this republicanism at first was probably in no instance purely democratic. it was the chiefs who were the visible agents in the encroachments on the monarchic power--it was an aristocracy that succeeded monarchy. sometimes this aristocracy was exceedingly limited in number, or the governing power was usurped by a particular faction or pre-eminent families; then it was called an oligarchy. and this form of aristocracy appears generally to have been the most immediate successor to royalty. "the first polity," says aristotle [ ], "that was established in greece after the lapse of monarchies, was that of the members of the military class, and those wholly horsemen," . . . . . "such republics, though called democracies, had a strong tendency to oligarchy, and even to royalty." [ ] but the spirit of change still progressed: whether they were few or many, the aristocratic governors could not fail to open the door to further innovations. for, if many, they were subjected to dissensions among themselves--if few, they created odium in all who were excluded from power. thus fell the oligarchies of marseilles, ister, and heraclea. in the one case they were weakened by their own jealousies, in the other by the jealousies of their rivals. the progress of civilization and the growing habits of commerce gradually introduced a medium between the populace and the chiefs. the middle class slowly rose, and with it rose the desire of extended liberties and equal laws. [ ] iv. now then appeared the class of demagogues. the people had been accustomed to change. they had been led against monarchy, and found they had only resigned the one master to obtain the many:--a demagogue arose, sometimes one of their own order, more often a dissatisfied, ambitious, or empoverished noble. for they who have wasted their patrimony, as the stagirite shrewdly observes, are great promoters of innovation! party ran high--the state became divided--passions were aroused--and the popular leader became the popular idol. his life was probably often in danger from the resentment of the nobles, and it was always easy to assert that it was so endangered.--he obtained a guard to protect him, conciliated the soldiers, seized the citadel, and rose at once from the head of the populace to the ruler of the state. such was the common history of the tyrants of greece, who never supplanted the kingly sway (unless in the earlier ages, when, born to a limited monarchy, they extended their privileges beyond the law, as pheidon of argos), but nearly always aristocracies or oligarchies [ ]. i need scarcely observe that the word "tyrant" was of very different signification in ancient times from that which it bears at present. it more nearly corresponded to our word "usurper," and denoted one who, by illegitimate means, whether of art or force, had usurped the supreme authority. a tyrant might be mild or cruel, the father of the people, or their oppressor; he still preserved the name, and it was transmitted to his children. the merits of this race of rulers, and the unconscious benefits they produced, have not been justly appreciated, either by ancient or modern historians. without her tyrants, greece might never have established her democracies. as may be readily supposed, the man who, against powerful enemies, often from a low origin and with empoverished fortunes, had succeeded in ascending a throne, was usually possessed of no ordinary abilities. it was almost vitally necessary for him to devote those abilities to the cause and interests of the people. their favour had alone raised him--numerous foes still surrounded him--it was on the people alone that he could depend. the wiser and more celebrated tyrants were characterized by an extreme modesty of deportment--they assumed no extraordinary pomp, no lofty titles--they left untouched, or rendered yet more popular, the outward forms and institutions of the government--they were not exacting in taxation--they affected to link themselves with the lowest orders, and their ascendency was usually productive of immediate benefit to the working classes, whom they employed in new fortifications or new public buildings; dazzling the citizens by a splendour that seemed less the ostentation of an individual than the prosperity of a state. but the aristocracy still remained their enemies, and it was against them, not against the people, that they directed their acute sagacities and unsparing energies. every more politic tyrant was a louis the eleventh, weakening the nobles, creating a middle class. he effected his former object by violent and unscrupulous means. he swept away by death or banishment all who opposed his authority or excited his fears. he thus left nothing between the state and a democracy but himself; himself removed, democracy ensued naturally and of course. there are times in the history of all nations when liberty is best promoted--when civilization is most rapidly expedited--when the arts are most luxuriantly nourished by a strict concentration of power in the hands of an individual--and when the despot is but the representative of the popular will [ ]. at such times did the tyrannies in greece mostly flourish, and they may almost be said to cease with the necessity which called them forth. the energy of these masters of a revolution opened the intercourse with other states; their interests extended commerce; their policy broke up the sullen barriers of oligarchical prejudice and custom; their fears found perpetual vent for the industry of a population whom they dreaded to leave in indolence; their genius appreciated the arts--their vanity fostered them. thus they interrupted the course of liberty only to improve, to concentre, to advance its results. their dynasty never lasted long; the oldest tyranny in greece endured but a hundred years [ ]--so enduring only from its mildness. the son of the tyrant rarely inherited his father's sagacity and talents: he sought to strengthen his power by severity; discontent ensued, and his fall was sudden and complete. usually, then, such of the aristocracy as had been banished were recalled, but not invested with their former privileges. the constitution became more or less democratic. it is true that sparta, who lent her powerful aid in destroying tyrannies, aimed at replacing them by oligarchies--but the effort seldom produced a permanent result: the more the aristocracy was narrowed, the more certain was its fall. if the middle class were powerful--if commerce thrived in the state--the former aristocracy of birth was soon succeeded by an aristocracy of property (called a timocracy), and this was in its nature certain of democratic advances. the moment you widen the suffrage, you may date the commencement of universal suffrage. he who enjoys certain advantages from the possession of ten acres, will excite a party against him in those who have nine; and the arguments that had been used for the franchise of the one are equally valid for the franchise of the other. limitations of power by property are barriers against a tide which perpetually advances. timocracy, therefore, almost invariably paved the way to democracy. but still the old aristocratic faction, constantly invaded, remained powerful, stubborn, and resisting, and there was scarcely a state in greece that did not contain the two parties which we find to-day in england, and in all free states--the party of the movement to the future, and the party of recurrence to the past; i say the past, for in politics there is no present! wherever party exists, if the one desire fresh innovations, so the other secretly wishes not to preserve what remains, but to restore what has been. this fact it is necessary always to bear in mind in examining the political contests of the athenians. for in most of their domestic convulsions we find the cause in the efforts of the anti-popular party less to resist new encroachments than to revive departed institutions. but though in most of the grecian states were two distinct orders, and the eupatrids, or "well-born," were a class distinct from, and superior to, that of the commonalty, we should err in supposing that the separate orders made the great political divisions. as in england the more ancient of the nobles are often found in the popular ranks, so in the grecian states many of the eupatrids headed the democratic party. and this division among themselves, while it weakened the power of the well-born, contributed to prevent any deadly or ferocious revolutions: for it served greatly to soften the excesses of the predominant faction, and every collision found mediators between the contending parties in some who were at once friends of the people and members of the nobility. nor should it be forgotten that the triumph of the popular party was always more moderate than that of the antagonist faction--as the history of athens will hereafter prove. v. the legal constitutions of greece were four--monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, and democracy; the illegal, was tyranny in a twofold shape, viz., whether it consisted in an usurped monarchy or an usurped oligarchy. thus the oligarchy of the thirty in athens was no less a tyranny than the single government of pisistratus. even democracy had its illegal or corrupt form--in ochlocracy or mob rule; for democracy did not signify the rule of the lower orders alone, but of all the people--the highest as the lowest. if the highest became by law excluded--if the populace confined the legislative and executive authorities to their own order--then democracy, or the government of a whole people, virtually ceased, and became the government of a part of the people--a form equally unjust and illegitimate--equally an abuse in itself, whether the dominant and exclusive portion were the nobles or the mechanics. thus in modern yet analogous history, when the middle class of florence expelled the nobles from any share of the government, they established a monopoly under the name of liberty; and the resistance of the nobles was the lawful struggle of patriots and of freemen for an inalienable privilege and a natural right. vi. we should remove some very important prejudices from our minds, if we could once subscribe to a fact plain in itself, but which the contests of modern party have utterly obscured--that in the mere forms of their government, the greek republics cannot fairly be pressed into the service of those who in existing times would attest the evils, or proclaim the benefits, of constitutions purely democratic. in the first place, they were not democracies, even in their most democratic shape:--the vast majority of the working classes were the enslaved population. and, therefore, to increase the popular tendencies of the republic was, in fact, only to increase the liberties of the few. we may fairly doubt whether the worst evils of the ancient republics, in the separation of ranks, and the war between rich and poor, were not the necessary results of slavery. we may doubt, with equal probability, whether much of the lofty spirit, and the universal passion for public affairs, whence emanated the enterprise, the competition, the patriotism, and the glory of the ancient cities, could have existed without a subordinate race to carry on the drudgeries of daily life. it is clear, also, that much of the intellectual greatness of the several states arose from the exceeding smallness of their territories--the concentration of internal power, and the perpetual emulation with neighbouring and kindred states nearly equal in civilization; it is clear, too, that much of the vicious parts of their character, and yet much of their more brilliant, arose from the absence of the press. their intellectual state was that of men talked to, not written to. their imagination was perpetually called forth--their deliberative reason rarely;--they were the fitting audience for an orator, whose art is effective in proportion to the impulse and the passion of those he addresses. nor must it be forgotten that the representative system, which is the proper conductor of the democratic action, if not wholly unknown to the greeks [ ], and if unconsciously practised in the spartan ephoralty, was at least never existent in the more democratic states. and assemblies of the whole people are compatible only with those small nations of which the city is the country. thus, it would be impossible for us to propose the abstract constitution of any ancient state as a warning or an example to modern countries which possess territories large in extent--which subsist without a slave population --which substitute representative councils for popular assemblies--and which direct the intellectual tastes and political habits of a people, not by oratory and conversation, but through the more calm and dispassionate medium of the press. this principle settled, it may perhaps be generally conceded, that on comparing the democracies of greece with all other contemporary forms of government, we find them the most favourable to mental cultivation--not more exposed than others to internal revolutions--usually, in fact, more durable,--more mild and civilized in their laws--and that the worst tyranny of the demus, whether at home or abroad, never equalled that of an oligarchy or a single ruler. that in which the ancient republics are properly models to us, consists not in the form, but the spirit of their legislation. they teach us that patriotism is most promoted by bringing all classes into public and constant intercourse--that intellect is most luxuriant wherever the competition is widest and most unfettered--and that legislators can create no rewards and invent no penalties equal to those which are silently engendered by society itself--while it maintains, elaborated into a system, the desire of glory and the dread of shame. chapter viii. brief survey of arts, letters, and philosophy in greece, prior to the legislation of solon. i. before concluding this introductory portion of my work, it will be necessary to take a brief survey of the intellectual state of greece prior to that wonderful era of athenian greatness which commenced with the laws of solon. at this period the continental states of greece had produced little in that literature which is now the heirloom of the world. whether under her monarchy, or the oligarchical constitution that succeeded it, the depressed and languid genius of athens had given no earnest of the triumphs she was afterward destined to accomplish. her literature began, though it cannot be said to have ceased, with her democracy. the solitary and doubtful claim of the birth--but not the song--of tyrtaeus (fl. b. c. ), is the highest literary honour to which the earlier age of attica can pretend; and many of the dorian states--even sparta itself--appear to have been more prolific in poets than the city of aeschylus and sophocles. but throughout all greece, from the earliest time, was a general passion for poetry, however fugitive the poets. the poems of homer are the most ancient of profane writings--but the poems of homer themselves attest that they had many, nor ignoble, precursors. not only do they attest it in their very excellence--not only in their reference to other poets--but in the general manner of life attributed to chiefs and heroes. the lyre and the song afford the favourite entertainment at the banquet [ ]. and achilles, in the interval of his indignant repose, exchanges the deadly sword for the "silver harp," "and sings the immortal deeds of heroes and of kings." [ ] ii. ample tradition and the internal evidence of the homeric poems prove the iliad at least to have been the composition of an asiatic greek; and though the time in which he flourished is yet warmly debated, the most plausible chronology places him about the time of the ionic migration, or somewhat less than two hundred years after the trojan war. the following lines in the speech of juno in the fourth book of the iliad are supposed by some [ ] to allude to the return of the heraclidae and the dorian conquests in the peloponnesus:-- "three towns are juno's on the grecian plains, more dear than all th' extended earth contains-- mycenae, argos, and the spartan wall-- these mayst thou raze, nor i forbid their fall; 'tis not in me the vengeance to remove; the crime's sufficient that they share my love." [ ] and it certainly does seem to me that in a reference so distinct to the three great peloponnesian cities which the dorians invaded and possessed, homer makes as broad an allusion to the conquests of the heraclidae, not only as would be consistent with the pride of an ionic greek in attesting the triumphs of the national dorian foe, but as the nature of a theme cast in a distant period, and remarkably removed, in its general conduct, from the historical detail of subsequent events, would warrant to the poet [ ]. and here i may observe, that if the date thus assigned to homer be correct, the very subject of the iliad might have been suggested by the consequences of the dorian irruption. homer relates, "achilles' wrath, to greece the direful spring of woes unnumbered." but achilles is the native hero of that thessalian district, which was the earliest settlement of the dorian family. agamemnon, whose injuries he resents, is the monarch of the great achaean race, whose dynasty and dominion the dorians are destined to overthrow. it is true that at the time of the trojan war the dorians had migrated from phthiotis to phocis--it is true that achilles was not of dorian extraction; still there would be an interest attached to the singular coincidence of place; as, though the english are no descendants from the britons, we yet associate the british history with our own: hence it seems to me, though i believe the conjecture is new, that it is not the whole trojan war, but that episode in the trojan war (otherwise unimportant) illustrated by the wrath of achilles, which awakens the inspiration of the poet. in fact, if under the exordium of the iliad there lurk no typical signification, the exordium is scarce appropriate to the subject. for the wrath of achilles did not bring upon the greeks woes more mighty than the ordinary course of war would have destined them to endure. but if the grecian audience (exiles, and the posterity of exiles), to whom, on asiatic shores, homer recited his poem, associated the hereditary feud of achilles and agamemnon with the strife between the ancient warriors of phthiotis and achaia; then, indeed, the opening lines assume a solemn and prophetic significance, and their effect must have been electrical upon a people ever disposed to trace in the mythi of their ancestry the legacies of a dark and ominous fatality, by which each present suffering was made the inevitable result of an immemorial cause. [ ] iii. the ancients unanimously believed the iliad the production of a single poet; in recent times a contrary opinion has been started; and in germany, at this moment, the most fashionable belief is, that that wonderful poem was but a collection of rhapsodies by various poets, arranged and organized by pisistratus and the poets of his day; a theory a scholar may support, but which no poet could ever have invented! for this proposition the principal reasons alleged are these:--it is asserted as an "indisputable fact," "that the art of writing, and the use of manageable writing materials, were entirely, or all but entirely, unknown in greece and its islands at the supposed date of the composition of the iliad and odyssey; that, if so, these poems could not have been committed to writing during the time of such their composition; that, in a question of comparative probabilities like this, it is a much grosser improbability that even the single iliad, amounting, after all curtailments and expungings, to upwards of , hexameter lines, should have been actually conceived and perfected in the brain of one man, with no other help but his own or others' memory, than that it should in fact be the result of the labours of several distinct authors; that if the odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled; that if we add, upon the authority of thucydides and aristotle, the hymns and margites, not to say the batrachomyomachia, that which was improbable becomes morally impossible! that all that has been so often said as to the fact of as many verses or more having been committed to memory, is beside the point in question, which is not whether , or , lines may not be learned by heart from print or manuscript, but whether one man can originally compose a poem of that length, which, rightly or not, shall be thought to be a perfect model of symmetry and consistency of parts, without the aid of writing materials;--that, admitting the superior probability of such an achievement in a primitive age, we know nothing actually similar or analogous to it; and that it so transcends the common limits of intellectual power, as at the least to merit, with as much justice as the opposite opinion, the character of improbability." [ ] and upon such arguments the identity of homer is to be destroyed! let us pursue them seriatim. st. "the art and the use of manageable writing materials were entirely, or all but entirely, unknown in greece and its islands at the supposed date of the composition of the iliad and odyssey." the whole argument against the unity of homer rests upon this assertion; and yet this assertion it is impossible to prove! it is allowed, on the contrary, that alphabetical characters were introduced in greece by cadmus--nay, inscriptions believed by the best antiquaries to bear date before the trojan war are found even among the pelasgi of italy. dionysius informs us that the pelasgi first introduced letters into italy. but in answer to this, it is said that letters were used only for inscriptions on stone or wood, and not for the preservation of writings so voluminous. if this were the case, i scarcely see why the greeks should have professed so grateful a reminiscence of the gift of cadmus, the mere inscription of a few words on stone would not be so very popular or beneficial an invention! but the phoenicians had constant intercourse with the egyptians and hebrews; among both those nations the art and materials of writing were known. the phoenicians, far more enterprising than either, must have been fully acquainted with their means of written communication--and indeed we are assured that they were so. now, if a phoenician had imparted so much of the art to greece as the knowledge of a written alphabet, is it probable that he would have suffered the communication to cease there! the phoenicians were a commercial people--their colonies in greece were for commercial purposes,--would they have wilfully and voluntarily neglected the most convenient mode of commercial correspondence?--importing just enough of the art to suffice for inscriptions of no use but to the natives, would they have stopped short precisely at that point when the art became useful to themselves? and in vindicating that most able people from so wilful a folly, have we no authority in history as well as common sense? we have the authority of herodotus! when he informs us that the phoenicians communicated letters to the ionians, he adds, that by a very ancient custom the ionians called their books diptherae, or skins, because, at a time when the plant of the bibles or papyrus was scarce [ ], they used instead of it the skins of goats and sheep--a custom he himself witnessed among barbarous nations. were such materials used only for inscriptions relative to a religious dedication, or a political compact? no; for then, wood or stone--the temple or the pillar--would have been the material for the inscription,--they must, then, have been used for a more literary purpose; and verse was the first form of literature. i grant that prior, and indeed long subsequent to the time of homer, the art of writing (as with us in the dark ages) would be very partially known-- that in many parts of greece, especially european greece, it might scarcely ever be used but for brief inscriptions. but that is nothing to the purpose;--if known at all--to any ionian trader--even to any neighbouring asiatic--even to any phoenician settler--there is every reason to suppose that homer himself, or a contemporary disciple and reciter of his verses, would have learned both the art and the use of the materials which could best have ensured the fame of the poet, or assisted the memory of the reciter. and, though plutarch in himself alone is no authority, he is not to be rejected as a corroborative testimony when he informs us that lycurgus collected and transcribed the poems of homer; and that writing was then known in greece is evident by the very ordinance of lycurgus that his laws should not be written. but lycurgus is made by apollodorus contemporary with homer himself; and this belief appears, to receive the sanction of the most laborious and profound of modern chronologers [ ]. i might adduce various other arguments in support of those i have already advanced; but i have said enough already to show that it is not an "indisputable fact" that homer could not have been acquainted with writing materials; and that the whole battery erected to demolish the fame of the greatest of human geniuses has been built upon a most uncertain and unsteady foundation. it may be impossible to prove that homer's poems were written, but it is equally impossible to prove that they were not--and if it were necessary for the identity of homer that his poems should have been written, that necessity would have been one of the strongest proofs, not that homer did not exist, but that writing did! but let us now suppose it proved that writing materials for a literary purpose were unknown, and examine the assertions built upon that hypothesis. d. "that if these poems could not have been committed to writing during the time of their composition, it is a much grosser improbability that even the single iliad, amounting, after all curtailments and expungings, to upwards of , hexameter lines, should have been actually conceived and perfected in the brain of one man, with no other help but his own or others' memory, than that it should, in fact, be the result of the labours of several distinct authors." i deny this altogether. "the improbability" might be "grosser" if the iliad had been composed in a day! but if, as any man of common sense would acknowledge, it was composed in parts or "fyttes" of moderate length at a time, no extraordinary power of memory, or tension of thought, would have been required by the poet. such parts, once recited and admired, became known and learned by a hundred professional bards, and were thus orally published, as it were, in detached sections, years perhaps before the work was completed. all that is said, therefore, about the difficulty of composing so long a poem without writing materials is but a jargon of words. suppose no writing materials existed, yet, as soon as portions of a few hundred lines at a time were committed to the memory of other minstrels, the author would, in those minstrels, have living books whereby to refresh his memory, and could even, by their help, polish and amend what was already composed. it would not then have been necessary for the poet himself perfectly and verbally to remember the whole work. he had his tablets of reference in the hearts and lips of others, and even, if it were necessary that he himself should retain the entire composition, the constant habit of recital, the constant exercise of memory, would render such a task by no means impracticable or unprecedented. as for the unity of the poem, thus composed, it would have been, as it is, the unity, not of technical rules and pedantic criticism, but the unity of interest, character, imagery, and thought--a unity which required no written references to maintain it, but which was the essential quality of one master-mind, and ought to be, to all plain men, an irrefragable proof that one mind alone conceived and executed the work. iv. so much for the alleged improbability of one author for the iliad. but with what face can these critics talk of "probability," when, in order to get rid of one homer, they ask us to believe in twenty! can our wildest imagination form more monstrous hypotheses than these, viz.--that several poets, all possessed of the very highest order of genius (never before or since surpassed), lived in the same age--that that genius was so exactly similar in each, that we cannot detect in the thoughts, the imagery, the conception and treatment of character, human and divine, as manifest in each, the least variety in these wonderful minds--that out of the immense store of their national legends, they all agreed in selecting one subject, the war of troy--that of that subject they all agreed in selecting only one portion of time, from the insult of achilles to the redemption of the body of hector--that their different mosaics so nicely fitted one into the other, that by the mere skill of an able editor they were joined into a whole, so symmetrical that the acutest ingenuity of ancient greece could never discover the imposture [ ]-- and that, of all these poets, so miraculous in their genius, no single name, save that of homer, was recorded by the general people to whom they sung, or claimed by the peculiar tribe whose literature they ought to have immortalized? if everything else were wanting to prove the unity of homer, this prodigious extravagance of assumption, into which a denial of that unity has driven men of no common learning and intellect, would be sufficient to establish it. d. "that if the odyssey be counted, the improbability is doubled; that if we add, upon the authority of thucydides and aristotle, the hymns and margites, not to say the batrachomyomachia, that which was improbable becomes morally impossible." were these last-mentioned poems homer's, there would yet be nothing improbable in the invention and composition of minor poems without writing materials; and the fact of his having composed one long poem, throws no difficulty in the way of his composing short ones. we have already seen that the author need not himself have remembered them all his life. but this argument is not honest, for the critics who have produced it agree in the same breath, when it suits their purpose, that the hymns, etc., are not homer's--and in this i concur with their, and the almost universal, opinion. the remaining part of the analysis of the hostile argument has already been disposed of in connexion with the first proposition. it now remains to say a few words upon the authorship of the odyssey. v. the question, whether or not the two epics of the iliad and odyssey were the works of the same poet, is a very different one from that which we have just discussed. distinct and separate, indeed, are the inquiries whether greece might produce, at certain intervals of time, two great epic poets, selecting opposite subjects--and whether greece produced a score or two of great poets, from whose desultory remains the mighty whole of the iliad was arranged. even the ancients of the alexandrine school did not attribute the odyssey to the author of the iliad. the theme selected--the manners described--the mythological spirit--are all widely different in the two works, and one is evidently of more recent composition than the other. but, for my own part, i do not think it has been yet clearly established that all these acknowledged differences are incompatible with the same authorship. if the iliad were written in youth, the travels of the poet, the change of mind produced by years and experience, the facility with which an ancient greek changed or remodelled his pliant mythology, the rapidity with which (in the quick development of civilization in greece) important changes in society and manners were wrought, might all concur in producing, from the mature age of the poet, a poem very different to that which he composed in youth. and the various undetected interpolations and alterations supposed to be foisted into the odyssey may have originated such detailed points of difference as present the graver obstacles to this conjecture. regarding the iliad and odyssey as wholes, they are so analogous in all the highest and rarest attributes of genius, that it is almost as impossible to imagine two homers as it is two shakspeares. nor is there such a contrast between the iliad and the odyssey as there is between any one play of shakspeare's and another [ ]. still, i should warn the general reader, that the utmost opposition that can reasonably and effectually be made to those who assign to different authors these several epics, limits itself rather to doubt than to denial. vi. it is needless to criticise these immortal masterpieces; not that criticism upon them is yet exhausted--not that a most useful, and even novel analysis of their merits and character may not yet be performed, nor that the most striking and brilliant proofs of the unity of each poem, separately considered, may not be established by one who shall, with fitting powers, undertake the delightful task of deducing the individuality of the poet from the individualizing character of his creations, and the peculiar attributes of his genius. with human works, as with the divine, the main proof of the unity of the author is in his fidelity to himself:--not then as a superfluous, but as far too lengthened and episodical a labour, if worthily performed, do i forego at present a critical survey of the two poems popularly ascribed to homer. the early genius of greece devoted itself largely to subjects similar to those which employed the homeric muse. at a later period--probably dating at the alexandrian age--a vast collection of ancient poems was arranged into what is termed the "epic cycle;" these commenced at the theogony, and concluded with the adventures of telemachus. though no longer extant, the cyclic poems enjoyed considerable longevity. the greater part were composed between the years b. c. and b. c. they were extant in the time of proclus, a. d. ; the eldest, therefore, endured at least twelve, the most recent ten centuries;-- save a few scattered lines, their titles alone remain, solitary tokens, yet floating above the dark oblivion which has swept over the epics of thirty bards! but, by the common assent, alike of the critics and the multitude, none of these approached the remote age, still less the transcendent merits, of the homeric poems. vii. but, of earlier date than these disciples of homer, is a poetry of a class fundamentally distinct from the homeric, viz., the collection attributed to hesiod. of one of these only, a rustic and homely poem called "works and days," was hesiod considered the author by his immediate countrymen (the boeotians of helicon); but the more general belief assigned to the fertility of his genius a variety of other works, some of which, if we may judge by the titles, aimed at a loftier vein [ ]. and were he only the author of the "works and days"--a poem of very insignificant merit [ ]--it would be scarcely possible to account for the high estimation in which hesiod was held by the greeks, often compared, and sometimes preferred, to the mighty and majestic homer. we must either, then, consider hesiod as the author of many writings superior perhaps to what we now possess, or, as is more plausibly and popularly supposed by modern critics, the representative and type, as it were, of a great school of national poetry. and it has been acutely suggested that, viewing the pastoral and lowly occupation he declares himself to pursue [ ], combined with the subjects of his muse, and the place of his birth, we may believe the name of hesiod to have been the representative of the poetry, not of the victor lords, but of the conquered people, expressive of their pursuits, and illustrative of their religion. this will account for the marked and marvellous difference between the martial and aristocratic strain of homer and the peaceful and rustic verse of hesiod [ ], as well as for the distinction no less visible between the stirring mythology of the one and the thoughtful theogony of the other. if this hypothesis be accepted, the hesiodic era might very probably have commenced before the homeric (although what is now ascribed to hesiod is evidently of later date than the iliad and the odyssey). and hesiod is to homer what the pelasgic genius was to the hellenic. [ ] viii. it will be obvious to all who study what i may call the natural history of poetry, that short hymns or songs must long have preceded the gigantic compositions of homer. linus and thamyris, and, more disputably, orpheus, are recorded to have been the precursors of homer, though the poems ascribed to them (some of which still remain) were of much later date. almost coeval with the grecian gods were doubtless religious hymns in their honour. and the germe of the great lyrical poetry that we now possess was, in the rude chants of the warlike dorians, to that apollo who was no less the inspirer than the protector. the religion of the greeks preserved and dignified the poetry it created; and the bard, "beloved by gods as men," became invested, as well with a sacred character as a popular fame. beneath that cheerful and familiar mythology, even the comic genius sheltered its license, and found its subjects. not only do the earliest of the comic dramatists seem to have sought in mythic fables their characters and plots, but, far before the drama itself arose in any of the grecian states, comic recital prepared the way for comic representation. in the eighth book of the odyssey, the splendid alcinous and the pious ulysses listen with delight to the story, even broadly ludicrous, how vulcan nets and exposes venus and her war-god lover-- "all heaven beholds imprisoned as they lie, and unextinguished laughter shakes the sky." and this singular and well-known effusion shows, not only how grave and reverent an example epicharmus had for his own audacious portraiture of the infirmities of the olympian family, but how immemorially and how deeply fixed in the popular spirit was the disposition to draw from the same source the elements of humour and of awe. but, however ancient the lyrical poetry of greece, its masterpieces of art were composed long subsequent to the homeric poems; and, no doubt, greatly influenced by acquaintance with those fountains of universal inspiration. i think it might be shown that lyrical poetry developed itself, in its more elaborate form, earliest in those places where the poems of homer are most likely to have been familiarly known. the peculiar character of the greek lyrical poetry can only be understood by remembering its inseparable connexion with music; and the general application of both, not only to religious but political purposes. the dorian states regarded the lyre and the song as powerful instruments upon the education, the manners, and the national character of their citizens. with them these arts were watched and regulated by the law, and the poet acquired something of the social rank, and aimed at much of the moral design, of a statesman and a legislator: while, in the ionian states, the wonderful stir and agitation, the changes and experiments in government, the rapid growth of luxury, commerce, and civilization, afforded to a poetry which was not, as with us, considered a detached, unsocial, and solitary art, but which was associated with every event of actual life--occasions of vast variety--themes of universal animation. the eloquence of poetry will always be more exciting in its appeals--the love for poetry always more diffused throughout a people, in proportion as it is less written than recited. how few, even at this day, will read a poem!-- what crowds will listen to a song! recitation transfers the stage of effect from the closet to the multitude--the public becomes an audience, the poet an orator. and when we remember that the poetry, thus created, imbodying the most vivid, popular, animated subjects of interest, was united with all the pomp of festival and show--all the grandest, the most elaborate, and artful effects of music--we may understand why the true genius of lyrical composition has passed for ever away from the modern world. as early as between and b. c., archilochus brought to perfection a poetry worthy of loftier passions than those which mostly animated his headstrong and angry genius. in (thirty-one years before the legislation of solon) flourished arion, the lesbian, who, at corinth, carried, to extraordinary perfection the heroic adaptation of song to choral music. in flourished the sicilian, stersichorus --no unworthy rival of arion; while simultaneously, in strains less national and grecian, and more resembling the inspiration of modern minstrels, alcaeus vented his burning and bitter spirit;--and sappho (whose chaste and tender muse it was reserved for the chivalry of a northern student, five-and-twenty centuries after the hand was cold and the tongue was mute, to vindicate from the longest-continued calumny that genius ever endured) [ ] gave to the most ardent of human passions the most delicate colouring of female sentiment. perhaps, of all that greece has bequeathed to us, nothing is so perfect in its concentration of real feeling as the fragments of sappho. in one poem of a few lines--nor that, alas! transmitted to us complete--she has given a picture of the effect of love upon one who loves, to which volumes of the most eloquent description could scarcely add a single new touch of natural pathos--so subtle is it, yet so simple. i cannot pass over in silence the fragments of mimnermus (fl. b. c. )--they seem of an order so little akin to the usual character of grecian poetry; there is in them a thoughtful though gloomy sadness, that belongs rather to the deep northern imagination than the brilliant fancies of the west; their melancholy is mixed with something half intellectual--half voluptuous--indicative of the mournful but interesting wisdom of satiety. mimnermus is a principal model of the latin elegiac writers--and propertius compares his love verses with those of homer. mimnermus did not invent the elegiac form (for it was first applied to warlike inspiration by another ionian poet, callinus); but he seems the founder of what we now call the elegiac spirit in its association of the sentiment of melancholy with the passion of love. ix. while such was the state of poetry in greece--torpid in the ionian athens, but already prodigal in her kindred states of asia and the isles; gravely honoured, rather than produced, in sparta;-- splendidly welcomed, rather than home-born, in corinth;--the asiatic colonies must also claim the honour of the advance of the sister arts. but in architecture the dorian states of european greece, sicyon, aegina, and the luxurious corinth, were no unworthy competitors with ionia. in the heroic times, the homeric poems, especially the odyssey, attest the refinement and skill to which many of the imitative arts of grecian civilization had attained. in embroidery, the high-born occupation of helen ad penelope, were attempted the most complex and difficult designs; and it is hard to suppose that these subjects could have been wrought upon garments with sufficient fidelity to warrant the praise of a poet who evidently wrote from experience of what he had seen, if the art of drawing had not been also carried to some excellence--although to painting itself the poet makes none but dubious and obscure allusions. still, if, on the one hand [ ], in embroidery, and upon arms (as the shield of achilles), delineation in its more complex and minute form was attempted,--and if, on the other hand, the use of colours was known (which it was, as applied not only to garments but to ivory), it could not have been long before two such kindred elements of the same art were united. although it is contended by many that rude stones or beams were the earliest objects of grecian worship, and though it is certain that in several places such emblems of the deity preceded the worship of images, yet to the superstitious art of the rude pelasgi in their earliest age, uncouth and half-formed statues of hermes are attributed, and the idol is commemorated by traditions almost as antique as those which attest the sanctity of the fetiche [ ]. in the homeric age, sculpture in metals, and on a large scale, was certainly known. by the door of alcinous, the king of an island in the ionian sea, stand rows of dogs in gold and silver--in his hall, upon pedestals, are golden statues of boys holding torches; and that such sculpture was even then dedicated to the gods is apparent by a well-known passage in the earlier poem of the iliad; which represents theano, the trojan priestess of minerva, placing the offering of hecuba upon the knees of the statue of the goddess. how far, however, such statues could be called works of art, or how far they were wrought by native greeks, it is impossible to determine [ ]. certain it is that the memorable and gigantic advance in the art of sculpture was not made till about the th olympiad (b. c. ), when dipaenus and scyllis first obtained celebrity in works in marble (wood and metals were the earliest materials of sculpture). the great improvements in the art seem to have been coeval with the substitution of the naked for the draped figure. beauty, and ease, and grace, and power, were the result of the anatomical study of the human form. architecture has bequeathed to us, in the pelasgic and cyclopean remains, sufficient to indicate the massive strength it early acquired in parts of greece. in the homeric times, the intercourse with asia had already given something of lightness to the elder forms. columns are constantly introduced into the palaces of the chiefs, profuse metallic ornaments decorate the walls; and the homeric palaces, with their cornices gayly inwrought with blue--their pillars of silver on bases of brass, rising amid vines and fruit-trees,--even allowing for all the exaggerations of the poet,--dazzle the imagination with much of the gaudiness and glitter of an oriental city [ ]. at this period athens receives from homer the epithet of "broad-streeted:" and it is by no means improbable that the city of the attic king might have presented to a traveller, in the time of homer, a more pleasing general appearance than in its age of fame, when, after the persian devastations, its stately temples rose above narrow and irregular streets, and the jealous effects of democracy forbade to the mansions of individual nobles that striking pre-eminence over the houses of the commonalty which would naturally mark the distinction of wealth and rank, in a monarchical, or even an oligarchical government. x. about the time on which we now enter, the extensive commerce and free institutions of the ionian colonies had carried all the arts just referred to far beyond the homeric time. and, in addition to the activity and development of the intellect in all its faculties which progressed with the extensive trade and colonization of miletus (operating upon the sensitive, inquiring, and poetical temperament of the ionian population), a singular event, which suddenly opened to greece familiar intercourse with the arts and lore of egypt, gave considerable impetus to the whole grecian mind. in our previous brief survey of the state of the oriental world, we have seen that egypt, having been rent into twelve principalities, had been again united under a single monarch. the ambitious and fortunate psammetichus was enabled, by the swords of some ionian and carian adventurers (who, bound on a voyage of plunder, had been driven upon the egyptian shores), not only to regain his own dominion, from which he had been expelled by the jealousy of his comrades, but to acquire the sole sovereignty of egypt (b. c. ). in gratitude for their services, psammetichus conferred upon his wild allies certain lands at the pelusian mouth of the nile, and obliged some egyptian children to learn the grecian language;--from these children descended a class of interpreters, that long afterward established the facilities of familiar intercourse between greece and egypt. whatever, before that time, might have been the migrations of egyptians into greece, these were the first greeks whom the egyptians received among themselves. thence poured into greece, in one full and continuous stream, the egyptian influences, hitherto partial and unfrequent. [ ] in the same reign, according to strabo, the asiatic greeks obtained a settlement at naucratis, the ancient emporium of egypt; and the communication, once begun, rapidly increased, until in the subsequent time of amasis (b. c. ) we find the ionians, the dorians, the aeolians of asia, and even the people of aegina and samos [ ], building temples and offering worship amid the jealous and mystic priestcrafts of the nile. this familiar and advantageous intercourse with a people whom the greeks themselves considered the wisest on the earth, exercised speedy and powerful effect upon their religion and their art. in the first it operated immediately upon their modes of divination and their mystic rites--in the last, the influence was less direct. it is true that they probably learned from the egyptians many technical rules in painting and in sculpture; they learned how to cut the marble and to blend the colours, but their own genius taught them how to animate the block and vivify the image. we have seen already, that before this event, art had attained to a certain eminence among the greeks--fortunately, therefore, what they now acquired was not the foundation of their lore. grafted on a grecian stock, every shoot bore grecian fruit: and what was borrowed from mechanism was reproduced in beauty [ ]. as with the arts, so with the sciences; we have reason to doubt whether the egyptian sages, whose minds were swathed and bandaged in the cerements of hereditary rules, never to swell out of the slavery of castes, had any very sound and enlightened philosophy to communicate: their wisdom was probably exaggerated by the lively and credulous greeks, awed by the mysticism of the priests, the grandeur of the cities, the very rigidity, so novel to them, of imposing and antique custom. what, then, was the real benefit of the intercourse? not so much in satisfying as in arousing and stimulating the curiosity of knowledge. egypt, to the greeks, was as america to europe--the egyptians taught them little, but egypt much. and that what the egyptians did directly communicate was rather the material for improvement than the improvement itself, this one gift is an individual example and a general type;--the egyptians imparted to the greeks the use of the papyrus--the most easy and popular material for writing; we are thus indebted to egypt for a contrivance that has done much to preserve to us--much, perhaps, to create for us--a plato and an aristotle; but for the thoughts of aristotle and plato we are indebted to greece alone:--the material egyptian--the manufacture greek. xi. the use of the papyrus had undoubtedly much effect upon the formation of prose composition in greece, but it was by no means an instantaneous one. at the period on which we now enter (about b. c. ), the first recorded prose grecian writer had not composed his works. the wide interval between prose in its commencement and poetry in its perfection is peculiarly grecian; many causes conspired to produce it, but the principal one was, that works, if written, being not the less composed to be recited, not read--were composed to interest and delight, rather than formally to instruct. poetry was, therefore, so obviously the best means to secure the end of the author, that we cannot wonder to find that channel of appeal universally chosen; the facility with which the language formed itself into verse, and the license that appears to have been granted to the gravest to assume a poetical diction without attempting the poetical spirit, allowed even legislators and moralists to promulgate precepts and sentences in the rhythm of a homer and a hesiod. and since laws were not written before the time of draco, it was doubly necessary that they should be cast in that fashion by which words are most durably impressed on the memory of the multitude. even on solon's first appearance in public life, when he inspires the athenians to prosecute the war with megara, he addresses the passions of the crowd, not by an oration, but a poem; and in a subsequent period, when prose composition had become familiar, it was still in verse that hipparchus communicated his moral apothegms. the origin of prose in greece is, therefore, doubly interesting as an epoch, not only in the intellectual, but also in the social state. it is clear that it would not commence until a reading public was created; and until, amid the poetical many, had sprung up the grave and studious few. accordingly, philosophy, orally delivered, preceded prose composition--and thales taught before pherecydes wrote [ ]. to the superficial it may seem surprising that literature, as distinct from poetry, should commence with the most subtle and laborious direction of the human intellect: yet so it was, not only in greece, but almost universally. in nearly all countries, speculative conjecture or inquiry is the first successor to poetry. in india, in china, in the east, some dim philosophy is the characteristic of the earliest works--sometimes inculcating maxims of morality--sometimes allegorically shadowing forth, sometimes even plainly expressing, the opinions of the author on the mysteries of life--of nature--of the creation. even with the moderns, the dawn of letters broke on the torpor of the dark ages of the north in speculative disquisition; the arabian and the aristotelian subtleties engaged the attention of the earliest cultivators of modern prose (as separated from poetic fiction), and the first instinct of the awakened reason was to grope through the misty twilight after truth. philosophy precedes even history; men were desirous of solving the enigmas of the world, before they disentangled from tradition the chronicles of its former habitants. if we examine the ways of an infant we shall cease to wonder at those of an infant civilization. long before we can engage the curiosity of the child in the history of england--long before we can induce him to listen with pleasure to our stories even of poictiers and cressy--and (a fortiori) long before he can be taught an interest in magna charta and the bill of rights, he will of his own accord question us of the phenomena of nature--inquire how he himself came into the world-- delight to learn something of the god we tell him to adore--and find in the rainbow and the thunder, in the meteor and the star, a thousand subjects of eager curiosity and reverent wonder. the why perpetually torments him;--every child is born a philosopher!--the child is the analogy of a people yet in childhood. [ ] xii. it may follow as a corollary from this problem, that the greeks of themselves arrived at the stage of philosophical inquiry without any very important and direct assistance from the lore of egypt and the east. that lore, indeed, awakened the desire, but it did not guide the spirit of speculative research. and the main cause why philosophy at once assumed with the greeks a character distinct from that of the oriental world, i have already intimated [ ], in the absence of a segregated and privileged religious caste. philosophy thus fell into the hands of sages, not of priests. and whatever the ionian states (the cradle of grecian wisdom) received from egypt or the east, they received to reproduce in new and luxuriant prodigality. the ionian sages took from an elder wisdom not dogmas never to be questioned, but suggestions carefully to be examined. it thus fortunately happened that the deeper and maturer philosophy of greece proper had a kind of intermedium between the systems of other nations and its own. the eastern knowledge was borne to europe through the greek channels of asiatic colonies, and became hellenized as it passed. thus, what was a certainty in the east, became a proposition in ionia, and ultimately a doubt, at athens. in greece, indeed, as everywhere, religion was connected with the first researches of philosophy. from the fear of the gods, to question of the nature of the gods, is an easy transition. the abundance and variety of popular superstitions served but to stimulate curiosity as to their origin; and since in egypt the sole philosophers were the priests, a greek could scarcely converse with an egyptian on the articles of his religion without discussing also the principles of his philosophy. whatever opinions the greek might then form and promulge, being sheltered beneath no jealous and prescriptive priestcraft, all had unfettered right to canvass and dispute them, till by little and little discussion ripened into science. the distinction, in fine, between the greeks and their contemporaries was this: if they were not the only people that philosophized, they were the only people that said whatever they pleased about philosophy. their very plagiarism from the philosophy of other creeds was fortunate, inasmuch as it presented nothing hostile to the national superstition. had they disputed about the nature of jupiter, or the existence of apollo, they might have been persecuted, but they could start at once into disquisitions upon the eternity of matter, or the providence of a pervading mind. xiii. this spirit of innovation and discussion, which made the characteristic of the greeks, is noted by diodorus. "unlike the chaldaeans," he observes, "with whom philosophy is delivered from sire to son, and all other employment rejected by its cultivators, the greeks come late to the science--take it up for a short time--desert it for a more active means of subsistence--and the few who surrender themselves wholly to it practise for gain, innovate the most important doctrines, pay no reverence to those that went before, create new sects, establish new theorems, and, by perpetual contradictions, entail perpetual doubts." those contradictions and those doubts made precisely the reason why the greeks became the tutors of the world! there is another characteristic of the greeks indicated by this remark of diodorus. their early philosophers, not being exempted from other employments, were not the mere dreamers of the closet and the cell. they were active, practical, stirring men of the world. they were politicians and moralists as well as philosophers. the practical pervaded the ideal, and was, in fact, the salt that preserved it from decay. thus legislation and science sprung simultaneously into life, and the age of solon is the age of thales. xiv. of the seven wise men (if we accept that number) who flourished about the same period, six were rulers and statesmen. they were eminent, not as physical, but as moral, philosophers; and their wisdom was in their maxims and apothegms. they resembled in much the wary and sagacious tyrants of italy in the middle ages--masters of men's actions by becoming readers of their minds. of these seven, periander of corinth (began to reign b. c. , died b. c. ) and cleobulus of lindus (fl. b. c. ), tyrants in their lives, and cruel in their actions, were, it is said, disowned by the remaining five [ ]. but goodness is not the necessary consequence of intellect, and, despite their vices, these princes deserved the epithet of wise. of cleobulus we know less than of periander; but both governed with prosperity, and died in old age. if we except pisistratus, periander was the greatest artist of all that able and profound fraternity, who, under the name of tyrants, concentred the energies of their several states, and prepared the democracies by which they were succeeded. periander's reputed maxims are at variance with his practice; they breathe a spirit of freedom and a love of virtue which may render us suspicious of their authenticity--the more so as they are also attributed to others. nevertheless, the inconsistency would be natural, for reason makes our opinions, and circumstance shapes our actions. "a democracy is better than a tyranny," is an aphorism imputed to periander: but when asked why he continued tyrant, he answered, "because it is dangerous willingly to resist, or unwillingly to be deposed." his principles were republican, his position made him a tyrant. he is said to have fallen into extreme dejection in his old age; perhaps because his tastes and his intellect were at war with his life. chilo, the lacedaemonian ephor, is placed also among the seven. his maxims are singularly dorian--they breathe reverence of the dead and suspicion of the living. "love," he said (if we may take the authority of aulus gellius, fl. b. c. ), "as if you might hereafter hate, and hate as if you might hereafter love." another favourite sentence of his was, "to a surety loss is at hand." [ ] a third, "we try gold by the touchstone. gold is the touchstone of the mind." bias, of priene in ionia, is quoted, in herodotus, as the author of an advice to the ionians to quit their country, and found a common city in sardinia (b. c. ). he seems to have taken an active part in all civil affairs. his reputed maxims are plain and homely--the elementary principles of morals. mitylene in lesbos boasted the celebrated pittacus (began to govern b. c. , resigned , died ). he rose to the tyranny of the government by the free voice of the people; enjoyed it ten years, and voluntarily resigned it, as having only borne the dignity while the state required the direction of a single leader. it was a maxim with him, for which he is reproved by plato, "that to be good is hard." his favourite precept was, "know occasion:" and this he amplified in another (if rightly attributed to him), "to foresee and prevent dangers is the province of the wise--to direct them when they come, of the brave." xv. of solon, the greatest of the seven, i shall hereafter speak at length. i pass now to thales (born b. c. );--the founder of philosophy, in its scientific sense--the speculative in contradistinction to the moral: although an ardent republican, thales alone, of the seven sages, appears to have led a private and studious life. he travelled, into crete, asia, and at a later period into egypt. according to laertius, egypt taught him geometry. he is supposed to have derived his astrological notions from phoenicia. but this he might easily have done without visiting the phoenician states. returning to miletus, he obtained his title of wise [ ]. much learning has been exhausted upon his doctrines to very little purpose. they were of small value, save as they led to the most valuable of all philosophies--that of experiment. they were not new probably even in greece [ ], and of their utility the following brief sketch will enable the reader to judge for himself. he maintained that water, or rather humidity, was the origin of all things, though he allowed mind or intellect (nous) to be the impelling principle. and one of his arguments in favour of humidity, as rendered to us by plutarch and stobaeus, is pretty nearly as follows: --"because fire, even in the sun and the stars, is nourished by vapours proceeding from humidity,--and therefore the whole world consists of the same." of the world, he supposed the whole to be animated by, and full of, the divinity--its creator--that in it was no vacuum--that matter was fluid and variable. [ ] he maintained the stars and sun to be earthly, and the moon of the same nature as the sun, but illumined by it. somewhat more valuable would appear to have been his geometrical science, could we with accuracy attribute to thales many problems claimed also, and more probably, by pythagoras and later reasoners. he is asserted to have measured the pyramids by their shadows. he cultivated astronomy and astrology; and laertius declares him to have been the first greek that foretold eclipses. the yet higher distinction has been claimed for thales of having introduced among his countrymen the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. but this sublime truth, though connected with no theory of future rewards and punishments, was received in greece long before his time. perhaps, however, as the expressions of cicero indicate, thales might be the first who attempted to give reasons for what was believed. his reasons were, nevertheless, sufficiently crude and puerile; and having declared it the property of the soul to move itself, and other things, he was forced to give a soul to the loadstone, because it moved iron! these fantastic doctrines examined, and his geometrical or astronomical discoveries dubious, it may be asked, what did thales effect for philosophy? chiefly this: he gave reasons for opinions--he aroused the dormant spirit of inquiry--he did for truths what the legislators of his age did for the people--left them active and stirring to free and vigorous competition. he took wisdom out of despotism, and placed her in a republic--he was in harmony with the great principle of his age, which was investigation, and not tradition; and thus he became the first example of that great truth-- that to think freely is the first step to thinking well. it fortunately happened, too, that his moral theories, however inadequately argued upon, were noble and exalting. he contended for the providence of a god, as well as for the immortality of man. he asserted vice to be the most hateful, virtue the most profitable of all things [ ]. he waged war on that vulgar tenacity of life which is the enemy to all that is most spiritual and most enterprising in our natures, and maintained that between life and death there is no difference--the fitting deduction from a belief in the continuous existence of the soul [ ]. his especial maxim was the celebrated precept, "know thyself." his influence was vigorous and immediate. how far he created philosophy may be doubtful, but he created philosophers. from the prolific intelligence which his fame and researches called into being, sprang a new race of thoughts, which continued in unbroken succession until they begat descendants illustrious and immortal. without the hardy errors of thales, socrates might have spent his life in spoiling marble, plato might have been only a tenth-rate poet, and aristotle an intriguing pedagogue. xvi. with this i close my introductory chapters, and proceed from dissertation into history;--pleased that our general survey of greece should conclude with an acknowledgment of our obligations to the ionian colonies. soon, from the contemplation of those enchanting climes; of the extended commerce and the brilliant genius of the people--the birthplace of the epic and the lyric muse, the first home of history, of philosophy, of art;--soon, from our survey of the rise and splendour of the asiatic ionians, we turn to the agony of their struggles--the catastrophe of their fall. those wonderful children of greece had something kindred with the precocious intellect that is often the hectic symptom of premature decline. originating, advancing nearly all which the imagination or the reason can produce, while yet in that social youth which promised a long and a yet more glorious existence--while even their great parent herself had scarcely emerged from the long pupilage of nations, they fell into the feebleness of age! amid the vital struggles, followed by the palsied and prostrate exhaustion of her ionian children, the majestic athens suddenly arose from the obscurity of the past to an empire that can never perish, until heroism shall cease to warm, poetry to delight, and wisdom to instruct the future. athens: its rise and fall by edward bulwer lytton volume ii. contents. book iii chapter i the character and popularity of miltiades.--naval expedition. --siege of paros.--conduct of miltiades.--he is accused and sentenced.--his death. ii the athenian tragedy.--its origin.--thespis.--phrynichus.-- aeschylus.--analysis of the tragedies of aeschylus. iii aristides.--his character and position.--the rise of themistocles.--aristides is ostracised.--the ostracism examined.--the influence of themistocles increases.--the silver--mines of laurion.--their product applied by themistocles to the increase of the navy.--new direction given to the national character. iv the preparations of darius.--revolt of egypt.--dispute for the succession to the persian throne.--death of darius.-- brief review of the leading events and characteristics of his reign. v xerxes conducts an expedition into egypt.--he finally resolves on the invasion of greece.--vast preparations for the conquest of europe.--xerxes arrives at sardis.--despatches envoys to the greek states, demanding tribute.--the bridge of the hellespont.--review of the persian armament at abydos.--xerxes encamps at therme. vi the conduct of the greeks.--the oracle relating to salamis.-- art of themistocles.--the isthmian congress.--embassies to argos, crete, corcyra, and syracuse.--their ill success.-- the thessalians send envoys to the isthmus.--the greeks advance to tempe, but retreat.--the fleet despatched to artemisium, and the pass of thermopylae occupied.--numbers of the grecian fleet.--battle of thermopylae. vii the advice of demaratus to xerxes.--themistocles.--actions off artemisium.--the greeks retreat.--the persians invade delphi, and are repulsed with great loss.--the athenians, unaided by their allies, abandon athens, and embark for salamis.--the irresolute and selfish policy of the peloponnesians.--dexterity and firmness of themistocles.-- battle of salamis.--andros and carystus besieged by the greeks.--anecdotes of themistocles.--honours awarded to him in sparta.--xerxes returns to asia.--olynthus and potidaea besieged by artabazus.--the athenians return home.--the ostracism of aristides is repealed. viii embassy of alexander of macedon to athens.--the result of his proposals.--athenians retreat to salamis.--mardonius occupies athens.--the athenians send envoys to sparta.-- pausanias succeeds cleombrotus as regent of sparta.--battle of plataea.--thebes besieged by the athenians.--battle of mycale.--siege of sestos.--conclusion of the persian war. book iv chapter i remarks on the effects of war.--state of athens.--interference of sparta with respect to the fortifications of athens.-- dexterous conduct of themistocles.--the new harbour of the piraeus.--proposition of the spartans in the amphictyonic council defeated by themistocles.--allied fleet at cyprus and byzantium.--pausanias.--alteration in his character.-- his ambitious views and treason.--the revolt of the ionians from the spartan command.--pausanias recalled.--dorcis replaces him.--the athenians rise to the head of the ionian league.--delos made the senate and treasury of the allies.-- able and prudent management of aristides.--cimon succeeds to the command of the fleet.--character of cimon.--eion besieged.--scyros colonized by atticans.--supposed discovery of the bones of theseus.--declining power of themistocles. --democratic change in the constitution.--themistocles ostracised.--death of aristides. ii popularity and policy of cimon.--naxos revolts from the ionian league.--is besieged by cimon.--conspiracy and fate of pausanias.--flight and adventures of themistocles. --his death. iii reduction of naxos.--actions off cyprus.--manners of cimon.--improvements in athens.--colony at the nine ways. --siege of thasos.--earthquake in sparta.--revolt of helots, occupation of ithome, and third messenian war.--rise and character of pericles.--prosecution and acquittal of cimon. --the athenians assist the spartans at ithome.--thasos surrenders.--breach between the athenians and spartans.-- constitutional innovations at athens.--ostracism of cimon. iv war between megara and corinth.--megara and pegae garrisoned by athenians.--review of affairs at the persian court.-- accession of artaxerxes.--revolt of egypt under inarus.-- athenian expedition to assist inarus.--aegina besieged.--the corinthians defeated.--spartan conspiracy with the athenian oligarchy.--battle of tanagra.--campaign and successes of myronides.--plot of the oligarchy against the republic.-- recall of cimon.--long walls completed.--aegina reduced.-- expedition under tolmides.--ithome surrenders.--the insurgents are settled at naupactus.--disastrous termination of the egyptian expedition.--the athenians march into thessaly to restore orestes the tagus.--campaign under pericles.--truce of five years with the peloponnesians.-- cimon sets sail for cyprus.--pretended treaty of peace with persia.--death of cimon. v change of manners in athens.--begun under the pisistratidae.-- effects of the persian war, and the intimate connexion with ionia.--the hetaerae.--the political eminence lately acquired by athens.--the transfer of the treasury from delos to athens.--latent dangers and evils.--first, the artificial greatness of athens not supported by natural strength.-- secondly, her pernicious reliance on tribute.--thirdly, deterioration of national spirit commenced by cimon in the use of bribes and public tables.--fourthly, defects in popular courts of law.--progress of general education.-- history.--its ionian origin.--early historians.--acusilaus. --cadmus.--eugeon.--hellanicus.--pherecides.--xanthus.--view of the life and writings of herodotus.--progress of philosophy since thales.--philosophers of the ionian and eleatic schools.--pythagoras.--his philosophical tenets and political influence.--effect of these philosophers on athens.--school of political philosophy continued in athens from the time of solon.--anaxagoras.--archelaus.--philosophy not a thing apart from the ordinary life of the athenians. book v chapter i thucydides chosen by the aristocratic party to oppose pericles.--his policy.--munificence of pericles.--sacred war.--battle of coronea.--revolt of euboea and megara-- invasion and retreat of the peloponnesians.--reduction of euboea.--punishment of histiaea.--a thirty years' truce concluded with the peloponnesians.--ostracism of thucydides. ii causes of the power of pericles.--judicial courts of the dependant allies transferred to athens.--sketch of the athenian revenues.--public buildings the work of the people rather than of pericles.--vices and greatness of athens had the same sources.--principle of payment characterizes the policy of the period.--it is the policy of civilization.-- colonization, cleruchia. iii revision of the census.--samian war.--sketch of the rise and progress of the athenian comedy to the time of aristophanes. iv the tragedies of sophocles. athens: its rise and fall. book iii. from the battle of marathon to the battles of plataea and mycale, b. c. --b. c. . chapter i. the character and popularity of miltiades.--naval expedition.--siege of paros.--conduct of miltiades.--he is accused and sentenced.--his death. i. history is rarely more than the biography of great men. through a succession of individuals we trace the character and destiny of nations. the people glide away from us, a sublime but intangible abstraction, and the voice of the mighty agora reaches us only through the medium of its representatives to posterity. the more democratic the state, the more prevalent this delegation of its history to the few; since it is the prerogative of democracies to give the widest competition and the keenest excitement to individual genius: and the true spirit of democracy is dormant or defunct, when we find no one elevated to an intellectual throne above the rest. in regarding the characters of men thus concentrating upon themselves our survey of a nation, it is our duty sedulously to discriminate between their qualities and their deeds: for it seldom happens that their renown in life was unattended with reverses equally signal--that the popularity of to-day was not followed by the persecution of to-morrow: and in these vicissitudes, our justice is no less appealed to than our pity, and we are called upon to decide, as judges, a grave and solemn cause between the silence of a departed people, and the eloquence of imperishable names. we have already observed in the character of miltiades that astute and calculating temperament common to most men whose lot it has been to struggle for precarious power in the midst of formidable foes. we have seen that his profound and scheming intellect was not accompanied by any very rigid or high-wrought principle; and placed, as the chief of the chersonese had been from his youth upward, in situations of great peril and embarrassment, aiming always at supreme power, and, in his harassed and stormy domain, removed far from the public opinion of the free states of greece, it was natural that his political code should have become tempered by a sinister ambition, and that the citizen of athens should be actuated by motives scarcely more disinterested than those which animated the tyrant of the chersonese. the ruler of one district may be the hero, but can scarcely be the patriot, of another. the long influence of years and custom--the unconscious deference to the opinion of those whom our youth has been taught to venerate, can alone suffice to tame down an enterprising and grasping mind to objects of public advantage, in preference to designs for individual aggrandizement: influence of such a nature had never operated upon the views and faculties of the hero of marathon. habituated to the enjoyment of absolute command, he seemed incapable of the duties of civil subordination; and the custom of a life urged him onto the desire of power [ ]. these features of his character fairly considered, we shall see little to astonish us in the later reverses of miltiades, and find additional causes for the popular suspicions he incurred. ii. but after the victory of marathon, the power of miltiades was at its height. he had always possessed the affection of the athenians, which his manners as well as his talents contributed to obtain for him. affable and courteous--none were so mean as to be excluded from his presence; and the triumph he had just achieved so largely swelled his popularity, that the most unhesitating confidence was placed in all his suggestions. in addition to the victory of marathon, miltiades, during his tyranny in the chersonese, had gratified the resentment and increased the dominion of the athenians. a rude tribe, according to all authority, of the vast and varied pelasgic family, but essentially foreign to, and never amalgamated with, the indigenous pelasgians of the athenian soil, had in very remote times obtained a settlement in attica. they had assisted the athenians in the wall of their citadel, which confirmed, by its characteristic masonry, the general tradition of their pelasgic race. settled afterward near hymettus, they refused to blend with the general population--quarrels between neighbours so near naturally ensued--the settlers were expelled, and fixed themselves in the islands of lemnos and imbros--a piratical and savage horde. they kept alive their ancient grudge with the athenians, and, in one of their excursions, landed in attica, and carried off some of the women while celebrating a festival of diana. these captives they subjected to their embraces, and ultimately massacred, together with the offspring of the intercourse. "the lemnian horrors" became a proverbial phrase--the wrath of the gods manifested itself in the curse of general sterility, and the criminal pelasgi were commanded by the oracle to repair the heinous injury they had inflicted on the athenians. the latter were satisfied with no atonement less than that of the surrender of the islands occupied by the offenders. tradition thus reported the answer of the pelasgi to so stern a demand-- "whenever one of your vessels, in a single day and with a northern wind, makes its passage to us, we will comply." time passed on, the injury was unatoned, the remembrance remained-- when miltiades (then in the chersonese) passed from elnos in a single day and with a north wind to the pelasgian islands, avenged the cause of his countrymen, and annexed lemnos and imbros to the athenian sway. the remembrance of this exploit had from the first endeared miltiades to the athenians, and, since the field of marathon, he united in himself the two strongest claims to popular confidence--he was the deliverer from recent perils, and the avenger of hereditary wrongs. the chief of the chersonese was not slow to avail himself of the advantage of his position. he promised the athenians a yet more lucrative, if less glorious enterprise than that against the persians, and demanded a fleet of seventy ships, with a supply of men and money, for an expedition from which he assured them he was certain to return laden with spoil and treasure. he did not specify the places against which the expedition was to be directed; but so great was the belief in his honesty and fortune, that the athenians were contented to grant his demand. the requisite preparations made, miltiades set sail. assuming the general right to punish those islands which had sided with the persian, he proceeded to paros, which had contributed a trireme to the armament of datis. but beneath the pretext of national revenge, miltiades is said to have sought the occasion to prosecute a selfish resentment. during his tyranny in the chersonese, a parian, named lysagoras, had sought to injure him with the persian government, and the chief now wreaked upon the island the retaliation due to an individual. such is the account of herodotus--an account not indeed inconsistent with the vindictive passions still common to the inhabitants of the western clime, but certainly scarce in keeping with the calculating and politic character of miltiades: for men go backward in the career of ambition when revenging a past offence upon a foe that is no longer formidable. miltiades landed on the island, laid vigorous siege to the principal city, and demanded from the inhabitants the penalty of a hundred talents. the besieged refused the terms, and worked day and night at the task of strengthening the city for defence. nevertheless, miltiades succeeded in cutting off all supplies, and the city was on the point of yielding; when suddenly the chief set fire to the fortifications he had erected, drew off his fleet, and returned to athens, not only without the treasure he had promised, but with an ignominious diminution of the glory he had already acquired. the most probable reason for a conduct [ ] so extraordinary was, that by some accident a grove on the continent was set on fire--the flame, visible equally to the besiegers and the besieged, was interpreted alike by both: each party imagined it a signal from the persian fleet--the one was dissuaded from yielding, and the other intimidated from continuing the siege. an additional reason for the retreat was a severe wound in the leg which miltiades had received, either in the course of the attack, or by an accident he met with when attempting with sacrilegious superstition to consult the infernal deities on ground dedicated to ceres. iii. we may readily conceive the amazement and indignation with which, after so many promises on the one side, and such unbounded confidence on the other, the athenians witnessed the return of this fruitless expedition. no doubt the wily and equivocal parts of the character of miltiades, long cast in shade by his brilliant qualities, came now more obviously in view. he was impeached capitally by xanthippus, an athenian noble, the head of that great aristocratic faction of the alcmaeonids, which, inimical alike to the tyrant and the demagogue, brooked neither a master of the state nor a hero with the people. miltiades was charged with having accepted a bribe from the persians [ ], which had induced him to quit the siege of paros at the moment when success was assured. the unfortunate chief was prevented by his wound from pleading his own cause--he was borne into the court stretched upon his couch, while his brother, tisagoras, conducted his defence. through the medium of his advocate, miltiades seems neither vigorously to have refuted the accusation of treason to the state, nor satisfactorily to have explained his motives for raising the siege. his glory was his defence; and the chief answer to xanthippus was "marathon and lemnos." the crime alleged against him was of a capital nature; but, despite the rank of the accuser, and the excitement of his audience, the people refused to pronounce sentence of death upon so illustrious a man. they found him guilty, it is true--but they commuted the capital infliction to a fine of fifty talents. before the fine was paid, miltiades expired of the mortification of his wound. the fine was afterward paid by his son, cimon. thus ended a life full of adventure and vicissitude. the trial of miltiades has often been quoted in proof of the ingratitude and fickleness of the athenian people. no charge was ever more inconsiderately made. he was accused of a capital crime, not by the people, but by a powerful noble. the noble demanded his death-- appears to have proved the charge--to have had the law which imposed death wholly on his side--and "the favour of the people it was," says herodotus, expressly, "which saved his life." [ ] when we consider all the circumstances of the case--the wound to the popular vanity-- the disappointment of excited expectation--the unaccountable conduct of miltiades himself--and then see his punishment, after a conviction which entailed death, only in the ordinary assessment of a pecuniary fine [ ], we cannot but allow that the athenian people (even while vindicating the majesty of law, which in all civilized communities must judge offences without respect to persons) were not in this instance forgetful of the services nor harsh to the offences of their great men. chapter ii. the athenian tragedy.--its origin.--thespis.--phrynichus.--aeschylus. --analysis of the tragedies of aeschylus. i. from the melancholy fate of miltiades, we are now invited to a subject no less connected with this important period in the history of athens. the interval of repose which followed the battle of marathon allows us to pause, and notice the intellectual state to which the athenians had progressed since the tyranny of pisistratus and his sons. we have remarked the more familiar acquaintance with the poems of homer which resulted from the labours and example of pisistratus. this event (for event it was), combined with other causes,--the foundation of a public library, the erection of public buildings, and the institution of public gardens--to create with apparent suddenness, among a susceptible and lively population, a general cultivation of taste. the citizens were brought together in their hours of relaxation [ ], by the urbane and social manner of life, under porticoes and in gardens, which it was the policy of a graceful and benignant tyrant to inculcate; and the native genius, hitherto dormant, of the quick ionian race, once awakened to literary and intellectual objects, created an audience even before it found expression in a poet. the elegant effeminacy of hipparchus contributed to foster the taste of the people--for the example of the great is nowhere more potent over the multitude than in the cultivation of the arts. patronage may not produce poets, but it multiplies critics. anacreon and simonides, introduced among the athenians by hipparchus, and enjoying his friendship, no doubt added largely to the influence which poetry began to assume. the peculiar sweetness of those poets imbued with harmonious contagion the genius of the first of the athenian dramatists, whose works, alas! are lost to us, though evidence of their character is preserved. about the same time the athenians must necessarily have been made more intimately acquainted with the various wealth of the lyric poets of ionia and the isles. thus it happened that their models in poetry were of two kinds, the epic and the lyric; and, in the natural connexion of art, it was but the next step to accomplish a species of poetry which should attempt to unite the two. happily, at this time, athens possessed a man of true genius, whose attention early circumstances had directed to a rude and primitive order of histrionic recitation:--phrynichus, the poet, was a disciple of thespis, the mime: to him belongs this honour, that out of the elements of the broadest farce he conceived the first grand combinations of the tragic drama. ii. from time immemorial--as far back, perhaps, as the grove possessed an altar, and the waters supplied a reed for the pastoral pipe--poetry and music had been dedicated to the worship of the gods of greece. at the appointed season of festival to each several deity, his praises were sung, his traditionary achievements were recited. one of the divinities last introduced into greece--the mystic and enigmatical dionysos, or bacchus, received the popular and enthusiastic adoration naturally due to the god of the vineyard, and the "unbinder of galling cares." his festival, celebrated at the most joyous of agricultural seasons [ ], was associated also with the most exhilarating associations. dithyrambs, or wild and exulting songs, at first extemporaneous, celebrated the triumphs of the god. by degrees, the rude hymn swelled into prepared and artful measures, performed by a chorus that danced circling round the altar; and the dithyramb assumed a lofty and solemn strain, adapted to the sanctity of sacrifice and the emblematic majesty of the god. at the same time, another band (connected with the phallic procession, which, however outwardly obscene, betokened only, at its origin, the symbol of fertility, and betrays the philosophy of some alien and eastern creed [ ]) implored in more lively and homely strains the blessing of the prodigal and jovial deity. these ceremonial songs received a wanton and wild addition, as, in order, perhaps, more closely to represent and personify the motley march of the liber pater, the chorus-singers borrowed from the vine-browsing goat which they sacrificed the hides and horns, which furnished forth the merry mimicry of the satyr and the faun. under license of this disguise, the songs became more obscene and grotesque, and the mummers vied with each other in obtaining the applause of the rural audience by wild buffoonery and unrestricted jest. whether as the prize of the winner or as the object of sacrifice, the goat (tragos in the greek) was a sufficiently important personage to bestow upon the exhibition the homely name of tragedy, or goatsong, destined afterward to be exalted by association with the proudest efforts of human genius. and while the dithyramb, yet amid the dorian tribes, retained the fire and dignity of its hereditary character--while in sicyon it rose in stately and mournful measures to the memory of adrastus, the argive hero--while in corinth, under the polished rule of periander, arion imparted to the antique hymn a new character and a more scientific music [ ],--gradually, in attica, it gave way before the familiar and fantastic humours of the satyrs, sometimes abridged to afford greater scope to their exhibitions--sometimes contracting the contagion of their burlesque. still, however, the reader will observe, that the tragedy, or goatsong, consisted of two parts--first, the exhibition of the mummers, and, secondly, the dithyrambic chorus, moving in a circle round the altar of bacchus. it appears on the whole most probable, though it is a question of fierce dispute and great uncertainty, that not only this festive ceremonial, but also its ancient name of tragedy, or goatsong, had long been familiar in attica [ ], when, about b. c. , during the third tyranny of pisistratus, a skilful and ingenious native of icaria, an attic village in which the eleutheria, or bacchic rites, were celebrated with peculiar care, surpassed all competitors in the exhibition of these rustic entertainments. he relieved the monotonous pleasantries of the satyric chorus by introducing, usually in his own person, a histrionic tale-teller, who, from an elevated platform, and with the lively gesticulations common still to the popular narrators of romance on the mole of naples, or in the bazars of the east, entertain the audience with some mythological legend. it was so clear that during this recital the chorus remained unnecessarily idle and superfluous, that the next improvement was as natural in itself, as it was important in its consequences. this was to make the chorus assist the narrator by occasional question or remark. the choruses themselves were improved in their professional art by thespis. he invented dances, which for centuries, retained their popularity on the stage, and is said to have given histrionic disguise to his reciter--at first, by the application of pigments to the face; and afterward, by the construction of a rude linen mask. iii. these improvements, chiefly mechanical, form the boundary to the achievements of thespis. he did much to create a stage--little to create tragedy, in the proper acceptation of the word. his performances were still of a ludicrous and homely character, and much more akin to the comic than the tragic. of that which makes the essence of the solemn drama of athens--its stately plot, its gigantic images, its prodigal and sumptuous poetry, thespis was not in any way the inventor. but phrynichus, the disciple of thespis, was a poet; he saw, though perhaps dimly and imperfectly, the new career opened to the art, and he may be said to have breathed the immortal spirit into the mere mechanical forms, when he introduced poetry into the bursts of the chorus and the monologue of the actor. whatever else phrynichus effected is uncertain. the developed plot--the introduction of regular dialogue through the medium of a second actor --the pomp and circumstance--the symmetry and climax of the drama--do not appear to have appertained to his earlier efforts; and the great artistical improvements which raised the simple incident to an elaborate structure of depicted narrative and awful catastrophe, are ascribed, not to phrynichus, but aeschylus. if the later works of phrynichus betrayed these excellences, it is because aeschylus had then become his rival, and he caught the heavenly light from the new star which was destined to eclipse him. but every thing essential was done for the athenian tragedy when phrynichus took it from the satyr and placed it under the protection of the muse--when, forsaking the humours of the rustic farce, he selected a solemn subject from the serious legends of the most vivid of all mythologies--when he breathed into the familiar measures of the chorus the grandeur and sweetness of the lyric ode--when, in a word, taking nothing from thespis but the stage and the performers, he borrowed his tale from homer and his melody from anacreon. we must not, then, suppose, misled by the vulgar accounts of the athenian drama, that the contest for the goat, and the buffooneries of thespis, were its real origin; born of the epic and the lyric song, homer gave it character, and the lyrists language. thespis and his predecessors only suggested the form to which the new-born poetry should be applied. iv. thus, under phrynichus, the thespian drama rose into poetry, worthy to exercise its influence upon poetical emulation, when a young man of noble family and sublime genius, rendered perhaps more thoughtful and profound by the cultivation of a mystical philosophy [ ], which had lately emerged from the primitive schools of ionian wisdom, brought to the rising art the united dignity of rank, philosophy, and genius. aeschylus, son of euphorion, born at eleusis b. c. , early saturated a spirit naturally fiery and exalted with the vivid poetry of homer. while yet a boy, and probably about the time when phrynichus first elevated the thespian drama, he is said to have been inspired by a dream with the ambition to excel in the dramatic art. but in homer he found no visionary revelation to assure him of those ends, august and undeveloped, which the actor and the chorus might be made the instruments to effect. for when the idea of scenic representation was once familiar, the epics of homer suggested the true nature of the drama. the great characteristic of that poet is individuality. gods or men alike have their separate, unmistakeable attributes and distinctions--they converse in dialogue-- they act towards an appointed end. bring homer on the stage, and introduce two actors instead of a narrator, and a drama is at once effected. if phrynichus from the first borrowed his story from homer, aeschylus, with more creative genius and more meditative intellect, saw that there was even a richer mine in the vitality of the homeric spirit--the unity of the homeric designs. nor was homer, perhaps, his sole though his guiding inspiration. the noble birth of aeschylus no doubt gave him those advantages of general acquaintance with the poetry of the rest of greece, which an education formed under the lettered dynasty of the pisistratidae would naturally confer on the well-born. we have seen that the dithyramb, debased in attica to the thespian chorus, was in the dorian states already devoted to sublime themes, and enriched by elaborate art; and simonides, whose elegies, peculiar for their sweetness, might have inspired the "ambrosial" phrynichus, perhaps gave to the stern soul of aeschylus, as to his own pupil pindar, the model of a loftier music, in his dithyrambic odes. v. at the age of twenty-five, the son of euphorion produced his first tragedy. this appears to have been exhibited in the year after the appearance of aristagoras at athens,--in that very year so eventful and important, when the athenians lighted the flames of the persian war amid the blazing capital of sardis. he had two competitors in pratinas and choerilus. the last, indeed, preceded phrynichus, but merely in the burlesques of the rude thespian stage; the example of phrynichus had now directed his attention to the new species of drama, but without any remarkable talent for its cultivation. pratinas, the contemporary of aeschylus, did not long attempt to vie with his mighty rival in his own line [ ]. recurring to the old satyr-chorus, he reduced its unmeasured buffooneries into a regular and systematic form; he preserved the mythological tale, and converted it into an artistical burlesque. this invention, delighting the multitude, as it adapted an ancient entertainment to the new and more critical taste, became so popular that it was usually associated with the graver tragedy; when the last becoming a solemn and gorgeous spectacle, the poet exhibited a trilogy (or three tragedies) to his mighty audience, while the satyric invention of pratinas closed the whole, and answered the purpose of our modern farce [ ]. of this class of the grecian drama but one specimen remains, in the cyclops of euripides. it is probable that the birth, no less than the genius of aeschylus, enabled him with greater facility to make the imposing and costly additions to the exhibition, which the nature of the poetry demanded--since, while these improvements were rapidly proceeding, the poetical fame of aeschylus was still uncrowned. nor was it till the fifteenth year after his first exhibition that the sublimest of the greek poets obtained the ivy chaplet, which had succeeded to the goat and the ox, as the prize of the tragic contests. in the course of a few years, a regular stage, appropriate scenery and costume, mechanical inventions and complicated stage machinery, gave fitting illusion to the representation of gods and men. to the monologue of phrynichus, aeschylus added a second actor [ ]; he curtailed the choruses, connected them with the main story, and, more important than all else, reduced to simple but systematic rules the progress and development of a poem, which no longer had for its utmost object to please the ear or divert the fancy, but swept on its mighty and irresistible march, to besiege passion after passion, and spread its empire over the whole soul. an itinerant platform was succeeded by a regular theatre of wood--the theatre of wood by a splendid edifice, which is said to have held no less an audience than thirty thousand persons [ ]. theatrical contests became a matter of national and universal interest. these contests occurred thrice a year, at three several festivals of bacchus [ ]. but it was at the great dionysia, held at the end of march and commencement of april, that the principal tragic contests took place. at that period, as the athenian drama increased in celebrity, and athens herself in renown, the city was filled with visiters, not only from all parts of greece, but almost from every land in which the greek civilization was known. the state took the theatre under its protection, as a solemn and sacred institution. so anxious were the people to consecrate wholly to the athenian name the glory of the spectacle, that at the great dionysia no foreigner, nor even any metoecus (or alien settler), was permitted to dance in the choruses. the chief archon presided, over the performances; to him was awarded the selection of the candidates for the prize. those chosen were allowed three actors [ ] by lot and a chorus, the expense of which was undertaken by the state, and imposed upon one of the principal persons of each tribe, called choragus. thus, on one occasion, themistocles was the choragus to a tragedy by phrynichus. the immense theatre, crowded by thousands, tier above tier, bench upon bench, was open to the heavens, and commanded, from the sloping hill on which it was situated, both land and sea. the actor apostrophized no mimic pasteboard, but the wide expanse of nature herself--the living sun, the mountain air, the wide and visible aegaean. all was proportioned to the gigantic scale of the theatre, and the mighty range of the audience. the form was artificially enlarged and heightened; masks of exquisite art and beauty brought before the audience the ideal images of their sculptured gods and heroes, while (most probably) mechanical inventions carried the tones of the voice throughout the various tiers of the theatre. the exhibitions took place in the open day, and the limited length of the plays permitted the performance of probably no less than ten or twelve before the setting of the sun. the sanctity of their origin, and the mythological nature of their stories, added something of religious solemnity to these spectacles, which were opened by ceremonial sacrifice. dramatic exhibitions, at least for a considerable period, were not, as with us, made hackneyed by constant repetition. they were as rare in their recurrence as they were imposing in their effect; nor was a drama, whether tragic or comic, that had gained the prize, permitted a second time to be exhibited. a special exemption was made in favour of aeschylus, afterward extended to sophocles and euripides. the general rule was necessarily stimulant of renewed and unceasing exertion, and was, perhaps, the principal cause of the almost miraculous fertility of the athenian dramatists. vi. on the lower benches of the semicircle sat the archons and magistrates, the senators and priests; while apart, but in seats equally honoured, the gaze of the audience was attracted, from time to time, to the illustrious strangers whom the fame of their poets and their city had brought to the dionysia of the athenians. the youths and women [ ] had their separate divisions; the rest of the audience were ranged according to their tribes, while the upper galleries were filled by the miscellaneous and impatient populace. in the orchestra (a space left by the semicircular benches, with wings stretching to the right and left before the scene), a small square platform served as the altar, to which moved the choral dances, still retaining the attributes of their ancient sanctity. the coryphaeus, or leader of the chorus, took part in the dialogue as the representative of the rest, and, occasionally, even several of the number were excited into exclamations by the passion of the piece. but the principal duty of the chorus was to diversify the dialogue by hymns and dirges, to the music of flutes, while, in dances far more artful than those now existent, they represented by their movements the emotions that they sung [ ],--thus bringing, as it were, into harmony of action the poetry of language. architectural embellishments of stone, representing a palace, with three entrances, the centre one appropriated to royalty, the others to subordinate rank, usually served for the scene. but at times, when the plot demanded a different locality, scenes painted with the utmost art and cost were easily substituted; nor were wanting the modern contrivances of artificial lightning and thunder--the clouds for the gods--a variety of inventions for the sudden apparition of demon agents, whether from above or below--and all the adventitious and effective aid which mechanism lends to genius. vii. thus summoning before us the external character of the athenian drama, the vast audience, the unroofed and enormous theatre, the actors themselves enlarged by art above the ordinary proportions of men, the solemn and sacred subjects from which its form and spirit were derived, we turn to aeschylus, and behold at once the fitting creator of its grand and ideal personifications. i have said that homer was his original; but a more intellectual age than that of the grecian epic had arrived, and with aeschylus, philosophy passed into poetry. the dark doctrine of fatality imparted its stern and awful interest to the narration of events--men were delineated, not as mere self-acting and self-willed mortals, but as the agents of a destiny inevitable and unseen--the gods themselves are no longer the gods of homer, entering into the sphere of human action for petty motives and for individual purposes--drawing their grandeur, not from the part they perform, but from the descriptions of the poet;--they appear now as the oracles or the agents of fate--they are visiters from another world, terrible and ominous from the warnings which they convey. homer is the creator of the material poetry, aeschylus of the intellectual. the corporeal and animal sufferings of the titan in the epic hell become exalted by tragedy into the portrait of moral fortitude defying physical anguish. the prometheus of aeschylus is the spirit of a god disdainfully subjected to the misfortunes of a man. in reading this wonderful performance, which in pure and sustained sublimity is perhaps unrivalled in the literature of the world, we lose sight entirely of the cheerful hellenic worship; and yet it is in vain that the learned attempt to trace its vague and mysterious metaphysics to any old symbolical religion of the east. more probably, whatever theological system it shadows forth, was rather the gigantic conception of the poet himself, than the imperfect revival of any forgotten creed, or the poetical disguise of any existent philosophy. however this be, it would certainly seem, that, in this majestic picture of the dauntless enemy of jupiter, punished only for his benefits to man, and attracting all our sympathies by his courage and his benevolence, is conveyed something of disbelief or defiance of the creed of the populace--a suspicion from which aeschylus was not free in the judgment of his contemporaries, and which is by no means inconsonant with the doctrines of pythagoras. viii. the conduct of the fable is as follows: two vast demons, strength and force, accompanied by vulcan, appear in a remote plain of earth--an unpeopled desert. there, on a steril and lofty rock, hard by the sea, prometheus is chained by vulcan--"a reward for his disposition to be tender to mankind." the date of this doom is cast far back in the earliest dawn of time, and jupiter has but just commenced his reign. while vulcan binds him, prometheus utters no sound--it is vulcan, the agent of his punishment, that alone complains. nor is it till the dread task is done, and the ministers of jupiter have retired, that "the god, unawed by the wrath of gods," bursts forth with his grand apostrophe-- "oh air divine! oh ye swift-winged winds-- ye sources of the rivers, and ye waves, that dimple o'er old ocean like his smiles-- mother of all--oh earth! and thou the orb, all-seeing, of the sun, behold and witness what i, a god, from the stern gods endure. * * * * * * when shall my doom be o'er?--be o'er!--to me the future hides no riddle--nor can wo come unprepared! it fits me then to brave that which must be: for what can turn aside the dark course of the grim necessity?" while thus soliloquizing, the air becomes fragrant with odours, and faintly stirs with the rustling of approaching wings. the daughters of ocean, aroused from their grots below, are come to console the titan. they utter many complaints against the dynasty of jove. prometheus comforts himself by the prediction that the olympian shall hereafter require his services, and that, until himself released from his bondage, he will never reveal to his tyrant the danger that menaces his realm; for the vanquished is here described as of a mightier race than the victor, and to him are bared the mysteries of the future, which to jupiter are denied. the triumph of jupiter is the conquest of brute force over knowledge. prometheus then narrates how, by means of his counsels, jupiter had gained his sceptre, and the ancient saturn and his partisans been whelmed beneath the abyss of tartarus--how he alone had interfered with jupiter to prevent the extermination of the human race (whom alone the celestial king disregarded and condemned)--how he had imparted to them fire, the seed of all the arts, and exchanged in their breasts the terrible knowledge of the future for the beguiling flatteries of hope and hence his punishment. at this time ocean himself appears: he endeavours unavailingly to persuade the titan to submission to jupiter. the great spirit of prometheus, and his consideration for others, are beautifully individualized in his answers to his consoler, whom he warns not to incur the wrath of the tyrant by sympathy with the afflicted. alone again with the oceanides, the latter burst forth in fresh strains of pity. "the wide earth echoes wailingly, stately and antique were thy fallen race, the wide earth waileth thee! lo! from the holy asian dwelling-place, fall for a godhead's wrongs, the mortals' murmuring tears, they mourn within the colchian land, the virgin and the warrior daughters, and far remote, the scythian band, around the broad maeotian waters, and they who hold in caucasus their tower, arabia's martial flower hoarse-clamouring 'midst sharp rows of barbed spears. one have i seen with equal tortures riven-- an equal god; in adamantine chains ever and evermore the titan atlas, crush'd, sustains the mighty mass of mighty heaven, and the whirling cataracts roar, with a chime to the titan's groans, and the depth that receives them moans; and from vaults that the earth are under, black hades is heard in thunder; while from the founts of white-waved rivers flow melodious sorrows, wailing with his wo." prometheus, in his answer, still farther details the benefits he had conferred on men--he arrogates to himself their elevation to intellect and reason [ ]. he proceeds darkly to dwell on the power of necessity, guided by "the triform fates and the unforgetful furies," whom he asserts to be sovereign over jupiter himself. he declares that jupiter cannot escape his doom: "his doom," ask the daughters of ocean, "is it not evermore to reign?"--"that thou mayst not learn," replies the prophet; "and in the preservation of this secret depends my future freedom." the rejoinder of the chorus is singularly beautiful, and it is with a pathos not common to aeschylus that they contrast their present mournful strain with that which they poured "what time the silence, erst was broken, around the baths, and o'er the bed to which, won well by many a soft love-token, and hymn'd by all the music of delight, our ocean-sister, bright hesione, was led!" at the end of this choral song appears io, performing her mystic pilgrimage [ ]. the utter wo and despair of io are finely contrasted with the stern spirit of prometheus. her introduction gives rise to those ancestral and traditionary allusions to which the greeks were so attached. in prophesying her fate, prometheus enters into much beautiful descriptive poetry, and commemorates the lineage of the argive kings. after io's departure, prometheus renews his defiance to jupiter, and his stern prophecies, that the son of saturn shall be "hurled from his realm, a forgotten king." in the midst of these weird denunciations, mercury arrives, charged by jupiter to learn the nature of that danger which prometheus predicts to him. the titan bitterly and haughtily defies the threats and warnings of the herald, and exults, that whatever be his tortures, he is at least immortal,-- to be afflicted, but not to die. mercury at length departs--the menace of jupiter is fulfilled--the punishment is consummated--and, amid storm and earthquake, both rock and prisoner are struck by the lightnings of the god into the deep abyss. "the earth is made to reel, and rumbling by, bellowing it rolls, the thunder's gathering wrath! and the fierce fires glare livid; and along the rocks the eddies of the sands whirl high, borne by the hurricane, and all the blasts of all the winds leap forth, each hurtling each met in the wildness of a ghastly war, the dark floods blended with the swooping heaven. it comes--it comes! on me it speeds--the storm, the rushing onslaught of the thunder-god; oh, majesty of earth, my solemn mother! and thou that through the universal void, circlest sweet light, all blessing; earth and ether, ye i invoke, to know the wrongs i suffer." ix. such is the conclusion of this unequalled drama, epitomized somewhat at undue length, in order to show the reader how much the philosophy that had awakened in the age of solon now actuated the creations of poetry. not that aeschylus, like euripides, deals in didactic sentences and oracular aphorisms. he rightly held such pedantries of the closet foreign to the tragic genius [ ]. his philosophy is in the spirit, and not in the diction of his works--in vast conceptions, not laconic maxims. he does not preach, but he inspires. the "prometheus" is perhaps the greatest moral poem in the world--sternly and loftily intellectual--and, amid its darker and less palpable allegories, presenting to us the superiority of an immortal being to all mortal sufferings. regarded merely as poetry, the conception of the titan of aeschylus has no parallel except in the fiend of milton. but perhaps the representation of a benevolent spirit, afflicted, but not accursed--conquered, but not subdued by a power, than which it is elder, and wiser, and loftier, is yet more sublime than that of an evil demon writhing under the penance deservedly incurred from an irresistible god. the one is intensely moral--at once the more moral and the more tragic, because the sufferings are not deserved, and therefore the defiance commands our sympathy as well as our awe; but the other is but the picture of a righteous doom, borne by a despairing though stubborn will; it affords no excitement to our courage, and forbids at once our admiration and our pity. x. i do not propose to conduct the reader at length through the other tragedies of aeschylus; seven are left to us, to afford the most striking examples which modern or ancient literature can produce of what perhaps is the true theory of the sublime, viz., the elevating the imagination by means of the passions, for a moral end. nothing can be more grand and impressive than the opening of the "agamemnon," with the solitary watchman on the tower, who, for ten long years, has watched nightly for the beacon-fires that are to announce the fall of ilion, and who now beholds them blaze at last. the description which clytemnestra gives of the progress of these beacon-fires from troy to argos is, for its picturesque animation, one of the most celebrated in aeschylus. the following lines will convey to the general reader a very inadequate reflection, though not an unfaithful paraphrase, of this splendid passage [ ]. clytemnestra has announced to the chorus the capture of troy. the chorus, half incredulous, demand what messenger conveyed the intelligence. clytemnestra replies:-- "a gleam--a gleam--from ida's height, by the fire--god sent, it came; from watch to watch it leap'd that light, as a rider rode the flame! it shot through the startled sky; and the torch of that blazing glory old lemnos caught on high, on its holy promontory, and sent it on, the jocund sign, to athos, mount of jove divine. wildly the while it rose from the isle, so that the might of the journeying light skimm'd over the back of the gleaming brine! farther and faster speeds it on, till the watch that keep macistus steep-- see it burst like a blazing sun! doth macistus sleep on his tower--clad steep? no! rapid and red doth the wild-fire sweep it flashes afar, on the wayward stream of the wild euripus, the rushing beam! it rouses the light on messapion's height, and they feed its breath with the withered heath. but it may not stay! and away--away it bounds in its freshening might. silent and soon, like a broadened moon, it passes in sheen, asopus green, [ ] and bursts on cithaeron gray. the warder wakes to the signal rays, and it swoops from the hill with a broader blaze, on--on the fiery glory rode-- thy lonely lake, gorgopis, glowed-- to megara's mount it came; they feed it again, and it streams amain a giant beard of flame! the headland cliffs that darkly down o'er the saronic waters frown, are pass'd with the swift one's lurid stride, and the huge rock glares on the glaring tide, with mightier march and fiercer power it gain'd arachne's neighbouring tower-- thence on our argive roof its rest it won, of ida's fire the long-descended son bright harbinger of glory and of joy! so first and last with equal honour crown'd, in solemn feasts the race-torch circles round. and these my heralds! this my sign of peace! lo! while we breathe, the victor lords of greece, stalk, in stern tumult, through the halls of troy!" [ ] in one of the earlier choruses, in which is introduced an episodical allusion to the abduction of helen, occurs one of those soft passages so rare in aeschylus, nor less exquisite than rare. the chorus suppose the minstrels of menelaus thus to lament the loss of helen:-- "and wo the halls, and wo the chiefs, and wo the bridal bed! and we her steps--for once she loved the lord whose love she fled! lo! where, dishonour yet unknown, he sits--nor deems his helen flown, tearless and voiceless on the spot; all desert, but he feels it not! ah! soon alive, to miss and mourn the form beyond the ocean borne shall start the lonely king! and thought shall fill the lost one's room, and darkly through the palace gloom shall stalk a ghostly thing. [ ] her statues meet, as round they rise, the leaden stare of lifeless eyes. where is their ancient beauty gone?-- why loathe his looks the breathing stone? alas! the foulness of disgrace hath swept the venus from her face! and visions in the mournful night shall dupe the heart to false delight, a false and melancholy; for naught with sadder joy is fraught, than things at night by dreaming brought, the wish'd for and the holy. swift from the solitary side, the vision and the blessing glide, scarce welcomed ere they sweep, pale, bloodless, dreams, aloft on wings unseen and soft, lost wanderers gliding through the paths of sleep." but the master-terror of this tragedy is in the introduction of cassandra, who accompanies agamemnon, and who, in the very hour of his return, amid the pomp and joy that welcome the "king of men," is seized with the prophetic inspiration, and shrieks out those ominous warnings, fated ever to be heard in vain. it is she who recalls to the chorus, to the shuddering audience, that it is the house of the long-fated atridae, to which their descendant has returned--"that human shamble-house--that bloody floor--that dwelling, abhorred by heaven, privy to so many horrors against the most sacred ties;" the doom yet hangs over the inexpiable threshold; the curse passes from generation to generation; agamemnon is the victim of his sires. recalling the inhuman banquet served by atreus to thyestes of his own murdered children, she starts from the mangled spectres on the threshold: "see ye those infants crouching by the floor, like phantom dreams, pale nurslings, that have perish'd by kindred hands." gradually her ravings become clear and clearer, until at last she scents the "blood-dripping slaughter within;" a vapour rises to her nostrils as from a charnel house--her own fate, which she foresees at hand, begins to overpower her--her mood softens, and she enters the palace, about to become her tomb, with thoughts in which frantic terror has yielded to solemn and pathetic resignation: "alas for mortals!--what their power and pride? a little shadow sweeps it from the earth! and if they suffer--why, the fatal hour comes o'er the record like a moistened sponge, and blots it out; _methinks this latter lot affects me deepest--well! 'tis pitiful!"_ [ ] scarcely has the prophetess withdrawn than we hear behind the scene the groans of the murdered king, the palace behind is opened, and clytemnestra is standing, stern and lofty, by the dead body of her lord. the critics have dwelt too much on the character of clytemnestra--it is that of cassandra which is the masterpiece of the tragedy. xi. the story, which is spread throughout three plays (forming a complete trilogy), continues in the opening of the choephori, with orestes mourning over his father's tomb. if clytemnestra has furnished would-be critics with a comparison with lady macbeth, for no other reason than that one murdered her husband, and the other persuaded her husband to murder somebody else, so orestes may with more justice be called the hamlet of the greeks; but though the character itself of orestes is not so complex and profound as that of hamlet, nor the play so full of philosophical beauties as the modern tragedy, yet it has passages equally pathetic, and more sternly and terribly sublime. the vague horror which in the commencement of the play prepares us for the catastrophe by the dream of clytemnestra--how a serpent lay in swaddling-clothes like an infant, and she placed it in her breast, and it drew blood; the brief and solemn answer of orestes-- "man's visions never come to him in vain;" the manner in which the avenging parricide interrupts the dream, so that (as in macbeth) the prediction inspires the deed that it foretells; the dauntless resolution of clytemnestra, when she hears, in the dark sayings of her servant, that "the dead are slaying the living" (i. e., that through the sword of orestes agamemnon is avenged on aegisthus), calls for a weapon, royal to the last, wishing only to "know which shall be the victor or the vanquished-- since that the crisis of the present horror;" the sudden change from fierce to tender as orestes bursts in, and, thinking only of her guilty lover, she shrieks forth, "ah! thou art then no more, beloved aegisthus;" the advance of the threatening son, the soft apostrophe of the mother as she bares her bosom-- "hold! and revere this breast on which so oft thy young cheek nestled--cradle of thy sleep, and fountain of thy being;" the recoil of orestes--the remonstrance of pylades--the renewed passion of the avenger--the sudden recollection of her dream, which the murderess scarcely utters than it seems to confirm orestes to its fulfilment, and he pursues and slays her by the side of the adulterer; all these passages are full of so noble a poetry, that i do not think the parallel situations in hamlet equal their sustained and solemn grandeur. but the sublimest effort of the imagination is in the conclusion. while orestes is yet justifying the deed that avenged a father, strange and confused thoughts gradually creep over him. no eyes see them but his own--there they are, "the gorgons, in vestments of sable, their eyes dropping loathly blood!" slowly they multiply, they approach, still invisible but to their prey--"the angry hell-hounds of his mother." he flies, the fresh blood yet dripping from his hands. this catastrophe--the sudden apparition of the furies ideally imaged forth to the parricide alone--seems to me greater in conception than the supernatural agency in hamlet. the visible ghost is less awful than the unseen furies. the plot is continued through the third piece of the trilogy (the eumenides), and out of aeschylus himself, no existing tragedy presents so striking an opening--one so terrible and so picturesque. it is the temple of apollo at delphi. the priestess, after a short invocation, enters the sacred edifice, but suddenly returns. "a man," she says, "is at the marble seat, a suppliant to the god--his bloody hands hold a drawn sword and a long branch of olive. but around the man sleep a wondrous and ghastly troop, not of women, but of things woman-like, yet fiendish; harpies they seem, but are not; black-robed and wingless, and their breath is loud and baleful, and their eyes drop venom--and their garb is neither meet for the shrines of god nor the habitations of men. never have i seen (saith the pythian) a nation which nurtured such a race." cheered by apollo, orestes flies while the dread sisters yet sleep; and now within the temple we behold the furies scattered around, and a pale and lofty shape, the ghost of clytemnestra, gliding on the stage, awakens the agents of her vengeance. they break forth as they rouse themselves, "seize--seize-- seize." they lament--they bemoan the departure of their victim, they expostulate with apollo, who expels them from his temple. the scene changes; orestes is at athens,--he pleads his cause before the temple of minerva. the contest is now shared by gods; apollo and the furies are the pleaders--pallas is the umpire, the areopagites are the judges. pallas casts in her vote in favour of orestes--the lots are equal--he is absolved; the furies, at first enraged, are soothed by minerva, and, invited to dwell in athens, pour blessings on the land. a sacred but joyous procession crowns the whole. thus the consummation of the trilogy is cheerful, though each of the two former pieces is tragic; and the poet artfully conduces the poem to the honour of his native athens and the venerable areopagus. regarding the three as one harmonious and united performance, altogether not so long as one play of shakspeare's, they are certainly not surpassed in greatness of thought, in loftiness of conception, and in sustained vigour of execution, by any poem in the compass of literature; nor, observing their simple but compact symmetry as a whole, shall we do right to subscribe to those who deny to aeschylus the skill of the artist, while they grant him the faculty of the poet. the ingenious schlegel attributes to these tragedies symbolical interpretations, but to my judgment with signal ill-success. these four tragedies--the prometheus, the agamemnon, the choephori, and the eumenides--are in grandeur immeasurably superior to the remaining three. xii. of these last, the seven against thebes is the best. the subject was one peculiarly interesting to greece; the war of the seven was the earliest record of a league among the grecian princes, and of an enterprise carried on with a regular and systematic design. the catastrophe of two brothers falling by each other's hand is terrible and tragic, and among the most national of the grecian legends. the fierce and martial spirit of the warrior poet runs throughout the play; his descriptions are animated as with the zeal and passion of battle; the chorus of theban virgins paint in the most glowing colours the rush of the adverse hosts--the prancing of the chargers--the sound of their hoofs, "rumbling as a torrent lashing the side of cliffs;" we hear the creak of the heavy cars--the shrill whiz of the javelins, "maddening the very air"--the showers of stones crashing over the battlements--the battering at the mighty gates--the uproar of the city--the yells of rapine--the shrieks of infants "strangled by the bubbling blood." homer himself never accumulated more striking images of horror. the description of tydeus is peculiarly homeric-- "three shadowy crests, the honours of his helm, wave wild, and shrilly from his buckler broad the brazen bell rings terror. on the shield he bears his haughty ensign--typed by stars gleaming athwart the sky, and in the midst glitters the royal moon--the eye of night. fierce in the glory of his arms, his voice roars by the river banks; and drunk with war he pants, as some wild charger, when the trump clangs ringing, as he rushes on the foe." the proud, dauntless, and warlike spirit of eteocles which is designed and drawn with inconceivable power, is beautifully characterized in his reply to the above description: "man hath no armour, war hath no array, at which this heart can tremble; no device nor blazonry of battle can inflict the wounds they menace; crests and clashing bells without the spear are toothless, and the night, wrought on yon buckler with the stars of heaven, prophet, perchance, his doom; and if dark death close round his eyes, are but the ominous signs of the black night that waits him." the description of each warrior stationed at each gate is all in the genius of homer, closing as it does with that of polynices, the brother of the besieged hero, whom, when he hears his name, eteocles himself resolves to confront. at first, indeed, the latter breaks out into exclamations which denote the awe and struggle of the abhorrent nature; forebodings of his own doom flit before him, he feels the curses of his sire are ripening to their fruit, and that the last storm is yet to break upon the house of oedipus. suddenly he checks the impulse, sensible of the presence of the chorus. he passes on to reason with himself, through a process of thought which shakspeare could not have surpassed. he conjures up the image of that brother, hateful and unjust from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood up to youth-- he assures himself that justice would be forsworn if this foe should triumph--and rushes on to his dread resolve. "'tis i will face this warrior; who can boast a right to equal mine? chief against chief-- foe against foe!--and brother against brother. what, ho! my greaves, my spear, my armour proof against this storm of stones! my stand is chosen." eteocles and his brother both perish in the unnatural strife, and the tragedy ends with the decree of the senators to bury eteocles with due honours, and the bold resolution of antigone (the sister of the dead) to defy the ordinance which forbids a burial to polynices-- "for mighty is the memory of the womb from which alike we sprung--a wretched mother!" the same spirit which glows through the "seven against thebes" is also visible in the "persians," which, rather picturesque than dramatic, is tragedy brought back to the dithyrambic ode. it portrays the defeat of xerxes, and contains one of the most valuable of historical descriptions, in the lines devoted to the battle of salamis. the speech of atossa (the mother of xerxes), in which she enumerates the offerings to the shade of darius, is exquisitely beautiful. "the charms that sooth the dead: white milk, and lucid honey, pure-distill'd by the wild bee--that craftsman of the flowers; the limpid droppings of the virgin fount, and this bright liquid from its mountain mother born fresh--the joy of the time--hallowed vine; the pale-green olive's odorous fruit, whose leaves live everlastingly--and these wreathed flowers, the smiling infants o' the prodigal earth." nor is there less poetry in the invocation of the chorus to the shade of darius, which slowly rises as they conclude. but the purpose for which the monarch returns to earth is scarcely sufficient to justify his appearance, and does not seem to be in accordance with the power over our awe and terror which the poet usually commands. darius hears the tale of his son's defeat--warns the persians against interfering with the athenians--tells the mother to comfort and console her son-- bids the chorus (who disregard his advice) give themselves to mirth, even though in affliction, "for to the dead riches are no advantage"-- and so returns to his repose, which seems very unnecessarily disturbed. "the suppliants," which schlegel plausibly conjectures to have been the intermediate piece of a trilogy, is chiefly remarkable as a proof of the versatility of the poet. all horror has vanished from the scene; the language is soft when compared with the usual diction of aeschylus; the action is peaceful, and the plot extremely simple, being merely the protection which the daughters of danaus obtain at the court of pelasgus from the pursuit of the sons of aegyptus. the heroines of the play, the danaides, make the chorus, and this serves to render the whole, yet more than the persians, a lyric rather than a tragedy. the moral of the play is homely and primitive, and seems confined to the inculcation of hospitality to strangers, and the inviolable sanctity of the shrine. i do not know any passages in "the suppliants" that equal in poetry the more striking verses of "the persians," or "the seven against thebes." xiii. attempts have been made to convey to modern readers a more familiar notion of aeschylus by comparisons with modern poets. one critic likens him to dante, another to milton--but he resembles neither. no modern language can convey a notion of the wonderful strength of his diction--no modern poet, of the stern sublimity of his conceptions. the french tragedians may give some weak reflection of euripides or even of sophocles, but none have ventured upon the sacred territory of the father of the tragic drama. he defies all imitation. his genius is so near the verge of bombast, that to approach his sublime is to rush into the ridiculous. [ ] aeschylus never once, in the plays that have come down to us, delineates love, except by an expression or two as regards the passion of clytemnestra for aegisthus [ ]. it was emblematic of a new state of society when euripides created the phaedra and the medea. his plots are worked out by the simplest and the fewest positions. but he had evidently his own theory of art, and studied with care such stage effects as appeared to him most striking and impressive. thus, in the burlesque contest between aeschylus and euripides, in the comedy of "the frogs," the former is censured, not for too rude a neglect, but for too elaborate a cultivation, of theatrical craft--such as introducing his principal characters, his niobe and achilles [ ], with their faces hid, and preserving long and obstinate silence, in order by that suspense to sharpen the expectation of the audience. aeschylus, in fact, contrary to the general criticism, was as earnest and thoughtful an artist as sophocles himself. there was this difference, it is true; one invented the art and the other perfected. but the first requires as intense a study as the last; and they who talk of the savage and untutored genius of aeschylus, are no wiser than the critics who applied the phrase of "native wood-notes wild" to the consummate philosophy of "hamlet," the anatomical correctness of "othello," the delicate symmetry of "the tempest." with respect to the language of aeschylus, ancient critics unite with the modern in condemning the straining of his metaphors, and the exaggeration of his images; yet they appear to me a necessary part of his genius, and of the effect it produces. but nothing can be more unsatisfactory and inconclusive than the theory of schlegel, that such metaphors and images, such rugged boldness and irregular fire, are the characteristics of a literature in its infancy. on the contrary, as we have already seen, phrynichus, the predecessor of aeschylus, was as much characterized by sweetness and harmony, as aeschylus by grandeur and headlong animation. in our own time, we have seen the cold classic school succeeded by one full of the faults which the german, eloquent but superficial, would ascribe to the infancy of literature. the diction of aeschylus was the distinction of himself, and not of his age; if it require an apology, let us not seek it in false pretences; if he had written after euripides, his diction would have been equally startling, and his metaphors equally lofty. his genius was one of those which, in any age, can form an era, and not that which an era necessarily forms. he might have enriched his music from the strains of the dorian lyres, but he required only one poet to have lived before him. the rest of the greek dramatists required aeschylus--aeschylus required only homer. the poet is, indeed, the creator, not of images solely, but of men-- not of one race of ideas and characters, but of a vast and interminable posterity scattered over the earth. the origin of what wonderful works, in what distant regions, in what various time, may be traced, step by step, from influence to influence, till we arrive at homer! such is the vitality of genius. the true spiritual transmigrator--it passes through all shapes--losing identity, but not life--and kindred to the great intelligence, which is the soul of matter--departing from one form only to animate another. chapter iii. aristides.--his character and position.--the rise of themistocles.-- aristides is ostracised.--the ostracism examined.--the influence of themistocles increases.--the silver-mines of laurion.--their product applied by themistocles to the increase of the navy.--new direction given to the national character. i. while the progress of the drama and the genius of aeschylus contributed to the rising renown of athens, there appeared on the surface of her external affairs two rival and principal actors, of talents and designs so opposite, that it soon became evident that the triumph of one could be only in the defeat of the other. before the battle of marathon, aristides had attained a very considerable influence in athens. his birth was noble--his connexions wealthy--his own fortune moderate. he had been an early follower and admirer of clisthenes, the establisher of popular institutions in athens after the expulsion of the pisistratidae, but he shared the predilection of many popular chieftains, and while opposing the encroachments of a tyranny, supported the power of an aristocracy. the system of lycurgus was agreeable to his stern and inflexible temper. his integrity was republican--his loftiness of spirit was patrician. he had all the purity, the disinterestedness, and the fervour of a patriot--he had none of the suppleness or the passion of a demagogue; on the contrary, he seems to have felt much of that high-spirited disdain of managing a people which is common to great minds conscious that they are serving a people. his manners were austere, and he rather advised than persuaded men to his purposes. he pursued no tortuous policy, but marched direct to his object, fronting, and not undermining, the obstacles in his path. his reputation for truth and uprightness was proverbial, and when some lines in aeschylus were recited on the stage, implying that "to be, and not to seem, his wisdom was," the eyes of the spectators were fixed at once upon aristides. his sternness was only for principles--he had no harshness for men. priding himself on impartiality between friends and foes, he pleaded for the very person whom the laws obliged him to prosecute; and when once, in his capacity of arbiter between two private persons, one of the parties said that his opponent had committed many injuries against aristides, he rebuked him nobly: "tell me not," he said, "of injuries against myself, but against thee. it is thy cause i am adjudging, and not my own." it may be presumed, that with these singular and exalted virtues, he did not seek to prevent the wounds they inflicted upon the self-love of others, and that the qualities of a superior mind were displayed with the bearing of a haughty spirit. he became the champion of the aristocratic party, and before the battle of marathon he held the office of public treasurer. in this capacity plutarch asserts that he was subjected to an accusation by themistocles, and even intimates that themistocles himself had been his predecessor in that honourable office [ ]. but the youth of themistocles contradicts this statement; and though his restless and ambitious temper had led him already into active life, and he might have combined with others more influential against aristides, it can scarcely be supposed that, possessing no advantages of birth, he rose into much power or distinction, till he won sudden and popular applause by his gallantry at marathon. ii. themistocles was of illegitimate birth, according to the athenian prejudice, since his mother was a foreigner. his father, though connected with the priestly and high-born house of the lycomedae, was not himself a eupatrid. the young themistocles had many of the qualities which the equivocal condition of illegitimacy often educes from active and stirring minds--insolence, ostentation, the desire to shine, and the invincible ambition to rise. he appears, by a popular tale, to have early associated with his superiors, and to have evinced betimes the art and address which afterward distinguished him. at a meeting of all the illegitimate youths assembled at the wrestling-ring at cynosarges, dedicated to hercules, he persuaded some of the young nobles to accompany him, so as to confound as it were the distinction between the legitimate and the baseborn. his early disposition was bold, restless, and impetuous. he paid little attention to the subtleties of schoolmen, or the refinements of the arts; but even in boyhood devoted himself to the study of politics and the arts of government. he would avoid the sports and occupations of his schoolfellows, and compose declamations, of which the subject was the impeachment or defence of some of his young friends. his dispositions prophesied of his future career, and his master was wont to say, "that he was born to be a blessing or a curse to the commonwealth." his strange and precocious boyhood was followed by a wild and licentious youth. he lived in extremes, and alternated between the loosest pleasures [ ] and the most daring ambition. entering prematurely into public life, either his restless disposition or his political principles embroiled him with men of the highest rank. fearless and sanguine, he cared not whom he attacked, or what he adventured; and, whatever his conduct before the battle of marathon, the popular opinions he embraced could not but bring him, after that event, in constant opposition to aristides, the champion of the areopagus. that splendid victory which gave an opening to his career sharpened his ambition. the loud fame of miltiades, yet unconscious of reverse, inspired him with a lofty envy. he seems from that period to have forsaken his more youthful excesses. he abstained from his wonted pursuits and pleasures--he indulged much in solitary and abstracted thought--he watched whole nights. his friends wondered at the change, and inquired the cause. "the trophies of miltiades," said he, "will not suffer me to sleep." from these meditations, which are common to most men in the interval between an irregular youth and an aspiring manhood, he soon seems to have awakened with fixed objects and expanded views. once emerged from the obscurity of his birth, his success was rapid, for he possessed all the qualities which the people demanded in a leader--not only the talents and the courage, but the affability and the address. he was an agreeable and boon companion-- he committed to memory the names of the humblest citizens--his versatility enabled him to be all things to all men. without the lofty spirit and beautiful mind of pericles, without the prodigal but effeminate graces of alcibiades--without, indeed, any of their athenian poetry in his intellectual composition, he yet possessed much of their powers of persuasion, their ready talent for business, and their genius of intrigue. but his mind, if coarser than that of either of his successors, was yet perhaps more masculine and determined; nothing diverted him from his purpose--nothing arrested his ambition. his ends were great, and he associated the rise of his country with his more selfish objects, but he was unscrupulous as to his means. avid of glory, he was not keenly susceptible to honour. he seems rather not to have comprehended, than comprehending, to have disdained the limits which principle sets to action. remarkably far-sighted, he possessed, more than any of his contemporaries, the prophetic science of affairs: patient, vigilant, and profound, he was always energetic, because always prepared. such was the rival of aristides, and such the rising leader of the popular party at athens. iii. history is silent as to the part taken by aristides in the impeachment of miltiades, but there is no reason to believe that he opposed the measure of the alcmaeonid party with which he acted, and which seems to have obtained the ascendency after the death of miltiades. in the year following the battle of marathon, we find aristides in the eminent dignity of archon. in this office he became generally known by the title of the just. his influence, his official rank, the power of the party that supported him, soon rendered him the principal authority of athens. the courts of the judges were deserted, every litigant repaired to his arbitration--his administration of power obtained him almost the monopoly of it. still, however, he was vigorously opposed by themistocles and the popular faction led by that aspiring rival. by degrees; various reasons, the chief of which was his own high position, concurred to diminish the authority of aristides; even among his own partisans he lost ground, partly by the jealousy of the magistrates, whose authority he had superseded--and partly, doubtless, from a maxim more dangerous to a leader than any he can adopt, viz., impartiality between friends and foes in the appointment to offices. aristides regarded, not the political opinions, but the abstract character or talents, of the candidates. with themistocles, on the contrary, it was a favourite saying, "the gods forbid that i should be in power, and my friends no partakers of my success." the tendency of the first policy is to discontent friends, while it rarely, if ever, conciliates foes; neither is it so elevated as it may appear to the superficial; for if we contend for the superiority of one set of principles over another, we weaken the public virtue when we give equal rewards to the principles we condemn as to the principles we approve. we make it appear as if the contest had been but a war of names, and we disregard the harmony which ought imperishably to exist between the opinions which the state should approve and the honours which the state can confer. he who is impartial as to persons must submit to seem lukewarm as to principles. thus the more towering and eminent the seeming power of aristides, the more really hollow and insecure were its foundations. to his own party it was unproductive-- to the multitude it appeared unconstitutional. the extraordinary honours he had acquired--his monopoly of the magistrature--his anti-popular opinions, could not but be regarded with fear by a people so jealous of their liberties. he seemed to their apprehensions to be approaching gradually to the sovereignty of the state--not, indeed, by guards and military force, but the more dangerous encroachments of civil authority. the moment for the attack arrived. themistocles could count at last upon the chances of a critical experiment, and aristides was subjected to the ordeal of the ostracism. iv. the method of the ostracism was this:--each citizen wrote upon a shell, or a piece of broken earthenware, the name of the person he desired to banish. the magistrates counted the shells, and if they amounted to six thousand (a very considerable proportion of the free population, and less than which rendered the ostracism invalid), they were sorted, and the man whose name was found on the greater number of shells was exiled for ten years, with full permission to enjoy his estates. the sentence was one that honoured while it afflicted, nor did it involve any other accusation than that of being too powerful or too ambitious for the citizen of a free state. it is a well-known story, that, during the process of voting, an ignorant burgher came to aristides, whose person he did not know, and requested him to write down the name of aristides. "has he ever injured you?" asked the great man. "no," answered the clown, "nor do i know him even by sight; but it vexes me to hear him everywhere called the 'just.'" aristides replied not--he wrote his own name on the shell, and returned it to the enlightened voter. such is a tale to which more importance than is its due has been attached. yet perhaps we can give a new reading to the honest burgher's reply, and believe that it was not so expressive of envy at the virtue, as of fear at the reputation. aristides received the sentence of exile (b. c. ) with his accustomed dignity. his last words on leaving his native city were characteristic of his generous and lofty nature. "may the athenian people," he said, "never know the day which shall force them to remember aristides!"--a wish, fortunately alike for the exile and the people, not realized. that day, so patriotically deprecated, soon came, glorious equally to athens and aristides, and the reparation of wrong and the triumph of liberty found a common date. the singular institution of the ostracism is often cited in proof of the ingratitude of a republic, and the fickleness of a people; but it owed its origin not to republican disorders, but to despotic encroachment--not to a people, but to a tyrant. if we look throughout all the grecian states, we find that a tyranny was usually established by some able and artful citizen, who, attaching himself either to the aristocratic, or more frequently to the popular party, was suddenly elevated into supreme power, with the rise of the faction he had espoused. establishing his fame by popular virtues, he was enabled often to support his throne by a moral authority--more dangerous than the odious defence of military hirelings: hence necessarily arose among the free states a jealousy of individuals, whose eminence became such as to justify an undue ambition; and hence, for a long period, while liberty was yet tender and insecure, the (almost) necessity of the ostracism. aristotle, who laments and condemns the practice, yet allows that in certain states it was absolutely requisite; he thinks the evil it is intended to prevent "might have been provided for in the earlier epochs of a commonwealth, by guarding against the rise of one man to a dangerous degree of power; but where the habits and laws of a nation are so formed as to render it impossible to prevent the rise, you must then guard against its consequences:" and in another part of his politics he observes, "that even in republics, where men are regarded, not according to their wealth, but worth--where the citizens love liberty and have arms and valour to defend it; yet, should the pre-eminent virtues of one man, or of one family, totally eclipse the merit of the community at large, you have but two choices--the ostracism or the throne." if we lament the precaution, we ought then to acknowledge the cause. the ostracism was the creature of the excesses of the tyrannical, and not of the popular principle. the bland and specious hypocrisy of pisistratus continued to work injury long after his death--and the ostracism of aristides was the necessary consequence of the seizure of the citadel. such evil hath arbitrary power, that it produces injustice in the contrary principles as a counterpart to the injustice of its own; thus the oppression of our catholic countrymen for centuries resulted from the cruelties and persecutions of a papal ascendency. we remembered the danger, and we resorted to the rigid precaution. to guard against a second tyranny of opinion, we condemned, nor perhaps without adequate cause, not one individual, but a whole sect, to a moral ostracism. ancient times are not then so opposite to the present--and the safety of the state may excuse, in a republic as in a monarchy, a thousand acts of abstract injustice. but the banishment of aristides has peculiar excuses in the critical circumstances of the time. the remembrance of pisistratus was still fresh--his son had but just perished in an attempt on his country--the family still lived, and still menaced: the republic was yet in its infancy--a hostile aristocracy within its walls--a powerful enemy still formidable without. it is a remarkable fact, that as the republic strengthened, and as the popular power increased, the custom of ostracism was superseded. the democratic party was never so strong as at the time in which it was finally abolished. it is the insecurity of power, whether in a people or a king, that generates suspicion. habituated to liberty, a people become less rigid and more enlightened as to its precautions. v. it had been a saying of aristides, "that if the athenians desired their affairs to prosper, they ought to fling themistocles and himself into the barathrum." but fortune was satisfied at this time with a single victim, and reserved the other for a later sacrifice. relieved from the presence of a rival who had constantly crossed and obstructed his career, themistocles found ample scope for his genius. he was not one of those who are unequal to the situation it costs them so much to obtain. on his entrance into public life he is said by theophrastus to have possessed only three talents; but the account is inconsistent with the extravagance of his earlier career, and still more with the expenses to which a man who attempts to lead a party is, in all popular states, unavoidably subjected. more probably, therefore, it is said of him by others, that he inherited a competent patrimony, and he did not scruple to seize upon every occasion to increase it, whether through the open emolument or the indirect perquisites of public office. but, desiring wealth as a means, not an end, he grasped with one hand to lavish with the other. his generosity dazzled and his manners seduced the people, yet he exercised the power he acquired with a considerate and patriotic foresight. from the first retreat of the persian armament he saw that the danger was suspended, and not removed. but the athenians, who shared a common grecian fault, and ever thought too much of immediate, too little of distant peril, imagined that marathon had terminated the great contest between asia and europe. they forgot the fleets of persia, but they still dreaded the galleys of aegina. the oligarchy of that rival state was the political enemy of the athenian demos; the ally of the persian was feared by the conqueror, and every interest, military and commercial, contributed to feed the passionate and jealous hate that existed against a neighbour, too near to forget, too warlike to despise. the thoughtful and profound policy of themistocles resolved to work this popular sentiment to ulterior objects; and urging upon a willing audience the necessity of making suitable preparations against aegina, then the mistress of the seas, he proposed to construct a navy, fitted equally to resist the persian and to open a new dominion to the athenians. to effect this purpose he called into aid one of the most valuable sources of her power which nature had bestowed upon athens. vi. around the country by the ancient thoricus, on the road from the modern kerratia to the cape of sunium, heaps of scoriae indicate to the traveller that he is in the neighbourhood of the once celebrated silver-mines of laurion; he passes through pines and woodlands--he notices the indented tracks of wheels which two thousand years have not effaced from the soil--he discovers the ancient shafts of the mines, and pauses before the foundations of a large circular tower and the extensive remains of the castles which fortified the neighbouring town [ ]. a little farther, and still passing among mine-banks and hillocks of scoriae, he beholds upon cape colonna the fourteen existent columns of the temple of minerva sunias. in this country, to which the old name is still attached [ ], is to be found a principal cause of the renown and the reverses of athens--of the victory of salamis--of the expedition to sicily. it appears that the silver-mines of laurion had been worked from a very remote period--beyond even any traditional date. but as it is well and unanswerably remarked, "the scarcity of silver in the time of solon proves that no systematic or artificial process of mining could at that time have been established." [ ] it was, probably, during the energetic and politic rule of the dynasty of pisistratus that efficient means were adopted to derive adequate advantage from so fertile a source of national wealth. and when, subsequently, athens, profiting from the lessons of her tyrants, allowed the genius of her free people to administer the state, fresh necessity was created for wealth against the hostility of sparta--fresh impetus given to general industry and public enterprise. accordingly, we find that shortly after the battle of marathon, the yearly profits of the mines were immense. we learn from the researches of one of those eminent germans [ ] who have applied so laborious a learning with so subtle an acuteness to the elucidation of ancient history, that these mines were always considered the property of the state; shares in them were sold to individuals as tenants in fee farms, and these proprietors paid, besides, an annual sum into the public treasury, amounting to the twenty-fourth part of the produce. the state, therefore, received a regular revenue from the mines, derived from the purchase--moneys and the reserved rents. this revenue had been hitherto divided among all the free citizens, and the sum allotted to each was by no means inconsiderable, when themistocles, at an early period of his career (before even the ostracism of aristides), had the courage to propose that a fund thus lucrative to every individual should be appropriated to the national purpose of enlarging the navy. the feud still carried on with the aeginetans was his pretext and excuse. but we cannot refuse our admiration to the fervent and generous order of public spirit existent at that time, when we find that it was a popular leader who proposed to, and carried through, a popular assembly the motion, that went to empoverish the men who supported his party and adjudged his proposition. privileged and sectarian bodies never willingly consent to a surrender of pecuniary benefits for a mere public end. but among the vices of a popular assembly, it possesses the redeeming virtue to be generous. upon a grand and unconscious principle of selfishness, a democracy rarely grudges a sacrifice endured for the service of the state. the money thus obtained was devoted to the augmentation of the maritime force to two hundred triremes--an achievement that probably exhausted the mine revenue for some years; and the custom once broken, the produce of laurion does not seem again to have been wasted upon individuals. to maintain and increase the new navy, a decree was passed, either at that time [ ], or somewhat later, which ordained twenty triremes to be built yearly. vii. the construction of these vessels, the very sacrifice of the citizens, the general interest that must have attached to an undertaking that was at once novel in itself, and yet congenial not more to the passions of a people, who daily saw from their own heights the hostile rock of aegina, "the eyesore of the piraeus," than to the habits of men placed in a steril land that on three sides tempted to the sea--all combined to assist themistocles in his master policy--a policy which had for its design gradually to convert the athenians from an agricultural into a maritime people. what was imputed to him as a reproach became his proudest distinction, viz., that "he first took his countrymen from the spear and shield, and sent them to the bench and oar." chapter iv. the preparations of darius.--revolt of egypt.--dispute for the succession to the persian throne.--death of darius.--brief review of the leading events and characteristics of his reign. i. while, under the presiding genius of themistocles, athens was silently laying the foundation of her naval greatness, and gradually increasing in influence and renown, the persian monarch was not forgetful of the burning of sardis and the defeat of marathon. the armies of a despotic power are often slow to collect, and unwieldy to unite, and darius wasted three years in despatching emissaries to various cities, and providing transports, horses, and forage for a new invasion. the vastness of his preparations, though congenial to oriental warfare, was probably proportioned to objects more great than those which appear in the greek historians. there is no reason, indeed, to suppose that he cherished the gigantic project afterward entertained by his son--a project no less than that of adding europe as a province to the empire of the east. but symptoms of that revolt in egypt which shortly occurred, may have rendered it advisable to collect an imposing force upon other pretences; and without being carried away by any frantic revenge against the remote and petty territory of athens, darius could not but be sensible that the security of his ionian, macedonian, and thracian conquests, with the homage already rendered to his sceptre by the isles of greece, made it necessary to redeem the disgrace of the persian arms, and that the more insignificant the foe, the more fatal, if unpunished, the example of resistance. the ionian coasts--the entrance into europe--were worth no inconsiderable effort, and the more distant the provinces to be awed, the more stupendous, according to all rules of asiatic despotism, should appear the resources of the sovereign. he required an immense armament, not so much for the sake of crushing the athenian foe, as of exhibiting in all its might the angry majesty of the persian empire. ii. but while asia was yet astir with the martial preparations of the great king, egypt revolted from his sway, and, at the same time, the peace of darius was imbittered, and his mind engaged, by a contest among his sons for the succession to the crown (b. c. ). artabazanes, the eldest of his family, born to him by his first wife, previous to his own elevation to the throne, founded his claim upon the acknowledged rights of primogeniture; but xerxes, the eldest of a second family by atossa, daughter of the great cyrus, advanced, on the other hand, a direct descent from the blood of the founder of the persian empire. atossa, who appears to have inherited something of her father's genius, and who, at all events, exercised unbounded influence over darius, gave to the claim of her son a stronger support than that which he could derive from argument or custom. the intrigue probably extended from the palace throughout the pure persian race, who could not but have looked with veneration upon a descendant of cyrus, nor could there have seemed a more popular method of strengthening whatever was defective in the title of darius to the crown, than the transmission of his sceptre to a son, in whose person were united the rights of the new dynasty and the sanctity of the old. these reasonings prevailed with darius, whose duty it was to nominate his own successor, and xerxes was declared his heir. while the contest was yet undecided, there arrived at the persian court demaratus, the deposed and self-exiled king of sparta. he attached himself to the cause and person of xerxes, and is even said to have furnished the young prince with new arguments, founded on the usages of sparta--an assertion not to be wholly disregarded, since demaratus appeared before the court in the character of a monarch, if in the destitution of an exile, and his suggestions fell upon the ear of an arbiter willing to seize every excuse to justify the resolution to which he had already arrived. this dispute terminated, darius in person prepared to march against the egyptian rebels, when his death (b. c. ) consigned to the inexperienced hands of his heir the command of his armies and the execution of his designs. the long reign of darius, extending over thirty-six years, was memorable for vast improvements in the administrations of the empire, nor will it, in this place, be an irrelevant digression to glance briefly and rapidly back over some of the events and the innovations by which it was distinguished. iii. the conquest of cyrus had transplanted, as the ruling people, to the median empire, a race of brave and hardy, but simple and uncivilized warriors. cambyses, of whose character no unequivocal evidence remains, since the ferocious and frantic crimes ascribed to him [ ] are conveyed to us through the channel of the egyptian priests, whom he persecuted, most probably, rather as a political nobility than a religious caste, could but slightly have improved the condition of the people, or the administration of the empire, since his reign lasted but seven years and five months, during which he was occupied with the invasion of africa and the subjugation of egypt. at the conclusion of his reign he was menaced by a singular conspiracy. the median magi conspired in his absence from the seat of empire to elevate a mede to the throne. cambyses, under the impulse of jealous and superstitious fears, had lately put to death smerdis, his brother. the secret was kept from the multitude, and known only to a few--among others, to the magian whom cambyses had intrusted with the charge of his palace at susa, an office as important as confidential. this man conceived a scheme of amazing but not unparalleled boldness. his brother, a namesake of the murdered prince, resembled the latter also in age and person. this brother, the chief of the household, with the general connivance of his sacerdotal caste, who were naturally anxious to restore the median dynasty, suddenly declared to be the true smerdis, and the impostor, admitted to possession of the palace, asserted his claim to the sovereign power. the consent of the magi-- the indifference of the people--the absence, not only of the king, but of the flower of the persian race--and, above all, the tranquil possession of the imperial palace, conspired to favour the deceit. [ ] placed on the persian throne, but concealing his person from the eyes of the multitude in the impenetrable pomp of an oriental seraglio, the pseudo smerdis had the audacity to despatch, among the heralds that proclaimed his accession, a messenger to the egyptian army, demanding their allegiance. the envoy found cambyses at ecbatana in syria. neither cowardice nor sloth was the fault of that monarch; he sprang upon his horse, determined to march at once to susa, when the sheath fell from his sword, and he received a mortal wound from the naked blade. cambyses left no offspring, and the impostor, believed by the people to be the true son of cyrus, issued, from the protecting and august obscurity of his palace, popular proclamations and beneficent edicts. whatever his present fraud, whatever his previous career, this daring mede was enabled to make his reign beloved and respected. after his death he was regretted by all but the persians, who would not have received the virtues of a god as an excuse for the usurpation of a mede. known to the vast empire only by his munificence of spirit--by his repeal of tribute and service, the impostor permitted none to his presence who could have detected the secret. he never quitted his palace--the nobles were not invited to his banquets--the women in his seraglio were separated each from each--and it was only in profound darkness that the partners of his pleasures were admitted to his bed. the imposture is said by herodotus to have been first discovered in the following manner:--the magian, according to the royal custom, had appropriated to himself the wives of cambyses; one of these was the daughter of otanes, a persian noble whom the secluded habits of the pretended king filled with suspicion. for some offence, the magian had been formerly deprived of his ears by the order of cyrus. otanes communicated this fact, with his suspicions, to his daughter, and the next time she was a partaker of the royal couch, she took the occasion of his sleep to convince herself that the sovereign of the east was a branded and criminal impostor. the suspicions of otanes verified, he entered, with six other nobles, into a conspiracy, which mainly owed its success to the resolution and energy of one among them, named darius, who appears to have held a station of but moderate importance among the royal guard, though son of hystaspes, governor of the province of persis, and of the purest and loftiest blood of persia. the conspirators penetrated the palace unsuspected--put the eunuchs who encountered them to death --and reached the chamber in which the usurper himself was seated with his brother. the impostors, though but imperfectly armed, defended themselves with valour; two of the conspirators were wounded, but the swords of the rest sufficed to consummate the work, and darius himself gave the death-blow to one of the brothers. this revolution was accompanied and stained by an indiscriminate massacre of the magi. nor did the persians, who bore to that median tribe the usual hatred which conquerors feel to the wisest and noblest part of the conquered race, content themselves with a short-lived and single revenge. the memory of the imposture and the massacre was long perpetuated by a solemn festival, called "the slaughter of the magi," or magophonia, during which no magian was permitted to be seen abroad. the result of this conspiracy threw into the hands of the seven nobles the succession to the persian throne: the election fell upon darius, the soul of the enterprise, and who was of that ancient and princely house of the achaemenids, in which the persians recognised the family of their ancestral kings. but the other conspirators had not struggled solely to exchange one despot for another. with a new monarchy arose a new oligarchy. otanes was even exempted from allegiance to the monarch, and his posterity were distinguished by such exclusive honours and immunities, that herodotus calls them the only persian family which retained its liberty. the other conspirators probably made a kind of privileged council, since they claimed the right of access at all hours, unannounced, to the presence of the king--a privilege of the utmost value in eastern forms of government--and their power was rendered permanent and solid by certain restrictions on marriage [ ], which went to maintain a constant alliance between the royal family and their own. while the six conspirators rose to an oligarchy, the tribe of the pasargadae-- the noblest of those sections into which the pure persian family was divided--became an aristocracy to officer the army and adorn the court. but though the great body of the conquered medes were kept in subject inferiority, yet the more sternly enforced from the persian resentment at the late median usurpation, darius prudently conciliated the most powerful of that great class of his subjects by offices of dignity and command, and of all the tributary nations, the medes ranked next to the persians. iv. with darius, the persian monarchy progressed to that great crisis in the civilization of those states founded by conquering nomades, when, after rich possessions are seized, cities built, and settlements established, the unwieldy and enormous empire is divided into provinces, and satrap government reflects in every district the mingled despotism and subservience, pomp and insecurity, of the imperial court. darius undoubtedly took the most efficient means in his power to cement his sway and organize his resources. for the better collection of tribute, twenty provinces were created, governed by twenty satraps. hitherto no specific and regular tax had been levied, but the persian kings had been contented with reluctant presents, or arbitrary extortions. darius now imposed a limited and annual impost, amounting, according to the computation of herodotus, to fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty talents, collected partially from africa, principally from asia [ ]. the persians, as the conquering and privileged race, were excluded from the general imposition, but paid their moderate contribution under the softer title of gratuity. the colchians fixed their own burdens--the ethiopians that bordered egypt, with the inhabitants of the sacred town of nyssa, rendered also tributary gratuities--while arabia offered the homage of her frankincense, and india [ ] of her gold. the empire of darius was the more secure, in that it was contrary to its constitutional spirit to innovate on the interior organization of the distant provinces--they enjoyed their own national laws and institutions--they even retained their monarchs--they resigned nothing but their independence and their tribute. the duty of the satraps was as yet but civil and financial: they were responsible for the imposts, they executed the royal decrees. their institution was outwardly designed but for the better collection of the revenue; but when from the ranks of the nobles darius rose to the throne, he felt the advantage of creating subject principalities, calculated at once to remove and to content the more powerful and ambitious of his former equals. save darius himself, no monarch in the known world possessed the dominion or enjoyed the splendour accorded to these imperial viceroys. babylon and assyria fell to one--media was not sufficient for another--nation was added to nation, and race to race, to form a province worthy the nomination of a representative of the great king. his pomp and state were such as befitted the viceroy over monarchs. a measure of silver, exceeding the attic medimnus, was presented every day to the satrap of babylon [ ]. eight hundred stallions and sixteen thousand mares were apportioned to his stables, and the tax of four assyrian towns was to provide for the maintenance of his indian dogs. but under darius, at least, these mighty officers were curbed and kept in awe by the periodical visits of the king himself, or his commissioners; while a broad road, from the western coast to the persian capital--inns, that received the messengers, and couriers, that transmitted the commands of the king, brought the more distant provinces within the reach of ready intelligence and vigilant control. these latter improvements were well calculated to quicken the stagnant languor habitual to the overgrowth of eastern empire. nor was the reign of darius undistinguished by the cultivation of the more elegant arts--since to that period may be referred, if not the foundation, at least the embellishment and increase of persepolis. the remains of the palace of chil-menar, ascribed by modern superstition to the architecture of genii, its graceful columns, its mighty masonry, its terrace-flights, its marble basins, its sculptured designs stamped with the unmistakeable emblems of the magian faith, sufficiently evince that the shepherd-soldiery of cyrus had already learned to appreciate and employ the most elaborate arts of the subjugated medes. during this epoch, too, was founded a more regular military system, by the institution of conscriptions--while the subjection of the skilful sailors of phoenicia, and of the great maritime cities of asiatic greece, brought to the persian warfare the new arm of a numerous and experienced navy. v. the reign of darius is also remarkable for the influence which grecian strangers began to assume in the persian court--and the fatal and promiscuous admission of grecian mercenaries into the persian service. the manners of the persians were naturally hospitable, and darius possessed not only an affable temper, but an inquisitive mind. a greek physician of crotona, who succeeded in relieving the king from the effects of a painful accident which had baffled the egyptian practitioners, esteemed the most skilful the court possessed, naturally rose into an important personage. his reputation was increased by a more difficult cure upon the person of atossa, the daughter of cyrus, who, from the arms of her brother cambyses, and those of the magian impostor, passed to the royal marriage-bed. and the physician, though desirous only of returning through some pretext to his own country, perhaps first inflamed the persian king with the ill-starred wish of annexing greece to his dominions. he despatched a commission with the physician himself, to report on the affairs of greece. many hellenic adventurers were at that time scattered over the empire, some who had served with cambyses, others who had sided with the egyptians. their valour recommended them to a valiant people, and their singular genius for intrigue took root in every soil. syloson, a greek of samos, brother to polycrates, the tyrant of that state, who, after a career of unexampled felicity and renown, fell a victim to the hostile treachery of oretes, the satrap of sardis, induced darius to send over otanes at the head of a persian force to restore him to the principality of his murdered brother; and when, subsequently, in his scythian expedition, darius was an eyewitness of the brilliant civilization of ionia, not only did greece become to him more an object of ambition, but the greeks of his respect. he sought, by a munificent and wise clemency, to attach them to his throne, and to colonize his territories with subjects valuable alike for their constitutional courage and national intelligence. nor can we wonder at the esteem which a hippias or a demaratus found in the persian councils, when, in addition to the general reputation of greeks, they were invested with the dignity of princely rank--for, above all nations [ ], the persians most venerated the name and the attributes of a king; nor could their oriental notions have accurately distinguished between a legitimate monarch and a greek tyrant. vi. in this reign, too, as the empire was concentrated, and a splendid court arose from the warrior camp of cyrus and cambyses, the noble elements of the pure persian character grew confounded with the median and assyrian. as the persians retreated from the manners of a nomad, they lost the distinction of a conquering people. warriors became courtiers--the palace shrunk into the seraglio--eunuchs and favourites, queens [ ], and above all queen-mothers, rose into pernicious and invisible influence. and while the greeks, in their small states, and under their free governments, progressed to a civilization, in which luxury only sharpened new energies and created new arts, the gorgeous enervation of a despotism destructive to competition, and an empire too vast for patriotism, rapidly debased and ruined the old hardy race of cyrus [ ], perhaps equal originally to the greeks in mental, and in many important points far superior to them in moral qualities. with a religion less animated and picturesque, but more simple and exalted, rejecting the belief that the gods partook of a mortal nature, worshipping their great one not in statues or in temples, but upon the sublime altar of lofty mountain-tops--or through those elementary agents which are the unidolatrous representatives of his beneficence and power [ ]; accustomed, in their primitive and uncorrupted state, to mild laws and limited authority; inured from childhood to physical discipline and moral honesty, "to draw the bow and to speak the truth," this gallant and splendid tribe were fated to make one of the most signal proofs in history, that neither the talents of a despot nor the original virtues of a people can long resist the inevitable effect of vicious political constitutions. it was not at marathon, nor at salamis, nor at plataea, that the persian glory fell. it fell when the persians imitated the manners of the slaves they conquered. "most imitative of all men," says herodotus, "they are ever ready to adopt the manners of the foreigners. they take from the medes their robe, from the egyptians their breastplate." happy, if to the robe and the breastplate they had confined their appropriations from the nations they despised! happy, if they had not imparted to their august religion the gross adulterations of the median magi; if they had not exchanged their mild laws and restricted government, for the most callous contempt of the value of life [ ] and the dignity of freedom. the whole of the pure persian race, but especially the nobler tribe of the pasargadae, became raised by conquest over so vast a population, to the natural aristocracy of the land. but the valuable principle of aristocratic pride, which is the safest curb to monarchic encroachment, crumbled away in the atmosphere of a despotism, which received its capricious checks or awful chastisement only in the dark recesses of a harem. retaining to the last their disdain of all without the persian pale; deeming themselves still "the most excellent of mankind;" [ ] this people, the nobility of the east, with the arrogance of the spartan, contracting the vices of the helot, rapidly decayed from all their national and ancient virtues beneath that seraglio-rule of janizaries and harlots, in which, from first to last, have merged the melancholy destinies of oriental despotism. vii. although darius seems rather to have possessed the ardour for conquest than the genius for war, his reign was memorable for many military triumphs, some cementing, others extending, the foundations of the empire. a formidable insurrection of babylon, which resisted a siege of twenty-one months, was effectually extinguished, and the new satrap government, aided by the yearly visits of the king, appears to have kept from all subsequent reanimation the vast remains of that ancient empire of the chaldaean kings. subsequently an expedition along the banks of the indus, first navigated for discovery by one of the greeks whom darius took into his employ, subjected the highlands north of the indus, and gave that distant river as a new boundary to the persian realm. more important, had the fortunes of his son been equal to his designs, was the alarming settlement which the monarch of asia effected on the european continent, by establishing his sovereignty in thrace and macedonia--by exacting homage from the isles and many of the cities of greece--by breaking up, with the crowning fall of miletus, the independence and rising power of those ionian colonies, which ought to have established on the asiatic coasts the permanent barrier to the irruptions of eastern conquest. against these successes the loss of six thousand four hundred men at the battle of marathon, a less number than darius deliberately sacrificed in a stratagem at the siege of babylon, would have seemed but a petty counterbalance in the despatches of his generals, set off, as it was, by the spoils and the captives of euboea. nor were the settlements in thrace and macedon, with the awe that his vast armament excited throughout that portion of his dominions, an insufficient recompense for the disasters of the expedition, conducted by darius in person, against the wandering, fierce, and barbarous mongolian race, that, known to us by the name of scythians, worshipped their war-god under the symbol of a cimeter, with libations of human blood--hideous inhabitants of the inhospitable and barren tracts that interpose between the danube and the don. viii. thus the heritage that passed from darius to xerxes was the fruit of a long and, upon the whole, a wise and glorious reign. the new sovereign of the east did not, like his father, find a disjointed and uncemented empire of countries rather conquered than subdued, destitute alike of regular revenues and local governments; a wandering camp, shifted to and fro in a wilderness of unconnected nations-- xerxes ascended the throne amid a splendid court, with babylon, ecbatana, persepolis, and susa for his palaces. submissive satraps united the most distant provinces with the seat of empire. the wealth of asia was borne in regular currents to his treasury. save the revolt of the enfeebled egyptians, and the despised victory of a handful of men upon a petty foreland of the remote aegaean, no cloud rested upon the dawn of his reign. as yet unfelt and unforeseen were the dangers that might ultimately result from the very wisdom of darius in the institution of satraps, who, if not sufficiently supported by military force, would be unable to control the motley nations over which they presided, and, if so supported, might themselves become, in any hour, the most formidable rebels. to whatever prestige he inherited from the fame of his father, the young king added, also, a more venerable and sacred dignity in the eyes of the persian aristocracy, and, perhaps, throughout the whole empire, derived, on his mother's side, from the blood of cyrus. never, to all external appearance, and, to ordinary foresight, under fairer auspices, did a prince of the east pass from the luxury of a seraglio to the majesty of a throne. chapter v. xerxes conducts an expedition into egypt.--he finally resolves on the invasion of greece.--vast preparations for the conquest of europe.-- xerxes arrives at sardis.--despatches envoys to the greek states, demanding tribute.--the bridge of the hellespont.--review of the persian armament at abydos.--xerxes encamps at therme. i. on succeeding to the throne of the east (b. c. ), xerxes found the mighty army collected by his father prepared to execute his designs of conquest or revenge. in the greatness of that army, in the youth of that prince, various parties beheld the instrument of interest or ambition. mardonius, warlike and enterprising, desired the subjugation of greece, and the command of the persian forces. and to the nobles of the pasargadae an expedition into europe could not but present a dazzling prospect of spoil and power--of satrapies as yet unexhausted of treasure--of garrisons and troops remote from the eye of the monarch, and the domination of the capital. the persons who had most influence over xerxes were his uncle artabanus, his cousin mardonius, and a eunuch named natacas [ ]. the intrigues of the party favourable to the invasion of europe were backed by the representations of the grecian exiles. the family and partisans of the pisistratidae had fixed themselves in susa, and the greek subtlety and spirit of enterprise maintained and confirmed, for that unprincipled and able faction, the credit they had already established at the persian court. onomacritus, an athenian priest, formerly banished by hipparchus for forging oracular predictions, was now reconciled to the pisistratidae, and resident at susa. presented to the king as a soothsayer and prophet, he inflamed the ambition of xerxes by garbled oracles of conquest and fortune, which, this time, it was not the interest of the pisistratidae to expose. about the same period the aleuadae, those princes of thessaly whose policy seems ever to have been that of deadly hostility to the grecian republics, despatched ambassadors to xerxes, inviting him to greece, and promising assistance to his arms, and allegiance to his sceptre. ii. from these intrigues xerxes aroused himself in the second year of his reign, and, as the necessary commencement of more extended designs, conducted in person an expedition against the rebellious egyptians. that people had neither military skill nor constitutional hardihood, but they were inspired with the most devoted affection for their faith and their institutions. this affection was to them what the love of liberty is in others--it might be easy to conquer them, it was almost impossible to subdue. by a kind of fatality their history, for centuries, was interwoven with that of greece: their perils and their enemies the same. the ancient connexion which apocryphal tradition recorded between races so opposite, seemed a typical prophecy of that which actually existed in the historical times. and if formerly greece had derived something of civilization from egypt, she now paid back the gift by the swords of her adventurers; and the bravest and most loyal part of the egyptian army was composed of grecian mercenaries. at the same time egypt shared the fate of all nations that intrust too great a power to auxiliaries. greeks defended her, but greeks conspired against her. the adventurers from whom she derived a fatal strength were of a vain, wily, and irritable temperament. a greek removed from the influence of greece usually lost all that was honest, all that was noble in the national character; and with the most refining intellect, he united a policy like that of the italian in the middle ages, fierce, faithless, and depraved. thus, while the greek auxiliaries under amasis, or rather psammenitus, resisted to the last the arms of cambyses, it was by a greek (phanes) that egypt had been betrayed. perhaps, could we thoroughly learn all the secret springs of the revolt of egypt, and the expedition of xerxes, we might find a coincidence not of dates alone between grecian and egyptian affairs. whether in memphis or in susa, it is wonderful to see the amazing influence and ascendency which the hellenic intellect obtained. it was in reality the desperate refuse of europe that swayed the councils, moved the armies, and decided the fate of the mighty dynasties of the east. iii. the arms of xerxes were triumphant in egypt (b. c. ), and he more rigorously enforced upon that ill-fated land the iron despotism commenced by cambyses. intrusting the egyptian government to his brother achaemenes, the persian king returned to susa, and flushed with his victory, and more and more influenced by the ambitious counsels of mardonius, he now fairly opened, in the full divan of his counsellors, the vast project he had conceived. the vanity of the greeks led them too credulously to suppose that the invasion of greece was the principal object of the great king; on the contrary, it was the least. he regarded greece but as the threshold of a new quarter of the globe. ignorant of the nature of the lands he designed to subject, and credulous of all the fables which impart proverbial magnificence to the unknown, xerxes saw in europe "regions not inferior to asia in extent, and far surpassing it in fertility." after the conquest of greece on either continent, the young monarch unfolded to his counsellors his intention of overrunning the whole of europe, "until heaven itself should be the only limit to the persian realm, and the sun should shine on no country contiguous to his own." [ ] iv. these schemes, supported by mardonius, were opposed only by artabanus; and the arguments of the latter, dictated by prudence and experience, made considerable impression upon the king. from that time, however, new engines of superstitious craft and imposture were brought to bear upon the weak mind, on whose decision now rested the fatal war between asia and europe. visions and warnings, threats and exhortations, haunted his pillow and disturbed his sleep, all tending to one object, the invasion of greece. as we learn from ctesias that the eunuch natacas was one of the parasites most influential with xerxes, it is probable that so important a personage in the intrigues of a palace was, with the evident connivance of the magi, the instrument of mardonius. and, indeed, from this period the politics of persia became more and more concentrated in the dark plots of the seraglio. thus superstition, flattery, ambition, all operating upon him, the irresolution of xerxes vanished. artabanus himself affected to be convinced of the expediency of the war; and the only object now remaining to the king and his counsellors was to adapt the preparations to the magnitude of the enterprise. four additional years were not deemed an idle delay in collecting an army and fleet destined to complete the conquest of the world. "and never," says herodotus, "was there a military expedition comparable to this. hard would it be to specify one nation of asia which did not accompany the persian king, or any waters, save the great rivers, which were not exhausted by his armament." preparations for an expedition of three years were made, to guard against the calamities formerly sustained by the persian fleet. had the success of the expedition been commensurate with the grandeur of its commencement, perhaps it would have ranked among the sublimest conceptions of military genius. all its schemes were of a vast and gigantic nature. across the isthmus, which joins the promontory of athos to the thracian continent, a canal was formed--a work of so enormous a labour, that it seems almost to have justified the skepticism of later writers [ ], but for the concurrent testimony of thucydides and lysias, plato, herodotus, and strabo. bridges were also thrown over the river strymon; the care of provisions was intrusted to the egyptians and phoenicians, and stores were deposited in every station that seemed the best adapted for supplies. v. while these preparations were carried on, the great king, at the head of his land-forces, marched to sardis. passing the river halys, and the frontiers of lydia, he halted at celaenae. here he was magnificently entertained by pythius, a lydian, esteemed, next to the king himself, the richest of mankind. this wealthy subject proffered to the young prince, in prosecution of the war, the whole of his treasure, amounting to two thousand talents of silver, and four millions, wanting only seven thousand, of golden staters of darius [ ]. "my farms and my slaves," he added, "will be sufficient to maintain me." "my friend," said the royal guest, who possessed all the irregular generosity of princes, "you are the first person, since i left persia (b. c. ), who has treated my army with hospitality and voluntarily offered me assistance in the war. accept my friendship; i receive you as my host; retain your possessions, and permit me to supply the seven thousand staters which are wanting to complete the four millions you already possess." a man who gives from the property of the public is seldom outdone in munificence. at length xerxes arrived at sardis, and thence he despatched heralds into greece (close of b. c. ), demanding the tribute of earth and water. athens and sparta were the only cities not visited by his envoys. vi. while xerxes rested at the lydian city, an enterprise, scarcely less magnificent in conception than that of the canal at athos, was completed at the sacred passage of the hellespont. here was constructed from the coast of asia to that of europe a bridge of boats, for the convoy of the army. scarce was this completed when a sudden tempest scattered the vessels, and rendered the labour vain. the unruly passion of the high-spirited despot was popularly said to have evinced itself at this intelligence, by commanding the hellespont to receive three hundred lashes and a pair of fetters--a story recorded as a certainty by herodotus, and more properly contemned as a fable by modern skepticism. a new bridge was now constructed under new artificers, whose industry was sharpened by the fate of their unfortunate predecessors, whom xerxes condemned to death. these architects completed at last two bridges of vessels, of various kinds and sizes, secured by anchors of great length, and thus protected from the influence of the winds that set in from the euxine on the one hand, and the south and southeast winds on the other. the elaborate description of this work given by herodotus proves it to have been no clumsy or unartist-like performance. the ships do not appear so much to have formed the bridge, as to have served for piers to support its weight. rafters of wood, rough timber, and layers of earth were placed across extended cables, and the whole was completed by a fence on either side, that the horses and beasts of burden might not be frightened by the sight of the open sea. vii. and now the work was finished (b. c. ), the winter was past, and at the dawn of returning spring, xerxes led his armament from sardis to abydos. as the multitude commenced their march, it is said that the sun was suddenly overcast, and an abrupt and utter darkness crept over the face of heaven. the magi were solemnly consulted at the omen; and they foretold, that by the retirement of the sun, the tutelary divinity of the greeks, was denoted the withdrawal of the protection of heaven from that fated nation. the answer pleased the king. on they swept--the conveyance of the baggage, and a vast promiscuous crowd of all nations, preceding; behind, at a considerable interval, came the flower of the persian army--a thousand horse--a thousand spearmen--the ten sacred steeds, called nisaean--the car of the great persian god, drawn by eight snow-white horses, and in which no mortal ever dared to seat himself. around the person of xerxes were spearmen and cavalry, whose arms glittered with gold--the ten thousand infantry called "the immortals," of whom nine thousand bore pomegranates of silver at the extremity of their lances, and one thousand pomegranates of gold. ten thousand horsemen followed these: and far in the rear, the gorgeous procession closed with the mighty multitude of the general army. the troops marched along the banks of the caicus--over the plains of thebes;--and passing mount ida to the left, above whose hoary crest broke a storm of thunder and lightning, they arrived at the golden scamander, whose waters failed the invading thousands. here it is poetically told of xerxes, that he ascended the citadel of priam, and anxiously and carefully surveyed the place, while the magi of the barbarian monarch directed libations to the manes of the homeric heroes. viii. arrived at abydos, the king reviewed his army. high upon an eminence, and on a seat of white marble, he surveyed the plains covered with countless thousands, and the hellespont crowded with sails and masts. at first, as he gazed, the lord of persia felt all the pride and exultation which the command over so many destinies was calculated to inspire. but a sad and sudden thought came over him in the midst of his triumphs, and he burst into tears. "i reflect," said he to artabanus, "on the transitory limit of human life. i compassionate this vast multitude--a hundred years hence, which of them will still be a living man?" artabanus replied like a philosopher, "that the shortness of life was not its greatest evil; that misfortune and disease imbittered the possession, and that death was often the happiest refuge of the living." [ ] at early daybreak, while the army yet waited the rising of the sun, they burnt perfumes on the bridge, and strewed it with branches of the triumphal myrtle. as the sun lifted himself above the east, xerxes poured a libation into the sea, and addressing the rising orb, implored prosperity to the persian arms, until they should have vanquished the whole of europe, even to the remotest ends. then casting the cup, with a persian cimeter, into the sea, the signal was given for the army to commence the march. seven days and seven nights were consumed in the passage of that prodigious armament. ix. thus entering europe, xerxes proceeded to doriscus (a wide plain of thrace, commanded by a persian garrison), where he drew up, and regularly numbered his troops; the fleets ranged in order along the neighbouring coast. the whole amount of the land-force, according to herodotus, was , , . later writers have been skeptical as to this vast number, but without sufficient grounds for their disbelief. there were to be found the soldiery of many nations:--the persians in tunics and scale breastplates, the tiara helmet of the medes, the arrows, and the large bow which was their natural boast and weapon; there were the medes similarly equipped; and the assyrians, with barbarous helmets, linen cuirasses, and huge clubs tipped with iron; the bactrians with bows of reeds, and the scythian sacae, with their hatchets and painted crests. there, too, were the light-clothed indians, the parthians, chorasmians, sogdians, gandarians, and the dadicae. there were the caspians, clad in tough hides, with bows and cimeters; the gorgeous tunics of the sarangae, and the loose flowing vests (or zirae) of the arabians. there were seen the negroes of aethiopian nubia with palm bows four cubits long, arrows pointed with flint, and vestures won from the leopard and the lion; a barbarous horde, who, after the wont of savages, died their bodies with gypsum and vermilion when they went to war; while the straight-haired asiatic aethiopians wore the same armour as the indians whom they bordered. save that their helmets were formed of the skin of the horse's head [ ], on which the mane was left in the place of plumage. the libyans were among the horde, and the buskined paphlagonians, with helms of network; and the cappadocian syrians; and the phrygians; and the armenians; the lydians, equipped similarly to the greeks; the strymonian thracians, clad in tunics, below which were flowing robes like the arabian zirae or tartan, but of various colours, and buskins of the skins of fawns--armed with the javelin and the dagger; the thracians, too, of asia, with helmets of brass wrought with the ears and horns of an ox; the people from the islands of the red sea, armed and people like medes; the mares, and the colchians, and the moschi, and other tribes, tedious to enumerate, swelled and diversified the force of xerxes. such were the infantry of the persian army, forgetting not the ten thousand chosen persians, called the immortal band [ ], whose armour shone with profuse gold, and who were distinguished even in war by luxury--carriages for their women, troops of attendants, and camels and beasts of burden. besides these were the persian cavalry; the nomad sagartii, who carried with them nooses, in which they sought to entangle their foe; the medes and the indian horse, which last had also chariots of war drawn by steeds or wild asses; the bactrians and caspians, equipped alike; the africans, who fought from chariots; the paricanians; and the arabians with their swift dromedaries, completed the forces of the cavalry, which amounted to eighty thousand, exclusive even of chariots and the camels. nor was the naval unworthy of the land armada. the number of the triremes was one thousand two hundred and seven. of these the phoenicians and the syrians of palestine furnished three hundred, the serving-men with breastplates of linen, javelins, bucklers without bosses, and helmets fashioned nearly similarly to those of the greeks; two hundred vessels were supplied by the egyptians, armed with huge battle-axes, and casques of network; one hundred and fifty vessels came from cyprus, and one hundred from cilicia; those who manned the first differing in arms from the greeks only in the adoption of the tunic, and the median mitres worn by the chiefs--those who manned the last, with two spears, and tunics of wool. the pamphylians, clad as the greeks, contributed thirty vessels, and fifty also were manned by lycians with mantles of goat-skin and unfeathered arrows of reed. in thirty vessels came the dorians of asia; in seventy the carians, and in a hundred, the subjugated ionians. the grecian isles between the cyaneae, and the promontories of triopium and sunium [ ], furnished seventeen vessels, and the aeolians sixty. the inhabitants of the hellespont (those of abydos alone excepted, who remained to defend the bridges) combined with the people of pontus to supply a hundred more. in each vessel were detachments of medes, persians, and saci; the best mariners were the phoenicians, especially those of sidon. the commanders-in-chief of the sea-forces were ariabignes (son of darius), prexaspes, megabazus (son of megabates), and achaemenes (brother of xerxes, and satrap of egypt). of the infantry, the generals were mardonius, tritantaechmes, son of artabanus, and smerdones (cousin to xerxes), maistes (his brother), gergis, and megabazus, son of that celebrated zopyrus, through whom darius possessed himself of babylon. [ ] harmamithres and tithaeus, who were medes, commanded the cavalry; a third leader, pharnouches, died in consequence of a fall from his horse. but the name of a heroine, more masculine than her colleagues, must not be omitted: artemisia, widow to one of the carian kings, furnished five ships (the best in the fleet next to those of sidon), which she commanded in person, celebrated alike for a dauntless courage and a singular wisdom. x. such were the forces which the great king reviewed, passing through the land-forces in his chariot, and through the fleet in a sidonian vessel, beneath a golden canopy. after his survey, the king summoned demaratus to his presence. "think you," said he, "that the greeks will presume to resist me?" "sire," answered the spartan, "your proposition of servitude will be rejected by the greeks; and even if the rest of them sided with you, lacedaemon still would give you battle; question not in what numbers; had sparta but a thousand men she would oppose you." marching onward, and forcibly enlisting, by the way, various tribes through which he passed, exhausting many streams, and empoverishing the population condemned to entertain his army, xerxes arrived at acanthus: there he dismissed the commanders of his fleet, ordering them to wait his orders at therme, a small town which gave its name to the thermean gulf (to which they proceeded, pressing ships and seamen by the way), and afterward, gaining therme himself, encamped his army on the coast, spreading far and wide its multitudinous array from therme and mygdonia to the rivers lydias and haliacmon. chapter vi. the conduct of the greeks.--the oracle relating to salamis.--art of themistocles.--the isthmian congress.--embassies to argos, crete, corcyra, and syracuse.--their ill success.--the thessalians send envoys to the isthmus.--the greeks advance to tempe, but retreat.--the fleet despatched to artemisium, and the pass of thermopylae occupied. --numbers of the grecian fleet.--battle of thermopylae. i. the first preparations of the persians did not produce the effect which might have been anticipated in the grecian states. far from uniting against the common foe, they still cherished a frivolous and unreasonable jealousy of each other. several readily sent the symbols of their allegiance to the persian, including the whole of boeotia, except only the thespians and plataeans. the more timorous states imagined themselves safe from the vengeance of the barbarian; the more resolute were overwhelmed with dismay. the renown of the median arms was universally acknowledged for in spite of marathon, greece had not yet learned to despise the foreigner; and the enormous force of the impending armament was accurately known from the spies and deserters of the grecian states, who abounded in the barbarian camp. even united, the whole navy of greece seemed insufficient to contend against such a foe; and, divided among themselves, several of the states were disposed rather to succumb than to resist [ ]. "and here," says the father of history, "i feel compelled to assert an opinion, however invidious it may be to many. if the athenians, terrified by the danger, had forsaken their country, or submitted to the persian, xerxes would have met with no resistance by sea. the lacedaemonians, deserted by their allies, would have died with honour or yielded from necessity, and all greece have been reduced to the persian yoke. the athenians were thus the deliverers of greece. they animated the ardour of those states yet faithful to themselves; and, next to the gods, they were the true repellers of the invader. even the delphic oracles, dark and ominous as they were, did not shake their purpose, nor induce them to abandon greece." when even the deities themselves seemed doubtful, athens was unshaken. the messengers despatched by the athenians to the delphic oracle received indeed an answer well calculated to appal them. "unhappy men," cried the priestess, "leave your houses and the ramparts of the city, and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth. fire and keen mars, compelling the syrian chariot, shall destroy, towers shall be overthrown, and temples destroyed by fire. lo! now, even now, they stand dropping sweat, and their house-tops black with blood, and shaking with prophetic awe. depart and prepare for ill!" ii. cast into the deepest affliction by this response, the athenians yet, with the garb and symbols of suppliants, renewed their application. "answer us," they said, "oh supreme god, answer us more propitiously, or we will not depart from your sanctuary, but remain here even until death." the second answer seemed less severe than the first: "minerva is unable to appease the olympian jupiter. again, therefore, i speak, and my words are as adamant. all else within the bounds of cecropia and the bosom of the divine cithaeron shall fall and fail you. the wooden wall alone jupiter grants to pallas, a refuge to your children and yourselves. wait not for horse and foot--tarry not the march of the mighty army--retreat, even though they close upon you. oh salamis the divine, thou shalt lose the sons of women, whether ceres scatter or hoard her harvest!" iii. writing down this reply, the messengers returned to athens. many and contradictory were the attempts made to interpret the response; some believed that by a wooden wall was meant the citadel, formerly surrounded by a palisade of wood. others affirmed that the enigmatical expression signified the fleet. but then the concluding words perplexed them. for the apostrophe to salamis appeared to denote destruction and defeat. at this juncture themistocles approved himself worthy of the position he had attained. it is probable that he had purchased the oracle to which he found a ready and bold solution. he upheld the resort to the ships, but denied that in the apostrophe to salamis any evil to athens was denounced. "had," said he, "the prediction of loss and slaughter referred to the athenians, would salamis have been called 'divine?' would it not have been rather called the 'wretched' if the greeks were doomed to perish near that isle? the oracle threatens not the athenians, but the enemy. let us prepare then to engage the barbarian by sea. our ships are our wooden walls." this interpretation, as it was the more encouraging, so it was the more approved. the vessels already built from the revenues of the mines of laurion were now destined to the safety of greece. iv. it was, however, before the arrival of the persian envoys [ ], and when the greeks first woke to the certainty, that the vast preparations of xerxes menaced greece as the earliest victim, that a congress, perhaps at the onset confined to the peloponnesian states, met at corinth. at the head of this confederate council necessarily ranked sparta, which was the master state of the peloponnesus. but in policy and debate, if not in arms, she appears always to have met with a powerful rival in corinth, the diplomacy of whose wealthy and liberal commonwealth often counteracted the propositions of the spartan delegates. to this congress subsequently came the envoys of all the states that refused tribute and homage to the persian king. the institution of this hellenic council, which was one cause of the salvation of greece, is a proof of the political impotence of the old amphictyonic league. the synedrion of corinth (or rather of that corinthian village that had grown up round the temple of neptune, and is styled the isthmus by the greek writers) was the true historical amphictyony of hellas. in the isthmian congress the genius of themistocles found an ampler sphere than it had hitherto done among the noisy cabals of athens. of all the greek delegates, that sagacious statesman was most successful in accomplishing the primary object of the confederacy, viz., in removing the jealousies and the dissensions that hitherto existed among the states which composed it. in this, perhaps the most difficult, as the most essential, task, themistocles was aided by a tegean, named chileus, who, though he rarely appears upon the external stage of action, seems to have been eminently skilled in the intricate and entangled politics of the time. themistocles, into whose hands the athenian republic, at this period, confided the trust not more of its interests than its resentments, set the example of concord; and athens, for a while, consented to reconciliation and amity with the hated aegina. all the proceedings of this illustrious congress were characterized by vigilant prudence and decisive energy. as soon as xerxes arrived in sardis, emissaries were despatched to watch the movements of the persian army, and at the same period, or rather some time before [ ], ambassadors were sent to corcyra, crete, argos, and to syracuse, then under the dominion of gelo. this man, from the station of a high-born and powerful citizen of gela, in sicily, had raised himself, partly by military talents, principally by a profound and dissimulating policy, to the tyranny of gela and of syracuse. his abilities were remarkable, his power great; nor on the grecian continent was there one state that could command the force and the resources that were at the disposal of the syracusan prince. the spies despatched to sardis were discovered, seized, and would have been put to death, but for the interference of xerxes, who dismissed them, after directing them to be led round his army, in the hope that their return from the terror of such a spectacle would, more than their death, intimidate and appal their countrymen. the mission to argos, which, as a peloponnesian city, was one of the earliest applied to, was unsuccessful. that state still suffered the exhaustion which followed the horrible massacre perpetrated by cleomenes, the spartan king, who had burnt six thousand argives in the precincts of the sanctuary to which they had fled. new changes of government had followed this fatal loss, and the servile population had been enabled to seize the privileges of the free. thus, hatred to sparta, a weakened soldiery, an unsettled internal government, all conspired to render argos lukewarm to the general cause. yet that state did not openly refuse the aid which it secretly resolved to withhold. it consented to join the common league upon two conditions; an equal share with the spartans in the command, and a truce of thirty years with those crafty and merciless neighbours. the spartans proposed to compromise the former condition, by allowing to the argive king not indeed half the command, but a voice equal to that of each of their own kings. to the latter condition they offered no objection. glad of an excuse to retaliate on the spartans their own haughty insolence, the argives at once rejected the proposition, and ordered the spartan ambassador to quit their territories before sunset. but argos, though the chief city of argolis, had not her customary influence over the other towns of that district, in which the attachment to greece was stronger than the jealous apprehensions of sparta. the embassy to sicily was not more successful than that to argos. gelo agreed indeed to furnish the allies with a considerable force, but only on the condition of obtaining for sicily the supreme command, either of the land-force claimed by sparta, or of the naval force to which athens already ventured to pretend; an offer to which it was impossible that the greeks should accede, unless they were disposed to surrender to the craft of an auxiliary the liberties they asserted against the violence of a foe. the spartan and the athenian ambassadors alike, and with equal indignation, rejected the proposals of gelo, who, in fact, had obtained the tyranny of his native city by first securing the command of the gelan cavalry. the prince of syracuse was little affected by the vehement scorn of the ambassadors. "i see you are in more want of troops than commanders," said he, wittily. "return, then; tell the greeks this year will be without its spring." for, as the spring to the year did gelo consider his assistance to greece. from sicily the ambassadors repaired to corcyra. here they were amused with flattering promises, but the governors of that intriguing and factious state fitted out a fleet of sixty vessels, stationed near pylos, off the coast of sparta, to wait the issue of events assuring xerxes, on the one hand, of their indisposition to oppose him, and pretending afterward to the greeks, on the other, that the adverse winds alone prevented their taking share in the engagement at salamis. the cretans were not more disposed to the cause than the corcyraeans; they found an excuse in an oracle of delphi, and indeed that venerable shrine appears to have been equally dissuasive of resistance to all the states that consulted it; although the daring of the athenians had construed the ambiguous menace into a favourable omen. the threats of superstition become but incitements to courage when interpreted by the brave. v. and now the hostile army had crossed the hellespont, and the thessalians, perceiving that they were the next objects of attack, despatched ambassadors to the congress at the isthmus. those thessalian chiefs called the aleuadae had, it is true, invited xerxes to the invasion of greece. but precisely because acceptable to the chiefs, the arrival of the great king was dreaded by the people. by the aid of the persians, the aleuadae trusted to extend their power over their own country--an ambition with which it is not to be supposed that the people they assisted to subject would sympathize. accordingly, while xerxes was to the chiefs an ally, to the people he remained a foe. these thessalian envoys proclaimed their willingness to assist the confederates in the defence of their fatherland, but represented the imminence of the danger to thessaly, and demanded an immediate supply of forces. "without this," they said, "we cannot exert ourselves for you, and our inability to assist you will be our excuse, if we provide for our own safety." aroused by these exhortations, the confederates commenced their military movements. a body of infantry passed the euripus, entered thessaly, and encamped amid the delights of the vale of tempe. here their numbers, in all ten thousand heavy-armed troops, were joined by the thessalian horse. the spartans were led by euaenetus. themistocles commanded the athenians. the army did not long, however, remain in the encampment. alexander, the king of macedon, sent confidentially advising their retreat, and explaining accurately the force of the enemy. this advice concurred with the discovery that there was another passage into thessaly through the higher regions of macedonia, which exposed them to be taken in the rear. and, in truth, it was through this passage that the persian army ultimately marched. the greeks, therefore, broke up the camp and returned to the isthmus. the thessalians, thus abandoned, instantly treated with the invader, and became among the stanchest allies of xerxes. it was now finally agreed in the isthmian congress, that the most advisable plan would be to defend the pass of thermopylae, as being both nearer and narrower than that of thessaly. the fleet they resolved to send to artemisium, on the coast of histiaeotis, a place sufficiently neighbouring thermopylae to allow of easy communication. never, perhaps, have the greeks shown more military skill than in the choice of these stations. but one pass in those mountainous districts permitted the descent of the persian army from thessaly, bounded to the west by steep and inaccessible cliffs, extending as far as mount oeta; to the east by shoals and the neighbouring sea. this defile received its name thermopylae, or hot gates, from the hot-springs which rose near the base of the mountain. in remote times the pastoral phocians had fortified the place against the incursions of the thessalians, and the decayed remains of the wall and gates of their ancient garrison were still existent in the middle of the pass; while, by marsh and morass, to render the place yet more impassable, they had suffered the hot-springs to empty themselves along the plain, on the thessalian side, and the quagmire was still sodden and unsteady. the country on either side the thermopylae was so contracted, that before, near the river phoenix, and behind, near the village of alpeni, was at that time space only for a single chariot. in such a pass the numbers and the cavalry of the mede were rendered unavailable; while at the distance of about fifteen miles from thermopylae the ships of the grecian navy rode in the narrow sea, off the projecting shores of euboea, equally fortunate in a station which weakened the force of numbers and allowed the facility of retreat. the sea-station was possessed by the allied ships. corinth sent forty; megara twenty; aegina eighteen; sicyon twelve; sparta ten; the epidaurians contributed eight; the eretrians seven; the troezenians five; the ityraeans and the people of ceos each two, and the opuntian locrians seven vessels of fifty oars. the total of these ships (without reckoning those of fifty oars, supplied by the locrians, and two barks of the same description, which added to the quota sent by the people of ceos) amount to one hundred and twenty-four. the athenian force alone numbered more vessels than all the other confederates, and contributed one hundred and twenty-seven triremes, partly manned by plataeans, besides twenty vessels lent to the chalcidians, who equipped and manned them. the athenian fleet was commanded by themistocles. the land-force at thermopylae consisted chiefly of peloponnesians; its numbers were as follows:--three hundred heavy-armed spartans; five hundred tegeans; five hundred mantinaeans; one hundred and twenty orchomenians; one thousand from the other states of arcady; two hundred from phlius; eighty from mycenae. boeotia contributed seven hundred thespians, and four hundred thebans; the last had been specially selected by leonidas, the spartan chief, because of the general suspicion that the thebans were attached to the medes, and he desired, therefore, to approve them as friends, or know them as foes. although the sentiments of the thebans were hostile, says herodotus, they sent the assistance required. in addition to these, were one thousand phocians, and a band of the opuntian locrians, unnumbered by herodotus, but variously estimated, by diodorus at one thousand, and, more probably, by pausanias at no less than seven thousand. the chief command was intrusted, according to the claims of sparta, to leonidas, the younger brother of the frantic cleomenes [ ], by a different mother, and his successor to the spartan throne. there are men whose whole life is in a single action. of these, leonidas is the most eminent. we know little of him, until the last few days of his career. he seems, as it were, born but to show how much glory belongs to a brave death. of his character or genius, his general virtues and vices, his sorrows and his joys, biography can scarcely gather even the materials for conjecture. he passed from an obscure existence into an everlasting name. and history dedicates her proudest pages to one of whom she has nothing but the epitaph to relate. as if to contrast the little band under the command of leonidas, herodotus again enumerates the persian force, swelled as it now was by many contributions, forced and voluntary, since its departure from doriscus. he estimates the total by sea and land, thus augmented, at two millions six hundred and forty-one thousand six hundred and ten fighting men, and computes the number of the menial attendants, the motley multitude that followed the armament, at an equal number; so that the son of darius conducted, hitherto without disaster, to sepias and thermopylae, a body of five millions two hundred and eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty human beings [ ]. and out of this wondrous concourse, none in majesty and grace of person, says herodotus, surpassed the royal leader. but such advantages as belong to superior stature, the kings of persia obtained by artificial means; and we learn from xenophon that they wore a peculiar kind of shoe so constructed as to increase their height. vi. the fleet of xerxes, moving from therme, obtained some partial success at sea: ten of their vessels despatched to sciathos, captured a guard-ship of troezene, and sacrificed upon the prow a greek named leon; the beauty of his person obtained him that disagreeable preference. a vessel of aegina fell also into their hands, the crew of which they treated as slaves, save only one hero, pytheas, endeared even to the enemy by his valour; a third vessel, belonging to the athenians, was taken at the mouth of the peneus; the seamen, however, had previously debarked, and consequently escaped. beacons apprized the greek station at artemisium of these disasters, and the fleet retreated for a while to chalcis, with a view of guarding the euripus. but a violent storm off the coast of magnesia suddenly destroying no less than four hundred of the barbarian vessels, with a considerable number of men and great treasure, the grecian navy returned to artemisium. here they soon made a capture of fifteen of the persian vessels, which, taking them for friends, sailed right into the midst of them. with this exception, the rest of the barbarian fleet arrived safely at aphetae. vii. meanwhile the mighty land-force of the great king, passing through thessaly and achaia, arrived at last at the wide trachinian plains, which, stretching along the shores of thessaly, forty miles in circumference, and adjacent to the straits of thermopylae, allowed space for the encampment of his army. the greeks at thermopylae beheld the approach of xerxes with dismay; they had anticipated considerable re-enforcements from the confederate states, especially sparta, which last had determined to commit all her strength to the campaign, leaving merely a small detachment for the defence of the capital. but the carneian festival in honour of the great dorian apollo, at sparta, detained the lacedaemonians, and the olympic games diverted the rest of the allies, not yet expecting an immediate battle. the vicinity of xerxes, the absence of the re-enforcements they expected, produced an alarmed and anxious council; leonidas dissuaded the confederates from retreat, and despatched messengers to the various states, urging the necessity of supplies, and stating the hopelessness of opposing the mede effectually with the present forces. xerxes, in the meanwhile, who had heard that an insignificant band were assembled under a spartan descendant of hercules, to resist his progress, despatched a spy to reconnoitre their number and their movements. the emissary was able only to inspect those without the intrenchment, who, at that time, happened to be the spartans; he found that singular race engaged in gymnastic exercises, and dressing their long hair for the festival of battle. although they perceived the spy, they suffered him to gaze at his leisure, and he returned in safety to the king. much astonished at the account he received, xerxes sent for demaratus, and detailing to him what the messenger had seen, inquired what it might portend, and whether this handful of men amusing themselves in the defile could seriously mean to resist his arms. "sire," answered the spartan, "it is their intention to dispute the pass, and what your messenger has seen proves that they are preparing accordingly. it is the custom of the spartans to adorn their hair on the eve of any enterprise of danger. you are advancing to attack the flower of the grecian valour." xerxes, still incredulous that opposition could be seriously intended, had the courtesy to wait four days to give the enemy leisure to retreat; in the interim he despatched a messenger to leonidas, demanding his arms. "come and take them!" replied the spartan. viii. on the fifth day the patience of xerxes was exhausted, and he sent a detachment of medes and cissians [ ] into the pass, with orders to bring its rash and obstinate defenders alive into his presence. the medes and cissians were repulsed with considerable loss. "the immortal band" were now ordered to advance, under the command of hydarnes. but even the skill and courage of that warlike troop were equally unsuccessful; their numbers were crippled by the narrowness of the pass, and their short weapons coped to great disadvantage with the long spears of the greeks. the engagement was renewed a second day with the like fortune; the loss of the persians was great, although the scanty numbers of the spartans were also somewhat diminished. in the midst of the perplexity which pervaded the king's councils after this defeat, there arrived at the persian camp one ephialtes, a malian. influenced by the hope of a great reward, this traitor demanded and obtained an audience, in which he offered to conduct the medes through a secret path across the mountains, into the pass. the offer was joyfully accepted, and hydarnes, with the forces under his command, was despatched under the guidance of the malian. at the dusk of evening the detachment left the camp, and marching all night, from the river asopus, between the mountains of oeta on the right hand, and the trachinian ridges on the left, they found themselves at the early dawn at the summit of the hill, on which a thousand phocians had been stationed to defend the pass, for it was not unknown to the spartans. in the silence of dawn they wound through the thick groves of oak that clad the ascent, and concealed the glitter of their arms; but the exceeding stillness of the air occasioned the noise they made in trampling on the leaves [ ] to reach the ears of the phocians. that band sprang up from the earth on which they had slept, to the consternation and surprise of the invaders, and precipitately betook themselves to arms. the persians, though unprepared for an enemy at this spot, drew up in battle array, and the heavy onslaught of their arrows drove the phocians to seek a better shelter up the mountains, not imagining that the passage into the defile, but their own destruction, was the object of the enterprise. the persians prudently forbore pursuit, but availing themselves of the path now open to their progress, rapidly descended the opposite side of the mountain. ix. meanwhile, dark and superstitious terrors were at work in the grecian camp. the preceding eve the soothsayer (megistias) had inspected the entrails, and foretold that death awaited the defenders of thermopylae in the morning; and on that fatal night a cumaean deserted from the persian camp had joined leonidas, and informed him of the treachery of ephialtes. at early day their fears were confirmed by the sentinels posted on the mountains, who fled into the defile at the approach of the barbarians. a hasty council was assembled; some were for remaining, some for flight. the council ended with the resolution of a general retreat, probably with the assent, possibly by the instances, of leonidas, who was contented to possess the monopoly of glory and of death. the laws of the spartans forbade them to fly from any enemy, however numerous, and leonidas did not venture to disobey them. perhaps his resolution was strengthened by an oracle of that delphi so peculiarly venerated by the dorian race, and which foretold either the fall of sparta, or the sacrifice of a spartan king of the blood of hercules. to men whose whole happiness was renown, life had no temptation equal to such a death! x. leonidas and his countrymen determined to keep the field. the thespians alone voluntarily remained to partake his fate; but he detained also the suspected thebans, rather as a hostage than an auxiliary. the rest of the confederates precipitately departed across the mountains to their native cities. leonidas would have dismissed the prophetic soothsayer, but megistias insisted on his right to remain; he contented himself with sending away his only son, who had accompanied the expedition. even the stern spirit of leonidas is said to have yielded to the voice of nature; and he ordered two of his relations to return to sparta to report the state of affairs. "you prescribe to us the duties of messengers, not of soldiers," was the reply, as the warriors buckled on their shields, and took their posts with the rest. if history could penetrate from events into the hearts of the agents, it would be interesting even to conjecture the feelings of this devoted band, awaiting the approach of a certain death, in that solitary defile. their enthusiasm, and that rigid and spartan spirit which had made all ties subservient to obedience to the law--all excitement tame to that of battle--all pleasure dull to the anticipation of glory--probably rendered the hours preceding death the most enviable of their lives. they might have exulted in the same elevating fanaticism which distinguished afterward the followers of mahomet; and seen that opening paradise in immortality below, which the moslemin beheld in anticipation above. xi. early on that awful morning, xerxes offered a solemn libation to his gods, and at the middle of the noon, when hydarnes might be supposed to be close upon the rear of the enemy, the barbarian troops commenced their march. leonidas and his band advanced beyond their intrenchment, into the broader part of the defile. before the fury of their despair, the persians fell in great numbers; many of them were hurled into the sea, others trodden down and crushed by the press of their own numbers. when the spears of the greeks were shivered in pieces they had recourse to their swords, and the battle was fought hand to hand: thus fighting, fell leonidas, surrounded in death by many of his band, of various distinction and renown. two half-brothers of xerxes, mingling in the foremost of the fray, contended for the body of the spartan king, and perished by the grecian sword. for a short time the spartans repelled the persian crowd, who, where valour failed to urge them on, were scourged to the charge by the lash of their leaders, and drew the body of leonidas from the press; and now, winding down the pass, hydarnes and his detachment descended to the battle. the scene then became changed, the spartans retired, still undaunted, or rather made yet more desperate as death drew near, into the narrowest of the pass, and, ranged upon an eminence of the strait, they died--fighting, even after their weapons were broken, with their hands and teeth--rather crushed beneath the number than slain by the swords of the foe--"non victi sed vincendo fatigati." [ ] xii. two spartans of the three hundred, eurytus and aristodemus, had, in consequence of a severe disorder in the eyes, been permitted to sojourn at alpeni; but eurytus, hearing of the contest, was led by his helot into the field, and died with his countrymen. aristodemus alone remained, branded with disgrace on his return to sparta; but subsequently redeeming his name at the battle of plataea. [ ] the thebans, beholding the victory of the persians, yielded their arms; and, excepting a few, slain as they approached, not as foes, but as suppliants, were pardoned by xerxes. the king himself came to view the dead, and especially the corpse of leonidas. he ordered the head of that hero to be cut off, and his body suspended on a cross [ ], an instance of sudden passion, rather than customary barbarity. for of all nations the persians most honoured valour, even in their foes. xiii. the moral sense of mankind, which places the example of self-sacrifice among the noblest lessons by which our nature can be corrected, has justly immortalized the memory of leonidas. it is impossible to question the virtue of the man, but we may fairly dispute the wisdom of the system he adorned. we may doubt whether, in fact, his death served his country so much as his life would have done. it was the distinction of thermopylae, that its heroes died in obedience to the laws; it was the distinction of marathon, that its heroes lived to defeat the invader and preserve their country. and in proof of this distinction, we find afterward, at plataea, that of all the allied greeks the spartans the most feared the conquerors of thermopylae; the athenians the least feared the fugitives of marathon. xiv. subsequently, on the hill to which the spartans and thespians had finally retired, a lion of stone was erected by the amphictyons, in honour of leonidas; and many years afterward the bones of that hero were removed to sparta, and yearly games, at which spartans only were allowed to contend, were celebrated round his tomb. separate monuments to the greeks generally, and to the three hundred who had refused to retreat, were built also, by the amphictyons, at thermopylae. long extant, posterity admired the inscriptions which they bore; that of the spartans became proverbial for its sublime conciseness. "go, stranger," it said, "and tell the spartans that we obeyed the law--and lie here!" the private friendship of simonides the poet erected also a monument to megistias, the soothsayer, in which it was said truly to his honour, "that the fate he foresaw he remained to brave;" such is the history of the battle of thermopylae (b. c. ). [ ] chapter vii. the advice of demaratus to xerxes.--themistocles.--actions off artemisium.--the greeks retreat.--the persians invade delphi, and are repulsed with great loss.--the athenians, unaided by their allies, abandon athens, and embark for salamis.--the irresolute and selfish policy of the peloponnesians.--dexterity and firmness of themistocles.--battle of salamis.--andros and carystus besieged by the greeks.--anecdotes of themistocles.--honours awarded to him in sparta.--xerxes returns to asia.--olynthus and potidaea besieged by artabazus.--the athenians return home.--the ostracism of aristides is repealed. i. after the victory of thermopylae, demaratus advised the persian monarch to despatch a detachment of three hundred vessels to the laconian coast, and seize the island of cythera, of which a spartan once (foreseeing how easily hereafter that post might be made to command and overawe the laconian capital) had said, "it were better for sparta if it were sunk into the sea." the profound experience of demaratus in the selfish and exclusive policy of his countrymen made him argue that, if this were done, the fears of sparta for herself would prevent her joining the forces of the rest of greece, and leave the latter a more easy prey to the invader. the advice, fortunately for the greeks, was overruled by achaemenes. meanwhile the grecian navy, assembled off artemisium, was agitated by divers councils. beholding the vast number of barbarian ships now collected at aphetae, and the whole shores around swarming with hostile troops, the greeks debated the necessity of retreat. the fleet was under the command of eurybiades, the spartan. for although athens furnished a force equal to all the rest of the allies together, and might justly, therefore, have pretended to the command, yet the jealousy of the confederates, long accustomed to yield to the claims of sparta, and unwilling to acknowledge a new superiority in another state, had induced the athenians readily to forego their claim. and this especially at the instance of themistocles. "to him," says plutarch, "greece not only owes her preservation, but the athenians in particular the glory of surpassing their enemies in valour and their allies in moderation." but if fortune gave eurybiades the nominal command, genius forced themistocles into the actual pre-eminence. that extraordinary man was, above all, adapted to his time; and, suited to its necessities, he commanded its fates. his very fault in the callousness of the moral sentiment, and his unscrupulous regard to expediency, peculiarly aided him in his management of men. he could appeal to the noblest passions--he could wind himself into the most base. where he could not exalt he corrupted, where he could not persuade he intimidated, where he could not intimidate he bribed. [ ] when the intention to retreat became generally circulated, the inhabitants of the northern coast of euboea (off which the athenian navy rode) entreated eurybiades at least to give them time to remove their slaves and children from the vengeance of the barbarian. unsuccessful with him, they next sought themistocles. for the consideration of thirty talents, the athenian promised to remain at artemisium, and risk the event of battle. possessed of this sum, he won over the sturdy spartan by the gift of five talents, and to adimantus the corinthian, the most obstinate in retreat, he privately sent three [ ]. the remainder he kept for his own uses;-- distinguished from his compeers in this--that he obtained a much larger share of the gift than they; that they were bribed to be brave, and that he was rewarded for bribing them. the pure-minded statesman of the closet cannot but feel some disdain and some regret to find, blended together, the noblest actions and the paltriest motives. but whether in ancient times or in modern, the web of human affairs is woven from a mingled yarn, and the individuals who save nations are not always those most acceptable to the moralist. the share of themistocles in this business is not, however, so much to his discredit as to that of the spartan eurybiades. we cannot but observe that no system contrary to human nature is strong against actual temptation. the spartan law interdicted the desire of riches, and the spartans themselves yielded far more easily to the lust of avarice than the luxurious athenians. thus a native of zelea, a city in asia minor, had sought to corrupt the peloponnesian cities by persian gold: it was not the spartans, it was the athenians, who declared this man infamous, and placed his life out of the pale of the grecian law. with a noble pride demosthenes speaks of this decree. "the gold," he, says, "was brought into peloponnesus, not to athens. but our ancestors extended their care beyond their own city to the whole of greece." [ ] an aristides is formed by the respect paid to integrity, which society tries in vain--a demaratus, an eurybiades, and, as we shall see, a pausanias, by the laws which, affecting to exclude the influence of the passions, render their temptations novel, and their effects irresistible. ii. the greeks continued at euboea; and the persians, eager to engage so inconsiderable an enemy, despatched two hundred chosen vessels, with orders to make a circuitous route beyond sciathos, and thus, unperceived, to attack the grecian rear, while on a concerted signal the rest would advance upon the front. a deserter of scios escaped, however, from aphetae, and informed the greeks of the persian plan. upon this it was resolved at midnight to advance against that part of the fleet which had been sent around euboea. but as twilight approached, they appeared to have changed or delayed this design, and proceeded at once towards the main body of the fleet, less perhaps with the intention of giving regular battle, than of attempting such detached skirmishes as would make experiment of their hardihood and skill. the persians, amazed at the infatuation of their opponents, drew out their fleet in order, and succeeded in surrounding the greek ships. the night, however, separated the hostile forces, but not until the greeks had captured thirty of the barbarian vessels; the first ship was taken by an athenian. the victory, however, despite this advantage, was undecided, when the greeks returned to artemisium, the persians to aphetae. iii. but during the night one of those sudden and vehement storms not unfrequent to the summers of greece broke over the seas. the persians at aphetae heard, with a panic dismay, the continued thunder that burst above the summit of mount pelion; and the bodies of the dead and the wrecks of ships, floating round the prows, entangled their oars amid a tempestuous and heavy sea. but the destruction which the persians at aphetae anticipated to themselves, actually came upon that part of the barbarian fleet which had made the circuit round euboea. remote from land, exposed to all the fury of the tempest, ignorant of their course, and amid the darkness of night, they were dashed to pieces against those fearful rocks termed "the hollows," and not a single galley escaped the general destruction. thus the fleet of the barbarians was rendered more equal to that of the greeks. re-enforced by fifty-three ships from athens the next day, the greeks proceeded at evening against that part of the hostile navy possessed by the cilicians. these they utterly defeated, and returned joyfully to artemisium. hitherto these skirmishes, made on the summer evenings, in order probably to take advantage of the darkening night to break off before any irremediable loss was sustained, seem rather to have been for the sake of practice in the war--chivalric sorties as it were--than actual and deliberate engagements. but the third day, the persians, impatient of conquest, advanced to artemisium. these sea encounters were made precisely on the same days as the conflicts at thermopylae; the object on each was the same--the gaining in one of the sea defile, in the other of the land entrance into greece. the euripus was the thermopylae of the ocean. iv. the greeks remained in their station, and there met the shock; the battle was severe and equal; the persians fought with great valour and firmness, and although the loss upon their side was far the greatest, many of the greek vessels also perished. they separated as by mutual consent, neither force the victor. of the persian fleet the egyptians were the most distinguished--of the grecian the athenians; and of the last none equalled in valour clinias; his ship was manned at his own expense. he was the father of that alcibiades, afterward so famous. while the greeks rested at artemisium, counting the number of their slain, and amid the wrecks of their vessels, they learned the fate of leonidas. [ ] this determined their previous consultations on the policy of retreat, and they abandoned the euripus in steady and marshalled order, the corinthians first, the athenians closing the rear. thus the persians were left masters of the sea and land entrance into greece. but even in retreat, the active spirit of themistocles was intent upon expedients. it was more than suspected that a considerable portion of the ionians now in the service of xerxes were secretly friendly to the greeks. in the swiftest of the athenian vessels themistocles therefore repaired to a watering-place on the coast, and engraved upon the rocks these words, which were read by the ionians the next day. "men of ionia, in fighting against your ancestors, and assisting to enslave greece, you act unworthily. come over to us; or if that may not be, at least retire from the contest, and prevail on the carians to do the same. if yet neither secession nor revolt be practicable, at least when we come to action exert not yourselves against us. remember that we are descended from one common race, and that it was on your behalf that we first incurred the enmity of the persian." a subtler intention than that which was the more obvious, was couched beneath this exhortation. for if it failed to seduce the ionians, it might yet induce xerxes to mistrust their alliance. when the persians learned that the greeks had abandoned their station, their whole fleet took possession of the pass, possessed themselves of the neighbouring town of histiaea, and overrunning a part of the isle of euboea, received the submission of the inhabitants. xerxes now had recourse to a somewhat clumsy, though a very commonly practised artifice. twenty thousand of his men had fallen at thermopylae: of these he buried nineteen thousand, and leaving the remainder uninterred, he invited all who desired it, by public proclamation, to examine the scene of contest. as a considerable number of helots had joined their spartan lords and perished with them, the bodies of the slain amounted to four thousand [ ], while those of the persians were only one thousand. this was a practical despotic bulletin. v. of all the neighbouring district, the phocians had alone remained faithful to the grecian cause: their territory was now overrun by the persians, at the instance of their hereditary enemies, the thessalians, destroying city and temple, and committing all the horrors of violence and rapine by the way. arrived at panopeae, the bulk of the barbarian army marched through boeotia towards athens, the great object of revenge, while a separate detachment was sent to delphi, with a view of plundering the prodigious riches accumulated in that celebrated temple, and of which, not perhaps uncharacteristically, xerxes was said to be better informed than of the treasures he had left behind in his own palace. but the wise and crafty priesthood of delphi had been too long accustomed successfully to deceive mankind to lose hope or self-possession at the approach even of so formidable a foe. when the dismayed citizens of delphi ran to the oracle, demanding advice and wishing to know what should be done with the sacred treasures, the priestess gravely replied that "the god could take care of his own possessions, and that the only business of the citizens was to provide for themselves;" a priestly answer, importing that the god considered his possessions, and not the flock, were the treasure. the one was sure to be defended by a divinity, the other might shift for themselves. the citizens were not slow in adopting the advice; they immediately removed their wives and children into achaia--while the males and adults fled--some to amphissa, some amid the craggy recesses of parnassus, or into that vast and spacious cavern at the base of mount corycus, dedicated to the muses, and imparting to those lovely deities the poetical epithet of corycides. sixty men, with the chief priest, were alone left to protect the sacred city. vi. but superstition can dispense with numbers in its agency. just as the barbarians were in sight of the temple, the sacred arms, hitherto preserved inviolable in the sanctuary, were seen by the soothsayer to advance to the front of the temple. and this prodigy but heralded others more active. as the enemy now advanced in the stillness of the deserted city, and impressed doubtless by their own awe (for not to a persian army could there have seemed no veneration due to the temple of the sun!) just by the shrine of minerva pronaea, built out in front of the great temple, a loud peal of thunder burst suddenly over their heads, and two enormous fragments of rock (separated from the heights of that parnassus amid whose recesses mortals as well as gods lay hid) rolled down the mountain-side with a mighty crash, and destroyed many of the persian multitude. at the same time, from the temple of the warlike goddess broke forth a loud and martial shout, as if to arms. confused--appalled--panic-stricken by these supernatural prodigies--the barbarians turned to fly; while the delphians, already prepared and armed, rushed from cave and mountain, and, charging in the midst of the invaders, scattered them with great slaughter. those who escaped fled to the army in boeotia. thus the treasures of delphi were miraculously preserved, not only from the plunder of the persian, but also from the clutch of the delphian citizens themselves, who had been especially anxious, in the first instance, to be permitted to deposite the treasures in a place of safety. nobody knew better than the priests that treasures always diminish when transferred from one hand to another. vii. the grecian fleet anchored at salamis by the request of the athenians, who were the more anxious immediately to deliberate on the state of affairs, as the persian army was now approaching their borders, and they learned that the selfish warriors of the peloponnesus, according to their customary policy, instead of assisting the athenians and greece generally, by marching towards boeotia, were engaged only in fortifying the isthmus or providing for their own safety. unable to engage the confederates to assist them in protecting attica, the athenians entreated, at least, the rest of the maritime allies to remain at salamis, while they themselves hastened back to athens. returned home, their situation was one which their generous valour had but little merited. although they had sent to artemisium the principal defence of the common cause, now, when the storm rolled towards themselves, none appeared on their behalf. they were at once incensed and discouraged by the universal desertion. [ ] how was it possible that, alone and unaided, they could withstand the persian multitude? could they reasonably expect the fortunes of marathon to be perpetually renewed? to remain at athens was destruction--to leave it seemed to them a species of impiety. nor could they anticipate victory with a sanguine hope, in abandoning the monuments of their ancestors and the temples of their gods. [ ] themistocles alone was enabled to determine the conduct of his countrymen in this dilemma. inexhaustible were the resources of a genius which ranged from the most lofty daring to the most intricate craft. perceiving that the only chance of safety was in the desertion of the city, and that the strongest obstacle to this alternative was in the superstitious attachment to home ever so keenly felt by the ancients, he had recourse, in the failure of reason, to a counter-superstition. in the temple of the citadel was a serpent, dedicated to minerva, and considered the tutelary defender of the place. the food appropriated to the serpent was suddenly found unconsumed--the serpent itself vanished; and, at the suggestion of themistocles, the priests proclaimed that the goddess had deserted the city and offered herself to conduct them to the seas. then, amid the general excitement, themistocles reiterated his version of the delphic oracle. then were the ships reinterpreted to be the wooden walls, and salamis once more proclaimed "the divine." the fervour of the people was awakened--the persuasions of themistocles prevailed--even the women loudly declared their willingness to abandon athens for the sake of the athenians; and it was formally decreed that the city should be left to the guardianship of minerva, and the citizens should save themselves, their women, children, and slaves, as their own discretion might suggest. most of them took refuge in troezene, where they were generously supported at the public expense--some at aegina--others repaired to salamis. a moving and pathetic spectacle was that of the embarcation of the athenians for the isle of salamis. separated from their children, their wives (who were sent to remoter places of safety)--abandoning their homes and altars--the citadel of minerva--the monuments of marathon--they set out for a scene of contest (b. c. ), perilous and precarious, and no longer on the site of their beloved and father-land. their grief was heightened by the necessity of leaving many behind, whose extreme age rendered them yet more venerable, while it incapacitated their removal. even the dumb animals excited all the fond domestic associations, running to the strand, and expressing by their cries their regret for the hands that fed them: one of them, a dog, that belonged to xanthippus, father of pericles, is said to have followed the ships, and swam to salamis, to die, spent with toil, upon the sands. viii. the fleet now assembled at salamis; the spartans contributed only sixteen vessels, the people of aegina thirty--swift galleys and well equipped; the athenians one hundred and eighty; the whole navy, according to herodotus, consisted of three hundred and seventy-eight [ ] ships, besides an inconsiderable number of vessels of fifty oars. eurybiades still retained the chief command. a council of war was held. the greater number of the more influential allies were composed of peloponnesians, and, with the countenance of the spartan chief, it was proposed to retire from salamis and fix the station in the isthmus near the land-forces of peloponnesus. this was highly consonant to the interested policy of the peloponnesian states, and especially to that of sparta; attica was considered already lost, and the fate of that territory they were therefore indisposed to consider. while the debate was yet pending, a messenger arrived from athens with the intelligence that the barbarian, having reduced to ashes the allied cities of thespiae and plataea in boeotia, had entered attica; and shortly afterward they learned that (despite a desperate resistance from the handful of athenians who, some from poverty, some from a superstitious prejudice in favour of the wooden wall of the citadel, had long held out, though literally girt by fire from the burning of their barricades) the citadel had been taken, plundered, and burnt, and the remnant of its defenders put to the sword. ix. consternation seized the council; many of the leaders broke away hastily, went on board, hoisted their sails, and prepared to fly. those who remained in the council determined that an engagement at sea could only be risked near the isthmus. with this resolve the leaders at night returned to their ships. it is singular how often, in the most memorable events, the fate and the glory of nations is decided by the soul of a single man. when themistocles had retired to his vessel, he was sought by mnesiphilus, who is said to have exercised an early and deep influence over the mind of themistocles, and to have been one of those practical yet thoughtful statesmen called into existence by the sober philosophy of solon [ ], whose lessons on the science of government made a groundwork for the rhetorical corruptions of the later sophists. on learning the determination of the council, mnesiphilus forcibly represented its consequences. "if the allies," said he, "once abandon salamis, you have lost for ever the occasion of fighting for your country. the fleet will certainly separate, the various confederates return home, and greece will perish. hasten, therefore, ere yet it be too late, and endeavour to persuade eurybiades to change his resolution and remain." this advice, entirely agreeable to the views of themistocles, excited that chief to new exertions. he repaired at once to eurybiades; and, by dint of that extraordinary mastery over the minds of others which he possessed, he finally won over the spartan, and, late as the hour was, persuaded him to reassemble the different leaders. x. in that nocturnal council debate grew loud and warm. when eurybiades had explained his change of opinion and his motives for calling the chiefs together; themistocles addressed the leaders at some length and with great excitement. it was so evidently the interest of the corinthians to make the scene of defence in the vicinity of corinth, that we cannot be surprised to find the corinthian leader, adimantus, eager to interrupt the athenian. "themistocles," said he, "they who at the public games rise before their time are beaten." "true," replied themistocles, with admirable gentleness and temper; "but they who are left behind are never crowned." pursuing the advantage which a skilful use of interruption always gives to an orator, the athenian turned to eurybiades. artfully suppressing his secret motive in the fear of the dispersion of the allies, which he rightly judged would offend without convincing, he had recourse to more popular arguments. "fight at the isthmus," he said, "and you fight in the open sea, where, on account of our heavier vessels and inferior number, you contend with every disadvantage. grant even success, you will yet lose, by your retreat, salamis, megara, and aegina. you would preserve the peloponnesus, but remember, that by attracting thither the war, you attract not only the naval, but also the land forces of the enemy. fight here, and we have the inestimable advantage of a narrow sea--we shall preserve salamis, the refuge of our wives and children--we shall as effectually protect the peloponnesus as by repairing to the isthmus and drawing the barbarian thither. if we obtain the victory, the enemy will neither advance to the isthmus nor penetrate beyond attica. their retreat is sure." the orator was again interrupted by adimantus with equal rudeness. and themistocles, who well knew how to alternate force with moderation, and menace with persuasion, retorted with an equal asperity, but with a singular dignity and happiness of expression. "it becomes you," said adimantus, scornfully, alluding to the capture of athens, "it becomes you to be silent, and not to advise us to desert our country; you, who no longer have a country to defend! eurybiades can only be influenced by themistocles when themistocles has once more a city to represent." "wretch!" replied themistocles, sternly, "we have indeed left our walls and houses--preferring freedom to those inanimate possessions-- but know that the athenians still possess a country and a city, greater and more formidable than yours, well provided with stores and men, which none of the greeks will be able to resist: our ships are our country and our city." "if," he added, once more addressing the spartan chief, "if you continue here you will demand our eternal gratitude: fly, and you are the destroyers of greece. in this war the last and sole resource of the athenians is their fleet: reject my remonstrances, and i warn you that at once we will take our families on board, and sail to that siris, on the italian shores, which of old is said to have belonged to us, and in which, if the oracle be trusted, we ought to found a city. deprived of us, you will remember my words." xi. the menace of themistocles--the fear of so powerful a race, unhoused, exasperated, and in search of a new settlement--and the yet more immediate dread of the desertion of the flower of the navy-- finally prevailed. eurybiades announced his concurrence with the views of themistocles, and the confederates, wearied with altercation, consented to risk the issue of events at salamis. xii. possessed of athens, the persian king held also his council of war. his fleet, sailing up the euripus, anchored in the attic bay of phalerum; his army encamped along the plains around, or within the walls of athens. the losses his armament had sustained were already repaired by new re-enforcements of malians, dorians, locrians, bactrians, carystians, andrians, tenedians, and the people of the various isles. "the farther," says herodotus, "the persians penetrated into greece, the greater the numbers by which they were followed." it may be supposed, however, that the motley contributions of an idle and predatory multitude, or of greeks compelled, not by affection, but fear, ill supplied to xerxes the devoted thousands, many of them his own gallant persians, who fell at thermopylae or perished in the euboean seas. xiii. mardonius and the leaders generally were for immediate battle. the heroine artemisia alone gave a more prudent counsel. she represented to them, that if they delayed a naval engagement or sailed to the peloponnesus [ ], the greeks, failing of provisions and overruled by their fears, would be certain to disperse, to retire to their several homes, and, thus detached, fall an easy prey to his arms. although xerxes, contrary to expectation, received the adverse opinion of the carian princess with compliments and praise, he yet adopted the counsel of the majority; and, attributing the ill success at artemisium to his absence, resolved in person to witness the triumph of his arms at salamis. the navy proceeded, in order, to that island: the land-forces on the same night advanced to the peloponnesus: there, under cleombrotus, brother to leonidas, all the strength of the peloponnesian confederates was already assembled. they had fortified the pass of sciron, another thermopylae in its local character, and protected the isthmus by a wall, at the erection of which the whole army worked night and day; no materials sufficing for the object of defence were disdained--wood, stones, bricks, and sand--all were pressed into service. here encamped, they hoped nothing from salamis--they believed the last hope of greece rested solely with themselves. [ ] xiv. again new agitation, fear, and dissension broke out in the grecian navy. all those who were interested in the safety of the peloponnesus complained anew of the resolution of eurybiades--urged the absurdity of remaining at salamis to contend for a territory already conquered--and the leaders of aegina, megara, and athens were left in a minority in the council. thus overpowered by the peloponnesian allies, themistocles is said to have bethought himself of a stratagem, not inconsonant with his scheming and wily character. retiring privately from the debate, yet unconcluded, and summoning the most confidential messenger in his service [ ], he despatched him secretly to the enemy's fleet with this message--"the athenian leader, really attached to the king, and willing to see the greeks subjugated to his power, sends me privately to you. consternation has seized the grecian navy; they are preparing to fly; lose not the opportunity of a splendid victory. divided among themselves, the greeks are unable to resist you; and you will see, as you advance upon them, those who favour and those who would oppose you in hostility with each other." the persian admiral was sufficiently experienced in the treachery and defection of many of the greeks to confide in the message thus delivered to him; but he scarcely required such intelligence to confirm a resolution already formed. at midnight the barbarians passed over a large detachment to the small isle of psyttaleia, between salamis and the continent, and occupying the whole narrow sea as far as the attic port of munychia, under cover of the darkness disposed their ships, so as to surround the greeks and cut off the possibility of retreat. xv. unconscious of the motions of the enemy, disputes still prevailed among the chiefs at salamis, when themistocles was summoned at night from the council, to which he had returned after despatching his messenger to the barbarian. the person who thus summoned him was aristides. it was the third year of his exile--which sentence was evidently yet unrepealed--or not in that manner, at night and as a thief, would the eminent and high-born aristides have joined his countrymen. he came from aegina in an open boat, under cover of the night passed through the midst of the persian ships, and arrived at salamis to inform the greeks that they were already surrounded. "at any time," said aristides, "it would become us to forget our private dissensions, and at this time especially; contending only who should most serve his country. in vain now would the peloponnesians advise retreat; we are encompassed, and retreat is impossible." themistocles welcomed the new-comer with joy, and persuaded him to enter the council and acquaint the leaders with what he knew. his intelligence, received with doubt, was presently confirmed by a trireme of tenians, which deserted to them; and they now seriously contemplated the inevitable resort of battle. xvi. at dawn all was prepared. assembled on the strand, themistocles harangued the troops; and when he had concluded, orders were given to embark. it was in the autumn of b. c., two thousand three hundred and sixteen years ago, that the battle of salamis was fought. high on a throne of precious metals, placed on one of the eminences of mount aegaleos, sat, to survey the contest, the royal xerxes. the rising sun beheld the shores of the eleusinian gulf lined with his troops to intercept the fugitives, and with a miscellaneous and motley crowd of such as were rather spectators than sharers of the conflict. [ ] but not as the persian leaders had expected was the aspect of the foe; nor did the greeks betray the confusion or the terror ascribed to them by the emissary of themistocles. as the daylight made them manifest to the persian, they set up the loud and martial chorus of the paean-- "the rocks of salamis echoed back the shout"--and, to use the expression of a soldier of that day [ ], "the trumpet inflamed them with its clangour." as soon as the greeks began to move, the barbarian vessels advanced swiftly. but themistocles detained the ardour of the greeks until the time when a sharp wind usually arose in that sea, occasioning a heavy swell in the channel, which was peculiarly prejudicial to the unwieldy ships of the persians; but not so to the light, low, and compact vessels of the greeks. the manner of attack with the ancient navies was to bring the prow of the vessel, which was fortified by long projecting beaks of brass, to bear upon the sides of its antagonist, and this, the swell of the sea causing the persian galleys to veer about unwieldily, the agile ships of the greeks were well enabled to effect. by the time the expected wind arose, the engagement was begun. the persian admiral [ ] directed his manoeuvres chiefly against themistocles, for on him, as the most experienced and renowned of the grecian leaders, the eyes of the enemy were turned. from his ship, which was unusually lofty, as from a castle [ ], he sent forth darts and arrows, until one of the athenian triremes, commanded by aminias, shot from the rest, and bore down upon him with the prow. the ships met, and, fastened together by their brazen beaks, which served as grappling-irons, ariabignes gallantly boarded the grecian vessel, and was instantly slain by the hostile pikes and hurled into the sea [ ]. the first who took a ship was an athenian named lycomedes. the grecians keeping to the straits, the persians were unable to bring their whole armament to bear at once, and could only enter the narrow pass by detachments; the heaviness of the sea and the cumbrous size of their tall vessels frequently occasioned more embarrassment to themselves than the foe--driven and hustling the one against the other. the athenians maintaining the right wing were opposed by the phoenicians; the spartans on the left by the ionians. the first were gallantly supported by the aeginetans, who, long skilled in maritime warfare, eclipsed even their new rivals the athenians. the phoenician line was broken. the greeks pursued their victory, still preserving the steadiest discipline and the most perfect order. the sea became strewn and covered with the wrecks of vessels and the bodies of the dead; while, to the left, the ionians gave way before that part of the allied force commanded by the spartans, some fighting with great valour, some favouring the greek confederates. meanwhile, as the persians gave way, and the sea became more clear, aristides, who had hitherto remained on shore, landed a body of athenians on the isle of psyttaleia, and put the persian guard there stationed to the sword. xerxes from the mountain, his countless thousands from the shore, beheld, afar and impotent, the confusion, the slaughter, the defeat of the forces on the sea. anxious now only for retreat, the barbarians retreated to phalerum; and there, intercepted by the aeginetans, were pressed by them in the rear; by the athenians, led by themistocles, in front. at this time the heroine artemisia, pursued by that aminias whose vessel had first grappled with the persians, and who of all the athenian captains was that day the most eminently distinguished, found herself in the extremest danger. against that remarkable woman the efforts of the athenians had been especially directed: deeming it a disgrace to them to have an enemy in a woman, they had solemnly set a reward of great amount upon her capture. thus pursued, artemisia had recourse to a sudden and extraordinary artifice. falling in with a vessel of the persians, commanded by a calyndian prince, with whom she had once been embroiled, she bore down against the ship and sunk it--a truly feminine stratagem--deceiving at once a public enemy and gratifying a private hatred. the athenian, seeing the vessel he had pursued thus attack a barbarian, conceived he had mistaken a friendly vessel, probably a deserter from the persians, for a foe, and immediately sought new objects of assault. xerxes beheld and admired the prowess of artemisia, deeming, in the confusion, that it was a hostile vessel she had sunken. [ ] xvii. the battle lasted till the dusk of evening, when at length the remnant of the barbarian fleet gained the port of phalerum; and the greeks beheld along the straits of salamis no other vestige of the enemy than the wrecks and corpses which were the evidence of his defeat. xviii. when morning came, the greeks awaited a renewal of the engagement; for the persian fleet were still numerous, the persian army yet covered the neighbouring shores, and, by a feint to conceal his real purpose, xerxes had ordered the phoenician transports to be joined together, as if to connect salamis to the continent. but a mandate was already issued for the instant departure of the navy for the hellespont, and a few days afterward the army itself retired into boeotia. the victory of salamis was celebrated by solemn rejoicings, in which, principally remarkable for the beauty of his person, and his accomplishments on the lyre and in the dance, was a youth named sophocles, destined afterward to share the glory of aeschylus, who, no less a warrior than a poet, distinguished himself in the battle, and has bequeathed to us the most detailed and animated account we possess of its events. the grecian conquerors beheld the retreat of the enemy with indignation; they were unwilling that any of that armament which had burnt their hearths and altars should escape their revenge; they pursued the persian ships as far as andros, where, not reaching them, they cast anchor and held a consultation. themistocles is said to have proposed, but not sincerely, to sail at once to the hellespont and destroy the bridge of boats. this counsel was overruled, and it was decided not to reduce so terrible an enemy to despair:--"rather," said one of the chiefs (whether aristides or eurybiades is differently related), "build another bridge, that xerxes may escape the sooner out of europe." themistocles affected to be converted to a policy which he desired only an excuse to effect; and, in pursuance of the hint already furnished him, is said to have sent secretly to xerxes, informing him that it was the intention of the allies to sail to the hellespont and destroy the bridge, so that, if the king consulted his safety, he would return immediately into asia, while themistocles would find pretexts to delay the pursuit of the confederates. this artifice appears natural to the scheming character of themistocles; and, from concurrent testimony [ ], it seems to me undoubted that themistocles maintained a secret correspondence with xerxes, and even persuaded that monarch that he was disposed to favour him. but it is impossible to believe, with herodotus, that he had at that time any real desire to conciliate the persian, foreseeing that he might hereafter need a refuge at the eastern court. then in the zenith of his popularity, so acute a foresight is not in man. he was one of those to whom the spirit of intrigue is delight in itself, and in the present instance it was exerted for the common cause of the athenians, which, with all his faults, he never neglected for, but rather incorporated with, his own. 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." [ ] 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. [ ] 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 [ ], 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. [ ] 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 [ ], "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 [ ], "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. ), 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. [ ] 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 [ ]. 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. [ ] 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 [ ] 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 [ ], 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 [ ], 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. [ ] 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 [ ], 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 [ ]), "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 [ ]. 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 [ ] 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?" [ ] 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." [ ] 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 [ ], 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," [ ] 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 [ ]. 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 [ ] 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 [ ]. 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. ), 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 [ ], 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 [ ], 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. ). 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. , concluded in the spring, b. c. ), 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. the public orations of demosthenes in two volumes vol i translated by arthur wallace pickard preface the translations included in this volume were written at various times during the last ten years for use in connexion with college lectures, and a long holiday, for which i have to thank the trustees of the balliol college endowment fund, as well as the master and fellows of balliol college, has enabled me to revise them and to furnish them with brief introductions and notes. only those speeches are included which are generally admitted to be the work of demosthenes, and the spurious documents contained in the mss. of the speech on the crown are omitted. the speeches are arranged in chronological order, and the several introductions to them are intended to supply an outline of the history of the period, sufficient to provide a proper setting for the speeches, but not more detailed than was necessary for this purpose. no discussion of conflicting evidence has been introduced, and the views which are expressed on the character and work of demosthenes must necessarily seem somewhat dogmatic, when given without the reasons for them. i hope, however, before long to treat the life of demosthenes more fully in another form. the estimate here given of his character as a politician falls midway between the extreme views of grote and schäfer on the one hand, and beloch and holm on the other. i have tried to render the speeches into such english as a political orator of the present day might use, without attempting to impart to them any antique colouring, such as the best-known english translations either had from the first or have acquired by lapse of time. it is of the essence of political oratory that it is addressed to contemporaries, and the translation of it should therefore be into contemporary english; though the necessity of retaining some of the modes of expression which are peculiar to greek oratory and political life makes it impossible to produce completely the appearance of an english orator's work. the qualities of demosthenes' eloquence sometimes suggest rather the oratory of the pulpit than that of the hustings or that of parliament and of the law-courts. i cannot hope to have wholly succeeded in my task; but it seemed to be worth undertaking, and i hope that the work will not prove to have been altogether useless. i have made very little use of other translations; but i must acknowledge a debt to lord brougham's version of the speeches on the chersonese and on the crown, which, though often defective from the point of view of scholarship and based on faulty texts, are (together with his notes) very inspiring. i have also, at one time or another, consulted most of the standard german, french, and english editions of demosthenes. i cannot now distinguish how much i owe to each; but i am conscious of a special debt to the editions of the late professor henri weil, and of sir j.e. sandys, and (in the speech on the crown) to that of professor w.w. goodwin. i also owe a few phrases in the earliest speeches to professor w.r. hardie, whose lectures on demosthenes i attended twenty years ago. my special thanks are due to my friend mr. p.e. matheson of new college, for his kindness in reading the proof-sheets, and making a number of suggestions, which have been of great assistance to me. the text employed has been throughout that of the late mr. s.h. butcher in the _bibliotheca classica oxoniensis_. any deviations from this are noted in their place. contents introduction i. list of speeches translated traditional order in this edition oration i. olynthiac i i. ii. olynthiac ii i. iii. olynthiac iii i. iv. philippic i i. v. on the peace i. vi. philippic ii i. viii. on the chersonese ii. ix. philippic iii ii. xiv. on the naval boards i. xv. for the freedom of the rhodians i. xvi. for the megalopolitans i. xviii. on the crown ii. xix. on the embassy i. notes ii. introduction demosthenes, the son of demosthenes of paeania in attica, a rich and highly respected factory-owner, was born in or about the year b.c. he was early left an orphan; his guardians mismanaged his property for their own advantage; and although, soon after coming of age in , he took proceedings against them and was victorious in the law-courts, he appears to have recovered comparatively little from them. in preparing for these proceedings he had the assistance of isaeus, a teacher and writer of speeches who was remarkable for his knowledge of law, his complete mastery of all the aspects of any case with which he had to do, and his skill in dealing with questions of ownership and inheritance. demosthenes' speeches against his guardians show plainly the influence of isaeus, and the teacher may have developed in his pupil the thoroughness and the ingenuity in handling legal arguments which afterwards became characteristic of his work. apart from this litigation with his guardians, we know little of demosthenes' youth and early manhood. various stories have come down to us (for the most part not on the best authority), of his having been inspired to aim at an orator's career by the eloquence and fame of callistratus; of his having overcome serious physical defects by assiduous practice; of his having failed, nevertheless, owing to imperfections of delivery, in his early appearances before the people, and having been enabled to remedy these by the instruction of the celebrated actor satyrus; and of his close study of the _history_ of thucydides. upon the latter point the evidence of his early style leaves no room for doubt, and the same studies may have contributed to the skill and impressiveness with which, in nearly every oration, he appeals to the events of the past, and sums up the lessons of history. whether he came personally under the influence either of plato, the philosopher, or of isocrates, the greatest rhetorical teacher of his time, and a political pamphleteer of high principles but little practical insight, is much more doubtful. the two men were almost as different in temperament and aims as it was possible to be, but demosthenes' familiarity with the published speeches of isocrates, and with the rhetorical principles which isocrates taught and followed, can scarcely be questioned. in the early years of his manhood, demosthenes undertook the composition of speeches for others who were engaged in litigation. this task required not only a very thorough knowledge of law, but the power of assuming, as it were, the character of each separate client, and writing in a tone appropriate to it; and, not less, the ability to interest and to rouse the active sympathy of juries, with whom feeling was perhaps as influential as legal justification. this part, however, of demosthenes' career only concerns us here in so far as it was an admirable training for his later work in the larger sphere of politics, in which the same qualities of adaptability and of power both to argue cogently and to appeal to the emotions effectively were required in an even higher degree. at the time when demosthenes' interest in public affairs was beginning to take an active form, athens was suffering from the recent loss of some of her most powerful allies. in the year b.c. she had counted within the sphere of her influence not only the islands of lemnos, imbros, and scyros (which had been guaranteed to her by the peace of antalcidas in ), but also the chief cities of euboea, the islands of chios, cos, rhodes, and samos, mytilene in lesbos, the towns of the chersonese, byzantium (a city of the greatest commercial importance), and a number of stations on the south coast of thrace, as well as pydna, potidaea, methone, and the greater part of the country bordering upon the thermaic gulf. but her failure to observe the terms of alliance, laid down when the new league was founded in , had led to a revolt, which ended in or in the loss to her of chios, cos, rhodes, and byzantium, and of some of the ablest of her own commanders, and left her treasury almost empty. about the same time mytilene and corcyra also took the opportunity to break with her. moreover, her position in the thermaic region was threatened first by olynthus, at the head of the chalcidic league, which included over thirty towns; and secondly by philip, the newly-established king of macedonia, who seemed likely to displace both olynthus and athens from their positions of commanding influence.[ ] nevertheless, athens, though unable to face a strong combination, was probably the most powerful single state in greece. in her equipment and capacity for naval warfare she had no rival, and certainly no other state could vie with her in commercial activity and prosperity. the power of sparta in the peloponnese had declined greatly. the establishment of megalopolis as the centre of a confederacy of arcadian tribes, and of messene as an independent city commanding a region once entirely subject to sparta, had seriously weakened her position; while at the same time her ambition to recover her supremacy kept alive a feeling of unrest throughout the peloponnese. of the other states of south greece, argos was hostile to sparta, elis to the arcadians; corinth and other less important cities were not definitely attached to any alliance, but were not powerful enough to carry out any serious movement alone. in north greece, thebes, though she lacked great leaders, was still a great power, whose authority throughout boeotia had been strengthened by the complete or partial annihilation of platacae, thespiae, orchomenus,[ ] and coroneia. in athens the ill feeling against thebes was strong, owing to the occupation by the thebans of oropus,[ ] a frontier town which athens claimed, and their treatment of the towns just mentioned, towards which the athenians were kindly disposed. the phocians, who had until recently been unwilling allies of thebes, were now hostile and not insignificant neighbours, and about this time entered into relations with both sparta and athens. the subject of contention was the possession or control of the temple of apollo at delphi, which the phocians had recently taken by force from the delphians, who were supported by thebes; and in the 'sacred war' to which this act (which was considered to be sacrilege) gave rise in b.c., the thebans and locrians fought against the phocians in the name of the amphictyonic council, a body (composed of representatives of tribes and states of very unequal importance[ ]) to which the control of the temple traditionally belonged. thessaly appears to have been at this time more or less under theban influence, but was immediately dominated by the tyrants of pherae, though the several cities seem each to have possessed a nominally independent government. the greek peoples were disunited in fact and unfitted for union by temperament. the twofold desire, felt by almost all the more advanced greek peoples, for independence on the one hand, and for 'hegemony' or leadership among other peoples, on the other, rendered any effective combination impossible, and made the relations of states to one another uncertain and inconstant. while each people paid respect to the spirit of autonomy, when their own autonomy was in question, they were ready to violate it without scruple when they saw their way to securing a predominant position among their neighbours; and although the ideal of panhellenic unity had been put before greece by gorgias and isocrates, its realization did not go further than the formation of leagues of an unstable character, each subject, as a rule, to the more or less tyrannical domination of some one member. probably the power which was most generally feared in the greek world was that of the king of persia. several times in recent years (and particularly in and ) he had been requested to make and enforce a general settlement of hellenic affairs. the settlement of (called the king's peace, or the peace of antalcidas, after the spartan officer who negotiated it) had ordained the independence of the greek cities, small and great, with the exception of those in asia minor, which were to form part of the persian empire, and of lemnos, imbros, and scyros, which were to belong to athens as before. the attempt to give effect to the arrangement negotiated in failed, and the terms of the peace of antalcidas, though it was still appealed to, when convenient, as a charter of liberty, also came to be disregarded. but there was always a sense of the possibility or the danger of provoking the great king to exert his strength, or at least to use his wealth, to the detriment of some or all of the greek states; though at the moment of which we are speaking (about ) the persian empire itself was suffering from recent disorders and revolutions, and the king had little leisure for interfering in the affairs of greece. it was to the department of foreign and inter-hellenic affairs that demosthenes principally devoted himself. his earliest political speeches, however, were composed and delivered in furtherance of prosecutions for the crime of proposing illegal legislation. these were the speeches against androtion (spoken by diodorus in ) and against leptines (in ). both these were written to denounce measures which demosthenes regarded as dishonest or unworthy of athenian traditions. in the former he displays that desire for clean-handed administration which is so prominent in some of his later speeches; and in the prosecution of leptines he shows his anxiety that athens should retain her reputation for good faith. both speeches, like those of the year against timocrates (spoken by diodorus), and against aristocrates (spoken by euthycles), are remarkable for thoroughness of argument and for the skill which is displayed in handling legal and political questions, though, like almost all athenian forensic orations, they are sometimes sophistical in argument. the first speech which is directly devoted to questions of external policy is that on the naval boards in ; and this is followed within the next two years by speeches delivered in support of appeals made to athens by the people of megalopolis and by the exiled democratic party of rhodes. from these speeches it appears that the general lines of demosthenes' policy were already determined. he was in opposition to eubulus, who, after the disastrous termination of the war with the allies, had become the leading statesman in athens. the strength of eubulus lay in his freedom from all illusion as to the position in which athens stood, in his ability as a financier, and in his readiness to take any measures which would enable him to carry out his policy. he saw that the prime necessity of the moment was to recruit the financial and material strength of the city; that until this should be effected, she was quite incapable of carrying on war with any other power; and that she could only recover her strength through peace. in this policy he had the support of the well-to-do classes, who suffered heavily in time of war from taxation and the disturbance of trade. on the other hand, the sentiments of the masses were imperialistic and militant. we gather that there were plenty of orators who made a practice of appealing to the glorious traditions of the past and the claim always made by athens to leadership among the greek states. to buy off the opposition which his policy might be expected to encounter, eubulus distributed funds freely to the people, in the shape of 'festival-money', adopting the methods employed before him by demagogues, very different from himself, in order that he might override the real sentiments of the democracy; and in spite of the large amounts thus spent he did in fact succeed, in the course of a few years, in collecting a considerable sum without resorting to extraordinary taxation, in greatly increasing the navy and in enlarging the dockyards. for the success of this policy it was absolutely necessary to avoid all entanglement in war, except under the strongest compulsion. the appeals of the megalopolitans and the rhodians, to yield to which would probably have meant war with sparta and with persia, must be rejected. even in dealing with philip, who was making himself master of the athenian allies on the thermaic coast, the fact of the weakness of athens must be recognized, and all idea of a great expedition against philip must be abandoned for the present. at the same time, some necessary measures of precaution were not neglected. it was essential to secure the route to the euxine, over which the athenian corn-trade passed, if corn was not to be sold at famine prices. for this purpose, therefore, alliance was made with the thracian prince, cersobleptes; and when philip threatened heraeon teichos on the propontis, an expedition was prepared, and was only abandoned because philip himself was forced to desist from his attempt by illness. similarly, when philip appeared likely to cross the pass of thermopylae in , an athenian force was sent (on the proposal of diophantus, a supporter of eubulus) to prevent him. the failure of eubulus and his party to give effective aid to olynthus against philip was due to the more pressing necessity of attempting to recover control of euboea: it had clearly been their intention to save olynthus, if possible. but when this had proved impossible, and the attempt to form a hellenic league against philip had also failed, facts had once more to be recognized; and, since athens was now virtually isolated, peace must be made with philip on the only terms which he would accept--that each side should keep what it _de facto_ possessed at the time. demosthenes was generally in opposition to eubulus and his party, of which aeschines (once an actor and afterwards a clerk, but a man of education and great natural gifts) was one of the ablest members. demosthenes was inspired by the traditions of the past, but had a much less vague conception of the moral to be drawn from them than had the multitude. athens, for him as for them, was to be the first state in hellas; she was above all to be the protectress of democracy everywhere, against both absolutism and oligarchy, and the leader of the hellenes in resistance to foreign aggression. but, unlike the multitude, demosthenes saw that this policy required the greatest personal effort and readiness for sacrifice on the part of every individual; and he devotes his utmost energies to the task of arousing his countrymen to the necessary pitch of enthusiasm, and of effecting such reforms in administration and finance as, in his opinion, would make the realization of his ideal for athens possible. in the speeches for the megalopolitans and the rhodians, the nature of this ideal is already becoming clear both in its athenian and in its panhellenic aspects. but so soon as it appeared that philip, at the head of the half-barbarian macedonians, and not athens, was likely to become the predominant power in the hellenic world, it was against philip that all his efforts were directed; and although in he is practically at one with the party of eubulus in his recognition of the necessity of peace, he is eager, when the opportunity seems once more to offer itself, to resume the conflict, and, when it is resumed, to carry it through to the end. we have then before us the sharp antagonism of two types of statesmanship. the strength of the one lies in the recognition of actual facts, and the avoidance of all projects which seem likely, under existing circumstances, to fail. the other is of a more sanguine type, and believes in the power of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice to transform the existing facts into something better, and to win success against all odds. statesmen of the former type are always attacked as unpatriotic and mean-spirited; those of the latter, as unpractical and reckless. there is truth and falsehood in both accusations: but since no statesman has ever combined all the elements of statesmanship in a perfect and just proportion, and since neither prudence and clear-sightedness, nor enthusiastic and generous sentiment, can ever be dispensed with in the conduct of affairs without loss, a larger view will attach little discredit to either type. while, therefore, we may view with regret some of the methods which both demosthenes and aeschines at times condescended to use in their conflicts with one another, and with no less regret the disastrous result of the policy which ultimately carried the day, we need not hesitate to give their due to both of the contending parties: nor, while we recognize that eubulus and phocion (his sturdiest supporter in the field and in counsel) took the truer view of the situation, and of the character of the athenians as they were, need we (as it is now fashionable to do) denounce the orator who strove with unstinting personal effort and self-sacrifice to rouse the athenians into a mood in which they could and would realize the ideal to which they, no less than he, professed their devotion. but the difficulties in the way of such a realization were wellnigh insuperable. neither the political nor the military system of athens was adapted to such a policy. the sovereign assembly, though capable of sensible and energetic action at moments of special danger, was more likely to be moved by feeling and prejudice than by businesslike argument, particularly at a time when the tendency of the best educated and most intelligent men was to withdraw from participation in public life; and meeting, as the assembly did (unless specially summoned), only at stated intervals, it was incapable of taking such rapid, well-timed, and decisive action as philip could take, simply because he was a single man, sole master of his own policy, and personally in command of his own forces. the publicity which necessarily attached to the discussions of the assembly was a disadvantage at a time when many plans would better have been kept secret; and rapid modifications of policy, to suit sudden changes in the situation, were almost impossible. again, while no subjects are so unsuited under any circumstances for popular discussion as foreign and military affairs, the absence in athens of a responsible ministry greatly increased the difficulties of her position. it is true that the controller of the festival fund (whose office gradually became more and more important) was now appointed for four years at a time, while all other offices were annual; and that he and his friends, and their regular opponents, were generally ready to take the lead in making proposals to the council or the assembly. but if they chose to remain silent, they could do so;[ ] no one was bound to make any proposal at all; and, on the other hand, any one might do so. with such a want of system, far too much was left to chance or to the designs of interested persons. moreover, the assembly felt itself under no obligation to follow for any length of time any lead which might be given to it, or to maintain any continuity or consistency between its own decrees. in modern times, a minister, brought into power by the will of the majority of the people, can reckon for a considerable period upon the more or less loyal support of the majority for himself and his official colleagues. in athens the leader of the moment had to be perpetually adapting himself afresh to the mood of the assembly, and even to deceive it, in order that he might lead at all, or carry out the policy which, in his opinion, his country's need required. it is therefore a remarkable thing that both eubulus and demosthenes succeeded for many years in maintaining a line of action as consistent as that taken by practical men can ever be. the fact that the council of five hundred, which acted as a standing committee of the people, and prepared business for the assembly and was responsible for the details of measures passed by the assembly in general form, was chosen by lot and changed annually, as did practically all the civil and the military officials (though the latter might be re-elected), was all against efficiency and continuity of policy.[ ] after the system of election by lot, the most characteristic feature of the athenian democracy was the responsibility of statesmen and generals to the law-courts.[ ] any citizen might accuse them upon charges nominally limited in scope, but often serving in reality to bring their whole career into question. had it been certain that the courts would only punish incompetence or misconduct, and not failure as such, little harm would have resulted. but although there were very many acquittals in political trials, the uncertainty of the issue was so great, and the sentences inflicted upon the condemned so severe (commonly involving banishment at least), that the liability to trial as a criminal must often have deterred the statesman and the general from taking the most necessary risks; while the condemnation of the accused had usually the result of driving a really able man out of the country, and depriving his fellow countrymen of services which might be urgently required when they were no longer available. the financial system was also ill adapted for the purposes of a people constantly liable to war. the funds required for the bare needs of a time of peace seem indeed to have been sufficiently provided from permanent sources of income (such as the silver mines, the rent of public lands, court fees and fines, and various indirect taxes): but those needed for war had to be met by a direct tax upon property, levied _ad hoc_ whenever the necessity arose, and not collected without delays and difficulties. and although the equipment of ships for service was systematically managed under the trierarchic laws,[ ] it was still subject to delays no less serious. there was no regular system of contribution to state funds, and no systematic accumulation of a reserve to meet military needs. the raising of money by means of loans at interest to the state was only adopted in greece in a few isolated instances:[ ] and the practice of annually distributing surplus funds to the people,[ ] however necessary or excusable under the circumstances, was wholly contrary to sound finance. an even greater evil was the dependence of the city upon mercenary forces and generals, whose allegiance was often at the call of the highest bidder, and in consequence was seldom reliable. there is no demand which demosthenes makes with greater insistence, than the demand that the citizens themselves shall serve with the army. at a moment of supreme danger, they might do so. but in fact athens had become more and more an industrial state, and men were not willing to leave their business to take care of itself for considerable periods, in order to go out and fight, unless the danger was very urgent, or the interests at stake of vital importance; particularly now that the length of campaigns had become greater and the seasons exempted from military operations shorter. in many minds the spread of culture, and of the ideal of self-culture, had produced a type of individualism indifferent to public concerns, and contemptuous of political and military ambitions. moreover, the methods of warfare had undergone great improvement; in most branches of the army the trained skill of the professional soldier was really necessary; and it was not possible to leave the olive-yard or the counting-house and become an efficient fighter without more ado. but the expensiveness of the mercenary forces; the violent methods by which they obtained supplies from friends and neutrals, as well as foes, if, as often happened, their pay was in arrear; and the dependence of the city upon the goodwill of generals and soldiers who could without much difficulty find employment under other masters, were evils which were bound to hamper any attempt to give effect to a well-planned and far-sighted scheme of action. it also resulted from the athenian system of government that the general, while obviously better informed of the facts of the military situation than any one else could be, and at the same time always liable to be brought to trial in case of failure, had little influence upon policy, unless he could find an effective speaker to represent him. in the assembly and in the law-courts (where the juries were large enough to be treated in the same manner as the assembly itself) the orator who could win the people's ear was all powerful, and expert knowledge could only make itself felt through the medium of oratory. a constitution which gave so much power to the orator had grave disadvantages. the temptation to work upon the feelings rather than to appeal to the reason of the audience was very strong, and no charge is more commonly made by one orator against another than that of deceiving or attempting to deceive the people. it is, indeed, very difficult to judge how far an athenian assembly was really taken in by sophistical or dishonest arguments: but it is quite certain that such arguments were continually addressed to it; and the main body of the citizens can scarcely have had that first-hand knowledge of facts, which would enable them to criticize the orator's statements. again, the oration appealed to the people as a performance, no less than as a piece of reasoning. ancient political oratory resembled the oratory of the pulpit at the present day, not only because it appealed perpetually to the moral sense, and was in fact a kind of preaching; but also because the main difficulty of the ancient orator and the modern preacher was the same: for the athenians liked being preached at, as the modern congregation 'enjoys' a good sermon, and were, therefore, almost equally immune against conversion. the conflicts of rival orators were regarded mainly as an entertainment. the speaker who was most likely to carry the voting (except when a great crisis had roused the assembly to seriousness) was the one who found specious and apparently moral reasons for doing what would give the audience least trouble; and consequently one who, like demosthenes, desired to stir them up to action and personal sacrifices, had always an uphill fight: and if he also at times 'deceived the people' or employed sophistical arguments in order to secure results which he believed to be for their good, we must remember the difficulty (which, in spite of the wide circulation of authentic information, is at least equally great at the present day) of putting the true reasons for or against a policy, before those who, whether from want of education or from lack of training in the subordination of feeling to thought, are not likely to understand or to listen to them. nor, if we grant the genuineness of demosthenes' conviction as to the desirability of the end for which he contended, can many statesmen be pointed out, who have not been at least as guilty as he in their choice of means. that he did not solve the problem, how to lead a democracy by wholly honest means, is the less to his discredit, in that the problem still remains unsolved. it should be added that with an audience like the athenian, whose aesthetic sensitiveness was doubtless far greater than that of any modern assembly, delivery counted for much. aeschines' fine voice was a real danger to demosthenes, and demosthenes himself spoke of delivery, or the skilled acting of his part, as the all-important condition of an orator's success. but it is clear that this can have been no advantage from the standpoint of the public interest. in the law-courts the drawbacks to which the commanding influence of oratory was liable were intensified. in the assembly a certain amount of reticence and self-restraint was imposed by custom: an opponent could not be attacked by name or on purely personal grounds; and an appearance of impartiality was commonly assumed. but in the courts much greater play was allowed to feeling; and the arguments were often much more disingenuous, not only because the personal interests at stake made the speaker more unscrupulous, but also, perhaps, because the juries ordinarily included a larger proportion of the poorer, the idler, and the less-educated citizens than the assembly. the legal question was often that to which the jury were encouraged to pay least attention, and the condemnation or acquittal of the accused was demanded upon grounds quite extraneous to the indictment. (the two court-speeches contained in these volumes afford abundant illustrations of this.) personalities were freely admitted, of a kind which it is difficult to excuse and impossible to justify. to attempt to blacken the personal character of an opponent by false stories about his parentage and his youth, and by the ascription to him and his relations of nameless immoralities, is a very different thing from the assignment of wrong motives for his political actions, though even in purely political controversy the ancients far exceeded the utmost limits of modern invective. and this both demosthenes and aeschines do freely. there is also reason to suspect that some of the tales which each tells of the other's conduct, both while serving as ambassadors and on other occasions, may be fabrications. the descriptive passages for which such falsehoods gave an opening had doubtless their dramatic value in the oratorical performance: possibly they were even expected by the listeners; but their presence in the speeches does not increase our admiration either for the speaker or for his audience. all the force of demosthenes' oratory was unable to defeat the great antagonist of his country. to philip of macedon failure was an inconceivable idea. resident during three impressionable years of his youth at thebes, he had there learned, from the example of epaminondas, what a single man could do: and he proceeded to each of the three great tasks of his life--the welding of the rough macedonians into one great engine of war, the unification of greece under his own leadership, and the preparation for the conquest of the east by a united greece and macedonia--without either faltering in face of difficulties, or hesitating, out of any scrupulosity, to use the most effective means towards the end which he wished at the moment to achieve; though in fact the charges of bad faith made against him by demosthenes are found to be exaggerated, when they are impartially examined. philip intended to become master of greece: demosthenes realized this early, and, with all the hellenic detestation of a master, resolved to oppose him to the end. philip was, indeed, in spite of the barbarous traits which revealed themselves in him at times, not only gracious and courteous by nature, but a sincere admirer of hellenic--in other words, of athenian--culture; the relations between his house and the people of athens had generally been friendly; and there was little reason to suppose that, if he conquered athens, he would treat her less handsomely than in fact he did. yet this could not justify one who regarded freedom as demosthenes regarded it, in making any concession not extorted by the necessities of the situation: his duty and his country's duty, as he conceived it, was to defeat the enemy of hellenic independence or to fall in the attempt. nor was it for him to consider (as isocrates might) whether or no philip's plans had now developed into, or could be transformed into, a beneficent scheme for the conquest of the barbarian world by a united hellas, if the union was to be achieved at the price of athenian liberty. it is because, in spite of errors and of the questionable methods to which he sometimes stooped, demosthenes devoted himself unflinchingly to the cause of freedom, for athens and for the hellenes as a whole, that he is entitled, not merely as an orator but as a politician, to the admiration which posterity has generally accorded him. it is, above all, by the second part of his career, when his policy of antagonism to philip had been accepted by the people, and he was no longer in opposition but, as it were, in office, that demosthenes himself claims to be justified; and aeschines' attempt to invalidate the claim is for the most part unconvincing. it is not easy to describe in a few paragraphs the characteristics of demosthenes as an orator. that he stands on the highest eminence that an orator has ever reached is generally admitted. but this is not to say that he was wholly free from faults. his contemporaries, as well as later greek critics, were conscious of a certain artificiality in his eloquence. it was, indeed, the general custom of athenian orators to prepare their speeches with great care: the speakers who, like aeschines and demades, were able to produce a great effect without preparation, and the rhetoricians who, like alcidamas, thought of the studied oration as but a poor imitation of true eloquence, were only a small minority; and in general, not only was the arrangement of topics carefully planned, but the greatest attention was paid to the sound and rhythm of the sentences, and to the appropriateness and order of the words. the orator had also his collections of passages on themes which were likely to recur constantly, and of arguments on either side of many questions; and from these he selected such passages as he required, and adapted them to his particular purpose. the rhetorical teachers appear to have supplied their pupils with such collections; we find a number of instances of the repetition of the same passage in different speeches, and an abundance of arguments formed exactly on the model of the precepts contained in rhetorical handbooks.[ ] yet with all this art nothing was more necessary than that a speech should appear to be spontaneous and innocent of guile. there was a general mistrust of the 'clever speaker', who by study or rhetorical training had learned the art of arguing to any point, and making the worse cause appear the better. to have studied his part too carefully--even to have worked up illustrations from history and poetry--might expose the orator to suspicion.[ ] demosthenes, in spite of his frequent attempts to deprecate such suspicion, did not succeed wholly in keeping on the safe side. aeschines describes him as a wizard and a sophist, who enjoyed deceiving the people or the jury. another of his opponents levelled at him the taunt that his speeches 'smelt of the lamp'. dionysius of halicarnassus, one of the best of the ancient critics, says that the artificiality of demosthenes and his master isaeus was apt to excite suspicion, even when they had a good case. nor can a modern reader altogether escape the same impression. sometimes, especially in the earlier speeches to the assembly, the argument seems unreal, the joints between the previously prepared commonplaces or illustrations and their application to the matter in hand are too visible, the language is artificially phrased, and wanting in spontaneity and ease. there are also parts of the court speeches in which the orator seems to have calculated out all the possible methods of meeting a particular case, and to be applying them in turn with more ingenuity than convincingness. an appearance of unreality also arises at times (again principally in the earlier speeches) from a certain want of imagination. he attributes feelings and motives to others, which they were really most unlikely to have entertained, and argues from them. some of the sentiments which he expects artaxerxes or artemisia to feel (in the speeches on the naval boards and for the rhodians) were certainly not to be looked for in them. similar misconceptions of the actual or possible sentiments of the spartans appear in the speech for the megalopolitans, and of those of the thebans in the third olynthiac (§ ). the early orations against philip also show some misunderstanding of his character. and if, in fact, demosthenes lived his early years largely in solitary studiousness and was unsociable by disposition, this lack of a quick grasp of human nature and motives is quite intelligible. but this defect grew less conspicuous as his experience increased; and though even to the end there remained something of the sophist about him, as about all the disciples of the ancient rhetoric, the greatness of his best work is not seriously affected by this. for, in his greatest speeches, and in the greatest parts of nearly all his speeches, the orator is white-hot with genuine passion and earnestness; and all his study and preparation resulted, for the most part, not in an artificial product, but in the most convincing expression of his real feeling and belief; so that it was the man himself, and not the rhetorical practitioner that spoke. the lighter virtues of the orator are not to be sought for in him. in gracefulness and humour he is deficient: his humour, indeed, generally takes the grim forms of irony and satire, or verges on personality and bad taste. few of his sentences can be imagined to have been delivered with a smile; and something like ferocity is generally not far below the surface. pathos is seldom in him unmixed with sterner qualities, and is usually lost in indignation. but of almost every other variety of tone he has a complete command. the essential parts of his reasoning (even when it is logically or morally defective) are couched, as a rule, in a forcible and cogent form;[ ] and he has a striking power of close, sustained, and at the same time lucid argumentation. his matter is commonly disposed with such skill that each topic occurs where it will tell most powerfully; and while one portion of a speech affords relief to another (where relief is needed, and particularly in the longer orations) all alike bear on the main issue or strengthen the orator's position with his audience. historical allusions are not (as they often are by aeschines and isocrates) enlarged out of proportion to their importance, but are limited to what is necessary, in order to illustrate the orator's point or drive his lesson home. add to these qualities his combination of political idealism with absolute mastery of minute detail; the intensity of his appeal to the moral sense and patriotism of his hearers; the impressiveness of his denunciation of political wrong; the vividness of his narrative, the rapid succession of his impassioned phrases, and some part of the secret of his power will be explained. for the rest, while there is in his writing every degree of fullness or brevity, there is no waste of words, no 'fine language' out of place. his language, indeed, is ordinarily simple--sometimes even colloquial; though in the arrangement of his words in their most telling order he shows consummate art, and his metaphors are often bold and sometimes even violent. in the use of the 'figures of speech' he excels; above all, in the use of antitheses (whether for the purpose of vivid contrast or of precise logical expression), and of the rhetorical question, used now in indignation, now in irony, now in triumphant conclusion of an argument: and at times there are master-strokes of genius, which defy all analysis, such as the great appeal to the men of marathon in the speech on the crown.[ ] he does not as a rule (and this is particularly true of the speech on the crown) cover the whole of the ground with the same adequacy; but so concentrates all his forces upon certain points as to be irresistible, and thus 'with thunder and lightning confounds'[ ] the orators who oppose him. it is no wonder that some of the greatest of english orators, and notably of those of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, borrow from him not only words and phrases, but inspiration and confidence in their cause, and look upon him as a model whom they may emulate, but cannot excel. footnotes [ ] see introduction to first philippic. [ ] see notes on speech for the megalopolitans. [ ] see note on speech on the crown, § . [ ] see speech on the crown, §§ ff. [ ] see zimmern, _the greek commonwealth_, pp. ff., for an excellent short account of the constitution and functions of the council. that the councillors themselves sat (for administrative purposes) in relays, changing ten times a year, was also against continuity. [ ] see speech on embassy, § n. [ ] see introduction to speech on naval boards, and philippic i, §§ , . [ ] see zimmern, _the greek commonwealth_, p. . [ ] see zimmern, _the greek commonwealth_, p. . [ ] the 'art' of anaximenes is an interesting extant example of a fourth-century handbook for practical orators. the rhetoric of aristotle stands on a higher plane, but probably follows the lines laid down by custom in the rhetorical schools. [ ] see speech on embassy, § , and note. [ ] he is especially fond of the dilemma, which is not indeed cogent in strict logic, but is peculiarly telling and effective in producing conviction in large audiences. [ ] see [longinus] 'on the sublime', especially chap, xvi-xviii (english translation by a. o. prickard in this series). this treatise should be read by all students of demosthenes, especially chap. xii, xvi-xviii, xxxii, xxxiv, xxxix. [ ] 'on the sublime', chap. xxxiv. [transcriber's note: the text for all notes marked [n] will be found at the end of the second volume.] on the naval boards (or. xiv) [_introduction_. the speech was delivered in b.c. news had been brought to athens that the persian king artaxerxes ochus was making great military and naval preparations, and though these were, in fact, directed against his own rebellious subjects in egypt, phoenicia, and cyprus, the athenians had some ground for alarm: for, two years before this, chares, in command of an athenian fleet, had given assistance to artabazus, satrap of ionia, who was in revolt against the king. the king had made a protest, and (late in ) athens had ordered chares to withdraw his aid from artabazus. a party in athens now wished to declare war on persia, and appealed strongly to athenian traditions in favour of the proposal. demosthenes opposes them, on the ground that it was not certain that the king was aiming at athens at all, and that the disunion of the hellenic peoples would render any such action unsafe: athens had more dangerous enemies nearer home, and her finances were not in a condition for such a campaign. but he takes advantage of the interest aroused, to propose a reform of the trierarchic system, designed to secure a more efficient navy, and to remedy certain abuses in the existing method of equipping vessels for service. in earlier times, the duty of equipping and commanding each trireme was laid upon single citizens of means, the hull and certain fittings being found by the state. when, early in the fourth century, the number of wealthy men had diminished, each ship might be shared by two citizens, who commanded in turn. in a law was passed, on the proposal of periander, transferring the responsibility from individuals to 'symmories' or boards. (the system had been instituted in a slightly different form for the collection of the war-tax in the archonship of nausinicus, - b.c.) the collection of the sums required became the work of twenty boards, formed by the subdivision of the , richest citizens: each contributor, whatever his property, paid the same share. the richer men thus got off with the loss of a very small proportion of their income, as compared with the poorer members of the boards,[ ] and in managing the business of the boards they sometimes contrived to exact the whole sum from their colleagues, and to escape payment themselves. at the same time the duties of the several boards and their members were not allocated with sufficient precision to enable the responsibility to be brought home in case of default; and the nominal twelve hundred had fallen to a much smaller number, on whom the burden accordingly fell with undue weight. demosthenes' proposal provided for the distribution of the responsibility of equipping the vessels and providing the funds, in the most detailed manner, with a view to preventing all evasion; but it was not carried. in fact, it was not until that he succeeded in reforming the trierarchy, and he then made the burden vary strictly with property. the proposal, however, to declare war upon persia went no further. while, in this speech, demosthenes is in accord with the policy of eubulus, so far as concerns the avoidance of war with persia, his proposals of financial reform would not be viewed with favour by the wealthy men who were eubulus' firm supporters. some of the themes which recur continually in later speeches are prominent in this--the futility of rhetorical appeals to past glories, without readiness for personal service, and the need of a thorough organization of the forces. while the speech shows rather too strongly the marks of careful preparation, and seldom rises to eloquence--the style, indeed, is often rather cramped and stiff, and the sentiments, especially at the beginning, artificially phrased--it is moderate and practical in tone, and shows a characteristic mastery of minute detail.] { } those who praise your forefathers,[n] men of athens, desire, no doubt, to gratify you by their speeches; and yet i do not think that they are acting in the interests of those whom they praise. for the subject on which they attempt to speak is one to which no words can do justice; and so, although they thus win for themselves the reputation of capable speakers, the impression which they convey to their hearers of the merit of our forefathers is not adequate to our conception of it. for my part i believe that their highest praise is constituted by time: for the time that has passed has been long, and still no generation has arisen, whose achievements could be compared with advantage to theirs. { } as for myself, i shall attempt to point out the way in which, in my opinion, you can best make your preparations. for the truth is, that if all of us who propose to address you were to succeed in proving to you our rhetorical skill, there would not be the slightest improvement in your condition--i am sure of it; but if a single speaker were to come forward, whoever he might be, who could instruct and convince you as to the nature of the preparations which would meet the city's need, as to their extent, and the resources upon which we can draw for them, your present fears would instantly be dissolved. this i will attempt to do--if indeed it is in my power. but first i must briefly express my views as to our relations with the king. { } i hold the king to be the common enemy of all the hellenes; and yet i should not on that account urge you, alone and unsupported, to raise war against him. for i observe that there is no common or mutual friendship even among the hellenes themselves: some have more faith in the king than in some other hellenes. when such are the conditions, your interest requires you, i believe, to see to it that you only begin war from a fair and just cause, and to make all proper preparations: this should be the basis of your policy. { } for i believe, men of athens, that if it were made plain to the eyes and understandings of the hellenes, that the king was making an attempt upon them, they would both fight in alliance with those who undertook the defence for them and with them, and would feel very grateful to them. but if we quarrel with him prematurely, while his intentions are still uncertain, i am afraid, men of athens, that we may be forced to fight not only against the king, but also against those for whose benefit we are exercising such forethought. { } for he will pause in the execution of his project, if indeed he has really resolved to attack the hellenes, and will bribe some of them with money and offers of friendship; while they, desirous of bringing their private wars to a successful end, and animated only by such a spirit, will disregard the common safety of all. i urge you then, not to hurl the city needlessly into the midst of any such chaos of selfish passions. { } moreover, i see that the question of the policy to be adopted towards the king does not even stand on the same footing for the other hellenes as for you. it is open, i think, to many of them to manage certain of their own interests as they please, and to disregard the rest of the hellenes. but for you it is not honourable, even if you are the injured party, and are dealing with those who have injured you, to punish them so severely as to leave some of them to fall under the domination of the foreigner: { } and this being so, we must take care, first, that we do not find ourselves involved in an unequal war, and secondly, that he, whom we believe to be plotting against the hellenes, does not gain credit from the supposition that he is their friend. how then can this be achieved? it will be achieved if it is manifest to all that the forces of athens have been overhauled and put in readiness, and if her intentions in regard to their use are plainly righteous. { } but to those who take a bold line, and urge you, without any hesitation whatever, to go to war, my reply is this--that it is not difficult to win a reputation for bravery, when the occasion calls for deliberation; nor to prove yourself an accomplished orator, when danger is at the door: but to display your courage in the hour of danger, and, in debate, to have wiser advice to offer than others--that is the hard thing, and that is what is required of you. { } for my part, men of athens, i consider that the proposed war with the king would be a difficult undertaking for the city; while the decisive conflict in which the war would result would be an easier matter, and for this reason. every war, i suppose, necessarily requires ships and money and the command of positions. all such advantages the king, i find, possesses more abundantly than we. but a conflict of forces requires nothing so much as brave men; and of these, i believe, the larger number is with us, and with those who share our danger. { } for this reason i exhort you not to be the first, in any way whatever, to take up the war; but for the decisive struggle i think you ought to be ready and your preparations made. and further, if the forces[n] with which foreigners and hellenes could respectively be repelled were really different in kind, the fact that we were arraying our forces against the king would naturally, it may be, admit of no concealment. { } but since all military preparations are of the same character, and the main points of a force must always be the same--the means to repel enemies, to help allies, and to retain existing advantages--why, when we have our acknowledged foes,[n] do we seek to procure others? let us rather prepare ourselves to meet the enemies whom we have, and we shall then repel the king also, if he takes the aggressive against us. { } suppose that you yourselves summon the hellenes to your side now. if, when the attitude of some of them towards you is so disagreeable, you do not fulfil their demands, how can you expect that any one will listen to you? 'why,' you say, 'we shall tell them that the king is plotting against them.' good heavens! do you imagine that they do not foresee this themselves? of course they do. but their fear of this does not yet outweigh the quarrels which some of them have against you and against each other. and so the tour of your envoys will end in nothing but their own rhapsodies.[n] { } but if you wait, then, if the design which we now suspect is really on foot, there is not one of the hellenes who stands so much upon his dignity that he will not come and beg for your aid, when he sees that you have a thousand cavalry, and infantry as many as any one can desire, and three hundred ships: for he will know that in these lies his surest hope of deliverance. appeal to them now, and we shall be suppliants, and, if unsuccessful, rejected suppliants. make your own preparations and wait, and then they will be the suppliants and we their deliverers; and we may rest assured that they will all come to us for help. { } in thinking out these points and others like them, men of athens, my object was not to devise a bold speech,[n] prolonged to no purpose: but i took the greatest pains to discover the means by which our preparations could be most effectively and quickly made; and therefore, if my proposal meets with your approval, when you have heard it, you ought, i think, to pass it. now the first element in our preparation, men of athens (and it is the most important), must be this: your minds must be so disposed, that every one of you will perform willingly and heartily any service that is required of him. { } for you see, men of athens, that whenever you have unanimously desired any object, and the desire has been followed by a feeling on the part of every individual, that the practical steps towards it were for himself to take, the object has never yet slipped from your grasp: but whenever the wish has had no further result than that each man has looked to his neighbour, expecting his neighbour to act while he himself does nothing, the object has never yet been attained. { } but supposing you to be filled with the keenness that i have described, i am of opinion that we should make up the twelve hundred to their full number, and increase it to , , by the addition of . for if you can display this total, then, when you have allowed for the unmarried heiresses and orphans,[n] for property outside attica,[n] or held in partnership, and for any persons who may be unable to contribute,[n] you will, i believe, actually have the full , persons available. { } these you must divide into twenty boards, as at present, with sixty persons to each board; and each of these boards you must divide into five sections of twelve persons each, taking care in every case to associate with the richest man the poorest men,[n] to maintain the balance. such is the arrangement of persons which i recommend, and my reason you will know when you have heard the nature of the entire system. { } i pass to the distribution of the ships. you must provide a total complement of ships, forming twenty divisions of fifteen ships apiece, and including in each division five of the first hundred vessels,[n] five of the second hundred, and five of the third hundred. next, you must assign by lot[n] to each board of persons its fifteen ships, and each board must assign three ships to each of its sections. { } this done, in order that you may have the payments also systematically arranged, you must divide the , talents (for that is the taxable capital[n] of the country) into parts of sixty talents each. five of each of these parts you must allot to each of the larger boards--the twenty--and each board must assign one of these sums of sixty talents to each of its sections; { } in order that, if you need ships,[n] there may be sixty talents to be taxed for the expense of each ship, and twelve persons responsible for it; if , thirty talents will be taxed to make up the cost, and six persons will be responsible; if , then twenty talents must be taxed to defray the expense, and four persons will be responsible. { } in the same way, men of athens, i bid you make a valuation according to the register of all those fittings of the ships which are in arrear,[n] divide them into twenty parts, and allot to each of the large boards one-twentieth of the debtors: these must then be assigned by each board in equal numbers to each of its sections, and the twelve persons composing each section must call up their share of the arrears, and provide, ready-equipped, the ships which fall to them. { } such is the plan by which, in my opinion, the expense, the ships, the trierarchs, and the recovery of the fittings could best be provided for and put into working order. i proceed to describe a simple and easy scheme for the manning of the vessels. i recommend that the generals should divide the whole space of the dockyards into ten, taking care to have in each space thirty slips for single vessels close together. this done they should apportion to each space two of the boards and thirty ships; and should then assign a tribe to each space by lot. { } each captain should divide into three parts the space which falls to his tribe, with the corresponding ships, and should allot these among the three wards[n] of each tribe, in such a way that if each tribe has one division of the entire docks, each ward will have a third of one of these divisions; and you will know, in case of need, first the position assigned to the tribe; next, that of the ward; and then the names of the trierarchs and their ships; each tribe will be answerable for thirty, and each ward for ten ships. if this system is put in train, circumstances as they arise will provide for anything that i may have overlooked to-day (for perhaps it is difficult to think of everything), and there will be a single organization for the whole fleet and every part of it. { } but what of funds? what resources have we immediately at our command? the statement which i am about to make on this subject will no doubt be astonishing; but i will make it nevertheless; for i am convinced that upon a correct view of the facts, this statement alone will be proved true, and will be justified by the event. i say then, that this is not the time to discuss the financial question. we have large resources upon which, in case of necessity, we may honourably and rightly draw: but if we inquire for them now, we shall not believe that we can rely upon them even against the hour of need; so far shall we be from supplying them now. 'what then,' you will ask me, 'are these resources, which are non-existent now, but will be ours then? this is really like a riddle.' i will tell you. { } men of athens, you see all this great city.[n] in this city there is wealth which will compare, i had almost said, with the united wealth of all other cities. but such is the disposition of those who own it, that if all your orators were to raise the alarm that the king was coming--that he was at the doors--that there was no possible escape; and if with the orators an equal number of prophets foretold the same thing; even then, far from contributing funds, they would show no sign[ ] [and make no acknowledgement] of their possession of them. { } if, however, they were to see in course of actual realization all the terrors with which at present we are only threatened in speeches, not one of them is so blind that he would not both offer his contribution, and be among the first to pay the tax. for who will prefer to lose his life and property, rather than contribute a part of his substance to save himself and the remainder of it? funds, then, we can command, i am certain, if there is a genuine need of them, and not before; and accordingly i urge you not even to look for them now. for all that you would provide now, if you decided upon a levy, would be more ludicrous than nothing at all. { } suppose that we are told to pay per cent. now; that gives you sixty talents. two per cent. then--double the amount; that makes talents. and what is that to the , camels which (as these gentlemen tell us) are bringing the king's money for him? or would you have me assume a payment of one-twelfth, talents? why, you would never submit to this; and if you paid the money down, it would not be adequate to the war. { } you must, therefore, make all your other preparations, but allow your funds to remain for the present in the hands of their owners--they could nowhere be more safely kept for the use of the state; and then, if ever the threatened crisis arises, you will receive them as the voluntary gift of their possessors. this, men of athens, is not only a possible course of action, but a dignified and a politic one. it is a course of action which is worthy to be reported to the ears of the king, and which would inspire him with no slight apprehension. { } for he well knows that by two hundred ships, of which one hundred were athenian,[n] his ancestors were deprived of one thousand; and he will hear that athens alone has now equipped three hundred; so that, however great his infatuation, he could certainly not imagine it a light thing to make this country his foe. but if it is his wealth that suggests proud thoughts to his mind, he will find that in this respect too his resources are weaker than ours. { } it is true that he is said to be bringing a great quantity of gold with him. but if he distributes this, he must look for more: for just so it is the way of springs and wells to give out, if large quantities are drawn from them all at once; whereas we possess, as he will hear, in the taxable capital of the country, resources which we defend against attack in a way of which those ancestors of his who sleep at marathon can best tell him: and so long as we are masters of the country there is no risk of our resources being exhausted. { } nor again can i see any grounds for the fear, which some feel, lest his wealth should enable him to collect a large mercenary force. it may be that many of the hellenes would be glad to serve under him against egypt,[n] against orontas,[n] or against certain other foreign powers--not from a wish that the king should conquer any such enemies, but because each desires individually to obtain some private means to relieve his present poverty. but i cannot believe that any hellene would march against hellas. whither will he turn afterwards? will he go to phrygia and be a slave? { } for the war with the foreigner is a war for no other stake than our country, our life, our habits, our freedom, and all that we value. where is the wretch who would sacrifice self, parents, sepulchres, fatherland, for the sake of some short-lived gain? i do not believe that he exists. and indeed it is not even to the king's own interest to conquer the hellenes with a mercenary force; for an army which has conquered us is, even more certainly,[n] stronger than he; and his intention is not to destroy us only that he may fall into the power of others: he wishes to rule, if it may be, over all the world; but if not, at least over those who are already his slaves. { } it may be supposed that the thebans will be on the king's side. now this subject is one upon which it is hard to address you. for such is your hatred of them, that you cannot hear a good word about them, however true, without displeasure. and yet those who have grave questions to consider must not on any pretext pass over any profitable line of argument. { } i believe, then, that so far are the thebans from being likely ever to march with him against the hellenes, that they would give a great deal, if they had it to give, for an opportunity of cancelling their former sins against hellas.[n] but if any one does believe that the thebans are so unhappily constituted, at least you are all aware, i presume, that if the thebans take the part of the king, their enemies must necessarily take the part of the hellenes. { } my own belief is that our cause, the cause of justice, and its supporters, will prove stronger in every emergency than the traitor and the foreigner. and therefore i say that we need feel no excessive apprehension, and that we must not be led on into taking the first step towards war. indeed, i cannot even see that any of the other hellenes has reason to dread this war. { } are they not all aware, that so long as they thought of the king as their common foe, and were at unity with one another, they were secure in their prosperity; but that ever since they imagined that they could count upon the king as their friend, and fell to quarrelling over their private interests, they have suffered such evils as no malediction could have devised for them? must we then dread a man whose friendship, thanks to fortune and heaven, has proved so unprofitable, and his enmity so advantageous? by no means! let us not, however, commit any aggression, in view of our own interests, and of the disturbed and mistrustful spirit which prevails among the rest of the hellenes. { } were it possible, indeed, to join forces with them all, and with one accord to attack the king in his isolation, i should have counted it no wrong even were we to take the aggressive. but since this is impossible, we must be careful to give the king no pretext for trying to enforce the claims of the other hellenes against us. if you keep the peace, any such step on his part would arouse suspicion; but if you are the first to begin war, his hostility to you would make his desire to befriend your rivals appear natural enough. { } do not then lay bare the evil condition of hellas, by calling the powers together when they will not obey, or undertaking a war which you will be unable to carry on. keep the peace; take courage, and make your preparations. resolve that the news which the king hears of you shall certainly not be that all hellas, and athens with it, in distress or panic or confusion. far from it! { } let him rather know that if falsehood and perjury were not as disgraceful in hellenic eyes as they are honourable in his, you would long ago have been on the march against him: and that though, as it is, your regard for yourselves forbids you to act thus, you are praying to all the gods that the same madness may seize him as once seized his ancestors. and if it occurs to him to reflect upon this, he will find that your deliberations are not conducted in any careless spirit. { } he at least shares the knowledge that it was your wars with his own ancestors that raised athens to the summit of prosperity and greatness; while the peaceful policy which she previously pursued never gave her such a superiority as she now enjoys over any single state in hellas. aye, and he sees that the hellenes are in need of one who, whether intentionally or not, will reconcile them one to another; and he knows that if he were to stir up war, he himself would assume that character in relation to them; so that the news which he will hear of you will be intelligible and credible to him. { } but i do not wish to trouble you, men of athens, by unduly prolonging my speech. i will therefore recapitulate my advice and retire. i bid you prepare your forces with a view to the enemies whom you have. if the king or any other power attempts to do you injury, you must defend yourselves with these same forces. but you must not take the aggressive by word or deed; and you must take care that it is your deeds, and not your platform speeches, that are worthy of your forefathers. if you act thus, you will be consulting both your own interests and those of the speakers who are opposing me; since you will have no cause to be angry with them afterwards, because you have decided wrongly to-day. footnotes [ ] see speech on crown, §§ ff. and notes. [ ] see speech on crown, §§ ff. and notes. for the megalopolitans (or. xvi) [_introduction_. in b.c. the thebans under epaminondas defeated the spartans at leuctra, and, assisted by thebes, the arcadians and messenians threw off the spartan yoke. the former founded megalopolis as their common centre, the latter messene. but after the death of epaminondas in , thebes was left without a leader; and when, in , she became involved in the 'sacred war' with the phocians, the new peloponnesian states turned towards athens, and messene received a solemn promise of athenian assistance, if ever she was attacked by sparta. in thebes was suffering considerably from the sacred war, and the spartans made an ingenious attempt to recover their power, in the form of a proposal for the restoration of territory to its original owners. this meant that athens would recover oropus, which had been in the hands of thebes since , and had previously been the subject of a long-standing dispute; that orchomenus, thespiae, and plataeae, which had all been overthrown by thebes, would be restored; and that elis and phlius would also recover certain lost possessions. all these states would then be morally bound (so the spartans thought) to help sparta to reconquer arcadia and messenia. on the occasion of this speech (delivered in ) the megalopolitans had appealed to athens, and an arcadian and a spartan embassy had each had an audience of the assembly, and had each received strong support from athenian speakers. the principal motives of the supporters of sparta were their hostility to thebes, and their desire not to break with the spartans, whom athens had assisted at mantineia in against the thebans and megalopolitans. demosthenes supports the arcadians, and lays great stress on the desirability of maintaining a balance of power between sparta and thebes, so that neither might become too strong. to allow sparta to reconquer arcadia, and, as the next step, messenia, would be to render her too formidable; and to reject the proposal of sparta would not preclude athens from recovering oropus and demanding the restoration of the boeotian towns. but the promise of assistance to the arcadians should be accompanied by a request for the termination of their alliance with thebes. demosthenes' advice was not followed. in fact athens was hardly in a position to risk becoming entangled in a war with sparta, particularly in view of the danger to her northern possessions from philip. she therefore remained neutral, while the thebans, relieved from the pressure of the sacred war owing to the defeat of the phocian leader onomarchus by philip, were able to send aid to megalopolis. a truce between sparta and megalopolis was made about . it was, however, a result of the neutrality of athens, that she was unable, a few years later, to secure the support of the arcadians against philip, whose allies they subsequently became. lord brougham describes the oration as 'one of extraordinary subtlety and address in handling delicate topics'; and, after quoting the passage in which demosthenes urges the necessity of maintaining a balance of power between rival states, adds that 'this is precisely the language of modern policy'. at the same time, the speech has in places a somewhat academic and theoretical air: it is much occupied with the weighing of hypothetical considerations and obligations against one another: and though it enunciates some plain and reasonable political principles, and makes an honest attempt to satisfy those who wished to help the arcadians, but at the same time desired to regain ground against thebes, it is not always convincing, and the tone is more frankly opportunist than is usually the case with demosthenes.] { } i think, men of athens, that those who have spoken on the arcadian side and those who have spoken on the spartan, are alike making a mistake. for their mutual accusations and their attacks upon one another would suggest that they are not, like yourselves, athenians, receiving the two embassies, but actually delegates of the two states. such attacks it was for the two deputations to make. the duty of those who claim to advise you here was to discuss the situation impartially, and to inquire, in an uncontentious spirit, what course is best in your interests. { } as it is, if one could alter the fact that they are known to us, and that they speak the dialect of attica, i believe that many would imagine that those on the one side actually were arcadians, and those on the other, spartans. for my part, i see plainly enough the difficulty of offering the best advice. for you, like them, are deluded, in your desire for one extreme or the other: and one who endeavours to propose an intermediate course, which you will not have the patience to understand, will satisfy neither side and will forfeit the confidence of both. { } but in spite of this, i shall prefer, for my own part, to risk being regarded as an idle chatterer (if such is really to be my lot), rather than to abandon my conviction as to what is best for athens, and leave you to the mercy of those who would deceive you. and while i shall deal with all other points later, by your leave, i shall take for my starting-point, in explaining the course which i believe to be best, those principles which are admitted by all. { } there can be no possible question that it is to the interest of the city that both the spartans and these thebans should be weak; and the present situation, if one may judge at all from what has constantly been asserted in your presence, is such, that if orchomenus, thespiae, and plataeae[n] are re-established, thebes becomes weak; and that if the spartans can reduce arcadia to subjection and destroy megalopolis, sparta will recover her former strength. { } we must, therefore, take care not to allow the spartans to attain a formidable degree of strength, before the thebans have become insignificant, lest there should take place, unobserved by us, such an increase in the power of sparta as would be out of proportion to the decrease in the power of thebes which our interests demand. for it is, of course, out of the question that we should desire merely to substitute the rivalry of sparta for that of thebes: that is not the object upon which we are bent. our object is rather that neither people shall be capable of doing us any injury. that is what will best enable us to live in security. { } but, granted that this is what ought to be, still, we are told, it is a scandalous thing to choose for our allies the men against whom we were arrayed at mantineia, and further, to help them against those whose perils we shared that day. i agree; but i think that we need to insert the condition, 'provided that the two parties are willing to act rightly.' { } for if all alike prove willing to keep the peace, we shall not go to the aid of the megalopolitans, since there will be no need to do so; and so there will be no hostility whatever on our part towards our former comrades in battle. they are already our allies, as they tell us; and now the arcadians will become our allies as well. what more could we desire? { } but suppose they act wrongfully and think fit to make war. in that case, if the question before us is whether we are to abandon megalopolis to sparta or not, then i say that, wrong though it is, i will acquiesce in our permitting this, and declining to oppose our former companions in danger. but if you all know that, after capturing megalopolis, they will march against messene, let me ask any of those who are now so harshly disposed towards megalopolis to say what action he will _then_ advise. no answer will be given. { } in fact you all know that, whether they advise it or not, we _must_ then go to the rescue, both because of the oath which we have sworn to the messenians, and because our interests demand the continued existence of that city. ask yourselves, then, on which occasion you can most honourably and generously interpose to check the aggressions of sparta--in defence of megalopolis, or in defence of messene? { } on the present occasion it will be understood that you are succouring the arcadians, and are anxious that the peace, which you fought for and risked your lives to win, may be secure. but if you wait, all the world will see plainly that it is not in the name of right that you desire the existence of messene, but because you are afraid of sparta. and while we should always seek and do the right, we should at the same time take good care that what is right shall also be advantageous. { } now an argument is used by speakers on the other side to the effect that we ought to attempt to recover oropus,[n] and that if we make enemies of those who might come to our assistance against it we shall have no allies. i too say that we should try to recover oropus. but the argument that the spartans will be our enemies now, if we make alliance with those arcadians who desire our friendship, is an argument which no one has less right even to mention, than those who induced you to help the spartans when they were in danger. { } such was not their argument, when all the peloponnesians came to you,[n] entreating you to support them in their campaign against sparta, and they persuaded you to reject the entreaty, with the result that the peloponnesians took the only remaining course and applied to thebes--when they bade you contribute funds and imperil your lives for the deliverance of the spartans. nor, i presume, would you have been willing to protect them, had they warned you that you must expect no gratitude for their deliverance, unless, after saving them, you allowed them once more to do as they pleased and commit fresh aggressions. { } and further, however antagonistic it may be to the designs of the spartans, that we should make the arcadians our allies, they are surely bound to feel a gratitude towards us for saving them when they were in the utmost extremity, which will outweigh their vexation at our preventing their present wrongdoing. must they not then either assist us to recover oropus, or else be regarded as the basest of mankind? for, by heaven, i can see no other alternative. { } i am astonished, also, to hear it argued that if we make the arcadians our allies, and carry out my advice, it will seem as though athens were changing her policy, and were utterly unreliable. i believe that the exact reverse of this is the case, men of athens, and i will tell you why. i suppose that no one in the world can deny that when this city saved the spartans,[n] and before them the thebans,[n] and finally the euboeans,[n] and subsequently made them her allies, she had one and the same end always in view. { } and what was this? it was to deliver the victims of aggression. and if this is so, it is not we that should be changing, but those who refuse to adhere to the right; and it will be manifest that, although circumstances change from time to time with the ambitious designs of others, athens does not change. { } i believe that the spartans are playing a very unscrupulous part. at present they tell us that the eleans are to recover part of triphylia,[n] and the phliasians, tricaranum;[n] other arcadians are to recover their own possessions, and we ourselves are to recover oropus--not that they have any desire to see every state enjoying its own--far from it!-- such generosity on their part would be late indeed in showing itself. { } they wish rather to present the appearance of co-operating with each separate state in the recovery of the territory that it claims, in order that when they themselves march against messene, all may take the field with them, and give them their hearty assistance, on pain of seeming to act unfairly, in refusing to return an equivalent for the support which each of them received from sparta in regard to their own several claims. { } my own view is that, even without the tacit surrender of some of the arcadians to sparta, we can recover oropus, aided not only by the spartans, if they are ready to act honourably, but by all who disapprove of allowing thebes to retain what is not her own. but even if it were made quite plain to us, that without allowing sparta to subdue the peloponnese, we should not be able to take oropus, i should still think it preferable, if i may dare to say so, to let oropus go, rather than sacrifice messene and the peloponnese to sparta. for our quarrel with them would not, i believe, be confined to this; since--i will not say what occurs to me; but there are many risks which we should run. { } but, to pass on, it is a monstrous thing to use the hostile actions which, they say, the megalopolitans committed against us, under the influence of thebes, as a ground of accusation against them to-day; and, when they wish to be friends and so atone for their action by doing us good, to look askance at them, to seek for some way of avoiding their friendship, to refuse to recognize that in proportion to the zeal which my opponents can prove the megalopolitans to have shown in supporting thebes will be the resentment to which my opponents themselves will deservedly be exposed, for depriving the city of such allies as these, when they have appealed to you before appealing to thebes. { } such a policy is surely the policy of men who wish to make the arcadians for the second time the allies of others. and so far as one can forecast the future by calculation, i am sure, and i believe that most of you will agree with me, that if the spartans take megalopolis, messene will be in peril; and if they take messene also, then i predict that we shall find ourselves allies of thebes.[n] { } it is a far more honourable, a far better, course that we should ourselves take over the theban confederacy,[n] refusing to leave the field open to the cupidity of the spartans, than that we should be so afraid of protecting the allies of thebes, as first to sacrifice them, and then to save thebes itself; and, in addition, to be in a state of apprehension for our own safety. { } for if the spartans capture megalopolis and become a great power once more, the prospect, as i conceive it, is not one which this city can view without alarm. for i can see that even now they are determining to go to war, not to prevent any evil which threatens them, but to recover their own ancient power: and what their aims were when they possessed that power, you, i think, know[n] perhaps better than i, and with that knowledge may well be alarmed. { } now i should be glad if the speakers who profess their hatred for thebes on the one side, or for sparta on the other, would tell me if their professed hatred is based on consideration for you and your interests, or whether the one party hates thebes from an interest in sparta, and the other sparta from an interest in thebes. if the latter is the case, you should not listen to either, but treat them as insane: but if the former, why this inordinate exaltation of one side or the other? { } for it is possible, perfectly possible, to humiliate thebes without rendering sparta powerful. indeed, it is by far the easier course; and i will try to tell you how it can be done. we all know that, however unwilling men may be to do what is right, yet up to a certain point they are ashamed not to do so, and that they withstand wrongdoers openly, particularly if there are any who receive damage through the wrong done: and we shall find that what ruins everything and is the source of all evil is the unwillingness to do what is right without reserve. { } now in order that no such obstacle may stand in the way of the humiliation of thebes, let us demand the re-establishment of thespiae, orchomenus, and plataeae, co-operating with their citizens ourselves, and requiring others to do so; for the principle of refusing to allow ancient cities to lie desolate is a right and honourable one. but let us at the same time decline to abandon megalopolis and messene to the aggressors, or to suffer the destruction of existing and inhabited cities, on the pretext of restoring plataeae and thespiae. { } then, if our policy is made plain to all, there is no one who will not wish to terminate the thebans' occupation of territory not their own. but if it is not, not only will our designs be opposed by the arcadians, in the belief that the restoration of these towns carries with it their own ruin, but we shall have troubles without end. for, honestly, where can we expect to reach an end, when we permit the annihilation of existing cities, and require the restoration of those that have been annihilated? { } it is demanded by those whose speeches display the strongest appearance of fairness, that the megalopolitans shall take down the pillars[n] which commemorate their alliance with thebes, if they are to be trustworthy allies of athens. the megalopolitans reply that for them it is not pillars, but interest, that creates friendship; and that it is those who help them, that they consider to be their allies. well, that may be their attitude. nevertheless, my own view is, roughly speaking, this:--i say that we should simultaneously require the megalopolitans to take down the pillars, and the spartans to keep the peace: and that in the event of either side refusing to fulfil our request, we should at once take the part of those who are willing to fulfil it. { } for if the megalopolitans obtain peace, and yet adhere to the theban alliance, it will be clear to all that they prefer the grasping policy of thebes to that which is right. if, on the other hand, megalopolis makes alliance frankly with us, and the spartans then refuse to keep the peace, it will surely be clear to all that what the spartans desire so eagerly is not the re-establishment of thespiae, but an opportunity of subduing the peloponnese while the thebans are involved in the war.[n] { } and i am surprised to find that there are some who are alarmed at the prospect of the enemies of sparta becoming allies of thebes, and yet see nothing to fear in the subjugation of these enemies by sparta herself; whereas the experience of the past can teach us that the thebans always use such allies against sparta, while, when sparta had them, she used to use them against us. { } there is another point which i think you should consider. suppose that you reject the overtures of the megalopolitans. if they are annihilated and dispersed, sparta can recover her power at once. if they actually survive--for things have happened before now beyond all hope--they will quite rightly be the firm allies of thebes. but suppose you receive them. then the immediate result, so far as they are concerned, is that they are saved by you: and as to the future, let us now transfer our calculation of possible risks to the case of the thebans and spartans. { } if the thebans are crushed, as they ought to be, the spartans will not be unduly powerful, for they will always have these arcadians at their doors to hold them in check. but if the thebans actually recover and survive the attack, they will at least be weaker; for the arcadians will have become our allies, and will owe their preservation to us. thus on every ground it is to our interest not to sacrifice the arcadians, nor to let them think that their deliverance, if they are really saved, is due to themselves, or to any other people than you. { } and now, men of athens, i solemnly declare that what i have said has been prompted by no personal feeling, friendly or hostile, towards either side. i have told you only what i believe to be expedient for you; and i exhort you not to sacrifice the people of megalopolis, and to make it your rule, never to sacrifice a smaller power to a greater. for the freedom of the rhodians (or. xv) [_introduction_. dionysius of halicarnassus places the speech in b.c. he is not always accurate, and the internal evidence has been thought by some to suggest a date perhaps two years earlier. the reasons, however, for this are not strong, and there has recently been a disposition to accept dionysius' date. as the result of the social war, chios, cos, rhodes, and byzantium had made themselves independent of athens. they had been assisted by mausolus, king of caria, a vassal of persia. after the termination of the war, a carian garrison occupied cos and rhodes; the democratic constitution of rhodes was overthrown and the democratic party driven into banishment, as the result of an oligarchic plot, which mausolus had fostered. in mausolus died, and was succeeded by artemisia, his sister and wife. the exiles appealed to athens for restoration, and for the liberation of rhodes from the carian domination. it is evident that the feeling in athens against the rhodians was very strong, owing to their part in the late war, for which the democratic party had been responsible; and there was some fear of the possible consequences of offending artemisia and perhaps becoming involved in war with persia. demosthenes, nevertheless, urges the people to assist them, and to forget their misconduct. he appeals to the traditional policy of athens, as the saviour of the oppressed and protectress of democracies, and warns them of the danger which would threaten athens herself, if the conversion of free constitutions into oligarchies were allowed to go unchecked. he takes a different view from that of his opponents of the probable attitude of artemisia, and utters an impressive warning against corrupt and unpatriotic statesmen, which foreshadows his more vehement attacks in the orations against philip. the appeal was unsuccessful, for in the speech on the peace (§ ) demosthenes speaks of cos and rhodes as still subject to caria. the speech is more eloquent than the last, and more outspoken. political principles and ideals are enunciated with some confidence, and illustrated by striking examples from history. but there also appears for the first time that sense of the difficulty of rousing the athenians to action of any kind, which is so strongly expressed in later speeches.] { } it is, i think, your duty, men of athens, when you are deliberating upon affairs of such importance, to grant freedom of speech to every one of your advisers. and for my part, i have never yet felt any difficulty in pointing out to you the best course; for i believe that, broadly speaking, you all know from the first what this is. my difficulty is to persuade you to act upon your knowledge. for when a measure is approved and passed by you, it is as far from execution as it was before you resolved upon it. { } well, you have to render thanks to heaven for this, among other favours--that those who went to war with you not long ago, moved by their own insolent pride, now place their own hopes of preservation in you alone. well may we rejoice at our present opportunity! for if your decision in regard to it is what it should be, you will find yourselves meeting the calumnies of those who are slandering this city with a practical and a glorious refutation. { } for the peoples of chios, byzantium, and rhodes accused us of entertaining designs against them; and on this ground they combined against us in the recent war. but now it will be seen[n] that, while mausolus, who under the pretence of friendship towards rhodes, directed and instigated their efforts, in reality robbed the rhodians of their freedom; while their declared allies, chios and byzantium, never came to aid them in their misfortunes; { } you, of whom they were afraid, and you alone, have been the authors of their salvation. and because all the world will have seen this, you will cause the popular party in every city to consider your friendship a guarantee of their own safety; nor could you reap any greater blessing than the goodwill which will thus be offered to you, spontaneously and without misgivings, upon every hand. { } i notice, to my surprise, that those who urge us to oppose the king in the interest of the egyptians,[n] are the very persons who are so afraid of him when it is the interest of the popular party in rhodes that is in question. and yet it is known to every one that the rhodians are hellenes, while the egyptians have a place assigned them in the persian empire. { } i expect that some of you remember that, when you were discussing our relations with the king, i came forward and was the first to advise you[n] (though i had, i believe, no supporters, or one at the most), that you would show your good sense, in my opinion, if you did not make your hostility to the king the pretext of your preparations, but prepared yourselves against the enemies whom you already had; though you would resist him also, if he attempted to do you any injury. { } nor, when i spoke thus, did i fail to convince you, but you also approved of this policy. what i have now to say is the sequel to my argument on that occasion. for if the king were to call me to his side and make me his counsellor, i should give him the same advice as i gave you--namely, that he should fight in defence of his own possessions, if he were opposed by any hellenic power, but should absolutely forego all claim to what in no way belongs to him. { } if, therefore, you have made a general resolve, men of athens, to retire from any place of which the king makes himself master, either by surprise or by the deception of some of the inhabitants, you have not resolved well, in my judgement: but if you are prepared, in defence of your rights, even to fight, if need be, and to endure anything that may be necessary, not only will the need for such a step be less, the more firmly your minds are made up, but you will also be regarded as showing the spirit which you ought to show. { } to prove to you that i am not suggesting anything unprecedented in bidding you liberate the rhodians, and that you will not be acting without precedent, if you take my advice, i will remind you of one of those incidents in the past which have ended happily for you. you once sent out timotheus, men of athens, to assist ariobarzanes,[n] adding to your resolution the provision that he must not break our treaty with the king; and timotheus, seeing that ariobarzanes was now openly in revolt against the king, but that samos was occupied by a garrison under cyprothemis, who had been placed there by tigranes, the king's viceroy, abandoned his intention of helping ariobarzanes, but sat down before samos, relieved it, and set it free. { } and to this day no war has ever arisen to trouble you on account of this. for to enter upon a war for the purpose of aggrandizement is never the same thing as to do so in defence of one's own possessions. every one fights his hardest to recover what he has lost; but when men endeavour to gain at the expense of others, it is not so. they desire to do this, if it is allowed them; but if they are prevented, they do not consider that their opponents have done them any wrong. { } now listen for a moment, and consider whether i am right or wrong, when i conclude that if athens were actively at work, artemisia herself would now not even oppose our action. if the king effects in egypt all that he is bent upon, i believe that artemisia would make every attempt to secure for him the continued possession of rhodes--not from any goodwill towards him, but from the desire to be credited with a great service to him, while he is still in her neighbourhood,[n] and so to win from him as friendly a reception as possible. { } but if he is faring as we are told, if all his attempts have failed, she will consider, and rightly, that the island can be of no further use to the king, except as a fortified post to command her own dominions--a security against any movement on her part. accordingly she would prefer, i believe, that you should have it, without her openly surrendering it to you, rather than that he should occupy it. i think, therefore, that she would not even make an attempt to save it; or that if she actually did so, it would be but weakly and ineffectively. { } for although i cannot, of course, profess to know what the king will do, i must insist that it is high time that it should be made clear, in the interests of athens, whether he intends to lay claim to rhodes or not: for if he does so, we have then to take counsel, not for the rhodians alone, but for ourselves and for the hellenes as a whole. { } at the same time, even if the rhodians who are now in possession[n] of the town held it by their own strength, i should never have urged you to take them for your allies, for all the promises in the world. for i observe that they took to their side some of their fellow citizens, to help them overthrow the democracy, and that, having done this, they turned and expelled them: and i do not think that men who failed to keep faith with either party would ever be trustworthy allies for yourselves. { } and further, i should never have made my present proposal, had i been thinking only of the interests of the popular party in rhodes. i am not their official patron,[n] nor have i a single personal friend among them; and even if both these things were otherwise, i should not have made this proposal, had i not believed it to be for your advantage. for as for the rhodians, if i may use such an expression when i am pleading with you to save them, i share your joy[ ] at what has happened to them. for it is because they grudged you the recovery of your rights that they have lost their own freedom; and that, instead of the equal alliance which they might have had with hellenes, better than themselves, they are in bondage to foreigners and slaves, whom they have admitted to their citadels. { } indeed, if you resolve to go to their aid, i may almost say that this calamity has been good for them; for, rhodians as they are, i doubt if they would ever have come to their right mind in prosperity; whereas actual experience has now taught them that folly generally leads to manifold adversities; and perhaps they will be wiser for the future. this lesson, i feel sure, will be no small advantage to them. i say then that you should endeavour to save these men, and should bear no malice, remembering that you too have been greatly deceived by conspirators against you, and yet would not admit that you deserved yourselves to suffer for such mistakes. observe this also, men of athens. { } you have waged many wars both against democracies and against oligarchies; and of this no doubt you are as well aware as i. but i doubt whether any of you considers for what objects you are fighting in each case. what then are these objects? in fighting against a democracy, you are fighting either over some private quarrel, when the parties have failed to settle their disputes by the means publicly provided;[n] or you are contending for a piece of territory, or about a boundary, or for a point of honour, or for paramountcy. but in fighting against an oligarchy, it is not for any such objects--it is your constitution and your freedom that are at stake. { } and therefore i should not hesitate to say that i believe it would be better for you, that all the hellenic peoples should be democracies, and be at war with you, than that they should be governed by oligarchies, and be your friends. for with a free people you would have no difficulty, i believe, in making peace whenever you desired: but with an oligarchical state friendship itself cannot be safe. for there can be no goodwill between few and many--between those who seek for mastery, and those who have chosen the life of political equality. { } it surprises me also that though chios and mytilene are ruled by oligarchies, and though now the rhodians and all mankind, i may almost say, are being brought into the same bondage, no one considers that any danger threatens our own constitution also, or reflects that if every state is organized upon an oligarchic basis, it is not possible that your own democracy should be suffered to remain. for they know that no people but you could ever bring them forth into a state of liberty again; and they will wish to put an end to so likely a source of trouble to themselves. { } as a rule we may regard wrongdoers as enemies only to those whom they have wronged. but when men destroy free constitutions and convert them into oligarchies, i say that you must think of them as the common enemies of all whose hearts are set on freedom. { } again, men of athens, it is only right that you, a democracy yourselves, should show towards other democracies in distress the same spirit as you would expect them to show towards you, if any such calamity (which god forbid!) should happen to you. it may be said that the rhodians are justly punished. if so, this is not the time to exult over them. when men are prosperous they should always be found taking thought how best to help the distressed; for the future is unknown to all men. { } i have often heard it stated here in your presence, that when our democracy had met with disaster,[n] you were joined by certain others in your anxiety for its preservation. of these i will only refer on the present occasion to the argives, and that briefly. for i cannot desire that you, who enjoy the reputation of being always the saviours of the distressed, should prove inferior to the argives in that work. these argives, though their territory borders on that of the spartans, whom they saw to be masters by land and sea, neither hesitated nor feared to display their goodwill towards you; but when envoys came from sparta (so the story goes) to demand the persons of certain athenian refugees, they even voted that unless the envoys departed before sunset, they should be adjudged public enemies. { } if then the democracy of argos in those days showed no fear of the might of the spartan empire, will it not be a disgrace if you, who are athenians, are afraid of one who is a barbarian--aye, and a woman?[n] the argives, moreover, could point to many defeats sustained at the hands of sparta, while you have often defeated the king, and have not once proved inferior either to his servants or to himself. for if ever the king has gained any success against athens, it has been by bribing the basest of the hellenes to betray their countrymen; in no other way has he ever succeeded. { } indeed, even such success has done him no good. you will find that no sooner had he rendered athens weak,[n] by the help of the spartans, than he had to fight for his own kingdom against clearchus and cyrus. his successes, therefore, have not been won in the open field, nor have his plots brought him any good. now some of you, i notice, are in the habit of speaking contemptuously of philip, as though he were not worth reckoning with; while you dread the king, as a powerful enemy to any whom he chooses to oppose. but if we are not to defend ourselves against philip, because he is so mean a foe, and are to give way in everything to the king, because he is so formidable, who is there, men of athens, against whom we shall ever take the field? { } men of athens, you have among you those who are particularly skilful in pleading with you the rights of the rest of the world; and i should be glad to give them this single piece of advice--that they should seek to plead your rights with the rest of the world,[n] and so set an example of duty. it is monstrous to instruct you about rights, without doing right oneself; and it is not right that a fellow citizen of yours should have studied all the arguments against you and none of those in your favour. { } ask yourselves, in god's name, why it is that there is no one in byzantium to tell the byzantines that they must not occupy chalcedon,[n] which belongs to the king and formerly belonged to you, but upon which they had no sort of claim; or that they must not make selymbria, once your ally, a contributory portion of the byzantine state; or include the territory of selymbria[n] within the byzantine frontier, in defiance of the sworn treaty which ordains the independence of the cities? { } why was there no one to tell mausolus, while he lived, and artemisia after his death, that they must not occupy cos and rhodes and other hellenic cities as well, which the king their master ceded to the hellenes by the treaty,[n] and for the sake of which the hellenes of those days faced many a peril and fought many a gallant fight? even if there actually are such advisers[n] in both cases, at least it is not likely that they will find listeners. { } for my part i believe that it is right to restore the exiled democracy of rhodes. but even if it were not right, i think it would be proper to urge you to do it, when i consider the course taken by such speakers as these; and for this reason. if all the world, men of athens, were bent upon doing right, it would be a disgrace to us if we alone were unwilling to do so: but when all the world is preparing itself in order to be able to commit wrong, then for us alone to abstain from every enterprise, on the plea of right, is no righteousness, to my mind, but cowardice. for i observe that the extent to which rights are admitted is always in proportion to the claimant's power at the moment. { } i can illustrate this by an instance familiar to all of you. there are two treaties[n] between the hellenes and the king. the first was made by our own city, and all men praise it; the second by the spartans, and it is denounced by all. the rights defined in these two treaties are not the same. for whereas a common and equal share of private rights is given by law to weak and strong alike, in a settlement of international rights it is the stronger who legislate for the weaker. well, you already know what the right course is.[n] { } it remains to inquire how you can carry out your knowledge into action; and this will be possible, if you come to be regarded as public champions of universal liberty. but the great difficulty which you find in doing your duty is, to my mind, natural enough. all other men have only one conflict to face--the conflict with their declared foes; and when these are subdued, there is no further obstacle to their secure enjoyment of their happiness. { } but for you there is a double conflict. in addition to that to which all men are liable, there is another which is harder, and which must be faced first: for you have to win the victory in your councils over those who are deliberately working in your midst against the interests of the city; and because, thanks to them, you can effect nothing that is demanded of you without a struggle, it is natural that you should often miss your mark. { } the chief reason for the fearless adoption of such a course in public life by so many men is perhaps to be found in the benefits which they obtain from those who hire them. yet at the same time, some of the blame may fairly be laid at your own doors. for you ought, men of athens, to think of a man's post in public life as you think of his post in the army in the field. and how do you think of this? if a man leaves the post assigned to him by his general, you think that he deserves to be disfranchised and to lose all share in the privileges of a citizen. { } and so when men desert the post of civil duty, committed to them by our forefathers, and follow an oligarchical[n] policy, they should forfeit the privilege of acting as advisers to yourselves. as it is, while you believe that those of your allies are best disposed towards you, who have sworn to have the same friends and foes as yourselves, the politicians in whom you place most faith are those whom you well know to have chosen the side of the enemies of athens. { } it is easy enough, however, to find reasons for accusing them and reproaching all of you. but to find words or actions which will enable us to rectify what is now amiss with us, is a task indeed. moreover, the present is not, perhaps, the time for entering into every point: but if only you can confirm the policy which you have chosen by some suitable action, it may be that other conditions will each in turn show some improvement. { } i think, therefore, that you ought to take this enterprise in hand with vigour, and to act worthily of your country. remember with what delight you listen to the praises of your forefathers,[n] the recital of their deeds, the enumeration of their trophies. consider then that your forefathers dedicated these trophies, not that you might gaze at them in idle wonder, but that you might imitate the actions of those who placed them there. footnotes [ ] [greek: humin sygchair_o]. the first philippic (or. iv) [_introduction_. philip became king of macedonia in b.c. being in great difficulties both from external enemies and from internal division, he made peace with the athenians, who were supporting the pretensions of argaeus to the throne, in the hope of recovering (by agreement with argaeus) the colony of amphipolis on the strymon, which they had lost in . philip acknowledged the title of athens to amphipolis, and sent home the athenian prisoners, whom he had captured among the supporters of argaeus, without ransom. the athenians, however, neglected to garrison amphipolis. in (the year in which athens temporarily recovered her hold over euboea, by compelling the thebans to evacuate the island), philip carried on a successful campaign against the paeonian and illyrian tribes, who were standing enemies of macedonia. for the next three years athens was kept occupied by the war with her allies, and philip saw his opportunity. he besieged amphipolis: when the citizens sent hierax and stratocles to ask athens for help, he dispatched a letter promising the athenians that he would give them amphipolis when he had taken it; and a secret understanding was arrived at between philip and the athenian envoys sent to him, that athens should give him pydna (once a macedonian town, but now an ally of athens) in exchange. athens, therefore, listened neither to amphipolis nor to olynthus, which had also made overtures to her. the olynthians in consequence made a treaty with philip, who gave them anthemus and promised to help them against their old rival poteidaea, a town in alliance with athens. the olynthians on their part agreed not to make peace with athens except in conjunction with him. but philip, when he had captured amphipolis by a combination of siege and intrigue, did not give it up to athens, and instead of waiting to receive pydna from athens, besieged and took it, aided once more by treachery from within. in he took poteidaea (in conjunction with the olynthians, to whom he gave the town), the athenians arriving too late to relieve it; and then pursued his conquests along the thracian coast. further inland he expelled the thasians (allies of athens) from crenides and founded philippi on the site, in the centre of the gold-mines of mount pangaeus, from which he henceforward derived a very large revenue; while the forests of the district provided him with timber for ship-building, of which he took full advantage: for in the next few years his ships made descents upon the athenian islands of lemnos and imbros, plundered the athenian corn-vessels off the coast of euboea, and even landed a force at marathon. in the latter part of and in he was occupied with the conquest of the paeonians and illyrians, with whom athens had made an alliance in . at the end of he laid siege to methone, the last athenian port on the thermaic gulf, and captured it in . (some place the siege and capture of methone in - , but an inscription, c.i.g. ii. , makes it at least probable that the siege had begun by the last month of .) in philip made his way to the thracian coast, and conquered abdera and maroneia. at maroneia we find him in company with pammenes (his former host at thebes), who had been sent by the thebans to assist artabazus in his revolt against the persian king; and at the same place he received apollonides of cardia, the envoy of the thracian prince cersobleptes. on his way home his ships escaped from chares, off neapolis, by a ruse. in the same year he interfered in the affairs of thessaly, where the aleuadae of larissa had invited his assistance against lycophron and peitholaus of pherae, who had invoked the aid of the phocians. (in opposing the phocians, the antagonists of the thebans in the sacred war, philip was also helping the thebans themselves, and gaining credit as the opponent of the plunderers of the temple of apollo at delphi.) onomarchus, the phocian leader, twice defeated philip, but was overthrown and slain in . philip took pherae and pagasae (its port), occupied magnesia, and, by means of promises, obtained financial aid from the thessalians. the expedition sent by athens to relieve pagasae arrived too late; but when philip, after putting down the tyrants of pherae and arranging matters in thessaly, advanced towards the pass of thermopylae, an athenian force, sent on the advice of diophantus and eubulus, appeared in time to oblige him to retire to macedonia. late in the autumn of we find him once more in thrace. it was probably now that he assisted the peoples of byzantium and perinthus, together with amadocus, a rival of cersobleptes, against the latter; with the result that cersobleptes was obliged to give up his son to philip as a hostage. philip had also made alliance with cardia, which, like byzantium, was on bad terms with athens. he now laid siege to heraeon teichos, a fortress on the propontis, but illness obliged him to suspend operations, and the rumour of his death prevented the athenians from sending against him the expedition which they had resolved upon. (the retention of her influence in this region was essential for athens, if her corn-supply was to be secure.) in , on recovering from his illness, he entered the territory of olynthus, which, contrary to the agreement with him, had made peace with athens in the previous year, apart from himself: but he did not at present pursue the invasion further. in october athens sent charidemus to the hellespont with ten ships, but no soldiers and little money. if these are the ships alluded to in § of the present speech, the speech must have been delivered after that date. otherwise any date after philip's incursion into the territory of olynthus would suit the contents of the speech, and many writers place it earlier in the year. the question of the relations of athens with philip had been brought forward; and demosthenes, who had risen first to speak, proposes the creation of a large permanent fleet, and of a smaller force for immediate action, laying great stress on the necessity of sending athenian citizens both to command and to form a substantial proportion of the troops, which, had so far been mostly mercenaries. the scheme was worked out in detail, both in its military and in its financial aspects, and supported with an eloquence and an earnestness which are far in advance of those displayed in the earlier speeches. the statement of dionysius of halicarnassus, that the speech as we have it, is really a conflation of two speeches, of which the second (beginning at § ) was delivered in , is generally (and rightly) discredited.] { } if some new subject were being brought before us, men of athens, i would have waited until most of your ordinary advisers had declared their opinion; and if anything that they said were satisfactory to me, i would have remained silent, and only if it were not so, would i have attempted to express my own view. but since we find ourselves once more considering a question upon which they have often spoken, i think i may reasonably be pardoned for rising first of all. for if their advice to you in the past had been what it ought to have been, you would have had no occasion for the present debate. { } in the first place, then, men of athens, we must not be downhearted at our present situation, however wretched it may seem to be. for in the worst feature of the past lies our best hope for the future-in the fact, that is, that we are in our present plight because you are not doing your duty in any respect; for if you were doing all that you should do, and we were still in this evil case, we could not then even hope for any improvement. { } in the second place, you must bear in mind (what some of you have heard from others, and those who know can recollect for themselves), how powerful the spartans were, not long ago, and yet how noble and patriotic your own conduct was, when instead of doing anything unworthy of your country you faced the war with sparta [n] in defence of the right. [n] now why do i remind you of these things? it is because, men of athens, i wish you to see and to realize, that so long as you are on your guard you have nothing to fear; but that if you are indifferent, nothing can be as you would wish: for this is exemplified for you both by the power of sparta in those days, to which you rose superior because you gave your minds to your affairs; and by the insolence of philip to-day, which troubles us because we care nothing for the things which should concern us. { } if, however, any of you, men of athens, when he considers the immense force now at philip's command, and the city's loss of all her strongholds, thinks that philip is a foe hard to conquer, i ask him (right though he is in his belief) to reflect also that there was a time when we possessed pydna and poteidaea and methone; when all the surrounding country was our own, and many of the tribes [n] which are now on his side were free and independent, and more inclined to be friendly to us than to him. { } now if in those days philip had made up his mind that it was a hard thing to fight against the athenians, with all their fortified outposts on his own frontiers, while he was destitute of allies, he would have achieved none of his recent successes, nor acquired this great power. but philip saw quite clearly, men of athens, that all these strongholds were prizes of war, displayed for competition. he saw that in the nature of things the property of the absent belongs to those who are on the spot, and that of the negligent to those who are ready for toil and danger. { } it is, as you know, by acting upon this belief, that he has brought all those places under his power, and now holds them--some of them by right of capture in war, others in virtue of alliances and friendly understandings; for every one is willing to grant alliance and to give attention to those whom they see to be prepared and ready to take action as is necessary. { } if then, men of athens, you also will resolve to adopt this principle to-day--the principle which you have never observed before--if each of you can henceforward be relied upon to throw aside all this pretence of incapacity, and to act where his duty bids him, and where his services can be of use to his country; if he who has money will contribute, and he who is of military age will join the campaign; if, in one plain word, you will resolve henceforth to depend absolutely on yourselves, each man no longer hoping that he will need to do nothing himself, and that his neighbour will do everything for him; then, god willing, you will recover your own; you will take back all that your indolence has lost, and you will have your revenge upon philip. { } do not imagine that his fortune is built to last for ever, as if he were a god. he also has those who hate him and fear him, men of athens, and envy him too, even among those who now seem to be his closest friends. all the feelings that exist in any other body of men must be supposed to exist in philip's supporters. now, however, all such feelings are cowed before him: your slothful apathy has taken away their only rallying point; and it is this apathy that i bid you put off to-day. { } mark the situation, men of athens: mark the pitch which the man's outrageous insolence has reached, when he does not even give you a choice between action and inaction, but threatens you, and utters (as we are told) haughty language: for he is not the man to rest content in possession of his conquests: he is always casting his net wider; and while we procrastinate and sit idle, he is setting his toils around us on every side. { } when, then, men of athens, when, i say, will you take the action that is required? what are you waiting for? 'we are waiting,' you say, 'till it is necessary.' but what must we think of all that is happening at this present time? surely the strongest necessity that a free people can experience is the shame which they must feel at their position! what? do you want to go round asking one another, 'is there any news?' could there be any stranger news than that a man of macedonia is defeating athenians in war, and ordering the affairs of the hellenes? { } 'is philip dead?' 'no, but he is sick.' and what difference does it make to you? for if anything should happen to him, you will soon raise up for yourselves a second philip, if it is thus that you attend to your interests. indeed, philip himself has not risen to this excessive height through his own strength, so much as through our neglect. i go even further. { } if anything happened to philip--if the operation of fortune, who always cares for us better than we care for ourselves, were to effect this too for us--you know that if you were at hand, you could descend upon the general confusion and order everything as you wished; but in your present condition, even if circumstances offered you amphipolis, you could not take it; for your forces and your minds alike are far away. { } well, i say no more of the obligation which rests upon you all to be willing and ready to do your duty; i will assume that you are resolved and convinced. but the nature of the armament which, i believe, will set you free from such troubles as these, the numbers of the force, the source from which we must obtain funds, and the best and quickest way, as it seems to me, of making all further preparations--all this, men of athens, i will at once endeavour to explain when i have made one request of you. { } give your verdict on my proposal when you have heard the whole of it; do not prejudge it before i have done; and if at first the force which i propose appears unprecedented, do not think that i am merely creating delays. it is not those whose cry is 'at once', 'to-day', whose proposals will meet our need; for what has already happened cannot be prevented by any expedition now. { } it is rather he who can show the nature, the magnitude, and the financial possibility of a force which when provided will be able to continue in existence either until we are persuaded to break off the war, or until we have overcome the enemy; for thus only can we escape further calamity for the future. these things i believe i can show, though i would not stand in the way of any other speaker's professions. it is no less a promise than this that i make; the event will soon test its fulfilment, and you will be the judges of it. first then, men of athens, i say that fifty warships must { } at once be got in readiness: and next, that you must be in such a frame of mind that, if any need arises, you will embark in person and sail. in addition, you must prepare transports for half our cavalry, and a sufficient number of boats. { } these, i think, should be in readiness to meet those sudden sallies of his from his own country against thermopylae, the chersonese, olynthus, and any other place which he may select. for we must make him realize that there is a possibility of your rousing yourselves out of your excessive indifference, just as when once you went to euboea,[n] and before that (as we are told) to haliartus,[n] and finally, only the other day, to thermopylae. { } such a possibility, even if you are unlikely to make it a reality, as i think you ought to do, is not one which he can treat lightly; and you may thus secure one of two objects. on the one hand, he may know that you are on the alert--he will in fact know it well enough: there are only too many persons, i assure you, in athens itself, who report to him all that happens here: and in that case his apprehensions will ensure his inactivity. but if, on the other hand, he neglects the warning, he may be taken off his guard; for there will be nothing to hinder you from sailing to his country, if he gives you the opportunity. { } these are the measures upon which i say you should all be resolved, and your preparations for them made. but before this, men of athens, you must make ready a force which will fight without intermission, and do him damage. do not speak to me of ten thousand or twenty thousand mercenaries. i will have none of your paper-armies. [n] give me an army which will be the army of athens, and will obey and follow the general whom you elect, be there one general or more, be he one particular individual, or be he who he may. { } you must also provide maintenance for this force. now what is this force to be? how large is it to be? how is it to be maintained? how will it consent to act in this manner? i will answer these questions point by point. the number of mercenaries--but you must not repeat the mistake which has so often injured you, the mistake of, first, thinking any measures inadequate, and so voting for the largest proposal, and then, when the time for action comes, not even executing the smaller one; you must rather carry out and make provision for the smaller measure, and add to it, if it proves too small--{ } the total number of soldiers, i say, must be two thousand, and of these five hundred must be athenians, beginning from whatever age you think good: they must serve for a definite period--not a long one, but one to be fixed at your discretion--and in relays. the rest must be mercenaries. with these must be cavalry, two hundred in number, of whom at least fifty must be athenians, as with the infantry; and the conditions of service must be the same. { } you must also find transports for these. and what next? ten swift ships of war. for as he has a fleet, we need swift-sailing warships too, to secure the safe passage of the army. and how is maintenance to be provided for these? this also i will state and demonstrate, as soon as i have given you my reasons for thinking that a force of this size is sufficient, and for insisting that those who serve in it shall be citizens. { } the size of the force, men of athens, is determined by the fact that we cannot at present provide an army capable of meeting philip in the open field; we must make plundering forays, and our warfare must at first be of a predatory nature. consequently the force must not be over-big--we could then neither pay nor feed it--any more than it must be wholly insignificant. { } the presence of citizens in the force that sails i require for the following reasons. i am told that athens once maintained a mercenary force in corinth,[n] under the command of polystratus, iphicrates, chabrias and others, and that you yourselves joined in the campaign with them; and i remember hearing that these mercenaries, when they took the field with you, and you with them, were victorious over the spartans. but even since your mercenary forces have gone to war alone, it is your friends and allies that they conquer, while your enemies have grown more powerful than they should be. after a casual glance at the war to which athens has sent them, they sail off to artabazus,[n] or anywhere rather than to the war; and the general follows them naturally enough, for his power over them is gone when he can give them no pay. you ask what i bid you do. { } i bid you take away their excuses both from the general and the soldiers, by supplying pay and placing citizen-soldiers at their side as spectators of these mysteries of generalship;[n] for our present methods are a mere mockery. imagine the question to be put to you, men of athens, whether you are at peace or no. 'at peace?' you would say; 'of course not! we are at war with philip.' { } now have you not all along been electing from among your own countrymen ten captains and generals,[n] and cavalry-officers, and two masters-of-the-horse? and what are they doing? except the one single individual whom you happen to send to the seat of war, they are all marshalling your processions for you with the commissioners of festivals. you are no better than men modelling puppets of clay. your captains and your cavalry-officers are elected to be displayed in the streets, not to be sent to the war. { } surely, men of athens, your captains should be elected from among yourselves, and your master-of-the-horse from among yourselves; your officers should be your own countrymen, if the force is to be really the army of athens. as it is, the master-of-the-horse who is one of yourselves has to sail to lemnos; while the master-of-the-horse with the army that is fighting to defend the possessions of athens is menelaus.[n] i do not wish to disparage that gentleman; but whoever holds that office ought to have been elected by you. { } perhaps, however, while agreeing with all that i have said, you are mainly anxious to hear my financial proposals, which will tell you the amount and the sources of the funds required. i proceed, therefore, with these at once. first for the sum. the cost of the bare rations for the crews, with such a force, will be talents and a little over-- talents for ten swift ships, and minae a month for each ship; and for the soldiers as much again, each soldier to receive rations to the value of drachmae a month; and for the cavalry (two hundred in number, each to receive drachmae a month) twelve talents. { } it may be said that the supply of bare rations to the members of the force is an insufficient initial provision; but this is a mistake. i am quite certain that, given so much, the army will provide everything else for itself from the proceeds of war, without injury to a single hellene or ally of ours, and that the full pay will be made up by these means. i am ready to sail as a volunteer and to suffer the worst, if my words are untrue. the next question then is of ways and means, in so far as the funds are to come from yourselves. i will explain this at once. [_a schedule of ways and means is read_.] { } this, men of athens, is what we have been able to devise; and when you put our proposals to the vote, you will pass them, if you approve of them; that so your war with philip may be a war, not of resolutions and dispatches, but of actions. { } i believe that the value of your deliberations about the war and the armament as a whole would be greatly enhanced, if you were to bear in mind the situation of the country against which you are fighting, remembering that most of philip's plans are successfully carried out because he takes advantage of winds and seasons; for he waits for the etesian winds[n] or the winter-season, and only attacks when it would be impossible for us to effect a passage to the scene of action. { } bearing this in mind, we must not carry on the war by means of isolated expeditions; we shall always be too late. we must have a permanent force and armament. as our winter-stations for the army we have lemnos, thasos, sciathos, and the islands in that region, which have harbours and corn, and are well supplied with all that an army needs. and as to the time of year, whenever it is easy to approach the shore and the winds are not dangerous, our force can without difficulty lie close to the macedonian coast itself, and block the mouths of the ports. { } how and when he will employ the force is a matter to be determined, when the time comes, by the commander whom you put in control of it. what must be provided from athens is described in the scheme which i have drafted. if, men of athens, you first supply the sum i have mentioned, and then, after making ready the rest of the armament--soldiers, ships, cavalry--bind the whole force in its entirety,[n] by law, to remain at the seat of war; if you become your own paymasters, your own commissioners of supply, but require your general to account for the actual operations; { } then there will be an end of these perpetual discussions of one and the same theme, which end in nothing but discussion: and in addition to this, men of athens, you will, in the first place, deprive him of his chief source of supply. for what is this? why, he carries on the war at the cost of your own allies, harrying and plundering those who sail the seas! and what will you gain besides this? you will place yourselves out of reach of disaster. it will not be as it was in the past, when he descended upon lemnos and imbros, and went off, with your fellow-citizens as his prisoners of war, or when he seized the vessels off geraestus,[n] and levied an enormous sum from them; or when (last of all) he landed at marathon, seized the sacred trireme,[n] and carried it off from the country; while all the time you can neither prevent these aggressions, nor yet send an expedition which will arrive when you intend it to arrive. { } but for what reason do you think, men of athens, do the festival of the panathenaea and the festival of the dionysia[n] always take place at the proper time, whether those to whom the charge of either festival is allotted are specially qualified persons or not--festivals upon which you spend larger sums of money than upon any armament whatsoever, and which involve an amount of trouble[n] and preparation, which are unique, so far as i know, in the whole world--; and yet your armaments are always behind the time--at methone, at pagasae, at potidaea? { } it is because for the festivals all is arranged by law. each of you knows long beforehand who is to supply the chorus,[n] and who is to be steward of the games,[n] for his tribe: he knows what he is to receive, and when, and from whom, and what he is to do with it. no detail is here neglected, nothing is left indefinite. but in all that concerns war and our preparation for it, there is no organization, no revision, no definiteness. consequently it is not until the news comes that we appoint our trierarchs and institute exchanges of property for them, and inquire into ways and means. when that is done, we first resolve that the resident aliens and the independent freedmen[n] shall go on board; then we change our minds and say that citizens shall embark; then that we will send substitutes; and while all these delays are occurring, the object of the expedition is already lost. { } for we spend on preparation the time when we should be acting, and the opportunities which events afford will not wait for our slothful evasions; while as for the forces on which we think we can rely in the meantime, when the critical moment comes, they are tried and found wanting. and philip's insolence has reached such a pitch, that he has sent such a letter as the following to the euboeans. [_the letter is read_.] { } the greater part of the statements that have been read are true, men of athens; and they ought not to be true! but i admit that they may possibly be unpleasant to hear; and if the course of future events would pass over all that a speaker passes over in his speech, to avoid giving pain, we should be right in speaking with a view to your pleasure. but if attractive words, spoken out of season, bring their punishment in actual reality, then it is disgraceful to blind our eyes to the truth, to put off everything that is unpleasant, { } to refuse to understand even so much as this, that those who conduct war rightly must not follow in the wake of events, but must be beforehand with them: for just as a general may be expected to lead his army, so those who debate must lead the course of affairs, in order that what they resolve upon may be done, and that they may not be forced to follow at the heels of events. { } you, men of athens, have the greatest power in the world-warships, infantry, cavalry, revenue. but none of these elements of power have you used as you ought, down to this very day. the method of your warfare with philip is just that of barbarians in a boxing-match. hit one of them, and he hugs the place; hit him on the other side, and there go his hands; but as for guarding, or looking his opponent in the face, he neither can nor will do it. { } it is the same with you. if you hear that philip is in the chersonese, you resolve to make an expedition there; if he is at thermopylae, you send one there; and wherever else he may be, you run up and down in his steps. it is he that leads your forces. you have never of yourselves come to any salutary decision in regard to the war. no single event do you ever discern before it occurs--before you have heard that something has happened or is happening. perhaps there was room for this backwardness until now; but now we are at the very crisis, and such an attitude is possible no longer. { } surely, men of athens, it is one of the gods--one who blushes for athens, as he sees the course which events are taking--that has inspired philip with this restless activity. if he were content to remain at peace, in possession of all that he has won by conquest or by forestalling us--if he had no further plans--even then, the record against us as a people, a record of shame and cowardice and all that is most dishonourable, would, i think, seem complete enough to some of you. but now he is always making some new attempt, always grasping after something more; and unless your spirit has utterly departed, his conduct will perhaps bring you out into the field. { } it amazes me, men of athens, that not one of you remembers with any indignation, that this war had its origin in our intention to punish philip; and that now, at the end of it, the question is, how we are to escape disaster at his hands. but that he will not stay his progress until some one arrests it is plain enough. are we then to wait for that? do you think that all is right, when you dispatch nothing but empty ships and somebody's hopes? shall we not embark? { } shall we not now, if never before, go forth ourselves, and provide at least some small proportion of athenian soldiers? shall we not sail to the enemy's country? but i heard the question, 'at what point on his coast are we to anchor?' the war itself, men of athens, if you take it in hand, will discover his weak points: but if we sit at home listening to the mutual abuse and recriminations of our orators, you can never realize any of the results that you ought to realize. { } i believe that whenever any portion of athens is sent with the forces, even if the whole city does not go, the favour of heaven and of fortune fights on our side. but whenever you dispatch anywhere a general with an empty resolution and some platform-hopes to support him, then you achieve nothing that you ought to achieve, your enemies laugh at you, and your allies are in deadly fear of all such armaments. { } it is impossible, utterly impossible, that any one man should be able to effect all that you wish for you. he can give undertakings and promises;[n] he can accuse this man and that; and the result is that your fortunes are ruined. for when the general is at the head of wretched, unpaid mercenaries, and when there are those in athens who lie to you light-heartedly about all that he does, and, on the strength of the tales that you hear, you pass decrees at random, what _must_ you expect? { } how then can this state of things be terminated? only, men of athens, when you expressly make the same men soldiers, witnesses of their general's actions, and judges at his examination[n] when they return home; for then the issue of your fortunes will not be a tale which you hear, but a thing which you will be on the spot to see. so shameful is the pass which matters have now reached, that each of your generals is tried for his life before you two or three times, but does not dare to fight in mortal combat with the enemy even once. they prefer the death of kidnappers and brigands to that of a general. { } for it is a felon's death, to die by sentence of the court: the death of a general is to fall in battle with the enemy. some of us go about saying that philip is negotiating with sparta[n] for the overthrow of the thebans and the breaking up of the free states; others, that he has sent ambassadors to the king;[n] others, that he is fortifying cities in illyria. { } we all go about inventing each his own tale. i quite believe, men of athens, that he is intoxicated with the greatness of his successes, and entertains many such visions in his mind; for he sees that there are none to hinder him, and he is elated at his achievements. but i do not believe that he has chosen to act in such a way that the most foolish persons in athens can know what he intends to do; for no persons are so foolish as newsmongers. { } but if we dismiss all such tales, and attend only to the certainty--that the man is our enemy, that he is robbing us of our own, that he has insulted us for a long time, that all that we ever expected any one to do for us has proved to be against us, that the future is in our own hands, that if we will not fight him now in his own country we shall perhaps be obliged to do so in ours--if, i say, we are assured of this, then we shall have made up our minds aright, and shall be quit of idle words. for you have not to speculate what the future may be: you have only to be assured that the future must be evil, unless you give heed and are ready to do your duty. { } well, i have never yet chosen to gratify you by saying anything which i have not felt certain would be for your good; and to-day i have spoken freely and without concealment, just what i believe. i could wish to be as sure of the good that a speaker will gain by giving you the best advice as of that which you will gain by listening to him. i should then have been far happier than i am. as it is, i do not know what will happen to me, for what i have said: but i have chosen to speak in the sure conviction that if you carry out my proposals, it will be for your good; and may the victory rest with that policy which will be for the good of all! the olynthiac orations (or. i-iii) [_introduction_. it has already been noticed that when philip took amphipolis in b.c., the olynthians made overtures to the athenians, with whom they had been at war for some years, and that, being rejected, they became allies of philip, who gave them anthemus and poteidaea. in , alarmed at philip's growing power, they once more applied to athens. peace was made, and negotiations began with regard to an alliance. in philip appeared in the territory of olynthus. he did not, however, at once carry the invasion further, but took pains, during this year and the next, to foster a macedonian party in the town. in philip virtually declared war on the olynthians by demanding the surrender of his step-brother arrhidaeus, who had taken refuge with them. the olynthians again appealed to athens; an alliance was made; chares was sent with thirty ships and , mercenaries, but seems to have mismanaged the war by misfortune or by design. probably he had been badly supplied with funds, and instead of helping olynthus, resorted to acts of piracy to satisfy his men. the macedonian troops proceeded to take stageira and other towns of the olynthian league, though philip still professed to have no hostile intentions against olynthus (see phil. iii, § ii). chares was recalled and put on his trial; and, probably in response to a further message from olynthus, charidemus was transferred thither from the hellespont. with a considerable mercenary force at his disposal, charidemus overran pallene and bottiaea, and did some damage to philip's territory, but afterwards gave himself up to dissipation in olynthus. in the meantime, some of the thessalians had become restless under philip's supremacy (see olynth. i, § , ii, § ii), and he was obliged to undertake an expedition to suppress the revolt, and to put down peitholaus (who had apparently become tyrant of pherae once more, though he had been expelled in ). but early in he appeared in person in chalcidice, and took one after another of the towns of the league, including mecyberna the port of olynthus, and torone. he thrice defeated the olynthians in battle, and at last obtained possession of olynthus itself by the treachery of euthycrates and lasthenes, the commanders of the olynthian cavalry. athens had probably been occupied during the early part of the year [ ] with an expedition which she sent (against the advice of demosthenes) to help plutarchus of eretria to repel attacks which were partly, at least, instigated by philip; and in consequence she had done little for olynthus, though on a request of the olynthians for cavalry, she had ordered some of those which had been sent to euboea to go to olynthus, and these may have been the athenians whom philip captured in that city. the seventeen ships, , infantry, and cavalry (all citizens), which athens dispatched under chares in response to a last urgent appeal from olynthus, were delayed by storms and arrived too late. philip entirely destroyed olynthus and thirty-two other towns, sold their inhabitants into slavery, brought the whole of chalcidice within the macedonian empire, and celebrated his conquests by a festival in honour of the olympian zeus at dium. the first olynthiac oration was delivered before olynthus itself was attacked or any other towns actually taken (olynth. i, § ); and both the first and second before the discontent with philip in thessaly had taken an active form (i, § , ii, § ). both, that is, belong to the summer of , and the situation implied is very much the same in both. the first was perhaps spoken when the olynthians first appealed to athens in that year, before the mission of chares; the second, to counteract the effect of something which had caused despondency in athens (possibly the conduct of the athenian generals, or the account given by other orators of philip's power). in both demosthenes urges the importance of resisting philip while he is still far away, and of sending, not mercenaries, but a citizen-army; and while hinting at what he regards as the true solution of the financial difficulty, proposes a special war-tax. the solution which he thinks the right one is more explicitly described in the third olynthiac, spoken (probably [footnote: see note on olynth. iii, section ]) in the autumn of the same year, and certainly at a time when the situation had become much more grave. the root of the financial difficulty lay in the existence of a law which prohibited (evidently under severe penalties, olynth. iii, section ) any proposal to devote to military purposes that portion of the revenues which constituted the 'festival' or 'theoric fund', and was for the most part distributed to the citizens to enable them to take part in the public festivals, and so join in fulfilling what was no doubt a religious duty as well as a pleasure. this particular form of expenditure is stated to have been introduced by the demagogue agyrrhius in , when it revived in an extended form a distribution of theatre money instituted late in the fifth century by cleophon; but the special law in question appears to have been of recent date (olynth. iii, section ), and was almost certainly the work of eubulus and his party. demosthenes himself proposes an extraordinary legislative commission, to repeal the mischievous laws and leave the way clear for financial reform. at the same time he attacks the whole policy of eubulus, charging him with distributing doles without regard to public service, adding to the amenities of athens instead of maintaining her honour in war, and enriching her politicians while degrading her people. the main object of the speech was unsuccessful; and just about this time (though whether before or after the speech is disputed) apollodorus proposed that the people should decide whether the surplus revenues should go to the festival fund, or be applied to military purposes, and was heavily fined for the illegality of the proposal. the three olynthiacs rank high among the orations of demosthenes. some passages, indeed, show that he had hardly as yet appreciated the genius of philip, or the unlikelihood of his making a false move either through over-confidence or because he had come to the end of his resources. but the noble patriotism of the speaker, the lofty tone of his political reflections, the clearness of his diagnosis of the evils of his time, and the fearlessness of his appeal for loyal and united self-sacrifice, are nowhere more conspicuous.] the first olynthiac { } i believe, men of athens, that you would give a great sum to know what policy, in reference to the matter which you are now considering, will best serve the interests of the city, and since that is so, you ought to be ready and eager to listen to those who desire to give you their advice. for not only can you hear and accept any useful proposals which a speaker may have thought out before he came here; but such, i conceive, is your fortune, that the right suggestion will often occur to some of those present on the spur of the moment; and out of all these suggestions it should be easy for you to choose the most advantageous course. { } the present time, men of athens, seems almost to cry aloud that you must take matters into your own hands yonder, if you have any interest in a successful termination of the crisis: and yet our attitude appears to be--i do not know what. my own opinion, at all events, is that you should at once resolve to send this assistance; that you should prepare for the departure of the expedition at the first possible moment--you must not fall victims to the same error as before--and that you should dispatch an embassy to announce our intention, and to be present at the scene of action. { } for what we have most to fear is this--that he, with his unscrupulous cleverness in taking advantage of circumstances--now, it may be, by making concessions; now by uttering threats, which he may well seem likely to fulfil; now by misrepresenting ourselves and our absence from the scene--may turn and wrest to his own advantage some of the vital elements of our power. { } and yet it may fairly be said, men of athens, that our best hope lies in that very circumstance which renders philip's power so hard to grapple with. the fact that the entire control over everything, open or secret,[n] is concentrated in the hands of a single man; that he is at one and the same time general, master, and treasurer; that he is always present in person with his army--all this is a great advantage, in so far as military operations must be prompt and well-timed. but as regards the compact which he would so gladly make with the olynthians, the effect is just the reverse. { } for the olynthians know well that they are not fighting now for honour and glory, nor for a strip of territory, but to avert the devastation and enslavement of their country. they know how he treated[n] those who betrayed to him their city at amphipolis, and those who received him at pydna; and it is, i imagine, universally true that tyranny is a faithless friend to a free state, and that most of all, when they occupy adjoining territories. { } with this knowledge, men of athens, and with all the reflections that the occasion calls for in your minds, i say that now, if ever before, you must make your resolve, rouse all your energies, and give your minds to the war: you must contribute gladly, you must go forth in person, you must leave nothing undone. there is no longer any reason or excuse remaining, which can justify you in refusing to do your duty. { } for every one was but recently harping on the desirability of exciting olynthus to war with philip; and this has now come to pass of itself, and in the way which most completely suits your interests. had they taken up the war because you had persuaded them to do so, their alliance might perhaps have been precarious, and their resolution might only have carried them a certain way. but now their detestation of philip is based upon grievances which affect themselves; and we may suppose that a hostility which is occasioned by their own fears and sufferings will be a lasting one. { } since, therefore, men of athens, such an opportunity has been thrown in your way, you must not let it go, nor fall victims to the mistake from which you have often suffered before. if, for instance, when we had returned from our expedition in aid of the euboeans,[n] and hierax and stratocles came from amphipolis and stood upon this platform and urged us to sail and take over the city; if, i say, we had continued to display in our own interest the eagerness which we displayed in the deliverance of the euboeans, you would have kept amphipolis then, and we should have been free from all the trouble that we have had since. { } and again, when news kept coming of the investment of pydna, poteidaea, methone, pagasae, and all the other places--i will not stay to enumerate them all--if we had acted at once, and had gone to the rescue of the first place attacked, with the energy which we ought to have shown, we should now have found philip much less proud and difficult to deal with. as it is, we are always sacrificing the present, always fancying that the future will turn out well of itself; and so we have raised philip to a position of such importance as no king of macedonia has ever before attained. { } and now an opportunity has come to athens, in this crisis at olynthus, as great as any of those former ones: and i believe, men of athens, that one who was to draw up a true account of the blessings which have been given us by the gods, would, in spite of much that is not as it should be, find great cause for thankfulness to them; and naturally so. for our many losses in the war must in fairness be set down to our own indifference; but that we did not suffer such losses long ago, and that an alliance has presented itself to us, which, if we will only take advantage of it, will act as a counterpoise to them--all this i, for one, should set down as a favour due to their goodness towards us. but it is, i imagine, in politics, as it is in money-making. { } if a man is able to keep all that he gets, he is abundantly grateful to fortune; but if he loses it all before he is aware, he loses with it his memory of fortune's kindness. so it is in politics. when men have not made a right use of their opportunities, they do not remember any good that heaven may actually have granted them: for it is by the ultimate issue that men estimate all that they have enjoyed before. therefore, men of athens, you must pay the very utmost heed to the future, that by the better use you make of it, you may wipe out the dishonour of the past. { } but if you sacrifice these men also, men of athens, and philip in consequence reduces olynthus to subjection, i ask any of you to tell me what is to prevent him from marching where he pleases. is there a man among you, men of athens, who considers or studies the steps by which philip, weak enough at first, has become so strong? first he took amphipolis, next pydna, then again poteidaea, and then methone. next he set foot in thessaly. { } then when pherae, pagasae, magnesia[n] were secured for his purposes, just as it suited him, he departed to thrace. in thrace, after expelling one prince and setting up another, he fell ill. when he grew easier again, he showed no inclination to take things easily, but at once attacked the olynthians[n]--and i am passing over his campaigns against the illyrians and the paeonians, against arybbas,[n] and in every possible direction. { } why, i may be asked, do i mention these things at the present moment? i wish you to understand, men of athens, and to realize these two points: first, the unprofitableness of perpetually sacrificing your interests one by one; and, secondly, the restless activity which is a part of philip's very being, and which will not allow him to content himself with his achievements and remain at peace. for if it is to be his fixed resolve, that he must always be aiming at something greater than he has yet attained; and ours, that we will never set ourselves resolutely to work; ask yourselves what you can expect to be the end of the matter. { } in god's name, is there one of you so innocent as not to know that the war will be transferred from olynthus to attica, if we pay no heed? but if that happens, men of athens, i fear that we shall be like men who light-heartedly borrow at a high rate of interest, and after a brief period of affluence, lose even their original estate; that like them we shall find that our carelessness has cost us dear; that through making pleasure our standard in everything, we shall find ourselves driven to do many of those unpleasant things which we wished to avoid, and shall find our position even in our own country imperilled. { } i may be told that it is easy to criticize--any one can do that; but that a political adviser is expected to offer some practical proposal to meet the existing situation. now i am well aware, men of athens, that in the event of any disappointment, it is not upon those who are responsible that your anger falls, but upon those who have spoken last upon the subject in question. yet i do not think that consideration for my own safety should lead me to conceal my conviction as to the course which your interests demand. { } i say then that there are two things which you must do to save the situation. you must rescue these towns [n] for the olynthians, and send troops to accomplish this: and you must damage philip's country with your ships and with a second body of troops. { } if you neglect either of these things, our campaign, i greatly fear, will be in vain. for suppose that you inflict damage on his country, and that he allows you to do so, while he reduces olynthus; he will have no difficulty in repelling you when he returns. suppose, on the other hand, that you only go to the help of olynthus; he will see that he has nothing to fear at home, and so he will sit down before the town and remain at his task, until time enables him to get the better of the besieged. the expedition, therefore, must be large, and it must be in two parts. such is my view with regard to the expedition. { } as to the sources of supply, you have funds, men of athens--funds larger than any one else in the world; but you appropriate these without scruple, just as you choose. now if you will assign these to your troops, you need no further supplies: otherwise, not only do you need further supplies--you are destitute of supplies altogether. 'well' (does someone say?), 'do you move that this money should form a war-fund?' i assure you that i make no such motion. { } for while i do indeed believe that a force ought to be made ready [and that this money should form a war-fund], and that the receipt of money should be connected, as part of one and the same system, with the performance of duty; you, on the contrary, think it right to take the money, after your present fashion, for your festivals, and spare yourselves trouble. and therefore, i suppose, our only resource is a general tax--larger or smaller, according to the amount required. in any case, we need funds, and without funds nothing can be done that we ought to do. various other sources of supply are suggested by different persons. choose whichever you think best of these, and get to work, while you have the opportunity. { } it is worth while to remember and to take into account the nature of philip's position at this moment. for neither are his affairs at present in such good order, or in so perfectly satisfactory a state, as might appear to any but a careful observer; nor would he ever have commenced this present war, if he had thought that he would really have to fight. he hoped at first that by his mere advance he would carry all before him; and he has since discovered his mistake. this disappointment, then, is the first thing which disturbs him and causes him great despondency: { } and next there is the disposition of the thessalians, naturally inconstant as we know it has always been found by all men; and what it has always been, that, in the highest degree, philip finds it now. for they have formally resolved to demand from him the restitution of pagasae; they have prevented him from fortifying magnesia, and i myself heard it stated that they intend even to refuse him the enjoyment of their harbour and market dues for the future. these, they say, should go to maintain the public administration of thessaly, instead of being taken by philip. but if he is deprived of these funds, the resources from which he must maintain his mercenaries will be reduced to the narrowest limits. { } nay, more: we must surely suppose that the chieftains of the paeonians and illyrians, and in fact all such personages--would prefer freedom to slavery; for they are not accustomed to obey orders, and the man, they say, is a bully. heaven knows, there is nothing incredible in the statement. unmerited success is to foolish minds a fountain-head of perversity, so that it is often harder for men to keep the good they have, than it was to obtain it. { } it is for you then, men of athens, to regard his difficulty as your opportunity, to take up your share of the burden with readiness, to send embassies to secure all that is required, to join the forces yourselves, and to stir up every one else to do so. only consider what would happen, if philip got such an opportunity to strike at us, and there was war on our frontier. can you not imagine how readily he would march against us? does it arouse no shame in you, that, when you have the opportunity, you should not dare to do to him even as much as you would have to suffer, were he able to inflict it? { } there is a further point, men of athens, which must not escape you. i mean that you have now to choose whether you are to carry on war yonder, or whether he is to do so in your own country. if the resistance of olynthus is maintained, you will fight there and will inflict damage on philip's territory, while you remain secure in the enjoyment of this land of your own which you now possess. but if philip captures olynthus, who is to hinder him from marching to athens? the thebans? { } it seems, i fear, too bitter a thing to say; but they will be glad to join him in the invasion. the phocians? they cannot protect their own country, unless you go to their aid, or some other power. 'but, my good sir,'[n] you say, 'he will not want to march here.' and yet it would be one of the strangest things in the world, if, when he has the power, he does not carry out the threats, which he now blurts out in spite of the folly that they show. { } but i suppose that i need not even point out how vast is the difference between war here and war in his country. for had you to camp outside the walls yourselves, for only thirty days, and to take from the country such things as men in camp must have--and i am assuming that there is no enemy in the country--i believe that the loss your farmers would suffer would exceed your whole expenditure on the war up to the present time. what then must we think will be the extent of our loss, if ever war comes to our doors? and besides the loss there is his insolence, and the shame of our position, which to right-minded men is as serious as any loss. { } when you take a comprehensive view of these things you must all go to the rescue and stave the war off yonder; you who are well-to-do, in order that, with a small expense in defence of the great fortunes which you quite rightly enjoy, you may reap the benefit of the remainder without fear; you who are of military age, that you may gain your experience of war in philip's country, and so become formidable guardians of a fatherland unspoiled; and your orators, that they may find it easy to render an account of their public life; for your judgement upon their conduct will itself depend upon the position in which you find yourselves. and may that be a happy one, on every ground! the second olynthiac { } many as are the occasions, men of athens, on which we may discern the manifestation of the goodwill of heaven towards this city, one of the most striking is to be seen in the circumstances of the present time. for that men should have been found to carry on war against philip; men whose territory borders on his and who possess some power; men, above all, whose sentiments in regard to the war are such that they think of the proposed compact with him, not only as untrustworthy, but as the very ruin of their country--this seems to be certainly the work of a superhuman, a divine, beneficence. { } and so, men of athens, we must take care that we do not treat ourselves less well than circumstances have treated us. for it is a shameful thing--nay, it is the very depth of shame--to throw away openly, not only cities and places which were once in our power, but even the allies and the opportunities which have been provided for us by fortune. { } now to describe at length the power of philip, men of athens, and to incite you to the performance of your duty by such a recital, is not, i think, a satisfactory proceeding; and for this reason--that while all that can be said on this subject tends to philip's glory, it is a story of failure on our part. for the greater the extent to which his success surpasses his deserts, the greater is the admiration with which the world regards him; while, for your part, the more you have fallen short of the right use of your opportunities, the greater is the disgrace that you have incurred. { } i will therefore pass over such considerations. for any honest inquirer must see that the causes of philip's rise to greatness lie in athens, and not in himself. of the services for which he has to thank those whose policy is determined by his interest--services for which you ought to require their punishment--the present is not, i see, the moment to speak. but apart from these, there are things which may be said, and which it is better that you should all have heard--things which (if you will examine them aright) constitute a grave reproach against him; and these i will try to tell you. { } if i called him perjured and faithless, without giving his actions in evidence, my words would be treated as idle abuse, and rightly: and it happens that to review all his actions up to the present time, and to prove the charge in every case, requires only a short speech. it is well, i think, that the story should be told, for it will serve two purposes; first, to make plain the real badness of the man's character; and secondly, to let those who are over-alarmed at philip, as if he were invincible, see that he has come to the end of all those forms of deceit by which he rose to greatness, and that his career is already drawing to its close. { } for i, too, men of athens, should be regarding philip with intense fear and admiration, if i saw that his rise was the result of a righteous policy. { } but when i study and consider the facts, i find that originally, when certain persons wished to drive from your presence the olynthians who desired to address you from this place, philip won over our innocent minds by saying that he would deliver up amphipolis to us, and by inventing the famous secret understanding; that he afterwards conciliated the olynthians by seizing poteidaea, which was yours, and injuring their former allies by handing it over to themselves; and that, last of all, he recently won over the thessalians, by promising to give up magnesia to them, and undertaking to carry on the war with the phocians on their behalf. there is absolutely no one who has ever had dealings with him that he has not deluded; and it is by deceiving and winning over, one after another, those who in their blindness did not realize what he was, that he has risen as he has done. { } and therefore, just as it was by these deceptions that he rose to greatness, in the days when each people fancied that he intended to do some service to themselves; so it is these same deceptions which should drag him down again, now that he stands convicted of acting for his own ends throughout. such, then, is the crisis, men of athens, to which philip's fortunes have now come. if it is not so, let any one come forward and show me (or rather you) that what i say is untrue; or that those who have been deceived at the outset trust him as regards the future; or that those who have been brought into unmerited bondage would not gladly be free. { } but if any of you, while agreeing with me so far, still fancies that philip will maintain his hold by force, because he has already occupied fortified posts and harbours and similar positions, he is mistaken. when power is cemented by goodwill, and the interest of all who join in a war is the same, then men are willing to share the labour, to endure the misfortunes, and to stand fast. but when a man has become strong, as philip has done, by a grasping and wicked policy, the first excuse, the least stumble, throws him from his seat and dissolves the alliance. { } it is impossible, men of athens, utterly impossible, to acquire power that will last, by unrighteousness, by perjury, and by falsehood. such power holds out for a moment, or for a brief hour; it blossoms brightly, perhaps, with fair hopes; but time detects the fraud, and the flower falls withered about its stem. in a house or a ship, or any other structure, it is the foundations that must be strongest; and no less, i believe, must the principles, which are the foundation of men's actions, be those of truth and righteousness. such qualities are not to be seen to-day in the past acts of philip. { } i say, then, that we should help the olynthians; and the best and quickest method which can be proposed is the method which i approve. further, we should send an embassy to the thessalians--to some, to inform them of our intention; to others, to spur them on; for even now they have resolved to demand the restitution of pagasae, and to make representations in regard to magnesia. { } take care, however, men of athens, that our envoys may not only have words to speak, but also actions of yours to point to. let it be seen that you have gone forth in a manner that is worthy of athens, and are already in action. words without the reality must always appear a vain and empty thing, and above all when they come from athens; for the more we seem to excel in the glib use of such language, the more it is distrusted by every one. { } the change, then, which is pointed out to them must be great, the conversion striking. they must see you paying your contributions, marching to war, doing everything with a will, if any of them is to listen to you. and if you resolve to accomplish all this in very deed, as it should be accomplished, not only will the feeble and untrustworthy nature of philip's alliances be seen, but the weakness of his own empire and power will also be detected. { } the power and empire of macedonia is, indeed, to speak generally, an element which tells considerably as an addition to any other power. you found it so when it helped you against the olynthians in the days of timotheus;[n] the olynthians in their turn found its help of some value, in combination with their own strength, against poteidaea; and it has recently come to the aid of the thessalians, in their disordered and disturbed condition, against the ruling dynasty: and wherever even a small addition is made to a force, it helps in every way. { } but in itself the macedonian empire is weak and full of manifold evils. philip has in fact rendered his own tenure of it even more precarious than it naturally was, by these very wars and campaigns which might be supposed to prove his power. for you must not imagine, men of athens, that philip and his subjects delight in the same things. philip has a passion for glory--that is his ambition; and he has deliberately chosen to risk the consequences of a life of action and danger, preferring the glory of achieving more than any king of macedonia before him to a life of security. { } but his subjects have no share in the honour and glory. constantly battered about by all these expeditions, up and down, they are vexed with incessant hardships: they are not suffered to pursue their occupations or attend to their own affairs: for the little that they produce, as best they can, they can find no market, the trading stations of the country being closed on account of the war. { } from these facts it is not difficult to discover the attitude of the macedonians in general towards philip; and as for the mercenaries and infantry of the guard who surround him, though they have the reputation of being a fine body of well-drilled warriors, i am told by a man who has been in macedonia, and who is incapable of falsehood, that they are no better than any other body of men. { } granted that there may be experienced campaigners and fighters among them; yet, he tells me, philip is so jealous of honour, that he thrusts all such men away from him, in his anxiety to get the credit of every achievement for himself; for in addition to all his other qualities, his jealousy is insurpassable. on the other hand, any generally temperate or upright man, who cannot endure the dissolute life there, day by day, nor the drunkenness and the lewd revels, is thrust on one side and counts for nothing. { } thus he is left with brigands and flatterers, and men who, when in their cups, indulge in dances of a kind which i shrink from naming to you now. and it is evident that this report is true; for men whom every one tried to drive out of athens, as far viler than even the very juggler in the street--callias the public slave and men like him, players of farces, composers of indecent songs, written at the expense of their companions in the hope of raising a laugh--these are the men he likes and keeps about him. { } you may think that these are trivial things, men of athens: but they are weighty, in the judgement of every right-minded man, as illustrations of the temper with which philip is cursed. at present, i suppose, these facts are overshadowed by his continual prosperity. success has a wonderful power of throwing a veil over shameful things like these. but let him only stumble, and then all these features in his character will be displayed in their true light. and i believe, men of athens, that the revelation is not far off, if heaven be willing and you desirous of it. { } so long as a man is in good health, he is unconscious of any weakness; but if any illness comes upon him, the disturbance affects every weak point, be it a rupture or a sprain or anything else that is unsound in his constitution. and as with the body, so it is with a city or a tyrant. so long as they are at war abroad, the mischief is hidden from the world at large, but the close grapple of war on the frontier brings all to light. { } now if any of you, men of athens, seeing philip's good fortune, thinks that this makes him a formidable enemy to fight against, he reasons like a sensible man: for fortune weighs heavily in the scale--nay, fortune is everything, in all human affairs. and yet, if i were given the choice, it is the fortune of athens that i should choose, rather than that of philip, provided that you yourselves are willing to act even to a small extent as you should act. for i see that there are far more abundant grounds for expecting the goodwill of heaven on your side than on his. { } but here, of course, we are sitting idle; and one who is a sluggard himself cannot require his friends to help him, much less the gods. it is not to be wondered at that philip, who goes on campaigns and works hard himself, and is always at the scene of action, and lets no opportunity go, no season pass, should get the better of us who delay and pass resolutions and ask for news; nor do i wonder at it. it is the opposite that would have been wonderful--if we, who do nothing that those who are at war ought to do, were successful against one who leaves nothing undone. { } but this i do wonder at, that you who once raised your hand against sparta, in defence of the rights of the hellenes--you, who with opportunities often open to you for grasping large advantages for yourselves, would not take them, but to secure for others their rights spent your own fortunes in war-contributions, and always bore the brunt of the dangers of the campaign--that you, i say, are now shrinking from marching, and hesitating to make any contribution to save your own possessions; and that, though you have often saved the rest of the hellenes, now all together and now each in their turn, you are sitting idle, when you have lost what was your own. { } i wonder at this; and i wonder also, men of athens, that none of you is able to reckon up the time during which you have been fighting with philip, and to consider what you have been doing while all this time has been going by. surely you must know that it is while we have been delaying, hoping that some one else would act, accusing one another, bringing one another to trial, hoping anew--in fact, doing practically what we are doing now--that all the time has passed. { } and have you now so little sense, men of athens, as to hope that the very same policy, which has made the position of the city a bad one instead of a good, will actually make it a good one instead of a bad? why, it is contrary both to reason and to nature to think so! it is always much easier to retain than to acquire. but now, owing to the war, none of our old possessions is left for us to retain; and so we must needs acquire. { } this, therefore, is our own personal and immediate duty; and accordingly i say that you must contribute funds, you must go on service in person with a good will, you must accuse no one before you have become masters of the situation; and then you must honour those who deserve praise, and punish the guilty, with a judgement based upon the actual facts. you must get rid of all excuses and all deficiencies on your own part; you cannot examine mercilessly the actions of others, unless you yourselves have done all that your duty requires. { } for why is it, do you think, men of athens, that all the generals whom you dispatch avoid this war,[n] and discover private wars of their own--if a little of the truth must be told even about the generals? it is because in this war the prizes for which the war is waged are yours, and if they are captured, you will take them immediately for your own; but the dangers are the personal privilege of your commanders, and no pay is forthcoming: while in those wars the dangers are less, and the profits--lampsacus, sigeum, and the ships which they plunder--go to the commanders and their men. each force therefore takes the road that leads to its own advantage. { } for your part, when you turn your attention to the serious condition of your affairs, you first bring the commanders to trial; and then, when you have given them a hearing, and have been told of the difficulties which i have described, you acquit them. the result, therefore, is that while you are quarrelling with one another and broken into factions-one party persuaded of this, another of that--the public interest suffers. you used, men of athens, to pay taxes by boards:[n] to-day you conduct your politics by boards. on either side there is an orator as leader, and a general under him; and for the three hundred, there are those who come to shout. the rest of you distribute yourselves between the two parties, some on either side. { } this system you must give up: you must even now become your own masters; you must give to all alike their share in discussion, in speech and in action. if you assign to one body of men the function of issuing orders to you, like tyrants; to another, that of compulsory service as trierarchs or tax-payers or soldiers; and to another, only that of voting their condemnation, without taking any share in the labour, nothing that ought to be done will be done in time. for the injured section will always be in default, and you will only have the privilege of punishing them instead of the enemy. { } to sum up, all must contribute, each according to his wealth, in a fair proportion: all must go on active service in turn, until you have all served: you must give a hearing to all who come forward, and choose the best course out of all that you hear--not the course proposed by this or that particular person. if you do this, you will not only commend the proposer of that course at the time, but you will commend yourselves hereafter, for the whole position of your affairs will be a better one. the third olynthiac { } very different reflections suggest themselves to my mind, i men of athens, when i turn my eyes to our real situation, and when i think of the speeches that i hear. for i observe that the speeches are all concerned with the taking of vengeance upon philip; whereas in reality matters have gone so far, that we have to take care that we are not ourselves the first to suffer: so that those who speak of vengeance are actually, as it seems to me, suggesting to you a false conception of the situation which you are discussing. { } that there was a time when the city could both keep her own possessions in safety, and punish philip, i am very well aware. for it was not long ago, but within my own lifetime, that both these things were so. but i am convinced that it is now quite enough for us as a first step to make sure of the preservation of our allies. if this is safely secured, we shall then be able to consider upon whom vengeance is to fall, and in what way. but until the first step is properly conceived, i consider it idle to say anything whatever about the last. { } if ever the most anxious deliberation was required, it is required in the present crisis; and my greatest difficulty is not to know what is the proper advice to give you in regard to the situation: i am at a loss rather to know, men of athens, in what manner i should address you in giving it. for i am convinced by what i have heard with my own ears in this place that, for the most part, the objects of our policy have slipped from our grasp, not because we do not understand what our duty is, but because we will not do it; and i ask you to suffer me, if i speak without reserve, and to consider only whether i speak truly, and with this object in view--that the future may be better than the past. for you see that it is because certain speakers make your gratification the aim of their addresses, that things have gone on getting worse, till at last the extremity has been reached. { } i think it necessary, first, to remind you of a few of the events which have taken place. you remember, men of athens, that two or three years ago[n] the news came that philip was in thrace, besieging heraeon teichos. that was in the month of november. amidst all the discussion and commotion which took place in this assembly, you passed a resolution that forty warships should be launched, that men under forty-five years of age should embark in person, and that we should pay a war-tax of talents. { } that year came to an end, and there followed july, august, september. in the latter month, after the mysteries,[n] and with reluctance, you dispatched charidemus[n] with ten ships, carrying no soldiers, and talents of silver. for so soon as news had come that philip was sick or dead--both reports were brought--you dismissed the armament, men of athens, thinking that there was no longer any occasion for the expedition. but it was the very occasion; for had we then gone to the scene of action with the same enthusiasm which marked our resolution to do so, philip would not have been preserved to trouble us to-day. { } what was done then cannot be altered. but now a critical moment in another campaign has arrived; and it is in view of this, and to prevent you from falling into the same error, that i have recalled these facts. how then shall we use this opportunity, men of athens? for unless you will go to the rescue 'with might and main to the utmost of your power',[n] mark how in every respect you will have served philip's interest by your conduct of the war. { } at the outset the olynthians possessed considerable strength, and such was the position of affairs, that neither did philip feel safe against them, nor they against philip. we made peace with them, and they with us. it was as it were a stumbling-block in philip's path, and an annoyance to him, that a great city which had made a compact with us should sit watching for any opportunity he might offer. we thought that we ought to excite them to war with him by every means; and now this much-talked-of event has come to pass--by what means, i need not relate. { } what course then is open to us, men of athens, but to go to their aid resolutely and eagerly? i can see none. apart from the shame in which we should be involved, if we let anything be lost through our negligence, i can see, men of athens, that the subsequent prospect would be alarming in no small degree, when the attitude of the thebans towards us is what it is, when the funds of the phocians are exhausted,[n] and when there is no one to prevent philip, so soon as he has made himself master of all that at present occupies him, from bringing his energies to bear upon the situation further south. { } but if any of you is putting off until then his determination to do his duty, he must be desirous of seeing the terrors of war close at hand, when he need only hear of them at a distance, and of seeking helpers for himself, when now he can give help to others. for that this is what it must come to, if we sacrifice the present opportunity, we must all, i think, be fairly well aware. { } 'but,' some one may say, 'we have all made up our minds that we must go to their aid, and we will go. only tell us how we are to do it.' now do not be surprised, men of athens, if i give an answer which will be astonishing to most of you. you must appoint a legislative commission.[n] but when the commissioners meet, you must not enact a single law--you have laws enough--you must cancel the laws which, in view of present circumstances, are injurious to you. { } i mean the laws which deal with the festival fund--to put it quite plainly--and some of those which deal with military service: for the former distribute your funds as festival-money to those who remain at home; while the latter give immunity to malingerers,[n] and thereby also take the heart out of those who want to do their duty. when you have cancelled these laws, and made the path safe for one who would give the best advice, then you can look for some one to propose what you all know to be expedient. { } but until you have done this, you must not expect to find a man who will be glad to advise you for the best, and be ruined by you for his pains; for you will find no one, particularly when the only result will be that some unjust punishment will be inflicted on the proposer or mover of such measures, and that instead of helping matters at all, he will only have made it even more dangerous in future than it is at present to give you the best advice. aye, and you should require the repeal of these laws, men of athens, from the very persons who proposed them.[n] { } it is not fair that those who originally proposed them should enjoy the popularity which was fraught with such mischief to the whole state, and that the unpopularity, which would lead to an improvement in the condition of us all, should be visited to his cost upon one who now advises you for the best. until you have thus prepared the way, men of athens, you must entertain no expectation whatever that any one will be influential enough here to transgress these laws with impunity, or senseless enough to fling himself to certain ruin. { } at the same time, men of athens, you must not fail to realize this further point. no resolution is worth anything, without the willingness to perform at least what you have resolved, and that heartily. for if decrees by themselves could either compel you to do what you ought, or could realize their several objects unaided, you would not be decreeing many things and performing few--nay, none--of the things that you decree, nor would philip have insulted you so long. { } if decrees could have done it, he would have paid the penalty long ago. but it is not so. actions come later than speeches and voting in order of procedure, but in effectiveness they are before either and stronger than either. it is action that is still needed; all else you already have. for you have those among you, men of athens, who can tell you what your duty is; and no one is quicker than you are to understand the speaker's bidding. aye, and you will be able to carry it out even now, if you act aright. { } what time, what opportunity, do you look for, better than the present? when, if not now, will you do your duty? has not the man seized every position from us already? if he becomes master of this country too, will not our fate be the most shameful in the world? and the men whom we promised to be ready to save, if they went to war--are they not now at war? { } is he not our enemy? are not our possessions in his hands? is he not a barbarian? is he not anything that you choose to call him? in god's name, when we have let everything go, when we have all but put everything into his hands, shall we then inquire at large who is responsible for it all? that we shall never admit our own responsibility, i am perfectly sure. just so amid the perils of war, none of those who have run away accuses himself; he accuses his general, his neighbour--any one but himself; and yet, i suppose, all who have run away have helped to cause the defeat. he who now blames the rest might have stood fast; and if every one had done so, the victory would have been theirs. { } and so now, if a particular speaker's advice is not the best, let another rise and make a proposal, instead of blaming him; and if some other has better advice to give, carry it out, and good fortune be with you. what? is the advice disagreeable? that is no longer the speaker's fault--unless, of course, he leaves out the prayer that you expect of him. there is no difficulty in the prayer, men of athens; a man need only compress all his desires into a short sentence. but to make his choice, when the question for discussion is one of practical policy, is by no means equally easy. _then_ a man is bound to choose what is best, instead of what is pleasant, if both are not possible at once. { } but suppose that some one is able, without touching the festival fund, to suggest other sources of supply for military purposes--is not he the better adviser? certainly, men of athens--if such a thing _is_ possible. but i should be surprised if it ever has happened or ever should happen to any one to find, after spending what he has upon wrong objects, that what he has _not_ is wealth enough to enable him to effect right ones. such arguments as these find, i think, their great support in each man's personal desire, and, for that reason, nothing is easier than to deceive oneself; what a man desires, he actually fancies to be true. { } but the reality often follows no such principle. consider the matter, therefore, men of athens, after this fashion; consider in what way our objects can be realized under the circumstances, and in what way you will be able to make the expedition and to receive your pay. surely it is not like sober or high-minded men to submit light-heartedly to the reproach which must follow upon any shortcomings in the operations of the war through want of funds--to seize your weapons and march against corinthians and megareans,[n] and then to allow philip to enslave hellenic cities, because you cannot find rations for your troops. { } these words do not spring from a wanton determination to court the ill-will of any party among you. i am neither so foolish nor so unfortunate as to desire unpopularity when i do not believe that i am doing any good. but a loyal citizen ought, in my judgement, to care more for the safety of his country's fortunes than for the popularity of his utterances. such, i have heard, and perhaps you have heard it also, was the principle which the orators of our forefather's time habitually followed in public life--those orators who are praised by all who rise to address you, though they are far from imitating them--the great aristides, and nicias, and my own namesake, and pericles. { } but ever since these speakers have appeared who are always asking you, 'what would you like?' 'what may i propose for you?' 'what can i do to please you?' the interests of the city have been wantonly given away for the sake of the pleasure and gratification of the moment; and we see the consequences--the fortunes of the speakers prosper, while your own are in a shameful plight. { } and yet consider, men of athens, the main characteristics of the achievements of your forefathers' time, and those of your own. the description will be brief and familiar to you; for you need not have recourse to the history of others, when your own will furnish examples, by following which you may achieve prosperity. { } our forefathers, who were not courted and caressed by their politicians as you are by these persons to-day, were leaders of the hellenes, with their goodwill, for forty-five years;[n] they brought up into the acropolis more than , talents; the king[n] who then ruled macedonia obeyed them as a foreigner ought to obey a hellenic people; serving in person, they set up many glorious trophies for victories by land and sea; and alone of all mankind they left behind them, as the crown of their exploits, a fame that is beyond the reach of envy. { } such was the part they played in the hellenic world: and now contemplate the manner of men they were in the city, both in public and in private life. as public men, they gave us buildings and objects of such beauty and grandeur, in the temples which they built and the offerings which they dedicated in them, that no room has been left for any of those that come after to surpass them: while in private life they were so modest, { } so intensely loyal to the spirit of the constitution, that if any one actually knows what the house of aristides, or miltiades, or any other of the glorious men of that day, is like, he can see that it is no more imposing than those of their neighbours. for it was not to win a fortune that they undertook affairs of state; but each thought it his duty to add to the common weal. and thus, acting in a spirit of good faith towards the hellenes, of piety towards the gods, and of equality towards one another, they naturally attained great prosperity. { } such was the national life of those times, when those whom i have mentioned were the foremost men in the state. how do matters stand to-day, thanks to these worthy persons? is there any likeness, any resemblance, to old times? thanks to them (and though i might say much, i pass over all but this), when we had the field, as you see, completely open to us--when the spartans had been ruined,[n] and the thebans had their hands full,[n] and no other power could seriously dispute the supremacy with us on the field of battle--when we could have retained our own possessions in safety, and have stood as umpires of the rights of others--we have been deprived of our own territory; { } we have spent more than , talents to no good purpose; the allies whom we had gained in the war,[n] these persons have lost in time of peace; and we have trained philip to be the powerful enemy to us that he is. let any one rise and tell me how philip has grown so strong, if we ourselves are not the source of his strength. { } 'but, my good sir,' you say, 'if we are badly off in these respects, we are at any rate better off at home.' and where is the proof of this? is it in the whitewashing of the battlements, the mending of the roads, the fountains, and all such trumperies? look then at the men whose policy gives you these things. some of them who were poor have become rich; others, who were unknown to fame, have risen to honour; some of them have provided themselves with private houses more imposing than our public buildings; and the lower the fortunes of the city have fallen, the higher theirs have risen. { } what is the cause of all these things? why is it that all was well then, and all is amiss to-day? it is because then the people itself dared to act and to serve in the army; and so the people was master of its politicians; all patronage was in its own hands; any separate individual was content to receive from the people his share of honour or office or other emolument. the reverse is now the case. { } all patronage is in the hands of the politicians, while you, the people, emasculated, stripped of money and allies, have been reduced to the position of servile supernumeraries, content if they give you distributions of festival-money, or organize a procession at the boedromia;[n] and to crown all this bravery, you are expected also to thank them for giving you what is your own. they pen you up closely in the city; they entice you to these delights; they tame you till you come to their hand. { } but a high and generous spirit can never, i believe, be acquired by men whose actions are mean and poor; for such as a man's practice is, such must his spirit be. and in all solemnity i should not be surprised if i suffered greater harm at your hands for telling you the things that i have told you, than the men who have brought them to pass. even freedom of speech is not possible on all subjects in this place, and i wonder that it has been granted me to-day. { } if, even now, you will rid yourselves of these habits, if you will resolve to join the forces and to act worthily of yourselves, converting the superfluities which you enjoy at home into resources to secure our advantage abroad, then it may be, men of athens, it may be, that you will gain some great and final good, and will be rid of these your perquisites, which are like the diet that a physician gives a sick man--diet which neither puts strength into him nor lets him die. for these sums which you now share among yourselves are neither large enough to give you any adequate assistance, nor small enough to let you renounce them and go about your business; but these it is that[ ] increase the indolence of every individual among you. { } 'is it, then, paid service that you suggest?'[n] some one will ask. i do, men of athens; and a system for immediate enforcement which will embrace all alike; so that each, while receiving his share of the public funds may supply whatever service the state requires of him.[ ] if we can remain at peace, then he will do better to stay at home, free from the necessity of doing anything discreditable through poverty. but if a situation like the present occurs, then supported by these same sums, he will serve loyally in person, in defence of his country. if a man is outside the military age, then let him take, in his place among the rest, that which he now receives irregularly and without doing any service, and let him act as an overseer and manager of business that must be done. { } in short, without adding or subtracting anything,[n] beyond a small sum, and only removing the want of system, my plan reduces the state to order, making your receipt of payment, your service in the army or the courts, and your performance of any duty which the age of each of you allows, and the occasion requires, all part of one and the same system. but it has been no part of my proposal that we should assign the due of those who act to those who do nothing; that we should be idle ourselves and enjoy our leisure helplessly, listening to tales of victories won by somebody's mercenaries;[n] for this is what happens now. { } not that i blame one who is doing some part of your duty for you; but i require you to do for yourselves the things for which you honour others, and not to abandon the position which your fathers won through many a glorious peril, and bequeathed to you. i think i have told you all that, in my belief, your interest demands. may you choose the course which will be for the good of the city and of you all! footnotes [ ] see notes to speech on the peace, § . some date the euboean expedition and the sending of the cavalry one or two years earlier, and the whole chronology is much disputed; but there are strong arguments for the date ( ) given in the text. [ ] [greek: esti tauta ta]. [ ] [greek: touto parechae]. on the peace (or. v) [_introduction_. after the fall of olynthus in , the athenians, on the proposal of eubulus, sent embassies to the greek states in the peloponnese and elsewhere, to invite them to join in a coalition against philip. aeschines went for this purpose to megalopolis, and did his best to counteract philip's influence in arcadia. when the embassies proved unsuccessful, it became clear that peace must be made on such terms as were possible. philip himself was anxious for peace, since he wished to cross the pass of thermopylae without such opposition from athens as he had encountered in , and to be free from the attacks of hostile ships upon his ports. even before the fall of olynthus, informal communications passed between himself and athens (see speech on embassy, §§ , , ); and in consequence of these, philocrates proposed and the assembly passed a decree, under which ten ambassadors were appointed to go to philip and invite him to send plenipotentiaries to athens to conclude a peace. demosthenes (who had strongly supported philocrates) was among the ten, as well as aeschines and philocrates himself. delighted with philip's reception of them, and greatly attracted by his personality, the ambassadors returned with a letter from him, promising in general terms to confer great benefits upon athens, if he were granted alliance as well as peace: in the meantime he undertook not to interfere with the towns allied to athens in the chersonese. demosthenes proposed (in the council, of which he was a member in the year - ) the usual complimentary resolution in honour of the ambassadors, and on his motion it was resolved to hold two meetings of the assembly, on the th and th of the month elaphebolion (i.e. probably just after the middle of april ), when philip's envoys would have arrived, to discuss the terms of peace. the envoys--antipater, parmenio, and eurylochus--reached athens shortly after this; and before the first of the two meetings was held, the synod of the allies of athens, now assembled in the city, agreed to peace on such terms as the athenian people should decide, but added a proposal that it should be permitted to any greek state to become a party to the peace within three months. they said nothing of alliance. of the two meetings of the assembly, in view of the conflicting statements of demosthenes and aeschines, only a probable account can be given. at the first, philocrates proposed that alliance as well as peace should be made by athens and her allies with philip and his allies, on the understanding that both parties should keep what they _de facto_ possessed--a provision entailing the renunciation by athens of amphipolis and poteidaea; but that the phocians and the people of halus should be excluded. aeschines opposed this strongly; and both he and demosthenes claim to have supported the resolution of the allies, which would have given the excluded peoples a chance of sharing the advantage of the peace. the feeling of the assembly was with them, although the phocians had recently insulted the athenians by declining to give up to proxenus (the athenian admiral) the towns guarding the approaches to thermopylae, which they had themselves offered to place in the hands of athens. but philocrates obtained the postponement of the decision till the next day. on the next day, if not before, it became plain that philip's envoys would not consent to forgo the exclusion of the phocians and halus; but in order that the assembly might be induced to pass the resolution, the clause expressly excluding them was dropped, and peace and alliance were made between athens and philip, each with their allies.[n] even this was not secured before aeschines and his friends had deprecated rash attempts to imitate the exploits of antiquity by continuing the war, and had explained that philip could not openly accept the phocians as allies, but that when the peace was concluded, he would satisfy all the wishes of the athenians in every way; while eubulus threatened the people with immediate war, involving personal service and heavy taxation, unless they accepted philocrates' decree. a few days afterwards the athenians and the representatives of the allies took the oath to observe the peace: nothing was said about the phocians and halus: cersobleptes' representative was probably not permitted to swear with the rest. the same ten ambassadors as before were instructed to receive philip's oath, and the oaths of his allies, to arrange for the ransom of prisoners, and generally to treat with philip in the interests of athens. demosthenes urged his colleagues (and obtained an instruction from the council to this effect) to sail at once, in order that philip, who was now in thrace, might not make conquests at the expense of athens before ratifying the peace; but they delayed at oreus, went by land, instead of under the escort of proxenus by sea, and only reached pella (the macedonian capital) twenty-three days after leaving athens. philip did not arrive for twenty-seven days more. by this time he had taken cersobleptes prisoner, and captured serrhium, doriscus, and other thracian towns, which were held by athenian troops sent to assist cersobleptes. demosthenes was now openly at variance with his colleagues. he had no doubt realized the necessity of peace, but probably regarded the exclusion of the phocians as unwarrantable, and thought that the policy of his colleagues must end in philip's conquest of all greece. at pella he occupied himself in negotiations for the ransom of prisoners. after taking the oath, philip kept the ambassadors with him until he had made all preparations for his march southward, and during this time he played with them and with the envoys from the other greek states who were present at the same time. his intention of marching to thermopylae was clear; but he seems to have led all alike to suppose that he would fulfil their particular wishes when he had crossed the pass. the ambassadors accompanied him to pherae, where the oath was taken by the representatives of philip's allies; the phocians, halus, and cersobleptes were excluded from the peace. (halus was taken by philip's army shortly afterwards.) the ambassadors of athens then returned homewards, bearing a letter from philip, but did not arrive at athens before philip had reached thermopylae. on their return demosthenes denounced them before the council, which refused them the customary compliments, and (on demosthenes' motion) determined to propose to the people that proxenus with his squadron should be ordered to go to the aid of the phocians and to prevent philip from crossing the pass. when the assembly met on the th of scirophorion (shortly before the middle of july), aeschines rose first, and announced in glowing terms the intention of philip to turn round upon thebes and to re-establish thespiae and plataeae; and hinted at the restoration to athens of euboea and oropus. then philip's letter was read, containing no promises, but excusing the delay of the ambassadors as due to his own request. the assembly was elated at the promises announced by aeschines; demosthenes' attempt to contradict the announcement failed; and on philocrates' motion, it was resolved to extend the peace and alliance with philip to posterity, and to declare that if the phocians refused to surrender the temple of delphi to the amphictyons, athens would take steps against those responsible for the refusal. demosthenes refused to serve on the embassy appointed to convey this resolution to philip: aeschines was appointed, but was too ill to start. the ambassadors set out, but within a few days returned with the news that the phocian army had surrendered to philip (its leader, phalaecus, and his troops being allowed to depart to the peloponnese). the surrender had perhaps been accelerated by the news of the athenian resolution. the assembly, in alarm lest philip should march southwards, now resolved to take measures of precaution and defence, and to send the same ambassadors to philip, to do what they could. they went, aeschines among them, and arrived in the midst of the festivities with which philip was celebrating the success of his plans. the invitation which philip sent to athens--to send a force to join his own, and to assist in settling the affairs of phocis--was (on demosthenes' advice) declined by the assembly; and soon afterwards another letter from philip expressed surprise at the unfriendly attitude taken up by the athenians towards him. philip next summoned the amphictyonic council (the legitimate guardians of the delphian temple, on whose behalf the thebans and thessalians, aided by philip, were now at war with the phocians): and the council, in the absence of many of its members, resolved to transfer the votes of the phocians in the council-meeting to philip, to break up the phocian towns into villages, disarming their inhabitants and taking away their horses, to require them to repay the stolen treasure to the temple by instalments, and to pronounce a curse upon those actually guilty of sacrilege, which would render them liable to arrest anywhere. the destructive part of the sentence was rigorously executed by the thebans. in order to punish the former supporters of the phocians, the right to precedence in consulting the oracle was transferred from athens to philip, by order of the council, and the spartans were excluded from the temple: orchomenus and coroneia were destroyed and their inhabitants enslaved; and thebes became absolute mistress of all boeotia. the pythian games (at delphi) in september were celebrated under philip's presidency; but both sparta and athens refused to send the customary deputation to them, and philip accordingly sent envoys to athens, along with representatives of the amphictyons, to demand recognition for himself as an amphictyonic power. aeschines supported the demand, his argument being apparently to the effect that philip had been forced to act as he had done by the thebans and thessalians; but the assembly was very angry at the results (as they seemed to be) of aeschines' diplomacy and the calamities of the phocians; and it was only when demosthenes, in the speech on the peace, advised compliance, that they were persuaded to give way. to have refused would have brought the united forces of the amphictyonic states against athens: and these she could not have resisted. it was therefore prudent to keep the peace, though demosthenes evidently regarded it only as an armistice.] { } i see, men of athens, that our present situation is one of great perplexity and confusion, for not only have many of our interests been sacrificed, so that it is of no use to make eloquent speeches about them; but even as regards what still remains to us, there is no general agreement in any single point as to what is expedient: some hold one view, and some another. { } perplexing, moreover, and difficult as deliberation naturally is, men of athens, you have made it far more difficult. for while all the rest of mankind are in the habit of resorting to deliberation before the event, you do not do so until afterwards: and consequently, during the whole time that falls within my memory, however high a reputation for eloquence one who upbraids you for all your errors may enjoy, the desired results and the objects of your deliberation pass out of your grasp. { } and yet i believe--and it is because i have convinced myself of this that i have risen--that if you resolve to abandon all clamour and contention, as becomes men who are deliberating on behalf of their country upon so great an issue, i shall be able to describe and recommend measures to you, by which the situation may be improved, and what we have sacrificed, recovered. { } now although i know perfectly well, men of athens, that to speak to you about one's own earlier speeches, and about oneself, is a practice which is always extremely repaying, i feel the vulgarity and offensiveness of it so strongly, that i shrink from it even when i see that it is necessary. i think, however, that you will form a better judgement on the subject on which i am about to speak, if i remind you of some few of the things which i have said on certain previous occasions. { } in the first place, men of athens, when at the time of the disturbances in euboea[n] you were being urged to assist plutarchus, and to undertake an inglorious and costly campaign, i came forward first and unsupported to oppose this action, and was almost torn in pieces by those who for the sake of their own petty profits had induced you to commit many grave errors: and when only a short time had elapsed, along with the shame which you incurred and the treatment which you received--treatment such as no people in the world ever before experienced at the hands of those whom they went to assist--there came the recognition by all of you of the baseness of those who had urged you to this course, and of the excellence of my own advice. { } again, men of athens, i observed that neoptolemus[n] the actor, who was allowed freedom of movement everywhere on the ground of his profession, and was doing the city the greatest mischief, was managing and directing your communications with philip in philip's own interest: and i came forward and informed you; and that, not to gratify any private dislike or desire to misrepresent him, as subsequent events have made plain. { } and in this case i shall not, as before, throw the blame on any speakers or defenders of neoptolemus--indeed, he had no defenders; it is yourselves that i blame. for had you been watching rival tragedies in the theatre, instead of discussing the vital interests of a whole state, you could not have listened with more partiality towards him, or more prejudice against me. { } and yet, i believe, you have all now realized that though, according to his own assertion, this visit to the enemy's country was paid in order that he might get in the debts owing to him there, and return with funds to perform his public service[n] here; though he was always repeating the statement that it was monstrous to accuse those who were transferring their means from macedonia to athens; yet, when the peace had removed all danger, he converted his real estate here into money, and took himself off with it to philip. { } these then are two events which i have foretold--events which, because their real character was exactly and faithfully disclosed by me, are a testimony to the speeches which i have delivered. a third, men of athens, was the following; and when i have given you this one instance, i will immediately proceed to the subject on which i have come forward to speak. when we returned from the embassy, after receiving from philip his oath to maintain the peace, { } there were some[n] who promised that thespiae and plataeae[n] would be repeopled, and said that if philip became master of the situation, he would save the phocians, and would break up the city of thebes into villages; that oropus would be yours, and that euboea would be restored to you in place of amphipolis--with other hopes and deceptions of the same kind, by which you were seduced into sacrificing the phocians in a manner that was contrary to your interest and perhaps to your honour also. but as for me, you will find that neither had i any share in this deception, nor yet did i hold my peace. on the contrary, i warned you plainly, as, i know you remember, that _i_ had no knowledge and no expectations of this kind, and that i regarded such statements as nonsense. { } all these plain instances of superior foresight on my part, men of athens, i shall not ascribe to any cleverness, any boasted merits, of my own. i will not pretend that my foreknowledge and discernment are due to any causes but such as i will name; and they are two. the first, men of athens, is that good fortune, which, i observe, is more powerful than all the cleverness and wisdom on earth. { } the second is the fact that my judgement and reasoning are disinterested. no one can point to any personal gain in connexion with my public acts and words: and therefore i see what is to our interest undistorted, in the light in which the actual facts reveal it. but when you throw money into one scale of the balance, its weight carries everything with it; your judgement is instantly dragged down with it, and one who has acted so can no longer think soundly or healthily about anything. { } now there is one primary condition which must be observed by any one who would furnish the city with allies or contributions or anything else--he must do it without breaking the existing peace: not because the peace is at all admirable or creditable to you, but because, whatever its character, it would have been better, in the actual circumstances, that it should never have been made, than that having been made, it should now be broken through our action. for we have sacrificed many advantages which we possessed when we made it, and which would have rendered the war safer and easier for us then than it is now. { } the second condition, men of athens, is that we shall not draw on these self-styled amphictyons,[n] who are now assembled, until they have an irresistible or a plausible reason for making a united war against us. my own belief is that if war broke out again between ourselves and philip about amphipolis or any such claim of our own, in which the thessalians and argives and thebans had no interest, none of these peoples would go to war against us, least of all--{ } and let no one raise a clamour before he hears what i have to say--least of all the thebans; not because they are in any pleasant mood towards us; not because they would not be glad to gratify philip; but because they know perfectly well, however stupid one may think them,[n] that if war springs up between themselves and you, _they_ will get all the hardships of war for their share, while another will sit by, waiting to secure all the advantages; and they are not likely to sacrifice themselves for such a prospect, unless the origin and the cause of the war are such as concern all alike. { } nor again should we, in my opinion, suffer at all, if we went to war with thebes on account of oropus[n] or any other purely athenian interest. for i believe that while those who would assist ourselves or the thebans would give their aid if their ally's own country were invaded, they would not join either in an offensive campaign. for this is the manner of alliances--such, at least, as are worth considering; and the relationship is naturally of this kind. { } the goodwill of each ally--whether it be towards ourselves or towards the thebans--does not imply the same interest in our conquest of others as in our existence. our continued existence they would all desire for their own sakes; but none of them would wish that through conquest either of us should become their own masters. what is it then that i regard with apprehension? what is it that we must guard against? i fear lest a common pretext should be supplied for the coming war, a common charge against us, which will appeal to all alike. { } for if the argives[n] and messenians and megalopolitans, and some of the other peloponnesians who are in sympathy with them, adopt a hostile attitude towards us owing to our negotiations for peace with sparta, and the belief that to some extent we are giving our approval to the policy which the spartans have pursued: if the thebans already (as we are told) detest us, and are sure to become even more hostile, because we are harbouring those whom they have exiled,[n] and losing no opportunity of displaying our ill-will towards them; { } and the thessalians, because we are offering a refuge to the phocian fugitives;[n] and philip, because we are preventing his admission to amphictyonic rank; my fear is that, when each power has thus its separate reasons for resentment, they may unite in the war against us, with the decrees of the amphictyons for their pretext: and so each may be drawn on farther than their several interests would carry them, just as they were in dealing with the phocians. { } for you doubtless realize that it was not through any unity in their respective ambitions, that the thebans and philip and the thessalians all acted together just now. the thebans, for instance, could not prevent philip from marching through and occupying the passes, nor even from stepping in at the last moment to reap the credit of all that they themselves had toiled for.[n] { } for, as it is, though the thebans have gained something so far as the recovery of their territory is concerned, their honour and reputation have suffered shamefully, since it now appears as though they would have gained nothing, unless philip had crossed the pass. this was not what they intended. they only submitted to all this in their anxiety to obtain orchomenus and coroneia, and their inability to do so otherwise. { } and as to philip, some persons,[n] as you know, are bold enough to say that it was not from any wish to do so that he handed over orchomenus and coroneia to thebes, but from compulsion; and although i must part company with them there, i am sure that at least he did not want to do this _more_ than he desired to occupy the passes, and to get the credit of appearing to have determined the issue of the war, and to manage the pythian games by his own authority. these, i am sure, were the objects which he coveted most greedily. { } the thessalians, again, did not desire to see either the thebans or philip growing powerful; for in any such contingency they thought that they themselves were menaced. but they did desire to secure two privileges--admission to the amphictyonic meeting, and the recovery of rights at delphi;[n] and in their eagerness for these privileges, they joined philip in the actions in question. thus you will find that each was led on, for the sake of private ends, to take action which they in no way desired to take. but this is the very thing against which we have now to be on our guard. { } 'are we then, for fear of this, to submit to philip? and do _you_ require this of us?' you ask me. far from it. our action must be such as will be in no way unworthy of us, and at the same time will not lead to war, but will prove to all our good sense and the justice of our position: and, in answer to those who are bold enough to think that we should refuse to submit to anything whatever,[n] [ ] and who cannot foresee the war that must follow, i wish to urge this consideration. we are allowing the thebans to hold oropus; and if any one asked us to state the reason honestly, we should say that it was to avoid war. { } again, we have just ceded amphipolis to philip by the treaty of peace;[n] we permit the cardians[n] to occupy a position apart from the other colonists in the chersonese; we allow the prince of caria[n] to seize the islands of chios, cos, and rhodes, and the byzantines to drive our vessels to shore[n]--obviously because we believe that the tranquillity afforded by peace brings more blessings than any collision or contention over these grievances would bring: so that it would be a foolish and an utterly perverse policy, when we have behaved in this manner towards each of our adversaries individually, where our own most essential interests were concerned, to go now to war with all of them together, on account of this shadow at delphi.[n] footnotes [ ] the term 'the allies of athens' was ambiguous. it might be taken (as it was taken by philip and his envoys) to include only the remaining members of the league (see p. ), who were represented by the synod then sitting, and whose policy athens could control. but it was evidently possible to put a wider interpretation upon it, as the assembly probably did and as demosthenes often does (e.g. speech on embassy, § ), and to understand it as including the phocians and others (such as cersobleptes) with whom athens had a treaty of alliance. much of the trouble which followed arose out of this ambiguity. [ ] [greek: oud hotioun]. the second philippic (or. vi) [_introduction_. after settling affairs at delphi in , philip returned to macedonia. during a considerable part of and in the early months of he was occupied with campaigns against the illyrians, dardani, and triballi. but in the summer (probably) of he resumed his activities in greece, garrisoning pherae and other towns of thessaly with macedonians, appropriating the revenues derived from the thessalian ports, and establishing oligarchical governments throughout the country. at the same time negotiations were going on between himself and athens with regard to the thracian strongholds which he had captured in . he refused to give these up, though he offered to cut a canal across the chersonese, for the protection of the athenian allies there from the attacks of the thracians. he also sent money and mercenaries to help the messenians and argives, who, like the megalopolitans, were anxious to secure their independence of sparta. athens, which was on friendly terms with sparta, sent envoys to the peloponnesian states to counteract philip's influence, and of these demosthenes was one. in return, argos and messene complained to athens of her interference with their attempt to secure freedom, and philip sent envoys to deprecate the charges made against him by the athenian ambassadors in the peloponnese. he pointed out that he had not broken any promises made to athens at the time of the peace, for he had made none. (in fact, if demosthenes' account is correct, he had confined himself to vague expressions of goodwill; the promises had been made by aeschines.) the second philippic, spoken late in , proposes a reply to philip, the text of which has unfortunately not come down to us. the peloponnesian envoys appear also to have been in athens at the time; and philip's supporters had put forward various explanations of his conduct at the time when the peace was made. to these also demosthenes replies.] { } in all our discussions, men of athens, with regard to the acts of violence by which philip contravenes the terms of the peace, i observe that, although the speeches on our side are always manifestly just and sympathetic,[n] and although those who denounce philip are always regarded as saying what ought to be said, yet practically nothing is done which ought to be done, or which would make it worth while to listen to such speeches. { } on the contrary, the condition of public affairs as a whole has already been brought to a point at which, the more and the more evidently a speaker can convict philip both of transgressing the peace which he made with you and of plotting against all the hellenes, the harder it is for him to advise you how you should act. { } the responsibility for this rests with us all, men of athens. it is by deeds and actions, not by words, that a policy of encroachment must be arrested: and yet, in the first place, we who rise to address you will not face the duty of proposing or advising such action, for fear of unpopularity with you, though we dilate upon the character of philip's acts, upon their atrocity, and so forth; and, in the second place, you who sit and listen, better qualified though you doubtless are than philip for using the language of justice and appreciating it at the mouths of others, are nevertheless absolutely inert, when it is a question of preventing him from executing the designs in which he is now engaged. { } it follows as the inevitable and perhaps reasonable consequence, that you are each more successful in that to which your time and your interest is given--he in actions, yourselves in words. now if it is still enough for you, that your words are more just than his, your course is easy, and no labour is involved in it. { } but if we are to inquire how the evil of the present situation is to be corrected; if its advance is not still to continue, unperceived, until we are confronted by a power so great that we cannot even raise a hand in our own defence; then we must alter our method of deliberation, and all of us who speak, and all of you who listen, must resolve to prefer the counsels which are best, and which can save us, to those which are most easy and most attractive. { } i am amazed, men of athens, in the first place, that any one who sees the present greatness of philip and the wide mastery which he has gained, can be free from alarm, or can imagine that this involves no peril to athens, or that it is not against you that all his preparations are being made. and i would beg you, one and all, to listen while i put before you in a few words the reasoning by which i have come to entertain the opposite expectation, and the grounds upon which i regard philip as an enemy; that so, if my own foresight appears to you the truer, you may believe me; but if that of the persons who have no fears and have placed their trust in him, you may give your adhesion to them. { } here then, men of athens, is my argument. of what, in the first place, did philip become master, when the peace was concluded? of thermopylae, and of the situation in phocis. next, what use did he make of his power? he deliberately chose to act in the interests of thebes, not in those of athens. and why? he scrutinized every consideration in the light of his own ambition and of his desire for universal conquest: he took no thought for peace, or tranquillity, or justice; { } and he saw quite correctly that our state and our national character being what they are, there was no attraction that he could offer, nothing that he could do, which would induce you to sacrifice any of the other hellenes to him for your own advantage. he saw that you would take account of what was right; that you would shrink from the infamy attaching to such a policy; that you would exercise all the foresight which the situation demanded, and would oppose any such attempt on his part, as surely as if you were at open war with him. { } but the thebans, he believed--and the event proved that he was right--in return for what they were getting would let him do as he pleased in all that did not concern them; and far from acting against him, or preventing him effectively, would even join him in his campaign, if he bade them. his services to the messenians and the argives at the present moment are due to his having formed the same conception of them. and this, men of athens, is the highest of all tributes to yourselves: { } for these actions of his amount to a verdict upon you, that you alone of all peoples would never, for any gain to yourselves, sacrifice the common rights of the hellenes, nor barter away your loyalty to them for any favour or benefit at his hands. this conception of you he has naturally formed, just as he has formed the opposite conception of the argives and the thebans, not only from his observation of the present, but also from his consideration of the past. { } he discovers, i imagine, and is told, how when your forefathers might have been rulers of the rest of the hellenes, on condition of submitting to the king themselves, they not only refused to tolerate the suggestion, on the occasion when alexander [n], the ancestor of the present royal house, came as his herald to negotiate, but chose rather to leave their country and to face any suffering which they might have to endure; and how they followed up the refusal by those deeds which all are so eager to tell, but to which no one has ever been able to do justice; and for that reason, i shall myself forbear to speak of them, and rightly; for the grandeur of their achievements passes the power of language to describe. he knows, on the other hand, how the forefathers of the thebans and argives, in the one case, joined the barbarian army, in the other, offered no resistance to it. { } he knows, therefore, that both these peoples will welcome what is to their own advantage, instead of considering the common interests of the hellenes: and so he thought that, if he chose you for his allies, he would be choosing friends who would only serve a righteous cause; while if he joined himself to them, he would win accomplices who would further his own ambitions. that is why he chose them, as he chooses them now, in preference to you. for he certainly does not see them in possession of more ships than you; nor has he discovered some inland empire, and withdrawn from the seaboard and the trading-ports; nor does he forget the words and the promises, on the strength of which he was granted the peace. { } but some one may tell us, with an air of complete knowledge of the matter, that what then moved philip to act thus was not his ambition nor any of the motives which i impute to him, but his belief that the demands of thebes were more righteous than your own. i reply, that this statement, above all others, is one which he cannot possibly make _now_. how can one who is ordering sparta to give up messene put forward his belief in the righteousness of the act, as his excuse for handing over orchomenus and coroneia to thebes? { } 'but,' we are told (as the last remaining plea), 'he was forced to make these concessions, and did so against his better judgement, finding himself caught between the cavalry of thessaly and the infantry of thebes.' admirable! and so, we are informed, he intends henceforth to be wary of the thebans, and the tale goes round that he intends to fortify elateia [n]. 'intends,' indeed! and i expect that it will remain an intention! { } but the help which he is giving to the messenians and argives is no 'intention'; for he is actually sending mercenaries to them and dispatching funds, and is himself expected to arrive on the spot with a great force. is he trying to annihilate the spartans, the existing enemies of thebes, and at the same time protecting the phocians, whom he himself has ruined? who will believe such a tale? { } for if philip had really acted against his will and under compulsion in the first instance--if he were now really intending to renounce the thebans--i cannot believe that he would be so consistently opposing their enemies. on the contrary, his present course plainly proves that his former action also was the result of deliberate policy; and to any sound observation, it is plain that the whole of his plans are being organized for one end--the destruction of athens. { } indeed, this has now come to be, in a sense, a matter of necessity for him. only consider. it is empire that he desires, and you, as he believes, are his only possible rivals in this. he has been acting wrongfully towards you for a long time, as he himself best knows; for it is the occupation of your possessions that enables him to hold all his other conquests securely, convinced, as he is, that if he had let amphipolis and poteidaea go, he could not dwell in safety even at home. { } these two facts, then, he well knows--first, that his designs are aimed at you, and secondly, that you are aware of it: and as he conceives you to be men of sense, he considers that you hold him in righteous detestation: and, in consequence, his energies are roused: for he expects to suffer disaster, if you get your opportunity, unless he can anticipate you by inflicting it upon you. { } so he is wide awake; he is on the alert; he is courting the help of others against athens--of the thebans and those peloponnesians who sympathize with their wishes; thinking that their desire of gain will make them embrace the immediate prospect, while their native stupidity will prevent them from foreseeing any of the consequences. yet there are examples, plainly visible to minds which are even moderately well-balanced[n]--examples which it fell to my lot to bring before messenian and argive audiences, but which had better, perhaps, be laid before yourselves as well. { } 'can you not imagine,' i said, 'men of messenia, the impatience with which the olynthians used to listen to any speeches directed against philip in those times, when he was giving up anthemus to them--a city claimed as their own by all former macedonian kings; when he was expelling the athenian colonists from poteidaea and presenting it to the olynthians; when he had taken upon his own shoulders their quarrel with athens, and given them the enjoyment of that territory? did they expect, do you think, to suffer as they have done? if any one had foretold it, would they have believed him? { } and yet,' i continued, 'after enjoying territory not their own for a very short time, they are robbed of their own by him for a great while to come; they are foully driven forth--not conquered merely, but betrayed by one another and sold; for it is not safe for a free state to be on these over-friendly terms with a tyrant. { } what, again, of the thessalians? do you imagine,' i asked, 'that when he was expelling their tyrants, or again, when he was giving them nicaea and magnesia, they expected to see the present council of ten[n] established in their midst? did they expect that the restorer of their amphictyonic rights would take their own revenues from them for himself? impossible! and yet these things came to pass, as all men may know. { } you yourselves,' i continued, 'at present behold only the gifts and the promises of philip. pray, if you are really in your right minds, that you may never see the accomplishment of his deceit and treachery. there are, as you know well,' i said, 'all kinds of inventions designed for the protection and security of cities--palisades, walls, trenches, and every kind of defence. { } all these are made with hands, and involve expense as well. but there is one safeguard which all sensible men possess by nature--a safeguard which is a valuable protection to all, but above all to a democracy against a tyrant. and what is this? it is distrust. guard this possession and cleave to it; preserve this, and you need never fear disaster. { } what is it that you desire?' i said. 'is it freedom? and do you not see that the very titles that philip bears are utterly alien to freedom? for a king, a tyrant, is always the foe of freedom and the enemy of law. will you not be on your guard,' i said, 'lest in striving to be rid of war, you find yourselves slaves?'[n] { } my audience heard these words and received them with a tumult of approbation, as well as many other speeches from the envoys, both when i was present and again later. and yet, it seems, there is still no better prospect of their keeping philip's friendship and promises at a distance. { } in fact, the extraordinary thing is not that messenians and certain peloponnesians should act against their own better judgement, but that you who understand for yourselves, and who hear us, your orators, telling you, that there is a design against you, and that the toils are closing round you--that you, i say, by always refusing to act at once, should be about to find (as i think you will) that you have exposed yourselves unawares to the utmost peril: so much more does the pleasure and ease of the moment weigh with you, than any advantage to be reaped at some future date. { } in regard to the practical measures which you must take, you will, if you are wise, deliberate by yourselves[n] later. but i will at once propose an answer which you may make to-day, and which it will be consistent with your duty to have adopted. [_the answer is read._] now the right course, men of athens, was to have summoned before you those who conveyed the promises[n] on the strength of which you were induced to make the peace. { } for i could never have brought myself to serve on the embassy, nor, i am sure, would you have discontinued the war, had you imagined that philip, when he had obtained peace, would act as he has acted. what we were then told was something very different from this. and there are others, too, whom you should summon. you ask whom i mean? after the peace had been made, and i had returned from the second embassy, which was sent to administer the oaths, i saw how the city was being hoodwinked, and i spoke out repeatedly, protesting and forbidding you to sacrifice thermopylae and the phocians: { } and the men to whom i refer were those who then said that a water-drinker[n] like myself was naturally a fractious and ill-tempered fellow; while philip, if only he crossed the pass, would fulfil your fondest prayers; for he would fortify thespiae and plataeae; he would put an end to the insolence of the thebans; he would cut a canal through the chersonese at his own charges, and would repay you for amphipolis by the restoration of euboea and oropus. all this was said from this very platform, and i am quite sure that you remember it well, though your memory of those who injure you is but short. { } to crown your disgrace, with nothing but these hopes in view, you resolved that this same peace should hold good for your posterity also; so completely had you fallen under their influence. but why do i speak of all this now? why do i bid you summon these men? by heaven, i will tell the truth without reserve, and will hold nothing back. { } my object is not to give way to abuse, and so secure myself as good a hearing[n] as others in this place, while giving those who have come into collision with me from the first an opportunity for a further claim[n] upon philip's money. nor do i wish to waste time in empty words. { } no; but i think that the plan which philip is pursuing will some day trouble you more than the present situation does; for his design is moving towards fulfilment, and though i shrink from precise conjecture, i fear its accomplishment may even now be only too close at hand. and when the time comes when you can no longer refuse to attend to what is passing; when you no longer hear from me or from some other that it is all directed against you, but all alike see it for yourselves and know it for a certainty; then, i think, you will be angry and harsh enough. { } and i am afraid that because your envoys have withheld from you the guilty secret of the purposes which they have been bribed to forward, those who are trying to remedy in some degree the ruin of which these men have been the instruments will fall victims to your wrath. for i observe that it is the general practice of some persons to vent their anger, not upon the guilty, but upon those who are most within their grasp. { } while then the trouble is still to come, still in process of growth, while we can still listen to one another's words, i would remind each of you once more of what he well knows--who it was that induced you to sacrifice the phocians and thermopylae, the control of which gave philip command of the road to attica and the peloponnesus; who it was, i say, that converted your debate about your rights and your interests abroad into a debate about the safety of your own country, and about war on your own borders--a war which will bring distress to each of us personally, when it is at our doors, but which sprang into existence on that day. { } had you not been misled by them, no trouble would have befallen this country. for we cannot imagine that philip would have won victories by sea which would have enabled him to approach attica with his fleet, or would have marched by land past thermopylae and the phocians; but he would either have been acting straightforwardly--keeping the peace and remaining quiet; or else he would have found himself instantly plunged into a war no less severe than that which originally made him desirous of the peace. { } what i have said is sufficient by way of a reminder to you. heaven grant that the time may not come when the truth of my words will be tested with all severity: for i at least have no desire to see any one meet with punishment, however much he may deserve his doom, if it is accompanied by danger and calamity to us all. on the embassy (or. xix) [_introduction_. the principal events with which a reader of this speech ought to be acquainted have already been narrated (see especially the introductions to the last two speeches). the influence of the anti-macedonian party grew gradually from the time of the peace onwards. in , within a month after the return of the second embassy, the ambassadors presented their reports before the logistae or board of auditors (after a futile attempt on the part of aeschines to avoid making a report altogether); and timarchus, supported by demosthenes, there announced his intention of taking proceedings against aeschines for misconduct on the second embassy. but timarchus' own past history was not above reproach: he was attacked by aeschines for the immoralities of his youth, which, it was stated, disqualified him from acting as prosecutor, and though defended by demosthenes, was condemned and disfranchised ( b.c.). but early in hypereides impeached philocrates for corruption as ambassador, and obtained his condemnation to death--a penalty which he escaped by voluntary exile before the conclusion of the trial; and, later in the same year, demosthenes brought the same charge against aeschines. in the meantime (since the delivery of demosthenes' second philippic) philip had been making fresh progress. the arcadians and argives (for the athenian envoys to the peloponnese in seem to have had little success) were ready to open their gates to him. his supporters in elis massacred their opponents, and with them the remnant of the phocians who had crossed over to elis with phalaecus. at megara, perillus and ptoeodorus almost succeeded in bringing a force of philip's mercenaries into the town, but the attempt was defeated, by the aid of an athenian force under phocion. in euboea philip's troops occupied porthmus, where the democratic party of eretria had taken refuge, owing to an overthrow of the constitution (brought about by philip's intrigues) which resulted in the establishment of cleitarchus as tyrant. in the course of the same year ( ) occurred two significant trials. the first was that of antiphon, who had made an offer to philip to burn the athenian dockyards at the peiraeus. he was summarily arrested by order of demosthenes (probably in virtue of some administrative office): aeschines obtained his release, but he was re-arrested by order of the council of areopagus[ ] and condemned to death. the other trial was held before the amphictyonic council on the motion of the people of delos, to decide whether the athenians should continue to possess the right of managing the temple of delos. the assembly chose aeschines as counsel for athens; but the council of areopagus, which had been given power to revise the appointment, put hypereides in his place. hypereides won the case. early in (or at all events before the middle of the year), philip sent python of byzantium to complain of the language used about him by athenian orators, and to offer to revise and amend the terms of the peace of philocrates. in response, an embassy was sent, headed by hegesippus, a violent opponent of macedonia, to propose to philip ( ) that instead of the clause 'that each party shall retain possession of what they have', a clause, 'that each party shall possess what is their own,' should be substituted; and ( ) that all greek states not included in the treaty of peace should be declared free, and that athens and philip should assist them, if they were attacked. these proposals, if sanctioned, would obviously have reopened the question of amphipolis, pydna, and poteidaea, as well as of cardia and the thracian towns taken by philip in . hegesippus, moreover, was personally objectionable, and the embassy was dismissed with little courtesy by philip, who even banished from macedonia the athenian poet xenocleides for acting as host to the envoys. the feeling against philip in athens was evidently strong, when the prosecution of aeschines by demosthenes took place. the trial was held before a jury (probably consisting of , persons), presided over by the board of auditors. demosthenes spoke first, and aeschines replied in a speech which is preserved. there is no doubt, on a comparison of the two speeches, that each, before it was published, received alterations and insertions, intended to meet the adversary's points, or to give a better colour to passages which had been unfavourably received. probably not all the refutations 'in advance' were such in reality. but there is no sufficient reason to doubt that the speeches were delivered substantially as we have them. aeschines was acquitted by thirty votes. the question of the guilt or innocence of aeschines will probably never be finally settled. a great part of his conduct can be explained as a sincere attempt to carry out the policy of eubulus, or as the issue of a genuine belief that it was best for athens to make terms with philip and stand on his side. even so the wisdom and the veracity of certain speeches which he had made is open to grave question; but this is a different thing from corruption. moreover, to some of demosthenes' arguments he has a conclusive reply. it is more difficult to explain his apparent change of opinion between the th and th of elaphebolion, (if demosthenes' report of the debates is to be trusted); and some writers are disposed to date his corruption from the intervening night. nor is it easy to meet demosthenes' argument that if aeschines had really been taken in by philip, and believed the promises which he announced, or if he had actually heard philip make the promises, he would have regarded philip afterwards as a personal enemy, and not as a friend. but even on these points aeschines might reply (though he could not reply so to the athenian people or jury) that though he did not trust the promises, he regarded the interest of athens as so closely bound up with the alliance with philip, that he considered it justifiable to deceive the people into making the alliance, or at least to take the risk of the promises which he announced proving untrue. in any case there is no convincing evidence of corruption; and it may be taken as practically certain that he was not bribed to perform particular services. it is less certain that he was not influenced by generous presents from philip in forming his judgement of philip's character and intentions. the standard of athenian public opinion in regard to the receipt of presents was not that of the english civil service; and the ancient orators accuse one another of corruption almost as a matter of course. (we have seen that demosthenes began the attack upon eubulus' party in this form as early as the speech for the rhodians; it appears in almost every subsequent oration: and in their turn, his opponents make the same charge against him.) it is, in any case, remarkable that at a time when the people was plainly exasperated with the peace and its authors, and very ill-disposed towards philip, a popular jury nevertheless acquitted aeschines; and the verdict is not sufficiently explained either by the fact that eubulus supported aeschines or by the jurors' memory of demosthenes' own part in the earlier peace-negotiations, though this must have weakened the force of his attack. that demosthenes himself believed aeschines to have been bribed, and could himself see no other explanation of his conduct, need not be doubted; and although the speech contains some of those misrepresentations of fact and passages of irrelevant personal abuse which deface some of his best work, it also contains some of his finest pieces of oratory and narrative. the second part of the speech is more broken up into short sections and less clearly arranged than the first; earlier arguments are repeated, and a few passages may be due (at least in their present shape) to revision after the trial: but the latter part even as it stands is successful in leaving the points of greatest importance strongly impressed upon the mind. the following analysis of the speech may enable the reader to find his way through it without serious difficulty:-- introduction (§§ - ) (i) _exordium_ (§§ , ). impartiality requested of the jury, in view of aeschines' attempt to escape by indirect means. (ii) _points of the trial_ (§§ - ). an ambassador must ( ) give true reports; ( ) give good advice; ( ) obey his instructions; ( ) not lose time; ( ) be incorruptible. (iii) _preliminary exposition of the arguments_ (§§ - ). ( ) the previous anti-macedonian zeal of aeschines suddenly collapsed after the first embassy. ( ) in the deliberations on the peace, aeschines supported philocrates. ( ) after the second embassy, aeschines prevented athens from guarding thermopylae and saving the phocians, by false reports and promises. ( ) such a change of policy is only explicable by corruption. part (§§ - ) the five points of introduction (ii) are treated as three, or in three groups. (i) the reports made by aeschines on his return from the second embassy, and his advice, especially as to the ruin of the phocians (§§ - ). ( ) the reports (a) to the senate, (b) to the people, and their reception (§§ - ). ( ) evidence that aeschines conspired with philip against the phocians, whose ruin is described (§§ - ). ( ) refutation of three anticipated objections, beginning at § , § , § respectively (§§ - ). ( ) the danger to athens from aeschines' treachery (§§ - ). ( ) request to confine the trial strictly to relevant points (§§ - ). (ii) the corruption of aeschines by the bribes of philip (§§ - ). ( ) arguments (beginning § , § , § , § ) showing the corruption of aeschines (§§ - ). ( ) refutation of anticipated objections (beginning at § , § , § ) (§§ - ). (iii) aeschines' loss of time, by which philip profited, and disobedience to his instructions (§§ - ). ( ) narrative of the second embassy (§§ - ). ( ) comparison of the two embassies (§§ - ). ( ) comparison of demosthenes' own conduct with that of the other ambassadors (§§ - ). recapitulation of the points established (§§ , ). part ii (§§ - ) (i) the injury done to athens-- (a) by the loss of thrace and the hellespont; (b) generally, by false reports from ambassadors (§§ - ). (ii) refutation of anticipated objections-- (a) 'it is not philip's fault that he has not satisfied athens' (§ ). (b) 'demosthenes has no right to prosecute' (§§ - ): including a digression (§§ - ) on aeschines' character and incidents in his life. (iii) demosthenes' object in prosecuting, passing into reproof of the laxity of athens towards traitors (§§ - ). (iv) warning against any attempt by aeschines to confuse the dates and incidents of the two embassies (§§ - .) (v) criticism of aeschines' brothers and his prosecution of timarchus (§§ - ). (vi) the increasing danger from traitors, and the traditional attitude of athens towards them (§§ - ). (vii) attack upon eubulus for defending aeschines (§§ - ). (viii) philip's policy and methods; proofs of aeschines' complicity repeated (§§ - ). (ix) warnings to the jury against aeschines' attempts to mislead them; and conclusion (§§ - ).] { } how much interest this case has excited, men of athens, and how much canvassing has taken place, must, i feel sure, have become fairly evident to you all, after the persistent overtures just now made to you, while you were drawing your lots.[n] yet i will make the request of you all--a request which ought to be granted even when unasked--that you will not allow the favour or the person of any man to weigh more with you than justice and the oath which each of you swore before he entered the court. remember that what i ask is for your own welfare and for that of the whole state; while the entreaties and the eager interest of the supporters of the accused have for their aim the selfish advantage of individuals: and it is not to confirm criminals in the possession of such advantages that the laws have called you together, but to prevent their attainment of them. { } now i observe that while all who enter upon public life in an honest spirit profess themselves under a perpetual responsibility, even when they have passed their formal examination, the defendant aeschines does the very reverse. for before entering your presence to give an account of his actions, he has put out of the way one of those[n] who appeared against him at his examination; and others he pursues with threats, thus introducing into public life a practice which is of all the most atrocious and most contrary to your interests. for if one who has transacted and managed any public business is to render himself secure against accusation by spreading terror round him, rather than by the justice of his case, your supremacy[n] must pass entirely out of your hands. { } i have every confidence and belief that i shall prove the defendant guilty of many atrocious crimes, for which he deserves the extreme penalty of the law. but i will tell you frankly of the fear which troubles me in spite of this confidence. it seems to me, men of athens, that the issue of every trial before you is determined as much by the occasion as by the facts; and i am afraid that the length of time which has elapsed since the embassy may have caused you to forget the crimes of aeschines, or to be too familiar with them. { } i will tell you therefore how, in spite of this, you may yet, as i believe, arrive at a just decision and give a true verdict to-day. you have, gentlemen of the jury, to inquire and to consider what are the points on which it is proper to demand an account from an ambassador. he is responsible first for his report; secondly, for what he has persuaded you to do; thirdly, for his execution of your instructions; next, for dates; and, besides all these things, for the integrity or venality of his conduct throughout. { } and why is he responsible in these respects? because on his report must depend your discussion of the situation: if his report is true, your decision is a right one: if otherwise, it is the reverse. again, you regard the counsels of ambassadors as especially trustworthy. you listen to them in the belief that they have personal knowledge of the matter with which they were sent to deal. never, therefore, ought an ambassador to be convicted of having given you any worthless or pernicious advice. { } again, it is obviously proper that he should have carried out your instructions to him with regard to both speech and action, and your express resolutions as to his conduct. very good. but why is he responsible for dates? because, men of athens, it often happens that the opportunity upon which much that is of great importance depends lasts but for a moment; and if this opportunity is deliberately and treacherously surrendered to the enemy, no subsequent steps can possibly recover it. { } but as to the integrity or corruption of an ambassador, you would all, i am sure, admit that to make money out of proceedings that injure the city is an atrocious thing and deserves your heavy indignation. yet the implied distinction was not recognized by the framer of our law. he absolutely forbade _all_ taking of presents, thinking, i believe, that a man who has once received presents and been corrupted with money no longer remains even a safe judge of what is to the interest of the city. { } if then i can convict the defendant aeschines by conclusive proofs of having made a report that was utterly untrue, and prevented the people from hearing the truth from me; if i prove that he gave advice that was entirely contrary to your interests; that on his mission he fulfilled none of your instructions to him; that he wasted time, during which opportunities for accomplishing much that was of great importance were sacrificed and lost to the city; and that he received presents in payment for all these services, in company with philocrates; then condemn him, and exact the penalty which his crimes deserve. if i fail to prove these points, or fail to prove them all, then regard me with contempt, and let the defendant go. { } i have still to charge him, men of athens, with many atrocious acts in addition to these--acts which would naturally call forth the execration of every one among you. but i desire, before all else that i am about to say, to remind you (though most of you, i know, remember it well) of the position which aeschines originally took up in public life, and the speeches which he thought it right to address to the people against philip; for i would have you realize that his own actions, his own speeches at the beginning of his career, are the strongest evidence of his corruption. { } according to his own public declaration at that time, he was the first athenian to perceive that philip had designs against the hellenes and was corrupting certain leading men in arcadia. with ischander, the son of neoptolemus, to second him in his performance, he came before the council and he came before the people, to speak on the subject: he persuaded you to send envoys in all directions to bring together a congress at athens to discuss the question of war with philip: { } then, on his return from arcadia, he reported to you those noble and lengthy speeches which, he said, he had delivered on your behalf before the ten thousand[n] at megalopolis, in reply to philip's spokesman, hieronymus; and he described at length the criminal wrong that was done, not only to their own several countries, but to all hellas, by men who took bribes and received money from philip. { } such was his policy at that time, and such the sample which he displayed of his sentiments. then you were induced by aristodemus, neoptolemus, ctesiphon, and the rest of those who brought reports from macedonia in which there was not an honest word, to send ambassadors to philip and to negotiate for peace. aeschines himself is appointed one of them, in the belief, not that he was one of those who would sell your interests, or had placed confidence in philip, but rather one who would keep an eye on the rest. the speeches which he had already delivered, and his antipathy to philip, naturally led you to take this view of him. { } well, after this he came to me[n] and tried to make an agreement by which we should act in concert on the embassy, and urged strongly that we should both keep an eye upon that abominable and shameless man philocrates; and until we returned to athens from the first embassy, i at least, men of athens, had no idea that he had been corrupted and had sold himself. for (not to mention the other speeches which, as i have told you, he had made on former occasions) at the first of the assemblies in which you debated about the peace, he rose and delivered an exordium which i think i can repeat to you word for word as he uttered it at the meeting. { } 'if philocrates,' he said, 'had spent a very long time in studying how he could best oppose the peace, i do not think he could have found a better device than a motion of this kind. the peace which he proposes is one which i can never recommend the city to make, so long as a single athenian remains alive. peace, however, we ought, i think, to make.' { } and he made a brief and reasonable speech in the same tone. but though he had spoken thus at the first meeting, in the hearing of you all, yet at the second meeting, when the peace was to be ratified; when i was upholding the resolution of the allies and working for a peace on just and equitable terms; when you in your desire for such a peace would not even listen to the voice of the despicable philocrates; then, i say, aeschines rose and spoke in support of him, using language for which he deserves, god knows, to die many deaths, { } saying that you must not remember your forefathers, nor tolerate speakers who recalled your trophies and your victories by sea; and that he would frame and propose a law, that you should assist no hellene who had not previously assisted you. these words he had the callous shamelessness to utter in the very presence and hearing of the ambassadors[n] whom you had summoned from the hellenic states, in pursuance of the advice which he himself had given you, before he had sold himself. { } you elected him again, men of athens, to receive the oaths. how he frittered away the time, how cruelly he injured all his country's interests, and what violent mutual enmity arose between myself and him in consequence of his conduct and of my desire to prevent it, you shall hear presently. but when we returned from this embassy which was sent to receive the oaths, and the report of which is now under examination; when we had secured nothing, either small or great, of all that had been promised and expected when you were making the peace, but had been totally deceived; when they had again acted without regard to their instructions,[n] and had conducted their mission in direct defiance of your decree; we came before the council: and there are many who have personal knowledge of what i am about to tell you, for the council-chamber was crowded with spectators. { } well, i came forward and reported to the council the whole truth: i denounced these men: i recounted the whole story, beginning with those first hopes, aroused in you by the report of ctesiphon and aristodemus, and going on to the speeches which aeschines delivered during the time of the peace-negotiations, and the position into which they had brought the city: as regards all that remained to you--i meant the phocians and thermopylae--i counselled you not to abandon these, not to be victims once more of the same mistake, not to let yourselves be reduced to extremities through depending upon a succession of hopes and promises: and i carried the council with me. { } but when the day of the assembly came, and it was our duty to address you, the defendant aeschines came forward before any of his colleagues--and i entreat you, in god's name, to follow me, and try to recollect whether what i tell you is true; for now we have come to the very thing which so cruelly injured and ruined your whole cause. he made not the remotest attempt to give any report of the results of the embassy--if indeed he questioned the truth of my allegations at all--but instead of this, he made statements of such a character, promising you benefits so numerous and so magnificent, that he completely carried you away with him. { } for he said that,[n] before his return, he had persuaded philip upon all the points in which the interests of the city were involved, in regard both to the amphictyonic dispute and to all other matters: and he described to you a long speech which he professed to have addressed to philip against the thebans, and of which he reported to you the substance, calculating that, as the result of his own diplomacy, you would within two or three days, without stirring from home or taking the field or suffering any inconvenience, hear that thebes was being blockaded, alone and isolated from the rest of boeotia, { } that thespiae and plataeae were being repeopled, and that the debt due to the god[n] was being exacted not from the phocians, but from the thebans who had planned the seizure of the temple. for he said that he gave philip to understand that those who planned the act were no less guilty of impiety than those whose hands executed the plan; and that on this account the thebans had set a price upon his head. { } moreover, he said that he heard some of the euboeans, who had been thrown into a state of panic and confusion by the friendly relations established between athens and philip, saying to the ambassadors, 'you have not succeeded, gentlemen, in concealing from us the conditions on which you have made your peace with philip; nor are we unaware that while you have given him amphipolis, he has undertaken to hand over euboea to you.' there was, indeed, another matter which he had arranged as well, but he did not wish to mention this at present, since even as it was some of his colleagues were jealous of him. { } this was an enigmatical and indirect allusion to oropus. these utterances naturally raised him high in your estimation; he seemed to be an admirable speaker and a marvellous man; and he stepped down with a very lofty air. then i rose and denied all knowledge of these things, and at the same time attempted to repeat some part of my report to the council. but they now took their stand by me, one on this side, one on that--the defendant and philocrates; they shouted, they interrupted me, and finally they jeered, while you laughed. { } you would not hear, and you did not wish to believe anything but what aeschines had reported. heaven knows, your feelings were natural enough; for who, that expected all these marvellous benefits, would have tolerated a speaker who said that the expectation would not be realized, or denounced the proceedings of those who made the promise? all else, of course, was of secondary importance at the time, in comparison with the expectations and the hopes placed before you; any contradiction appeared to be nothing but sheer obstruction and malignity, while the proceedings described seemed to be of incredible importance and advantage to the city. { } now with what object have i recalled these occurrences to you before everything else, and described these speeches of his? my first and chief object, men of athens, is that none of you, when he hears me speak of any of the things that were done and is struck by their unparalleled atrocity, may ask in surprise why i did not tell you at once and inform you of the facts; { } but may remember the promises which these men made at each critical moment, and by which they entirely prevented every one else from obtaining a hearing; and that splendid pronouncement by aeschines; and that you may realize that in addition to all his other crimes, you have suffered this further wrong at his hands--that you were prevented from learning the truth instantly, when you ought to have learned it, because you were deluded by hopes, deceits and promises. { } that is my first and, as i have said, my chief object in recalling all these occurrences. but there is a second which is of no less importance than the first, and what is this? it is that you may remember the policy which he adopted in his public life, when he was still uncorrupted--his guarded and mistrustful attitude towards philip; and may consider the sudden growth of confidence and friendship which followed; { } and then, if all that he announced to you has been realized, if the results achieved are satisfactory, you may believe that all has been done out of an honest interest in the welfare of athens; but if, on the other hand, the issue has been exactly the opposite of that which he predicted: if his policy has involved the city in great disgrace and in grave perils, you may then be sure that his conversion was due to his own base covetousness and to his having sold the truth for money. { } and now, since i have been led on to this subject, i desire to describe to you, before everything else, the way in which they took the phocian question entirely out of your hands. and let none of you, gentlemen of the jury, when he looks at the magnitude of the transactions, imagine that the crimes with which the defendant is charged are on a grander scale than one of his reputation could compass. you have rather to observe that any one whom you would have placed in such a position as this--a position in which, as each critical moment arrived, the decision would be in his hands--could have brought about disasters equal to those for which aeschines is responsible, if, like aeschines, he had wished to sell his services, and to cheat and deceive you. { } for however contemptible[n] may be the men whom you frequently employ in the public service, it does not follow that the part which the world expects this city to play is a contemptible one. far from it! and further, though it was philip, of course, who destroyed the phocian people, it was aeschines and his party who seconded philip's efforts. and so what you have to observe and consider is whether, so far as the preservation of the phocians came within the scope of their mission, these men deliberately destroyed and ruined that whole cause. you have not to suppose that aeschines ruined the phocians by himself. how could he have done so? { } (_to the clerk._) now give me the draft-resolution which the council passed in view of my report, and the deposition of the clerk who wrote it. (_to the jury._) for i would have you know that i am not repudiating to-day transactions about which i held my peace at the time, but that i denounced them at once, with full prevision of what must follow; and that the council, which was not prevented from hearing the truth from me, neither voted thanks to the ambassadors, nor thought fit to invite them to the town hall.[n] from the foundation of the city to this day, no body of ambassadors is recorded to have been treated so; nor even timagoras,[n] whom the people condemned to death. { } but these men have been so treated. (_to the clerk._) first read them the deposition, and then the resolution. [_the deposition and resolution are read._] here is no expression of thanks, no invitation of the ambassadors to the town hall by the council. if aeschines asserts that there is any, let him point it out and produce it, and i give way to him. but there is none. now on the assumption that we all fulfilled our mission in the same way, the council had good reason not to thank any of us, for the transactions of all alike were in that case atrocious. but if some of us acted uprightly, while others did the reverse, it must, it seems, have been owing to the knavery of their colleagues that the virtuous were forced to take their share of this dishonour. { } how then can you all ascertain without any difficulty who is the rogue? recall to your minds who it is that has denounced the transaction from the outset. for it is plain that it must have been the guilty person who was well content to be silent, to stave off the day of reckoning for the moment, and to take care for the future not to present himself to give an account of his actions; while it must have been he whose conscience was clear to whom there occurred the thought of the danger, lest through keeping silence he might be regarded as a partner in such atrocious villany. now it is i that have denounced these men from the outset, while none of them has accused me. { } such then was the resolution of the council. the meeting of the assembly took place when philip was already at thermopylae: for this was the first of all their crimes, that they placed philip in command of the situation, so that, when you ought first to have heard the facts, then to have deliberated, and afterwards to have taken such measures as you had resolved upon, you in fact heard nothing until he was on the spot, and it was no longer easy to say what steps you ought to take. { } in addition to this, no one read the resolution of the council to the people, and the people never heard it; but aeschines rose and delivered the harangue which i just now described to you, recounting the numerous and important benefits which he said he had, before his return, persuaded philip to grant, and on account of which the thebans had set a price upon his head. in consequence of this, appalled though you were at first at the proximity of philip, and angry with these men for not having warned you of it, you became as mild as possible, having now formed the expectation that all your wishes would be realized; and you would not hear a word from me or from any one else. { } after this was read the letter from philip, which aeschines had written[n] when we had left him behind, a letter which was nothing less than a direct and express defence in writing of the misconduct of the ambassadors. for in it is stated that philip himself prevented them, when they were anxious to go to the several cities and receive the oaths, and that he retained them in order that they might help him to effect a reconciliation between the peoples of halus and pharsalus. he takes upon his own shoulders the whole of their misconduct, and makes it his own. { } but as to the phocians and thespiae, and the promises contained in aeschines' report to you--why, there is not the slightest mention of them! and it was no mere accident that the proceedings took this form. for the failure of the ambassadors to carry out or give effect to any of the instructions imposed upon them by your resolution--the failure for which you were bound to punish them--philip makes himself responsible in their stead, and says that the fault was his; for you were not likely, of course, to be able to punish _him_. { } but the points in regard to which philip wished to deceive you and to steal a march upon the city were made the subject of the defendant's report, in order that you might be able to find no ground of accusation or reproach against philip, since these points were not mentioned either in his letter or in any other part of the communications received from him. but (_to the clerk_) read the jury the actual letter--written by aeschines, sent by philip; and (_to the jury_) do you observe that it is such as i have described. (_to the clerk._) read on. [_the letter is read._] { } you hear the letter, men of athens; you hear how noble and generous it is. but about the phocians or the thebans or the other subjects of the defendant's report--not a syllable. indeed, in this letter there is not an honest word, as you will very shortly see for yourselves. he says that he retained the ambassadors to help him reconcile the people of halus: and such is the reconciliation that they have obtained, that they are exiles from their country, and their city is laid waste. and as to the prisoners, though he professed to be wondering what he could do to gratify you, he says that the idea of procuring their release had not occurred to any one. { } but evidence has, as you know, been laid before you many times in the assembly, to the effect that i myself went to ransom them, taking a talent[n] for the purpose; and it shall now be laid before you once more. it follows, therefore, that it was to deprive me of my laudable ambition[n] that aeschines persuaded philip to insert this statement. but the strongest point of all is this. in his former letter--the letter which we brought back--he wrote, 'i should have mentioned expressly the great benefits that i propose to confer upon you, if i felt sure that you would grant me the alliance as well.' and yet when the alliance has been granted, he says that he does not know what he can do to gratify you. he does not even know what he had himself promised! why, he must obviously have known that, unless he was trying to cheat you! to prove that he did write thus and in these terms, (_to the clerk_) take his former letter, and read the very passage, beginning at this point. read on. [_an extract from the letter is read._] { } thus, before he obtained the peace, he undertook to set down in writing the great benefits he would confer on the city, in the event of an alliance also being granted him. but as soon as he had obtained both his wishes, he says that he does not know what he can do to gratify you, but that if you will inform him, he will do anything that will not involve any disgrace or stigma upon himself. such are the excuses in which he takes refuge, to secure his retreat, in case you should actually make any suggestion or should be induced to ask any favour. { } it would have been possible to expose this whole proceeding at the time--and a great deal more--without delay; to inform you of the facts, and to prevent you from sacrificing your cause, had not the thought of thespiae and plataeae, and the idea that the thebans were on the very point of paying the penalty, robbed you of the truth. while, however, there was good reason for mentioning these prospects, if the city was to hear of them and then be cheated, it would have been better, if their realization was actually intended, that nothing should have been said about them. for if matters had already reached a stage at which the thebans would be no better off, even if they perceived the design against them, why was the design not fulfilled? but if its fulfilment was prevented because they perceived it in time, who was it that betrayed the secret? { } must it not have been aeschines? its fulfilment, however, was not in fact intended, nor did the defendant either desire or expect it; so that he may be relieved of the charge of betraying the secret. what was intended was that you should be hoodwinked by these statements, and should refuse to hear the truth from me; that you should not stir from home, and that such a decree should carry the day as would involve the destruction of the phocians. hence this prodigality in promises, and their proclamation in his speech to the people. { } when i heard aeschines making all these magnificent promises, i knew perfectly well that he was lying; and i will tell you how i knew. i knew it first, because when philip was about to take the oath in ratification of the peace, the phocians were openly excluded from it. this was a point which it would have been natural to pass over in silence, if the phocians were really to be saved. and secondly, i knew it because the promises were not made by philip's ambassadors or in philip's letter, but by the defendant. { } accordingly, drawing my conclusions from these facts, i rose and came forward and attempted to contradict him; but as you were not willing to hear me, i held my peace, with no more than these words of solemn protest, which i entreat you, in heaven's name, to remember. 'i have no knowledge of these promises,' i said, 'and no share in making them; and,' i added, 'i do not believe they will be fulfilled.' this last expression roused your temper, and i proceeded, 'take care, men of athens, that if any of these things comes to pass, you thank these gentlemen for it, and give your honours and crowns to them, and not to me. if, however, anything of an opposite character occurs, you must equally vent your anger on them: i decline all responsibility.' { } 'no, no!' interrupted aeschines, 'do not decline responsibility now! take care rather that you do not claim credit, when the time comes.' 'indeed, it would be an injustice if i did so,' i replied. then philocrates arose with a most insolent air, and said, 'it is no wonder, men of athens, that i and demosthenes should disagree; for he drinks water, i drink wine.' and you laughed. { } now consider the decree which philocrates proposed and handed in.[n] an excellent resolution it sounds, as you hear it now. but when you take into account the occasion on which it was proposed, and the promises which aeschines was then making, you will see that their action amounts to nothing less than a surrender of the phocians to philip and the thebans, and that, practically, with their hands tied behind their backs. (_to the clerk._) read the decree. [_the decree is read._] { } there, men of athens, is the decree, overflowing with expressions of gratitude and auspicious language. 'the peace,' it says, 'which is granted to philip shall be granted on the same terms to his descendants, and also the alliance.' again, we are 'to thank philip for his promised acts of justice'. yet philip made no promises: so far was he from making promises that he said he did not know what he could do to gratify you. { } it was aeschines who spoke in his name, and made the promises. then philocrates took advantage of the enthusiasm which aeschines' words aroused in you, to insert in the decree the clause, 'and unless the phocians act as they are bound, and surrender the temple to the amphictyons, the athenian people will render their assistance against those who still stand in the way of such surrender.' { } thus, men of athens, at a time when you were still at home and had not taken the field, when the spartans had foreseen the deception and retired, and when none of the amphictyons were on the spot but the thessalians and thebans, he proposes in the most innocent-sounding language in the world that they shall deliver up the temple to these. for he proposes that they shall deliver it up to the amphictyons. but what amphictyons? for there were none there but the thessalians and thebans. he does not propose that the amphictyons should be convoked, or that they should wait until the amphictyons met or that proxenus should render assistance in phocis, or that the athenians should take the field, or anything of the sort. { } philip did indeed actually send two letters to summon you.[n] but he did not intend you really to march from athens. not a bit of it! for he would not have waited to summon you until he had seen the time go by in which you could have set out; nor would he have tried to prevent me, when i wished to set sail and return hither; nor would he have instructed aeschines to speak to you in the terms which would be least likely to cause you to march. no! he intended that you should fancy that he was about to fulfil your desires, and in that belief should abstain from any resolution adverse to him; and that the phocians should, in consequence, make no defence or resistance, in reliance upon any hopes inspired by you, but should put themselves into his hands in utter despair. (_to the clerk._) read to the jury the letters of philip. [_the letters are read._] { } now these letters summon you, and that, forsooth, instantly; and it was surely for aeschines and his party, if the proceeding was in any way genuine, to support the summons, to urge you to march, and to propose that proxenus, whom they knew to be in those parts, should render assistance at once. yet it is plain that their action was of precisely the opposite character; and naturally so. for they did not attend to the terms of the letter, but to the intention with which philip wrote it. { } with this intention they co-operated, and to this they strove to give effect. as soon as the phocians had learned the news of your proceedings in the assembly, and had received this decree of philocrates, and heard the defendant's announcement and his promises, everything combined to effect their doom. consider the circumstances. there were some of them who had the wisdom to distrust philip. these were induced to trust him. and why? because they believed that even if philip were trying to deceive them ten times over, the ambassadors of athens, at least, would never dare to deceive their own countrymen. this report which aeschines had made to you must therefore be true: it was the thebans, and not themselves, whose hour had come. { } there were others who advocated resistance at all hazards; but these too were weakened in their resolution, now that they were persuaded that they could count upon philip's favour, and that, unless they did as they were bidden, you, whose assistance they were hoping for, would march against them. there was also a third party, who thought that you repented of having made the peace with philip; but to these they pointed out that you had decreed that the same peace should hold good for posterity also; so that on every ground, all assistance from you was despaired of. that is why they crowded all these points into one decree. { } and in this lies, i think, the very greatest of all their crimes against you. to have made a peace with a mortal man, whose power was due to the accidents of the moment--a peace, whereby they covenanted that the disgrace brought upon the city should be everlasting; to have robbed the city, not only of all beside, but even of the benefits that fortune might hereafter bestow: to have displayed such superabundant villany as to have done this wicked wrong not only to their countrymen now living, but also to all those who should ever thereafter be born--is it not utterly atrocious? { } and this last clause, by which the peace was extended to your descendants, you would certainly never have allowed to be added to the conditions of peace had you not then placed your trust in the promises announced by aeschines, as the phocians placed their trust in them and perished. for, as you know, they delivered themselves up to philip; they gave their cities into his hands; and the consequences which befell them were the exact opposite of all that aeschines had predicted to you. { } that you may realize plainly that this calamity was brought about in the manner that i have described, and that they are responsible for it, i will go through the dates at which each separate event occurred; and if any one can contradict me on any point, i invite him to rise and speak in the time allotted to me. the peace was made on the th of elaphebolion, and we were away on the mission which was sent to receive the oaths three whole months. { } all this time the phocians remained unharmed. we returned from that mission on the th of scirophorion. philip had already appeared at thermopylae, and was making promises to the phocians, none of which they believed--as is proved, when you consider that otherwise they would not have appealed to you. then followed the assembly, at which, by their falsehoods and by the deception which they practised upon you, aeschines and his party ruined the whole cause. { } that was on the th of scirophorion. now i calculate that it was on the fifth day that the report of your proceedings reached the phocians: for the phocian envoys were here on the spot, and were deeply concerned to know what report these men would make, and what your resolution would be. that gives us the th as the date on which, as we calculate, the phocians heard of your proceedings; for, counting from the th, the th is the fifth day. then followed the st, the nd, and the rd. { } on the latter day the truce was made, and the ruin of the phocians was finally sealed. this can be proved as follows. on the th you were holding an assembly in the peiraeus, to discuss the business connected with the dockyards, when dercylus arrived from chalcis with the news that philip had put everything into the hands of the thebans, and that this was the fifth day since the truce had been made. rd, th, th, th, th--the th is the fifth day precisely. thus the dates, and their reports and their proposals--everything, in short, convicts them of having co-operated with philip, and of sharing with him the responsibility for the overthrow of the phocians. { } again, the fact that none of the towns in phocis was taken by siege or by an attack in force, and that the utter ruin of them all was the direct consequence of their truce with philip, affords the strongest evidence that it was the belief inspired in the phocians by these men, that they would be preserved from destruction by philip, which was the cause of their fate. philip himself they knew well enough. (_to the clerk._) bring me our treaty of alliance with the phocians, and the decrees under which they demolished their walls. (_to the jury._) you will then realize what were the relations between themselves and you, upon which they relied, and what nevertheless was the fate which befell them through the action of these accursed men. (_to the clerk._) read. [_the treaty of alliance between the athenians and phocians is read._] { } these, then, were the things for which they relied upon you--friendship, alliance, and assistance. now listen to what befell them, because aeschines prevented your going to their assistance. (_to the clerk._) read. [_the agreement between philip and the phocians is read._] you hear it, men of athens. 'an agreement between philip and the phocians,' it runs--not between the thebans and the phocians, nor the thessalians and the phocians, nor the locrians, nor any one else who was there. again, 'the phocians shall deliver up their cities to philip'--not to the thebans or thessalians or any one else. { } and why? because the defendant's report to you was that philip had crossed the pass with a view to the preservation of the phocians. thus it was aeschines in whom all their trust was placed; it was with him in their minds that they considered the whole situation; it was with him in their minds that they made the peace. (_to the clerk._) now read the remainder. (_to the jury._) and do you observe for what they trusted him, and what treatment they received. does it show any resemblance or similarity to what aeschines predicted in his report? (_to the clerk._) read on. [_the decrees of the amphictyons are read._] { } men of athens, the horror and the immensity of this calamity have never been surpassed in our day in the hellenic world, nor even, i believe, in the time before us. yet these great and dreadful events a single man has been given power to bring about, by the action of these men, while the city of athens was still in being--athens, whose traditional policy is to stand as the champion of the hellenic peoples, and not to suffer anything like this to take place. the nature of the ruin which the unhappy phocians have suffered may be seen, not only from these decrees, but also from the actual results of the action taken, and an awful and piteous sight it is, men of athens. { } for when recently we were on our way to delphi[n] we could not help seeing it all--houses razed to the ground, cities stripped of their walls, the land destitute of men in their prime--only a few poor women and little children left, and some old men in misery. indeed, no words can describe the distress now prevailing there. yet this was the people, i hear you all saying, that once gave its vote against the thebans,[n] when the question of your enslavement was laid before them. { } what then, men of athens, do you think would be the vote, what the sentence, that your forefathers would give, if they could recover consciousness, upon those who were responsible for the destruction of this people? i believe that if they stoned them to death with their own hands, they would hold themselves guiltless of blood. is it not utterly shameful--does it not, if possible, go beyond all shame--that those who saved us then, and gave the saving vote for us, should now have met with the very opposite fate through these men, suffering as no hellenic people has ever suffered before, with none to hinder it? who then is responsible for this crime? who is the author of this deception? who but aeschines? { } of all the many reasons for which philip might be congratulated with good cause upon his fortune, the chief ground of congratulation is a piece of good fortune, to which, by every heavenly power, i cannot find any parallel in our days. to have captured great cities, to have reduced a vast expanse of territory to subjection, and all similar actions, are, of course, enviable and brilliant achievements--undeniably so. but many other persons might be mentioned who had achieved as much. { } the good fortune of which i am about to speak is peculiar to philip, and has never been given to any other. it is this--that when he needed scoundrels to do his work for him, he found even greater scoundrels than he wanted. for as such we have surely good reason to think of them. for when there were falsehoods which philip himself, in spite of the immense interests which he had at stake, did not dare to utter on his own behalf--which he did not set down in any of his letters, and which none of his envoys uttered--these men sold their services for the purpose, and undertook your deception. { } antipater and parmenio, servants of a master as they were, and unlikely ever to find themselves in your presence again, none the less secured for themselves that _they_ should not be the instruments in your deception, while these men, who were athenians, citizens of the most free city, and held an official position as your ambassadors--though they would have to meet you and look you in the face, and pass the remainder of their lives among you, and render before you an account of their actions--they, i say, undertook the task of deceiving you. how could vileness or desperation go further than this? { } but i would have you understand further that he is under your curse, and that you cannot, without violation of religion and piety, acquit him, when he has thus lied to you. (_to the clerk._) recite the curse. take it from me, and read it out of the law. [_the curse is read._] this imprecation is pronounced in your name, men of athens, by the herald, at every meeting of the assembly, as the law appoints; and when the council sits, it is pronounced again there. nor can aeschines say that he did not know it well. he was your under-clerk and servant to the council, and used himself to read this law over[n] to the herald. { } surely, then, you will have done a strange and monstrous thing, men of athens, if to-day, when you have it in your power, you should fail to do for yourselves the thing which you enjoin upon the gods, or rather claim from them as your due; and should acquit a man whom you pray to the gods to destroy utterly--himself, his race and his house. you must not do this. you may leave it to the gods to punish one whom you cannot yourselves detect; but when you have yourselves caught the criminal, you must no longer lay the task of punishing him upon the gods. { } now i am told that he intends to carry his shamelessness and impudence so far, as to avoid all mention of his own proceedings--his report, his promises, the deception he has practised upon the city--as though his trial were taking place before strangers, instead of before you, who know all the facts; and that he intends to accuse first the spartans,[n] then the phocians,[n] and then hegesippus.[n] { } that is mere mockery; or rather, it is atrocious shamelessness. for all that he will allege to-day against the phocians or the spartans or hegesippus--their refusal to receive proxenus, their impiety--let him allege what he will--all these allegations refer, as you know, to actions which were already past when these ambassadors returned to athens, and which were no obstacle to the preservation of the phocians--the admission is made by whom? by the defendant aeschines himself. for what was his report on that occasion? { } not that if it had not been for their refusal to receive proxenus, nor that if it had not been for hegesippus, nor that if it had not been for such and such things, the phocians would have been saved. no! he discarded all such qualifications, and stated expressly that before he returned he had persuaded philip to save the phocians, to repeople boeotia, and to arrange matters to suit your convenience; that within two or three days these things would be accomplished facts, and that for this reason the thebans had set a price upon his head. { } refuse then, to hear or to tolerate any mention of what had already been done, either by the spartans or by the phocians, before he made his report; and do not let him denounce the rascality of the phocians. it was not for their virtue that you once saved the spartans, nor the euboeans, that accursed people! nor many others; but because the interests of the city demanded their preservation, as they demanded that of the phocians just now. and what wrong was done either by the phocians or by the spartans, or by yourselves, or by any one else in the world after he made those declarations, to prevent the fulfilment of the promises which he then made? ask him that: for that is what he will { } not be able to show you. it was within five days--five days and no more--that aeschines made his lying report, that you believed him, that the phocians heard of it, surrendered themselves and perished. this, i think, makes it as plain as it can possibly be, that the ruin of the phocians was the result of organized deceit and trickery, and of nothing else.[n] for so long as philip was unable to proceed to phocis on account of the peace,[n] and was only waiting in readiness to do so, he kept sending for the spartans, promising to do all that they wished,[n]in order that the phocians might not win { } them over to their side by your help. but when he had arrived at thermopylae, and the spartans had seen the trap and retired, he now sent aeschines in advance to deceive you, in order that he might not, owing to your perceiving that he was playing into the hands of the thebans, find himself once more involved in loss of time and war and delay, through the phocians defending themselves and your going to their assistance, but might get everything into his power without a struggle; and this is what has in fact happened. do not, then, let the fact that philip deceived the spartans and phocians as well as yourselves enable aeschines to escape his punishment for deceiving you. that would not be just. { } but if he tells you that, to compensate for the phocians and thermopylae and all your other losses, you have retained possession of the chersonese, do not, in heaven's name, accept the plea! do not tolerate the aggravation of all the wrong that you have suffered through his conduct as ambassador, by the reproach which his defence would bring upon the city--the reproach of having sacrificed the existence of your allies, in an underhand attempt to save part of your own possessions! you did not act thus; for when the peace had already been made, and the chersonese was no longer in danger, there followed four whole months[n] during which the phocians remained unharmed; and it was not until after this that the lying statements of aeschines brought about their ruin by deceiving you. { } and further, you will find that the chersonese is in much greater danger now than it was then. for when do you think that we had the greater facilities for punishing philip for any trespass against the chersonese?--before he stole any of these advantages from the city, or now? for my part, i think we had far greater facilities then. what, then, does this 'retention of the chersonese' amount to, when all the fears and the risks which attended one who would have liked to attack it have been removed? { } again, i am told that he will express himself to some such effect as this--that he cannot think why he is accused by demosthenes, and not by any of the phocians. it is better that you should hear the true state of the case from me beforehand. of the exiled phocians, the best, i believe, and the most respectable, after being driven into banishment and suffering as they have suffered, are content to be quiet, and none of them would consent to incur an enmity which would fall upon himself, on account of the calamities of his people: while those who would do anything for money have no one to give it to them. { } for assuredly _i_ would never have given any one anything whatever to stand by my side here and cry aloud how cruelly they have suffered. the truth and the deeds that have been done cry aloud of themselves. and as for the phocian people,[n] they are in so evil and pitiable a plight, that there is no question for them of appearing as accusers at the examination of every individual ambassador in athens. they are in slavery, in mortal fear of the thebans and of philip's mercenaries, whom they are compelled to support, broken up into villages as they are and stripped of their arms. { } do not, then, suffer him to urge such a plea. make him prove to you that the phocians are not ruined, or that he did not promise that philip would save them. for the questions upon which the examination of an ambassador turns are these: 'what have you effected? what have you reported? if the report is true, you may be acquitted; if it is false, you must pay the penalty.' how can you plead the non-appearance of the phocians, when it was you yourself, i fancy, that brought them, so far as it lay in your power, into such a condition that they could neither help their friends nor repel their enemies. { } and further, apart from all the shame and the dishonour in which also these proceedings are involved, it is easy to show that in consequence of them the city has been beset with grave dangers as well. every one of you knows that it was the hostilities which the phocians were carrying on, and their command of thermopylae, that rendered us secure against thebes, and made it impossible that either philip or the thebans should ever march into the peloponese or into euboea or into attica. { } but this guarantee of safety which the city possessed, arising out of the position of thermopylae and the actual circumstances of the time, you were induced to sacrifice by the deceptions and the lying statements of these ambassadors--a guarantee, i say, fortified by arms, by a continuous campaign, by great cities of allies, and by a wide tract of territory; and you have looked on while it was swept away. fruitless has your first expedition to thermopylae become--an expedition made at a cost of more than two hundred talents, if you include the private expenditure of the soldiers--and fruitless your hopes of triumph over thebes! { } but of all the wicked services which he has done for philip, let me tell you of that which is in reality the greatest outrage of all upon athens and upon you all. it is this--that when philip had determined from the very first to do for the thebans all that he has done, aeschines, by reporting the exact opposite to you, and so displaying to the world your antagonism to philip's designs, has brought about for you an increase in the enmity between yourselves and the thebans, and for philip an increase in their gratitude. how could a man have treated you more outrageously than this? (_to the clerk._) { } now take and read the decrees of diophantus[n] and callisthenes[n]; (_to the jury_) for i would have you realize that when you acted as you ought, you were thought worthy to be honoured with public thanksgivings and praises, both at home and abroad; but when once you had been driven astray by these men, you had to bring your children and wives in from the country, and to decree that the sacrifice to heracles[n] should take place within the walls, though it was a time of peace. and in view of this it is an amazing idea, that you should dismiss unpunished a man who even prevented the gods from receiving their worship from you after the manner of your fathers. (_to the clerk._) read the decree. [_the decree of diophantus is read._] this decree, men of athens, was one which your conduct nobly deserved. (_to the clerk._) now read the next decree. [_the decree of callisthenes is read._] { } this decree you passed in consequence of the action of these men. it was not with such a prospect in view that you made the peace and the alliance at the outset, or that you were subsequently induced to insert the words which extended them to your posterity. you expected their action to bring you benefits of incredible value. aye, and besides this, you know how often, after this, you were bewildered by the report that philip's forces and mercenaries were threatening porthmus or megara. you have not then to reflect contentedly that philip has not yet set foot in attica. you have rather to consider whether their action has not given him power to do so when he chooses. it is that danger that you must keep before your eyes, and you must execrate and punish the man who is guilty of putting such power into philip's hands. { } now i am aware that aeschines will eschew all defence of the actions with which he is charged, and that, in his desire to lead you as far away as possible from the facts, he will enumerate the great blessings which peace brings to all mankind, and will set against them the evils that follow in the train of war. his whole speech will be a eulogy of peace, and in that will consist his defence. but such an argument actually incriminates the defendant further. if peace, which brings such blessings to all other men, has been the source of such trouble and confusion to us, what explanation can be found, except that they have taken bribes and have cruelly marred a thing by nature so fair? { } 'what?' he may say, 'have you not to thank the peace for three hundred ships, with their fittings, and for funds which remain and will remain yours?' in answer to this, you are bound to suppose that, thanks to the peace, philip's resources too have become far more ample--aye, and his command of arms, and of territory, and of revenues, which have accrued to him to such large amounts. { } we, too, have had some increase of revenue. but as for power and alliances, by the establishment of which all men retain their advantages, either for themselves or their masters, ours have been sold by these men--ruined and enfeebled; while philip's have become more formidable and extensive by far. thus it is not fair that while philip has been enabled by their action to extend both his alliances and his revenue, all that would in any case have been ours, as the result of the peace, should be set off against what they themselves sold to philip. the former did not come to us in exchange for the latter. far from it! for had it not been for them, not only should we have had the former, as we have now, but we should have had the latter as well. { } you would doubtless admit, men of athens, in general terms, that, on the one hand, however many and terrible the disasters that have befallen the city, your anger cannot justly be visited upon aeschines, if none of them has been caused by him; and that, on the other hand, aeschines is not entitled to be acquitted on account of any satisfactory results that may have been accomplished through the action of others. you must examine the acts of aeschines himself, and then show him your favour if he is worthy of it, or your resentment, on the other hand, if his acts prove to be deserving ing of that. { } how, then, can you solve this problem fairly? you will do so if, instead of allowing him to confound all questions with one another--the criminal conduct of the generals, the war with philip, the blessings that flow from peace--you consider each point by itself. for instance, were we at war with philip? we were. does any one accuse aeschines on that ground? does any one wish to bring any charge against him in regard to things that were done in the course of the war? no one whatever. he is therefore acquitted in regard to such matters, and must not say anything about them; for the witnesses and the proofs which a defendant produces must bear upon the matters which are in dispute; he must not deceive you by offering a defence upon points which are not disputed. take care, then, that you say nothing about the war; for no one charges you with any responsibility for that. { } later on we were urged by certain persons to make peace. we consented; we sent ambassadors; and the ambassadors brought commissioners to athens who were to conclude the peace. once more, does any one blame aeschines for this? does any one allege that aeschines introduced the proposal of peace, or that he committed any crime in bringing commissioners here to make it? no one whatever. he must therefore say nothing in regard to the fact that the city made peace; for he is not responsible for that. { } 'then what _is_ your assertion, sir?' i may be asked. 'at what point _do_ your charges begin?' they begin, men of athens, from the time when the question before you was not whether you should make peace or not (for that had already been settled), but what sort of peace you should make--when aeschines opposed those who took the side of justice, supported for a bribe the hireling mover of the decree, and afterwards, when he had been chosen to receive the oaths, failed to carry out every one of your instructions, destroyed those of your allies who had passed unscathed through the war, and told you falsehoods whose enormity and grossness has never been surpassed, either before or since. at the outset, before philip was given a hearing in regard to the peace, ctesiphon and aristodemus took the leading part in the work of deception; but when the time had come for action, they surrendered their rôle to philocrates and aeschines, who took it up and ruined everything. { } and then, when he is bound to answer for his actions and to give satisfaction for them--like the unscrupulous god-forsaken clerk that he is--he will defend himself as though it were the peace for which he was being tried. not that he wishes to account for more than is charged against him--that would be lunacy. no! he sees rather that in all his own proceedings no good can be found--that his crimes are his whole history; while a defence of the peace, if it has no other merits, has at least the kindly sound of the name to recommend it. { } i fear, indeed, men of athens, i fear that, unconsciously, we are enjoying this peace like men who borrow at heavy interest. the guarantees of its security--the phocians and thermopylae--they have betrayed. but, be that as it may, it was not through _aeschines_ that we originally made it; for, paradoxical as it may seem, what i am about to say is absolutely true--that if any one is honestly pleased at the peace, it is the generals, who are universally denounced, that he must thank for it: for had they been conducting the war as you desired them to do, { }you would not have tolerated even the name of peace. for peace, then, we must thank the generals; but the perilous, the precarious, the untrustworthy nature of the peace is due to the corruption of these men. cut him off, then, cut him off, i say, from all arguments in defence of the peace! set him to defend his own actions! aeschines is not being tried on account of the peace. on the contrary, the peace stands discredited owing to aeschines. and here is evidence of the fact:--if the peace had been made, and if no subsequent deception had been practised upon you, and none of your allies had been ruined, who on earth would have been hurt by the peace, except in so far as it was inglorious? and for its inglorious character the defendant in fact shares the responsibility, for he spoke in support of philocrates. at least no irreparable harm would have been done; whereas now, i believe, much has been done, and the guilt rests with the defendant. { } that these men have been the agents in this shameful and wicked work of ruin and destruction, i think you all know. yet so far am i, gentlemen of the jury, from putting any unfair construction upon these facts or asking you to do so, that if it has been through stupidity or simplicity, or ignorance in any form whatever, that such results have been so brought about, i acquit aeschines myself, and i { } recommend you also to acquit him. at the same time none of these excuses is either constitutional[n] or justifiable. for you neither command nor compel any one to undertake public business; but when any one has satisfied himself of his own capacity and has entered political life, then, like good-hearted, kindly men, you welcome him in a friendly and ungrudging manner, and even elect him to office and place your own interests in his hands. { } then, if a man succeeds, he will receive honour and will so far have an advantage over the crowd. but if he fails, is he to plead palliations and excuses? that is not fair. it would not satisfy our ruined allies, or their children, or their wives, or the rest of the victims, to know that it was through my stupidity--not to speak of the stupidity of the defendant--that they had suffered such a fate. far from it! { } nevertheless, i bid you forgive aeschines for these atrocious and unparalleled crimes if he can prove that it was simplicity of mind, or any form of ignorance whatever, which led him to work such ruin. but if it was the rascality of a man who had taken money and bribes--if he is plainly convicted of this by the very facts themselves--then, if it be possible, put him to death; or if not, make him, while he lives, an example to others. and now give your thoughts to the proof by which he is convicted on these points, and observe how straightforward it will be. { } if the defendant aeschines was not deliberately deceiving you for a price, he must necessarily, i presume, have had one of two reasons for making the statements in question to you, in regard to the phocians and thespiae and euboea. either he must have heard philip promise in express terms that such would be his policy and the steps he would take; or else he must have been so far bewitched and deluded by philip's generosity in all other matters as to conceive these further hopes of him. there is no possible alternative besides these two. { } now in both these cases he, more than any living man, ought to detest philip. and why? because, so far as philip could bring it about, all that is most dreadful and most shameful has fallen upon him. he has deceived you; his reputation is gone [he is rightly ruined]; he is on his trial; aye, and were the course of the proceedings in any way that which his conduct called for, he would long ago have been impeached;[n] { - } whereas now, thanks to your innocence and meekness, he presents his report, and that at the time which suits his own wishes. i ask, then, if there is one among you who has ever heard aeschines raise his voice in denunciation of philip--one, i say, who has seen aeschines exposing him or saying a word against him? not one! all athens denounces philip before aeschines does so. every one whom you meet does so, though not one of them has been injured by him--i mean, of course, personally. on the assumption that aeschines had not sold himself, i should have expected to hear him use some such expressions as these--'men of athens, deal with _me_ as you will. i trusted philip; i was deceived; i was wrong; i confess my error. but beware of _him_, men of athens. he is faithless--a cheat, a knave. do you not see how he has treated me? how he has deceived me?' { } but i hear no such expressions fall from him, nor do you. and why? because he was _not_ misled; he was _not_ deceived; he made these statements, he betrayed all to philip, because he had sold his services and received the money for them; and gallantly and loyally has he behaved--as philip's hireling. but as your ambassador, as your fellow citizen, he is a traitor who deserves to die, not once, but thrice. { } this is not the only evidence which proves that all those statements of his were made for money. for, recently, the thessalians came to you, and with them envoys from philip, demanding that you should decree the recognition of philip as one of the amphictyons. who then, of all men, should naturally have opposed the demand? the defendant aeschines. and why? because philip had acted in a manner precisely contrary to the announcement which aeschines had made to you. { } aeschines declared that philip would fortify thespiae and plataeae; that he intended, not to destroy the phocians, but to put down the insolence of thebes. but in fact philip has raised the thebans to an undue height of power, while he has utterly destroyed the phocians; and instead of fortifying thespiae and plataeae, he has brought orchomenus and coroneia into the same bondage with them. how could any contradiction be greater than this? aeschines did not oppose the demand. he neither opened his lips nor uttered a sound in opposition to it. { } but even this, monstrous as it is, is not yet the worst. for he, and he alone, in all athens, actually supported the demand. this not even philocrates dared to do, abominable as he was; it was left for the defendant aeschines. and when you raised a clamour and would not listen to him, he stepped down from the platform, and, showing off before the envoys who had come from philip, told them that there were plenty of men who made a clamour, but few who took the field when it was required of them--you remember the incident, no doubt--being himself, of course, a marvellous soldier, god knows! { } again, if we had been unable to prove that any of the ambassadors had received anything--if the fact were not patent to all--we might then have resorted to examination by torture,[n] and other such methods. but if philocrates not only admitted the fact frequently in your presence at the assembly, but used actually to make a parade of his guilt--selling wheat, building houses, saying that he was going[n] whether you elected him or not, importing timber, changing macedonian gold openly at the bank--it is surely impossible for _him_ to deny that he received money, when he himself confesses and displays his guilt. { } now, is any human being so senseless or so ill-starred that, in order that philocrates might receive money, while he himself incurred infamy and disgrace, he would want to fight against those upright citizens in whose ranks he might have stood, and to take the side of philocrates and face a trial? i am sure that there is no such man; but in all these considerations, if you examine them aright, you will find strong and evident signs of the corruption of the defendant. { } consider next an incident which occurred last in order of time, but which is second to none as an indication that aeschines had sold himself to philip. you doubtless know that in the course of the recent impeachment of philocrates by hypereides, i came forward and expressed my dissatisfaction with one feature of the impeachment--namely, the idea that philocrates alone had been responsible for all these monstrous crimes, and that the other nine ambassadors had no share in them. i said that it was not so, for philocrates by himself would have been nowhere, had he not had some of them to co-operate with him. { } 'and therefore,' i said, 'in order that i may not personally acquit or accuse any one, and that the guilty may be detected, and those who have had no share in the crime acquitted by the evidence of their own conduct, let any one who wishes to do so rise and come forward into your midst, and let him declare that he has no share in it, and that the actions of philocrates are displeasing to him. any one who does this,' i said, 'i acquit.' you remember the incident, i am sure. { } well, no one came forward or showed himself. each of the others has some excuse. one was not liable to examination; another, perhaps, was not present; a third is related to philocrates. but aeschines has no such excuse. no! so completely has he sold himself, once for all--so plain is it that his wages are not for past services only, but that, if he escapes now, philip can equally count upon his help against you in the future--that to avoid letting fall even a word that would be unfavourable to philip, he does not accept his discharge[n] even when you offer to discharge him, but chooses to suffer infamy, to stand his trial and to endure any treatment in this court, rather than to take a step that would not please philip. { } but what is the meaning of this partnership, this careful forethought for philocrates? for if philocrates had by his diplomacy accomplished the most honourable results and achieved all that your interest required, and yet admitted (as he did admit) that he had made money by his mission, this very fact was one by which an uncorrupted colleague should have been repelled and set him on his guard, and led to protest to the best of his power. aeschines has not acted in this way. is it not all clear, men of athens? do not the facts cry aloud and tell you that aeschines has taken money, that he is a rascal for a price, and that consistently--not through stupidity, or ignorance, or bad luck? { } 'but where is the witness who testifies to my corruption?' he asks. why, this is the finest thing of all![n] the witnesses, aeschines, are facts; and they are the surest of all witnesses: none can assert or allege against them, that they are influenced by persuasion or by favour to any one: what your treachery and mischief have made them, such, when examined, they must appear. but, besides the facts, you shall at once bear witness against yourself. come, stand up[n] and answer me! surely you will not plead that you are so inexperienced as not to know what to say. for when, under the ordinary limitations of time, you prosecute and win cases that have all the novelty of a play[n]--cases, too, that have no witness to support them--you must plainly be a speaker of tremendous genius. { } many and atrocious as are the crimes of the defendant aeschines, and great as is the wickedness which is implied by them (as i am sure you also feel) there is none which is more atrocious than that of which i am about to speak to you, and none which will afford more palpable proof that he has taken bribes and sold everything. for when once more, for the third time, you sent the ambassadors to philip on the strength of those high and noble expectations which the defendant's promises had roused, you elected both aeschines and myself, and most of those whom you had previously sent. { } for my part i came forward and declined upon oath to serve;[n] and though some raised a clamour and bade me go, i declared that i would not; but the defendant had already been elected. afterwards, when the assembly had risen, he and his party met and discussed whom they should leave behind in athens. for while everything was still in suspense, and the future doubtful, there were all kinds of gatherings and discussions in the market-place. { } they were afraid, no doubt, that a special meeting of the assembly might suddenly be called, and that you might then hear the truth from me, and pass some of the resolutions which it was your duty to pass in the interest of the phocians, and that so philip's object might slip from his grasp. for had you merely passed a resolution and shown them the faintest ray of hope of any kind, the phocians would have been saved. it was absolutely impossible for philip to stay where he was, unless you were misled. there was no corn in the country, for, owing to the war, the land had not been sown; and to import corn was impossible so long as your ships were there and in command of the sea; while the phocian towns were many in number, and difficult to take except by a prolonged siege. even assuming that he were taking a town a day, there are two and twenty of them. { } for all these reasons they left aeschines in athens, to guard against any alteration of the course which you had been deluded into taking. now to decline upon oath to serve, without any cause, was a dangerous and highly suspicious proceeding. 'what?' he would have been asked, 'are you not going on the mission which is to secure all those wonderful good things which you have foretold?' yet he was bound to remain. how could it be done? he pleads illness. his brother took with him execestus the physician, came before the council, swore that aeschines was too ill to serve, and was himself elected in his place. { } five or six days later the ruin of the phocians had been accomplished, and aeschines' contract--a mere matter of business--had been fulfilled. dercylus turned back, and on his arrival here from chalcis announced to you the destruction of the phocians, while you were holding an assembly in the peiraeus. on hearing the news you were naturally struck with sympathy for them, and with terror for yourselves. you passed resolutions to bring in your children and wives from the country, to repair the garrison-forts, to fortify the peiraeus, and to celebrate the sacrifice to heracles within the city walls: { } and in the midst of all this, in the midst of the confusion and the tumult which had fallen upon the city, this learned and able speaker, so loud of voice, though not elected[n] either by the council or by the people, set off as ambassador to the man who had wrought the destruction, taking no account of the illness which he had previously made his excuse, upon oath, for not serving, nor of the election of another ambassador in his place, nor of the law which imposes the penalty of death for such offences; { } nor yet reflecting how utterly atrocious it was, that after announcing that the thebans had placed a price on his head, he should choose the moment when the thebans had (in addition to all boeotia, which they already possessed) become masters of the territory of the phocians as well, to go into the very midst of thebes, and into the very camp of the thebans. but so beside himself was he, so utterly bent upon his profits and his bribe, that he ruled out and overlooked all such considerations, and took his departure. { } such was the nature of this transaction; and yet his proceedings when he arrived at his destination are far worse. all of you who are present, and all other athenians as well, thought the treatment of the unhappy phocians so atrocious and so cruel that you sent to the pythian games neither the official deputation from the council, nor the thesmothetae,[n] but abandoned that ancient representation of yourselves at the festival. but aeschines went to the triumphal feast[n] with which the thebans and philip were celebrating the victory of their cause and their arms. he joined in the festival: he shared in the libations and the prayers which philip offered over the ruined walls and country and arms of your allies: with philip he set garlands on his head, and raised the paean, and drank the loving-cup. { } nor is it possible for the defendant to give a different version of the facts from that which i have given. as regards his sworn refusal to serve, the facts are in your public records in the metroon,[n] guarded by your officer; and a decree stands recorded with express reference to the name of aeschines.[n] and as for his conduct there, his fellow ambassadors, who were present, will bear witness against him. they told me the story; for i was not with them on this embassy, having entered a sworn refusal to serve. (_to the clerk._) { } now read me the resolution [and the record], and call the witnesses. [_the decree is read, and the witnesses called._] what prayers, then, do you imagine philip offered to the gods, when he poured his libation, or the thebans? did they not ask them to give success in war, and victory, to themselves and their allies, and the contrary to the allies of the phocians? in these prayers, therefore--in these imprecations upon his own country--aeschines joined. it is for you to return them upon his own head to-day. { } his departure, then, was a contravention of the law which imposes the penalty of death for the offence, and it has been shown that on his arrival he acted in a manner for which he deserves to die again and again, while his former proceedings and the work which he did as ambassador, in their interest,[n] would justly slay him. ask yourselves what penalty can be found, which will adequately atone for all these crimes? { } it would surely be shameful, men of athens, that while all of you, and the whole people, denounce publicly all the consequences of the peace; while you decline to take part in the business of the amphictyons; while your attitude towards philip is one of vexation and mistrust, because the deeds that have been done are impious and atrocious, instead of righteous and advantageous to you; that nevertheless, when you have come into court as the sworn representatives of the state, to sit in judgement upon the report of these proceedings, you should acquit the author of all the evil, when you have taken him red-handed in actions like these. { } who is there of all your fellow citizens--nay, who of all the hellenes--that would not have good cause for complaint against you, when he saw that though you were enraged against philip, who in making peace after war was merely purchasing the means to his end from those who offered them for sale--a very pardonable transaction--you were yet acquitting aeschines, who sold your interests in this shameful manner, notwithstanding the extreme penalties which the laws appoint for such conduct? { } now it is possible that an argument may also be used by the other side to some such effect as this--that the condemnation of those whose diplomacy brought about the peace will mean the beginning of enmity with philip. if this is true, then, i can imagine, upon consideration, no more serious charge that i could bring against the defendant, than this. if philip, who spent his money on the peace which he wished to obtain, has become so formidable, so powerful, that you have already ceased to regard your oaths and the justice of the case, and are seeking how you can gratify philip, what penalty, that those who are responsible for this could suffer, would be adequate to the offence? { } i believe, however, that i shall actually show you that it would more probably mean the beginning of a friendship, advantageous to you. for you must be well assured, men of athens, that philip does not despise your city; nor was it because he regarded you as less serviceable than the thebans, that he preferred them to you. no! { } he had been instructed by these men and had heard from them, what i once told you in the assembly, without contradiction from any of them, that the people is the most unstable thing in the world, and the most incalculable, inconstant as a wave of the sea, stirred by any chance wind. one comes, another goes; but no one cares for the public interest, or remembers it. philip needs (he is told) friends upon whom he can rely to execute and manage his business with you--such friends, for instance, as his informant.[n] if this were secured for him, he would easily effect all that he desired in athens. { } now if he heard that those who had used such language to him had immediately upon their return been beaten to death, he would doubtless have behaved as the persian king did. and how was this? he had been deceived by timagoras,[n] and had given him, it is said, forty talents; but when he heard that timagoras had been put to death here, and had not even power to secure his own life, much less to carry out the promises he had made to him, he recognized that he had not paid the price to the man who had the power to effect his object. for first, as you know, he sent a dispatch, acknowledging once more your title to amphipolis, which he had previously described as in alliance and friendship with himself; and secondly, he thenceforward wholly abstained from giving money to any one. { } this is exactly what philip would have done, if he had seen that any of these men had paid the penalty, and what, if he sees it, he will still do. but when he hears that they address you, and enjoy a high reputation with you, and prosecute others, what is he to do? is he to seek to spend much, when he can spend less? or to desire to court the favour of all, when he need but court two or three? that would be madness. for even those public benefits which philip conferred upon the thebans he conferred not from choice-- far from it--but because he was induced to do so by their ambassadors; and i will tell you how. { } ambassadors came to him from thebes just at the time when we were there upon our mission from you. philip wished to give them money, and that (so they said) in very large amounts. the theban ambassadors would not accept or receive it. after that, while drinking at a sacrificial banquet and displaying his generosity towards them, philip offered, as he drank to them, presents of many kinds--captives and the like--and finally he offered them goblets of gold and silver. all these they steadily refused, declining to put themselves in his power in any way. { } at last philo, one of the ambassadors, made a speech, men of athens, which was worthy to be made in the name, not of thebes, but of yourselves. for he said that it gave them pleasure and delight to see the magnanimous and generous attitude of philip towards them; but for their own personal part, they were already his good friends even without these presents; and they begged him to apply his generosity to the existing political situation of their country, and to do something worthy of himself and thebes, promising that, if he did so, their whole city, as well as themselves, would become attached to him. { } and now observe what the thebans have gained by this, and what consequences have followed; and contemplate in a real instance the advantages of refusing to sell your country's interests. first of all, they obtained peace when they were already distressed and suffering from the war, in which they were the losing side. next, they secured the utter ruin of their enemies, the phocians, and the complete destruction of their walls and towns. and was this all? no, indeed! for besides all this they obtained orchomenus, coroneia, corsia, the tilphossaeum, and as much of the territory of the phocians as they desired. { } this then was what the thebans gained by the peace; and surely no more could they have asked even in their prayers. and the ambassadors of thebes gained--what? nothing but the credit of having brought this good fortune to their country; and a noble reward it was, men of athens, a proud record on the score of merit and honour--that honour which aeschines and his party sold for money. let us now set against one another the consequences of the peace to the city of athens and to the athenian ambassadors respectively; and then observe whether its effects have been similar in the case of the city and of these men personally. { } the city has surrendered all her possessions and all her allies; she has sworn to philip that even if another approaches them to preserve them for her, you will prevent him; that you will consider any one who wishes to give them up to you as your enemy and foe, and the man who has robbed you of them as your ally and friend. { } that is the resolution which aeschines supported, and which was moved by his accomplice philocrates; and although on the first day i was successful, and had persuaded you to ratify the decree of the allies and to summon philip's envoys,[n] the defendant forced an adjournment of the question till the next day, and persuaded you to adopt the resolution of philocrates, in which these proposals, and many others even more atrocious, are made. { } these were the consequences of the peace to athens. it would not be easy to devise anything more shameful. what were the consequences to the ambassadors who brought these things about? i say nothing of all that you have seen for yourselves--the houses, the timber, the wheat. but they also possess properties and extensive estates in the country of your ruined allies, bringing in incomes of a talent to philocrates and thirty minae to the defendant. { } yet surely, men of athens, it is an atrocious and a monstrous thing, that the calamities of your allies should have become sources of revenue to your ambassadors, and that the same peace which to the city that sent them meant the ruin of her allies, the surrender of her possessions, and shame in the place of honour, should have created for the ambassadors who brought these things to pass against their country, revenue, affluence, property, and wealth, in the place of abject poverty. to prove, however, that what i am telling you is true (_to the clerk_) call me the witnesses from olynthus. [_the witnesses are called._] { } now i should not wonder if he even dared to make some such statement as this--that the peace which we were making could not have been made an honourable one, or such as i demanded, because our generals had mismanaged the war. if he argues thus, then remember, in heaven's name, to ask him whether[n] it was from some other city that he went as ambassador, or from this city itself? if it was from some other, to whose success in war and to whose excellent generals he can point, then it was natural for him to take philip's money: but if it was from athens itself, why do we find him taking presents as part of a transaction which involved the surrender of her possessions by the city which sent him? for in any honest transaction the city that sent the ambassadors ought to have shared the same fortune as the ambassadors whom she sent. { } consider also this further point, men of athens. do you think that the successes of the phocians against the thebans in the war, or the successes of philip against you, were the more considerable? those of the phocians against the thebans, i am quite certain. at least, they held orchomenus and coroneia and the tilphossaeum;[n] they had intercepted the theban garrison at neones;[n] they had slain two hundred of them on hedyleum;[n] a trophy had been raised, their cavalry were victorious, and a whole iliad of misfortunes had beset the thebans. you were in no such position as this, and may you never be so in the future! your most serious disadvantage in your hostilities with philip was your inability to inflict upon him all the damage that you desired; you were completely secure against suffering any harm yourselves. how is it then that, as the result of one and the same peace, the thebans, who were being so badly worsted in the war, have recovered their own possessions and, in addition, have gained those of their enemies; while you, the athenians, have lost under the peace even what you retained safely through the war? it is because their ambassadors did not sell their interests, while these men have sold yours. [ah! he will say,[n] but the allies were exhausted by the war....]. that this is how these things were accomplished, you will realize still more clearly from what i have yet to say. { }for when this peace was concluded--the peace of philocrates, which aeschines supported--and when philip's envoys had set sail, after receiving the oaths from us--and up to this time nothing that had been done was irreparable, for though the peace was disgraceful and unworthy of athens, still we were to get those marvellous good things in return--then i say, i asked and told the ambassadors to sail as quickly as possible to the hellespont, and not to sacrifice any of our positions there, nor allow philip to occupy them in the interval. { } for i knew very well that everything that is sacrificed when peace is in process of being concluded after war, is lost to those who are so neglectful; since no one who had been induced to make peace with regard to the situation as a whole ever yet made up his mind to fight afresh for the sake of possessions which had been left unsecured; such possessions those who first take them keep. and, apart from this, i thought that, if we sailed, the city could not fail to secure one of two useful results. either, when we were there and had received philip's oath according to the decree, he would restore the possessions of athens which he had taken, and keep his hands off the rest; { } or, if he did not do so, we should immediately report the fact to you here, and so, when you saw his grasping and perfidious disposition in regard to those your remoter and less important interests, you would not in dealing with greater matters close at hand--in other words, with the phocians and thermopylae--let anything be lost. if he failed to forestall you in regard to these, and you were not deceived, your interests would be completely secured, and he would give you your rights without hesitation. { } and i had good reason for such expectations. for if the phocians were still safe and sound, as they then were, and were in occupation of thermopylae, philip would have had no terror to brandish before you, which could make you overlook any of your rights. for he was not likely either to make his way through by land, or to win a victory by sea, and so reach attica; while if he refused to act as was right, you would instantly close his ports, reduce him to straits for money and other supplies, and place him in a state of siege; and in that case it would be he, and not you, to whom the advantages of peace would be the overmastering consideration. { } and that i am not inventing this or claiming wisdom after the event--that i knew it at once, and, with your interest in view, foresaw what must happen and told my colleagues--you will realize from the following facts. when there was no longer any meeting of the assembly available (since you had used up all the appointed days) and still the ambassadors did not depart, but wasted time here, i proposed a decree as a member of the council, to which the people had given full powers, that the ambassadors should depart directly, and that the admiral proxenus should convey them to any district in which he should ascertain philip to be. my proposal was just what i now tell you, couched expressly in those terms. (_to the clerk_.) take this decree and read it. [_the decree is read_.] { } i brought them away, then, from athens, sorely against their will, as you will clearly understand from their subsequent conduct. when we reached oreus and joined proxenus, instead of sailing and following their instructions, they made a circuitous journey by land, and before we reached macedonia we had spent three and twenty days. all the rest of the time, until philip's arrival, we were sitting idle at pella; and this, with the journey, brought the time up to fifty days in all. { } during this interval, in a time of peace and truce, philip was taking doriscus,[n] thrace, the district towards the walls, the sacred mountain--everything, in fact, and making his own arrangements there; while i spoke out repeatedly and insistently, first in the tone of a man giving his opinion to his colleagues, then as though i were informing the ignorant, till at last i addressed them without any concealment as men who had sold themselves and were the most impious of mankind. { } and the man who contradicted me openly and opposed everything which i urged and which your decree enjoined, was aeschines. whether his conduct pleased all the other ambassadors as well, you will know presently; for as yet i allege nothing about any of them, and make no accusation: no one of them need appear an honest man to-day because i oblige him to do so, but only of his own free will, and because he was no partner in aeschines' crimes. that the conduct in question was disgraceful, atrocious, venal, you have all seen. who were the partners in it, the facts will show. { } 'but of course, during this interval they received the oaths from philip's allies, or carried out their other duties.' far from it! for though they had been absent from home three whole months, and received , drachmae from you for their expenses, they did not receive the oaths from a single city, either on their journey to macedonia, or on the way back. it was in the inn before the temple of the dioscuri--any one who has been to pherae will understand me--when philip was already on the march towards athens at the head of an army, that the oaths were taken, in a fashion which was disgraceful, men of athens, and insulting to you. { } to philip, however, it was worth anything that the transaction should have been carried out in this form. these men had failed in their attempt to insert among the terms of the peace the clause which excluded the people of halus and pharsalus; philocrates had been forced by you to expunge the words, and to write down expressly 'the athenians and the allies of the athenians'; and philip did not wish any of his own allies to have taken such an oath; for then they would not join him in his campaign against those possessions of yours which he now holds, but would plead their oaths in excuse; { } nor did he wish them to be witnesses of the promises on the strength of which he was obtaining the peace. he did not wish it to be revealed to the world that the city of athens had not, after all, been defeated in the war, and that it was philip who was eager for peace, and was promising to do great things for athens if he obtained it. it was just to prevent the revelation of these facts that he thought it inadvisable that the ambassadors should go to any of the cities; while for their part, they sought to gratify him in everything, with ostentatious and extravagant obsequiousness. { } but when all this is proved against them--their waste of time, their sacrifice of your position in thrace, their complete failure to act in accordance either with your decree or your interests, their lying report to you--how is it possible that before a jury of sane men, anxious to be true to their oath, aeschines can be acquitted? to prove, however, that what i say is true (_to the clerk_), first read the decree, under which it was our duty to exact the oaths, then philip's letter, and then the decree of philocrates and that of the people. [_the decrees and letter are read._] { } and now, to prove that we should have caught philip in the hellespont, had any one listened to me, and carried out your instructions as contained in the decrees, (_to the clerk_) call the witnesses who were there on the spot. [_the witnesses are called._] (_to the clerk._) next read also the other deposition--philip's answer to eucleides,[n] who is present here, when he went to philip afterwards. [_the deposition is read._] { } now listen to me, while i show that they cannot even deny that it was to serve philip's interest that they acted as they did. for when we set out on the first embassy--that which was to discuss the peace--you dispatched a herald in advance to procure us a safe conduct. well, on that occasion, as soon as ever they had reached oreus, they did not wait for the herald, or allow any time to be lost; but though halus was being besieged, they sailed there direct, and then, leaving the town again, came to parmenio, who was besieging it, set out through the enemy's camp to pagasae, and, continuing their journey, only met the herald at larissa: with such eager haste did they proceed. { } but at a time when there was peace and they had complete security for their journey and you had instructed them to make haste, it never occurred to them either to quicken their pace or to go by sea. and why? because on the former occasion philip's interest demanded that the peace should be made as soon as possible; whereas now it required that as long an interval as possible should be wasted before the oaths were taken. { } to prove that this is so, (_to the clerk_) take and read this further deposition. [_the deposition is read._] how could men be more clearly convicted of acting to serve philip's interest throughout, than by the fact that they sat idle, when in your interest they ought to have hurried, on the very same journey over which they hastened onward, without even waiting for the herald, when they ought not to have moved at all? { } now observe how each of us chose to conduct himself while we were there, sitting idle at pella. for myself, i chose to rescue and seek out the captives, spending my own money and asking philip to procure their ransom[n] with the sums which he was offering us in the form of presents. how aeschines passed his whole time you shall hear presently. { } what then was the meaning of philip's offering money to us in common? he kept sounding us all--for this too i would have you know. and how? he sent round privately to each of us, and offered us, men of athens, a very large sum in gold. but when he failed in a particular case (for i need not mention my own name myself, since the proceedings and their results will of themselves show to whom i refer), he thought that we should all be innocent enough to accept what was given to us in common; and then, if we all alike had a share, however small, in the common present, those who had sold themselves privately would be secure. { } hence these offers, under the guise of presents to his guest-friends. and when i prevented this, my colleagues further divided among themselves the sum thus offered. but when i asked philip to spend this sum on the prisoners, he could neither, without discredit, denounce my colleagues, and say, 'but so-and-so has the money, and so-and-so,' nor yet evade the expense. so he gave the promise, but deferred its fulfilment, saying that he would send the prisoners home in time for the panathenaea. (_to the clerk._) read the evidence of apollophanes, and then that of the rest of those present. [_the evidence is read._] { } now let me tell you how many of the prisoners i myself ransomed. for while we were sitting waiting there at pella, before philip's arrival, some of the captives--all, in fact, who were out on bail--not trusting, i suppose, my ability to persuade philip to act as i wished, said that they wished to ransom themselves, and to be under no obligation to philip for their freedom: and they borrowed, one three minae, another five, and another--whatever the amount of the ransom was in each case. { } but when philip had promised that he would ransom the rest, i called together those to whom i had advanced the money; i reminded them of the circumstances; and, lest they should seem to have suffered by their impatience, and to have been ransomed at their own cost, poor men as they were, when all their comrades expected to be set free by philip, i made them a present of their ransom. to prove that i am speaking the truth, (_to the clerk_) read these depositions. [_the depositions are read._] { } these, then, are the sums which i excused them, and gave as a free gift to fellow citizens who had met with misfortune. and so, when aeschines says presently, in his speech to you, 'demosthenes, if, as you say, you knew, from the time when i supported philocrates' proposal, that we were acting altogether dishonestly, why did you go again as our colleague on the subsequent mission to take the oaths, instead of entering a sworn excuse?' remember this, that i had promised those whose freedom i had procured that i would bring them their ransom, and deliver them to the best of my power. { } it would have been a wicked thing to break my word and abandon my fellow citizens in their misfortune; while, on the other hand, if i had excused myself upon oath from service, it would not have been altogether honourable, nor yet safe, to make a tour there in a private capacity. for let destruction, utter and early, fall upon me, if i would have joined in a mission with these men for a very large sum of money, had it not been for my anxiety to rescue the prisoners. it is a proof of this, that though you twice elected me to serve on the third embassy, i twice swore an excuse. and all through the journey in question my policy was entirely opposed to theirs. { } all, then, that it was within my own power to decide in the course of my mission resulted as i have described; but wherever in virtue of their majority they gained their way, all has been lost. and yet, had there been any who listened to me, all would have been accomplished in a manner congruous with my own actions. for i was not so pitiful a fool as to give away money, when i saw others receiving it, in my ambition to serve you, and yet not to desire what could have been accomplished without expense, and would have brought far greater benefits to the whole city. i desired it intensely, men of athens; but, of course, they had the advantage over me. { } come now and contemplate the proceedings of aeschines and those of philocrates, by the side of my own; for the comparison will bring out their character more vividly. well, they first pronounced the exclusion from the peace of the phocians and the people of halus, and of cersobleptes, contrary to your decree and to the statements made to you. then they attempted to tamper with and alter the decree, which we had come there as ambassadors to execute. then they entered the cardians as allies of philip and voted against sending the dispatch which i had written to you, sending in its stead an utterly unsound dispatch of their own composition. { } and then the gallant gentleman asserted that i had promised philip that i would overthrow your constitution, because i censured these proceedings, not only from a sense of their disgracefulness, but also from fear lest through the fault of these men i might have to share their ruin: while all the time he was himself having incessant private interviews with philip. and, to pass over all besides, dercylus (not i) watched him through the night at pherae, along with my slave who is here present; and as the slave came out of philip's tent he took him and bade him report what he had seen, and remember it himself; and finally, this disgusting and shameless fellow was left behind with philip for a night and a day, when we went away. { } and to prove that i am speaking the truth, i will myself give evidence which i have committed to writing,[n] so as to put myself in the position of a responsible witness; and after that i call upon each of the other ambassadors, and i will compel them to choose their alternative--either to give evidence, or to swear that they have no knowledge of the matter. if they take the latter course, i shall convict them of perjury beyond doubt. [_evidence is read._] { } you have seen now by what mischief and trouble i was hampered, throughout our absence from home. for what must you imagine their conduct to have been there, with their paymaster close at hand, when they act as they do before your very eyes, though you have power either to confer honour or, on the other hand, to inflict punishment upon them? i wish now to reckon up from the beginning the charges which i have made, in order to show you that i have done all that i undertook to do at the beginning of my speech. { } i have proved that there was no truth in his report--that, on the contrary, he deceived you--by the evidence not of words but of the actual course of events. i have proved that he was the cause of your unwillingness to hear the truth from my mouth, captivated as you were at the time by his promises and undertakings; that he gave you advice which was the exact opposite of that which he ought to have given, opposing the peace which was suggested by the allies, and advocating the peace of philocrates; that he wasted time, in order that you might not be able to march to the aid of the phocians, even if you wished to do so; and that he has done many atrocious deeds during his absence from home; for he has betrayed and sold everything, he has taken bribes, and has left no form of rascality untried. these are the points which i promised at the outset to prove, and i have proved them. { } observe, then, what follows; for what i have now to say to you has already become a simple matter. you have sworn that you will vote according to the laws and the decrees of the people and the council of five hundred. the defendant is proved, in all his conduct as ambassador, to have acted in contravention of the laws, of the decrees, and of justice. he ought, therefore, to be convicted in any court composed of rational men. even if there were no other crimes at his door, two of his actions are sufficient to slay him; for he betrayed to philip not only the phocians but also thrace. { } two places in the whole world of greater value to athens than thermopylae on land, and the hellespont over sea, could not possibly be found; and both these places these men have shamefully sold, and placed in philip's hands to be used against you. the enormity of this crime alone--the sacrifice of thrace and the walls--apart from all the rest, might be proved in countless ways,[n] and it is easy to point out how many men have been executed or fined vast sums of money by you for such offences--ergophilus,[n] cephisodotus,[n] timomachus,[n] ergocles[n] long ago, dionysius, and others; all of whom together, i may almost say, have done the city less harm than the defendant. { } but in those days, men of athens, you still guarded against danger by calculation and forethought; whereas now you overlook any danger which does not annoy you from day to day, or cause you pain by its immediate presence, and then pass such resolutions here as 'that philip shall take the oath in favour of cersobleptes also,' 'that we will not take part in the proceedings of the amphictyons,' 'that we must amend the peace.' but none of these resolutions would have been required, had aeschines then been ready to sail and to do what was required. as it is, by urging us to go by land, he has lost all that we could have saved by sailing; and by lying, all that could have been saved by speaking the truth. { } he intends, i am told, to express immediately his indignation that he alone of all the speakers in the assembly should have to render an account of his words. i will not urge that all speakers would reasonably be called upon to render such an account, if any of their words were spoken for money; i only say this. if aeschines in his private capacity has spoken wildly on some occasion or committed some blunder, do not be over-strict with him, but let it pass and grant him pardon: but if as your ambassador he has deliberately deceived you for money, then do not let him go, or tolerate the plea that he ought not to be called to account for what he _said_. { } why, for what, if not for his words, is an ambassador to be brought to justice? ambassadors have no control over ships or places or soldiers or citadels--no one puts such things in their hands--but over words and times. as regards times, if he did not cause the times of the city's opportunities to be lost, he is not guilty; but if he did so, he has committed crime. and as to his words, if the words of his report were true or expedient, let him escape; but if they were at once false, venal, and disastrous, let him be convicted. { } no greater wrong can a man do you, than is done by lying speeches. for where government is based upon speeches, how can it be carried on in security, if the speeches are not true? and if, in particular, a speaker takes bribes and speaks to further the interests of the enemy, how can you escape real danger? for to rob you of your opportunities is not the same thing as to rob an oligarchy or a tyrant. far from it. { } under such governments, i imagine, everything is done promptly at a word of command. but with you the council must first hear about everything, and pass its preliminary resolution--and even that not at any time, but only when notice has been given of the reception of heralds and embassies: then you must convoke an assembly, and that only when the time comes for one, as ordained by law: then those who speak for your true good have to master and overcome those who, through ignorance or wickedness, oppose them. { } besides all this, even when a measure is resolved upon, and its advantages are already plain, time must be granted to the impecuniosity of the majority, in which they may procure whatever means they require in order to be able to carry out what has been resolved. and so he who causes times so critical to be lost, in a state constituted as ours is, has not caused you to lose times, but has robbed you absolutely of the realization of your aims. { } now all those who are anxious to deceive you are very ready with such expressions as 'disturbers of the city,' 'men who prevent philip from conferring benefits on the city.' in reply to these, i will use no argument, but will read you philip's letters, and will remind you of the occasion on which each piece of deception took place, that you may know that philip has got beyond this exaggerated title of 'benefactor',[n] of which we are so sickened, in his attempts to take you in by it. [_philip's letters are read._] { } now although his work as ambassador has been so shameful, so detrimental to you in many--nay, in all points, he goes about asking people what they think of demosthenes, who prosecutes his own colleagues. i prosecute you indeed, whether i would or no, because throughout our entire absence from home you plotted against me as i have said, and because now i have the choice of only two alternatives: either i must appear to share with you the responsibility for such work as yours, or i must prosecute you. { } nay, i deny that i was ever your colleague in the embassy. i say that your work as ambassador was an atrocious work, while my own was for the true good of those present here. it is philocrates that has been your colleague, as you have been his, and phrynon. for your policy was the same as theirs, and you all approved of the same objects. but 'where are the salt, the table, the libations that we shared?' so he asks everywhere in his theatrical style--as though it were not the criminals, but the upright, that were false to such pledges! { } i am certain that though all the prytanes offer their common sacrifice on each occasion, and join one with another in their meal and their libation, the good do not on this account copy the bad; but if they detect one of their own number in crime they report the fact to the council and the people. in the very same way the council offers its inaugural sacrifice and feasts together, and joins in libations and sacred rites. so do the generals, and, one may practically say, every body of magistrates. does that mean that they grant an indemnity to any of their number who is guilty of crime? very far from it. { } leon accuses timagoras,[n] after being his fellow ambassador for four years: eubulus accuses tharrex and smicythus, after sharing the banquet with them: the great conon, the elder, prosecuted adeimantus,[n] though they were generals together. which sinned against the salt and the libation, aeschines--the traitors and the faithless ambassadors and the hirelings, or their accusers? plainly those who violated, as you have done, the sanctity, not of private libations, but of libations poured in the name of the whole country. { } that you may realize that these men have been the most worthless and wicked not only of all who have ever gone to philip in a public capacity, but even of those who have gone as private persons, and indeed of all mankind, i ask you to listen to me while i describe briefly an incident which falls outside the story of this embassy. when philip took olynthus he celebrated olympian games, and gathered together all the artists to the sacrifice and the festal gathering. { } and while he was entertaining them at a banquet, and crowning the victors, he asked satyrus, the well-known comic actor, why he alone requested no favour of him. did he see any meanness in him, or any dislike towards himself? satyrus answered (so the story goes) that he happened to stand in no need of the things for which the rest were asking, but that the boon which he would like to ask was a favour which it would be very easy indeed for philip to bestow; only he was afraid that he might fail to obtain it. { } philip bade him name his request, declaring with some spirit that there was nothing that he would not do for him. satyrus is then said to have stated that apollophanes of pydna was formerly his friend and guest-friend,[n] and that when he had perished by a treacherous assassination, his kinsman had, in alarm, conveyed his daughters, then little children, to olynthus secretly. 'these girls,' said satyrus, 'have been taken prisoners at the capture of the city; they are with you, and they are now of marriageable age. { } it is these girls that i beg and entreat you to give to me. but i should like you to hear and understand what sort of present you will be giving me, if you really give it. i shall gain nothing by receiving it: i shall give them in marriage, and a dowry with them, and shall not allow them to suffer anything unworthy of us or of their father.' when those who were present at the feast heard this, there was such applause and cheering and approbation on all hands, that philip was moved and granted the request, although the apollophanes who was spoken of was one of the murderers of alexander, philip's brother. { } now let us examine side by side with this banquet of satyrus, that in which these men took part in macedonia. observe what likeness and resemblance there is between the two! for these men were invited to the house of xenophron, the son of phaedimus, who was one of the thirty,[n] and went. i did not go. but when it came to the time for wine, he brought in an olynthian woman--good-looking, but well-bred and modest, as the event proved. { } at first, i believe (according to the account which iatrocles gave me the next day), they only forced her to drink a little wine quietly and to eat some dessert; but as the feast proceeded and they waxed warm, they bade her recline and even sing a song. and when the poor creature, who was in great distress, neither would nor could do as they bade her, aeschines and phrynon declared that it was an insult and quite intolerable, that a captive woman--one of those god-forsaken devils the olynthians--should give herself airs. 'call a slave,' they cried, 'and let some one bring a strap.' a servant came with a lash; they had been drinking, i imagine, and were easily annoyed; and as soon as she said something and burst into tears, the servant tore open her dress and gave her a number of cuts across the back. { } beside herself with the pain and the sense of her position, the woman leaped up and fell before the knees of iatrocles, overturning the table as she did so. and had he not rescued her, she would have perished as the victim of a drunken debauch; for the drunkenness of this abominable creature is something horrible.[n] the case of this woman was also mentioned in arcadia before the ten thousand, and diophantus reported to you what i shall now force him to testify; for the matter was much talked of in thessaly and everywhere. { } yet with all this on his conscience this unclean creature will dare to look you in the face, and will very soon be speaking to you of the life he has lived, in that magnificent voice of his. it chokes me to hear him! does not the jury know how at first you used to read over the books to your mother at her initiations,[n] and wallow amid bands of drunken men at their orgies, while still a boy? { } and how you were afterwards under-clerk to the magistrates, and played the rogue for two or three drachmae?[n] and how at last, in recent days, you thought yourself lucky to get a parasitic living in the training-rooms of others, as a third-rate actor? what then is the life of which you propose to speak? where have you lived it? for the life which you have really lived has been what i have described. and how much does he take upon himself! he brought another man to trial here for unnatural offences! but i leave this point for the moment. (_to the clerk._) first, read me these depositions. [_the depositions are read._] { } so many, then, and so gross, gentlemen of the jury, being the crimes against you of which he stands convicted--and what wickedness do they not include? he is corrupt, he is a minion, he is under the curse, a liar, a betrayer of his own people; all the most heinous offences are there--he will not defend himself against a single one of these charges, and will have no defence to offer that is either just or straightforward. but the statement which, i am told, he intends to make, borders on madness; though perhaps a man who has no other plea to offer must contrive anything that he can. { } for i hear that he is to say that i, forsooth, have been a partner in everything of which i accuse him; that at first i used to approve of his policy and to act with him; and that i have suddenly changed my mind and become his accuser. as a defence of his conduct such assertions are, of course, neither legitimate nor to the point, though they do imply some kind of charge against myself; for, of course, if i have acted thus, i am a worthless person. but the conduct itself is no better for that. far from it! { } at the same time, i think it is proper for me to prove to you both the points in question--first, that if he makes such an assertion he will be lying; and secondly, what is the just line of defence. now a just and straightforward defence must show either that the acts charged against him were not committed, or that having been committed, they are to the advantage of the city. { } but aeschines cannot do either of these things. for i presume that it is not possible for him to say that it is to the advantage of the city that the phocians have been ruined, that thermopylae is in philip's hands, that thebes is powerful, that there are soldiers in euboea and plotting against megara, and that the peace should not have been sworn to,[n] when on the former occasion he announced the very contrary of all these things to you in the guise of advantages, and advantages about to be realized? nor will he be able to persuade you that these things have not been done, when you yourselves have seen them and know the facts well. { } it remains for me, therefore, to show you that i have had no share in any of their proceedings. shall i then dismiss everything else from consideration--all that i have said against them in your presence, all my collisions with them during our absence, all my antagonism to them from first to last--and produce my opponents themselves as witnesses to the fact that my conduct and theirs have been absolutely contrary the one to the other--that they have taken money to your detriment, and that i refused to receive it? then mark what i say. { } who, would you say, was of all men in athens the most offensive, most overflowing with effrontery and contemptuousness? i am sure that none of you, even by mistake, would name any other than philocrates. and who, would you say, possessed the loudest voice and could enunciate whatever he pleased most clearly? aeschines the defendant, i am sure. who is it then that these men describe as cowardly and timid before a crowd, while i call him cautious? it is myself; for i have never annoyed you or forced myself upon you against your will. { } now at every meeting of the assembly, as often as a discussion has arisen upon these subjects, you hear me accusing and convicting these men, declaring explicitly that they have taken money and have sold all the interests of the city. and not one of them has ever to this day contradicted the statement, when he heard it, or opened his mouth, or shown himself. { } what then is the reason, why the most offensive men in the city, the men with the loudest voices, are so cowed before me, the timidest of men, whose voice is no louder than any other? it is because truth is strong; while to them, on the other hand, the consciousness of having sold public interests is a source of weakness. it is this that steals away the boldness of these men, this that binds down their tongues and stops their mouths--chokes them, and makes them silent. { } you remember, of course, how at the recent meeting in the peiraeus, when you would not have him for your representative,[n] he was shouting that he would impeach me and indict me, and crying, 'oh! oh!' but such steps are the beginning of long and numerous trials and speeches; whereas the alternative was but to utter perhaps two or three words, which even a slave purchased yesterday could have pronounced--'men of athens, this is utterly atrocious. demosthenes is accusing me here of crimes in which he himself was a partner; he says that i have taken money, when he has taken money, or shared it, himself.' { } but no such words, no such sound, did he utter, nor did one of you hear him do so; he only uttered threats to a different effect. and why? because he knew that he had done what he was charged with doing; he was abjectly afraid to use any such expressions; his resolution could not rise to them, but shrank back; for it was in the grip of his conscience; whereas there was nothing to hinder him from uttering irrelevant abuse and slander. { } but here is the strongest proof of all, and it consists not in words, but in fact. for when i was anxious to do what it was right to do, namely, to make a second report to you, after serving a second time as ambassador, aeschines came before the board of auditors with a number of witnesses, and forbade them to call me before the court, since i had rendered my account already, and was no longer liable to give it. the incident was extremely ridiculous. and what was the meaning of it? he had made his report with reference to the first embassy, against which no one brought any charge, and did not wish to go before the court again with regard to the second embassy, with reference to which he now appears before you, and within which all his crimes fell. { } but if i came before you twice, it became necessary for him also to appear again; and so he tried to prevent them from summoning me. but this action of his, men of athens, plainly proves to you two things--first, that he had so condemned himself that none of you can now acquit him without impiety; and secondly, that he will not speak a word of truth about me. had he anything true to assert, he would have been found asserting it and accusing me then; he would certainly not have tried to prevent my being summoned. { } to prove the truth of what i say, (_to the clerk_) call me the witnesses to the facts. but further, if he makes slanderous statements against me which have nothing to do with the embassy, there are many good reasons for your refusing to listen to him. for i am not on my trial to-day, and when i have finished my speech i have no further time allotted to me.[n] what can such statements mean, except that he is bankrupt of legitimate arguments? for who that was on his trial and had any defence to make, would prefer to accuse another? { } and consider also this further point, gentlemen of the jury. if i were on my trial, with the defendant aeschines for accuser and philip for judge; and if, being unable to disprove my guilt, i abused aeschines and tried to sully his character, do you not think that philip would be indignant at the very fact of a man abusing _his_ benefactors in his own presence? do not _you_ then prove worse than philip; but force aeschines to defend himself against the charges which are the subject of the trial. (_to the clerk._) read the deposition. [_the deposition is read._] { } so for my part, because i had nothing on my conscience, i felt it my duty to render an account and submit all the information that the laws required, while the defendant took the opposite view. how then can his conduct and mine have been the same? or how can he possibly assert against me now things of which he has never even accused me before? it is surely impossible. and yet he will assert these things, and, heaven knows, it is natural enough. for you doubtless know well that ever since the human race began and trials were instituted, no one was ever convicted admitting his crime: they brazen it out, they deny it, they lie, they make up excuses, they take every means to escape paying the penalty. { } _you_ must not let any of these devices mislead you to-day; your judgement must be given upon the facts, in the light of your own knowledge; you must not attend to words, whether mine or his, still less to the witnesses whom he will have ready to testify anything, since he has philip to pay his expenses--you will see how glibly they will give evidence for him; nor must you care whether his voice is fine and loud, or whether mine is poor. { } for it is no trial of orators or of speeches that you have to hold to-day, if you are wise men. you have rather, in the name of a cause shamefully and terribly ruined, to thrust off the present disgrace on to the shoulders of the guilty, after a scrutiny of those results which are known to you all. { } and these results, which you know and do not require us to tell you of--what are they? if the consequences of the peace have been all that they promised you; if you admit that you were so filled with an unmanly cowardice, that, though the enemy was not in your land, though you were not blockaded by sea, though your city was menaced by no other danger whatever, though, on the contrary, the price of corn was low and you were in other respects as well off as you are to-day, { } though you knew beforehand on the information of these men that your allies were about to be ruined and thebes to become powerful, that philip was about to occupy the thracian strongholds and to establish a basis of operations against you in euboea, and that all that has now happened was about to come to pass, you nevertheless made peace cheerfully;--if that is so, then acquit aeschines, and do not add perjury to all your disgrace. for in that case he is guilty of no crime against you; it is i that am mad and brainsick to accuse him now. { } but if what they told you was altogether the reverse of this, if it was a tale of great generosity--of philip's love for athens, of his intention to save the phocians, to check the insolence of the thebans, and beside all this (if he obtained the peace) to confer on you benefits that would more than compensate for amphipolis, and to restore to you euboea and oropus; if, i say, they stated and promised all this, and have now totally deceived and cheated you, and have all but robbed you of attica itself, then condemn him, and do not, in addition to all the outrages--i know not what other word to use--that you have suffered, carry with you to your homes, through upholding their corruption, the curse and the guilt of perjury. { } again, gentlemen of the jury, ask yourselves what reason i could have had for choosing to accuse these men, if they had done no wrong? you will find none. is it pleasant to have many enemies? pleasant? it is not even safe. was there any quarrel between me and aeschines? none. what then? 'you were afraid for yourself, and in your cowardice thought to save yourself this way:' for that, i have heard, is what he says. what? i was afraid, when, according to your own statement, there was nothing to be afraid of, and no crime had been committed? if he repeats such an assertion, men of athens, consider[n] what these men themselves, the actual criminals, ought to suffer for their offences, if i, who am absolutely guiltless, was afraid of being ruined owing to them. { } but what is my motive for accusing you? i am an informer, of course, and want to get money out of you![n] and which was the easier course for me--to get money out of philip, who offered a large sum--to get as much as any of these men, and to have not only philip for my friend, but also my opponents (for they would assuredly have been friends, had i been partner with them, since even now they have no inherited quarrel against me, but only the fact that i refused to join in their actions); or to beg them for a share of their gains, and be regarded with hostility both by philip and by them? is it likely that when i was ransoming the prisoners at such cost to myself, i should ask to receive a paltry sum from these men, in a disgraceful manner and with their enmity accompanying it? { } impossible! my report was true. i abstained from taking money for the sake of justice and truth and my own future. for i thought, as others among you have thought, that my own uprightness would receive its reward, and that i must not barter my ambition to stand well with you for gain of any kind. and i abhor these men, because i saw that they were vile and impious in the conduct of their mission, and because i have been robbed of the objects of my own ambition, owing to their corruption, now that you have come to be vexed with the embassy as a whole. and it is because i foresee what must happen that i now accuse him, and appear to challenge his report; for i would have it decided here, in a trial before a jury, that my conduct has been the opposite of his. { } and i am afraid--afraid, i say, for i will speak all my mind to you--that though when the time comes you may drag me in spite of my entire innocence to the same ruin with them, you are now utterly supine. for, men of athens, you appear to me to be altogether unstrung, waiting to suffer the horrors which others are suffering before your eyes, and taking no precautions, no thought for the city, which for so long has been exposed to destruction in many a dreadful form. { } is it not, think you, dreadful and preternatural? for even where i had resolved upon silence, i am driven to speak. you doubtless know pythocles here, the son of pythodorus. i had been on very kindly terms with him, and to this day there has been no unpleasantness between us. he avoids me now, when he meets me--ever since he visited philip--and if he is obliged to encounter me anywhere, he starts away immediately, lest any one should see him talking with me. but with aeschines he walks all round the marketplace, discussing their plans. { } now is it not a terrible and shocking thing, men of athens, that those who have made it their choice to foster philip's interests should be able to rely upon so accurate a discrimination on philip's part, that all that any one of them does here can no more be hid from philip (so they believe) than if he were standing by their side, and that his friends and foes alike are those that philip chooses; while those whose life is lived for _your_ good, who are greedy of honour at _your_ hands, and have not betrayed you, should be met by such deafness, such blindness, on your part, that to-day i have to wrestle with these devils incarnate on equal terms, and that before you, who know the whole truth? { } would you know or hear the cause of these things? i will tell you, and i beg that none of you be angry with me for speaking the truth. it is, i imagine, that philip has but one body and one soul, and it is with all his heart that he cherishes those who do him good and detests those who do him evil: whereas each of you, in the first place, has no feeling that the good or the evil which is being done to the city, is being done to himself; { } other feelings are of more consequence, and often lead you astray--pity, envy, anger, favour towards the suppliant, and an infinite number of other motives: while if a man has actually escaped all these, he will still not escape from those who do not want such a man to exist at all. and so the error due to each of these single causes steals on little by little, till the state is exposed to the whole accumulated mischief. { } do not fall victims to any such error to-day, men of athens: do not let the defendant go, when he has done you all this wrong. for honestly, if you let him go, what will be said of you? 'certain men,' it will be said, 'went as ambassadors to philip yonder--philocrates, aeschines, phrynon, and demosthenes; and, what happened? one of them not only gained nothing by his mission, but ransomed the prisoners at his private expense; another, with the money for which he sold the interests of his country, went about purchasing harlots and fish. { } one of them, the abominable phrynon, sent his son to philip before he had registered him as an adult; the other did nothing unworthy of himself or his city. one, though serving as choregus and trierarch,[n] felt it his duty voluntarily to incur that further expense [to ransom the prisoners] rather than see any of his fellow citizens suffering misfortune for want of means; the other, so far from rescuing any of those who were already in captivity, joined in bringing a whole district, and more than , infantry and , cavalry with them, the forces of the actual allies of his country, into captivity to philip. what followed? { } when the athenians got them into their hands (for they had long known the truth) what did they do? they let go the men who had received bribes and had disgraced themselves, and their city, and their children; they thought that these were wise men, and that all was well[n] with the city; and as for their accuser, they thought him thunderstruck--a man who did not understand his country, and did not know where to fling his money away.' { } and who, men of athens, with this example before his eyes, will be willing to offer you his honest service? who will act as ambassador for nothing, if he is not only to gain nothing by it, but is not to be more trustworthy in your eyes than those who have taken money? you are not only trying these men to-day, but you are laying down a law for all future time--a law which will declare whether your ambassadors are to serve the enemy for a price, or to act disinterestedly for your true good and to take no bribe? { } on all the other points you require no evidence; but to prove that phrynon sent his son, (_to the clerk_) call me the witnesses to the facts. aeschines then did not prosecute phrynon, for sending his own son to philip for a disgraceful purpose. but because a man, who in his youth was above the average in appearance, did not foresee the suspicion which his good looks might entail, and afterwards lived a somewhat fast life, he has prosecuted him for unnatural offences. { } now let me speak of the banquet and the decree; for i had almost overlooked what i was especially bound to tell you. in drawing up the resolution of the council with reference to the first embassy, and again in addressing the people, at the assemblies in which you were to discuss the question of peace, not a single word or act of a criminal nature on the part of these men having so far come to light, i followed the ordinary custom, and proposed to accord them a vote of thanks, and to invite them to the town hall. { } and i did, of course, entertain philip's ambassadors as well, and on a very splendid scale, men of athens. for when i saw that in their own country they prided themselves even on things like these, as showing their prosperity and splendour, i thought that i must begin by outdoing them in this respect, and displaying even greater magnificence. these incidents aeschines will shortly bring forward to prove that 'demosthenes himself voted thanks to us, and gave a banquet to the ambassadors', without telling you the precise time when the incidents occurred. { } for these things belong to a time before any injury had been done to the city, and before it was evident that they had sold themselves. the ambassadors had only just arrived on their first visit; the people had still to hear what they proposed; and there was nothing as yet to show that aeschines would support philocrates, or that philocrates would make such proposals as he did. if, then, aeschines uses any such argument, remember that the dates of the incidents are earlier than those of his crimes. but since then there has been no friendliness between myself and them, and no common action. (_to the clerk._) read the deposition. [_the deposition is read._] { } now perhaps his brother philochares will support him, and aphobetus. there is much that you may fairly urge in reply to both; and i am obliged, men of athens, to speak to you quite freely and without any reserve. you, philochares, are a painter of vase-cases and drums; your brothers are under-clerks and quite ordinary men--not that there is any harm in these things, but at the same time they do not qualify a man to be a general.[n] and yet, aphobetus and philochares, we thought you worthy to be ambassadors and generals, and to receive the highest honours; { } so that even if none of you were guilty of any crime, we should owe no gratitude to you; you would rather owe gratitude to us for your preferment. for we passed by many others, more deserving of such honours than you were, and exalted you instead. but if in the enjoyment of these very honours one of you has actually committed crimes, and crimes of such a nature, how much more deserving are you of execration than of acquittal? much more, i am sure. perhaps they will force their claims upon you, for they are loud-voiced and shameless, and they have taken to themselves the motto that 'it is pardonable for brother to help brother'. { } but you must not give way. remember that if it is right for them to think of aeschines, it is for you to think of the laws and the whole state, and, above all, of the oath which you yourselves, who sit here, have taken. yes, and if they have entreated some of you to save the defendant, then ask yourselves whether you are to save him if he is proved innocent of crime, or even if he is proved guilty. if they ask you to do so, should he be innocent, i too say that you must acquit him. but if you are asked to acquit him, whatever he has done, then they have asked you to commit perjury. for though your vote is secret, it will not be hidden from the gods; and the framer of our law [which enjoins secret voting] was absolutely right, when he saw that though none of these men will know which of you has granted his request, the gods will know, and the unseen powers, who has given the unjust vote. { } and it is better for a man to lay up, for his children and himself, those good hopes which _they_ can bestow, by giving the decision that is just and right, than to win credit from these men for a favour of whose reality they can have no certain knowledge, and to acquit the defendant, when his own testimony condemns him. for what stronger testimony can i produce, aeschines, to prove how terrible your work as ambassador has been, than your own testimony against yourself? for when you thought it necessary to involve in so great and dreadful a calamity one who wished to reveal some of your actions as ambassador, it is plain that you expected your own punishment to be a terrible one, if your countrymen learned what you had done. { } that step, if you are wise, he will prove to have taken to his own detriment; not only because it is an overwhelming proof of the nature of his conduct as ambassador, but also because of those expressions which he used in the course of the prosecution, and which are now at our disposal against himself. for the principles of justice, as defined by you when you were prosecuting timarchus, must, i presume, be no less valid when used by others against yourself. { } his words to the jury on that occasion were these. 'demosthenes intends to defend timarchus, and to denounce my acts as ambassador. and then, when he has led you off the point by his speech, he will brag of it, and go about saying, "well? what do you think?[ ] why i led the jury right away from the point, and stole the case triumphantly out of their hands."' then you at least must not act thus, but must make your defence with reference to the real points of your case, though, when you were prosecuting timarchus on that occasion, you permitted yourself to make any charges and assertions that you chose. { } but there were verses too, which you recited before the jury, in your inability to produce any witness to the charges on which you were prosecuting timarchus:-- rumour, the voice of many folk, not all doth die, for rumour too a goddess is.[ ] well, aeschines, all those who are present say that you have made money out of your mission; and so it holds true against you, i suppose, that 'rumour, the voice of many folk, not all doth die'. { } for observe how easily you can ascertain how much larger a body of accusers appears in your case than in his. timarchus was not known even to all his neighbors; while there is not a man, hellene or foreigner, but says that you and your fellow ambassadors made money out of your mission. and so, if the rumour is true, then the rumour which is the voice of many folk is against you; and you have yourself laid down that such a rumour is to be believed, that 'rumour too a goddess is', and that the poet who composed these lines was a wise man. { } then, you remember, he collected some iambic verses, and recited the whole passage; for instance:-- whoso in evil company delights of him i ne'er enquired, for well i trow, as is his company, such is the man.[ ] and 'when a man goes to the cockpit[n] and walks about with pittalacus'--he added more to the same effect--'surely,' said he, 'you know what to think of him.' well, aeschines, these same verses will now exactly serve my turn against you, and if i quote them to the jury, the quotation will be true and apposite. 'but whoso in the company delights' of philocrates, and that when he is an ambassador, 'of him i ne'er enquired, for well i trow' that he has taken money, as did philocrates who does not deny it. { } he attempts to insult others by labelling them hack-writers[n] and sophists. he shall himself be proved liable to these very imputations. the verses he quoted are derived from the _phoenix_ of euripides--a play which has never to this day been acted either by theodorus or aristodemus, the actors under whom aeschines always played third-rate parts, though it was performed by molon, and no doubt by other actors of former times. but the _antigone_ of sophocles has often been acted by theodorus and often by aristodemus; and in this play there are some admirable and instructive verses, which he must know quite well by heart, since he has often delivered them himself, but which he has omitted to quote. { } for you know, i am sure, that in every tragedy it is, as it were, the special privilege of third-rate actors to play in the rôle of tyrants and sceptred kings. consider, then, these excellent lines, placed by the poet in the mouth of our creon-aeschines in this play--lines which he neither repeated to himself to guide him as an ambassador, nor yet quoted to the jury. (_to the clerk._) read the passage. _verses from the 'antigone' of sophocles._ to learn aright the soul and heart and mind of any man--for that, device is none, till he be proved in government and law, and so revealed. for he who guides the state, yet cleaves not in his counsels to the best, but from some fear in prison locks his tongue, is in mine eyes, as he hath ever been, vilest of men. and him, who sets his friend before his land, i count of no esteem. for i--be it known to god's all-viewing eye-- would ne'er keep silence, seeing the march of doom upon this city--doom in safety's stead, nor ever take to me as mine own friend my country's foe.' for this i know, that she, our country, is the ship that bears us safe, and safe aboard her, while she sails erect, we make good friends. { } none of these lines did aeschines ever repeat to himself during his mission. instead of preferring his country he thought that to be friend and guest-friend of philip was much more important and profitable for himself, and bade a long farewell to the wise sophocles. he saw the 'march of doom' draw near, in the campaign against the phocians; but he gave no warning, no announcement of what was to come. on the contrary, he helped to conceal it, he helped to carry out the doom, he prevented those who would have given warning--{ } not remembering that 'our country is the ship that bears us safe, and safe aboard her' his mother with the help of her initiations and purifications and the property of the clients, on whom she lived, reared up these sons of hers to their destined greatness;[n] while his father, who kept an elementary school, as i am told by my elders, near the temple of the hero-physician,[n] made a living, such as he could indeed, but still on the same ship. the sons, who had received money as under-clerks and servants in all the magistrates' offices, were finally elected clerks by you, and for two years continued to get their living in the round chamber;[n] and aeschines was just now dispatched as your ambassador--from this same ship. he regarded none of these things. { } he took no care that the ship should sail erect. nay, he capsized her; he sank the ship; he did all that he could to bring her into the power of the enemy. what then? are you not a sophist? aye, and a villanous one. are you not a hack? aye, and one detested of heaven--for you passed over the scene which you had so often performed and knew well by heart, while you sought out a scene which you had never acted in your life, and produced the passage in the hope of injuring one of your fellow citizens. { } and now examine his speech about solon. he told us that the statue of solon, with his hand concealed in the drapery of his robe, was erected as an illustration of the self-restraint of the orators of that day. (this was in the course of a scurrilous attack upon the impetuosity of timarchus.) but the salaminians tell us that this statue was erected less than fifty years ago, whereas some two hundred and forty years have passed between the time of solon and the present day; so that not only was the artist, who modelled him in this attitude, not living in solon's day, but even his grandfather was not. { } that then is what he told the jury, copying the attitude as he did so. but that which it would have done his country far more good to see--the soul and the mind of solon--he did not copy. no, he did the very reverse. for when salamis had revolted from athens and the death-penalty had been decreed against any one who proposed to attempt its recovery, solon, by singing, at the risk of his own life,[n] a lay which he had composed, won back the island for his country, and wiped out her disgrace: { } while aeschines, when the king and all the hellenes had decided that amphipolis was yours, surrendered and sold it, and supported philocrates, who proposed the resolution for this purpose. it is indeed worth his while (is it not?) to remember solon! nor was he content with acting thus in athens; for when he had gone to macedonia, he did not even mention the name of the place which it was the object of his mission to secure. this, in fact, he reported to you himself, in words which doubtless you remember: 'i too had something to say about amphipolis; but in order that demosthenes might have an opportunity of speaking upon the subject, i left it to him.' { } upon which i came forward and denied that aeschines had left to me anything which he was anxious to say to philip; he would rather have given any one a share in his lifeblood than in his speech. the truth is, i imagine, that he had taken money; and as philip had given him the money in order that he might not have to restore amphipolis, he could not speak in opposition to philip's case. now (_to the clerk_) take this lay of solon's and read it; and (_to the jury_) then you will know how solon used to hate all such men as this. { } it is not when you are speaking, aeschines, but when you are upon an embassy, that you should keep your hand within your robe. but on the embassy you held out your hand, and held it open; you brought shame to your countrymen: and do you here assume a solemn air and recite in those practised tones the miserable phrases that you have learned by heart, and expect to escape the penalty for all your heinous crimes--even if you do go round with a cap on your head,[n] uttering abuse against me? (_to the clerk._) read the verses. _solon's lay._ the father's voice hath spoken, whose word is destiny, and the blest gods have willed it, the gods who shall not die; that ne'er shall the destroyer prevail against our land; the dread sire's valiant daughter guards us with eye and hand. yet her own sons, in folly, would lay their country low, for pelf; and in her leaders an heart of sin doth grow. for them--their pride's fell offspring-- there waiteth grievous pain; for sated still, they know not their proud lust to contain. not theirs, if mirth be with them, the decent, peaceful feast; to sin they yield, and sinning rejoice in wealth increased. no hallowed treasure sparing, nor people's common store, this side and that his neighbour each robs with havoc sore. the holy law of justice they guard not. silent she, who knows what is and hath been, awaits the time to be. then cometh she to judgement, with certain step, tho' slow; e'en now she smites the city, and none may 'scape the blow. to thraldom base she drives us, from slumber rousing strife,-- fell war of kin, destroying the young, the beauteous life. the foemen of their country in wicked bands combine, fit company; and stricken the lovely land doth pine. these are the wrong, the mischief, that pace the earth at home; but many a beggared exile to other lands must roam-- sold, chained in bonds unseemly; for so to each man's hall comes home the people's sorrow, and leaps the high fence-wall. no courtyard door can stay it; it follows to his side, flee tho' he may, and crouching in inmost chamber hide. such warning unto athens my spirit bids me sound, that lawlessness in cities spreads evil all around; but lawfulness and order make all things good and right, chaining sin's hands in fetters, quenching the proud soul's light, smoothing the rough, the sated staying, and withering the flowers, that, fraught with ruin, from fatal seed upspring. the paths of crooked justice are turned into straight; the ways of pride grow gentle, the ways of strife and hate; then baleful faction ceases, then health prevails alway, and wisdom still increases, beneath law's wholesome sway. { } you hear, men of athens, how solon speaks of men like these, and of the gods, who, he says, preserve the city. it is my belief and my hope that this saying of his, that the gods preserve our city, is true at all times; but i believe that all that has happened in connexion with the present examination is, in a sense, a special proof of the goodwill of some unseen power towards the city. { } consider what has happened. a man who as ambassador did a work of great wickedness, and has surrendered countries in which the gods should have been worshipped by yourselves and your allies, has disfranchised one who accepted the challenge[n] to prosecute him. to what end? to the end that he himself might meet with no pity or mercy for his own iniquities. nay, more; while prosecuting his victim he deliberately set himself to speak evil of me; and again, before the people, he threatened to enter an indictment against me, and said more to the same effect. and to what end? to the end that i, who had the most perfect knowledge of all his acts of villany, and had followed them closely throughout, might have your full indulgence in prosecuting him. { } aye, and through postponing his appearance before you continually up to the present moment, he has been insensibly brought to a time when, on account of what is coming upon us, if for no other reason, it is neither possible nor safe for you to allow him (after his corruption) to escape unscathed. for though, men of athens, you ought always to execrate and to punish those who are traitors and corrupt, to do so at this time would be more than ever seasonable, and would confer a benefit upon all mankind in common. { } for a disease, men of athens, an awful disease has fallen upon hellas--a disease hard to cope with, and requiring abundant good fortune, and abundant carefulness on your own part. for the most notable men in their several cities, the men who claim[n] to lead in public affairs, are betraying their own liberty--unhappy men!--and bringing upon themselves a self-chosen servitude, under the milder names of friendship and companionship with philip, and other such phrases; while the other citizens, and the sovereign bodies in each city, however composed, whose duty it was to punish these men and slay them out of hand, are so far from taking any such action, that they admire and envy them, and every one would be glad to be in the same case. { } yet it is from this very cause--it is through entertaining ambitions like these--that the thessalians, who up to yesterday or the day before had lost thereby only their paramount position[n] and their dignity as a state, are now already being stripped of their very liberty; for there are macedonian garrisons in some of their citadels. this same disease it is which has invaded the peloponnese and brought about the massacres in elis, infecting the unhappy people of that country with such insanity and frenzy, that in order to be lords over one another and to gratify philip, they murder their kinsmen and fellow citizens. { } not even here has the disease been stayed: it has penetrated arcadia and turned it upside-down; and now many of the arcadians, who should be no less proud of liberty than yourselves--for you and they alone are indigenous peoples--are declaring their admiration for philip, erecting his image in bronze, and crowning him; and, to complete the tale, they have passed a resolution that, if he comes to the peloponnese, they will receive him within their walls. { } the argives have acted in exactly the same way. these events, i say it in all solemnity and earnestness, call for no small precautions: for this plague, men of athens, that is spreading all around us, has now found its way to athens itself. while then we are still safe, ward it off, and take away the citizenship of those who first introduced it. beware lest otherwise you realize the worth of the advice given you this day, only when there is no longer anything that you can do. { } do you not perceive, men of athens, how vivid and plain an example has been afforded you by the unhappy olynthians? the destruction of those wretched men was due to nothing so much as to conduct like that of which i speak. you can test this clearly if you review their history. { } for at a time when they possessed only cavalry, and numbered not more than , men in all, since the chalcidians were not yet all united under one government, the spartans came against them with a large force, including both army and fleet (for you doubtless remember that at that period the spartans were virtually masters both of land and sea); and yet, though this great force came against them, the olynthians lost neither the city nor any single fortress, but won many battles, killed three of the enemy's commanders, and finally concluded the war on their own terms.[n] { } but when some of them began to take bribes, and the people as a whole were foolish enough, or rather unfortunate enough, to repose greater confidence in these men than in those who spoke for their own good; when lasthenes roofed his house with the timber which came from macedonia, and euthycrates was keeping a large herd of cattle for which he had paid no one anything; when a third returned with sheep, and a fourth with horses, while the people, to whose detriment all this was being done, so far from showing any anger or any disposition to chastise men who acted so, actually gazed on them with envy, and paid them honour and regarded them as heroes--{ } when, i say, such practices were gaining ground in this way, and corruption had been victorious; then, though they possessed , cavalry and numbered more than , men; though all the surrounding peoples were their allies; though you went to their assistance with , mercenaries and ships, and with , citizen-soldiers as well, none of these things could save them. before a year of the war had expired they had lost all the cities in chalcidice, while philip could no longer keep pace with the invitations of the traitors, and did not know which place to occupy first. { } five hundred horsemen were betrayed by their own commanders and captured by philip, with their arms--a larger number than were ever before captured by any one. and the men who acted thus were not ashamed to face the sun or the earth--the soil of their native land--on which they stood, or the temples, or the sepulchres of the dead, or the disgrace which was bound to follow upon such deeds afterwards. such is the madness and distraction which corruption engenders. so it is for you--for you, the people--to be wise, to refuse to suffer such things, and to visit them with public chastisement. for it would be monstrous indeed, if, after the terrible condemnation which you passed upon those who betrayed the olynthians, it were seen that you allowed the criminals who are in your very midst to go unpunished. (_to the clerk._) read the decree passed with reference to the olynthians. [_the decree is read._] { } this decree, gentlemen of the jury, is one which in the eyes of all, hellenes and foreigners alike, it was right and honourable in you to have passed in condemnation of traitors and men detested of heaven. and so, since the taking of the bribe is the step which precedes such actions, and it is the bribe that prompts the traitor's deeds, whenever, men of athens, you find a man receiving a bribe, you must count him a traitor as well. that one man betrays opportunities, and another affairs of state, and another soldiers, means only, i imagine, that each works mischief in the particular department over which he has control; but there should be no distinction in your execration of all such men. { } you, men of athens, are the only people in the world who can draw from your own history examples which bear upon this matter, and who have those ancestors, whom you rightly praise, to imitate in your actions. you may not be able, at the present time, to imitate them in the battles, the campaigns, the perils in which they distinguished themselves, since at the present moment you are at peace; but at least you can imitate their wisdom. { } for of wisdom there is need everywhere; and a right judgement is no more laborious or troublesome a thing than a wrong one. each of you need sit here no longer, in order to judge and vote on the question before him aright, and so to make his country's position a better one, and worthy of our ancestors, than he must in order to judge and vote wrongly, and so make it worse and unworthy of our ancestors. what then were their sentiments on this matter? (_to the clerk._) take this, clerk, and read it: (_to the jury_) for i would have you see that the acts towards which you are so indifferent are acts for which your forefathers voted death to the doers. (_to the clerk._) read. [_an inscription is read._] { } you hear the inscription, men of athens, declaring that arthmius[n] of zeleia, son of pythonax, is a foe and a public enemy to the people of athens and their allies--both he and all his house. and why? because he brought the gold from the foreigner to the hellenes. apparently, therefore, we may judge from this, that your ancestors sought to ensure that no one, not even a stranger, should work mischief against hellas for money; whereas you do not even seek to prevent any of your fellow citizens from injuring his own city. { } 'but,' it may be said, 'the inscription occupies a quite unimportant position.' on the contrary, although all yonder acropolis is sacred and there is no lack of space upon it, this inscription stands on the right hand of the great bronze statue of athena, the prize of valour in the war against the barbarians, set up by the state with funds which the hellenes had presented to her. in those days, therefore, uprightness was so sacred, and such merit was attached to the punishment of actions like these, that the sentences passed upon such crimes were thought to deserve the same position as the prize-statue of the goddess. and now, unless you, in your turn, set a check upon this excess of licence, the result must be ridicule, impunity, and shame.[ ] { } you would do well, i think, men of athens, to imitate your forefathers, not in this or that point alone, but continuously, and in all that they did. now i am sure that you have all heard the story of callias,[n] the son of hipponicus, to whose diplomacy was due the peace which is universally celebrated, and which provided that the king should not come down by land within a day's ride of the sea, nor sail with a ship of war between the chelidonian islands and the cyanean rocks. he was thought to have taken bribes on his mission; and your forefathers almost put him to death, and actually fined him, at the examination of his report, a sum of talents. { } true it is, that no more honourable peace can be mentioned than this, of all which the city ever made before or afterwards. but it was not to this that they looked. the nature of the peace they attributed to their own prowess and the glory of their city: but whether the transaction was disinterested or corrupt, depended upon the character of the ambassador; and they expected the character displayed by one who took part in public affairs to be upright and incorruptible. { } your ancestors, then, regarded corruption as so inimical, so unprofitable, to the state, that they would not admit it in connexion with any single transaction or any single man; while you, men of athens, though you have seen that the peace which has laid low the walls of your own allies is building the houses of your ambassadors--that the peace which has robbed the city of her possessions has secured for them more than they had ever before hoped for even in their dreams--you, i say, instead of putting them to death of your own accord, need a prosecutor to assist you; and when all can see their crimes in very deed, you are making their trial a trial of words. { } it is not, however, by the citation of ancient history, nor by these examples alone, that one may stimulate you to vengeance: for even within the lifetime of yourselves, who are here and still living, many have paid the penalty. all the rest of these i will pass over; but i will mention one or two of those who were punished with death, on returning from a mission whose results have been far less disastrous to the city than those of the present embassy. (_to the clerk._) take then this decree and read it. [_the decree is read._] { } in this decree, men of athens, you passed sentence of death upon those ambassadors, one of whom was epicrates,[n] a good man, as i am told by my elders, and one who had in many ways been of service to his country--one of those who brought the people back from the peiraeus,[n] and who was generally an upholder of the democracy. yet none of these services helped him, and rightly. for one who claims to manage affairs of such magnitude has not merely to be half honest; he must not secure your confidence and then take advantage of it to increase his power to do mischief; he must do absolutely no wrong against you of his own will. { } now if there is one of the things for which those men were sentenced to death, that these men have not done, you may put me to death without delay. observe what the charges were. 'since they conducted their mission,' says the decree,[n] 'contrary to the terms of the resolution'--that is the first of the charges. and have not these men contravened the terms of the resolution? does not the decree speak of peace 'for the athenians and the allies of the athenians?' and did they not exclude the phocians from the treaty? does not the decree bid them administer the oath to the magistrates in the several cities? and did they not administer it to men sent to them by philip? does not the resolution forbid them 'to meet philip anywhere alone?' and did they not incessantly do business with him privately? { } again i read, 'and some of them have been convicted of making a false report before the council.' but these men have been convicted of doing so before the people as well. and convicted by whom? for this is the splendid thing.[n] convicted by the actual facts; for all that has happened, as you know, has been the exact reverse of what they announced. 'and,' the decree goes on, 'of not sending true dispatches.' nor did these men. 'and of accusing our allies falsely and taking bribes.' instead of 'accusing falsely', say, 'of having utterly ruined'--surely a far more heinous thing than a false accusation. and as for the charge of taking bribes, if it had been denied, it would still have required proof; but since they admitted it, a summary procedure was surely the proper one. { } what then will you do, men of athens? you are the offspring of that generation, and some of you are actually survivors from it; and will you endure it, that epicrates, the benefactor of the people, one of the men from the peiraeus, should have been exiled and punished;[n] that thrasybulus, again, the son of the great thrasybulus, the people's friend, who brought the people back from phyle, should recently have been fined ten talents; and that the descendant of harmodius,[n] and of those who achieved for you the greatest of blessings, and whom, for the benefits which they conferred upon you, you have caused to share in the libations and the bowls outpoured, in every temple where sacrifice is offered, singing of them and honouring them as you honour heroes and gods--{ } that all these, i say, should have undergone the penalty ordained by the laws, and that no feeling of compassion or pity, nor the tears of their children who bore the names of our benefactors, nor aught else, should have availed them anything: and yet, when you have to do with the son of atrometus the schoolmaster, and glaucothea, who used to hold those meetings of the initiated, a practice for which another priestess[n] was put to death--when you have in your hands the son of such parents, a man who never did a single service to his country--neither himself, nor his father, nor any of his house--will you let him go? { } where is the horse, the trireme, the military service, the chorus, the burden undertaken[n] for the state, the war-contribution, the loyal action, the peril undergone, for which in all their lifetime the city has had to thank him or his? aye, and even if all these stood to his credit, and those other qualifications, of uprightness and integrity in his mission, were not also to be found in him, it would surely have been right that he should perish. but when neither the one nor the other are to be found, will you not avenge yourselves upon him? { } will you not call to mind his own words, when he was prosecuting timarchus--that there was no help for a city which had no sinews to use against the criminal, nor for a constitution in which compassion and solicitation were more powerful than the laws--that it was your duty not to pity the aged mother of timarchus, nor his children, nor any one else, but to attend solely to one point, namely, that if you abandoned the cause of the laws and the constitution, you would look in vain for any to have pity on yourselves. { } is that unhappy man to have lost his rights as a citizen, because he witnessed the guilt of aeschines, and will you then suffer aeschines to escape unscathed? on what ground can you do so? for if aeschines demanded so heavy a penalty from those whose sins were against their own persons, what must be the magnitude of the penalty which _you_ should require--you, the sworn judges of the case--from those who have sinned so greatly against their country's interests, and of whom aeschines is convincingly proved to be one? { } 'but,' we are told, 'that was a trial which will raise the moral standard of our young men.' yes, and this trial will raise that of our statesmen, upon whose character the supreme interests of the city are staked. for your care ought to extend to them also. but you must realize that his real motive for ruining timarchus himself was not, heaven knows, to be found in any anxiety for the virtue of your sons. indeed, men of athens, they are virtuous even now; for i trust that the city will never have fallen so low, as to need aphobetus and aeschines to reform the morals of the young. { } no! the reason was that timarchus had proposed in the council, that if any one was convicted of conveying arms or fittings for ships of war to philip, the penalty should be death. and here is a proof. how long had timarchus been in the habit of addressing you? for a long time. now throughout all this time aeschines was in athens, and never showed any vexation or indignation at the fact of such a man addressing you, until he had been to macedonia and made himself a hireling. (_to the clerk._) come, take the actual decree which timarchus proposed, and read it. [_the decree is read._] { } so the man who proposed on your behalf the resolution which forbade, on pain of death, the supply of arms to philip during the war, has been ruined and treated with contumely; while aeschines, who had surrendered the arms of your very allies to philip, was his accuser, and charged him--i call heaven and earth to witness--with unnatural offences, although two of his own kinsmen stood by his side, the very sight of whom would call forth a cry of protest from you--the disgusting nicias, who went to egypt and hired himself to chabrias, and the accursed cyrebion,[n] who joins in processions, as a reveller,[n] without a mask. nay, why mention these things? his own brother aphobetus was there before his eyes! in very truth all the words that were spoken on that day about unnatural offences were water flowing up stream.[n] { } and now, to show you the dishonour into which the villainy and mendacity of the defendant have brought our country, passing by all besides, i will mention a fact known to you all. formerly, men of athens, all the other hellenes used to watch attentively, to see what had been resolved in your assembly; but now we are already going about and inquiring what others have decided--trying to overhear what the arcadians are doing, or the amphictyons, or where philip will be next, and whether he is alive or dead. { } we do this, do we not? but for me the terrible question is not whether philip is alive, but whether in this city the habit of execrating and punishing criminals is dead. philip has no terrors for me, if your own spirit is sound; but the prospect that you may grant security to those who wish to receive their wages from him--that they may be supported by some of those whom you have trusted, and that those who have all along denied that they were acting in philip's interests may now mount the platform in their defence--that is the prospect which terrifies me. { } tell me, eubulus, why it was, that at the recent trial of your cousin hegesilaus,[n] and of thrasybulus, the uncle of niceratus, when the primary question[n] was before the jury, you would not even respond when they called upon you; and that when you rose to speak on the assessment of the penalty,[n] you uttered not a word in their defence, but only asked the jury to be indulgent to you? do you refuse to ascend the platform in defence of kinsmen and relations, { } and will you then do so in defence of aeschines, who, when aristophon was prosecuting philonicus, and in accusing him was denouncing your own acts, joined with him in accusing you, and was found in the ranks of your enemies? you frightened your countrymen here by saying that they must either march down to the peiraeus at once, and pay the war-tax, and convert the festival-fund into a war-fund, or else pass the decree advocated by aeschines and proposed by the shameless philocrates--{ } a decree, of which the result was that the peace became a disgraceful instead of a fair one, and that these men have ruined everything by their crimes: and have you, after all this, become reconciled to him? you uttered imprecations upon philip, in the presence of the people, and swore by the life of your children that you would be glad if perdition seized him; and will you now come to the aid of aeschines? how can perdition seize philip, when you are trying to save those who take bribes from him? { } why is it that you prosecuted moerocles for misappropriating drachmae out of the sums paid by each of the lessees of the mines, and indicted ctesiphon for the theft of sacred moneys, because he paid minae into the bank three days too late; and yet, when men have taken money and confess it, and are convicted, by being caught in the very act, of having done so in order to bring about the ruin of our allies, you do not prosecute them, but even command their acquittal? { } but the appalling character of these crimes and the great watchfulness and caution that they call for, and the triviality of the offences for which you prosecuted those other men, may further be seen in this way. were there any men in elis who stole public funds? it is very likely indeed. well, had any of them anything to do with the overthrow of the democracy there? not one of them. again, while olynthus was standing, were there others of the same character there? i am sure that there were. was it then through them that olynthus was destroyed? no. again, do you not suppose that in megara there was someone who was a thief and who embezzled public funds? there must have been. well, has any such person been shown to be responsible for the recent crisis there? { } not one. but of what sort _are_ the men who commit crimes of such a character and magnitude? they are those who count themselves worthy to be styled friends and guest-friends of philip, who would fain be generals, who claim[n] to be leaders, who must needs be exalted above the people. was not perillus put on his trial lately before the three hundred at megara, because he went to philip's court; and did not ptoeodorus, the first man in megara in wealth, family, and distinction, come forward and beg him off, and send him back again to philip? and was not the consequence that the one came back at the head of the mercenaries, while the other was churning the butter[n] at home? { } for there is nothing, nothing, i say, in the world, which you must be so careful not to do, as not to allow any one to become more powerful than the people. i would have no man acquitted or doomed, to please any individual. only let us be sure that the man whose actions acquit or condemn him will receive from you the verdict he deserves. { } that is the true democratic principle. and further, it is true that many men have come to possess great influence with you at particular times--callistratus, and again aristophon, diophantus, and others before them. but where did each of these exercise his primacy? in the assembly of the people. but in the law-courts no man has ever, to this day, carried more influence than the laws and the juror's oath. do not then allow the defendant to have such influence to-day. to prove to you that there is good reason for you not to trust, but to beware of such influence, i will read you an oracle of the gods, who always protect the city far better than do its foremost citizens. (_to the clerk._) read the oracles. [_the oracles are read._] { } you hear, men of athens, the warnings of the gods. if these responses were given by them when you were at war, they mean that you must beware of your generals, since in war it is the generals who are leaders; but if they were uttered after you had made peace, they must refer to those who are at the head of your government; for these are the leaders whom you obey, and it is by these that you are in danger of being led astray. 'and hold the state together' [says the oracle] 'until all are of one mind, and afford no joy to their foes.' { } which event then, men of athens, do you think would afford joy to philip--the acquittal of one who has brought about all this evil, or his punishment? his acquittal, i am sure. but the oracle, you see, says that we should so act as not to afford joy to our foes; and therefore, by the mouth of zeus, of dione,[n] and of all the gods, is this exhortation given to us all, that with one mind we chastise those who have done any service to our enemies. without are those who are plotting against us, within are their confederates. the part of the plotters is to offer the bribe; that of their confederates is to receive it, and to save from condemnation those who have received it. { } and further, it needs no more than human reason to arrive at the conclusion that nothing can be more hateful and dangerous than to allow your first citizen to be intimate with those whose objects are not those of the people. consider by what means philip has become master of the entire situation, and by what means he has accomplished the greatest of his successes. it has been by purchasing the opportunities for action from those who offered them for sale--by corrupting and exciting the aspirations of the leaders of their several cities. { } these have been the means. now both of these methods it is in your power, if you wish it, to render futile to-day, if you will refuse to listen to prominent persons who speak in defence of such practices, and will thus prove that they have no power over you--for now they assert that they have you under their control--while at the same time you punish the man who has sold himself, and let all the world see what you have done. { } for you would have reason enough, men of athens, for being angry with any man who had acted so, and had betrayed your allies and your friends and your opportunities (for with these are bound up the whole prosperity or adversity of every people), but with no one more than with aeschines, or with greater justice. after taking up a position as one of those who mistrusted philip--after being the first and the only man to perceive that philip was the common enemy of all the hellenes--he deserted, he betrayed you; he suddenly became philip's supporter. surely he deserves to die many times over! { } nay, he himself will not be able to deny that these things are so. for who was it that brought ischander forward before you originally, stating that he had come from the friends of athens in arcadia? who was it that cried out that philip was organizing hellas and the peloponnese against you, while you were asleep? who was it that delivered those long and noble orations to the people, that read to you the decrees of miltiades and themistocles, and the oath of the young soldiers[n] in the temple of aglaurus? { } was it not the defendant? who was it that persuaded you to send embassies almost as far as the red sea, on the ground that philip was plotting against hellas, and that it was for you to foresee this and not to sacrifice the interests of the hellenes? was it not eubulus who proposed the decree, while the ambassador to the peloponnese was the defendant aeschines? what expressions he used in his address to the people, after he arrived there, is best known to himself: but i know you all remember what he reported to you. { } many a time in the course of his speech he called philip 'barbarian' and 'devil'; and he reported the delight of the arcadians at the thought that athens was now waking up and attending to public affairs. one thing he told us, which caused him, he said, more distress than anything else. as he was leaving, he met atrestidas, who was travelling home from philip's court, and with him were walking some thirty women and children. wondering at this, he asked one of the travellers who the man was, and what this crowd was along with him; { } and on hearing that it was atrestidas, who was on his way home, and that these with him were captives from olynthus whom philip had given him as a present, he was struck with the atrocity of the thing and burst into tears, and lamented the unhappy condition of hellas, that she should allow such tragedies to pass unnoticed. at the same time he counselled you to send representatives to arcadia to denounce philip's agents, saying that his friends told him that if athens took notice of the matter and sent envoys, philip's agents would be punished. { } such, men of athens, was the tenor of his speeches then; and very noble they were, and worthy of this city. but when he had been to macedonia, and had seen the enemy of himself and of the hellenes, were his speeches couched any more in the same or a similar tone? far from it! he told you that you must neither remember your forefathers nor mention your trophies, nor go to the aid of any one. he was amazed, he said, at those who urged you to confer with the rest of the hellenes in regard to the peace with philip, as though there was any need to convince some one else about a matter which was purely your own affair. { } and as for philip, 'why, good gracious!' said he, 'philip is the most thorough hellene in the world, a most able speaker, and most friendly towards athens: only there are certain persons in athens so unreasonable and so churlish, that they are not ashamed to slander him and call him "barbarian".' now is it possible that the man who had formerly spoken as aeschines did, should now have dared to speak in such a way, if he had not been corrupted? what? { } is there a man who after conceiving such detestation for atrestidas, owing to those children and women from olynthus, could have endured to act in conjunction with philocrates, who brought freeborn olynthian women here to gratify his lust, and is so notorious for his abominable living, that it is unnecessary for me now to use any offensive or unpleasant expression about him; for if i say that philocrates brought women here, the rest will be understood by all of you and of the bystanders, and you will, i am sure, pity the poor unhappy creatures--though aeschines felt no pity for them, and shed no tears for hellas at the sight of them, or at the thought of the outrages they were suffering among their own allies at the hands of our ambassadors. { } no! he will shed tears on his own behalf--he whose proceedings as ambassador have had such results--and perhaps he will bring forward his children, and mount them upon the platform. but, gentlemen of the jury, when you see the children of aeschines, remember that the children of many of your allies and friends are now vagabonds, wandering in beggary, owing to the cruel treatment they have suffered in consequence of his conduct, and that these deserve your compassion far more than those whose father is a criminal and a traitor. remember that your own children have been robbed even of their hopes by these men, who inserted among the terms of the peace the clause which extended it to posterity. and when you see the tears of aeschines, remember that you have now before you a man who urged you to send representatives to arcadia to denounce the agents of philip. { } now to-day you need send no embassy to the peloponnese; you need take no long journey; you need incur no travelling expenses. each of you need only come as far as this platform, to deposit the vote which piety and justice demand of him, on behalf of your country; and to condemn the man who--i call earth and heaven to witness!--after originally delivering the speeches which i described, speaking of marathon and of salamis, and of your battles and your trophies, suddenly--so soon as he had set foot in macedonia--changed his tone completely, and told you that you must not remember your forefathers, nor recount your trophies, nor go to the aid of any one, nor take common counsel with the hellenes--who all but told you that you must pull down your walls. { } never throughout all time, up to this day, have speeches more shameful than these been delivered before you. what hellene, what foreigner, is so dense, or so uninstructed, or so fierce in his hatred of our city, that if one were to put to him this question, and say, 'tell me now; of all hellas, as it now is--all this inhabited country--is there any part which would have been called by this name, or inhabited by the hellenes who now possess it, unless those who fought at marathon and salamis, our forefathers, had displayed that high prowess on their behalf?' why, i am certain that not one would answer 'yes': they would say that all these regions must have been conquered by the barbarians. { } if then no single man, not even one of our enemies, would have deprived them of these their panegyrics and praises, does aeschines forbid you to remember them--you their descendants--in order that he himself may receive money? in all other blessings, moreover, the dead have no share; but the praises which follow their noble deeds are the peculiar possession of those who have died thus; for then even envy opposes them no longer. of these praises aeschines would deprive them; and justly, therefore, would he now be deprived of his privileges as as a citizen, and justly, in the name of your forefathers, would you exact from him this penalty. such words you used, nevertheless, in the wickedness of your heart, to despoil and traduce the deeds of our forefathers, and by your word you ruined all our interests in very deed. { } and then, as the outcome of this, you are a landed gentleman, and have become a personage of consequence! for this, too, you must notice. before he had wrought every kind of mischief against the city he acknowledged that he had been a clerk; he was grateful to you for having elected him, and behaved himself modestly. but since he has wrought countless evils, he has drawn up his eyebrows, and if any one speaks of 'aeschines the late clerk', he is his enemy at once, and declares that he has been insulted: he walks through the market-place with his cloak trailing down to his ankles, keeping step with pythocles,[n] and puffing out his cheeks--already one of philip's friends and guest-friends, if you please--one of those who would be rid of the democracy, and who regard the established constitution as so much tempestuous madness--he who was once the humble servant of the round chamber. { } i wish now to recapitulate to you summarily the ways in which philip got the better of you in policy, when he had taken these heaven-detested men to aid him. it is well worth while to review and contemplate the course of his deception as a whole. it began with his anxiety for peace; for his country was being plundered, and his ports were closed, so that he could enjoy none of the advantages which they afforded; and so he sent the messengers who uttered those generous sentiments on his behalf--neoptolemus, aristodemus, and ctesiphon. { } but so soon as we went to him as your ambassadors, he immediately hired the defendant to second and co-operate with the abominable philocrates, and so get the better of those who wished to act uprightly; and he composed such a letter to you as he thought would be most likely to help him to obtain peace. { } but even so, he had no better chance than before of effecting anything of importance against you, unless he could destroy the phocians. and this was no easy matter. for he had now been reduced, as if by chance, to a position in which he must either find it impossible to effect any of his designs, or else must perforce lie and forswear himself, and make all men, whether hellenes or foreigners, witnesses of his own baseness. { } for if, on the one hand, he received the phocians as allies, and administered the oath to them together with yourselves, it at once became necessary for him to break his oaths to the thessalians and thebans; for he had sworn to aid the latter in the reduction of boeotia, and the former in the recovery of their place in the amphictyonic council; but if, on the other hand, he refused to receive them (as in fact he did reject them), he thought that you would not let him cross the pass, but would rally to thermopylae--and so you would have done, had you not been misled; and if this happened, he calculated that he would be unable to march across. { } nor had he to learn this from others; he had already the testimony of his own experience. for on the occasion of his first defeat of the phocians, when he destroyed their mercenaries and their leader and general, onomarchus, although not a single human being, hellene or foreigner, came to the aid of the phocians, except yourselves, so far was he from crossing the pass and thereafter carrying out any of his designs, that he could not even approach near it. { } he realized, i imagine, quite clearly, that at a time when the feelings of the thessalians were turning against him, and the pheraeans (to take the first instance) refused to accompany him--when the thebans were being worsted and had lost a battle, and a trophy had been erected to celebrate their defeat--it was impossible for him to cross the pass, if you rallied to its defence; and that if he made the attempt he would regret it, unless some cunning could be called in to aid him. how then, he asked, can i avoid open falsehood, and yet accomplish all that i wish without appearing perjured? how can it be done? it can be done, if i can get some of the athenians to deceive the athenians. in that case the discredit no longer falls to my share. { } and so philip's own envoys first informed you that philip declined to receive the phocians as allies; and then these men took up the tale, and addressed you to the effect that it was inconvenient to philip to receive the phocians as your allies openly, on account of the thebans and the thessalians; but if he gets command of the situation, they said, and is granted the peace, he will do just what we should now request him to promise to do. { } so they obtained the peace from you, by holding out these seductive hopes, without including the phocians. but they had still to prevent the expedition to thermopylae, for the purpose of which, despite the peace, your fifty ships were still lying ready at anchor, in order that, if philip marched, you might prevent him. { } how then could it be done? what cunning could be used in regard to this expedition in its turn? they must deprive you of the necessary time, by bringing the crisis upon you suddenly, so that, even if you wished to set out, you might be unable to do so. so this, it appears, was what these men undertook to do; while for my part, as you have often been told, i was unable to depart in advance of them, and was prevented from sailing even when i had hired a boat for the purpose. { } but it was further necessary that the phocians should come to believe in philip and give themselves up to him voluntarily, in order that there might be no delay in carrying out the plan, and that no hostile decree whatever might issue from you. 'and therefore,' said he, 'the athenian ambassadors shall announce that the phocians are to be preserved from destruction, so that even if any one persists in distrusting me, he will believe them, and put himself in my hands. we will summon the athenians themselves, so that they may imagine that all that they want is secured, and may pass no hostile decree: but the ambassadors shall make such reports about us, and give such promises, as will prevent them from moving under any circumstances.' { } it was in this way, and by such trickery as this, that all was ruined, through the action of these doomed wretches. for immediately afterwards, as you know, instead of seeing thespiae and plataeae repeopled, you heard that orchomenus and coroneia had been enslaved; instead of thebes being humbled and stripped of her insolence and pride, the walls of your own allies were being razed, and it was the thebans who were razing them--the thebans who, according to aeschines' story, were as good as broken up into villages. { } instead of euboea being handed over to you in exchange for amphipolis, philip is making new bases of operations against you in euboea itself, and is plotting incessantly against geraestus and megara. instead of the restoration of oropus to you, we are making an expedition under arms to defend drymus and the country about panactum[n]--a step which we never took so long as the phocians remained unharmed. { } instead of the restoration of the ancestral worship in the temple, and the exaction of the debt due to the god, the true amphictyons are fugitives, who have been banished and their land laid desolate; and macedonians, foreigners, men who never were amphictyons in the past, are now forcing their way to recognition; while any one who mentions the sacred treasures is thrown from the rocks, and our city has been deprived of her right to precedence in consulting the oracle. { } indeed, the story of all that has happened to the city sounds like a riddle. philip has spoken no falsehood, and has accomplished all that he wished: you hoped for the fulfilment of your fondest prayers, and have seen the very opposite come to pass; you suppose yourselves to be at peace, and have suffered more terribly than if you had been at war; while these men have received money for all this, and up to this very day have not paid the penalty. { } for that the situation has been made what it is solely by bribery, and that these men have received their price for it all, has, i feel sure, long been plain to you in many ways; and i am afraid that, quite against my will, i may long have been wearying you by attempting to prove with elaborate exactness what you already know for yourselves. { } yet this one point i ask you still to listen to. is there, gentlemen of the jury, one of the ambassadors whom philip sent, whose statue in bronze you would erect in the market-place? nay, one to whom you would give maintenance in the town hall, or any other of those complimentary grants with which you honour your benefactors? i think not. and why? for you are of no ungrateful or unfair or mean disposition. you would reply, that it is because all that they did was done in the interest of philip, and nothing in your own; and the reply would be true and just. { } do you imagine then that, when such are your sentiments, philip's are not also such? do you imagine that he gives all these magnificent presents because your ambassadors conducted their mission honourably and uprightly with a view to _your_ interest? impossible. think of hegesippus, and the manner in which he and the ambassadors who accompanied him were received by philip. to go no further, he banished xenocleides, the well-known poet, by public proclamation, because he received the ambassadors, his own fellow citizens. for so it is that he behaves to men who honestly say what they think on your behalf: while to those who have sold themselves he behaves as he has to these men. do we then need witnesses? do we need stronger proofs than these to establish my conclusions? will any one be able to steal these conclusions from your minds? { } now i was told a most extraordinary thing just now by some one who accosted me in front of the court, namely, that the defendant is prepared to accuse chares, and that by such methods and such arguments as that, he hopes to deceive you. i will not lay undue stress on the fact that chares,[n] subjected to every form of trial, was found to have acted on your behalf, so far as was in his power, with faithfulness and loyalty, while his frequent shortcomings were due to those who, for money, were cruelly injuring your cause. but i will go much further. let it be granted that all that the defendant will say of chares is true. { } even so it is utterly absurd that aeschines should accuse him. for i do not lay the blame on aeschines for anything that was done in the course of the war--it is the generals who have to account for all such proceedings--nor do i hold him responsible for the city's having made peace. so far i acquit him of everything. what then do i allege, and at what point does my accusation begin? i accuse him of having supported philocrates, at the time when the city was making peace, instead of supporting those who proposed what was for your real good. i accuse him of taking bribes, and subsequently, on the second embassy, of wasting time, and of not carrying out any of your instructions. i accuse him of cheating the city, and ruining everything, by the suggestion of hopes that philip would do all that we desired; and then i accuse him of speaking afterwards in defence of one of whom[n] all warned him to beware, on account of the great crimes of which he had been guilty. { } these are my charges, and these are what you must bear in mind. for a peace that was honest and fair, and men that had sold nothing and had told no falsehoods afterwards, i would even have commended, and would have bidden you crown them. but the injuries which some general may have done you have nothing to do with the present examination. where is the general who has caused the loss of halus? or of the phocians? or of doriscus? or of cersobleptes? or of the sacred mountain? or of thermopylae? who has secured philip a road to attica that leads entirely through the country of allies and friends? who has given coroneia and orchomenus and euboea to others? who has all but given megara to the enemy, only recently? who has made the thebans powerful? { } not one of all these heavy losses was the work of the generals; nor does philip hold any of these places because you were persuaded to concede it to him by the treaty of peace. the losses are due to these men and to their corruption. if then he evades these points, and tries to mislead you by speaking of every other possible subject, this is how you must receive his attempt. 'we are not sitting in judgement upon any general,' you must say, 'nor are you on your trial for the things of which you speak. do not tell us whether some one else may not also be responsible for the ruin of the phocians: prove to us that no responsibility attaches to yourself. why do you tell us _now_ of the alleged iniquities of demosthenes, instead of accusing him when his report was under examination? for such an omission alone you deserve to perish. { } do not speak of the beauty of peace, nor of its advantages. no one holds you responsible for the city's having made peace. but show that it was not a shameful and discreditable peace; that we have not since been deceived in many ways; that all was not lost. it is for all these things that the responsibility has been proved to be yours. and why, even to this hour, do you praise the man who has done us all this evil?' if you keep a watch upon him thus, he will have nothing to say; and then he will lift up his voice here, in spite of all his vocal exercises, to no purpose. { } and yet perhaps it is necessary for me to speak about his voice also. for of this too, i am told, he is extremely proud, and expects to carry you away by his declamation. but seeing that you used to drive him away and hiss him out of the theatre and almost stone him, when he was performing the tragic story of thyestes or of the trojan war, so that at last he gave up his third-rate playing, you would be acting in the most extraordinary way if, now that he has wrought countless ills, not on the stage, but in the most important affairs in the public life of the state, you listened to him for his fine voice. { } by no means must you do this, or give way to any foolish sentiment. rather reflect, that if you were testing the qualifications of a herald, you would then indeed look for a fine voice; but when you are testing those of an ambassador, or a man who claims the administration of any public business, you must look for an upright man--a man who bears himself proudly indeed, as your representative, but seeks no more than equality with yourselves--as i myself refused to pay respect to philip, but did pay respect to the captives, whom i saved, and never for a moment drew back; whereas aeschines rolled at philip's feet, and chanted his paeans, while he looks down upon you. { } and further, whenever you notice that cleverness or a good voice or any other natural advantage has been given to an honest and public-spirited man, you ought all to congratulate him and help him to cultivate his gift; for the gift is an advantage in which you all share, as well as he. but when the gift is found in a corrupt and villainous man, who can never resist the chance of gain, then you should exclude him from your presence, and give a harsh and hostile reception to his words: for villainy, which wins from you the reputation of ability, is the enemy of the state. { } you see what great troubles have fallen upon the city, through those qualities which have brought renown to aeschines. but whereas all other faculties are more or less independent, the gift of eloquence, when it meets with hostility from you who listen, is a broken thing. listen, then, to the defendant as you would listen to a corrupt villain, who will not speak a single word of truth. { } observe also that the conviction of the defendant is in every way expedient, not only on all other grounds, but even when you consider our relations with philip himself. for if ever philip finds himself compelled to give the city any of her rights, he will change his methods. as it is, he has chosen to deceive the people as a whole, and to show his favours to a few persons; whereas, if he learns that these men have perished, he will prefer for the future to act in the interest of yourselves collectively, in whose hands all power rests. { } if, however, he intends to persist in his present domineering and outrageous insolence, you will, by getting rid of these men, have rid the city of those who would do anything in the world for him. for when they have acted as they have done, with the expectation of having to pay the penalty in their minds, what do you think they will do, if you relax your severity towards them? where is the euthycrates,[n] or the lasthenes, or the traitor of any description, whom they will not outdo? { } and who among all the rest will not be a worse citizen, when he sees that, for those who have sold themselves, the friendship of philip serves, in consequence, for revenue, for reputation, and for capital; while to those who have conducted themselves uprightly, and have spent their own money as well, the consequences are trouble, hatred, and ill will from a certain party. let it not be so. it is not for your good--whether you regard your reputation or your duty towards heaven or your safety or any other object, that you should acquit the defendant; but rather that you should avenge yourselves upon him, and make him an example in the eyes of all your fellow citizens and of the whole hellenic world. footnotes [ ] this body was composed of life-members, the archons passing into it annually at the conclusion of their term of office. a certain religious solemnity attached to it, and it was generally respected as a public-spirited and high-minded body. [ ] [greek: p_os: ti;]. [ ] hesiod, _works and days_, . [ ] euripides, _phoenix_ fragment. [ ] [greek: adeia, aischuv_e.].