'{ THE HISTORY OF NATIONS GREECE Tii t 1 ean History, University of Nebraska CHARLES MERIVALE. LL.D., Late Dean of Ely, formerly Lecturer in FRANCOIS AUGUSTE MARIE MIGNET. History, Cambridge University Late Member of the French Academy J. HIGGINSON CABOT. Ph.D., Department of History, Wellesley College JAMES WESTFALL THOMPSON. Ph.D., Department of History, University of Chicago SIR WILLIAM W. HUNTER. F.R.S., Late Director-General of Statistics in India SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER. LL.D., Professor of Modem History. King's Col- lege, London GEORGE M. DUTCHER, Ph.D., Professor of History, Wesleyan University R. W. JOYCE, LL.D., Commissioner for the Publication of the Ancient Laws of Ireland ASSOCIATE EDITORS AND AUTHORS-Continued JUSTIN McCarthy, ll.d.. Author and Historian PAUL LOUIS LEGER, Professor of the Slav Languages, C611eRe de France AUGUSTUS HUNT SHEARER, Ph.D., Instructor in History, Trinity College. WILLIAM E. LINGLEBACH, Ph.D., Hartford Assistant Professor of European Histor>', University of Pennsylvania W. HAROLD CLAFLIN, BJ^., Department of History. Harvard Uni- BAYARD TAYLOR, versity Former United States Minister to Germany CHARLES DANDLIKER, LL.D., President of Zurich University SIDNEY B. FAY. Ph.D., Professor of History, Dartmouth College ELBERT JAY BENTON, Ph.D., Department of History, Western Reserve University SIR EDWARD S. CREASY, Late Professor of History, University Col- lege, London ARCHIBALD CARY COOLIDGE, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History, Harvard University WILLIAM RICHARD MORFILL, M.A., Professor of Russian and other Slavonic Languages, Oxford University CHARLES EDMUND FRYER, Ph.D., Department of History, McGill University E. C. OTTE, Specialist on Scandinavian History J. SCOTT KELTIE, LL.D., President Royal Geographical Society ALBERT GALLOWAY KELLER, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of the Science of So- ciety, Yale University EDWARD JAMES PAYNE, M.A., Fellow of University College, Oxford PHILIP PATTERSON WELLS, Ph.D., Lecturer in History and Librarian of the Law School, Yale University FREDERICK ALBION OBER, Historian, Author and Traveler JAMES WILFORD GARNER, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois EDWARD S. CORWIN, Ph.D., Instructor in History, Princeton Uni- versity JOHN BACH McMASTER, Litt.D., LL.D., Professor of History. University of Penn- sylvania JAMES LAMONT PERKINS. Managing Editor The editors and publishers desire to express their appreciation for valuable advice and suggestions received from the following: Hon. Andrew D. White, LL.D., Alfred Thayer Mahan, D.C.L., LL.D., Hon. Charles Emory Smith, LL.D., Professor Edward Gaylord Bourne, Ph.D., Charles F. Thwing, LL.D., Dr. Emil Reich, William Elliot Griffis, LL.D., Professor John Martin Vincent, Ph.D., LL.D., Melvil Dewey, LL.D., Alston Ellis, LL.D., Professor Charles H. McCarthy, Ph.D., Professor Herman V. Ames, Ph.D., Professor Walter L. Fleming, Ph.D., Professor David Y. Tho.mas, Ph.D., Mr. Otto Reich and Mr. O. M. Dickerson. vii PREFACE From time to time I have found it necessary to rewrite portions of this book, in order to keep it abreast with modern discoveries. In the second edition some sixty pages had to be more or less recast, in consequence of the appearance of the IloXirsta twv 'A07]vacwv in 1 89 1. Many small changes have been made since then, and in this latest edition I have thought it well to reconstruct the whole of Chapter IL, which deals with the origins of the Greek nationality. Archaeological evidence on the prehistoric days of the Aegean lands has been accumulating so fast of late that the whole section required revision. The excavations of Mr. A. J. Evans in Crete were enough by themselves to cause the introduction of several new paragraphs. I have also made appreciable changes in my narratives of some of the battles of the fifth century b. c, mainly in consequence of reading the very interesting monographs of Mr. Grundy, to whom I must express my gratitude. A word of thanks must be given to many correspondents, some known to the author, some strangers to him, who have written to make suggestions, and to point out errors in the previous editions. Most of them will note that their advice has been taken into con- sideration, and all will understand that it was duly appreciated. Oxford University. ^- ^ IX CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. The Geography of Greece 3 II. Aegean Civilization : Origin of the Greek Nation- ality 20 III. Homeric Poems and the Greeks of the Homeric Age 29 IV. Religion of the Greeks: Olympia and Delphi . 38 V. The Great Migrations 46 VI. Colonies in Asia 51 VII. Dorians in Peloponnesus The Legislation of Ly- curgus 58 VIII. Establishment of Spartan Supremacy in Pelopon- nesus. 743-560 B. c 70 IX. Age of Colonization 78 X. Age of the Tyrants. Circa 750-560 b. c. . . .90 XL Early History of Attica. Circa 1068-621 b. c. . . 97 XII. Solon and Peisistratus. Circa 600-510 b. c. . . 102 XIII. The Lydian Monarchy. 700-546 b. c. . . .114 XIV. Cyrus and Darius. 549-516 b. c. . . . .119 XV. Darius and the Greeks The Ionian Revolt. 510- 492 B. c 131 XVI. Constitution of Cleisthenes. 510-508 b. c . . 140 XVII. European Greece Jealousy of the States. 509- 490 2. c ' . . . .154 XVIII. Battle of Marathon to the Invasion of Xerxes. 490-480 b. c 165 XIX. The Invasion of Xerxes. 480 b. c 181 XX. Salamis and Plataea. 480-479 b. c. , . . 195 XXI. Greeks of Italy and Sicily. 600-465 b. c. . .214 XXII. Events in Asia Minor and Greece. 479-460 b. c. , 222 xi xii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXIII. Rise of Athenian Empire. 471-458 b. c. . . 232 XXIV. Atpiens at the Height of her Power. 458-445 B- c 241 XXV. The Years of Peace. 445-431 b. c. . . .251 XXVI. Rivalry of Sparta and Athens. 435-432 b. c. . 262 XXVII. Early Years of the Peloponnesian War. 431- 429 B. c 274 XXVIII. Siege of Plataea. 429-427 b. c 286 XXIX. Sphacteria and Delium. 427-424 b. c. . . 299 XXX. Brasidas in Thrace The Peace of Nicias. 424- 421 B. c 313 XXXI. Truce of Nicias. 421-416 b. c. . . . . 320 XXXII. Expedition to Sicily. 415-413 b. c. . . . 328 XXXIII. Decline of Athens. 413-41 i b. c. . . . 349 XXXIV. Surrender of Athens. 404 b. c. . . . . 363 XXXV. Spartan Supremacy in Greece. 404-396 b. c. . 379 XXXVI. Revolt from Sparta. 395-387 b. c. . . . 396 XXXVII. The Greeks of the West. 413-338 b. c. . . 407 XXXVIII. Last Years of Spartan Hegemony. 387-379 b. c. 419 XXXIX. Uprising of Thebes. 379-371 b. c. . . . 426 XL. Theban Predominance. 371-362 b. c. . . . 436 XLI. The Peace of 362 b. c. to Philip's Invasion. 362-352 B. c 452 XLII. Philip and Demosthenes. 352-344 b. c. . . 463 XLIII. End of Freedom. 344-336 b. c 471 XLIV. Alexander the Great, 336-323 b. c. . . . 483 XLV. Alexander's Successors and the Greek Leagues. 323-146 B. c 511 XLVI. Under Roman Rule. 146 b. C.-476 a. d. . . 521 XLVII. The Middle Ages and Turkish Yoke. 476-1821 532 XLVIII. The War of Independence. 1821-1829 . . 542 XLIX. The Present Kingdom. 1829- 1906 . . . 546 Bibliography 553 Index 561 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Socrates Drinks the Hemlock (Photogravure) . Frontispiece FACING PAGE Priestess of Apollo on the Tripod at Delphi . . .12 Sack of Troy 30 Homer 38 Foot Races at Olympian Games , 44 Lycurgus 60 Solon 102 An Audience in Athens . . 152 Leonidas and his Three Hundred Spartans . . . 192 Victors of the Battle of Salamis 204 Themistocles 230 Pericles and Aspasia Visiting the Heights of the Acropolis 254 Herodotus Reads his History at Olympia .... 260 Pericles 284 Suppliant Praying before the Statue of Zeus . . . 332 School of Plato 414 Demosthenes 464 Alexander Tames Bucephalus 482 Aristotle 484 Battle of Issus (Colored) 492 Alexander the Great 500 Death of Alexander ........ 504 Theodosius Refused Admission to Church .... 528 Emperor Justinian Orders Compilation of the Laws into A Code . 532 Suliote and Turkish Soldier in Mortal Combat . . 540 xiii xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TEXT MAPS Greece about 550 b. c The Homeric Map of Greece Spartan Supremacy in Peloponnesus, circa 560 b. c. . Asia in 600 b. c. Plan of Battle of ^Marathon Plan of Salamis The Three Positions of the Greek Army before the Battle OF Plataea Greece during the Invasion of Xerxes. 480-479 b. c. Greek Colonies in Sicily and Italy. 500-465 b. c. The Athenian Empire, circa 445 b. c Greece at the Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, 431 b. c The Athenian Siege of Syracuse Plan of Battle of Leuctra Dominions and Dependencies of Alexander, circa 323 b. c PAGE 19 37 17 121 167 201 210 213 221 259 273 33(^ 434 506 HISTORY OF GREECE HISTORY OF GREECE Chapter I THE GEOGRAPHY OF GREECE WHEN we can first discern through the mists of antiquity the race who called themselves Hellenes though we, following the ancient Romans, know them better as Greeks we find them dwelling in the southern region of the Bal- kan Peninsula, That they must at some remote date have wandered into that land from Asia we may surmise, but cannot prove. There is a great mountain range, which under many names forms the backbone of the Balkan Peninsula. Starting from the Alps, it runs from north to south, forming the watershed between the streams which flow west into the Adriatic and those which run northeast or southeast to seek the Danube or the Aegean. Of this great chain the southernmost link is a range called Pindus. From the broad square tract which forms the bulk of the peninsula this range of Pindus strikes out boldly into the Mediterranean, and with its spurs and dependent ranges forms a great mountainous mass projecting for more than two hundred and fifty miles from its base, and almost touching the thirty-sixth degree of latitude with its southernmost cape. It is this southern extension of the Balkan Peninsula which has been since the earliest dawn of history the home of the Hellenic race. Here alone could the Greek claim that he was the first inhab- itant of the land, the true child of the soil. His cities were built on every shore from Gaul to Colchis, but in all lands save this he was a stranger and a sojourner, maintaining a precarious hold on a fortified haven or a strip of coastland won from some earlier possessor. The Hellenic Peninsula if we may so name the southern pro- jection of the Balkan region is not large. It is about equal to 4 GREECE Scotland in size,^ and may be aptly compared to that country in many other things than mere extent. Both are almost entirely sur- rounded by the sea; both possess a wildly irregular coast-line, seamed with countless bays and inlets ; both are fringed by a wide- spreading chain of islands great and small ; both own a soil not over- fertile for the greater part of its surface ; and above all, both are pre-eminently mountain-lands. In Greece, as in Scotland, it is almost impossible to get out of sight of the hills; no spot in the whole land is more than fifteen miles from some considerable range. The three plains of any size which it contains do not together form one-sixth of its surface. The mountains of Greece, then, give the land its special char- acter. They are not remarkable for their great height Olympus, the loftiest summit, falls short of ten thousand feet but are pecul- iarly wild, rugged, and barren. The sharp bare limestone peaks and ridges stand out with surprising distinctness in the bright dry atmosphere of the South, Their summits do not reach the region of perpetual snow, nor are their outlines softened by forests ; all is clear-cut and hard. Moreover, there is so much sheer cliff and impassable ravine in their structure that they constitute much more effective barriers between valley and valley than might be inferred from their mere height, which generally ranges between three thou- sand and seven thousand feet above the sea. The paths from one district to another are few and difficult, winding at the bottom of beetling crags or climbing precipitous gorges in their tortuous course. Hence each tribe was well protected from its neighbors ; the points at which it could be assailed were well known, and could in most cases be obstructed with ease, and firmly held by a handful of resolute men. Greece was framed by Nature for the home of small independent communities. Not the least characteristic feature of the Greek mountains is their chaotic complexity. There is no general system or order in their course; sometimes they remind us of the ribs starting from a backbone, sometimes of the diverging arms of a star-fish, some- times of the complicated meshes of a spider's web. Ranges turn sharply at right angles to themselves, or divide into parallel chains, only to meet again ; bold ridges, whose height promises a long 1 Scotland contains 29,800 square miles ; the modern kingdom of Greece, in- cluding the Cyclades and Thessaly, 24,900; Southern Albania, the old Epirus, makes up some 4000 or 5000 more. GEOGRAPHY 5 course, end suddenly in a sea-beaten cliff. Deep, narrow, unex- pected gorges, torn open by some convulsion of nature, sunder apparently continuous lines of crest. At one point an upland valley is lost in some recess of the hills, with no natural outlet for its waters; at another an arm of the sea comes creeping up a tortuous cleft far into the heart of the mountains. Everything is present except system, order, and regularity. Although the summits of the mountains of Greece are invari- ably bare and bleak, their spurs and slopes were in ancient days not entirely destitute of forest tracts. In Northern Greece extensive woods of ash, beech, and pine were to be found on the sides of Pelion and Parnassus, and, in the Peloponnesus, Arcadia was renowned for its widespreading oak-groves. But on the whole the land was not abundantly timbered ; it had no broad, untrodden stretches of tangled woodland such as formed the primitive boun- daries of Germany or England its wildness was always the wild- ness of the cliff, and not of the forest. The character of the mountains of a country determines that of its rivers. Gentle slopes and wide plains produce broad navigable streams; rocks and ravines breed unmanageable torrents. The course of the rivers of Greece is so short, and their descent to the sea from the hills so rapid, that not one of them can bear a boat. But if incapable of use they are not incapable of mischief; swollen with the winter rains, they become broad dangerous floods which sweep away all that impedes their passage to the sea, and often spread destruction through the cultivated land along their lower course. The Greeks represented the gods of their rivers as mixed shapes, with the body of a bull and the head of a man ; the meaning is not difficult to seize the figure combines the headlong rush and brute-strength of the animal with that almost human ingenuity for mischief which a stream in flood displays. Four or five rivers in Greece possess a course of some length, and bear a considerable volume of water to the sea through all the seasons of the year. Largest of these was the Achelous, the king of Grecian waters, which hurries for more than a hundred miles through the gloomy gorges of Epirus and Aetolia, and ends its obscure course opposite the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. Smaller but more famous were Peneus, which drains Thessaly, the one great Grecian plain; and Alpheus, the sole river which succeeds in forcing its way out of the mountain barriers of Arcadia, and reaching the Ionian Sea. The 6 GREECE other streams of Greece, though famous enough in story, are little better than winter torrents; for one-half of the year they rush tumultuously down to the sea ; for the other half they show a nar- row thread of water barely connecting a chain of isolated pools, or even shrink away altogether and disappear. The bed of a dried- up river has always been during the summer months the most obvious, and often the only, road for the Greek wayfarer. The lakes of Greece are almost without exception the result of the accumulation of water in upland valleys without any natural exit for drainage. The Lake of Pambotis in Epirus, that of Copais in Boeotia, and that of Stymphalus in Arcadia, are all fair examples of this. There would be no limit to the increase of their extent were it not for the existence of a phenomenon common in all lime- stone countries. The water, unable to find its way above ground, pierces itself a subterranean passage, a " swallow," which the Greeks called ^dpadpov or haulo<;, and reappears in some lower valley. If the " swallow " is choked, the lake increases and inundates the whole valley. If it is naturally or artificially enlarged, the sheet of water may dry up entirely. The ancient kings of Orchomenus turned the large lake Copais into grassy meadows by cutting a tunnel four miles long into the Euboean Strait ; a few centuries of neglect, how- ever, choked the issue, and reproduced a broad expanse of marsh which exists till this day. What Greece lacks in navigable rivers is more than compen- sated for by her numerous gulfs. These arms of the sea run up into the heart of the land, and make almost every district readily accessible from the water. The Corinthian Gulf is but the largest example of a long series of land-locked inlets which penetrate Greece from all sides ; so deeply is the coast indented that even the inmost recesses of Thessaly or Arcadia are not more than forty miles from the nearest sea. The depth of her bays and gulfs pro- duces the surprising result that Greece has as many miles of sea- coast as Spain and Portugal, though its superficial area is only one-tenth of that of the Iberian Peninsula. As a land of mountain and shore, Greece possesses a more temperate climate than might have been expected from her southern latitude. The greater part of the surface is upland, where the sum- mer heat is appreciably moderated by the elevation. Moreover, the sea-breeze penetrates almost everywhere to cool and refresh. So it comes to pass that Thessaly, for example, though further GEOGRAPHY 7 south than Naples, has a cHmate no warmer than that of Lombardy ; and that the southernmost plains of Messenia are the only part of the country where anything approaching semi-tropical vegetation can be found. The temperature of Greece was probably even milder in ancient days than now, for the hand of man has cleared away the forest tracts which once equalized the rainfall and saved the land from drought. The Greek held that the excellence of his climate quite compensated for the richness of soil which was denied to his home by nature, and pointed out Hellas as owning the happy mean between the cold of the North and the heat of the South. Greece may be divided into three main parts, each separated from the others by an isthmus. The first includes Thessaly and Epirus, the lands which lie between the northern boundary of the country, and the Malian and Ambracian gulfs two land-locked sheets of water which cut into the peninsula at the thirty-ninth degree of latitude, and reduce its breadth to sixty-five miles. To the south of these inlets Greece broadens out again into its middle region, the district to which the late geographers sometimes restricted the name of " Hellas," opposing it alike to Peloponnesus and to the Northern lands. This tract contains the countries of Acarnania, Aetolia, Doris, Locris, Phocis, Boeotia, Attica, and Megaris. Lastly, beyond the Isthmus of Corinth lies the disconnected mass of Peloponnesus, a mountainous peninsula only joined to Central Greece by a low-lying spit of land three miles and a half across. The northern third of Greece is divided into two widely dis- similar halves by the great range of Pindus. Westward lies Epirus, a land never fully recognized as Greek, for the inhabitants were alien in race and language, though in the course of time they took upon themselves a varnish of Hellenic culture and civilization. It is composed of a number of mountain valleys, some running parallel with Pindus, some at right angles to it, according as the spurs of the great range strike south or west. The northern half of its coast is sheer cliff, where the Ceraunian Mountains run close by the seaside; farther south the shore is less impracticable, and shows a narrow coast-plain and one or two fair harbors. Epirus was divided between three kindred tribes the Chaonians, Thespro- tians, and Molossians. The last-named occupied the inland valleys under the western slope of Pindus ; the Chaonians and Thesprotians 8 GREECE shared the coast the former holding the more rugged northern tract, the latter the smaller and southern half of the shore-lands. Epirus only contains one place of importance, the ancient oracular seat of Dodona. Here, in a secluded upland valley among the hills of the Molossian territory, the priestesses of Zeus dwelt in their oak- groves, and gave responses to inquirers from all parts of Greece. Opposite Epirus lies the long and rugged island of Corcyra, whose ridge runs parallel with the coast of the mainland, and looks like one more Epirot mountain range parted from its fellows by the intervention of a narrow arm of the sea. Thessaly, the land east of Pindus, is very different in character from Epirus. It is not divided by mountain ranges, but surrounded by them, forming a single great plain shut in on every side by hills. To the north it is separated from Macedonia by the Cambunian Mountains a chain which runs out at right angles from Pindus and culminates near the sea in Olympus, the highest of Greek moun- tains, on whose cloud-capped summit primeval tradition placed the inaccessible abodes of the gods. The southern shoulder of Olym- pus turns south and almost touches the Magnesian range, the eastern wall of Thessaly, whose highest summit Mount Ossa faces Olympus across the narrow gorge of Tempe. Legends told how the mountains had once formed a continuous barrier, and how Poseidon had split Ossa asunder from Olympus by a blow of his trident, and opened an outlet for the land-locked waters of Thessaly into the Aegean. Tempe forms a picturesque defile four miles and a half long, buried in foliage and bordered by rampart-like walls of gray limestone. Through its midst runs the Peneus, a vigorous stream even in the heat of summer, for it receives the drainage of the whole Thessalian plain. Southward from Ossa, the Magnesian hills run hard by the sea, rising into a secondary peak in the well- wooded Pelion, and ending in the surf-beaten promontory of Sepias. A chain of islands Sciathos, Icos, and several more carry the general direction of the range out into the open sea. Southward Thessaly is bounded by Othrys " the Brow," as its name betokens a ridge five thousand feet high, which runs out at right angles from Pindus, much in the same way as the Cam- bunian chain does in the north. It approaches to within two miles of the southern point of the Magnesian range, and is then broken by a strait, the outlet of the Gulf of Pagasae. This great land- locked sheet of water lies along the western base of Pelion, and GEOGRAPHY 9 reaches far inland up to lolcos, the oldest haven of Thessaly, where the famous ship " Argo " was said to have been built. The region to the west of the gulf formed the district of Phthidtis, one of the earliest seats of Grecian life, the home of Hellen, the mythical founder of the Hellenic name, and Achilles, the hero of the war of Troy. It is separated from the Thessalian plain by a minor range of hills,^ through which the Enipeus alone finds its way northward to join the Peneus ; the other streams of Phthiotis seek the Paga- saean Gulf. Shut in by its four mountain walls, Thessaly forms a little world apart. Its fertile slopes and green water-meadows were studded by more than twenty cities small and great, whose relations with each other form one of the most obscure chapters of Greek history. Three places deserve mention as more important than their neighbors Pharsalus, in the southern angle of the plain; Pherae, which lies at the foot of the hills which separate Thessaly from Phthiotis and the Pagasaean Gulf; and Larissa, the largest town of all, which commands the middle course of the Peneus, the choicest land of the whole country. Thessaly was even more celebrated for its pastures than its cornfields. The cattle which fed in its water-meadows were highly esteemed; but still more so were its horses, which gave mounts to the famous Thessalian cavalry, the one really important force of horsemen that Greece could put into the field. The only drawback to which the country is subject is the liability of its lower parts to inundation. After the winter storms the Peneus cannot carry off the rainfall fast enough, and a long backwater, covering many square miles, forms itself in the lowland below the spurs of Ossa. When the rains have ceased, the flood shrinks back into the two deepest hollows of the plain, and forms the lakes of Boebe and Nes- sonis, which gradually decrease till they are replenished again in winter by the next inundation. South of Othrys, we come to the second great section of Greece the lands which lie between the Malian and Ambracian gulfs to the north, and those of Aegina and Corinth to the south. After sending off Othrys eastward, the great range of Pindus loses the comparatively simple character which it has up to that point preserved. It no longer continues a single chain, but breaks up into a quantity of diverging ridges. A mountain-mass called 2 Narthacius and Titanus. 10 GREECE Typhrestus is the center from which these spurs start. To the southwest it sends out two ranges whose complexities form the rug-ged land of Aetolia, a district so far from the highways of civili- zation that its inhabitants always remained two or three hundred years behind the rest of the Greek races in their development. As late as the Persian wars there were still Aetolian tribes who lived entirely by rapine, always went armed, and ate their meat raw. The lower course of the Achelous the Epirot river of which we have before spoken divides Aetolia from Acarnania, another high- land country, but one less wild and remote than its neighbor. Its coast presents many havens, notably the great Gulf of Ambracia, a land-locked sea, not unlike the Pagasaean Gulf of Thessaly, It is approached by a narrow strait a mile broad, almost blocked by the promontory of Actium ; then it broadens out and runs inland for twenty miles between Acarnania and Epirus. At its end lay Argos, the city of the Amphilochi, a tribe closely akin to the Acarnanians ; a few miles from its northern shore stood the more important town of Ambracia, a Corinthian colony, whose inhabitants had driven the Epirots out of the southernmost angle of their land. The coast of Acarnania is fringed with islands; those at its southern end, the Echinades, are gradually being absorbed by the mud-flats deposited by the Achelous, which brings down vast quantities of silt from its upper course, and builds up islands opposite its mouth. Further out to sea lie Leucas, Ithaca, and Cephallenia, three rocky crests of a submerged mountain chain. Of these Leucas, " the White Island," a tract of gray limestone cliffs, was once united by a sand- spit to the Acarnanian mainland, but a canal cut across the neck turned it from a peninsula into an island. Ithaca, a narrow and rugged mountain-top, is only famous as the home of the much- wandering Odysseus. Cephallenia, the largest of the three islands, faces the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth ; it was broad enough to contain four cities, and possessed some fertile patches on its coast. The mountain ranges which run eastward from Typhrestus are somewhat less chaotic in their structure than those which go towards Aetolia and the west. Two main chains can be dis- tinguished. The first is formed by Oeta and the heights which continue it. These mountains run close to the shore of the Malian Gulf and the Straits of Euboea. Oeta forms the western part of the range, and contains the highest peaks. In the scanty space left between its declivities and the opposite slopes of Othrys lies the GEOGRAPHY 11 valley of the Spercheius, along whose upper course dwelt the Aeni- anes, while the Malians occupied the narrow coast-plain at its mouth. Eastward of Malis the cliffs of Mount Callidromus, a shoulder of Oeta, come right down to the water's edge, so that there was only room for a single wagon to pass in the road which lies between the sea and the overhanging rocks. This -forms the culmi- nating point of the defile along the coast known as the Pass of Thermopylae, and is famous for all time as the spot which Leonidas and his Spartans held for so long against the overwhelming hosts of Persia. After Thermopylae, the mountains retire a few miles from the coast; they are now no longer known as Oeta, but bear the names first of Cnemis, then of Ptoum, then of Messapium. After the last-named height, they sink down to insignificance oppo- site to Chalcis and the narrows of the Euripus. The land between this mountain range and the Euboean Strait v/as held by the Locrians, known sometimes as Hypocnemidian, from the mountain Cnemis under which they dwelt, sometimes as Opuntian, from the name of their chief town.^ The qualifying epithet was necessary to distinguish them from their kindred, the Ozolian Locrians, who lived further to the south on the shores of the Corinthian Gulf. Parallel on the whole to Oeta and its daughter ranges lies the other great mountain-system of Central Greece. This is the chain of which Parnassus, Helicon, and Cithaeron are the three chief links. It runs along the shore of the Corinthian Gulf, to which, however, it never approaches so closely as does Oeta to the Gulf of Malis. By far the most important height in this range is Par- nassus, a great mountain mass, rising to eight thousand feet above the sea, whose buttresses spread far out on every side, and make an almost impassable barrier between Phocis, the land to its east, and Ozolian Locris, the country which faces its western slopes. Parnassus is the most central peak in Greece ; the view from its sum- mit is by far the widest that can be obtained in the whole country, embracing as it does everything that lies betvv'een Thessaly and Arcadia, the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf and the southern heights of Attica. In one of the recesses of the southern face of Parnassus lay the site of the great oracle of Delphi, the spot which the Greeks 2 Geographers have erred in distinguishing the Locrians into separate tribes of Hypocnemidians and Opuntians. The names were used indifferently for the same people. 12 GREECE regarded as the center of the whole world {oii^2 The first recorded outbreak of troubles in Attica belongs to the third quarter of the seventh century. Cylon was a noble of great wealth and distinction. He had been a victor at the Olympic games, and boasted of a numerous troop of friends and dependents. Moreover, he had married the daughter of Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, and had the career of his father-in-law constantly before his eyes. Counting on the weak- ness of the oligarchic government, and the universality of public discontent with it, Cylon determined on a bold attempt to make 1 It has been much debated whether the Areopagus represented the primitive council of chiefs ; probably it did. 2 Those who wish to study the dry and obscure question of the exact meaning of the Naucraries, Trittyes, Phratrys, and other primitive Attic divisions of the people, are referred to purely constitutional histories. 100 GREECE 625-621 B.C. himself tyrant of Athens. On a concerted day his friends were joined by a band of mercenaries from Megara, and seized the AcropoHs. But he had not troubled himself to insure the good will of the populace, and the majority looked on while he and his fac- tion were blockaded in the citadel by all the forces that the govern- ment could muster. The chief conspirator escaped by night, but his followers were ere long starved out. They sat down as sup- pliants at the altar of Athena, and threw open the gates to the besiegers. Megacles, the archon in command, induced them to quit their sanctuary by a promise that their lives should be spared; but the moment that they had left the Acropolis he caused them to be put to death. Hence a deep stain of sacrilege and perjury was held to attach to Megacles and his descendants, the house of the Alo- maeonidae. Again and again in later times the cry was raised that the " family under the curse " ought to be expelled from Athens. After Cylon's failure the struggle between the oligarchy of Eupatridae and the nation that it oppressed grew yet more bitter. Two main sources of trouble existed : the people, like the Roman plebeians of the following century, were in a chronic state of poverty and distress, owing to misgovernment as much as to bad seasons ; moreover, they were driven to despair by the arbitrary and unequal incidence of punishments. No one could ever foresee the end of a suit, for the archons varied the judgments at pleasure. Hence there was a universal cry for the publication of laws which should fix some proportion between the offenses and the penalty. The demand of the citizens was at last met by the nobles con- senting to give way, and the Archon Draco in 621 B.C. published a written code of laws. An Athenian of a later day exclaimed that " the laws of Draco seemed to have been written with blood rather than with ink." It is highly probable that the aristocracy chose to leave themselves a power of applying very severe punishments, and stated the penalty of each offense at its possible maximum; but we need not believe the legends which assert that Draco affixed the punishment of death to almost every crime. The one fragment, indeed, of his legislation which has come down to us deals with a mitigation of the law of murder, and provides that involuntary homicides should not be treated as outlaws liable to be slain by everyone who met them, but be placed under the protection of the E A R L Y A T T I C A 101 621 B.C. state till they could make compensation to the family of the slain man.^ Whatever was the exact bearing of the legislation of Draco, it proved a very inadequate palliative for the evils which were troubling the state. Within a few years of its promulgation mat- ters were as bad as ever. The details given in the noXireta twv Adrj'miojv'^ about some alleged political reforms of Draco, over and above his laws, seem untrustworthy. " If a homicide kept away from markets and games and festivals, and yet was sought out and slain by the kinsmen of his victim, the men who slew him were to be held themselves guilty of murder. ^ This work of Aristotle's was composed near the end of his life, but disappeared altogether somewhere between the sixth and ninth century, a. d. Nothing was known of it thereafter beyond fragments quoted by different writers, until 1890, when it was recovered almost entire in a Greek manuscript discovered in Egypt which found its way to the British Museum and was there deciphered and recognized. The first edition of this manuscript was published in 1891. It is unknown who discovered the original manuscript, but it was probably some native in Egypt who sold it to a traveler and in this way, in course of time, it came to the British Museum. Chapter XII SOLON AND PEISISTRATUS. CIRCA 600-510 B.C. A FEW years after the legislation of Draco we find Athens engaged in a long and doubtful war with Megara. The civil . discords, which the new laws had proved quite insufficient to allay, were aggravated by the miseries of a disastrous and ill-con- ducted v/ar. The weakness of the Athenian oligarchy is shown plainly enough by the fact that they were quite unable to cope with the smaller states in the west. Even Salamis, the island which lies in full view of Athens, and is divided by less than a mile of water from the Attic shore, fell into the hands of the Megarians; for yUhens had as yet no ships to put in line against the flourishing navy which had planted the many colonies of Megara. It was during a critical period of the Megarian war that the name of Solon is first heard. He was a Eupatrid by birth, a man of high personal integrity and attractive character, who had won from the people a respect which they paid to few of his caste. He was a practiced orator and a poet : his stirring verses played at Athens the same part that the war-songs of Tyrtaeus had played at Sparta, and induced his desponding fellow-citizens to persevere in an apparently hopeless contest. " Rather would I be," he sang, " a man of Pholegandros or Sicinos ^ than an Athenian, if I am to be ]3ointed at as one of those who abandoned Salamis to the enemy." The sarcasm told, and the war was continued. Solon himself was put at the head of an expedition which ran the blockade of the Sala- minian Strait, hastily landed on the island, and succeeded in driving- out the Megarian garrison. He even carried the Athenian arms up to the very gates of the hostile city, and seized for a moment its harbor of Xisaea. The war had still many vicissitudes, and Athens was ere long reduced to the defensive again ; but her citizens never forgot the exploits of the soldier-poet, and continued to regard him as the one possible savior of the community. Probably he might have become tyrant of Attica had he wished, but he was a loyal servant of the state, and had no personal ambition. ^ Obscure islands in the Cyclades. 102 SOLON (Born circa 638 h. r. Died circa 559 :i. c.) Bust in the Xdlwnal Miiscuiii, .WiHrs SOLON AND PEISISTRATUS 103 595-594 B. C. After some years the war with Megara was ended by the arbi- tration of Sparta, and Athens retained permanent possession of Salamis. We need not attach any importance to the legend which states that Solon influenced the Lacedaemonians in favor of Athens by quoting to them a line which he interpolated in the Iliad, to the effect that Ajax of Salamis ranged his ships on the Trojan beach beside those of Athens. The argument would have been worthless, and Solon was not a forger. A little later Solon acquired favorable notice throughout Greece for the prominent part which he took in behalf of the Delphic oracle against its oppressors. The Phocians of Crissa and Cirrha had been molesting the pilgrims who came to make inquiry of Apollo. Solon took up the cause of the injured, preached a crusade against the wrong-doers, and, in conjunction with Cleisthenes, tyrant of Sicyon, succeeded in subduing the guilty towns, which received destruction as the reward of their sacrilege. About 595 B.C. the internal troubles of Athens, which had been growing worse since the time of Cylon's conspiracy, came to a head. The particular grievance which brought matters to a crisis was the question of the law of debt. A series of years of war and bad harvests had brought down to a condition of abject misery the poorer agricultural class in Attica, who cultivated the farms of the Eupatridae as servile tenant-farmers, paying to the landowner a rent of one-sixth of their produce, a tenure which won them the name of 'Ey.-riix6poi, These unfortunate " villeins," as they would have been called in mediaeval Europe, were deeply sunk in arrears of debt to their landlords, and by the legislation of Draco were liable to be sold as slaves if they failed in due payment, for the creditor's only security was the bodies of his debtor and his wife and children. Attica was threatened with the total extinction of her poorer classes ; the Megarian war seems to have rendered the situation desperate, and every day the bankrupt debtor might be seen dragged off in chains to be exposed in the slave-markets of Lydia or Egypt. Either the ruin of the state or a bloody revolution was obviously at hand. Scared at the results of their own usurious greed, the Eupatrids were induced to entrust power to Solon, as the one man whose integrity was acknowledged both by rich and poor, and who could still stave off a collision. In 594 b.c.^ if our chronology is correct, Solon was elected archon, and entrusted with the duty of drafting a new constitution for the city. 104; GREECE 594 B.C. The first part of Solon's legislation was directed to the practi- cal end of alleviating the miserable condition of the debtors. He forbade the lending of money on the security of the borrower's person, and canceled not only loans so contracted, but all outstand- ing debts of every kind ; a desperate measure which only dire need could excuse. It would seem that he even removed the feudal rent of one-sixth which the ^Exrr^iwpot had paid, and thereby turned them from villeins into freeholders, owning the land they tilled. The state renounced all sums owing to it from the poorer citizens, whether due as arrears of taxes or as fines. These measures brought about a perceptible improvement in the condition of the community; the newly manumitted debtors swelled the roll of citizens, and the growth of prosperity supplied some ground of hoping that a crisis of the same kind would not recur again. Another innovation of Solon's was destined to improve the economic condition of Athens in a much more indirect fashion. The city had down to this time been using money struck on the Pheidonian standard, such as circulated in Peloponnesus or Boeotia. Solon made a sweeping change by striking coins based, not on this standard, but on that known as the Euboic, which Was employed in the great commercial cities of Chalcis and Eretria. This made the currency of Athens interchangeable with that of her wealthy Ionic neighbors, though it somewhat complicated exchanges with Aegina or Thebes. Both politically and commercially this was an excellent move. The new money, of which the drachma weighed only sixty-seven grains and a half, was coined into tetradrachms, while the old, whose unit had weighed about ninety-five grains, had never possessed a higher multiple than the didrachm. The constitutional reforms of Solon are even more important than his economical legislation. They were the starting-point of all political liberty in Athens, and their importance was so impressed on the citizens of later years that all early laws were put down to him, just as all Spartan regulations came to be ascribed to Lycurgus. Solon was a man of just and liberal soul, and a sincere friend of the people; but he was also a noble, with a rooted dislike to democratic methods of government. His aim was to construct a constitution which should give the proletariate an ultimate control over the ad- ministration of public affairs, without allowing them the power to interfere in matters of detail. The nobles were no longer to govern at their own good will and for their own benefit; but they rein- SOLON AND PEISISTRATUS 105 594 B.C. forced by the richest of the non-noble classes were to continue to administer the state, under due control and for the benefit of the whole community. Even before Solon's time the division of the people into classes arranged according to their wealth had perhaps been known. Pos- sibly it may have been employed as early as Draco's time, for pur- poses of taxation only, but Solon determined to use the system as a political instead of a merely economic institution. He abolished all the privileges of birth which the Eupatridae had enjoyed, sub- stituted a " timocracy " for an " aristocracy." and made wealth, not birth, the test of eligibility for office. The first of the four Solonian classes was called that of the Pentckosioincdimni, and in- cluded, as its name shows, all citizens whose annual income from land was equivalent to five hundred medimni of corn, or exceeded that amount. The second class, that of the Hippeis, or knights, comprised everyone whose income ranged between five hundred and three hundred medimni. The third class, the Zeugitae ("owners of a yoke of oxen"), included those whose income was more than a hundred and fifty medimni, and less than three hundred. Finally, the fourth class, or Thctcs, was composed of all whose income fell short of a hundred and fifty medimni. Landed property only was assessed, not commercial gains or hoarded wealth, so that to qualify for the three higher classes a merchant or artisan had to invest in a smaller or larger plot of land. This arrangement placed the majority of the Eupatridae in the first two classes, while the bulk of the yeomen of Attica fell into the ranks of the Zeugitae, and the artisans were nearly all Thetes. But a fair proportion of wealthy merchants who had bought land, and a certain number of rich yeomen, were mixed among the Pentekosiomedimni and Hippeis, while a few ruined Eupatrids, we may suppose, sank to the status of the Thetes. When Solon, therefore, restricted the archonship to those who were Pentekosiomedimni, he practically left the supreme magistracy of the state in the hands of the nobles. To other minor offices the Hippeis and Zeugitae were eligible, but the Thetes were excluded altogether from the public service; as a compensation, they were also excluded from all taxation. In time of war they were to serve as light troops, while the Zeugitae fought as heavy-armed infantry and the Hippeis as horsemen. The constitutional reforms of Solon had as their main aim a 106 GREECE 594 B.C. rearrangement of the relations of the archons and the Areopagus with the Senate and public assembly, so that each was to have its share in the guidance of the state. The archons retained their old functions, but were in future to be elected by an ingenious mixture of selection and chance. The four tribes each chose ten candidates, and from these forty men the nine archons were chosen by lot. This system was probably intended to obviate an attempt to introduce party government : it would be most unlikely that all the successful candidates would be of the same political faction. The archons at the end of their year of office were to pass a public examination {edduvT}), at which they were made responsible before the assembly for all their acts during their tenure of power. The Areopagus ceded many of its functions to a Council or Senate of Four Hundred, composed of a hundred members chosen from each of the four tribes into which the Athenians (like other Ionic communities) were divided. This Senate or Boule took over all the more clearly political duties of the Areopagus, such as pre- paring measures to be put before the assembly, or receiving embassies. We may perhaps compare Solon's Boule to the Roman Senate, while the Areopagus, as reformed by him, may be likened to the Roman Censorship. It was to undertake the moral supervision of the state : on its own initiative and without incurring any responsi- bility it might inquire into the public or private life of any citizen, and inflict fines and forfeitures on him if it considered his conduct obnoxious. Profligacy, insolence, and idleness w^ere punished by the Areopagus, no less than crimes which fell under the letter of the law. In addition to this wide censorial power, it had the func- tion of trying all cases of international homicide a charge which it had exercised from time immemorial, ever since (so Attic tradi- tion ran) Ares had been indicted before it for slaying Halirrhothius, the son of Poseidon. The court was recruited from ex-archons, as in earlier days, and therefore remained a center of Eupatrid influence, for the majority of the archons w^re still chosen from the old houses. It was, no doubt, intended to curb all citizens who showed any signs of practicing demagogic arts, or aimed at estab- lishing a tyranny. The Ecclcsia, or public assembly of Athens, was hitherto nothing more than a survival of the Homeric Agora, a body con- vened to hear the promulgation of such decrees as the archons and SOLON AND PEISISTRATUS 107 594 B.C. the oligarchy chose to pubHsh. Solon made it powerful. The most important function that it received, " the measure by which it is agreed that the democracy got its main power," in the words of Aristotle was the right of trying all magistrates, and of investi- gating their actions at the end of their year of ofhce. Thus it was secured that the archons should owe their power to the people, and be kept in view of their responsibility to their constituents all through their tenure of office. The assembly w^as also, as we must conclude, entrusted with the supreme decision in such matters as treaties or declarations of war, and gave a final vote in favor of or against such measures as the Boule put before it. This was as far as Solon wished to go in democratizfng the constitution ; he had no intention of handing over either administrative or legislative business to the Ecclesia. To sum up the constitution of Solon, we may say that the state was to be administered by such of the Eupatridae as the people thought worthy; that its moral supervision was entrusted to the Areopagus ; that the Boule guided its foreign and domestic policy, while the Ecclesia exercised an effective but indirect control over the whole of the machinery of government. The legislator himself claimed that " he gave the people so much power as was sufficient, neither defrauding them nor aw^arding them more than w^as their share ; while as for those who had wealth and position, he was careful that they should suffer no wrong. Both classes were protected, and neither was allowed to molest the other." Besides the constitutional enactments, a large number of laws of all kinds were to be found in the legislation of Solon. They ranged over all provinces of life, and to a great extent did away with the previous code of Draco. A few of them are worth mention. He first gave the right of disposing of property by will to citizens destitute of children : previously their kinsmen inherited everything, and the owner could not divert his property from them. He relaxed the harshness of the control which old usage had given to the father over his sons ; he forbade arbitrary disinheritance ; and even enacted that a father who had not taught his son some useful trade had no claim to be maintained by that son when he arrived at old age. A number of sumptuary laws directed the attention of the Areopagus against luxury. Trade was favored by the permission given to foreigners to take up the citizenship, after solemnly disavowing allegiance to their old country, and swearing fealty to Athens. But 108 GREECE 594-582 B.C. perhaps the most noteworthy clause in the whole legislation was that which imposed disfranchisement on the citizen who, in a time of civil strife, did not take one side or the other. Solon feared that the existence of a body of timid and cautious neutrals would be fatal to public spirit, and favor the growth of tliat apathy which makes tyrannies possible. The laws of Solon were inscribed on wooden pyramids, called Kurhcis, some of them three-sided, some four-sided, and all about the height of a man. They stood on the Acropolis till the Persian wars, when they were removed for safety to Salamis. Afterwards they were placed in the Prytaneum, and fragments of them were still on view in the time of Plutarch (a.d. 120). Many legends grew up around the later life of Solon. We are told that he exiled himself for ten years, in order to avoid the importunities of those who urged him to supplement his legislation with further clauses. His travels took him far afield to Cyprus, Egypt, and Asia Minor. Everywhere that he went tales grew up to illustrate his profound wisdom and practical ability. In Cyprus he fixed the site of the flourishing city of Soli. In Lydia it was fabled that he visited King Croesus, and viewed unmoved all the splendors of an Oriental court. Then, v.hen his host asked him who was the happiest man in the world, expecting to hear himself named, Solon first mentioned a worthy but obscure citizen of Athens, who had fallen gloriously in battle, and then two young Argives who had met their death in the performance of an act of filial piety. Croesus was offended at the moment, but learned by bitter experience " to call no man happy till he was dead." Unfortunately, the legend of the interview is rendered quite impossible by the dates : it is merely one of the moral apologues with which the Greeks loved to illustrate the instability of mortal happiness. When Solon returned to his native city he had the disappoint- ment of discovering that his constitution, in spite of its fairness and its ingenius system of checks on the various members of the ad- ministration, had not sufficed to reduce the state to order. The local factions of the Plain, the Shcjre, and the Upland were still engaged in political strife. As early as 582 b.c. an archon named Damasias illegally prolonged his office over a second year, and had to be deposed by armed force. The populace, having once got a taste of power in the new privilege of impeaching magistrates, was eager to extend its rights. The Eupatridae were still yearning after SOLON AND PEISISTRATUS 109 582-558 B.C. the old days of oligarchy. The commercial classes found that the exclusion of all property except land from the assessment which settled the status of citizens, hindered them from taking the part in public affairs which they regarded as their due. No one was enthusiastic in defense of the Solonian constitution, for it satisfied no one. While the Eupatridae of the Plain were headed by Lycurgus and Miltiades, a kinsman of the Corinthian tyrants, the merchants of the Shore found a leader in Megacles the Alcmaeonid, grandson of that Megacles who had murdered the adherents of Cylon. The poor men of the Upland had placed themselves under a young and energetic leader, one of those -men of oligarchic birth who in every Greek city were found ready to desert their class and take up the career of a demagogue. It must have added to Solon's grief to find that this adventurer was his own kinsman, Peisistratus, the son of Hippocrates. The last years of the legislator were spent in unavail- ing warnings to the democracy of Athens that they were " treading in the footsteps of the fox," and preparing the way for a tyranny by attaching themselves to the train of the ambitious young man. Solon's denunciations of demagogic arts were quite useless. When Peisistratus persuaded the people that his life had been attempted by assassins hired by the men of the Plain, the assembly voted him a body-guard of fifty club-men, in spite of the opposition of the Boule. The club-men were ere long armed with deadlier weapons, their numbers increased, and one morning Athens woke to find them in occupation of the Acropolis. It was just seventy- two years since the similar attempt of Cylon ; but the times had changed : unlike Cylon, Peisistratus had a strong following among the people, while his adversaries were divided into two hostile camps. Megacles left Athens: Miltiades accepted the offer of a barbarian tribe in Thrace, who wanted an experienced leader in war, and departed to take over the sovereignty of the Thracian Chersonese. Peisistratus became tyrant of Athens without opposi- tion, and when Solon, in 558 B.C., died, full of years and honors, he died as the subject of a despotic monarch. The last months of his life were not embittered by oppression, for his kinsman treated him with every mark of respect; but the old man shut himself up in his house, and refused to be comforted. The work of his life seemed to have been entirely wasted. Peisistratus showed himself an able and moderate ruler : he did 110 GREECE 558-535 B.C. everything in his power to promote the material welfare of the poorer classes, who had rendered his rise possible, and did not slay or banish the rich. This mildness encouraged the men of the Shore and Plain to combine to dethrone him; the exiled Megacles and the Eupatrid Lycurgus headed a rising, and the tyrant was driven out. But the Athenian factions were not yet taught wisdom; the mer- chants and the nobles could not learn to work together, and Mega- cles, enraged with Lycurgus, entered into treasonable negotiations with the ex-tyrant. To spite the Plain, the Shore consented to join the Upland. This insured the return of Peisistratus. The manner of it requires a word of notice, as one of the most characteristic and extraordinary events of the age. Megacles found a tall and stately woman named Phya. arrayed her in armor, and conducted her to the city in a chariot, giving out that Athena, the tutelary goddess of the city, had appeared in person to command the restoration of Peisistratus! The people obeyed, the gates were thrown open, and the tyrant was once more master of Athens. If this tale is true, the Athenians, as Herodotus remarks, instead of being the wisest of the Greeks, deserved a prize for credulous simplicity. For six years Megacles and Peisistratus held together, and the alliance was cemented by the tyrant's marriage to the Alcmaeonid's daughter. But at last they quarreled, and Megacles once more led over his followers to join the men of the Plain. After a short struggle, Peisistratus was for the second time expelled from Attica. He retired to Thrace, gathered men and money there, and waited for the factions of Athens to give him a third opportunity for action. For no less than ten years he watched for the times to become ripe, keeping up communications with his party in the Upland of Attica, and looking out for men likely to aid him in an expedition. At last (535 B.C.) he landed in Attica at the head of his own fol- lowing, strengthened by a band of Argive mercenaries and by a body of Naxian exiles under Lygdamis, once tyrant of that island. The Athenian army marched on Marathon, where Peisistratus had landed. They faced the invaders at Pallene, and a battle appeared imminent, but the tyrant at first avoided an action. When, however, the Athenians had broken their ranks, and retired to take their midday meal, Peisistratus unexpectedly fell upon them, and routed them without trouble and almost without slaughter. His sons rode after the fugitives, and shouted to them that all who dispersed homewards shoukl be granted an amnesty; after this the leaders of SOLON AND PEISISTKATUS 111 635-527 B.C. the citizens found themselves so deserted by their followers that no further resistance could be offered. The tyrant re-entered the city without having to strike a second blow. During his third reign Peisistratus showed himself a more strict and cautious, but hardly a more oppressive, ruler than in his previous tenures of power. He kept up the forms of the Solonian constitution, though he always took care to have some one of his own family at the head of the board of archons. An income-tax of 5 per cent, was the only extraordinary burden which he imposed upon the people, and the proceeds of this were used to strengthen and adorn the city, and not to pile up a private treasure or support private luxury. The support which he gave to the state religion was particularly marked; he increased the splendor of the Pana- thenaea, the festival of the tutelary goddess of the city; he insti- tuted a new feast in honor of Dionysus ; and he commenced a temple to the Olympian Zeus on such a grand scale that it was never com- pleted till the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, six hundred and seventy years after. He gathered literary men from all parts about his court, though the legend that he employed them to collate and edit the text of Homer is probably without foundation. His foreign policy was one of peace; he strengthened himself by alliances with the houses of tyrants which still survived in Greece and Asia Minor, but ' at the same time courted the favor of Sparta, the implacable enemy of tyranny in Peloponnesus. Peisistratus died in peace thirty-three years after his first, and eight years after his last, seizure of Athens. He was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, who ruled in great harmony, unlike most brother-kings. They persevered for some years in the benevolent despotism of their father, and only left his steps in foreign policy, where they followed a bolder line. The town of Plataea, having left the Boeotian league on account of a feud with Thebes, craved the protection of Athens, and obtained it, though this alliance involved the Peisistratidae in a war with their northern neighbors. They carried it to a victorious end, and seemed likely to reign long and successfully. But ere long a catastrophe occurred to change the course of Athenian history. Hipparchus was thoroughly immoral in his private life; he was foiled in a disreputable love-affair which concerned the honor of a noble family, and revenged himself by a public insult. Har- modius the Gephyrean, the victim of the tyrant's anger, was driven 112 GREECE 527-510 B.C. to a reckless revenge, and organized a conspiracy against the lives of the brother-despots. He and his friend Aristogeiton joined with a few others to fall on the Peisistratidae at the festival of the Panathenaea. Owing to a misconception they made their onslaught too soon, and struck down Hipparchus before Ilippias had arrived on the scene. The guards slew Harmodius on the spot ; the rest were caught and executed. Aristogeiton suffered fearfully before his death, as Hippias tried in vain to wring from him 1)y torture the names of all involved in the conspiracy. This reckless act of private vengeance was the indirect cause of the overthrow of tyranny at Athens, and for that reason the names of Harmodius and Aristogeiton were held in rather undeserved veneration at Athens down to the latest days of the republic. Maddened by his brother's death, and his own narrow escape from assassination, Hippias changed his whole system of govern- ment. He crowded the city with mercenaries, began to make away with everyone that he suspected of discontent, raised arbitrary taxes, and commenced a series of petty vexations which drove the Athenians to desperation. This led to an open rising; Cleisthenes the Alcmaeonid, son of Megacles, the old leader of the faction of the Shore, returned from exile, and headed an abortive rebellion. It was crushed by the tyrant's mercenaries, but Cleisthenes then set diplomacy to work. He was in high favor at Delphi, where he had won the gratitude of the priesthood by the munificent liberality with which he had restored the great temple after a disastrous fire. Instigated by him, the Delphic priestess would give no answer when the state of Sparta sent to inquire of Apollo, except that " Athens ought to be liberated." A series of such replies screwed the super- stitious Spartans up to the necessary pitch of reverent obedience. Disregarding their old friendship with Peisistratus, they invaded Attica. They were beaten in the first engagement by a desperate charge of the tyrant's Thessalian cavalry. Then their vigorous and able king, Cleomenes, was sent to take command ; he defeated Plippias, and shut him up in the city. The Acropolis would have stood a long siege, but fortune interfered to crush the tyrant. His children were captured by the Spartans as they were being secretly conveyed out of Attica, and to preserve their lives Hippias con- sented to surrender the citadel if he and his were allowed a safe conduct to Asia. The Spartans consented, and in the seventeenth year of his reign the tyrant evacuated Athens, and sailed away SOLON AND PEISISTRATUS 113 510 B.C. v.'ith his family and his mercenaries, to seek refuge at Sigeum in the Troad, a small town which Peisistratus, foreseeing some such catastrophe, had got into his hands many years before. Here he settled down, paid homage to the Persian king as overlord, and awaited the return of better days, much as his father had done at Eretria forty years before. Meanwhile at Athens the republic was restored, and a new era began. Chapter XIII THE LYDIAN MONARCHY, 700-546 B.C. DOWN to the commencement of the seventh century the I Greeks of Asia had pursued their career of expansion without meeting with any dangers from the inland. In the north the Aeoh'ans had driven the Teucrians and Mysians away from the coast. In the south the lonians and Carians had arrived at a modus vivendi, and were often to be found joining together in expeditions such as that which, in 656 B.C., placed Psammetichus on the throne of Egypt. In the center, filling the upper valleys of the Hermus and Cayster, lay the kingdom of Lydia, the westernmost extension of the old empire of the Hittites, governed by a race of princes whose origin the Greeks ascribed to some Asiatic god whom they identified with Heracles. For many generations these kings seem to have had no hostile relations with their Greek neighbors on the coast, and were content to serve as middlemen in the great line of commerce which ran through their capital of Sardis, and connected Ephesus and Miletus with the Euphrates and Assyria. The Asiatic Greeks went through much the same constitutional developments as their European brethren, with the exception that their oligarchies were usually founded on wealth rather than birth, as was inevitable in cities where the population had from the first been much mixed. Tyrants appeared, in Asia no less than Europe, to sweep away the monopoly of the oligarchs, and when history becomes continuous in the seventh century, we find the states of Ionia and Aeolis governed some by still-surviving oligarchies, some by tyrants, some by democracies which had risen when tyrants had been swept away. The universal opinion of Greece pronounced the lonians and their neighbors to be the best merchants but the worst soldiers of the Hellenic world. Their feats of exploration and their activity in colonizing were unrivaled, but they did not pass as good fighting men. Their European brethren accused them of indolence and luxury, and asserted that the softness and languor of the climate 114 LYDIAN MONARCHY 115 Circa 700-550 B.C. of Asia, and the admixture of Oriental blood which had resulted from the Carian marriages of the early settlers, had combined to weaken and demoralize them. Civilization and luxury developed among them long before they reached Greece. The arts of music and lyric poetry were especially their own; the Lesbian poetess Sappho sang of love in passionate tones which no other Hellenic poet could ever equal; her countryman Alcaeus was equally cele- brated for his praises of wine and beauty, and for his political poems. Anacreon of Teos was a mere jovial voluptuary, a bad specimen of the worst Ionian type, but made himself a great name by his songs. It was in Asia Minor also that philosophy the product of a self- conscious civilization which too often marks the decay of civic virtue made its earliest appearance among the Greeks. It took at first the comparatively harmless form of inquiry into the phenomena of nature, and speculations as to the physical basis of life and creation^ which some philosophers sought in the primary principle of air, others in that of fire, others again in that of water. Thales of Miletus (circ. 640-550 B.C.) was the best known of the early philosophers ; in spite of his speculative bent, he was a man of great practical ability, and worked out a plan for the federation of the Greek cities of Asia which would have saved them many a disaster if it had been carried out. There would appear to have been less political intercourse between the Greeks of Asia and those of Europe than might have been expected, when we remember the narrowness of the Aegean. The chief occasion on which they are found in contact was the Lelantine war (circ. 700 B.C.). This was nominally a struggle to settle whether Chalcis or Eretria should own the plain of Lelas, which lay between their walls. But in real fact it was a commercial war between two bands of allied states who were bound together by their trade interests. Eretria was aided by Miletus, Chalcis by Samos, and the war raged over the Asiatic as well as the European shore of the Aegean.^ In the West Chalcis would seem to have had the better of her neighbor, but in Asia Samos was never able to shake the commercial predominence of Miletus. About the year 685 B.C., the period during which the Asiatic Greeks had been able to carry out their great schemes of coloniza- tion, and to fight out their civil broils undisturbed by interference from without, suddenly came to an end. The new factor intro- 1 It seems probable that the two alliances were (i) Chalcis, Samos, Thessaly, Corinth; (2) Eretria, Miletus, Aegina. Details are wanting. 116 GREECE 668-568 B.C. duced into their history was the aggressive policy of the kings of Lydia. Gyges, a noble of the house of the Mermnadae. after slaying his master Candaules, the last of the old royal line, had usurped the throne of Lydia. He at once abandoned the peaceful policy of his predecessors, and set to work to attack the Greek cities of the coast. The Lydians were a bold warlike race, the best horsemen of Asia, and the lonians could offer them no resistance in the field. The war became one of sieges ; Gyges took Colophon, though he failed before Smyrna and Miletus. In the midst of his career he was summoned home by a crisis which freed the lonians from fear for another generation. A wild race from the north, the Cimmerians, had been pushed into Asia Minor by pressure from yet more un- known tribes in their rear. They swept over the land, burning and devastating all before them. The Greek city of Sinope and the native monarchy of Phrygia were completely destroyed by them. Gyges, in spite of his energy, only succeeded in saving his kingdom by becoming the vassal of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria. This protection was withdrawn when he revolted a few years later, and the Cimmerians almost made an end of Lydia. Gyges was slain in battle, the valley of the Hermus harried, and Sardis, save its citadel, taken by the barbarians in 660 b.c. Ardys, the successor of Gyges, was many years on the throne before he could get free from the Cimmerians. When this danger was over, he renewed his father's policy of attacking the Greeks, and captured Priene. But again the inroads of the barbarians came to the rescue of the lonians; about 627 b.c. another Cimmerian inva- sion, whose westernmost foray resulted in the sack of the wealthy Aeolian town of Magnesia, called Ardys off to defend the limits of his own kingdom. The successors of Ardys, his son Sadyattes (622-610 b.c), and his grandson Alyattes (610-568 B.C.), continued the traditional policy of their race by attacking the Greek cities, more especially Miletus, the great stronghold and bulwark of Ionia. The Milesians were easily beaten in the field, but their walls opposed an impassable barrier to the Lydian cavalry. Alyattes resolved, we are told, to starve the town into submission. Every midsummer, when corn and fruit began to ripen, he marched into the Milesian territory, and beat down the corn and felled the trees to the sound of miHtary music. After several years of assiduous raiding, he had occasion LYDIAN MONARCHY 117 568-546 B.C.C to send an embassy into Miletus. The envoys found the Milesians feasting and trafficking as if the ruin of their country-side was a perfectly indifferent occurrence. A seaport town can never be starved out by an enemy who is destitute of a fleet, and this fact Alyattes now realized. He made peace with Miletus, and turned to less hopeless enterprises. The Greek town of Smyrna fell into his hands, but his great conquests lay inland, where he subdued Phrygia, Bithynia, and all the lands up to the river Halys. Here he met the equally aggressive armies of the Medes, and, after a drawn battle with King Cyaxares, made a peace which laid down the Halys as the boundary between the two empires. Alyattes died in 568 B.C., and was buried in a great barrow which he had caused his subjects to pile up on the Plain of Sardis during the last years of his life. Croesus, the son and successor of Alyattes, was by far the most powerful of the race of the Mermnadae. His enterprises against the coast-land were crowned with a degree of success which had never been granted to his ancestors. Ephesus, the second town of Ionia, fell into his hands in the very commencement of his reign, and as the various states were too jealous to unite in a league against him, one after the other was compelled to do him homage. Miletus, which had so successfully resisted his father, had now sunk into a state of decay consequent on wild civil strife. It had just got rid of a tyrant, Thrasybulus, the friend and adviser of Periander. To celebrate their freedom, the Milesians fell to blows with each other, and the proletariate vied with the oligarchs in deeds whose Oriental atrocity shocked the whole Greek world. The mob beat the children of the rich to death with flails on threshing-floors ; their opponents replied by burning their prisoners alive in pitch- coats. No help was found in Miletus to sustain the other states, and one after another the Ionic and Aeolic cities of the mainland submitted to Croesus, and began to pay him tribute. The king even dreamed for a moment of building ships, and of attacking Chios, Lesbos, and the other islands off the coast. This idea he had to abandon in face of the strong fleets of the island states, and the entire ignorance of naval matters which his own warriors displayed. But on the mainland he was undisputedly supreme from the Hellespont to the Halys. The tributes of the states that owned him as overlord, and the commercial profits which flowed into Sardis, now that the great trade-route between Asia 118 GREECE 568-546 B.C. and the West was entirely in Lyclian hands, made Croesus wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of Greek avarice. A whole cycle of legends illustrate his boundless resources and overweening self- confidence, among them the well-known tale of his interview with Solon, which we have had to relate elsewhere. Croesus was no stolid Oriental, but a great admirer and patron of Greek civilization. He was particularly well known for his devo- tion to the Greek god Apollo, whose temples at Branchidae near Miletus, and at Delphi in distant Phocis, he crowded with gifts of astonishing magnificence. He gladly received Greeks at his court, and went out of his way to do favors to the more important states across the Aegean ; Sparta, in particular, he bound to his alliance by a munificent gift of gold. But while Croesus appeared to be at the height of wealth and power, a cloud was arising in the East which portended ruin alike to him and to his Hellenic subjects. Chapter XIV CYRUS AND DARIUS, 549-516 B.C. THE century which lay between the years 620 and 520 B.C. was fraught with changes of a more rapid and sweeping kind than had ever before been known in the East changes, too, which were to have a direct influence on the history of Greece, such as no previous events in Asia had ever exercised. That century saw the ruin of five great empires those of Assyria, Media, Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt and the rise of a sixth, which absorbed not only all lands that had obeyed the kings whom it supplanted, but vast additional tracts to east and west, regions which owe their first appearance in history to this conquest. Finally the new monarchy came into collision with the Greeks. Backed by the forces of all nations which dwelt between the Indus and the Aegean, the " Great King " of the East marched on to deal with the Hellenes of Europe as his predecessors had dealt with the Hellenes of Asia. But in the Strait of Salamis and on the plains of Plataea his projects came to wreck. Greece was saved, and with Greece the future of European civilization. The West repelled the invading East so thoroughly that for eleven hundred years no Oriental conqueror again approached the Hellespont to threaten the Balkan Peninsula with annexation to an Asiatic realm. ^ The one considerable Oriental power with which the Greeks down to the sixth century had any prolonged contact was, as we have already seen, the kingdom of Lydia. Behind that state lay the great empire of Assyria, which for three hundred years had formed by far the strongest power in Asia. With the Assyrian kings the Greeks had not many direct relations; the chief occasion on which they had touched Hellenic history was when, in 708 b.c.^ the conqueror Sargon had received the homage of the Greek princes of Cyprus. But though it was only the outlying cities of that island which experienced the weight of the hand of the kings of Nineveh, 1 Battle of Salamis, 480 B. c. ; siege of Constantinople by Chosroes of Persia, 620 A.D. 119 120 GREECE Circa 625 B.C. yet the power and wealth of Assyria were well known to the Greek. Wild tales of the all-conquering " Ninus " ^ and the luxurious and overweening " Sardanapalus " have been preserved to attest the impression which the kings of Asshur left on the minds of their Hellenic contemporaries. At last, in the fourth quarter of the seventh century, the doom of Nineveh came. A long series of suc- cessful or partially successful revolts began to strip Assyria of her outlying provinces, and to wear down the strength of her armies. Revolted vassals joined with wild tribes from the north to attack the failing monarchy, and Nineveh collapsed under the weight of their onset. The details are lost: we only know of the Greek legends which tell how the last king of Assyria, when his enemies had burst within the wall, collected his treasures and his gods, his wives and his sons, on a vast pyre in the court of his palace, and gave himself and them to the flames, to balk the victors of their spoil. Of an Oriental despot, mad with rage and despair, such a tale need not be false; but, be it false or true, we know that in some not less dreadful scene of blood and fire the Assyrian monarchy passed away. Two princes had led the attack on Nineveh, and profited by its fall. Nabopolassar, the rebel viceroy of Babylon, annexed the southern and western dominions of Assyria. Cyaxares, King of the Medes, seized the northern and eastern provinces. Of Nabo- polassar and his more famous son, Nebuchadnezzar, we need not speak at length. Their victories and conquests in Syria, Elam, and Egypt have no bearing on our history. With the Medes it is otherwise. They were a new race and a new kingdom, but they are important to us as being the real founders of that empire " Persian," as we call it, though the earlier Greeks knew it better as " Median " which came into such violent contact with the Hellenes. The Medes were a portion of that great body of Aryan tribes which migrated from the north- east, out of the land which was then known as Bactria, towards the borders of the Assyrian kingdom. Various allied clans of this race scattered themselves over the whole of the great table-land of Iran, from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean. In some districts they drove out the previous inhabitants Turanian tribes of low * " Ninus " is an eponymous hero manufactured for the Ninevites on the or- dinary Greek system. " Sardanapalus " is a corruption of the real name Assur- bani-pal. CYRUS AND DARIUS 121 Circa 625 B.C. civilization in others they dwelt among them; in others, again, they mixed with them. The most southern section of these in- vaders were the tribes of the Persians, over whom reigned a house descended from a certain unknown king Achaemenes. The more northern clans were the Medas, who had dwelt apart in weakness and disunion till Cyaxares, in the third quarter of the seventh century, united them into a compact monarchy. The Medes were much more mixed with the previous inhabitants of the land than were the Persians, and had adopted in a large measure the customs and religion of their predecessors. The Persians, a more vigorous but ruder and less numerous race, kept themselves free from such intermixture in their mountainous homes on the coast of the Erythraean Sea. They were a poor and hardy race, rough leather- clad shepherds and plowmen, who dwelt in a land which seemed scanty and rugged to the richer inhabitants of the plains. The ten tribes which composed the nation dwelt apart, only connected by a loose subjection to the house of the Achaemenidae, and by the national religion which they had brought with them from Bactria. While the common ancestors of Medes and Persians were still dwelling by the Oxus, they had adopted a religion called Zoro- astrianism, from the name of Zoroaster the great sage and preacher who is said to have converted his countrymen to it. This faith is 122 GREECE 549 B.C. a " dualistic " system, which refers all the changes of the world, moral and physical, to the constant and unending struggle of two opposing deities. Ornuizd, " the spirit of wisdom and light, the very great and very good, the lord of perfection and activity, of intelligence, growth, and beauty," was the creator of the universe, and endeavors to rule it with wisdom and benevolence. But his efforts are being continually hampered by the evil god Ahriman, " the spirit of darkness and malice, of crime, sin, and ugliness." The whole life of a pious Persian was a crusade against Ahriman and all his works, and an endeavor to work out the purpose of Ormuzd, to whom sacrifice was made, not in temples or shrines, but on lofty heights, where a sacred fire was kept ever burning in honor of the god of light. The ]Medes had perverted Zoro- astrianism, by endeavoring to conciliate Ahriman and his angels rather than to help Ormuzd ; and their religion had thus become a kind of " devil-worship," in which their priests, the Magians, pre- tended to ward off the spirits of evil by sacrifices and incantations. The empire which Cyaxares the Mede had founded after the fall of Nineveh stretched from the confines of Bactria to the Lydian frontier on the Halys, where it had been fixed since the indecisive struggle with King Alyattes, Both Cyaxares and his contemporary Nebuchadnezzar, the great King of Babylon, had long been dead when a new conqueror arose to shatter both their empires. Be- tween Babylonia and Persia lay the land of Elam, which had long been a vassal state to its western neighbor. But after the death of Nebuchadnezzar it had apparently fallen into subjection to the Medes, under Astyages, the successor of Cyaxares. Elam was now ruled by a prince of the house of Achaemenidae, not sprung from the same line as reigned in Persia, but from a family which claimed cousinship with the older branch, and must have migrated into Elam from Persia a few generations back. Cyrus, " son of Cambyses, son of Cyrus, son of Tei'spes, son of Achaemenes, of the ancient seed-royal," now dwelt at Susa, and reigned as a vassal of Astyages the Mede. So many legends have grovrn up round the name of Cyrus that it is disappointing to remember how little is really known of him. The Greeks believed that he was the grandchild of Astyages the Mede, by a daughter who had been married to a Persian of middle rank, in order to avert a prophecy that threatened harm to the Median king from an over-powerful grandson. But we know CYRUS AND DARIUS 123 549 B.C. that Cambyses, the father of Cyrus, was a reigning king, and have no proof that any relationship existed between Cyrus and Astyages. In 549 B.C. Media and Babylon were at war, when the King of Elam suddenly attacked his suzerain from the rear. Astyages was defeated in battle, after which his army revolted, put their master in bonds, and delivered him up to Cyrus. Apparently the fact that the conqueror was an Aryan of the royal blood, and of a race nearly allied to themselves, inclined the Medes to submission. They became the followers rather than the subjects of Cyrus, and the transference of the seat of empire from Median Ecbatana to Elamite Susa was well-nigh the only mark of the change which had taken place. The Greeks saw so little difference that they continued to call the great Asiastic power Median, as though Astyages had still been on the throne. After his first victory Cyrus received homage from the vassal kings who had served the Mede, including his own relatives in Persia. Then he turned against nations whom the Mede had left unconquered. For twenty years he was continually passing from west to east and from east to west in his career of conquest, and seldom did he fail to add to his empire the district against which he marched. The dangerous power which Cyrus had built up brought about an alliance between the three states who were most likely to suffer from his growing strength. Croesus of Lydia joined to himself Nabonadius of Babylon and Amasis of Egypt, who in a common fear suspended the incessant wars which had raged between their empires since the fall of Nineveh. Besides his two royal confede- rates, Croesus is said to have hoped to enlist the Spartans in his cause, as he was their good friend and ally. But whether it be true or not that he reckoned on Greek troops to aid his army, it is certain that he went to war buoyed up by promises of victory from Greek oracles. His lavish gifts of massive gold ingots and vessels remained long after at Delphi, to show the honor in which he held the gods of the West, and the importance which he attached to their advice. Apollo, we are told, answered, when consulted by the Lydian ambassadors, that " Croesus, if he crossed the Halys, would destroy a great empire." Forgetting that the cautiously worded oracle would apply to his own realm as much as to that of Cyrus, the Lydian king declared war, and invaded Cappadocia at 124< GREECE 546 B.C. the head of the forces of the I.ydians and all the tribes subject to him between the Halys and the Aegean (546 B.C.). The dominions of Cyrus stretched westward so as to cut off Babylon from Lydia, and he was thus able to prevent his two chief enemies from joining. The Egyptians were too far off to be promptly on the scene, and Croesus alone had to face the brunt of the contest. Neglecting Nabonadius for the moment, Cyrus threw himself on the Lydians. In the Cappadocian district of Pteria the two armies fought a bloody but indecisive combat, which recalled the similar engagement when Cyaxares and Alyattes had met on the same spot some sixty years earlier. The troops of Cyrus retired a few miles after the battle, and Croesus, who had suffered too heavily to pursue them, concluded that the campaign was over. Accordingly he dismissed his allies and marched home, determined to raise a larger army before committing himself again to the chances of war. But Cyrus, though checked, was not beaten. When he heard of the break-up of the Lydian armament, he turned on his way and followed hard on the steps of Croesus. So rapidly did he pursue, that his enemy was compelled to turn to fight in front of his capital, the strong fortress of Sardis, long ere the dispersed contingents could rejoin him. Croesus, crushed by numbers, was routed and compelled to shut himself up in Sardis, which fell quite unexpectedly before a sudden assault, only fourteen days after tlie siege had commenced. Greek legend had much to say of the fate of Croesus ; it told how the victor condemned him to death by fire, and how, as the flames began to mount, Cyrus reflected on the vicissitudes of human fortune, and repented of his cruel orders. When no human intervention could have stayed the fire, Apollo, it was said, interfered to save the man who had so richly endowed his temple at Delphi, and a miraculous shower of rain extinguished the blazing pyre, and enabled Cyrus to show a tardy clemency towards his prisoner. The spectacle of a powerful and wealthy state dashed down in the midst of its glory profoundly affected the mind of the Greeks. No such catastrophe had previously taken place so closely before their eyes, or ended with such dramatic suddenness. Their theory of Nemesis, the inevitable retribution which follows on pride and over-prosperity, found in Croesus a striking illustration. A hundred tales were framed to show how his self-confidence, his wealth and courage, liberality and ambition, contrasted with his CYRUS AND DARIUS 1^5 541 B.C. sudden and complete fall. Thus the outlines of his real character and the details of his real fate come down to us blurred and exag- gerated, though still recognizable, through the haze of legend which surrounded him. The vanishing of the Lydian empire brought the Greeks of Ionia and Aeolis into direct relations with Cyrus. The Milesians at once did homage to him, accepting the same semi-independent position which they had already enjoyed under Croesus. The other states of the coast made a stand, and endeavored to win back their freedom. Although the Lacedaemonians refused them help, they found allies in the warlike Carians and Lycians, and in Pactyas, a Lydian chief who endeavored to rouse his newly con- quered countrymen to revolt. Cyrus, who was set on greater projects than the subjection of a few rebellious towns, turned off to subdue his Eastern enemies, and left behind him an army, under a Median noble named Mazares, to complete the conquest of Asia Minor. This chief put down the Lydian revolt, and then moving against the lonians captured and sacked Priene, and wasted the whole plain of the Maeander. At this juncture he died, and was succeeded by Harpagus, another Mede, who had played a great part in the deposition of Astyages, and was much trusted by Cyrus. Harpagus besieged Phocaea and Teos, whose inhabitants, when their position began to grow desperate, escaped by sea, and betook themselves to distant shores beyond the reach of the Great King's arm. The Teians migrated to Abdera in Thrace, which ere long became the largest town on the north shore of the Aegean. The Phocaeans, sailing into the far West, landed at Alalia, a harbor in Corsica, and endeavored to deal with that island as their Ionic kinsmen, two hundred years before, had dealt with Sicily. But Alalia was not to be to Corsica what Naxos had been to the larger island. After a hopeless struggle of five years with the united navies of Carthage and Etruria, the Phocaeans were constrained to abandon their new settlement. Some of them sailed north to join the old Phocaean colony of Massilia in Gaul, which grew largely in importance from this sudden increase of population. The rest founded the new town of Hyele (Velia) on the Lucanian coast, south of Poseidonia. The remaining Greek cities of Asia showed no such desperate determination to avoid the Persian yoke. After a certain amount of ill-combined resistance, they opened their gates to Harpagus. 126 GREECE 538 B.C. The islanders were no less impressed with the futihty of further resistance than the inhabitants of the mainland, and Lesbos and Chios, as well as Ephesus and Smyrna, acknowledged Cyrus as their suzerain. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, alone maintained his independence; he owned the largest navy on the eastern shore of the Aegean, and as the Persian king had not yet become master of a fleet, hoped to retain his island and his " thalassocracy " undis- turbed. His independence was no great benefit to Hellas, for his piratical galleys kept the whole eastern Aegean in awe, and had succeeded to the old maritime predominance of Miletus. Polycrates lived and flourished by plunder. He was wont to say that " he made a rule to rob everyone alike, because he found that his friends were more grateful on getting their stolen wealth back than they ever w^ould have been if it had remained undisturbed in their possession." Harpagus did not impose onerous terms on the Greeks of Asia. They were bound to pay an annual tribute, and to supply armed contingents when the king called for them, but the internal govern- ments of their cities were left unmolested. The state where a tyrant ruled remained under that tyrant's power; democracies were still democratic, and oligarchies no less oligarchic than in the days of full autonomy. Aided by Ionian and Aeolian troops, Harpagus subdued the Greeks of Doris, and their barbarian neighbors, the peoples of Caria and Lycia. Meanwhile Cyrus himself was pushing his fortunes in Upper Asia, and in a series of campaigns brought his frontier up to India and the borders of the great central plateau of the Pamir. He even penetrated to the far northeast, and subdued many of the wild Sacae, who dwelt in the extreme limits of Tartary. In 538 B.C. he turned back again to deliver an attack on Babylon. Cross- ing the Tigris, he defeated King Nabonadius in a pitched battle; a few days later Sippara, the second town in the kingdom, fell by treachery. Then Babylon itself yielded without fighting, and its empire was at an end. The king, who fled with the remnant of his army, was pursued and taken prisoner, and Cyrus reigned with undisputed authority in Chaldaea, Mesopotamia, and Syria, It might now have appeared natural for Cyrus to turn his arms against Egypt, the last surviving power of those which had allied themselves against him in 546 B.C. But of such an endeavor we hear nothing. On the contrary, the remaining nine years of CYRUS AND DARIUS 127 529-521 B.C. Cyrus's life and reign would seem to have been comparatively peace- ful. It is certain, however, that he continued to extend his borders eastward, and occupied the upper valley of the Indus, and wide tracts beyond the river Oxus, in the region of Sogdiana and Chorasmia. At last, in 529 B.C., he led an attack on the Massa- getae, a nomad tribe who dwelt beyond Sogdiana, in what is now the south of Siberia. While engaged in battle with this race the old king was slain. His army turned back and brought his body to be buried at Pasargadae, among the sepulchers of the royal house of Achaemenes. Cyrus was a favorable example of a great Oriental conqueror. That he was brave, persevering, and full of resource, is evident ; it is even more to his credit that we find connected with his name none of those A\4iolesale acts of cruelty and massacre which mark the career of a Nebuchadnezzar or an Attila. But he would seem to have been more of a general than an administrator. He could form the motley tribes of Asia into a conquering army, but he made no attempt to bind them into an organized empire. Accordingly disruptive tendencies lurked in every province, which only awaited the removal of the master's hand to display themselves in full vigor. Cyrus, like his Median kinsmen, had not remained faith- ful to the ancient faith of his race; he was not a wholehearted worshiper of Ormuzd, but had learned from his Elamite subjects to worship other gods, and notably Merodach, the patron of Babylon, in whose honor he was ever zealous. Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, a cruel and reckless but strong-handed tyrant, whose rule contrasted most unfavorably with that of his father. His reign of eight years (529-521 B.C.) is mainly memorable for the conquest of Egypt and its depend- encies. Phoenicia and Cyprus submitted to him when he marched against Amasis, the Egyptian king. He was therefore able to bring up a strong fleet of Phoenician, Cypriot, and Ionian vessels to aid his land army. In a decisive battle at Pelusium he over- threw Psammetichus II., who had just succeeded his father Amasis. Many thousands of Greek mercenaries had been serving in the ranks of the Egyptians, and the fact that they had proved utterly unable to resist the troops of Cambyses made a deep and discourag- ing impression on the mind of the Hellenes of Europe, who feared ere long to suffer the fate of their Asiatic brethren. Egypt needed no second blow, and its subjection was followed by that of the 128 GREECE 529-521 B.C. Libyans and their neighbors, the Greek colonists of Cyrene and Barca. Cambyses tarried long in Egypt, winning an unenviable repu- tation. He may have conciliated the Egyptians to a certain extent by the enthusiastic w^orship which he gave their gods, for his predilection towards polytheism was no less marked than that of his father had been.^ But among his own subjects he grew to be hated more and more. He wasted his soldiery in distant expedi- tions of the maddest character, while his savage and suspicious treatment of his nobles and courtiers, whose lives he was continually taking on the pretext of imaginary treasons, filled his palace with enemies. Cyrus had left a son named Bardes,"* a whole-brother to Cambyses, who was regarded with hatred by the young king. Be- fore starting on his Egyptian expedition Cambyses had his brother secretly slain. This was not generally known, and an ambitious Magian priest named Gomates, who chanced to resemble the murdered prince, resolved to take advantage of the secret crime. Knowing that Cambyses was generally detested, he gave himself out to be the missing Bardes, and claimed the throne. A general rising in his favor took place in Persia Media and all the neigh- boring provinces. Cambyses started off to suppress it, but while passing through Syria was so discouraged at the universality of the revolt that he committed suicide (521 B.C.). The Magian impostor now reigned for a few months under the name of Bardes. But his suspicious behavior, and the anxiety with which he proceeded to seek out and slay all who had known the prince whom he personated, provoked remark. Then Darius, son of Hystaspes, a prince of the royal house of Persia, with only six followers to back him, sought out the impostor, and slew him in the fort of Sichtachotes, by a sudden attack in the night-time. Darius was not of that branch of the house of Achaemenes which had ruled in Elam, and had produced Cyrus and Cambyses. His progenitors had borne sway in Persia Proper, and had been distinct for three generations from the Elamite branch of the family. It was not unnatural, therefore, that the subjects of 3 All the stories about Cambyses's crusade against the Egyptian gods seem to be mere inventions. * The Greeks called him Smerdis. CYRUS AND DARIUS 1^9 520-516 B.C. Cambyses refused to see in Darius their late master's heir. The whole empire broke up in hopeless anarchy. Babylon and Media asserted their independence under princes who claimed to represent the lines of Nabonadius and Cyaxares. Armenia, Parthia, Sar- angia, and well-nigh all the provinces of the East followed their example. Where a native rebellion did not occur, the governors showed signs of wishing to make themselves as little dependent as possible on the central power. But Darius was a man of genius a greater than Cyrus himself; for in the East it has always been far more easy to build up a new empire than to reconstruct an old one which has gone to pieces. By ceaseless activity and long- continued struggles he succeeded in crushing the eight pretenders who had dismembered the eastern provinces, and in removing or destroying the disobedient satraps. Among Darius's victims of the second class was Oroetes, governor of Lydia, who had during the anarchy played a foul trick on Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos. Polycrates was a keen lover of money, and held no act mean and undignified which filled his treasury. Oroetes sent word to him that he was about to fly from the wrath of his master, and besought him to take his money and himself across to safety in Samos. When Polycrates came to meet the supposed wealthy fugitive on the shore of the mainland he was kidnaped, taken inland, and crucified. Thus ignominiously ended the man whose fleet swayed the Aegean, who had repelled the Lacedaemonians, preserved his independence from Cyrus, and won a reputation for wealth second only to that of Croesus himself ( ? 520 B.C.). His realm once mastered, Darius set to work to reorganize it (516 B.C.). As recast by him, it can now for the first time be called with accuracy the " Persian Empire," for his predecessors had not been kings of Persia, nor had they professed the national faith of that country. Darius was not only hereditary chief of Persia, but also a zealous Zoroastrian, and a fanatical foe to the de- based and heretical creed of the ]\Iedes and their Alagi. He called it " the Lie," and traced all the evils through which the empire had passed to its prevalence. " All that I have done," he wrote, " I have done by the help of Ormuzd ; and Ormuzd brought me help because I was not heretical, nor a believer in the Lie, nor a tyrant." But although he broke with the religious traditions of his prede- cessors and recast their administrative system, Darius was in every true sense their heir. He continued to make Susa, the Elamite 130 GREECE 520-516 B.C. home of Cyrus, his capital, and did not remove his seat to his native PersepoHs or Pasargadae. The system on which Darius reorganized his empire w^as that of satrapies. Instead of allowing his dominions to remain a heterogeneous mass of vassal states and fully subjected districts, he distributed the whole into twenty-three provinces, each governed by a satrap, or civil governor, a military commander, and a royal secretary. The satrap had full authority in all things save the disposition of the troops in his territory, the one privilege which could have rendered him a dangerous subject. The general re- ceived his orders from the king, but had to look for the pay and maintenance of his troops to the satrap. The secretary was specially charged with the duty of informing the king of the conduct of his two colleagues, and all the orders of the satrap had to pass through his hands. The three rival powers created a balance which left all things ultimately depending on the king, if only the king had the industry and mental grasp required to keep the system in order The vassal states of the empire were now placed directly under the satrap, and though they retained their internal institutions, were compelled to obey him with as much punctuality as if he had been the king himself. Under Darius's new system the empire began to flourish in an unexampled manner ; his care was especially rewarded by the rapid increase of his revenue a fact which so pleased him that the Persians observed that " Cyrus had the soul of a father, Cambyses that of a master, Darius that of a shopkeeper." Chapter XV DARIUS AND THE GREEKS THE IONIAN REVOLT, 510-492 B.C. WHEN Darius had reorganized his empire and estabhshed peace and quietness within it, he showed himself no less enamored of the dehghts of foreign conquest than his predecessors. North and south of his dominions lay only deserts and steppes, or tracts of sea. But to the east and west were lands worth conquering. Darius's first foreign expeditions were pushed in the direction of India ; he not only subdued the whole " land of the five rivers," which we now call the Punjab, but built a fleet on the Upper Indus, and sent it down to the mouth of that river, and along the shores of the Erythraean Sea and the coast of Arabia, right round to Suez. His admiral, the Greek Scylax of Caryanda, wrote an account of this adventu- rous voyage. In about 510 B.C., however, Darius turned his attention to the west, and the Greeks of Hellas heard with terror that an expedition was preparing to cross the water into Europe. Samos, the last independent Greek island ofT the coast of Asia, had already fallen into Darius's hands, the tyrant Maeandrius, who had succeeded the murdered Polycrates, being in no condition to withstand the Persian attack. But, on first crossing the Bosphorus, Darius set himself a more unprofitable task than the conquest of Hellas. After receiv- ing the homage of the Greek towns of the coast and the numerous Thracian tribes in the valley of the Hebrus, the king did not proceed westward in the direction of Macedon and Thessaly, but set his face towards the wild north. He crossed the Balkans and arrived at the Danube. There he moored his fleet, which had followed him up the coast, in the form of a bridge of boats, and threw his army across it into the melancholy treeless waste of the South Russian steppes. The Scythians were the foe at whom he struck, moved, it is said, by a fanciful desire to pay off on them the insult of invasion which they had inflicted on Asia in the reign of Cyaxares the Mede. The nomad horsemen of the steppes made no attempt to withstand the great king in battle. They drove off their herds 131 13S GREECE 510 B.C. into the interior, and dogged the steps of the Persian army without attacking it. For more than two months Darius marched through a desolate land, seeking an enemy who was always in sight but never in reach. At last it was evident that nothmg could be done against the Scythians ; the provisions were well-nigh spent, the strength of men and animals was giving out, and Darius gave the signal for retreat. The Scythians turned and followed hard on him, picking up all his stragglers, and many sick whom he had to abandon on the way for want of transport. Thus the king returned to the Danube without any great disaster such as has attended other invaders of the Russian plain, but disgusted with an utterly fruitless and abortive expedition. It was well for Darius that he found his fleet, with its stores of provisions and material, where he had left it. When his absence had been so long protracted, many of the Greek captains of the armament schemed to abandon their post, and draw off the fleet to their homes. For Darius, of whom they had no news, might, for all they knew, have perished in the waste ; and if not, that con- summation might yet befall him if he were abandoned, bridgeless and foodless, on the further bank of the impassable river. Milti- ades the Athenian, tyrant of the Thracian Chersonese, who was one of the new vassals acquired by Darius since he crossed the Hellespont, was set on sailing away; and he would have led off the whole fleet with him had he not been resisted by Histiaeus, tyrant of Miletus, who pointed out to the rulers of the Ionian towns that their interest was bound up with that of their master, since the fall of the Persian rule would infallibly be followed by a democratic revolution in every Greek town. The bridge, therefore, was pre- served, and by its means Darius and his army came safely back into Thrace. As was not unnatural, the king took Histiaeus into high favor and made him one of his council. But when he showed such esteem for him that he insisted on the Greek remaining per- manently with the court and dwelling at Susa, far from his Milesian home, Histiaeus was anything rather than contented, and set his wits to work to find some device for getting himself sent down to Ionia. When he returned home after the Scythian expedition, Darius left Megabazus with eighty thousand men in Thrace, to complete the conquest of that country, and to push the Persian border as far westward as he could. The general proved equal to the task; he IONIAN REVOLT 133 500 B.C. took Periiithus and several other Greek towns which refused to open their gates, subdued the Thracians of the coast, and the Paeonians of the lower Strymon valley, and reached the frontier of Macedon. Amyntas, king of that country, made an endeavor to preserve his freedom by force of arms. He did homage to the King of Persia, by sending him the symbolical gifts of earth and water. A tribute was imposed on Macedon, and by its submission the Achaemenian empire was brought to the borders of Thessaly, the frontier state of Greece Proper. It seemed as if the next campaign must commence with an invasion of Hellas, and so successful had the Persian arms been in their attacks on Greek states, that no one was free from the fear that invasion must necessarily mean conquest. But this was not to be; nearly a quarter of a century more was to elapse before the hosts of the Great King forced the passes of Tempe and descended into the Thessalian Plain. While Megabazus was threatening the Greeks of the mainland, Artaphernes, satrap of Lydia, was carrying out another expedition against the Greeks of the islands. Sedition was raging at the time in Naxos, the largest and most fertile and populous of the Cyclades. Aristagoras cousin and son-in-law of the expatriated Histiaeus who now ruled at Miletus as regent for his kinsman, thought to gain credit with his Persian masters by winning the island for them. He persuaded Darius to authorize an expedition against Naxos, and received command of a fleet of two hundred vessels to effect the conquest. But Artaphernes, out of distrust of the Milesian, procured that Megabates, a Persian noble, should be given him as second-in-command. This man, like Aristagoras himself, was of fiery temper, and a hot dispute broke out between the two admirals concerning a private matter, ere yet the fleet had sailed. Megabates, who had the worst of it, revenged himself by sending secret intelligence of the expedition to Naxos, and when the fleet arrived it found the city so well garrisoned and stored that it could effect nothing. Aristagoras had staked all his credit at Sardis and Susa on the success of the expedition, and had rendered himself liable for large debts in equipping it. He was at his wits' end, and ready to adopt any desperate measure, when he received a message from Histiaeus, who implored him to use any means which would lead to his own recall, even if it must be by raising revolt in Ionia. Of this message a quaint tale is told. It is said that 13A GREECE 500 B.C. Histiaeus had so great a fear that spies would discover any letter which he sent down to his cousin, that he had the incriminating words tattooed on the shaven head of a confidential slave, and sent him down to Miletus, when his hair had grown again, with the verbal message that his head required shaving. 7'he private interests of these two despots fell in with the bent of popular feeling, which, as in all Greek states at all times, was set on the assertion of autonomy. The tyrant had been the element in the state wdiich represented acquiescence in the Persian rule, and when he declared for revolt Miletus followed him. Aristagoras did more than revolt : he declared that he laid down his despotic power, and received back from the people a commission as a con- stitutional magistrate. Then he led a crusade against the tyrants all down the Ionic coast : in every town when the Milesians ap- peared, a revolution ensued, and the local ruler was slain or banished. Internal freedom as well as external was proclaimed, and the revolt for the moment promised well. Of the Greeks of Asia, hardly a town, from Byzantium to the Lycian border, refused to proclaim war on Persia. Nor was this the full measure of success obtained by Aristagoras in the first moments of his activity. He w'ent over in person to the western shore of the Aegean, and began to stir up the states of old Greece. In Sparta he obtained no success, for Spartan ideas were well-nigh bounded by the limits of Peloponnesus, and the one expedition the Lacedaemonians had sent out by sea, that directed against Polycrates of Samos, had not been so fortunate as to encourage them to repeat the experiment. King Cleomenes told the Milesian that " he was mad to propose that Sparta should attack a monarch whose residence lay at Susa, three months' journey from the sea," and bade him depart home. But the rising maritime state of Ionian blood, which men already esteemed the second power in Greece, gave Aristagoras a very different reception. Touched by an appeal from the daughter- cities to the mother-city of the Ionian race, desirous, too, of keeping the Persian employed far from their gates, and willing to prove the efficiency of their newly formed navy, the Athenians readily listened to the ex-tyrant, and granted him a fleet of twenty ships. To these the Eretrians added five more, moved by their old fellow- ship in arms with Miletus, which had endured since the remote days of the great Lelantine war. The moment that this squadron arrived at Ephesus, the troops IONIAN REVOLT 135 499 B.C. it carried were joined by the levies of the neighboring towns, and executed a sudden and daring attack on Sardis, the residence of the satrap of Lydia, and the center of Persian influence in Asia Minor. The Greeks drove Artaphernes into tlie citadel, and sacked and burned the town. This proved a fatal mistake. The blow told more on the Lydians than on their Persian masters. Enraged at the plunder of their chief city, and especially by the burning of the great temple of Cybele, the holiest sanctuary of the land, the pro- vincials rose in arms and joined Artaphernes. When the Greeks commenced their retreat to the sea, the whole country-side set on them, and a running fight ensued, in which the invaders had greatly the worse. Their army reached its ships in a very maltreated con- dition, and afterwards dispersed, while the Athenians and Eretrians returned home in a state of great discouragement (499 B.C.). The chief result of the sack of Sardis was disastrous : it moved the court of Susa to energetic action. Darius redoubled his armaments, and vowed vengeance not only on his revolted subjects, but on the rash states beyond the Aegean, who had called down his wrath by interfering in the affairs of Asia. For the moment, however, be- fore the full meaning of the events was known, the tidings that the capital of the Lydian satrapy had been destroyed told in favor of the lonians. They were now joined by most of the Carian tribes, and by all the cities of Cyprus, Greek and barbarian, with the single exception of the Phoenician colony of Amathus. Darius now called out against the rebels not only the disposable troops of all the western satrapies, but the full naval force of his Phoenician and Cilician vassals. Fleet and army together fell first on Cyprus, the most isolated and outlying of the revolted districts. By sea the lonians and Cypriots defeated the Phoenician squadron ; but the land force, which the beaten fleet had previously thrown on shore, completely crushed the Cypriot ami}', and the victory was followed by the submission of the island. Then the Persians pressed on against the original authors of the revolt. Three great armies came down from the central plateau of Asia Minor, and began to harry the coast-land. One sacked city after city along the Hellespont and Propontis; the second marched from Sardis against the midmost towns of the Greek confederacy, and took Cyme and Clazomenae, while most of the lonians looked on in helplessness, afraid to venture on another land campaign ; the third entered Caria, but after two victories was 136 GREECE 497 B.C. annihilated by the Carians and Milesians at the battle of Pedasus. In spite of this isolated success, Aristagoras now lost heart, and despaired of the enterprise he had so lightly begun. He called to- gether the ]\Iilesians, and proposed to them to emigrate in a body, as their kinsmen of Teos and Phocaea had done forty years before. They refused, but the ex-tyrant was so set on saving his own neck that he got together his personal adherents and retainers and deserted his country. Sailing to the Thracian coast with the in- tention of establishing a new settlement, just as the Teians had done at the neighboring Abdera, he landed at Alyrcinus, and was promptly cut off with all his followers by the savage tribe of the Edonians, on whose territory he had trespassed (497 B.C.). Such was the condition of affairs when Histiaeus, the original instigator of the revolt, at last appeared in Ionia. His influence w^ith Darius had not proved so omnipotent as he had supposed, nor had the great king sent him down to stay the movement of insur- rection the moment it broke out. Three weary years had passed, and the backbone of the rebellion had been broken when Darius at last found some business for him at Sardis. He arrived there only to be taunted with his schemes and their failure by the satrap Artaphernes. " You stitched this shoe," said the Persian, referring to the revolt, " and Aristagoras only put it on." Alarmed at the Persian's knowledge of his plans, Histiaeus escaped to Chios and joined the rebels. He found himself deeply suspected as an ex- tyrant, and a confidant of the king. No city offered to place him in the position of command for which he had hoped. The Chians imprisoned him for a time. Miletus refused to admit her old master within her walls, and he considered himself lucky when at last the Lesbians gave him eight ships, and allowed him to sail for the Hellespont, w^ith a commission to reorganize the revolt in the towns which had gone back to their allegiance. Instead of doing so he stationed himself at Byzantium, and levied extortionate tolls on the merchant-ships which passed through the Bosphorus, without making any vigorous attempt to attack the Persians. Meanwhile the end of the war drew near. Neglecting the smaller towns, Artaphernes drew together all his land forces for an attack on Miletus, the heart of Ionia. At the same time a great Phoenician fleet rounded the Triopian Cape, and cast anchor oppo- site the mouth of the Maeander. From the nine towns which yet kept up their hearts and hoped against hope for the retention of IONIAN REVOLT 137 496 B.C. their autonomy, the lonians and AeoHans mustered for the final conflict, till at the little island of Lade, in front of Miletus, three hundred and fifty-three triremes lay moored to face the six hundred vessels of the barbarians. It is greatly to the discredit of the Athenians that not a single ship of theirs appeared to aid their kinsmen and allies in their death-struggle. The confederate states placed their fleet under a single admiral, a certain Dionysius, one of the few straggling survivors of the population of Phocaea who had drifted back to their old home and set up an insignificant town among its ruins. He was an excellent captain, and kept his men well to their duty, till his vigilance and strict discipline provoked the listless lonians. They refused any longer to obey a man who had no strong squadron of the ships of his own city at his back, and, as the Persians delayed their attack day after day, fell into a perilous carelessness and security. At last the enemy came down upon them, and they hastily formed a line of battle to meet him. The honor of the day was very un- equally distributed. The Samians fled at a very early hour, with a precipitancy that suggested treachery rather than cowardice. The Lesbians gave way no long time after. The Chians, however, main- tained the fight after their untrustworthy allies and all the rest of the fleet had abandoned the fray, and only succumbed after the larger number of their own ships had been sunk or taken (496 B.C.). The battle of Lade was decisive in its results. The wreck of the defeated fleet dispersed, and each city had to await its doom without deriving aid from its allies. Miletus was the first to fall ; Artaphernes sat down before it, and took it after a protracted siege. He burned the city and reduced its inhabitants to slavery; so thor- oughly was the work done that Miletus never appears again as pos- sessing anything like its former importance. The preeminence among the Ionian towns fell to Ephesus, which had disarmed the wrath of Persia by a prompt and tame submission. The fall of Aliletus caused bitter grief and self-reproach at Athens. When the people realized that they had allowed their best allies against the Persian to perish unaided, they could not restrain their sorrow and shame. Next year the tragic poet Phrynichus exhibited on a stage a play called " The Taking of Miletus " (Mdrjroo aXuxn?), At its production the whole theater was plunged in tears, and the author was fined a thousand drachmae for recalling the unwelcome subject. After Miletus had succumbed, the turns of Samos, Chios, and 138 GREECE 494 B.C. Mitylene arrived. Each was subdued after more or less resistance. Their fates, though hard, were not so crushing as that of Miletus. Heavy fines were laid on them, and many of their inhabitants were deported to Asia, but no wholesale ruin or massacre ensued- Internal freedom was allowed to remain, and it was noted that the Persians, discontented with the way in which the Ionian tyrants had failed to be a support to their masters, showed themselves more favorable to democracy than could have been expected. Last of all, a few scattered towns on the Propontis which still held out were subdued one by one. In that part of the world Histiaeus had for the last two years been leading a precarious and piratical existence, a plague to Greeks no less than Persians. He now fell into the hands of Artaphernes during an insignificent skirmish near Atarneus, and was promptly fmpaled by his captor, much to the displeasure of Darius, who still cherished a feeling of gratitude to the preserver of the bridge on the Danube (494 b.c). With the exception of a few fugitives who fled to the West, all the king's subjects had now fallen or returned to their allegiance. The great Ionian revolt was now at an end, after six years of desultory warfare. Its course had brought three facts into prominence. The first was the incapacity of Greek states for combination into a close federal alliance. The jealousies be- tween city and city, and the narrow patriotism which made men comparatively indifferent to the fate of the Hellenic race, provided their own town w-as flourishing, were sufficient to prevent any efficacious common action in war. A Greek alliance, in short, could only be kept together by the power of some one state overawing the rest, as was afterwards the case during the existence of the Confederacy of Delos. And even w-hen such a consummation had arrived, the desire for complete local autonomy was so keen that all the weaker members of a federation would be secretly longing for a disruption, in order to free themselves from the hegemony of the leading state. The second characteristic of the Ionian revolt w^as the slow and inefficient working of the military machinery of the Persian empire. To subdue the revolted towns of a single satrapy six years of war had been required. Unless the king him- self were present in person, to compel all his satraps and com- manders to act promptly and in loyal combination, there was a tendency to slackness and spasmodic effort on the part of the Per- sian officers in Asia. Thirdly, the prompt conclusion of the war IONIAN REVOLT 139 492 B.C. after the battle of Lade proved that a fleet was more important than an army in attacking the Greek world. When the command of the sea had passed to the barbarian, and each state on its island or peninsula was cut off from communication with its fellows, a complete collapse of resistance followed. We shall see all these tendencies illustrated again, though with a different relative im- portance, in the greater struggle between Persia and the Greeks of Europe which began a few years after the end of the Ionian revolt. The share vvhich Athens and Eretria had taken in the sack of Sardis had not escaped the memory of Darius. When his revolted subjects were once subdued, he was determined that there should be no delay in punishing the more distant enemy. A legend, which is true in the spirit if not in the letter, tells us how the Great King bade his cup-bearer to repeat to him thrice at every banquet the words, " Master, remember the Athenians," lest the insult wrought at Sardis should ever vanish from his mind. The year after the end of the revolt was devoted to the prepara- tion of an expedition to chastise the objects of Darius's enmity. In 492 B.C. Mardonius came down from Susa to take the command. He sent a fleet to coast round the north shore of the Aegean, and himself led an army parallel to it by the great road which runs between the sea and the spurs of the Rhodope. But fortune fought for Athens. A hurricane strev/ed the rocky shores of the peninsula of Athos v^'ith the wrecks of three hundred Persian galleys. A few days later a desperate battle with the wild Thracian tribes so thinned the ranks of iMardonius's army that, although victorious, he halted, and shrank from a further advance. The attack on the king's enemies had to be put off for another year. Before proceeding to relate the results of the first Persian expedition which touched the shores of European Greece, we must explain the condition of affairs in that country. Chapter XVI CONSTITUTION OF CLEISTHENES, 510-508 B.C. OF the numerous tyrants of European Greece the son of Peisistratus had been the last to fall. Even before his expulsion the zeal which had led on the Spartans to attack tyrants wherever they found them had cooled down ; and it had been with a half-hearted effort that they had cast out the ruler of Athens. The danger of an anti-Dorian movement led by a league of tyrants had been removed long before, when Corinth fell ; and in crushing Hippias the Spartans had destroyed a useful ally merely to satisfy a religious scruple a scruple which, as they soon heard, had been deliberately played upon by an unscrupulous politician and a mercenary priesthood. Apollo must have been in bad odor at Sparta when the bribery of his oracle was discovered, and his be- hests were never again obeyed with the single-hearted loyalty of old days. \\'hen Cleomenes had drawn off his troops, and liberated Athens was left to herself, it seemed for a moment as if the old factions had learned no lesson under the strong hand of the Peisis- tratidae. Civil strife at once broke out, the opposing leaders being Cleisthenes the Alcmaeonid, chief of the newly returned exiles, and Isagoras, the son of Tisander. The matter was at first a personal rivalry between two powerful nobles, but ere long it took the shape of a political struggle; for when Isagoras strengthened himself by organizing a new oligarchic party, Cleisthenes at once assumed the role of a leader of the populace. " He took the democracy into partnership," says Herodotus, " it having been previously excluded from all authority." Thirty years of the rule of the Peisistratidae had weakened the oligarchic tendencies in Athens, by breaking up the traditions of authority and influence which had belonged to the old houses. On the other hand, it had been favorable to the growth of democratic feeling; for under the tyrants all men had been equal, though equal in slavery alone. xVccordingly it was found that Isagoras had sumriioned to his aid a waning power, while 140 CLEISTHENES 141 509-508 B. C. Cleisthenes was backed by the rising sentiment of the majority of the nation. The oHgarch was easily worsted, and had to fly, while the democrat was left in possession of the field (509 B.C.) Isagoras without delay called in foreign enemies in order to worst his rival, reckless of the evils he was thereby bringing on his country. Flying to Sparta, he stirred up his personal friend King Cleomenes to expel Cleisthenes from Athens by force. So easy was the task in the king's estimation that he marched on Athens at the head of a few hundred personal retainers only, without asking for or receiving the national army of Sparta, or the con- tingents of the numerous Peloponnesian states which looked to that city as their head. He sent before him a herald to bid the Athenians "expel the accursed family," using the old scruple con- cerning the hereditary blood-guiltiness of the Alcmaeonidae for their sacrilegious slaughter of the Cylonian conspirators, in order to discredit the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes with his fellow-citizens. The reformer had either overrated the strength of the Spartan army, or resolved to do his best to deprive Cleomenes of his nominal casus belli. Immediately on the arrival of the herald he withdrew from Athens. Deprived of their leader, and not yet realizing their oWn or their adversaries' strength, the Athenians threw open their gates to Cleomenes and Isagoras. The Spartan's retainers garrisoned the Acropolis, while the oligarch installed himself in office as archon, and mustered his partisans to overthrow the new democratic constitution by a fictitious vote of the people. Then Isagoras de- clared the Athenian " Senate of Four Hundred " dissolved, and replaced it by a body of three hundred oligarchs named by himself. At the same time seven hundred families of the democratic party were expelled from the city, and sent to join Cleisthenes in exile (508 B.C.). Meanwhile the people of Athens had the time to count up the number of Cleomenes' body-guard, and to gauge the strength of the native partisans of Isagoras. The result was a sudden and spontaneous insurrection, which broke the power of the oligarchs in a few hours. Isagoras and his followers were driven pell-mell within the gates of the Acropolis, the only spot which his Spartan friends were able to hold for him. The Senate of Four Hundred reassembled and assumed its old functions, recalling Cleisthenes and all the other exiles, and setting the full armed force of Attica to blockade the Acropolis. The crowd in the fortress was great, 142 GREECE 508 B.C. and no stock of provisions had been laid in, so that in a very lew days the garrison were approaching a state of starvation. They were soon compelled to surrender at (liscrclion. I'lic Athenians, loath to drive Sparta to a war of vengeance, spared the lives of Cleo- menes and his hoplites, and allowed them to depart. The king suc- ceeded in smuggling oft" Isagoras in the ranks of his troops, but the rest of the oligarchs fell into the hands of the people. So great was the rage in Athens at their detestable attempt to destroy the national constitution by the aid of the foreigner, tliat all the prominent men, many scores in number, were put to death. The rest of the guilty party were sent into exile. Far from feeling gratitude for the preservation of his life, Cleomenes had no other sentiment in his heart, when he returned to Sparta, than hatred for the people who had brought his over- weening confidence to such an ignominious fall. News soon ar- rived at Athens that the king was straining every nerve to organize a second and more formidable expedition against those who had worsted him. So large was the Spartan contingent in the new army that King Demaratus, the colleague of Cleomenes, was joined with him in command ; while the whole of the Peloponnesian sub- ject-allies had been ordered to send their troops to the Isthmus, though no information was given them as to the destination or object of the expedition. Terrified at the impending storm, the Athenians sent ambassadors to Sardis, to beg for aid from the satrap Artaphernes and his master the Great King. But the Per- sian offered hard terms to the Athenian envoys. He could con- ceive of no relation between the Great King and a foreign people other than that of master and subject. Accordingly he refused to pledge the armed aid of Persia to the Athenians, unless they should make the typical oft'erings of earth and v/ater, and acknowledge Darius as their suzerain. So great was the dread of Sparta which filled the ambassadors' minds that they actually accepted the satrap's conditions, and undertook, in the name of Athens, to do homage to the king. On their return, however, they were astonished to find themselves met with the wildest indignation. Even in the worst extremity the Athenians had not dreamed of surrendering themselves to the barbarian, but only of forming an alliance with him. The engagement was repudiated, the treaty disavowed, and the advocates of the embassy as well as the ambassadors themselves fell into discredit. CLEISTHENES 143 508 B.C. Athens would have been left wholly unaided to face the attack of the Peloponnesian confederacy, if it had not been for one feeble ally whom she possessed the little Boeotian town of Plataea. We have related in a previous chapter how the Peisistratidae had undertaken, in behalf of Athens, the protection of the Plataeans against their Theban neighbors, and now the alliance was still preserved. But the friendship of Plataea ensured the enmity of Thebes, and when Cleomenes was mustering his army the Boeotian League thought that the opportunity had come to reclaim its one recalcitrant member. The Thebans drew into alliance with them- selves the people of Chalcis, the great maritime town of Euboea, who were jealous of the rising commercial and maritime power of Athens, and were not averse to crush a city which was beginning to supersede older marts as the emporium of the Central Aegean. Cleomenes, therefore, found it easy to concert a plan of operations with the Boeotians and Chalcidians, who undertook to fall on Attica from the north as soon as the Spartan army should have passed the Isthmus. It was, accordingly, with every prospect of success before him that Cleomenes led his army through the Megarid into the plain of Eleusis. Once arrived there, the allies learned the purpose for which they had been assembled a purpose which many of them viewed with the highest disgust. For Cleomenes now proposed a plan far more iniquitous than that of overthrowing the democratic constitu- tion of Athens; he openly avowed that he would make his friend Isagoras tyrant of Attica. Such an act would have been a formal repudiation of the policy which Sparta had hitherto pursued, that of expelling all the tyrants whom she met. King Demaratus, who was joined with Cleomenes in the command of the army, was not unnaturally provoked into setting himself in opposition to his col- league, and found himself supported by the majority of the allies. The Athenians, who had mustered in full force on the eastern skirts of the Thriasian Plain, were surprised to find that the enemy made no movement of advance. Everything, indeed, was in confusion in the Peloponnesian camp. The Corinthians, who remembered the ills they had suffered under the house of Cypselus, took the lead in refusing to fight merely that a tyranny might be established at Athens. Many of the contingents of the smaller states showed a similar disposition, and Demaratus backed them with his authority. At last, after a stormy council of war, the army broke up ; the allies 144 GREECE 508 B.C. returned to their homes, and Cleomenes was forced to retrace his steps towards Sparta without having enjoyed his revenge. While the Athenian army had been concentrated in front of the main body of invaders, the Boeotians and Chalcidians had ravaged the northeastern denies of Attica without meeting with resistance. But the moment that the Peloponnesians had de- parted, the Athenians hastily turned northward to check these in- cursions. They marched first against the Chalcidians, but, hearing that the Thebans were hurrying coastwards to join their confeder- ates, threw themselves between two forces and attacked them in detail. In one day they fought two battles. In the morning they fell on the Boeotians and routed them, taking seven hundred pris- oners; then, crossing the Euripus into Euboea, they encountered the Chalcidians in the afternoon and won another victory. So decisive was the second engagement, that Chalcis itself fell into the hands of the conquerors. Expelling from the city the families called Hippobotae, who had ruled it as a strict oligarchy, the Athenians divided their confiscated estates into four thousand farms, and bestowed them on poor citizens of Athens. This was the second of their many Clcruchies/ or " lottings-out " of con- quered territory. Although the lower classes in Chalcis were left unharmed to dwell among the new settlers, the state was in reality transformed into a mere dependency of Athens, as all political power rested with the permanent garrison of Cleruchs. A comparison at once suggests itself between this settlement and the system of " colonies " which the Romans found so effectual in holding down newly conquered districts in Italy. Few statesmen have found themselves in such a favorable position as Cleisthenes enjoyed at this moment, and few have ever made a better use of their opportunities. In the short time of his ascendency he completely remodeled the Athenian constitution. A taste for political reorganization, indeed, seems to have been innate in his blood; for his grandfather, Cleisthenes of Sicyon, from whom he derived his name, had been famous for the manner in which he recast the institutions of his native town ; and his brother Hip- pocrates was the grandfather of the yet greater reformer Pericles. The results of the work of Cleisthenes were not to be ephem- 1 The first had been the lotting out of Salamis after a conquest from the Megarians, somewhere about the year 587 b.c.; a fact preserved in an inscrip- tion only. CLEISTHENES 145 508 B.C. eral ; they made themselves felt through the whole of the subsequent history of Athens, and were the foundation on which all succeeding legislators built. For their plan was so well suited to the needs of the times, that it admitted with ease and safety of all those ad- ditions and modifications in a democratic direction which Aristeides, Pericles, and other statesmen afterwards devised. At the base of the new constitution lay the idea of the supreme authority of the whole body of citizens gathered in their assembly; and this being once granted, all new developments of the functions of that body were logical consequences of the original conception of its omnipotence. Cleisthenes began his reforms with the most simple elements of the state, completely recasting the whole of the local and tribal divisions of citizens. He could not, of course, interfere with the ancient ties of the yivo!io).to!xa is a recommendation of the Senate sent down to the Ecclesia for ratification ; vofioii is a permanent part of the constitution. C L E I S T H E N E S 149 508 B. C. hoots and hisses with which the crowd were ready to silence the windbag or the bore, for the Ecclesia was more celebrated for HveHness than for decorum. On days of an important debate the whole Pnyx would be crammed with citizens, but when the agenda were of an uninteresting nature a small muster was often seen. If it was too scanty, the presidents could send out public slaves, armed with a rope smeared with red paint, to sweep the neigh- boring streets of their loungers. Thus even a dull day in the Ecclesia was not destitute of its humors. Anyone who, while endeavoring to evade a rope and escape the meeting, received a touch of the paint was liable to fine. The Heliaea, like the Ecclesia, was probably composed of the whole body of full citizens, or, at least, of all full citizens over thirty years of age. Its history is less exactly known than that of the Ecclesia, but it would appear that its function as settled by Cleis- thenes was to hear appeals from decisions of magistrates, and to try persons accused of crimes against the state, such as treason. Cases between private persons still had a first hearing before the archons or other individual magistrates, while the court of the Areopagus retained its jurisdiction in cases of homicide, and its general censorial power of supervising the lives of citizens. It was probably not during the lifetime of Cleisthenes, but at some subsequent date in the first quarter of the fifth century, that the Heliaea was divided into dikastcrics. By later ages these courts were often ascribed to Solon, but when we find the name used in his time it probably meant the whole Heliaea, not a subdivision of it. In later times there were ten large courts each composed of many hundred sworn jurors, called Heliasts or Dicasts. When a case came on for decision, the dikasteries cast lots to see which should try it ; while the six junior archons, or Thesmothetae, also cast lots to settle v/hich of them was to sit as president of the dikastery. These elaborate precautions were directed against the possible use of bribery or intimidation. For since a criminal would not know till the last moment v/hich archon would be the presiding judge, or which dikastery would be the jury at his trial, he could not set to work to exert influence or corruption on them. Moreover, the great size of the dikastery itself would have made it difficult to try bribery. Justice at Athens, then, might be perverted by preju- dice or party strife, but hardly ever by the coarser means of corrup- tion In this the Athenian courts compare very favorably with 160 GREECE 508 B.C. those of Rome, where during the last century of the repubhc bribery seems to have been the rule rather than the exception. Having- discussed the Ecclesia and the Heliaea, we must now turn to the magistracy. Solon's complicated arrangements for the choice of archons had fallen into desuetude during the tyranny of the Peisistratidae, who had practically nominated such persons as they chose for the office. Cleisthenes now placed the election in the hands of the newly-developed Ecclesia, which thus became the maker as well as the judge of the chief magistrates. It will be remembered that direct popular election had never before pre- vailed; before Solon the archons had been nominated by the Are- opagus; after him the hazard of the lot had limited the elector's choice. It was not till now that the democracy really obtained a preponderating influence over its officials. One result of this arrangement of Cleisthenes was to strengthen the Areopagus, for all archons were nov/ men of mark, the direct choice of the Ecclesia, and as they passed on to the Areopagus after leaving office, brought it a great accession of personal influence. In the first draft of the new constitution the old military ar- rangements of the republic were left untouched, the polemarch or third archon remaining as commander-in-chief, while under him served four strategi, who had formerly represented the four old tribes. But some years later,"* Cleistlienes's new arrangement of the tribes was carried into the province of war. That nieasure had re- sulted in the division of the national army into ten bodies of approx- imately equal strength. To suit the change, the number of strategi was now increased to ten, each to head the hoplites of a single tribe. These strategi served under the polemarch, and seem from the first to have limited his authority to a very considerable degree. Being independent officers chosen by the people, they were not so wholly or thoroughly under his control as he might have wished. He seems to have been obliged to treat them as a permanent council-of-war, and on one occasion we shall find their vote counting for as much as his. There remains for consideration one more provision of im- portance in the Cleisthenic constitution the extraordinary device called Ostracism. The personal and political rivalry of great party leaders had been the curse of Athens ; it had led to the usurpation of * Aristotle's newly-discovered work gives two irreconcilable dates for this sup- plementary legislation it may have been either in 504 b. c. or 501 u. c. CLEISTHENES 151 508 B. C. the Peisistratidae, and had reasserted itself again the moment that the Peisistratidae had been driven out in the conflict between Cleis- thenes and Isagoras. The reformer cast about for a means to pre- vent it for the future, and found one in the institution of honorable banishment, which men called Ostracism. He provided that at any political crisis a special meeting might be held, in which the people could declare by their vote that the presence of any individual in Athens was prejudicial to the state. If six thousand votes ostraka, as they were called, from being written upon a pot-sherd ( oarpaxov ) were cast into the ballot-box against any one name, that statesman went into exile for ten years. This banishment implied no necessary slur on the personal or political character of the sufferer. He did not lose his rights of citizenship, or incur confiscation of property. When his enforced travels were ended, he re-entered the city with the same property and status as he had possessed before his depar- ture. His exile had not been intended for a punishment on him, but as a means of ending a political dead-lock, or of removing a person- ality which was inimical for the time being to the interests of the state, or of averting the consequences of an honest but injudicious statesman's personal influence on the people. If we examine the list of persons ostracized, we find that not only Hipparchus,^ the advocate of the return of the Peisistratidae, and Damon, the over- zealous friend who was suspected of fostering autocratic views in the mind of Pericles, are included in it, but also the blameless Aristeides, who incurred his fate merely because he staked his political career on a persistent opposition to the views of Themis- tocles, which were in favor with the people at the time. Cimon and Thucydides, son of Melesias, also suffered from ostracism, pro- voked by the necessity put before the Ecclesia of choosing between their policy and that of Pericles. But Cleisthenes forgot that it v/as possible that there might arise more than two parties in the state, each vrith its rival policy. The final disuse of ostracism, after an employment of about a century, came about from the discovery that it was powerless to remedy the confusion which arose from the coexistence of more than two factions. For when the tribunal of ostracism, in 418 b.c.^ was called upon to decide between the leaders of the war party and the peace party, Alcibiades and Nicias, the partisans of those statesmen combined to black-ball the dema- gogue Hyperbolus, chief of a third party, the extreme democrats. 5 Not to be confused with his relative, the tyrant slain by Harmodius 152 GREECE 508 B.C. Thus the two statesmen, whose poHcies were antagonistic, still remained to divide the city with their rivalry. After this failure ostracism was never again employed. Such were the chief points in the constitution of Cleisthenes, whose establishment marks the commencement of Athenian great- ness. It was the most thoroughly democratic scheme of legislation which had yet been seen, and partook of the nature of a gigantic ex- periment in political science. No previous constitution in any Greek city had given the assembly of the full body of citizens such untram- meled power to sway the state. Instead of the restricted privileges which it had been granted by Solon the right to elect magistrates and to call them to account at the expiration of their office it now- enjoyed almost unfettered control over the foreign and home policy of Athens, and also had the supreme judicial power in the state. The partisans of oligarchy foretold the speedy ruin of the city which had placed the conduct of affairs in the hands of an untried and fickle populace. But the actual result of the adoption of democracy at Athens was an outburst of vigor, unparalleled before or after in any Greek city. The town, which had been looked upon as a state of the second class, lying off the main road of commerce, and exercising little influence in international politics, suddenly started up as a great naval and military power, and went forth conquering and to conquer. Its hoplites, alone and unaided, faced and flung back the hitherto unvanquished armies of the king of the East; its triremes, after leading the united fleets of Hellas to victory against the common enemy, established an unquestioned supremacy at sea which the once-famed squadrons of Corinth and Aegina were not able to dispute. An outburst of literary and artistic energy made itself felt at the same moment, and rendered Athens the intellectual as well as the commercial center of the Hellenic race. Far from being diverted into material channels by the far-reaching political inter- ests of the day, the genius of Athenian art and literature was stimu- lated by them into higher flights, and its fullest development was contemporaneous with the zenith of the imperial greatness of the city. How far was the glory of Athens in the fifth century the result of the constitutional reforms which had marked the end of the sixth? It would, no doubt, be easy to exaggerate the extent of their connection, and to forget the inspiring effect which the victory over Persia, won twenty years later, exercised over the CLEISTHENES 153 508 B. C. whole Hellenic race no less than over Athens. But the records of the years which preceded Salamis v/ould be sufficient by themselves to prove that Athens had set forth on the path of greatness long before the final defeat of the Eastern invader. In the history of the struggle which she waged in order to maintain her new consti- tution, when her neighbors banded themselves together to crush her rising greatness, we shall see the signs of the same spirit which afterwards enabled her to withstand the Persian and to found an empire of the seas. Chapter XVII EUROPEAN GREECE JEALOUSY OF THE STATES, 509-490 B.C. IN spite of the defeat of their alHes, the Boeotian confederacy continued the war, but they met with no success in it. Send- ing for advice to Delphi, the Thebans received from the oracle the command to " ask aid of those nearest to them." This dark saying could not apply to their neighbors of Coronea or Tanagra, who were already serving in the army of the league, so was inter- preted as no doubt the oracle had designed into a hint to form an alliance with the Aeginetans. Thebe and Aegina, it was remem- bered, were, according to the old myths, sisters, daughters of the river-god Asopus ; hence their descendants might be regarded as the " nearest relatives " of each other. An embassy was therefore sent to ask the aid of the powerful island state. The same commercial jealousy which had influenced Chalcis made itself felt at Aegina with redoubled force. Athens was a possible rival before the fall of Chalcis, but after she had swallowed up the trade of the great Euboean town she had become doubly formidable. If we add that as Dorians the Aeginetans despised their Ionian neighbors, and as oligarchs detested their democratic constitution, we can easily understand their frame of mind. They still possessed the largest navy in European Greece, and determined to use it ere Athens had time to grow yet greater. Accordingly they commenced to ravage Phalerum and the other sea-coast demes of Western Attica, and by these attacks, which the Athenian fleet was not strong enough to resist, drew off the pressure of the war from the Boeotians (506 b.c). Aleanwhile Cleomenes had returned to Sparta, and in spite of his second failure found himself able to stir up his countrymen to new projects against Athens. They tacitly threw blame on Demaratus for having opposed his colleague's plans by passing a decree " that the two kings should never in future go out in the same army," Moreover, they summoned a congress of delegates 154 JEALOUSY OF STATES 155 506-505 B.C. from the whole of the alHed states to assemble at Sparta, for they apparently considered that although the confederates had refused to march against Athens when the order was suddenly and arbi- trarily laid before them, they might be induced to reconsider their determination by argument and debate. The Spartans also took the strange step of sending for Hippias from his refuge at Sigeum, and offering to restore him to the tyranny. Finding that Isagoras's party had failed to help them, they hoped that the faction of supporters of the Peisistratidae, which still survived in Athens, might be stirred into activity by their aid, and used to break up the power of the new dem.ocracy. Forgetting the old grudge of his expulsion from Athens by Spartan hands, the ex-tyrant repaired to the congress, and joined Cleomenes in plying every argument on the assembled allies. The Corinthians, however, remained obdurate, and the majority of the members of the Peloponnesian league evidently inclined to non-intervention. Nothing could be done to convince them, and Hippias returned in disgust to his place of exile in the Troad. For the present he abandoned the attempt to make any capital out of the internal politics of Greece, and set himself instead to win favor with the satrap Artaphenies of Sardis, who was already ill-disposed towards Athens on account of the uncere- monious way in which that state, two years before, had repudiated the half-ratified treaty which had bound it to Persia. An attempt to conciliate the offended magnate which the Athenians made, when they heard of the intrigues of the ex-tyrant, had no other effect than to draw from Artaphernes the declaration that " they could only secure their safety by receiving back Hippias, and giving the Great King earth and water." From that moment the Athenians regarded peace with the great Eastern power as im- possible, and resigned themselves to the necessity of adding the Persian to the already considerable list of their enemies (505 B.C.). At a moment when the armies of ]\legabazus v/ere slowly making their way westward through Thrace and Macedon towards Greece, the consequences of offending the Great King must have seemed likely to be fatal. But rather than give up their cherished consti- tution the Athenians resolved to brave them. After the unfruitful congress at Sparta, in which the Pelopon- nesians had refused to crush Athens for Cleomenes's gratification, the Athenians were freed from the foe whom tliey most dreaded. The. peace party at Sparta was not only headed by King Demaratus, 156 GREECE Circa 505 B.C. but favored by the ephors, who dreaded lest Cleomenes should attempt to win back the old royal power of the Heraclidae. Accord- ingly the Lacedaemonians and their allies no longer appear among the enemies of Athens, and when next a Spartan king is heard of in connection with Athenian affairs, he appears in a benevolent rather than a hostile aspect. It is probable that the continued neu- trality of the Peloponnesian powers was in some degree secured by a desperate war which about this time broke out between Sparta and Argos (circ. 505 b.c.)^ The Argives had never forgotten the ancient supremacy which their city had, in the days of Pheidon, enjoyed over all the lands within the Isthmus, and seized their opportunity when Sparta was estranged from the majority of her allies. Instead, however, of being able to molest the Lacedae- monians, they were obliged to fight on the defensive, for Cleomenes advanced at once into Argolis. After trying unsuccessfully to attack Argos from the west, the king compelled the Aeginetans and Sicyonians to supply him with ships, and landed in the neigh- borhood of Tiryns. Here he found the Argive army occupying a defensive position at a place called Sepeia, between their capital and the sea. By gross carelessness the Argives allowed themselves to be surprised, and received a crushing defeat. Nor was this all : the majority of the fugitives sought refuge hard b)^, in the sacred grove of the hero Argos, where they were completely surrounded by the Spartan army. Cleomenes might have received them in surrender, and obtained any terms he thought fit to ask for their release; but he chose instead to commit an atrocity which has few parallels in Greek history. He blocked all the outlets with troops, and then set fire to the grove. Not an Argive escaped from the flames except to fall by the sword. In this huge disaster the van- quished lost six thousand men, two-thirds of their citizens capable of bearing arms. Cleomenes might have taken the city had he chosen, but instead of doing so returned home, only celebrating his victory by forcing his way into the great temple of Hera, which stood outside the walls of Argos, and doing solemn sacrifice therein, despite the priests, whom he caused to be flogged for their remon- strances. On being attacked at Sparta for his remissness, he gave the ephors the curious answer that the Delphic oracle had foretold that he should " destroy Argos." When he found that this was the 1 The date of this war is doubtful. Some place it as early as 517 B.C.,, others as late as 493 b. c. The date given above seems probable, however. JEALOUSY OF STATES 157 510-490 B.C. name of the grove which he had burned after the battle, he saw that the prophecy had been fulfilled; moreover, the sacrifice which he made at the temple of Hera had not been so propitious as to promise complete success, and he had therefore returned. Whether con- vinced or not, the ephors desisted from their reproaches. The main importance of this campaign was that it took Argos out of Greek politics for more than a generation. Its reduced population saw their subject-allies of Orneae, Cleonae, and Mycenae in successful revolt, and were even reduced to struggle for existence with their own agricultural serfs, who rose and maintained a vigorous war against them for several years. We must now return to Athens. That state, though freed from fear of Sparta, had a war with Thebes and Aegina still on her hands, besides the prospect of another with Persia impending. Of the details of the former struggle we unfortunately know nothing; but it cannot have been unsuccessful, since, when the revolted Ion- ions sent Aristagoras to beg for aid in 500 b.c, Athens was in a condition to spare a squadron of twenty ships for distant opera- tions on the coast of Asia Minor, This was the expedition which cooperated with the Eretrians and Milesians in that unfortunate attack on Sardis which roused such wrath in Darius. Probably the vicissitudes of the v^ar with Aegina account for the fact that, except on this one occasion, Athens sent no help to her Eastern kinsmen ; for it is impossible to find any other reason for her deser- tion of the lonians, when that people were fighting her battles by keeping her enemy employed at home. That the Athenians realized the meaning to themselves of the failure of the Ionic revolt is sufficiently shown by their conduct in the matter of Phrynichus's play, " The Fall of Miletus." For six years, however, the revolt In Asia Minor left the Per- sian no spare time for interference with states beyond the Aegean, and the respite was very precious to Athens. It allowed a whole generation to arise which had been educated in a free and demo- cratic city, where the traditions of tyranny and seditious party strife were yearly growing less dangerous. Nothing, indeed, could have been more fortunate for Athens than the course which events took in the period 510-490 b.c. The memory of the deeds of Hippias and Isagoras was enough to make oligarchy or tyranny impossible, while the violent interference of Sparta had made men associate in all their thoughts the autonomy of Athens and her 158 GREECE 510-490 B.C. democratic constitution, which had been ahke threatened by foreign arms. Finally, the long war with Aegina hindered the Athenians from relapsing into their old party quarrels, by the continual state of tension in which it kept them, and at the same time drove them to become more and more of a naval power. Public opinion, not only in Athens, but among enlightened men throughout Greece, laid the prosperity of the city to the credit of the constitution of Cleisthenes. " In this Vv-hole course of events," writes Herodotus, " it was plainly evident what an excellent thing is a democratic constitution. For while Athens was ruled by tyrants her citizens were no more fortunate in war than their neighbors, but when they were freed they proved themselves far the best soldiers. This evidently came from the fact that they were slack while they worked for a master, but grew zealous when eveiy man was fighting to defend his own liberty." The twenty years 510-490 b.c. were the training-school of Athenian greatness ; and the turn which the history of the subse- quent half-century took is only to be explained when we realize their meaning and importance. Nothing can illustrate their effect bet- ter than the influence which they exerted on the character and posi- tion of the three great men whom Athens produced during this epoch. Miltiades, son of Cimon, was a man who, in an earlier genera- tion, would have proved either an aspirant for tyranny or a bitter oligarchic partisan. He sprang from one of the oldest Attic fami- lies, the Aeacidae, who claimed descent from the Salaminian Ajax, The wealth and influence of his father were so great that it had drawn down on him banishment at the hands of Peisistratus, and assassination from the more reckless Hippias. Aliltiades himself had vv'ithdrawn from Athens to escape a similar fate, and had suc- ceeded to a curious inheritance in the Thracian Chersonese. His uncle and namesake had, thirty years before, become king of a small tri]:)e of barbarians named the Dolonci, who dwelt upon the shore of the Hellespont. These people, being oppressed in war by their neighbors, had, by the advice of the Delphic oracle, taken a Greek for king. The elder Miltiades not only reigned over them, but subdued by their aid several small Greek cities in the Thracian Chersonese, so that he was at once a Doloncian king and a tyrant over Cardia and its Hellenic neighbors. In this double capacity he was succeeded by two nephevvs, of whom his more JEALOUSY OF STATES 159 499-497 B.C. famous namesake was the second. The younger Mihiades has already met our notice, at the moment when he endeavored to persuade the other Greek vassals of Darius to destroy the Danube bridge, at the time of that monarch's expedition into Scythia. Whn the Ionic revolt took place he joined in it heartily, and, after driving out the Persian garrisons from Imbros and Lemnos, took his countrymen at home into partnership, and aided them to establish their third great Cleruchy in the conquered islands (499 B.C.). When, however, the Hellespontine towns were recovered by the armies of the Great King in 497 b.c, Miltiades was com- pelled to fly from his own little domain in the Thracian Chersonese, and, after a hairbreadth escape from a Phoenician squadron, which chased his galleys across the Aegean, thought himself fortunate to reach Athens in safety. The people were not ungrateful for the services he had done them in the matter of Imbros and Lemnos, and ere long chose him as one of the ten strategi of the year. That an ex-tyrant and a member of one of the old oligarchic families could be elected to the highest office by the democracy proves two things. The constitution of Cleisthenes must have obtained such a firm hold on the esteem of the Athenian people that they had grown to regard it as invulnerable to the assaults of any internal enemy: even a man of the most undemocratic antece- dents could not harm it, though he held one of the chief magis- tracies in the state. Secondly, Miltiades himself must have pos- sessed no small share of that power of adapting one's self to cir- cumstances which formed such a prominent feature in the Attic character. For an independent sovereign to become a republican official, and to win high renown in that capacity, was indeed a marvel. Nevertheless, Miltiades had not been brought up under the training of the Constitution of Cleisthenes the Athenians never felt that he was quite one of themselves and, in spite of his many excellent qualities, he could never make himself so thoroughly the people's hero and champion as two younger men who came into prominence at Athens about the same time as himself. These two were Aristeides, son of Lysimachus, and Themisto- cles, son of Neocles. Both were sprung from undistinguished families of the middle class, and the second was not even of pure Attic parentage, his mother having been a Carian woman. Each, therefore, owed his position to his own ability, and only rose to prominence through the carriere ouvertc aiix talents which the 160 GREECE 497 B.C. democratic constitution opened to him. But, except in age and station, the two men were as dissimilar as it is possible for human beings to be. Aristeides won the confidence of the Athenian peo- ple by his possession of those virtues which were most wanting in the national character. Themistocles, on the other hand, rose to renown because he reproduced in their highest possible develop- ment all the features, good and bad alike, of the Athenian dis- position. The son of Lysimachus displayed two great and excellent traits. He was rigidly just and honorable, and he was gifted with the most imperturbable cool-headedness. The faults of the Athenian democracy were precisely the reverse of these good qualities. Their foible w^as over-hasty action, the tendency to be led astray in matters both of right and wrong and of expediency and inexpediency by the impulses of the moment. Hence they learned by experience to respect the one man who was never moved by passion and prejudice, but always summed up clearly on the side of honor and justice. But ere he fully won the confidence of his countrymen Aristeides had to undergo a rough probation. Often his advice was scorned, and once he was even ostracized for his uncompromising opposition to the policy which had the momentary approbation of the people. Everyone has heard the story of the prejudiced and ignorant voter who, on that occasion, gave his voice for expulsion, " because he was tired of always hearing Aristeides called ' The Just.' " True or false, the anecdote brings into relief the pettiness of human nature and the stupid jealousy which Aristeides had to surmount before his position grew unquestioned. The son of Neocles was a man of a very dift'erent type. The respectable talents of Aristeides were thrown into the shade by his genius, but to his rival's moral virtues he had nothing to oppose. The characteristics, evil as well as good, of the Athenian people seemed incarnate in him. Of all statesmen that Greece ever knew, he was incomparably the most versatile and ingenious. Thucy- dides says that at unpremeditated action there was no one to com- pare with him. With the shortest notice given, he would always hit on a happy expedient, and his forecasts of future events were wonderfully accurate. Nor did his successes proceed from study and long forethought; they were the fruits of the untaught quick- ness of his intellect. But Themistocles's ready brains were employed JEALOUSY OF STATES 161 A93 B.C. to benefit his country only so long as, while so doing, he benefited himself also. If he was patriotic, his patriotism was merely a larger kind of selfishness, which embraced his country as a thing necessary to his comfort. Above all, he was hopelessly corrupt in money matters. He made politics a paying trade. Left a patri- mony of three talents by his father, he was found to possess more than ninety at the moment of the sudden end of his career in Athens, and this large fortune had been mainly accumulated by taking bribes from foreign states. That he was nothing more than an unscrupulous adventurer was sufficiently shown by the fact that, when expelled from his country, he promptly went over to the Persians, and died in the receipt of a pension from King Arta- xerxes. All the vices of the Greek character were indeed embodied in him selfishness, double-dealing, want of political principle, malevolent jealously, and that love of ostentation which drives men to the acquisition of wealth by any means, whether dishonorable or fair and open. Yet, ere his faults were discovered by his country- men, he had done them benefits whose effects were unparalleled. For in the earlier days of his life, when in working for Athens he also worked for himself, his services to the state were such as no statesman, not even Pericles, was ever able to surpass. It was the necessities of the war with Aegina which first brought Themistocles into prominence. When he obtained the archonship in 493 b.c.,^ he persuaded his countrymen to fortify the Peiraeus and make it their naval arsenal. Previously the Athenian harbor had been the open roadstead of Phalerum, whose only advantage was that it lay on the spot at which the sea approached the city most nearly. The Peiraeus had been merely a rocky waste peninsula, undefended and unemployed. Themistocles saw its capacities, and at his instigation it was walled off, and made the naval station of the Athenian fleet. For this purpose it was admir- ably fitted, presenting as it did one large and two smaller harbors all deep enough to receive the largest ships, and yet so narrow at their mouths that they could be closed with chains and booms so as to be perfectly inaccessible to an enemy. The Peiraeus was inconveniently distant indeed (four miles) from Athens, and did not lie so thoroughly under the eyes of all who dwelt in the city as did the Bay of Phalerum; but for safety, strength, and com- mercial use it was so incomparably superior that it superseded the ~ Some writers doubt this archonship, but it rests on good authority. 169. GREECE 493 B.C. older station at once. In a few years it became a considerable town, the headquarters of the most democratic section of the Athenian people; for the landless class flocked down in crowds to the port, where employment was easy to find, either on shipboard or in con- nection with the small industries which were called into existence by the necessities of the seafaring population. The vauTud<; ir/ko? of the Peiraeus grew ere long to be a prominent factor in Athenian politics; for the events of the years which followed the founding of the new port were such as to bring forward in every way the importance of the naval side of the city's strength. In 493 B. c, the very year of Themistocles' archonship, the hands of the Persian satraps of Asia Minor were once more entirely free. The last throes of the Ionic revolt were over, and the Great King might now send forth his armies to renew the westward progress which had been interrupted by the rebellion. To give an opportunity for prompt submission to any states which might choose to do homage without making any attempt to defend themselves, Darius sent heralds to every city in Greece to demand the customary " earth and water." After the affair of the burning of Sardis, the Athenians could not hope for favorable treatment at the hands of Persia ; but their indignant rejection of submission might have taken a less ferocious form. They cast the unfortunate herald into the Barathrum, or pit into which criminals were thrown, and bade him take earth therefrom. Themistocles is said to have instigated the act, nor is it out of keeping with his character. It is more surpris- ing to find the same deed repeated by the self-contained Spartans. Indignant that the first state in Greece should be held so lightly by the king, they gave his herald water by tossing him into a well. These two desperate defiances proclaimed that it was war to the death between Persia and the two most resolute states in Greece. But in other cities the summons did not meet such an answer; many dismissed the heralds with scorn ; but some gave the neces- sary pledge, and notable among these were the Aeginetans, who were probably impelled as much by dislike of Athens as by mere dread of Darius. The submission of Aegina had an unexpected result in recon- ciling Athens and Sparta. Hearing of the line which the Lacedae- monians had taken up, the Athenians sent to them, ignoring old grudges, and appealed to them to hinder the desertion of the cause of Grecian freedom, which the Aeginetans meditated. Nor did JEALOUSY OF STATES 163 492-490 B.C. they appeal in vain. King Cleomenes had lost the memory of his old wrath with Athens while engaged in the subsequent struggle with Argos, and in a long course of wrangling with his colleague Demaratus. He took up warmly the grievance against Aegina, all the more so that Demaratus did the reverse. Going in person to the island, he declared there his intention of coercing any traitorous attempt against the common v/eal of Greece. Acting under pri- vate advice from Demaratus, the Aeginetans took no notice of the threat, and Cleomenes returned in high dudgeon to Sparta. There he at once put into action a long-meditated scheme against his colleague and enemy. He laid against him a charge of illegiti- macy, and when an appeal was made on the point to the Delphic Apollo, a bribed oracle replied that Demaratus was no true son of King Ariston. He was dethroned and superseded by Leotychides, who had been Cleomenes's confederate in the plot. Demaratus fled to Asia, and repaired to the court of Darius, whose favor he won. From that time forward his return at the head of a Persian army was a constant source of dread to Cleomenes and every other Spar- tan, and its prospect did much to keep them firm in their resistance to the Great King. When he had thus provided himself with a subservient col- league, Cleomenes swooped down on Aegina. So irresistible did he now appear, that the Aeginetans submitted to him without a struggle. He bound them to peace with Athens, and, to secure it, took from them ten hostages of the highest rank, whom he handed over to the custody of the Athenians. Thus when the armies of the Mede presented themselves on Attic soil two years later, there was no hostile power ready to distract the defense by attacks in the rear. We have already related how the expedition which Mardonius launched against Greece in 492 b.c. was shattered against the rocks of Athos, and the stubborn resistance of the Thracian tribes. Eigh- teen months were employed to gather a second army and fleet, but in the summer of 490 b.c. all was ready. Phoenicia and Ionia had furnished six hundred war-galleys, while the land contingents of the western satrapies mustered at Tarsus under Artaphernes, son of that satrap of Lydia of whom we have so frequently heard, Datis the Mede brought down from Susa a select force recruited in the far East, Thirty-six nations were represented in the com- bined army, from the Greeks of Ionia to the Sakae of Eastern 164. GREECE 490 B.C. Tartary, They may well have numbered the hundred thousand foot and ten thousand horse which are ascribed to them. Nor were they without guidance ; besides many other Greek exiles, there sailed with them the aged Hippias, who now for the last time led a hostile force against his native country, that he might win back his long-lost tyranny. The Peisistratidae still numbered a few par- tisans at Athens, and the ex-tyrant hoped great things from their cooperation. It was rather late in the summer when the expedition went forth to carry out the behests of Darius by subduing all the Greeks who had not given him earth and water, and more especially by bringing before him in chains those Eretrians and Athenians who had insulted his majesty by crossing the Aegean and burning his city of Sardis. Chapter XVIII BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE INVASION OF XERXES, 490-480 B.C. 'ARNED of the dangers of the Thracian coast by the great shipwreck of Mardonius's fleet in 492 b.c.^ Datis and Artaphernes steered straight across the Aegean through the Cyclades. Their great armament terrified the island- ers, most of whom hastened to give earth and water to the Great King. The Naxians, after refusing submission, took refuge in the hill-tops, abandoning their city to the spoiler. Apparently they had forgotten their own successful defense against Megabates and Aris- tagoras just twelve years before. Passing the holy island of Delos, which they left unsacked, and treated with all respect, the Persians came to Euboea, and landed not far from Eretria, the first goal at which they aimed. There was panic in the city, and although the Athenian " Cleruchs " of Chalcis came to their aid, the Eretrians dared not take the field. They shut themselves up within their walls, but, to the dismay of all freedom-loving Greeks, the town was betrayed by malcontents from within after a siege of only six days, and its citizens made prisoners en masse. Placing them on shipboard in chains, Datis and Artaphernes coasted down the Eurlpus to Attica. Hippias guided them to the plains of ^Marathon, the spot at which he himself and his father had landed fifty years before, on their last and most successful expedition against Athens. It is not quite certain whether the intention of the Persian commanders was to march straight on Athens across the spurs of Mount Brilessus, as Peisistratus had done, or whether, after attracting the Athenian army to the extreme northeast limit of Attica, they proposed to send troops round on the fleet in order to fall upon the city when stripped of its defenders. The latter scheme, at any rate, is suggested by the fact that the few traitors who existed in Athens had promised Hippias to give a signal when there was a favorable opportunity for attacking Athens, by raising a bright shield on the summit of Mount Pentelicus. 165 166 GREECE 490 B.C. The sudden fall of Eretria had set Athens in a ferment : there was no thong-ht of surrender, but very little of success. Tlie first measure taken was to send for instant aid to Sparta. Philippides, a famous runner, took the message, and sped along with such good will that he reached Sparta in two days, though he had no less than a hundred and fifty miles to cover. A legend of the time tells how when, dazed and weary, he breasted the last Arcadian moun- tain which separated him from his goal in the vale of the Eurotas, the god Pan suddenly appeared before him, spoke words of cheer- ing import for Athens, and then vanished av/ay. But there was no encouragement to be drawn from the immediate effect of Philip- pides's mission. The Spartans were honestly ready for the fight, but the summons unfortunately reached them on the eve of a great festival, and such was their reverence for tradition that they dared not move before the full moon had come. Not till five all-important days had passed did their army set out, and then the crisis had passed. Miltiades, as we have already mentioned, was one of the ten strategi in the year 490 b.c, and his rank, military experience, and hatred of Persia gave him an undisputed preeminence among his colleagues. When the enemy's landing had been reported, the polemarch summoned his council of war, to decide whether the army should take the field, or shut itself up within the walls of the city. ^Miltiades chose the bolder plan, but five of his coadjutors voted against it. It was long remembered how, at that council of war which practically decided the freedom of Greece, Miltiades solemnly rose when the votes seemed going against him, and adjured the archon Callimachus, who, as polemarch, had the chief command and the decisive vote, to take the side of courage, pointing- out the opportunity wdiich delay would give to domestic traitors, and the splendid results which immediate action would secure. It seemed a desperate moment at which to forecast success, but the enthusiasm of Miltiades won over the polemarclvs vote, and the army marched on Marathon. The site of the coming battle was a bare open plain, six miles long by less than two broad, which lies between the lower spurs of Mount Pentelicus and the sea. A fine bay gave room for the nu- merous ships of tlie Persians to be drawn on shore; but it v/as not at every point that access from the beach to the plain was possible. Two marshes, of which the more northern is a full mile long, lie BATTLE OF MARATHON 167 490 B.C. between the hills and the sea. Between them was the camp of the invader. Opposite him the Athenians were posted on the steep slope of the mountains, guarding the two roads w^hich climb up from the level ground and lead to Athens. Their headquarters were in a sacred enclosure dedicated from time immemorial to Heracles, a position from which they easily overlooked the hostile camp. They mustered about nine thousand hoplites, besides a con- siderable number of slaves equipped as light-armed troops. When, however, they had already reached Marathon, they received an unex- pected accession to their strength by the arrival of the whole dis- posable force of the little town of Plataea, a thousand hoplites more. Athens had twice taken arms to defend Plataea from being swal- lowed up by the Boeotian League, and now the smaller state sent out its full contingent to share the fate of the Athenians in their apparently hopeless struggle with Persia. It is probable that Aliltiades expected at first to be attacked by the Persians in his position ; but when the enemy stayed four or five days without an advance, probably awaiting the promised signal from the partisans of Hippias in Athens, he determined to take the ofifensive himself. He quietly got his men into order and prepared 168 GREECE 490 B.C. for action. The Athenians were ranged in a line, of which the center was only a few files deep, while the wings were composed of deep, heavy columns. The polemarch Callimachus headed the right wing; Aristeides took the weak center, which was composed of his own tribe, the Antiochis, and the Leontis; while the Plataeans formed the extreme left. Then at Miltiades's word, the whole started down the hill at a run. There was a mile to cover before the Persian camp was reached, and though the slope added momen- tum to the charge, the long distance must have disordered the ranks. Probably, as in all cases where a line advances in haste, the flanks gained ground on the center, so that the army must have assumed a crescent shape ere the moment at which it crashed into the Persian host. Datis and Artaphernes had not been expecting a battle at that moment; it would seem that their cavalry was on ship- board, ready to start for the projected attack on Athens from the west, and that the rest of the army was preparing for embarkation. But they had not neglected to keep watch while in presence of the enemy, and despite the suddenness of Miltiades's attack, were able to form up some sort of a line in front of their camp. The Per- sians and Sacae held the center, the post of honor, the subject tribes the two wings. All, however, must have been still in disarray when the moment of the shock came. At the first the enemy had regarded the Athenians as madmen, when they came storming down the hill to attack in the open a force of ten times their own number. But when the barbarians found the line of pikes rolling down upon them with all the momentum of a mile's run downhill, while they themselves were caught hurriedly forming their array, they must have recognized that there was a method in the madness. What the decisive shock would bring no one knew. The Persian had so often worsted the Greek in battle that the Athenians must have felt that their charge was little less than desperate. But they did not shrink from it, and they had their reward. The heavy columns which formed their w'ings crashed through the barbarian multitude as if it had been a flock of sheep. The light-armed Orientals were riven asunder and trodden underfoot by the mailed hoplites. The Persian right wing was thrown into the swamp at the north end of the beach, where many perished ; the rest fled with the left wing to the ships, and began to thrust them out to sea. In the center, indeed, the battle was for a time doubtful, and the native Persians began to push back the thin line where Aristeides com- BATTLE OF MARATHON 169 490 B.C. manded. But the Athenian wings turned to aid their overmatched countr3'men, and when the barbarians saw themselves attacked on both flanks they gave way, and retreated seawards Hke their fel- lows. Meanwhile most of the ships were afloat, and the rest were being launched as the flying troops sprang on board. A severe struggle now raged along the beach, for the Athenians strove to capture the belated vessels, and the barbarians to get them out to sea. Here fell the polemarch Callimachus, and with him Cyne- geirus, brother of the poet Aeschylus, whose hands were hacked off as he clung desperately to the poop-staff of a galley which was just being thrust off from the shallows. At last the contest was ended by the escape of the fleet, which left, however, seven vessels on shore in the power of the Athenians. Just at this moment the bright shield was hoisted on Pentel- icus by the traitors in Athens, who had promised to give Hippias information when there was a favorable opportunity for attacking the city. It was seen by Datis and Artaphernes, who in spite of their defeat resolved to make the preconcerted attempt. But Alilti- ades also had observed the signal, and divined its meaning. When, therefore, the Persian fleet appeared off Phalerum, after rounding the south point of Attica, it was found that the Athenians who had fought at Marathon had already returned by a forced march, and were drawn up ready for a second battle on the slope outside the southern wall of the city. They were plainly visible from the sea, and, with a routed and cowed army, Datis and Artaphernes did not care to venture on another disembarkation. They turned back and sailed for Asia, utterly abandoning the expedition. Their Eretrian prisoners were sent up to Susa, where they served to prove that the Greeks from beyond the sea had not gone alto- gether unpunished. Darius treated them more kindly than might have been expected, giving them lands in Elam, where their descendants were long afterwards to be traced. The battle of Marathon was more notable for its moral effect than its carnage. Of the Persians, 6400 had fallen, no very great loss out of an army of 100,000 men. The Athenians counted up 192 hoplites who had been slain, besides some of the Plataeans and of the light-armed slaves. Three great tumuli were reared over the bodies of the victors, on the largest of which the one which covered the Athenian hoplites were erected ten pillars, one for each of the tribes, bearing the names of the fallen. 170 GREECE 490 B.C. To the Persians the battle had seemed nothing very extraor- dinary; the armies of the Great King had received many more crushing defeats, yet everything had been repaired afterwards. But to the Athenians their victory was a new revelation; like all other Greeks, they had been accustomed to regard the Persian power as invincible, and to look forward to almost certain disaster when facing it. Their unfortunate expedition to Sardis had con- firmed them in this opinion, and it was only a desperate resolve to defend their cherished freedom which had nerved them to resist- ance. When, therefore, they looked the danger in the face, and found it so much less than they had supposed, the revulsion of feeling was enormous. They had measured themselves with the conquerors of the East, and had found that, man for man, and army for army, they were far superior. Such a victory, coming at the end of the series of struggles against odds which they had lived through since the expulsion of the Peisistratidae, nerved the Athe- nians to exertions such as few states have ever known. It was the enthusiastic self-confidence which Marathon gave that enabled them to bear so cheerfully the trials of the invasion of Xerxes, and afterwards to strike so boldly for the empire of the seas. The immediate consequences of the battle in Greek politics were incalculable. If the Athenians had been beaten at Marathon, there is little reason to doubt that Boeotia, Aegina, Argos, and other Greek states, whose national traditions made them hostile to Sparta and Athens, would have submitted to the Persian. Nor can we feel any certainty that the Lacedaemonians w^ould have been able to make a successful resistance in the Peloponnese. The freedom of Greece, therefore, had depended on the bold resolu- tion of Miltiades and the steady onset of his devoted army. We have already mentioned the foolish superstition which had prevented the Spartans from arriving in time to join in the battle of Marathon. When the fateful full moon came, indeed, they sent out two thousand citizens, with their usual contingents of Perioeci and Helots a force considerable enough to have been of the greatest aid to Miltiades. But though they marched the hundred and fifty miles in three days, the Spartans came too late for the battle, and after viewing the field strewn with the bodies of the slain barbarians, they were constrained, as Herodotus says, to praise the y\thenians and their deeds, and then to betake themselves home again. BATTLE OF MARATHON 171 490 B.C. The result of the battle raised the man who had so boldly prophesied success, and won it, to a pitch of popularity such as no other Athenian ever knew. Unfortunately Miltiades chose to abuse his opportunity. After no long time had passed, he came before the assembly, and promised to place the state in the way of acquiring great wealth and advantage, if he was entrusted with seventy ships and a corresponding land force, to employ as he might choose. The people blindly voted the armament, which Miltiades turned to avenge a private grudge which he owed to the inhabitants of Paros. He sailed, without declaration of war, against that fertile island, and, landing on it, demanded a hundred talents as a fine for the submission to the Persians, of which the Parians, like the other islanders, had been guilty. The blackmail was denied him, and he proceeded to lay siege to the town of Paros. All his efforts were fruitless, and, beginning to dread the reception which awaited him at Athens in the event of failure, he endeavored to bribe the priestess of Demeter to betray the city. While holding a secret interview with her by night without the walls, he was startled, and as he hastily made off, disabled himself by tearing open his thigh on a stake. The armament returned to Athens, where Miltiades was received with wild anger for his semi-piratical expedition, and still more for the way in which he had abused the confidence of the people. He was tried before the Heliaea, though he had to be brought into court on a litter, dying from his wound, which had gangrened. His accuser was Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, who demanded that the penalty of death should be inflicted. But, mindful of Marathon, the people contented themselves with in- flicting a fine of fifty talents, which Miltiades did not live to pay, for he died within a few days. His son Cimon, however, after- wards discharged the debt, in order to clear the reputation of his father so far as he was able. Thus a man who seemed destined to play a great part in the affairs of Greece was suddenly removed from the scene within a few months of the splendid achievement which has forever preserved his name. There is little doubt that the expedition which failed so egre- giously at Marathon would have been followed up by another and a larger armament if the hands of King Darius had been free. The first disappointment, indeed, had irritated him, without in- ducing him to reconsider his purpose of destroying Athens, and he determined to lead the whole force of his empire against her 172 GREECE 490-487 B.C. himself. But in 487 B.C. a revolt broke out in Egypt, which obliged him to turn his arms in that direction. After nominating as his colleague his favorite son Xerxes, the old king set out against the rebels; but died on the way, after a reign of thirty-six years (521- 486 B.C.). The disturbances at the end of his reign and the fruit- lessness of his expedition against Scythia must not lead us to under- value him. He preserved and made permanent an empire which seemed on the eve of disappearing; he showed a genius for organ- ization unparalleled among Eastern conquerors, and was, in addi- tion, no mean general. Considering his position as an Oriental monarch, he must be pronounced moderate, just, and merciful; the history of his son sufficiently shows the freaks of cruelty and arro- gance which were natural to a Persian autocrat, but from such faults Darius was conspicuously free. With his death the expansion of the Achaemenian monarchy came to an end. In an Oriental state everything depends on the character of the sovereign, and for the next two centuries Persia was cursed with a succession of tyrants or weaklings who gradually ruined the excellent administrative system which their ancestor had established. Nothing, indeed, save the ingenuity of that system could have preserved their empire for the long period which intervenes between the death of Darius and the invasion of Alexander the Great. Meanwhile the Egyptian war and the decease of Darius gave Greece ten years of respite from Persian invasion years which were all-important as covering the period during which Athens transformed herself into a predominantly naval power, during the second great struggle with the Aeginetans. This war w^as brought about by the fall of Cleomenes at Sparta, and the consequent cessation of the anti-Aeginetan policy which he had imposed on his countrymen. It was apparently in 490 B.C. that his bribery of the Delphic oracle in the matter of Demaratus came to light ; as a consequence of the discovery he found himself forced to quit Sparta, like the colleague whom he had ruined so shortly before. But no such distant prospect of vengeance as was afforded by taking refuge in Persia satisfied Cleomenes. Passing into Arcadia, he began to form an anti-Spartan league among the numerous cities of that district. The success with which he met frightened the ephors, who offered him restitution of his kingly office if he would return home. He accepted their terms and appeared again in Sparta, but within a few months perished in a somewhat mys- BATTLE OF MARATHON 173 490-487 B.C. terious manner. His conduct had often been eccentric, and this gave the ephors an excuse for charging him with madness, and placing him in the stocks as a raving lunatic. One day he was found dead, horribly mangled with a knife; it was given out that he had committed suicide, but considering his relations with the ephors, his end appears decidedly suspicious. Throughout his career he had displayed vigor and capacity, but his character was so fickle and wrong-headed that his talents brought him no final suc- cess. He is chiefly noteworthy as being the last king of Sparta who fought on equal terms with the College of Ephors, and made his own personality a more important element in state matters than their desires. Cleomenes was no sooner dead than the Aeginetans claimed their hostages who had been interned at Athens. The Athenians, however, refused to give them up, though Leotychides, who had joined Cleomenes in the original delivery of the prisoners, came in person to plead for their release. This conduct on the part of Athens was unjustifiable, but it was met by a still more flagrant breach of international law. An Aeginetan squadron lay in wait off Sunium, and captured a vessel which was carrying a secret embassy from Athens. This led to a declaration of war, and a lively struggle at sea for the mastery of the Saronic Gulf. The Athenians endeavored to foment a civil war in Aegina, entering into a conspiracy with a prominent citizen named Nicodromus, who had formed a plot to overthrow the oligarchy which ruled in his native place, as it did in all Dorian towns. They were still too weak to face the Aeginetan fleet unaided, so sent to ask for help from Corinth, where a traditional hatred of Aegina prevailed. The Corinthians did not openly engage in the war, but helped the Athe- nians by selling them twenty war-galleys for the ridiculous price of five drachmae apiece. On a preconcerted day Nicodromus raised a democratic revolt, and endeavored to seize Aegina at the head of his partisans; but the Athenian fleet, which he expected, came too late to bring him aid, and his followers were completely defeated. A frightful massacre followed, seven hundred of the democratic party being put to death in cold blood after they had surrendered. Next day the Athenian fleet, seventy vessels strong, came up, and had the better in a naval engagement with the Aegi- netan squadron, but on approaching the shore found no supporters, on account of the extermination of the party of Nicodromus. 174. GREECE 490-487 B.C. Aegina now sought aid at Argos, and obtained much the same kind of informal assistance which Athens had found at Corinth. Argos was still too weak, after the frightful disaster she had sustained at the hands of Cleomenes, to engage in open war with a first-class power. But a thousand Argive volunteers joined the Aeginetan army without any objection being raised by the govern- ment. Shortly afterwards the Athenians made a second attack on Aegina, but though their army won a considerable victory on shore, and slew off well-nigh all the Argive volunteers, their fleet was decidedly worsted, and was compelled to pick up the land force and retire to the Peiraeus. A war of irregular descents followed, in which each party saw its coast districts ravaged, but suffered no worse harm at the hands of the enemy. It was during the progress of this war that an important politi- cal change was introduced into the Athenian constitution, which was destined to modify to some extent the arrangements of Cleisthenes. Down to 487 B.C., the annually elected archons, the chosen of the whole people, were indisputably the greatest magistrates of the state. But in that year the archonship ceased to be elective, and was in future conferred by lot. The arrangement was not the old one which Solon had devised, that the tribes should select forty men, between whom the lot should make decision. This time there was to be no preliminary selection of candidates, and the verdict of chance was left untouched. The measure, however, was not quite so wild as it appears at first sight. It was still only the wealthy " Pentekosiomedimni " who were eligible for the office, so that there was as yet no chance of an archon being a pauper subsidized by some rich wire-puller. Moreover, the lots were not cast between the whole body of Athenians, but only between those who chose to come forward as candidates. It was fair to assume that any man who offered himself for an office which was laborious, responsible, and unremunerative, would be possessed of energy and public spirit. That he would not be a notorious evil-liver was secured by the process known as " Dokimasia," or examination into the character and past life of candidates, in which all who were esteemed disreputable were struck out of the competition. In addi- tion, the office was not now what it had once been, being cramped by the privileges of the new strategi and still more by the enlarged powers of the Ecclesia. It might be discharged fairly well by any- one of good average intelligence, probity, and decision. For some BATTLE OF MARATHON 176 490-487 B.C. time after the change men of high poHtical standing continued to present themselves to encounter the hazard of the lot. As long, in fact, as no one but politicians of some weight engaged in the struggle, there was enough probability of success to encourage a man who had some regard for his dignity to enter for it. It was not till the archonship was opened to the lower classes, or till men of no weight or standing began to come forward as candidates, that the office sank into a mere ornamental figure-head of the ship of state, while the real administrative power passed to the strategi. For it was the strategi who still were elected by the direct vote of the people that reaped the benefit of the degradation of the archonship. As representing the choice of the voters, they natu- rally came to be regarded as more serious persons than the archons, who were now mere children of chance. It could not be expected, for example that ten capable military officers would any longer obey a polemarch who might be entirely ignorant of the rudiments of warlike experience. Hence the strategi came ere long to assume some of the functions which had been peculiar to the archonate; they gained power to convoke the Ecclesia, and habitually con- ducted relations with foreign states before they were submitted to the Ecclesia for ratification. While the archons fell into the back- ground, the strategi became a kind of ministry, who managed the chief departments of the state, under the constant and jealous con- trol of the Assembly. This indecisive prolongation of the Aeginetan war occasioned much dissatisfaction at Athens, and led to a vigorous attempt to put down Aegina by swamping her navy by force of numbers. Themistocles was the author of this scheme, as he had previously been of the fortification of the Peiraeus. It happened one year that the state had realized a very considerable surplus from the silver mines of Laurium, which were public property. One hun- dred talents lay in the treasury, and were about to be dispersed in a very primitive way, each adult Athenian citizen having been promised ten drachmae. Themistocles stood up in the Ecclesia and boldly proposed that the money should not be distributed, but applied entirely to the building of new ships of war, till the national fleet should number two hundred vessels. His eloquence persuaded the people to this piece of self-denial and far-sighted policy. New keels were at once laid down, and the richer citizens vied with each other in the rapidity and completeness with which they equipped 176 GREECE 487-483 B.C. the vessels whose construction had been imposed as a " liturgy " on them. The energetic work of three years tripled the Athenian navy, and ere long Themistocles was able to view within the har- bors of Peiraeus a number of vessels as large as the combined fleets of Aegina and Corinth. The policy which aimed at turning the whole of the energies of Athens towards the sea did not pass with- out opposition. A considerable party in the state, headed by no less a personage than Aristeides, held that naval supremacy was a thing so fleeting and uncertain that it was unwise to sacrifice all other ends at which the city might aim in the endeavor to secure so problematical an advantage. It was urged that the skill of the seaman was a less firm basis for the state than the valor of the hop- lite, and that the influx of foreign population and foreign manners, which would follow on a perseverance of Themistocles's designs, would introduce an element of corruption and weakness in the city. The lavish expenditure of public money and heavy taxation which were now commencing, in spite of the surplus from the mines, frightened the more cautious of the citizens. Aristeides set himself to check it by repeatedly challenging the accounts of the public officers through whose hands the money was passing; he succeeded in proving several instances of embezzlement, and is said to have molested even Themistocles himself. At last the struggle between the two statesmen and their policies grew so hot that recourse was had to the ostracism. A decisive majority decreed the honorable exile of Aristeides, and the advocate of a quiet and conservative policy was compelled to go into banishment (483 b.c). Themistocles had now a free hand, and was able to direct the course of the state without meeting with any opposition. Under his guidance the works by the sea were carried out with the greatest energy; the Peiraeus, though but ten years since it had been a mere barren headland, was already growing into a considerable town, where the sea-going and mercantile interests reigned supreme. Its population formed a body of no inconsiderable importance in poli- tics, and a fertile field for the democratic propaganda of the party in the state which was opposed to the old aristocratic doctrines of class-privilege and unaggressive foreign policy. The two hundred triremes had been built, and Athens was already in the possession of the strongest navy which any single Greek state had ever owned, when once more clouds began to arise from tlie East. The young King Xerxes had now been sitting for five years on the throne of BATTLE OF MARATHON 177 483-481 B.C. Persia ; he had successfully put down the Egyptian revolt which had vexed the last days of his father, and was free to turn the undivided strength of his empire against any foe whom he might choose. The traditions of Persia pointed to foreign conquest as the noblest occupation and truest glory of the Great King, and Xerxes was not insensible to their influence. Personally, indeed, he was but a mediocrity. The fair and stately face and form which seemed to mark him as a king of men were belied by his intellectual feebleness and moral instability. His whole character was that of the mere harem-bred Eastern despot, and no spark of his father's genius in- spired his actions. Vain and luxurious, indolently good-natured, but capable of sudden and savage outbursts of cruelty, easily swayed by a courtier or a sultana, by no means fond of exposing his sacred person to the hazards of battle, he seemed extremely unlikely to leave his name associated with one of the greatest events of history. But though the man was weak, his position was strong; if no better motives could stir him to action, his vanity could not suffer him to fall behind the achievements of his predecessors. A warlike race of subjects expected him to lead them to new conquests; an enemy who had routed his father's armies stood before him inviting chas- tisement and revenge ; Demaratus of Sparta, and other exiles from beyond the Aegean, thronged his court, and were continually point- ing out the weakness and divisions of their land : small wonder, then, if this arrogant despot was led into his famous campaign against the Greeks. Greek legend adorned the story of the commencement of the design of Xerxes with many striking details, into the credibility of which there is no need to make inquiry. But this much is un- doubted, that by the spring of 481 B.C. all Asia was astir with preparations for the invasion of the lands beyond the Aegean. The king had declared his intention of leading the armament in person, and the whole scale of the undertaking was to be very different from that of the comparatively modest expedition of Datis and Arta- phernes. Not only the Western satrapies, but the remotest prov- inces of inner Asia were ordered to provide contingents; every maritime town in the Levant that owned the authority of the Great King had its quota of ships appointed. The cities of the Hellespont and Thrace were directed to collect magazines of every kind of provision on the largest scale for the army. The whole Persian empire had for some time been ringing with preparation. 178 GREECE 481 B.C. and the rumor of tlie coming- storm must have already reached Greece, when Xerxes dispatched his herald to make the formal demand for earth and water which was to serve him as a casus belli. Only to Athens and Sparta was no sumimxons sent ; the brutal treatment which the Persian messengers had received in those towns, ten years before, had put them beyond the pale of repent- ance. To all other states the heralds went, nor was their mission altogether without effect. With the certain prospect of an invasion by the innumerable hordes of Asia before them, the Greeks drew together wnth an unw^onted unanimity. The idea of a Pan-Hellenic Union had already been dimly shadowed forth in the predominance of Sparta in the Peloponnese; and Sparta, as one of the two states against whom the Persian attack was more especially directed, had now every motive to encourage her confederates to bind themselves more closely to her. Athens had even stronger reasons for en- deavoring to bring about a union against the invader; she w^as not only destitute of allies, but was still engaged in her protracted war with Aegina. Accordingly it is not strange to find that The- mistocles was the statesman to whom, in connection with one Chileus of Tegea, the convocation of delegates from the greater number of the states of European Greece was due. These repre- sentatives met, late in the summer of 481 B.C., at the Isthmus of Corinth, under Spartan presidency. The gathering was larger than men of a desponding frame of mind could have hoped to see. It is true the two powers of the first magnitude, Argos and Thebes, had failed to respond to the summons actuated, the one by her ancient rivalry wnth Sparta, the other by her jealousy of the rising power of Athens. But well-nigh all the other states of continental Greece appeared by their delegates on the appointed day. From the Cambunian mountains on the north, where the last free Greek dis- trict touched the Persian vassal kingdom of Macedon, to Taenarum in the extreme south, the Hellenic states had, with the two excep- tions before mentioned, answered to the appeal. It was no ordi- nary crisis that could cause old enemies like Athens and Aegina, Thessaly and Phocis, Tegea and Mantinea, to forget their feuds and remember that all were sons of Hellen and lovers of freedom. But under the stress of the attack of Persia reconciliation had be- come possible. Some came to the meeting determined to resist at any cost ; others were so deeply impressed with the might of the BATTLE OF MARATHON 179 481 B.C. oncoming enemy that comparatively little confidence was to be placed in their steadfastness; but even these last had not ventured to neglect the summons. The first step of the congress was to mediate between those of its members who were at feud with each other. In consequence of this action, Aegina and Athens, as well as sundry other states, were induced to suspend their hostilities. Next, a solemn appeal was made for assistance to all the outlying sections of the Greek race beyond the seas. This idea deserved greater success than it obtained; the Cretans excused themselves on the ground of a prohibition from the Delphic oracle ; the Corcyraeans promised aid, but by starting their squadron late, and ordering it to delay on the way, caused it to arrive long after the crisis of the war was over. Gelo, the powerful despot of Syracuse, made most liberal offers of assistance, promising twenty thousand hoplites and two hun- dred triremes, but only on the preposterous condition that he should be made generalissimo of the whole confederate army, a demand which he must have known would be refused by Spartan pride. Indeed, it is most unlikely that he ever dreamed of sending help across the Ionian Sea, for he was at this very moment threat- ened by a formidable invasion of the Carthaginians from Africa, which was in all probability concerted to synchronize with Xerxes's attack on Greece. Although they had now ascertained that they would have to rely on themselves alone, the delegates of the confederated Greeks resolved to issue a bold manifesto ere they separated. Accordingly they published a solemn warning that any state which submitted to Xerxes without having been compelled by force should, after the termination of the war, be attacked by all the confederates, and that one-tenth of the booty obtained from it should be dedicated to the Delphic Apollo. It was now too late in the autumn to allow the Persian attack to be delivered in 481 b.c. The crisis was evidently to take place in the spring of the following year, and four months of suspense lay before the confederates. To this period belong the numerous appeals which the different states, in their feverish anxiety to know the unknowable, made to the Delphic oracle. Much to his dis- credit, Apollo showed no slight tendency to " Medize," or take the side of the Great King. No doubt the Delphians, then as always in the possession of excellent information as to foreign 180 GREECE 481-480 B.C. parts, had fully realized the strength of Xerxes, and foresaw his success. At any rate, the oracle told the Spartans that " not even if they had the strength of bulls or of lions could they resist the Persian, and that either Sparta or a Spartan king must perish." Athens received an even more dismal reply : " She was rotten in head and body, hand and foot fire and sword in the wake of the Syrian chariot should destroy the city of Pallas " ; while but poor consolation was given by a supplementary rhapsody, which stated that " safety should be found in the wooden wall, and divine Salamis should destroy the children of men." Argos, on the other hand, was encouraged in her policy of selfish isolation by the advice to " keep her head within her shell " like the tortoise, and let events take their course. Betwixt hopes and fears, the winter of 481-480 B.C. slipped by, and the approaching spring made the commencement of warlike operations possible. Chapter XIX THE INVASION OF XERXES, 480 B.C. AS early as the spring of 481 B.C. the orders of Xerxes had ZJk set the contingents of the distant satrapies of the East in X _m. motion, and by the autumn of the same year the whole land force of the Persian empire had gathered at its appointed meeting- place, the plain of Critalla in Cappadocia. In summoning it, the king had thought more of his own personal dignity than of any other consideration. His following was to be worthy of his great- ness, and when he went forth to war he did not consider it fitting that any of his subjects should claim an immunity from its dangers. Accordingly he had demanded contingents, not only from the peo- ples whose military virtues were known, but from every tribe, great or small, brave or unwarlike, whom his dominions contained. It naturally resulted that his army was more fitted to serve as an ethnological museum than as an efficient machine for conquest. His own Persians were gallant and loyal, but side by side with them marched worthless hordes drawn from nations destitute of military reputation, half-naked savages, dragged from the ends of the earth, and Asiatic Greeks dispatched against their will to subdue their own brethren. The muster-roll of the host of Xerxes has been preserved for us in the pages of Herodotus. Its contents go far to justify the boast of the Greeks that they had faced a whole world in arms, but at the same time explain why the seeming miracle was possible. There were, indeed, in the Great King's army, besides his own ten thousand " Immortals " of the body-guard and the other native Persians, numerous contingents of value. The Bactrian horse and the archers of the Sacae could be trusted to do good service; the Lycians and Carians were armed after the Greek fashion, and had ere now faced Greeks in battle ; but equally numer- ous were the masses of savages who had not even learned the use of metals or the value of defensive armor. " The Aethiopians from beyond Egypt," for example, as we read, " were clad in leopard-skins, and carried bows made of the central rib of the 181 182 G R E E C E 481-480 B.C. palm leaf. Their arrows were reed tipped with sharp fragments of stone, and they were armed in addition with spears pointed with gazelles' horns or knotted clubs. They painted half their body white and half red before going into battle." The Sagartian horse- men came bearing no weapons but a lasso and a long knife. The Libyans had no better arms than staves with their points hardened in the fire. The wild tribes of Caucasus tried to guard their heads with wooden hats, but had no form of protection for their bodies, and only short darts and knives as offensive weapons. It can easily be imagined how utterly useless were these half-naked bar- barians when Greek hoplites had to be faced in the narrow frontage of a Greek pass. But they were even worse than useless, for they increased the line of march to an unwieldy length, consumed vast quantities of provisions, and in the moment of conflict were cer- tain to enfeeble the steadier troops who were mixed with them in the line of battle. How many fighting men, good, bad, or indifferent, Xerxes took with him it is impossible to say. Report swelled their numbers to five millions, and the least exaggerated accounts speak of eight hundred thousand a figure which does not seem utterly impossible when we remember the vigor with which the king had urged on the armament, and the years he had spent in preparation. But if we consider the quality of the host, its quantity becomes a matter of comparatively little importance. After meeting at Critalla, the army moved westward to Sardis, and went into winter quarters in that city and the neighboring Lydian and Ionian towns till the spring of 480 B.C. arrived. It was during this interval that spies sent by the Greeks were detected in the Persian camp. Xerxes thought that he had everything to gain by the full number of his army being known across the Aegean, and instead of slaying the men, had them conducted through every part of his cantonments, and then dismissed them in safety to tell all that they had seen. Early in 480 b.c, the Persian army was joined by its fleet, which safely rounded the Triopian promontory and cast anchor at Samos. The marine conscription had been no less rigorous than that on land, and every maritime people in Xerxes's dominions had been compelled to put forth its full strength even nations like the Egyptians, who were little habituated to the sea. The most trust- worthy portion of the fleet was composed of the sliips of the Phoe- INVASION OF XERXES 183 480 B.C. nician cities ; the kings of Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus each appeared in person at the head of his contingent, and together these amounted to more than three hundred vessels; the Egyptians, Cypriots, Ci- licians, and Greeks of Asia Minor contributed nine hundred more, so that the whole armada mustered twelve hundred vessels of war, in addition to numerous tenders and transports. Each trireme car- ried, besides its native crew, a detachment of thirty Persian sol- diers, who were destined to serve as marines. Before fleet and army finally started on their way, the king had commanded the execution of two works of great magnitude and little utility, which he imagined would facilitate their progress. Lest his ships should suffer at the stormy headland of Mount Athos a disaster similar to that which Mardonius had experienced twelve years before, he had the sandy isthmus, which connects the penin- sula of Acte with the mainland of Chalcidice, pierced by a canal. This saved the fleet a few miles of sea at the cost of an incalculable amount of labor and expense. But the second engineering work was even more useless. In order that his army might be able to move straight on from Asia into Europe, without being delayed by the necessity of crossing the Hellespont on shipboard, he determined to bridge over that strait. Six hundred and seventy-four mer- chantmen, moored in two rows side by side, and fastened together with strong cables, formed two bridges spanning the space of some- what less than a mile between the continents, and connecting the European shore near Sestos with the Asiatic heights above Abydos. A continuous flooring of planks was laid on the vessels, and earth rammed down on top of it, while boardings were erected on each side of the gangway to hide the view of the sea from the horses and baggage animals. Not long after its completion the bridges were shattered by a storm ; thereupon Xerxes asserted his authority by ordering the engineers who had designed them to be beheaded, and, if we may believe tradition, by inflicting three hundred lashes on the unruly sea, and causing chains to be cast into its rebellious waters. The officials to whom the rebuilding of the bridge was entrusted took Vv-arning by the fate of their predecessors, and, by doubling the strength of their fastenings, produced a more durable work, which endured the stress of all weathers for nine months. Over this structure the whole Persian land force defiled in safety, while Xerxes, seated on a marble throne on the Asiatic shore, watched the interminable line of march as it pressed forward into 184 GREECE 480 B.C. Europe. At the sight of such countless myriads of men even the reckless despot was touched by a feeling of common humanity: he burst into tears when he reflected that of the whole host not one man would be alive a hundred years hence. Immense magazines of provisions had been collected during the past three years at four points on the Thracian coast ^Leuce Acte, Tyrodiza, Doriscus, and Eion so that the expedition was enabled to push on westward without suffering any privations. At Doris- cus Xerxes held a review of all his forces by land and sea ; the fleet sailed by under his eyes, while the army was numbered by the primitive method of finding how large an enclosure would hold ex- actly ten thousand men, and then sending the contingents one after the other into the space till all had been measured by it. Pressing on from Doriscus, the king reached the frontiers of the vassal state of Macedonia, where he was joined by the whole force of the land under its prince, Alexander. In the Pangaean hills his baggage- train suffered much molestation from the lions, which then abounded in that part of Europe, though they have since entirely disappeared. Meantime the fleet passed through the canal on Mount Athos, and rounded the capes of the other two Chalcidic peninsulas, finally rejoining the army at Therma, the town which later generations knew as the great harbor of Thessalonica. From this point Xerxes had full in his view the towering heights of Olym- pus, the only barrier which now intervened between him and the plain of Thessaly. There were exiled Thessalian princes of the great house of Aleuas in his camp, and from them he was able to gain information as to the disposition of the first free Greek people with whom he was to come into contact. The moment that the news of Xerxes's passage of the Helles- pont reached Greece, the delegates of the preceding year had re- assembled at Corinth. The Th.essalians, on whom the storm was first to break, spoke out in no hesitating terms. They placed their whole force at the disposition of the confederates, provided that adequate assistance from Southern Greece was granted them, but they insisted that they should not be left alone to face the first shock. If no army came to their aid, they would not undertake to fight alone in behalf of absent allies, and would make what terms they could with the Great King. The confederates had no thought of allowing the rich and populous Thessalian plain to pass into Persian hands without a blow being struck, and promptly collected INVASION OF XERXES 185 480 B.C. a contingent of ten thousand hopHtes and a considerable squadron of ships. The service was considered so important that Themisto- cles was placed in command of the Athenian troops, though the Spartan Euaenetus took charge of the whole army. They em- barked at the isthmus, rounded Sunium, and passing up the Euripus disembarked at Halus in Phthiotis, where the fleet remained, blocking the strait between Euboea and the mainland. The full force of the Thessalian cities, including their famous and formidable cavalry, joined the confederates in the valley of the Peneus, and the whole advanced to the pass of Tempe, the narrow defile at the mouth of that river, through which the main road from Macedonia passes. The position was excellent for a small army designing to block the road of a superior force, but it had the disadvantage, to which well- nigh all positions are liable, of being able to be turned by a long flank march. The Greeks had been only a few days in Tempe when they received secret notice from Alexander of ]\Iacedon, who passed for a well-wisher to Greece, though he was a Persian vassal, to the effect that Xerxes was about to use not only the main road, but also the upland passes which lead from Western JMacedonia to Gonnus and the other towns of Northwestern Thessaly. If these were once forced, the army in the defile of Tempe would be com- pelled to retire, and would probably be caught and trodden underfoot in the plain of Thessaly by the innumerable hosts of the Great King. Strategically this was true, but the danger was not yet imminent, and the political reasons for endeavoring to keep up a show of resistance on the Thessalian border were manifest. If the example was once set of deserting allies because they did not possess a thor- oughly defensible frontier, there was no saying where the retreat would end, and all confidence in the action of the confederacy must cease. Nevertheless the nerve of Euaenetus and his colleagues seems to have failed them; without waiting for the Persians to develop an attack, they hastily broke up their camp, deserted their Thessalian comrades, and hurrying down to Halus took ship back to the Isthmus. It naturally followed that the Thessalians, with all their de- pendent tribes the Magnesians, Malians, Aenianes, and Dolopes lost not a moment in sending earth and water to Xerxes. It was not yet too late to propitate him by prompt submission before they had been attacked. Thus the largest Greek land in the whole penin- sula was lost to the confederates before a blow had been struck. 186 GREECE 480 B.C. There was much wranghng- and recrimination at Corinth when the fruitless expedition returned. The evil was now at the very doors of the states of Central Greece, and, to make the matter worse, it was known that Thebes and her dependents in the Boeotian League were ready to follow the example of the Thessalians, not merely from fear, as had been the case with the latter people, but from an active dislike to their neighbor Athens, and a wish to crush the newly risen power. The only doubt which could influence the confederate synod was whether the next stand should by made at Thermopylae or at the Corinthian Isthmus. If the latter position was chosen, Athens, Phocis, and Euboea must be sacrificed, as Thessaly had already been. It was, therefore, not difficult to foresee that the more advanced post would be occupied, in spite of the reluctance of some of the Peloponnesians to fight at such a distance from their homes. Accordingly it was determined to seize and hold Thermopylae with an army, and the straits of Euboea with a fleet, before the Persians should have crossed Thes- saly. Luckily Xerxes tarried long at Therma before resuming his march, and the scheme turned out to be feasible. A fleet of 271 ships, of which as many as 127 were Athenian, met in the Saronic Gulf and passed up the Eurlpus. It was commanded by the Spartan Eurybiades, for the Corinthians and Aeginetans refused to serve under an Athenian admiral, although Athens contributed by far the largest contingent to the fleet, while the Athenians were equally averse to yielding precedence to anyone save a Spartan. Eury- biades was a man of narrow mind and hopeless obstinacy, and it re- quired every blandishment of his able subordinate Themistocles to keep him from ruining the cause of Greece by his continual blunders and vagaries. The land force was placed under the command of the Spartan king Leonidas, who had succeeded his brother Cleom- enes after the latter's untimely death. The space to be traversed by the land force in its march to Thermopylae was greater than that which the fleet had to cover, and the time required to collect the contingents far longer; there was, therefore, no slight danger that the army might arrive at Thermopylae only to find that it was already in the hands of the Persians. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the Spartans were on the eve of celebrating their great festival of the Carneia, and were troubled by the same ridic- ulous scruples as to marching in the holy season which had caused them to arrive too late at Marathon ten years before. Leonidas was INVASION OF XERXES 187 430 B.C. unable to lead out the full force of Laconia, and had to depend for the moment on his personal following. Recognizing that he had a service of great danger before him, and, moreover, having the prophecy that " either Sparta or a Spartan king must perish " ring- ing in his ears, he chose as his body-guard not the three hundred youths who usually accompanied him to the field, but the same number of men who had sons living, and whose families would not be extinguished in the event of a disaster. Without delay he set out at the head of this small force, and of the usual contingent of Helots, who in all Spartan expeditions accompanied their masters in the proportion of seven or eight to each of the citizens. From the Arcadian towns which lay directly on his route he hastily col- lected something more than two thousand hoplites, while at the isthmus seven hundred Corinthians, Phliasians, and Mycenaeans joined him. With this force at his back he suddenly presented him- self before the gates of Thebes, whose citizens had not yet accom- plished their meditated defection to the Persians. As they were unprepared for resistance, Leonidas was able to overawe the ruling oligarchy, and to draw from its ranks a contingent of four hundred men, who, though their hearts were not in the cause, still served as hostages for the fidelity of their countrymen. From Thespiae, on the other hand, the town which had always taken the lead in oppos- ing the centralizing policy of Thebes, came of their own accord a body of seven hundred hoplites, who proved in the subsequent operations that some at least of the Boeotians were true to the cause of Hellas. Giving out that his force was but the vanguard of the full levy of the Peloponnese, Leonidas pressed forward to Thermop- ylae, and arrived there long before the Persians had crossed Thessaly. The troops of Phocis and of the Locrians of Opus joined him in the pass, and raised his total numbers to nearly ten thousand men, a body quite sufficient to occupy the narrow defile. The first step for the defense of Central Greece had been successfully carried out, but it was rendered of no avail by the delay of the Peloponnesian confederates in bringing up their main body. It is impossible to ascribe this merely to dilatoriness, negligence, or religious scruples ; there can be no doubt that selfishness played a larger part in causing their delay than did any other motive. The celebrated pass in which Leonidas took up his position consists of a narrow slip of level ground between the sea and the cliffs of Mount Callidromus, one of the numerous offshoots of the 188 GREECE 480 B.C. range of Oeta. It looks westward into the little plain of Malis, while behind it to the east lies the coast-land of Locris and Phocis. As the space between the mountains and the water contracts, the defile becomes narrower, till at its culminating point there is barely room for a carriage-way. The whole passage, from the river Asopus on the Malian side to the Locrian village of Alpeni, is about two miles in length. In the middle of the defile lay the hot springs which gave the place its name. In front of them the level ground expands for a few furlongs, so as to leave room for the temple of Demeter, at which the Amphictyonic deputies used to meet.^ In rear of this spot there lay an ancient fortification, a wall which the Phocians had once raised to restrain the inroads of their Thessalian neighbors ; it was now half-ruined, but still served to mark the line on which resistance to an invader coming from the northwest would be easiest. Here, then, Leonidas and his men fixed their camp ; to their right lay the strait, some five miles broad, and beyond it the mountains of Euboea. To their left were inaccessible rocks rising in many places to sheer cliffs eight hundred feet high. So rugged was the defile that in its whole length not one path led down from the mountain to the shore. But from Trachis, beyond the Malian end of the pass, a winding track, curving far inland over a ridge called Anopaea, reached Alpeni in the rear of the Greek position. This was the only route by which the pass could be turned, with- out making an enormous detour of several days' march into the upper valleys of Mount Oeta. To guard it, Leonidas placed the whole of his Phocian allies on the hills, while his Peloponnesian forces held the pass. Meanwhile Eurybiades, with the confederate fleet, took post at the promontory of Artemisium, a point on the Euboean Strait considerably to the north of Thermopylae, so that it was impossible for the Persian fleet to pass by the position of Leonidas in order to land troops in his rear. Of this, as it happened, there was little danger. With the instinct of a barbarian utterly unused to the sea, Xerxes never seems to have reflected that his fleet could be used to explore the way for his army, or to take the enemy in the rear. It was rather the army which pushed ahead to explore the way for the fleet. Xot till twelve days after the Persian rear-guard had defiled through the gates of Therma did the armada set sail on its 1 At the western end of the pass, near Anthela, was another hot spring and contraction of the road, which has been called " the False Thermopylae." INVASION OF XERXES 189 480 B.C. southern voyage. Coasting down the rocky coast of Magnesia, the ships reached Cape Sepias, where the range of PeHon abruptly ends in a sea-beaten promontpry. Here the fleet halted, a single row of vessels being drawn up on the narrow beach, while the rest seven deep rode at anchor off the harborless coast. At mid-night a sud- den storm from the northeast swept down on the dangerously crowded array, and threw all into disorder. Some captains made for the open sea, while others endeavored to beach their vessels on the already crowded strip of shingle. The hurricane lasted three days, and at its end no small part of the king's fleet was found to have been destroyed or disabled. The rocky coast for miles to the north was strewn with wrecks, and many scores of vessels were struck from the muster-roll of the Persian armament. The Greeks, meanwhile, who had remained safely moored in the harbor of His- tiaea, exclaimed that Boreas kinsman, according to a strange myth, of the Athenian kings of old had come to the help of his relations, and sailed out to destroy the king's fleet, which was said to have been utterly shattered by the storm. They found, however, that the Persians were still nearly four times as numerous as them- selves, and at once the Peloponnesian admirals proposed to fall back on the Isthmus, and gather reinforcements there. Eurybiades was only induced to remain by a large bribe which his colleague, The- mistocles, administered to him. That astute statesman had just received thirty talents from the cities of Euboea, who, being cov- ered while the fleet remained at Artemisium, were most reluctant to see it depart. Making over about a third of the sum to his col- leagues, Themistocles pocketed the rest. The talents which he spared for the Peloponnesians did their work, and the fleet kept its position. Meanwhile the Persian admirals had got their armada again in hand ; they sent two hundred ships down the eastern coast of Euboea to round the southern point of the island and block the exit of the Euripus, and prepared with the remainder to crush the Greeks at Artemisium. A day's fighting in the strait brought no decisive result, but on the next night another storm arose, not less dreadful than the one of the preceding week. Not only did it dam- age the king's fleet, which now lay in the Thessalian harbor of Aphe- tae, but it caught the detached squadron as it sailed down the iron- bound eastern coast of Euboea, and dashed it to pieces on the rocks of Geraestus ; it seemed as if the gods were working to bring down the Persian fleet to an equality with the Greeks. Two days more 190 GREECE 480 B.C. of indecisive fighting in the strait followed, in which the weaker party held its own. The enemy was still too numerous to be crushed, but though he spread his vessels out in an enormous cres- cent, and endeavored to envelop the confederates, he suffered far more damage than he inflicted. The Athenian ships were always to the front, and suffered a proportionately heavier loss than their allies : but their numbers were more than sustained by the arrival of a reserve squadron of fifty-three triremes, which came up the Eurlpus in time for the third day's fighting. Nothing decisive had yet occurred at Artemisium, when, on the fourth day, a swift row- ing-boat was seen coming up from the south. In it was Abrony- chus, an Athenian who had been left off the Malian coast to bear intelligence from the army to the fleet. The news which he brought from Thermopylae was so disastrous that the admirals had not a moment to lose before they retreated. When the multitudes of Xerxes came pouring over the passes of Othrys into the Malian plain, they halted on finding that the defile of Thermopylae was occupied. The king had now before him two alternatives : he might force the pass, or he might move inland, and march round by the upland roads which pass through Doris, so as to turn Thermopylae just as he had turned Tempe. To take the inland road meant to lose many days, and to break off communica- tion with the fleet. He therefore determined to assault the Phocian wall, and trample down its presumptuous defenders. The story of the fight in the pass of Thermopylae is sur- rounded by a host of legends, probable, possible, and impossible, whose authenticity it is useless to discuss. Most of them illustrate the utter insensibility of the Spartans in the face of imminent death, and the bewilderment which that insensibility caused in the mind of a king accustomed to regard courage as the offspring of confi- dence in victory alone. When the Persian scouts, we are told, ap- peared for the first time in front of the pass, they did not find the Spartans cowering behind their wall, but carelessly wandering without it, combing their long hair, or indulging in gymnastic exer- cises. The king laughed at them as madmen for not taking to flight, and was only amused when Demaratus, the exiled Spartan king who had attached himself to the Persian court, explained that their heedlessness was the sign of desperate resolution, and not of folly. After waiting a while to allow the madmen time to come to their senses, Xerxes grew irritated, and sent forward a body of INVASION OF XERXES 191 480 B.C. troops from Media and Elam, bidding them " take these presump- tuous men ahve, and bring them before the face of the king." Leonidas must have already reaHzed, as the days went by, without the promised succors from Peloponnesus reaching him^ that he was sent on a hopeless task, for although he might maintain the defile, and even the flanking road over Anopaea, he could do nothing to keep the king from the more western passes. But, like a true Spartan, he kept his orders before him, and took no thought of the consequences. He had by this time repaired the Phocian wall to serve him as a final defense, but was still holding ground in front of it, at one of the narrowest points of the pass. He had divided his men into several bodies, of which each was to take the place of danger in turn, for a few score of hoplites only could find space between the water and the cliff, and the rest had perforce to remain in reserve. The Medes came on with great confidence, pushing forward into the defile till they formed a long, deep column, with a front no broader than that of the Greeks. Then the shock came, and ere long the Asiatics were hurled back in disorder. In fighting hand- to-hand on equal terms it was seen now, as it had been at Marathon ten years before, that the lightly armed Oriental, with his dart and scimitar and wicker shield, could do nothing against the hoplite cased in brass from head to foot, and armed with the long, thrust- ing spear. The Medes were fighting under the eye of their king, and W' ould not give up the contest ; they came on again and again, to be beaten back with fearful slaughter. Then Xerxes, thinking that it was for w'ant of courage that they failed, called them in, and sent forw^ard instead his ow'n body-guard, the ten thousand chosen Persians, called " The Immortals." But though they fought gal- lantly enough, the second column w-as dashed back with even greater loss than the first. Night then fell, but next morning the attack w^as renewed, for the king was beside himself with rage, and had determined to wear out the Greeks by mere force of numbers, if no other means would avail. But Leonidas, relieving each of his battalions as it grew tired by another from the reserve, kept his ground with little loss, while the road before him was almost choked with dead Asiatics, and the Persian officers were seen endeavoring to lash their dispirited men back to the charge with whips, when no lighter persuasion would induce them to tempt the dangers of the reeking pass. By the second evening it was evident that no 192 GREECE 480 B.C. effort from in front could possibly break through; the whole in- vasion was at a standstill, and although the actual loss signified little among the myriads of Xerxes's army, the moral effect of the check was growing fatal. If ten thousand Greeks could hold the king at bay, what was likely to happen when the hundred and fifty thousand men whom a national levy might at any moment produce came up to help their comrades? It was fortunate for Xerxes that the Peloponnesian towns were too far off to allow the news of the first days of battle to work any immediate effect. Despondency still reigned at Sparta, while eager self-confidence was felt at Ther- mopylae. It was on the night following the second conflict that a Malian named Ephialtes came before the downcast king, and offered, for a large sum of gold, to guide the Persians over the heights of Anopaea by the winding path which came out at the rear of the pass. Strangely enough, no previous search seems to have been made for such a road, though its existence must have been known to every inhabitant of Trachis, where Xerxes had now been tarry- ing for six days. The traitor's proposals were readily received, and at midnight the satrap Hydarnes started, with the king's " Immor- tals," to attempt the passage. It was in the stillness of the last hour of the night, just before the dawn, that Ephialtes brought the Per- sians to the point on the ridge where lay the Phocian force which Leonidas had set to guard his flank. The Phocians kept a careless watch ; and when the rustling of thousands of feet among the dead leaves of the oak forest smote upon tlieir ears as they woke, they were seized with panic. Instead of holding the path, they ran back and formed up to defend themselves on the summit of Callidromus. But Hydarnes, paying no further attention to them, passed rapidly on, and next morning the Greeks in the pass saw, to their utter dis- may, the head of the Persian column descending from the hills in their rear. There was small time for debate, and Leonidas's resolve was soon taken. As a Spartan king at the head of the vanguard of the hosts of Greece, he felt that he must not desert the post committed to his charge. His orders bade him hold Thermopylae, and spoke of nothing more; Thermopylae, then, he would hold. He divided his little army into two halves; his Arcadian and other Pelopon- nesian auxiliaries, some four thousand strong, were hastily sent off to the rear. They were probably ordered to make a desperate INVASION OF XERXES 193 480 B.C. effort to arrest the march of Hydarnes, by seizing the lower outlet of the path by which he was descending from Anopaea. But either they were too late, or their hearts failed them ; we hear of no fight- ing, but only that they retreated eastward, leaving the pass unde- fended in the rear. Meanwhile, Leonidas and the rest of the army were keeping their old position by the Phocian wall. There re- mained behind the three hundred Spartans with their Helots, and seven hundred Thespians, as also four hundred Thebans a contin- gent of doubtful loyalty which Leonidas would not suffer to depart. The third day's fighting at Thermopylae was quite unlike that which had gone before. When he learned that his allies had made off, and that his rear was uncovered, the king resolved to throw himself on the enemy in front, and do what damage he could before Hydarnes came up to surround him. Accordingly, when the Per- sians came flooding up, as on the previous days, he ran out into the wider parts of the pass, and cut his way deep into the midst of them. Then the Greeks turned and burst back again as far as the Phocian wall, losing heavily as their ranks grew looser in the onset, but thrusting the barbarians by hundreds into the sea, and rolling column against column till more perished by being trampled down in the press than fell by the edge of the sword. Ere long Leonidas was slain, but the fight went on only the more fiercely over his body, and two brothers and two uncles of Xerxes went down in the melee. Presently Hydarnes and the " Immortals " came up from Alpeni. By this time the surviving Greeks were well-nigh wearied out; their spears were broken, their swords blunted, their armor hacked from their limbs. But retiring on to a hillock beside the roadway, they made one final stand, till they fell under the arrows and javelins of a foe who dared not close. Only the Thebans escaped. Early in the conflict they had fallen back and surrendered to the nearest enemy; they were led to the Persian camp, and branded with the king's mark as his slaves; but when Xerxes learned that they were only in arms by compulsion, and that their city was about to " Med- ize " on his approach, he at once set them free. Thus ended the fight in the pass of Thermopylae. It had caused the death of some four thousand Greeks and of more than twenty thousand Persians. But its effects were not to be measured by the mere numbers of the slain. Its real importance lay in the impression which it left on the mind of the Great King and his army. Xerxes had at last begun to have doubts of his own omnipo- 194* GREECE 480 B.C. tence, and his self-confidence had been the only spring of strength in his character. Deprived of it, he would become the weakest of despots. His soldiery had imbibed an exaggerated dread of their enemies. There was but one Leonidas in Hellas, and Sparta was but a single state among a multitude; but to the Persian spearman every Greek was in future a reckless hero, careless of life, and only bent on slaughter an adversary who in open fight was individ- ually superior to himself, and could only be overpowered by num- bers. There were many brave men in Xerxes's host, who in later engagements went into battle readily enough ; but they never after fought with the confidence in their own superiority which had been the strength of the Persian down to Thermopylae. This was for- tunate for Greece; for one Leonidas there were in the Greek ranks scores of weak, venal, selfish leaders, whose inefficiency was hidden from the enemy by the glory which surrounded the name of the hero of Thermopylae. But for the moment the Greeks could not judge of the moral effect of the battle on the enemy, and, looked at from the military aspect, the war had begun with a disaster. A Spartan king, the soul of the war party, had fallen ; the vanguard of the confederate host had been cut to pieces; the strongest position in Greece had been forced by the enemy, who was now ready to pour down into the plain of the Cephissus, and to be joined by all the Medizing cities of Boeotia. The fleet, too, was compelled to fall back at once from the Euboean Strait, and where its retreat might end it was impossible to foresee. In short, no one in Greece could tell at the time that the moral gain of Thermopylae had been so tremendous as quite to outweigh the miltary and political loss. Chapter XX SALAMIS AND PLATAEA, 480-479 B.C. THE inexcusable slackness and selfishness of the Pelopon- nesians, which had ruined Leonidas by depriving him of his expected reinforcements, reacted at once on the fleet at Artemisium. In order to avoid being cut off, Eurybiades had to weigh anchor on the night after the ill news arrived. He retired down the Euripus, leaving Themistocles and a detachment of the Athenian squadron to bring up the rear, and after rounding Su- nium, halted opposite Athens in the bay of Salamis. The Athenian admiral is said to have employed himself during the retreat in painting up, on the rocks near the watering-places of the Euboean coast, appeals to the lonians in the Persian fleet not to destroy the land of their ancestors. If this tale be true, he was probably aiming at making Xerxes suspicious of his Greek subjects, rather than at inducing them to come over; for he must have known well enough that the lonians were not the men to desert a winning for a losing cause. In consequence of the retreat of the Greek squadron, the Eu- boeans found that their bribes to Themistocles had availed them but for a few days. Their leading men took refuge on the Euboean ships in the confederate fleet, and followed its fortunes, but the towns themselves made their peace with Xerxes. On the mainland the loss to the cause of independence was even greater. When Thermopylae was clear, Xerxes began to push his army forward, using not only the pass he had forced, but the more circuitous inland road through Doris and the Upper Ce- phissus valley, which he had previously left unessayed. The Pho- cians, who refused to submit to him, were compelled to take to the hills, and to see all their townships harried by the Persians, to whom their hereditary enemies, the Thessalians, acted as willing guides. The Locrians of Opus, and the oligarchies who governed the ma- jority of the Boeotian towns, took the opposite course, and promptly made their submission to the king, who received them graciously 195 196 GREECE 480 B.C. enough, and contented himself with incorporating their contingents in his army. Plataea, Thespiae, and HaHartus alone refused to join in the general surrender, and had to face the consequences of their patriotism. The last-named town suffered complete destruction, but from the others, which lay farther from the enemy, the inhabi- tants had time to escape. The Thespians, though they had suffered so severely at Thermopylae, were in nowise shaken in their devo- tion to the national cause, but took refuge at Corinth. The Pla- taeans retired to their old friends at Athens, whose fortunes now, as ten years before, they had determined to follow. Now that the Great King was already in Boeotia, and his van- guard might at any moment reach the foot of the passes of Cith- aeron. the Athenians had to face the whole danger of their position. Of defending Attica by land there could be no question ; if Ther- mopylae could not be held, it would be madness to attempt to block the four comparatively easy roads which converge on Athens from the north. Three alternatives only were possible : to submit to Xerxes ; to man the walls and stand a siege : or to abandon the city and retire on the Peloponnese, as the Thespians had already done. Each opinion had its advocates even the first and most dishonor- able. But Themistocles, in the moment of crisis, carried everything before him by his ready eloquence. He pointed out the hopelessness of surrender for the city, which was beyond all others the peculiar object of the hatred of the Great King, and so incensed the people against Cyrsilus, an orator who pleaded in favor of that mean and witless step, that we hear that the traitor was stoned on the spot. He had ingenious arguments to urge against those who bade Ath- ens stand at bay behind her ramparts, on the spot hallowed by the traditions of centuries. He pointed to the fleet, his own creation, as the true hope and safety of the people ; in it was to be found the " wooden wall " of which the Delphic oracle had spoken as the sole refuge in the day of disaster. To abandon without a struggle the temples of their national deities and the tombs of their ancestors required a pitch of patriotic exaltation which it was hard for the Athenians to attain, when ultimate success was so problematic. Nevertheless Themistocles roused his countrymen to stake every- thing on the fleet, to deliberately evacuate Attica and Athens, place the aged, the women, and children in safety and then man every available vessel and stand for the mastery in the waters of the Attic Strait. There can be no doubt that his plan was the only SALAMIS ANDPLATAEA 197 480 B.C. feasible one. The experience of Thermopylae had shown that the land army of Xerxes would probably fail at the Isthmus, where it would be met, not by a scant ten thousand men, but by the national levy of the Peloponnese. Now, if the position at the Isthmus could be turned by the Persians from the side of the sea, and troops landed in its rear, the previous disaster would only be repeated on a larger scale. But if the Great King's fleet could be driven back, and kept from assisting his army, the whole expedition would be brought to a check ; for the Corinthian Isthmus offered no facilities for a flank movement by land such as had settled the day at Ther- mopylae. The battles of Artemisium had made it clear that the Persian fleet could be harassed and insulted by a squadron of far inferior numbers, and at those engagements the Greeks had brought up little more than half of their available strength. Themistocles, therefore, was convinced that in a vigorous assault on the sea-power of the enemy lay the only hope of salvation; and it was fortunate for Athens, for Greece, and for the whole world that his fiery elo- quence won over his countrymen to accept his views. It was not every Athenian who could be convinced by the ora- tor. A small but obstinate party refused to find the " wooden wall," which was to save the city, anywhere but in the palisades of the Acropolis, and shut themselves up therein, relying on divine aid. But the vast majority set to work to transport their families and their portable goods to a place of safety. For several days every available ship was pressed into service to ferry the exiled multitude over the Saronic Gulf. Troezen, a town connected with Athens both by traditional ties and close commercial intercourse, was the chosen point of refuge, and its hospitable citizens not only received the fugitives with kindness, but even assisted them with a consider- able allowance from the public revenue. Some of the Athenians also retired to Aegina, and a few went no further than Salamis, but the great bulk of them sought the more distant and secure haven in the Peloponnesus. It is said that the departing multitude were in no small degree comforted by the disappearance of the sacred snake of the Acropolis on the first day of the embarkation a portent which was taken to imply that Athena and her visible representative had quitted the city in company with her worshipers. Probably Themistocles could have explained the marvel had he so chosen. The last act of the Athenians before deserting their home was to pass an act of amnesty for all exiles, inviting them to re- 198 GREECE 480 B.C. turn and help their brethren in the day of adversity. Of the many who took advantage of this decree, and prepared to join the fleet, by far the most important was Aristeides, who, since his ostracism four years ago, had been living in retirement in the Peloponnese. The moment that he reappeared in the Athenian ranks his old in- fluence returned to him, and he was not the man to use it amiss in the time of danger. While the embarkation was proceeding at the quays of Pei- raeus and Phalerum, the armies of the Great King were hurrying through the plains of Boeotia on their southward march, and before it was completed the passes of Cithaeron must have already fallen into their hands. While the main body pressed on for Athens, a considerable detachment marched west to seize Delphi, whose vast temple-treasures were enough to tempt the invader, even if he had no conception of the shock which he could inflict on Greek national feeling by the destruction of the greatest sanctuary of the Hel- lenic world. But this expedition came to nought; its end is so shrouded with wild legends that it is hard to ascertain the facts. We hear of great falls of rock in the passes of Parnassus which slew many of the Asiatics, and of a panic fear which fell upon them when the holy place was almost in their grasp, and sent them crowd- ing back in groundless terror into the Boeotian plain. The Del- phians maintained that Apollo had interfered in person to save his temple, though the god had shown himself apathetic enough when his " loved Didymean dwelling " at Branchidae had been sacked by the same enemy, at the time of the Ionian revolt. At any rate, the treasures of Delphi remained unspoiled, and the fact of their preservation went far to rescue the repute of the oracle from the discredit cast upon it by the dismal Medizing prophecies which it had been venting during the previous year. If the sanctuary of Apollo remained unscathed, the home of Pallas on the Athenian Acropolis had a very different fate. The heads of the Persian columns converged on Athens, and entered the city only to find it completely deserted, save for the few fanatics who were still holding out behind the palisades of the Acropolis. They made a longer defense than might have been expected, but finally a body of Persians, scrambling up the almost impracticable cliff below the temple of Aglaurus, carried the place by escalade, and slew the remnant of the garrison in the very temple of Athene. Xerxes was determined to make an example of the city which had SALAMIS AND PLATA E A 199 480 B.C. SO long and so successfully defied his father and himself. Con- trary to the custom of the Persians, he not only burned all private dwellings, but leveled to the ground the sacred buildings on the Acropolis, as if determined to drive the gods of Athens as well as her citizens from their ancient stronghold. So thoroughly did he do his work, and so completely was everything overturned, that many of the statues which he then cast down remained buried in the fragments of the edifices which had contained them, only to be unearthed by the explorers of our own day. The destruction of Athens was carried out under the very eyes of her citizens, for the flames of the city were plainly visible from Salamis, where the Greek fleet was still lying. The vessels which fought at Artemisium had now been largely reinforced by fresh detachments from various localities , the Sicyonians had doubled their contingent, and the ships of the Corinthian colonies on the west coast of Greece had at last arrived. But except Athens no city had exerted itself to its utmost. Aegina, for example, kept more than half her fleet at home, to provide for her safety in the event of defeat; and Corinth only put forty ships into the confed- erate squadron. Then it came to pass that Athens, in spite of con- siderable losses at Artemisium, still supplied almost half the total 1 80 triremes out of the 378 which lay in the Salaminian bay. The Spartan Eurybiades still held nominal command of the whole, but his personal incompetence threw the settlement of every important question into the hands of stormy councils of war. The admirals of the various squadrons were hopelessly at variance; Adeimantus the Corinthian and the majority of the Peloponnesians were for retiring to the Isthmus, and acting in close concert with the land army, which had now gathered there in strength, and was com- mencing to build a wall from sea to sea for the defense of the peninsula. Eurybiades, in his vacillating way, inclined to favor this course. But Themistocles was determined to attack the Persian ships the moment they appeared in Attic waters, and before they could commence any movement against the rear of the Greeks. The Aeginetan and Megarian admirals adhered to his opinion, for the position at Salamis protected their cities, which would be exposed to attack from the sea the moment the confederate fleet retreated to Corinth. The contention was brought to a crisis by the appear- ance of the Persian armada, which rounded Sunium and appeared in the harbor of Phalerum. After a fruitless discussion many of 200 GREECE 480 B.C. the Peloponnesians were actually preparing to weigh anchor, when Themistocles, bringing all the influence of his vehement personality to bear on Eurybiacles, procured a final meeting of the admirals at midnight. Here words grew hot and furious. Adeimantus bade Themistocles, " a man who had no longer a country," hold his peace and obey. The xA.thenian replied that the admiral who had a hun- dred and eighty war-ships at his back could choose himself a country wherever he wished, and swore that if the Peloponnesians retired to tlie Isthmus, the Athenian squadron should separate itself from them, take on board the fugitives at Troezen, and sail for Italy, there to found a new Athens. This threat so disturbed Eurybiades that he threw all his influence into the scale, and ere daybreak the council of war resolved to stand firm and offer battle in the strait. The chosen battlefield was the space of land-locked water whose northern portion forms the Strait of Salamis. A deep curve in the Attic coast is faced for the greater part of its length by the eastern shore of the rugged and irregularly shaped island of Sala- mis, which leaves in the center a considerable expanse of sea, but sends out to east and west long promontories which approach the mainland, and contract the bay into a strait. In the eastern exit of this island sea lie the harbor and town of Salamis, where the Grecian fleet was moored. Further out, beyond the strait, and round an angle of the Attic coast, lay the Persian fleet in the harbor of Phalerum. As long as this remained the relative position of the two armaments, the eastern passage was practically barred to the confederates, but they had full opportunity to retire on Me- gara and Corinth by the western exit. In the vehemence of his desire to precipitate a collision, The- mistocles now had recourse to one of those ingenious but unscrupu- lous maneuvers which give the key to his character. He sent by night a confidential Asiatic slave to the Persian camp ; the man bore letters to the king which protested that the Athenian admiral was anxious to serve him, and would have him know that the Greek commanders were about to retire under cover of the darkness. If, therefore, he wished to crush his enemies, he must make haste to seize both entries of the bay of Eleusis, or the confederate fleet would escape westward. Themistocles thus provided for himself, whatever the course of events might be. If, as he hoped, the Per- sians should proceed to attack, the battle for which he yearned would SAL AM IS AND PLATAEA 201 480 B.C. take place, and victory would probably follow ; but if Xerxes either should refuse to advance or should attack and be successful he would at any rate be personally well disposed to a man who had endeavored to do something in his behalf. The events fell out exactly as the ingenious plotter desired. The Great King, in fear that his enemies might escape, determined to render their flight impossible. He detached a squadron, the Egyptian contingent, to block the Alegar ian outlet of the bay, and A.GrKtinfccsfba,ttIc S.FferSicin n < ^ ;^ C . 5t2tt of XtrxtS. began to extend his main fleet across its nearer mouth close to the confederates' anchorage. He even ordered land troops to be trans- ported across to the small island of Psyttaleia, which lies off the southeast exit of the bay, in order that they might seize any Greeks whose vessels might run ashore upon that island an excess of pre- caution which was soon to appear ludicrous enough during the bat- tle. The confederate admirals were thrown into a new fever of indecision by the advance of the Persian fleet, and spent the day in inconclusive debates, during which several of the Peloponnesians showed that their old design of absconding was not even now for- gotten. But meanwhile the horns of the crescent into which the hostile squadron had formed itself were slowly contracting, till retreat had grown impossible. At nightfall the exiled Aristeides made his appearance among the Athenians, to announce that he had 202 GREECE 480 B.C. only just found it possible to slip between the nearest ships of the enemy and the shore, while his news was soon confirmed by de- serters, who reported that a complete blockade of the Strait of Salamis had been established. A battle next day was inevitable. The Persian king had still about a thousand vessels, in spite of all his losses by war and shipwreck. He had enclosed his ene- mies in a position where defeat must mean destruction, and felt no doubt of the result. His crews were roused to unusual excitement by the fact that they were to fight under his own royal eye. For on the slope of Mount Aegialeus, overlooking the bay, a splendid throne had been erected, and on it the king took his seat, sur- rounded by his princes and courtiers, and well furnished with scribes, who were to take down the names and actions of all who distinguished themselves in the coming engagement. Not a soul had ventured to raise a doubt as to the policy of fighting, save Ar- temisia, the widowed Queen of Halicarnassus, who had headed her own squadron on the expedition, and more than once displayed prudence and foresight which should have been invaluable to the king. But Xerxes treated her advice, to attack the Isthmus by land before joining battle by sea, with quiet disregard, and no one else had the temerity to run counter to the royal will. By the desertion of two vessels, a Lemnian and a Tenian, from the enemy, the Greek armament had been raised to 380 sail. Re- treat was completely cut off, so that it was for every man a question of victory or destruction ; and there was no opportunity for faint- hearted captains to edge away and make for the open sea, as the Samians had done with such fatal result fifteen years before, at the battle of Lade. The Athenians and Aeginetans, who formed the majority of the combatants, were ready enough for the fight; while the Peloponnesians, though they had wished to avoid .an engage- ment, had no temptations to slackness now that one had become inevitable. The generals did their best to encourage their men by citing such prophecies and oracles as seemed to portend a victory for Greece, and even fetched out and placed on shipboard the images of Ajax and his kinsmen, the tutelary heroes of Salamis, as if to make them their leaders in a fight which seemed to repro- duce the old struggle with Asia in the mythic days of Troy. But no less important than the moral advantages of the Greeks was the character of the waters in which they were about to fight. The sea- room was so confined, and so hampered with reefs, promontories SALAMIS ANDPLATAEA 203 480 B.C. and islands, that the king's admirals could not make full use of their overwhelming numbers, while their inferior seamanship and want of knowledge of the localities led to overcrowding, stranding, and other small mishaps long before the battle began. Next morning each fleet discerned the other drawn up in battle array. On the side of the confederates the Athenian squad- ron held the left wing, the Euboeans and Aeginetans the center, the Corinthians and other Peloponnesian contingents the right, the place of honor; here, too, Eurybiades, the commander-in-chief, with his sixteen ships from Laconia, took his station. Among the bar- barians the Phoenicians were on the right, facing the Athenians, the Cilicians and Pamphylians in the center, and the Ionian squad- rons on the left. The day was rough, a southwest wind was blowing across the breadth of the bay, and the surf ran high. Nevertheless it was the king's fleet which made the first movement. Rowing against wnnd and tide, and suffering much from overcrowding, they slowly and laboriously advanced. For a moment the Greeks hung back, close to the land and their anchorage ; then Ameinias of Pallene, an Athenian trierarch, shot out from the line and rammed a Sidonian vessel. Ship after ship followed him, and soon battle had been joined all along the strait, and the water was covered by a con- fused medley of galleys, circling round each other, and seeking opportunity to ram, or locked in close combat, where the press was thicker and no room for maneuvering remained. On neither side was much strategy displayed ; the day was decided by the superior sea- manship and determination of the confederates, not by the ability of their admirals. Before long it was evident that the barbarians were gaining no advantage, but their confidence in gross numbers kept them from panic, and there were ships unnumbered ready to press forward into the fighting line to replace disabled consorts. Even the lonians. on whose desertion many of the Greeks had been relying, showed no reluctance to engage, and took their full share of the action. For many hours the conflict showed no signs of slackening, and the king, as he sat on Aegialeus, with his scribes at his feet, gazing on the vast panorama in the bay, had time enough to note down many a bold deed of friend and foe. But at last the current of the fight began to set markedly towards the south and east ; numbers of Persian ships dropped out of the line disabled, and ran ashore, or drifted down the coast; the rest fell more and 204 GREECE 480 B.C. more into confusion, huddling into helpless masses, and fighting purely on the defensive. Finally their losses began to tell on them. The king's brother, Ariabignes, who held the supreme command, fell as he was attempting to board an Athenian vessel, and about nightfall the broken fleet reeled slowly back to the Attic coast and took refuge with the land army, which had moved down to the beach to assist it. Most of its rearmost vessels were cut off by the Athenians and Aeginetans, Vv'ho pressed their victory home, and chased the enemy till he was absolutely out of reach. To crown the day, Aristeides embarked some Athenian hoplites from the town of Salamis, and putting them ashore on Psyttaleia, cut to pieces the Persian detachment which had landed there, and was now com- pletely isolated by the falling back of the fleet. So ended the battle of Salamis. Balancing the mere loss of ships, we find that the king's fleet had been diminished by some two hundred vessels, while the Greeks were only weakened by forty. The victory, therefore, though decisive enough, was far from being a crushing one, and the barbarians still outnumbered the Hellenes by more than two to one. But all spirit had been taken out of the vanquished. The Phoenicians accused the lonians of having lost the battle by their slackness; while the lonians fully made up their minds that they were on the losing side, and resolved to quit it as soon as possible. Xerxes was profoundly disgusted with his fleet, and began to deem that uncertain element, the sea, unworthy of his royal notice. At the same time he realized that, if he was no longer master of the Aegean, his homeward route by the long circuit back to the bridge on the Hellespont was in no small danger. When once his self-confidence was abated, regard for his own valuable person began to assume the most prominent place in his thoughts, and those of his courtiers who could read the signs of the times were quick to fall in with his new disposition. On the Greek side the revulsion of feeling was no less great. There were few who, with Themistocles, had foreseen a victory from the first; the majority, even among the Athenians, had ac- cepted the battle as the last desperate chance in a hazardous game; many had not fought voluntarily at all, but merely because their retreat was cut off and no other alternative remained. The suc- cess which they had won with such small loss completely changed their spirit, and for the future the Greeks by sea were inclined to recklessness rather than fear, and thought of nothing but taking SALAMIS ANDPLATAEA 205 480 B.C. the offensive. More than any others did the Athenians rise to this pitch of elation: they had staked everything on the battle; they alone, by the numbers of their contingent, had made victory pos- sible; their general had been the one consistent prophet of good fortune, and they rightly felt that the credit of the day was almost entirely their own. The council of admirals, indeed, awarded the prize of valor to an Aeginetan, and presented Eurybiades with a wreath of honor, but their partial decision deceived nobody ; Ath- ens and Themistocles were entitled to the glory of having saved Greece. For a few days after the battle Xerxes kept up a show of per- severance ; his army commenced to construct a broad mole out from the mainland, as if he were determined to win Salamis by military if not by naval operations. But this was only a cover to his real design ; he had made up his mind to return home. Mardonius, who had been the most prominent supporter of the expedition, and still hoped to bring it to a successful end, supplied him with a plausible excuse. Athens, he said, had been the city at which the Great King's wrath had been directed, and now that Athens was a mass of smoking ruins, the object of the invasion had been fulfilled. The minor task of finishing the campaign might be left to inferior hands. Let the king, therefore, return to Susa, and leave some satrap with an adequate force to complete the subjection of Hellas. Xerxes eagerly accepted his view ; he bade Mardonius choose what troops he washed, and announced his intention of returning home with the remainder. His departure is said to have been hastened by a secret message from Themistocles, who again dispatched his confidential slave to the mainland, to inform the king that he had with great difficulty induced the admirals to postpone sailing to the Hellespont to destroy the bridge of boats, and that it would undoubtedly be attacked ere long. As a matter of fact Themistocles himself had advised this step, but Eurybiades had found it too rash, and prevented any such design from being taken in hand. Accordingly Mardonius chose the best troops of the army all the Persians, including the king's body-guard, together with the Median Sacan and Bactrian contingents, and many smaller bodies from other nations. The rest of the host set out with the king to retrace the long road through Boeotia, Thessaly, and Macedonia by which they had advanced. The satrap Artabazus, with sixty thou- sand picked men, brought up the rear, and after covering the march 206 GREECE 480-479 B.C. of the main body as far as the Hellespont, remained behind to overawe the Macedonians and keep up communications between Mardonius and Asia. The Persians are said to have suffered severe privations on their return journey; for the magazines which had supplied them during their advance were no longer full, and the season had grown late and was now verging on winter. It was with ranks much thinned by dysentery and exposure to the bleak Thracian climate that Xerxes reached Abydos. There he found the bridge broken by the storms of the equinox, and was compelled to cross on shipboard. His army was slowly ferried over, and followed him back to Sardis in a sufficiently depressed and disconso- late frame of mind. Meanwhile the Persian fleet had left the ports of Athens at the same time that Xerxes set out on his return. Sailing by night, the defeated armada ingloriously made off for the Hellespont. It reached Abydos long before the land army, and protected the pas- sage of the king, which was not molested by the Greeks. Then part of it, apparently the Phoenician squadrons, went home; while the western contingents wintered at the harbor of Cyme in Aeolis. The Greek admirals, with a vague dread of the power of Persia still hanging about them, made no attempt to pursue the enemy. They contented themselves w^th sailing to the nearer Cyclades and compelling the islanders to throw off their lately sworn allegiance to Persia. The Andrians alone made resistance, and had their land ravaged; the Parians and some others got their submission more easily accepted by sending large bribes in secret to Themis- tocles, who readily made their peace for them with the other con- federate admirals. After a solemn visit to the Isthmus, where the booty of Salamis was divided up, and large offerings made to the national gods not even the Medizing Apollo of Delphi being omitted the various squadrons dispersed to their native cities. The winter of 480-479 b.c. was long protracted, and more than six months elapsed before warlike operations recommenced. Mardonius drew back his army far to the north, cantoning the greater part of it in the towns of Thessaly. His Boeotian allies kept to their own territories north of the range of Cithaeron, and Attica was, therefore, left unoccupied. This emboldened the Athenians to return to their ruined city, and to bring over their families from Troezen. They were already beginning to restore their dilapidated dwellings, when they received a warning that their SALAMIS ANDPLATAEA 207 480-479 B.C. troubles were not yet ended. In the early spring- Alexander the Mace- donian appeared among them, bearing a message from Mardonius. The Persian, anxious to detach the Athenians from the league of Greece, proposed to them terms such as the Great King had never before deigned to proffer to an ally. In return for withdrawing from their opposition, they were not only to retain complete inde- pendence, but to be allowed to annex as much of their neighbors' territory as they might choose, and to receive from Xerxes a sum large enough to enable them to restore all the ruins of their temples and dwellings. Refusal was to be punished by a second occupation of the city, when the campaigning season came round. But it was not likely that, after Salamis, the Athenians would desert a cause to which they had been faithful in the darkest hour. They sent away the Macedonian prince with a defiant reply, and stoically awaited the chances of war. Mardonius was as good as his word. When spring arrived his army came flooding southward from Thessaly, and then, swollen by the contingents of Boeotia, swept over the crest of Cithaeron and into the Thriasian plain. The Athenians had been hoping that their allies from Peloponnesus would come out in full force from the Isthmus and help them to hold the passes of Cithaeron against the Persian. But the Spartans had not yet given up their old scheme of making the wall in front of Corinth, now completed into a substantial fortification, their line of defense. Not a hoplite appeared to defend Attica, and the Athenians were constrained once more to put their families on shipboard and escape to Troezen and Salamis. Exactly ten months after Xerxes had first entered Athens, Mardonius appeared in front of its deserted walls and occupied them without resistance. The Athenians were in high dudgeon at the isolation in which they were left; they sent ambas- sadors to Sparta to upbraid their selfish confederates, and to en- deavor to drive them forward by hinting that they still had before them the proposals made by Alexander of Macedon, and might be driven to accept them if no help came. This threat secretly moved the ephors, but they determined to conceal their perturbation from the Athenians, and put off the ambassadors some days before giving them an answer, alleging as an excuse the fact that their great festival, the Hyacinthia, was at that moment being celebrated. They then collected five thousand Spartans, more than half the available force of the state, placed Pausanias, the nephew of Leonidas, in 208 GREECE 479 B.C. command, and started them off by night to march northward. Thus, when the Athenian ambassadors received their audience, they learned to their surprise that the Spartan army was already far advanced towards the Isthmus, and had its orders to go beyond it. Five thousand hoplites of the Perioeci accompanied the ambassadors on their return journey, and soon it became apparent that the whole of the Peloponnese was on the march. All the contingents of the states that owned the hegemony of Sparta came flocking into Corinth; then the whole body, an army such as Greece had never before put in the field, advanced to Megara and Eleusis. At the latter place they were joined by eight thousand Athenian hoplites, who crossed the strait from Salamis. But they did not find Mardonius in front of them and offering battle, as they had expected. On their approach the satrap, after directing a cavalry reconnoissance as far as the gates of Megara the furthest point to the west which the Persian arms reached had evacuated Athens. He carefully destroyed any remains of the temples and walls that had escaped the first occupation, and leveled the new buildings which had been commenced in the winter. Then he marched across the front of the advancing Greek army, passed Cithaeron, and setted down in the valley of the Asopus. Here he offered battle in the plain of Southern Boeotia. His camp, surrounded by an earthen rampart which formed a square of ten furlongs, was pitched by the river, facing towards Plataea, the spot on which the roads leading from Megara and the Peloponnese into Boeotia converge. The Greeks lay above on the hillside, for they did not dare to come down into the plain on account of the large bodies of horse which Mardonius could put into the field. As the two armies were posted, the Persian threatened equally the two passes into Attica and that which leads through the Megarid towards the Corinthian Isthmus. Similarly, the Greeks were posted so that they could attack Mar- donius at advantage in the hilly ground, if he moved forward on either of these lines of communication. For some time the two armies faced each other, each expecting the other to make the decisive move. Mardonius was determined not to attack the Greeks on hilly ground, remembering Thermopylae. Pausanius, though a brave and ambitious man, had no military judgment or power of initiative, and feared that the morale of many of his troops was bad. The Greek army had now swelled to more than a hundred SAL A MIS ANDPLATAEA 209 479 B.C. thousand men, of whom nearly forty thousand were troops of the line, hoplites in full brazen panoply, such as no Asiatic force of anything like equal numbers could hope to resist.^ Yet there were still many contingents due ; the Eleians and Mantineans alone, who were expected every day, were bringing up at least five or six thou- sand hoplites more. The strength of Mardonius we cannot so easily calculate; but, including his Greek allies, he must have had at least twice or three times the numbers of Pausanias. After some days Mardonius sent bodies of cavalry up the gentler part of the slopes of the Greek position, to annoy the con- federates and tempt them to advance. There was hot skirmishing in the center of the Greek army, but it terminated in the complete repulse of the Persians, who left Masistius, commander of the cavalry of the whole army, dead on the field within the Greek lines. This emboldened Pausanias to come down more into the plain : the first dread of the Persian cavalry had passed away, now that it was discovered to be by no means invincible. Accordingly the Greeks marched westward, and drew up upon a line of hillocks which run out from Cithaeron some two miles and a half in front of Plataea, hard by the fountain of Gargaphia. The Spartans held the right wing, nearest to the mountains ; the other Peloponnesians formed the center ; while the Athenians on the left-wing lay farthest out in the plain. For ten days they lay in this position, with the Asopus between them and the enemy. They were, however, much annoyed by the Persian cavalry, who stopped up the neighboring spring from which they drew their water, and sometimes rode round their flanks and intercepted the convoys which brought up provisions from Megara. Pausanias was still unable to make up his mind to attack, and had the tameness of spirit to determine on drawing his army back nearer to Plataea, to a position where water was more abundant and the slopes less exposed to cavalry raids. Accordingly the army commenced its retreat by night; but everything went wrong with the movement. The Peloponnesians of the center started off in a hurry, and did not halt in the chosen position, but a mile too far to the rear. The Spartans delayed till nearly day; for one commander of a brigade obstinately refused to believe in a retreat, and had to be convinced by Pausanias himself before he would move. The Athenians waited for the Lacedaemonians to retire before they themselves went back. Hence it came to pass 1 Herodotus gives, in ix. 28, 29, the full muster-roll of the Greeks. 210 GREECE 479 B.C. that when day broke the Persians saw that the Greek center had disappeared, while the two wings were retreating across the rolhng ground towards Plataea, without any connection between their movements. Mardonius thought his opportunity had come, and salHed forth Thethrre positions oftiheGreeKArmy^ before the ba,ttle of Plataea- 1 with horse and foot, taking no trouble to form a line of battle, but hurrying on to catch the enemy before they could take up a position. It looked as if the Greeks were lost, but despair gave Pausanias the necessary courage ; he fronted up the portion of the army that was with him ten thousand Spartan and Laconian hoplites, fifteen hundred Arcadians of Tegea, and a mass of some thirty-five thou- SALAMIS ANDPLATAEA 211 479 B.C. sand Helots and other light troops. Then, after sending off to tell the Athenians that he was going to fight, he dashed at the con- fused mass of pursuers that was streaming after him. Here the Persians were in front, while the rest of the army was hurrying up from the camp in great disorder, and was not yet on the field. The Persians set their large wicker shields on the ground before them, and began to ply their bows, but after they had let fly a few volleys the Greek line came crashing down upon them, rolled over the barrier of shields, and fell to work at close quarters with sword and lance. There was half an hour of hard fighting, for the picked troops of the army of Mardonius stood their ground like men. But their short swords and quilted tunics were not a fair match for the heavy pike and complete mail of the Spartans. They began to fall back towards the river, and rolled in upon the hordes that were advancing to join them. Mardonius was struck down by a stone; no officer came forward to take his place, and the whole vast body of Asiatics broke up in disorder. Artabazus, who led the rear, drew off his forty thousand men and retired In safety on the road which led to the northwest. He started off with all speed, and marched day and night, everywhere preceding the rumor of the disaster, so that he got safely away to Thessaly, and finally reached Asia. No doubt he was followed by many other scattered bodies. But the mass of the Asiatics fell back on their fortified camp beyond the Asopus, and then turned to bay. Meanwhile, far to the left, a separate battle had been going on between the Athenians and the Boeotian contingent of the Persian army. It raged until the Boeotians saw that their main body was routed; then they gave way and retreated on Thebes. The Athe- nians did not pursue them, but marched on the Persian camp, where they found the Spartans vainly endeavoring to force an entrance. Presently the Greek center also appeared, too late to take any part in the main battle. It had not seen an enemy, except one stray body of Theban horse, which caught the Megarian contingent on the march, and slew six hundred men before It was driven off. After some severe fighting at the palisades of the entrenched camp, the Athenians and Tegeans burst their way in. The rest followed, and then the resistance of the Orientals suddenly collapsed. They let themselves be butchered without a struggle, till the corpses lay massed In heaps in every corner of the camp. Nothing put an end to the slaughter but the weariness of the conquerors. The spoil 212 GREECE 479 B.C. which fell into the hands of the Greeks was enormous : the camp equipage of the Persian officers comprised cups and dishes of silver and gold, rich stuffs and hangings, and troops of slaves and con- cubines; even their inlaid weapons and armor were of very consid- erable value; horses, camels, and mules in countless numbers were also captured. It was a booty such as no Greeks had ever divided before. Plataea was fought and won in the most unscientific way; not even at Inkerman was the generalship more wanting on both sides. But the victory was none the less decisive: while the victors only lost thirteen hundred men, the Persian army was annihilated ; nothing was left of it save broken bands flying northward towards the Hellespont. All that remained to be done was to punish the traitors in Greece. A few days after the battle the army marched on Thebes and laid siege to it ; ere long the town had to surrender. It was punished by the public execution of the leaders of its oli- garchy, and deprived of its presidency in the Boeotian League, which seems to have fallen for a time to Tanagra. The other allies of Persia submitted without striking a blow. On the very day on which the battle of Plataea had been fought, another engagement of great importance had taken place on the other side of the Aegean. At the same time that the Greek army marched for Boeotia, a confederate fleet of one hundred and ten ships had been collected at Aegina, under the Spartan King Leoty- chides and the Athenian Xanthippus. This squadron was destined to create a diversion in Asiatic waters, and to watch the remnant of the Persian fleet, of which three hundred vessels still lay off the coast of Ionia. Moreover, there was some hope that the Greeks of Asia, especially the islanders, would rise in revolt when they saw the confederate fleet at hand. Accordingly the Greeks advanced as far as Delos; here they received emissaries from Samos promising active assistance, and heard that an outbreak had already taken place at Chios. This emboldened them to push out and search for the Persian fleet. They found it drawn ashore on the promontory of Mycale, not far from Miletus. A considerable land force, sent down from Sardis, lay encamped beside the fleet. With a promptness and decision which contrasts very strongly with the slowness and timidity of Pausanias at Plataea, Leotychides and Xanthippus determined on an imme- diate attack. They landed on the mainland and marched straight sala:mis and plataea 213 479 B.C. on the Persian camp. The enemy came out to meet them, and a protracted struggle was fought on the shore, which ended in the retreat of the Asiatics towards their entrenched camp. Here a second contest raged, but it was short, for the Athenians and Corin- thians got in at the gates along with the flying foe. Then the Persians dispersed and took to the hills, leaving both their camp and their three hundred ships on the shore in the hands of the victors. The loss of the Greeks was heavy, that of their enemies enormous, and many of the fugitives were cut off by the Milesians, who now rebelled openly, and beset the passes through which the Persians fled. Such was the end of the Persian dominion in Ionia; for the moment that the battle was known all the islands threw off their GRUCC DURINS THE INVASION Of XERXES 4 80>479B.C. allegiance to Xerxes, and as many of the mainland towns as dared followed their example. The Great King made his way home to Susa, not only without having gained the new provinces he had coveted, but having actually lost the greater part of one of his own satrapies. Chapter XXI GREEKS OF ITALY AND SICILY, 600-465 B.C. WHILE the recorded history of the states of Greece be- comes fairly continuous in the seventh century, that of the colonies of Sicily and Magna Graecia remains very fragmentary till the end of the sixth. This is but natural; the earlier years of the existence of these cities must have been occupied with little more than monotonous increase and expansion, and obscure wars with the tribes of the inland. It would not be until they had arrived at their full maturity, and found leisure for other things than mere growth, that their annals were likely to become important. Of the relations of the Greeks of Italy and Sicily with their barbarian neighbors there is little to tell before the fifth century. The Oenotrians and Messapians of the one country, the Sicels and Sicanians of the other, gave little trouble to the immigrants. But behind these feeble tribes there loomed in the distance two great powers with whom the Greeks were one day to be engaged in des- perate struggles. The colonists of Cumae and Neapolis dwelt hard by the Etruscan ; those of Selinus and Himera were the immediate neighbors of the Carthaginian merchants of Panormus and Lily- baeum. But it would seem that these nations were very seldom provoked to war by the growth of the Greek states till the com- mencement of the fifth century. Nor was it till the end of that period that the warlike Sabellian tribes came wandering down Central Italy, and commenced to cut short the dominions of the states of Magna Graecia; then only do the names of the Samnite or the Lucanian begin to be heard. Among the Italiot Greeks the most important events of the sixth century are connected with the curious story of the Pythag- orean brotherhoods. Pythagoras was a celebrated philosopher, a Samian by birth, but a resident in Italy by choice. His tenets were strange and fanciful including such beliefs as the transmigra- tion of souls, and the mystic meaning of arithmetical numbers; but he imported a moral earnestness and a religious fervor into his 214 ITALY AND SICILY 215 Circa 529 B.C. teaching which secured him many disciples. These followers were formed into societies, and bound themselves by oath to assist each other as well in temporal matters as in the diffusion of the Pythag- orean philosophy. No member was admitted without long pro- bation, and the societies were divided into a hierarchy of grades, through which the aspirant had to pass before becoming fully initiated. It may, therefore, be said that the organization of these brotherhoods had a considerable resemblance to that of the Free- masons of our own day. But they were far from preserving the character of societies for mutual benevolence and philosophic life, and very soon took to interfering in politics. They fostered such a feeling of clanship, and such contempt for the unphilosophic multi- tude, that the Pythagoreans were ere long found acting as an organized party in the Italiot cities. Their strongest seat was at Croton, where the philosopher himself had settled, and where many of the leading men had become his disciples. Everywhere they are found on the side of oligarchy; the teaching of Pythagoras was too subtle to attract the ignorant masses, and lent a sanction to the contempt which the upper classes nourished for the proletariate. When, as happened at Croton, the Pythagorean brotherhoods secured a hold on the magistracy and the conduct of public affairs, they worked in favor of autocratic government by the initiated, and the exclusion of the democracy from power. Croton, while under the rule of the Pythagoreans, became involved in a war with her wealthy and luxurious neighbors of Sybaris. The struggle was fought out on a larger scale and carried to a more bitter end than was usual in the contests of Greek states. When each town had called in its allies and armed its native Italian subjects, Sybaris is said to have put three hundred thousand and Croton a hundred thousand men into the field. The numbers are no doubt exaggerated, but they bear witness to the size and wealth of the cities of Magna Graecia. Milo, the famous athlete, a distinguished follower of Pythagoras, commanded the Cro- toniate army and triumphed over the enemy, whose tyrant, Telys with thousands of his followers was slain in the battle. The conquered city itself fell into the hands of the victors, who granted no terms, but expelled the whole of the inhabitants, and divided up their land among themselves. The exiled Sybarites wandered far and wide, but the majority settled at Laiis and Scidrus on the Tyrrhenian Sea, old colonies of their native town. The whole 216 GREECE 570-376 B.C. Greek world was surprised and shocked at the fall of so great a city; even the distant Milesians put on mourning when the news reached them ; for they had long been bound to Sybaris by com- mercial ties, and their manufacturers were wont to weave into gar- ments the wool of the rich Sybarite flockmasters. Their ruthless treatment of the conquered city was ultimately the cause of the ruin of the Pythagoreans of Croton. The oligarchs divided up all the Sybarite territory among themselves, and refused to grant allotments to the proletariate. This gave rise to a sedi- tion much resembling some of the agrarian troubles at Rome. The populace took arms under a certain Cylon, and made an attack on the haughty philosophers. A democracy was successfully estab- lished, and the Pythagorean brotherhoods were subjected to such a relentless persecution that after much bloodshed they were crushed. Similar but less violent movements troubled the other Italiot cities, and resulted in the destruction of Pythagoreanism as a political power. As a philosophy, however, it long remained vigorous in Italy; as late as 376 B.C. Archytas, the great legislator of Taren- tum, is said to have endeavored to embody Pythagorean principles in his system of government. Like their mother-cities in Greece, the majority of the states of Italy and Sicily passed under the rule of a tyrant at some period of their existence. The most famous among the earlier despots was Phalaris of Acragas (circ. 570 b.c), a magistrate who had seized the throne by means of the numerous clients and public servants whom his office put at his disposal. He was noted above all his fellows in the West or the East for his savage cruelty; even Periander is not credited with any deeds so atrocious as that of roasting enemies alive within a brazen bull, which tradition ascribes to Phalaris. This ruffian was overthrown at the end of sixteen years by a popular outbreak, but Acragas was not thereby freed from tyrants ; the grandsons of Telemachus, the leader who slew Phalaris, are found ruling the city as despots till 475 B.C. Anaxilaiis, of the Italiot town of Rhegium, was another tyrant of great power and resolution. His chief exploit was to seize complete control over the Sicilian Strait by capturing the town of Zancle, which lay over against him on the other side of the water (493 B.C.). He instigated the exiled Samians, who fled from Asia after the Ionic revolt, to seize the place by a treacherous and piratical descent. When they had done this he himself fell upon ITALY AND SICILY 217 485 B.C. them, and avenged the Zancleans by crushing their conquerors. He then settled up the town with colonists of his own, who changed its name to Messene, in honor of the Messenian blood which ran in the veins of the population of Rhegium. Thus the great port on the Sicilian shore of the strait became a Dorian instead of an Ionian town. But the greatest of the despots of the West were the two sons of Deinomenes, Gelo and Hiero, tyrants of Syracuse. They were originally officers in the service of Hippokrates, the ruler of Gela; but when their master was killed in battle, Gelo, by the aid of the army, became his successor. Five years after, the oligarchic party at Syracuse expelled from their city by the populace called in Gelo to help them. The tyrant restored them to their homes, but retained possession of Syracuse for himself (485 B.C.). He fixed his abode there, and handed over Gela to be governed by his brother Hiero. Gelo was the founder of the supremacy of Syracuse in Sicily: before his day it would seem that both Acragas and Gela were more important places. His method of enlarging Syracuse was not unlike that of the Assyrian kings of old ; he took Camarina, and forced all its inhabitants to come and dwell in his new capital. Soon after he fell on Megara Hyblaea and other neighboring places, and after selling the lower classes as slaves " for he thought the proletariate a most troublesome companion to dwell with " ^ transplanted the wealthier citizens to Syracuse. These accessions of population may have made that city larger and richer, but they paved the way for countless troubles in the future; for, as was natural, the old and the new inhabitants were always quarreling. But perhaps Gelo calculated that their divisions made him strong. He fortified Syracuse with new walls and adorned it with many public edifices. His undisputed sway extended over the larger half of Sicily; only Messene, Acragas, Himera, and Selinus were outside his power. Moreover, he maintained an immense merce- nary army, the inevitable appendage of a tyranny. So large was it, that when the Greeks sent to ask aid at the time of the invasion of Xerxes, Gelo was able to proffer them twenty thousand hoplites and eight thousand horsemen and light-troops, if only they would accept him as their commander-in-chief. It will be remembered that the confederates very wisely refused to put themselves in the hands of the unscrupulous tyrant. 1 Herod, vii. c. 156. 218 GREECE 480-478 B.C. The same spring which witnessed the invasion of Greece by Xerxes proved a time of no small danger for Gelo. The Cartha- ginians seem to have been moved into a fear for their own pos- sessions by the growth of the Syraciisan power. Moreover, there were Sicilian exiles who, with the true Greek recklessness in mat- ters of civil strife, called in the barbarians to aid them. It is said too that the Persian king urged them on to the attack, in order that they might prevent any aid from being sent to Greece by the Italiot or Siceliot towns. It is at any rate certain that the first great Carthaginian invasion of Sicily coincides in time with Thermopy- lae and Salamis. Hamilcar, one of the two " suffetes," or supreme magistrates of Carthage, landed on the north coast of the island with a vast mercenary army of barbarian troops, drawn from all the tribes of the Western Mediterranean ; it is said to have amounted to three hundred thousand men. He then laid siege to Himera, the nearest Greek city, and was lying before it when Gelo attacked him. The tyrant had got together all his own forces, and was joined by those of Acragas, whose ruler Thero was his close friend. With about sixty thousand men in hand, he boldly fell upon the Car- thaginian camp. The day was bloody and the victory long dis- puted, but at last Gelo learned from an intercepted letter that Hamilcar was expecting a reinforcement of cavalry. Disguising a body of his own horsemen, he sent them round to the back of the Carthaginian camp, and at the critical moment these supposed friends charged the rear of Hamilcar's men and threw them into confusion. This settled the fight; the Carthaginian suffete fell, his army was scattered, and its loss in slain and prisoners was so great that it was practically annihilated. The victory was soon followed by a peace, and it w^as seventy years before another army from Africa dared to make a descent on the shores of .Sicily. While the laurels which he had earned by saving the Greeks of the West from the barbarian were still fresh, Gelo died of a dropsical complaint, and left his throne and his army to his brother Hiero (478 B.C.). That prince was not less powerful or less able than his predecessor. The chief event of his reign was the defeat which he inflicted on the barbarian power wdiich stood to the Greeks of Italy in much the same relation that Carthage did to the Greeks of Sicily. The Etruscans had long resented the attempts of Hellenic merchants and settlers to establish themselves in the northern half of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Half a century before they ITALY AND SICILY 219 478-468 B.C. had succeeded, after a desperate struggle, in preventing the exiled Phocaeans of Asia Minor from establishing themselves in Corsica (540 B.C.). Nov^ they themselves took the offensive, and collect- ing a considerable fleet laid siege to Cumae, the northernmost of the Italiot cities. The Cumaeans sent for aid to Hiero, who came up in haste with a powerful squadron, and completely defeated the Etruscans (474 b.c). Chance has preserved, among the few relics of the fifth century which have come down to us, one of the original Etruscan helmets which the victor offered up to Apollo at Delphi, with its dedicatory inscription still legible. In Sicily Hiero extended the dominion which his brother had left him. He quarreled with Thrasydaeus, son of Thero of Acra- gas, and succeeded in expelling that tyrant and annexing his dominions. This conquest made him master of all Sicily except the extreme west and northeast of the island. Hiero resolved to make himself a name by establishing a new city, and set to work much in the same way as his brother had done in peopling Syra- cuse. He compelled the inhabitants of the Ionic city of Catana to remove to Leontmi, and fixed on their deserted city as the place for his new foundation. On its site, which he renamed Aetna after the mountain which overlooked it, he settled ten thousand colonists, mostly chosen from the ranks of his mercenaries. So pleased was he with this achievement that when his chariot chanced to be victorious at the Olympic games, he ordered the heralds to proclaim his name as " Hiero the Aetnaean " rather than " the Syracusan." After a prosperous reign of ten years, Hiero died (468 B.C.). His death was the signal for the wildest internal commotions at Syracuse. The throne was disputed between his brother Thrasy- bulus, and his nephew, the son of Gelo. This quarrel gave the Syracusans an opportunity of coming by their own. After a stormy period, in which the old citizens and the mercenaries of Hiero settled all their outstanding grudges with the sword, the party of the tyrants had the worst of the game. Thrasybulus was besieged in Ortygia, the island-citadel of Syracuse, and at last com- pelled to surrender it, and to retire under a capitulation to Italy. His departure, however, was far from making an end of the civil broils. The rights of the original inhabitants of the city, of the Camarinaeans and others whom Gelo had forced to dwell there, of the strangers from all parts of Greece who had been invited over 220 GREECE 478-465 B.C. by the tyrants, and of the numerous exiles who returned to reclaim their property, were so hopelessly at variance that no peaceful agree- ment could be made between them. Seditions were equally rife in the other towns of Sicily; when the strong hand of Hiero was removed, the faction which had supported and that which had opposed the tyrants promptly fell to blows. It was not till several years of desperate sedition and civil war had elapsed that the Sice- \Megara \' pyracuse '^ CREEK COLONIES IN SICILY AND fTALY SOO-465 &C liots arrived at a modus vivcndi. It was the democratic faction which conquered ; they celebrated their triumph by giving back to each city its complete autonomy, and by restoring all the exiles who had been driven out by the sons of Deinomenes. The sur- vivors of the mercenaries of Hiero were allowed to settle down at Messene alone. Catana was reconquered by its old inhabitants, and resumed its former name. Camarina also rose from the dust, ITALY AND SICILY 221 478-465 B.C. and everywhere an endeavor was made to restore the old state of things which had existed before the rise of the tyrants. The next forty years formed the most flourishing period in the whole of the history of Sicily. The troubles which the islanders had undergone seem to have aroused them to the same energy which the Persian wars had kindled in their brethren of Greece Proper. Their prog- ress in wealth and prosperity was astonishing: that side of culture which displays itself in art was especially rapid in development; in the middle of the fifth century the Siceliots were decidedly ahead of their contemporaries in the older Hellenic lands. It was not till the influence of Pheidias was felt in Greece that art in the mother-country attained to the level of art in the colonies. In political matters the Siceliots remained consistently attached to democracy, until a series of disasters at the end of the century drove them to take refuge once more under the strong hand of a despot. But for sixty years they flourished beneath the democratic form of government which was best suited to cities that possessed such a mixed body of inhabitants. The Greeks of Italy had never fallen so wholly into the power of tyrants as had their Siceliot brethren. The few towns, such as Rhegium, which were despotically governed seem to have freed themselves about the same time that the despots of Sicily were expelled. The chief event in Italiot history which marked this period was the first check which the Greeks suffered at the hands of the peoples of the interior. In 473 b. c, the next year after the defeat of the Etruscans at Cumae, the Tarentines and Rhegines allied themselves to make an attack on the powerful tribe of the lapygians, in hope of extending the area of Greek colonization. But they suffered a most disastrous repulse, and the greater part of their army was cut to pieces. " Never in my day," wrote Herod- otus, " was there such a terrible slaughter of Hellenes ; three thou- sand of the Rhegines alone fell and the loss of the Tarentines was even greater." This defeat was but the first intimation of greater disasters to come, when two generations later the Sabellian tribes were to set themselves to cut short the borders of the states of Magna Graecia. But for the present the Italiot cities shared alike in the rapid development and the democratic tendencies of their Siceliot neighbors. Chapter XXII EVENTS IN ASIA MINOR AND GREECE, 479-460 B.C. AFTER the battle of Mycalethe Peloponnesian admirals /-\ considered that enough had been done in disabhng the ^ -M. Persians from further naval operations in the Aegean. This was not, however, the opinion of Xanthippus and the Athe- nians; strengthening themselves with ships from the revolted Ionian cities, they sailed north, and began to attack the Persian garrisons along the Hellespont. They found the famous bridge completely destroyed by storms, but the towns in its neighborhood were still so firmly held by the Persians that the inhabitants had not dared to rise. Sestos was the place which gave the Athenians most trouble ; they lay before it all the autumn, and did not take it until the famishing garrison slipped out by night into the Thracian hills, there to be cut to pieces by the natives. Only Artayctes, the gov- ernor of the district, fell into the hands of the besiegers; him, contrary to Greek custom, they put to death by crucifixion, to avenge a wanton pollution of the temple of Protesilaiis, of which he had been guilty. After this the Athenians sailed home, and their allies dispersed. Such was the panic which the result of Plataea and Mycale had cast on the soul of Xerxes, that the Great King made no further endeavor to sustain the numerous outlying garrisons which still held for him the cities of the Thracian coast and other distant pos- sessions. Nevertheless the Persian power had been so firmly rooted beyond the Hellespont that it did not fall at once. Several years of war were necessary to reduce these strongholds. In 478 B.C. the Peloponnesians fitted out a small fleet of twenty ships, which was joined by thirty more from Athens. They were placed under Pausanias, regent of Sparta, the victorious commander at Plataea; while the Athenian squadron was headed by Aristeides and by Cimon, the young son of the great Miltiades. After sail- ing into the Levant and assisting the Greek cities of Cyprus to revolt, Pausanias turned north and laid siege to Byzantium, the 22-2 INASIA MINOR 223 478 B.C. most important of the Persian fortresses in Thrace. It held out as obstinately as Sestos in the previous year; but later in the autumn the governor, a kinsman of Xerxes, surrendered. The fleet was therefore able to winter at the town. Pausanias was a man of more ambition than ability; the honors and wealth which had fallen to him on account of his share in the triumph of Plataea had completely turned his head. He took the whole credit of the battle to himself, and dedicated in his own name, and not in that of the confederates, the tripod which was set up at Delphi as a memorial of the victory. While in Sparta he had openly showed his dislike for the frugal and irksome manner of life which was there imposed upon him, and when once he was away from home his luxury, haughtiness, and reckless violence became unbearable. But, ill regulated though his ambition might be, it was not at first suspected that it would spur him on to high treason against Greece. Such, however, was its effect; after tak- ing Byzantium he secretly released some of the prisoners, and charged them with letters to the Persian king, in which he offered to subdue Greece and to do homage for it as the vassal of Xerxes, if only he were supplied with sufficient means and granted the king's daughter as his wife. It was his aim, in short, to become tyrant of all Greece, and he was ready to purchase his opportunity by becoming the servant of the barbarian whose armies he had routed. Xerxes was far from estimating the presumptuous regent at his right value, and showed himself delighted with his overtures. He placed his resources at the Spartan's disposal, and bade him " work on night and day to accomplish his purpose, without letting himself be held back by lack of gold or silver, or want of troops, for all should be at his command." If Pausanias could have kept cool, he might have become really dangerous to Greece, but when once he had the king's letters before him his conduct grew so out- rageous that his designs began to be suspected. Not only did he effect royal state and surround himself with numbers of foreign mercenaries, but his bearing towards the allies assumed such an arbitrary and dictatorial cast that no Oriental despot could have been more offensive. Ere long reports of his behavior reached Sparta, and provoked the ephors into issuing a warrant for his recall, and appointing a certain Dorcis admiral in his stead. Before Dorcis could reach Byzantium, matters had come to a 224 GREECE 478 B.C. head ; the fleet had refused to obey its commander, and placed itself at the disposition of the Athenian leaders, Aristeides and Cimon. One morning, we are told, a Samian captain gave the signal for revolt, by rowing up to the regent's galley and running into it in a deliberate and malicious manner. Pausanias was driven to fury, when his angry rebukes were met by the reply that " he had better go home, and that if it had not been for the memory of Plataea he would have been punished as he deserved." He could do nothing to revenge himself; the Peloponnesian ships in the fleet were few, and those of the Athenians and the revolted Greeks of Asia out- numbered them threefold. The would-be tyrant found himself stripped of his power, and summoned home to take his trial for treason at Sparta. His successor's orders were quietly disregarded by the fleet, which acknowledged Aristeides alone as admiral. The mad conduct of Pausanias had precipitated a change which was inevitable; it was obvious that Sparta could not any longer pretend to the direction of the confederate fleet. Her contingent did not amount to a tithe of its force, and was in no way distinguished for conduct or seamanship. Her admirals had nearly wrecked the cause of Greece at Artemisium and Salamis. The Athenians, as we shall soon see, owed her no gratitude ; the Greeks of Asia were lonians who preferred to follow their kinsmen of Athens rather than a Dorian from Sparta. Moreover, Aristeides and Cimon were personally the models of everything that Pau- sanias was not ; the inflexible honesty of purpose of the one, and the gallantry and generosity of the other, won every heart, and made the transference of power as popular as it was necessary. While the siege of Byzantium was in progress, a very danger- ous crisis in the home politics of Greece had been tided over. When the winter which followed Plataea and Mycale had passed, the Athenians set themselves to rebuild their twice-ruined city. They included in the new circuit much ground which had formerly been outside the walls, and planned for its defense a far more formidable line of fortifications than had existed before. The energy which they displayed in this work roused an unworthy jealousy in the hearts of their neighbors. Several states, headed by Aegina, sent private information to Sparta, to the effect that Athens was making herself dangerously strong, and urged the ephors to endeavor to arrest the work. The Spartans were already growing alarmed at the power and resolution which Athens had INASIAMINOR 225 478 B.C. displayed in the late war; their timid and conservative policy was sure to come into collision sooner or later with the designs of the active and restless naval state. Accordingly they listened with attention to the complaints of their allies, and determined to inter- fere. For very shame they could not venture absolutely to forbid the fortification of Athens, but they sent an embassy to urge that the work was both unnecessary and inexpedient. In the event of another Persian invasion they asserted that the possession of a strongly walled city, just outside Peloponnesus, would give the enemy a dangerous base of operations, and they offered to receive the Athenians within the Isthmus and give them safe harborage there, if ever they were again compelled to evacuate Attica. The plea was futile and obviously insincere, but the Athenians were for the moment in too hazardous a position to return a bold refusal. Their walls were but half-built, and showed gaps and breaches everywhere. The crisis was one at which the subtle genius of Themistocles was able to display itself in all its power. By his advice the Athenian assembly returned answer that an embassy should at once be sent to Sparta to discuss the matter. Themistocles was given two colleagues and entrusted with the affair; he himself went off at once, and notified his mission to the ephors, but his companions, by previous arrangement, were long in making their appearance. Until they arrived Themistocles professed himself unable to commence the negotiations. Meanwhile the whole population of Attica, men, women, and chilren, were working day and night to complete the w^all. Abundant material was at hand in the ruins of the old city, and the fortifications rose at an incredible rate ; ever after the haste of the builders could be discerned from the roughness of their con- struction; tombstones, temple-columns, and wrought blocks of all kinds may still be seen built up in the courses of the wall. By the time that the two belated ambassadors reached Sparta, Athens was already getting into a state of defense. Meanwhile rumors of this activity began to reach the ephors; but Themistocles succeeded in keeping them quiet by asserting with the utmost confidence that nothing was being done at Athens. He even induced the Spartans to send commissioners to obtain confirmation with their own eyes as to the suspension of the work; when these envoys arrived in Athens they were treated with courtesy, but detained to serve as hostages for the personal safety of Themistocles and his colleagues. S26 GREECE 478 B.Cc At last several months had been wasted, and the walls were suffi- ciently strong to withstand a siege; Themistocles then changed his tone, boldly avowed his stratagem, and proclaimed the fortifications of Athens as an accomplished fact. The Spartans were bitterly vexed at the trick, but the time for action had now gone by, and they were compelled to accept the inevitable, and leave Athens to herself. This incident, combined with the mutiny against Pau- sanias, sufficed to complete the estrangement of the two powers which had conquered the Persian. When the walls of the old city of Athens were finished, Themis- tocles prevailed on his countrymen to enlarge their system of forti- fications. Such was his influence with the Ecclesia that he obtained a vote which sanctioned the erection of another line of walls around Peiraeus and the neighboring harbor of Munychia. This work was even more laborious and expensive than that which had just been completed. The ramparts were built to a thickness of fourteen or fifteen feet, and not lined with rubble, as was usual in Greek fortifi- cations, but composed of hewn stone throughout ; they were by far the strongest piece of military architecture which Greece had yet seen. In the splendid harbors which they protected, ships might ride by the hundred, while the ample open spaces which lay within them were large enough to sen-e as a refuge for a great part of the inhabitants of Attica. Ere long the population of Peiraeus began to increase at a much more rapid rate than that of the old city ; it was always the chosen abode of the mercantile and seafaring classes, and now became the chief haunt of the numerous Metics (or resident aliens) who were drawn to Attica by the commercial advantages to be found there. Indeed, if it had not been for the sentimental patriotism which clung to the time-honored rock of the Acropolis, Peiraeus rather than Athens might have become the capital of the land. The transference to Athenian hands of the control over the con- federate fleet at Byzantium was destined to have the most mo- mentous consequences. The stress of circumstances combined with the ability of the Athenian leaders to turn the unexpected situa- tion of the moment into a permanent settlement. Asiatic Greece was but half liberated, and the Athenians and their Ionian kinsmen were set upon completing the work. Now that the Peloponncsians had withdrawn from the enterprise, there was no third party present to prevent them from coming to an agreement. Accordingly it was INASIAMINOR 227 477 B.C. but natural that Aristeides, as representing Athens, should conclude conventions with the Ionian states for the regulation of the future conduct of the war. On these compacts, freely and voluntarily entered into by both parties, the future empire of x\thens Was to be built. The chief clauses of the treaties which were now ratified pro- vided that the several states should furnish ships or money for the further prosecution of the war with Persia, and should not with- draw from the alliance without the consent of the whole body of confederates. The probity of Aristeides was so universally recog- nized that he was allowed to assess the liabilities of the various cities at his own discretion. We read that he fixed the sum required for the prosecution of the war at four hundred and sixty talents per annum, partly payable in ships, partly in money. The amount appears considerable, but when it is remembered that, besides the Ionian and Aeolian towns, all the islands of the Cyclades, the colo- nies of Chalcidice, and the liberated states along both shores of the Hellespont were enrolled as contributors, it ceases to appear exces- sive. Subsequent experience showed that it could be largely in- creased without becoming unbearable. The westernmost of the confederates were the cities of Euboea, the most easterly the Byzan- tines ; but the list of members was ere long to be largely increased. It was agreed that the common treasury of the league should be placed in the sacred island of Delos, and that delegates from every state should annually repair to the same spot to discuss the needs of the war. The execution of the decrees of this synod was placed in the hands of the Athenians, who were also charged with the appointment of the officers, afterwards called Hellenotamiae, by whom the funds of the league v/ere to be collected. In their behalf tax-gatherers sailed around the Aegean every spring, and gathered in all contributions, from the few drachmae at which Ceria or Anaphe were assessed, to the numerous talents owed by Miletus or Abdera. The Confederacy of Delos, as this league came to be styled, was in its origin purely military; the sole end which it proposed to itself was the expulsion of the Persian from the various outlying strong- holds in which he was still established. In this design it had no small success. Its first triumphs were won over the garrisons which held the towns of the Thracian coast; but of the operations which dis- lodged them only one has left a mark in history. This was the siege 228 GREECE 468 B.C. of Eion, the fortress at the mouth of the Strymon, by the Athenians under Cimon. Boges, the Persian governor, made a resistance which surpassed in obstinacy any that the Greeks had yet known. When his provisions at last gave out, he gathered his family and his treas- ures on a great funeral pyre and burned himself alive, like the leg- endary Sardanapalus. In the course of nine or ten years of war the Athenians and their confederates succeeded in completely expelling the Persian from Europe, and in restricting his dominion in Western Asia Minor to the inland parts. The whole coast-line, except a small tract between the Troad and the northernmost towns of Aeolis, was liberated ; and its towns, without exception, enrolled themselves in the confederacy of Delos. As these new members came in, the payments of the original confederates were probably reduced, so that nothing more than the necessary four hundred and sixty talents might be raised. Athens had not yet contem- plated turning her predominance into an empire, and was still anxious to show that her activity was disinterested. While the Confederacy of Delos was gaining strength beyond the Aegean, the course of politics in European Greece was compara- tively uneventful. At Sparta Pausanias had been tried for treason after his return from Byzantium, but either because of the caution with which he had conducted his traitorous correspondence, or because the ephors did not wish to push matters to extremity, he was acquitted. Nevertheless he was a marked man, and was never again entrusted with a command. Yet though reduced to the con- dition of a private individual, he did not desist from his intrigues with Xerxes. He sailed back to the East, and once more placed himself in secret connection with the satraps of Asia Minor. The wealth which he had at his disposal and the eternal factions which divided the Greek cities still gave him some hopes of success. At Byzantium he gained such an ascendency that the Athenians were obliged to interfere, and to expel him by force. He then established himself in the Troad, and continued his schemes with such vigor that the Spartan government at last summoned him back to stand another trial. He had the assurance to accept the challenge, and when he arrived at home no accuser had the courage to appear against him. He therefore remained at large, though shunned and suspected by his fellow-citizens. This social ostracism drove him to plan a more violent revenge ; he commenced to intrigue with the Helots, and set on foot a scheme for a general insurrection of the INASIA MINOR 229 469 B.C. serfs of Laconia and the massacre of the Dorian oligarchy. The Helots were always ready to revolt when a leader presented himself, and Pausanias found them ready to follow him. Although the ephors obtained some hints as to his designs, they could obtain no convincing evidence till chance placed it in their hands. Pausanias had a confidential slave, who was acquainted with all his secrets ; one day his master entrusted him with a letter directed to the satrap Artabazus. The slave had observed that, of all the messengers who were sent to Asia, none ever returned. This in- duced him to tamper with the letter; he opened it, and found in a postscript a request that the bearer might be put to death. This discovery naturally induced him to lay the whole matter before the Spartan government. In order that they might have clear evidence against the traitor, the ephors laid a trap for him. They directed the slave to take sanctuary at Taenarum, and arranged a hiding-place for two of their num.ber within earshot of his refuge. Pausanias hastened to the spot to remonstrate with his messenger, and the concealed ephors were able to gather from his conversation ample proof of his guilt. When he returned to Sparta orders were issued for his arrest, and the officers set out to seize him. Pausanias was passing by a temple of Athena when he saw the ephors and their followers approaching him ; his guilty conscience gave him suffi- cient warning, and he rushed into the temple and took sanctuary. Instead of tearing him from the altar, the ephors ordered the doors to be built up, and left the ex-regent to die of starvation. It is said that his own mother was the first to approach and aid the magistrates in the work. When, after some days, Pausanias was drawing near his last gasp, the ephors had the temple opened, and took the dying man outside, that the holy place might not be polluted by his death. Thus perished the conqueror of Plataea, the victim of his own insane pride and ambition (469 B.C.). The fall of Pausanias brought about the disgrace of a man of much greater genius, one who had done ten times more service for Greece than the vainglorious regent. For the last few years Themistocles had been steadily declining in popularity at Athens. His unscrupulous talents were better suited to troublous times than to the less eventful days which had now arrived, and his gross faults were more easily discerned when no crisis was at hand to distract the attention of his fellow-citizens. The fact that his political schemes never showed the least respect for honesty or good faith might not 230 GREECE 471 B.C. entirely have alienated the people. But his open corruption could not be palliated ; it was well known to everyone that he took bribes from all quarters on all possible occasions. A characteristic story relates that while Themistbcles was debating- in public with Aristeides, he observed in a self-laudatory manner " that the chief excellence of a statesman was to be able to foresee and frustrate the designs of public enemies," to which Aristeides rejoined " that another very excellent and necessary quality in a statesman was to have clean hands." The retort was considered crushing. It was indeed unfortunate for Themistocles that he was continually being contrasted with Aristeides, a man who as much exceeded the average Greek standard of probity as he himself fell below it. Moreover he had the bad taste to be continually reminding the Athenians of the services he had done them the worst way to keep the favor of the multitude, for repetition sickens the hearer.^ It is also probable that the influence of Themistocles was weakened by the fact that his political antagonists no longer showed themselves such foes to democratic reforms in the constitution as they had been before the Persian war. The result of Salamis had convinced even the most conservative statesmen that the future career of Athens was to be found on the sea, and that her true strength lay in the arms of her sailors. Nothing marks this change of opinion better than the fact that it was Aristeides, the old op- ponent of naval expansion, who founded the Confederacy of Delos. He is also said in his later years to have advised the concentration of the whole population of Attica in Athens, a step which he would have opposed fifteen years earlier. About the year 471 b.c.^ the strife of political parties became so keen that recourse was once more had to ostracism, the expedient which had been fatal to Aristeides twelve years before. But this time it was Themistocles who was its victim ; he was sent into hon- orary banishment, and took up his abode at Argos. While he was staying there, Pausanias, then deep in his treasonable schemes, sounded him as to his willingness to join in the plot against the liberties of Greece. With more firmness than might have been expected of him, Themistocles refused to take part in the intrigue, but he did not reveal the plans of Pausanias to anyone. When the ephors seized the traitor's papers after his death, they found traces 1 The story in tlie IloXirtia zmv Ad-Qvaiujv about Themistocles's intrigues against the Areopagus in 463 is impossible; he was in exile long before. IN ASIA MINOR 231 4C8-460 B.C. of this correspondence with Themistocles, though there was nothing which actually proved the Athenian's implication in the plot. How- ever, his countrymen showed an intention of bringing the exiled statesman to trial, and sent to fetch him from Argos. Themistocles resolved to fly rather than to face his political opponents ; he reached Corcyra, but such a hue-and-cry after him was raised throughout Greece that he could find no safe refuge, and, after a series of hair- breadth escapes, which lasted for more than two years, was com- pelled to take refuge in Asia, on Persian ground (466 B.C.). All chance of an honorable career in Athens was now gone from Themistocles. In sheer disgust he turned to his old enemies, and craved the protection of the Great King. Xerxes was just dead, slain by a domestic conspiracy, and it was to his young son Artaxerxes that the exile made his petition. The name of Themis- tocles was so dreaded at Susa that his offers of service produced all the effect he could have desired. It is even said that Artaxerxes was so affected with joy that he was heard at night to cry thrice in his dreams, *' Themistocles the Athenian is mine." The king re- ceived his suppliant with the greatest favor, listened with attention to his schemes for the subjugation of Greece, and sent him down to Asia Minor furnished with ample resources. He was allotted con- siderable revenues for his support, and made tyrant of IMagnesia, where he dwelt in great state. Here he was joined by his family, and his friends in Attica contrived to remit him the greater part of his fortune. Eighty talents had been seized by the state, yet this was only the smaller half of the wealth of a man who at the moment he entered public life had not three talents of his own. Themistocles ruled at Magnesia for a few years, and then died, without having fulfilled any of the promises which he had made to the Persian. It is probable that he never had the heart to injure Athens, and resigned himself to ending his life in exile as the pen- sioner of the barbarian. If he had really intended to forward the intrigues of Artaxerxes, there is little doubt that he might have done much against the liberties of Greece; that he failed in his promise argues want of will rather than want of power. Perhaps his last years may have been made less unbearable to him by the sight of the rapid expansion of the naval power of Athens, a power of which he had himself been the sole founder. Chapter XXIII RISE OF ATHENIAN EMPIRE, 471-458 B.C. THREE years after Themistocles had suffered ostracism and disappeared from the poHtics of Athens, his great rival was removed by death. Aristeides had come to be considered so far above all mere party and faction that his death was mourned by every class alike as much by the democrats, who remembered his services at Byzantium and his later constitutional reforms, as by the old Attic party, which recollected the history of his earlier years. Although the legends which relate that he died in absolute poverty deserve little credit, it is certain that he was not an obol the richer for all the years he had spent in the service of the state. Athens never saw his like again ; though she owned many able statesmen in after years, and many true patriots, she was never so happy as to produce another man who combined in such a degree the spirit of honor and self-abnegation with the highest practical ability. The death of Aristeides left Cimon the most prominent figure in Athenian politics. The son of Miltiades was a man of generous impulses and perfect honesty, but he could never rise above the position of a party leader, or win the entire confidence of his fellow- citizens. The aristocratic spirit was so deeply rooted in him that he was constantly acting in a way which caused him to be suspected by the democratic party. Above all, his reverence and admiration for Sparta, and the efforts which he made to keep his country on good terms with her, were destined to work him harm. The Athe- nians could never believe that a man who loved Laconian manners and admired the Laconian constitution was a safe political guide. Nevertheless, there were many things in his favor : his first appear- ance in public life had been when he discharged, in the true spirit of filial piety, the fine which had been inflicted on his father Miltia- des. Next he had ably seconded Aristeides at the time of the foun- dation of the Confederacy of Delos. Again he had greatly distin- guished himself in the campaign against the Persian garrisons in Thrace, the first occasion on which he had been placed in supreme 233 ATHENIAN EMPIRE 233 470 B.C. command of an Athenian armament. Moreover, his Hfe at home was devoted to winning- the hearts of the multitude. He threw his parks and gardens open to the public, and kept a free table for all the poorer members of his own deme. We are even assured that he used to walk abroad with a retinue of well-dressed slaves, and, if he met a citizen in threadbare clothes, would order some one of them to change garments with him. But all this liberality won him applause rather than confidence from the classes that he courted. Cimon's political schemes were entirely directed towards the East. He thought that Athens should carefully avoid all entangle- ments in the quarrels of European Greece, and devote herself solely to the war with Persia and the strengthening of the maritime confederacy. He wished to preserve a benevolent attitude towards Sparta, and even to assist her, if need should arise, to maintain her old position of predominance on land. In return he hoped to secure her good will, and to induce her to acquiesce in the naval supremacy of Athens. His blind admiration for the Lacedaemo- nians caused him to forget the narrowness and selfishness of their views, and to hope that they would join in a fair and equal alliance a policy of which those dull egoists were quite incapable. While Athens was under the political guidance of Cimon, her maritime expeditions never ceased. In 470 B.C. she fell upon the island of Scyros and occupied it. The inhabitants, a people of Dolopian race, were much addicted to piracy, and had made them- selves such a nuisance to traders that their expulsion was hailed as a public benefit to Greece. The island was occupied by a body of Athenians as " Cleruchs." They settled there, not as an independ- ent community, but as an outlying body of citizens who did not abandon their civic rights at home. Athenian superstition was much gratified by the discovery in Scyros of a gigantic skeleton, which was pronounced to be that of the old Attic hero Theseus, who had, according to legend, died in exile on the island. The bones were brought to Athens with great rejoicings, and a temple named the Theseum was built over them. A more important expedition was that which Cimon led, a few years later, to liberate the Greek cities of Lycia and Pamphylia, many of which were still in the hands of the Persians. He set sail from Cnidus with three hundred Athenian and Ionian galleys, and passed eastward, expelling Persian garrisons from Phaselis and 234 GREECE 467 B.C. other places. At last he heard that a fleet was collecting to oppose him. The satrap in command had not yet been joined by his Phoenician contingents, and in order to avoid a battle retired up the river Eurymedon, on whose shores a considerable land army was lying. Cimon was set upon fighting before this reinforcement arrived; he pushed up the river and brought the enemy to action in a confined space where the superior seamanship of the Athenians was of little avail. Nevertheless he gained a decisive victory, and when the defeated Persians ran their galleys aground and en- deavored to save them by the aid of their land army, he put his hop- lites ashore and won a second battle on the beach. His good for- tune and skillful strategy combined to give him yet another triumph ; putting to sea, he intercepted the eighty Phoenician galleys, which had set out to join the main armament, and destroyed most of them off the coast of Cyprus. This brilliant series of victories completely broke the naval power of Persia; two generations were to pass before a barbarian fleet was again seen in Greek waters. Meanwhile Phaselis and the other Greek towns of the neighborhood joined the Confederacy of Delos, and the liberation of the Asiatic Hellenes was completed. The nominal object of the league which the Athenians and the lonians had formed at Byzantium was now fulfilled. There was no longer any Greek state in servitude to the barbarian. It might, therefore, be reasonably pleaded that the reasons for the existence of the Confederacy of Delos no longer survived. The Persian had ceased to be dangerous, and any further attacks on him could merely lead to unnecessary expenditure of blood and money. Moreover, the continuance of the league left in the hands of Athens a power of taxing her allies and imposing orders on them which was decidedly in contradiction to the universal Greek desire for " autonomy." The states of Asia and the Aegean had placed power in her hands in the moment of danger, but had not intended it to be permanent. AVhen the crisis was over, they began to think of withdrawing from the league and managing their own affairs. The first state which declared its secession from the Confeder- acy of Delos was the wealthy island-city of Naxos in the Cyclades. Probably her citizens remembered the repulse which they had in- flicted on the Persian in 501 B.C., and thought that they were once more quite able to take care of themselves. In the same year that ATHENIAN EMPIRE 233 465 B.C. the battle of the Eurymedon was fought, they announced that they intended to withdraw from the league. In strict equity Athens ought to have allowed her recalcitrant ally to secede ; but she had no intention of doing so. Her greatness and strength were so bound up with her position as head of the Confederacy of Delos, that her statesmen had no thought of allowing the league to dissolve. When Naxos proclaimed its secession it was immediately blockaded by an Athenian fleet. After a siege of some duration the islanders were forced to surrender; they were punished by the demolition of their walls, the forfeiture of their warships, and the imposition of a heavy fine. It was now evident to the whole body of the allies of Athens that by joining the league they had provided themselves with a mistress rather than a leader. Moreover, the slackness of many members of the confederacy had been for some time working to diminish the naval strength of the whole body of allies as compared with that of Athens. It had grown customary for cities, especially small places which had no old traditions of naval greatness, to com- pound for their contingent of ships, by paying a larger annual con- tribution in money. Athens had gladly accepted their offers, and the galleys which should have been supplied by them were now replaced by Athenian vessels maintained by their composition- money. This enabled the Athenian government to keep afloat a much larger number of ships than could have been supported from the mere revenues of Attica. There was at first, perhaps, no ulterior motive in the minds of Cimon or his fellows when they supported this scheme. They were merely desirous of having a larger number of Athenian vessels with them, because of their superiority in effi- ciency to those of the allies. But, at the same time, the system of composition worked entirely in the direction of giving Athens a complete mastery, and of turning her allies into mere payers of tribute. Two years after the reduction of Naxos another powerful island-state broke out into rebellion against the supremacy of Athens. The people of Thasos had from very early times possessed a slip of coast land on the mainland of Thrace opposite to their island. By holding it they engrossed the trade of the valley of the Strymon, and held the rich gold mines of Mount Pangaeus. But the Athenians after the capture of Eion set themselves to develop that port as the commercial center of Thrace. They even sent two considerable 236 GREECE 465-463 B.C. expeditions inland, with the object of seizing the lower course of the Strymon. A spot called " The Nine Ways " (Ewia v(Ju{\ where that great river first begins to broaden out into its estuary, but can still be spanned by a bridge, was the chosen site for a fortress to secure the hold of Athens on the land. But the native Thracian tribes banded themselves together, and fell upon the invaders with such desperation that both the Athenian armies were defeated; the rout of the second and larger force in 465 b.c. was a heavy disaster for Athens; of the ten thousand men under Leagrus who had formed the expedition, the larger half were cut to pieces on the battle-field. It was probably the discouragement which this defeat caused at Athens that emboldened Thasos to declare her secession from the Confederacy of Delos. She wished to save her Thracian trade before Athens could make another attempt to divert it from her. The Thasians did not rely on their own resources alone ; they enlisted the Thracians and Macedonians of the mainland, and sent to Sparta to endeavor to induce the ephors to declare war on Athens, as a traitor-state who was endeavoring to steal away the autonomy of her neighbors. The Spartans were in a jealous and sullen mood, and sufficiently alarmed at the continued growth of Attic power to make them think of granting aid to Thasos. But at the very moment that they were about to declare war, they were diverted from it by a disaster that no one could have foreseen. The island-state was therefore left to its own resources; and these were so considerable that she held out against the force of the Athenian confederacy for two whole years. But her ultimate failure was inevitable when she met with no assistance from without. She was obliged at last to surrender to Cimon, whose army had long been lying before her walls. Like Naxos, she was punished for her defection by the loss of her war-fleet and her fortifications, and the imposition of a fine of many talents. Still more galling must have been the final loss of her trade with Thrace, which now passed entirely into Athenian hands. Up to the moment of the siege of Thasos, Athens had been for some fourteen or fifteen years entirely untroubled by the home affairs of Greece ; this freedom she owed partly to the policy of Cimon, and partly to the condition of affairs in Peloponnesus. Since the fall of Pausanias, Sparta had been undergoing many troubles at home. Pier old rival, Argos, had at last recovered from the blow which had been dealt her by Cleomenes in the previous generation. ATHENIAN EMPIRE 237 468-464 B.C. In 468 B.C. she began to bestir herself, and to reclaim her old do- minion over her nearest neighbors. One of her expeditions ended in the final destruction of Mycenae, the little Achaian state in the hills which had survived so many vicissitudes of fortune. It last appears in history as having sent a small contingent to Plataea, in marked contrast to the selfish indifference of Argos. Now at last it met its fate, and was left an empty ring of Cyclopean walls on its lonely hillside (468 B.C.). This activity of the Argives soon brought down on them the anger of Sparta ; and a war broke out, in which many of the Arcadian states lent their aid to Argos. The Spartans fought two severe battles one in front of Tegea against the allied Tegeans and Argives; the other at Dipaea with the full force of Arcadia, except the Mantineans, who, out of hatred to Tegea, clung to their old masters. In both conflicts the Lacedae- monians were victorious, and Argos had once more to sink back into her usual sullen apathy, while the Arcadians returned to their al- legiance. It was soon after the termination of this war that the overtures of the Thasians were made at Sparta. The event which prevented them from receiving attention was the great earthquake of 464 B.C. Such a terrific shock had never visited Peloponnesus before ; its worst force was felt in the valley of the Eurotas. The earth was cleft asunder into chasms ; fearful landslips occurred on the slopes of Taygetus ; while in the town of Sparta hardly a house or temple was left standing, and the loss of life was enormous. This disaster emboldened the Helots to attempt a rising. They had been more suspected and oppressed than ever since the conspiracy of Pausanias, and were ready for any desperate treason. All Messenia rose as one man, and much of Laconia followed its example. The Spartans, backed by their Perioeci, had great difficulty in making head against the rebels, who fortified as their base of operations the old Messenian citadel and sanctuary on Mount Ithome. The Spartans were still engaged in a desperate struggle with their revolted subjects when the siege of Thasos came to an end. Cimon, who was now at the height of his reputation and power, saw with distress the troubles of the city he so much admired. He set himself to persuade the Athenians that they ought to forget old grudges, and save from destruction the state which had shared with them the glory of the Persian war. " Would they," he asked, " con- sent to see Hellas lamed of one leg, and Athens drawing without her yoke-fellow?" His pleading was bitterly opposed by the anti- 238 GREECE 460 B.C. Spartan party at Athens, headed by two statesmen, Ephialtes and Pericles, who had already come into notice as antagonists of Cimon. But the more generous and unwise policy prevailed, and four thousand hoplites were sent to the aid of Sparta. This army was pursued by misfortune ; it was so unsuccessful in attacking Ithome, that the Spartans attributed its failure to ill will rather than ill luck. They therefore began to treat their allies with marked discourtesy, and at last sent them home without a word of thanks, merely stating that their sen-ices could be of no further use. This rudeness and ingratitude fully justified the anti-Spartan party at Athens for their opposition to the projects of Cimon, and gave them a power with the assembly which they had not previously enjoyed. Cimon was now^ no longer able to deal with the policy of the state as he chose, and the conduct of affairs began to pass into the hands of men whose foreign and domestic policy were alike opposed to all his views. Ephialtes and Pericles proceeded to form alliances abroad with all the states which were ill disposed towards Sparta, and at home to commence a revision of the constitution. They were determined to carry out to its furthest logical develop- ment the democratic tendency which Cleisthenes had introduced into the Athenian polity. Of Ephialtes, the son of Sophonides, com- paratively little is known. Although he at first appears as the recog- nized leader of the popular and anti-Spartan party at Athens, he was destined to be cut off so early in his career that we have little record of his character and doings. He seems to have been an eloquent and fiery speaker, and an extreme democrat. But Pericles was a man of very different importance. He was the son of Xan- thippus, the accuser of Miltiades in 489 B.C., and the victor of Mycale and Sestos ; while on his mother's side he came of the blood of the Alcmaeonidae. Pericles was staid, self-contained, and haughty a strange chief for the popular party. But his relationship to Cleisthenes, and the enmity which existed between his house and that of Cimon, urged him to espouse the cause of democracy. More- over, the foreign policy to which he was devoted was the one which had commended itself to the populace. He wished to con- tinue the schemes of Themistocles, and to extend the Athenian power in all directions, without any regard for the susceptibilities of Sparta. The war with Persia he was ready to abandon, now that all danger from that side had passed away, while he designed to strengthen and enlarge the Confederacy of Delos in every pos- ATHENIAN EMPIRE 2^9 460 B.C. sible way, and to make use of its power to the west as well as the east of the Aegean. While Cimon had Greece in his mind, Pericles could only think of Athens, and the temper of the times was favorable to the narrower policy. Pericles was a man of grave and noble presence ; his friends in admiration and his enemies in jest alike compared him to Zeus. He lived a reserved, secluded life, and was seldom to be seen except on great public occasions. His eloquence was all the more effective for not being heard every day; for he always withheld himself, and only appeared to speak on affairs of high moment. But though the man was better fitted to command respect than affection from his followers, his policy was one which was so well suited to the spirit of the times that the populace was quite enthusi- astic in his favor. The first aim which Ephialtes and Pericles set before them- selves was the cutting down of the power of the Areopagus. That body had since the Persian war been the stronghold of the Conservative and philo-Laconian party. Though it had no longer any important political power by the strict letter of the constitution, its patriotic efforts during the Persian wars had enabled it to retain much influence. Moreover, it was the one political corporation at Athens whose members held office for life, and were not responsible for their votes to the people. This by itself sufficed to give the Areopagus a conservative tendency, like that which may be remarked in such bodies as the English Plouse of Lords. Ephialtes took the lead in the attack on the Areopagus. He chose a moment when Cimon was away in the field, assisting the Spartans against the revolted Helots. After a violent struggle, he succeeded in carrying a law which deprived the Areopagus of its ancient censorial power, and reduced it to a mere court to try homicide. As a sign that the guardianship of the laws was thereby taken from the ancient corporation and placed in the hands of the people, he brought down from the Acropolis the tablets inscribed. with the laws of Solon, and set them up before the Prytaneium in the market-place. The prerogatives of the Areopagus were divided among the Council of Five Hundred, the Ecclesia, and the Dicasteries. The law courts took over its moral supervision of the private lives of the citizens, while the Nomophylaces undertook its other function of guarding the con- stitution. These officers were given a seat of honor in the public 240 GREECE 458 B.C. assembly, and instructed to interfere with a veto, whenever a legis- lative proposal was made which transgressed one of the fundamental principles of the constitution. When Cimon came home from the war he was wildly enraged at the advantage that had been taken of his absence, and actually endeavored to repeal the decree of Ephialtes on a technical point of law. This brought matters to a crisis, and, in the confusion, recourse was had to the test of ostracism. It decided against Cimon, who therefore went into banishment. But this wrong against the greatest general of Athens was, not long after, avenged by an over-zealous and unscrupulous friend. Ephialtes was slain by assassins in his own house, and though no one could accuse Cimon himself, it was certain that his party were responsible for the deed. The immediate result of this murder was to leave Pericles in sole and undivided command of the democratic party. The foreign policy of Pericles soon began to involve Athens in troubles at home. He concluded alliances with Argos and Thes- saly, both states at variance with Sparta, and thereby made a collision with the Lacedaemonian confederacy inevitable. He gave still more direct offense to Corinth, one of the most powerful members of that confederacy, by concluding a close alliance with Megara. That state had been engaged in unsuccessful war with Corinth, and had placed herself under the protection of Athens to save her existence. In Boeotia, too, he stirred up enmity, by giving an active support to the democratic party in that country, which was at this moment endeavoring to subvert the oligarchies which prevailed in most of the cities. These provocations made war inevitable. In 458 B.C. the storm burst; the Corinthians formed an alliance with the Aeginetans, whose jealousy of Athens was as great as it had been in the earlier years of the century, and with their Dorian kinsmen at Epidaurus. They were encouraged by the fact that a fleet of no less than two hundred Athenian ships had just been sent to Egypt, to continue the help which Cimon had afforded to the rebel prince Inarus in his revolt against Persia. The allies had also the secret good will of Sparta, but as that state had not yet succeeded in putting down its revolted Helots, it could not spare any aid to its confederates, and did not even declare war on Athens. Chapter XXIV ATHENS AT THE HEIGHT OF HER POWER, 458-445 B.C. AT the moment of the outbreak of the first important naval / \ war which she had to wage with a Greek enemy since the X Jk. formation of her empire, Athens took two important steps. The first was destined to guard against the risk of misfortunes by- sea ; it consisted in the tranference from Delos to Athens of the cen- tral treasury of the confederacy.^ The Samians pointed out the exposed situation of the sacred island, and the great hoard was moved to Athens. If they had been more wary the Samians would have refrained from proposing this motion, which helped Athens forward one more stage in the process of turning her " hegemony " into an empire. By the removal of the common funds of the league from the sanctuary of Delos, the original religious and patriotic purpose of the confederates was obscured ; by their storage at Athens it began to appear that the allies were paying tribute to their powerful protectress. It was not long be- fore the Athenians came to regard the treasury as their own, and to draw upon it for purely Attic needs, which had no con- nection with the welfare of the other confederates. Pericles and his party were not at a loss for arguments to justify this mis- appropriation of the funds of the league. They represented that Athens had for some time had the entire supervision of the war in her hands, and that the other cities had practically abandoned their share in the undertaking: Chios, Lesbos, and Samos were the only states which continued to supply ships to the confederate fleet ; all the others had commuted their galleys for money. Athens had continued the struggle with Persia in the most energetic way, and spent so much of her own money on it, that, if she tres- passed on the surplus in the common chest of the league, she was but repaying herself for her losses. Moreover, no one could dispute that she had carried out the purposes of the league with 1 Some, however, place the date of the transference in 455 or 454 241 242 GREECE 458 B.C. perfect success; she had liberated all the Hellenic subjects of the Great King, and was now giving him such trouble in Egypt that he would never be able to stir against Hellas. If this could be done at less expense than was originally calculated, it was due to her, and she deserved the surplus as her reward. The second important event of the year 458 B.C. was the com- mencement of the famous " Long Walls " of Athens. They had been suggested by a much smaller work of the same kind at Megara. After forming their alliance with that city, the Athenians had con- nected the old town, which lay on a hill not quite a mile from the sea, with its seaport of Nisaea, by building two walls which secured a safe passage between them. But the Megarian " Long Walls " were only seven stadia from end to end, while Athens was divided from Phalerum and Peiraeus by thirty-five and forty stadia respec- tively. The gigantic scheme of constructing walls for the whole four miles which lie between the old city and the water's edge could only have been formed when a war with an enemy overwhelmingly powerful on land was in view. It must have been the dread of Spartan interference which led to the building of these great works. When they were finished, Athens, Peiraeus, and Phalerum formed the angles of a vast fortified triangle, while the space between them, a considerable expanse of open country, could be utilized as a place of refuge for the population of Attica and even for their flocks and herds. Some years afterwards a second wall (rd dca fiiffov rer/o^) was erected close to and parallel with the original wall running to Peiraeus. This gave an additional security to the communication between the city and its ports ; even if the Phaleric wall were forced, there would still be free access from the upper city to Peiraeus. The war with Corinth and Aegina commenced by two severe naval engagements in the Saronic Gulf. The first, fought off the island of Cecryphaleia near the coast of Argolis, had no decisive result. But when the fleets met for the second time opposite to the town of Aegina itself, the Athenians gained a crushing victory. No less than seventy Corinthian and Aeginetan vessels fell into their hands. The astonishing part of this success was the fact that two hundred Athenian galleys were at that moment in Egypt, so that it was with less than half her resources that Athens succeeded in beating the two navies which were reckoned the second and third in Greece. After their victory the Athenians landed and laid siege to ATHENS IN POWER 243 458 B.C. Aegina with the full force of hoplites that was at that moment at home. The Corinthians determined to do all they could to save their ally, and resolved to create a diversion by attacking Megara. They calculated that, as the whole force of Athens was either in Egypt or at Aegina, no army could be put into the field against them, unless the siege of Aegina was raised. But they had not reckoned on the indomitable spirit of their ene- mies. Since all the men of military age were absent, Athens determined to call out those who had not yet reached it, or had long passed it. Myronides raised an army exclusively composed of boys and old men, and marched to relieve Megara. He took up a defensive position and repulsed the attack which was made on him; although not very severely handled, the Corinthians retired home and Megara was saved. But when the defeated soldiery learned the nature of the force which had beaten them, they found the taunts of their fellow-citizens unbearable, and returned to take their revenge. Myronides again went out to meet them, probably reinforced by the troops of Megara. This time the battle was decisive ; the Corinthians were routed, and their loss was heavy, for a large body were surrounded in a walled enclosure and shot down to a man. As an assertion of the courage of her citizens, Athens regarded these battles as only inferior to Marathon, In commemoration of the achievements of this season monumental pillars were erected in the Cerameicus, recording that " in one and the same year the soldiers of Athens had fallen off Cyprus, in Egypt, Phoenicia, Argolis, Aegina, and Megara." * A fragment of this inscription still survives, to recall the energy of the Athenians at the highest moment of their glory. Meanwhile a second war had broken out in Central Greece, between two ancient enemies, the Phocians and the Boeotian League. The ruling oligarchies of Boeotia were so anti-Athenian in their sentiments that the Phocians were felt to be fighting the battle of Athens by keeping employed an enemy who would other- wise have joined Corinth and Aegina. During this war the Pho- cians fell upon and occupied the little district to their north, the home of the four Dorian communities who had remained behind in their original seats, when the rest of the nation invaded Pelop- 2 The fighting in Egypt, Aegina, and Megara we have already mentioned. That in Argolis was an Athenian descent on the Halieis, which failed ; that in Cyprus and Phoenicia was dependent on the great expedition to Egypt. 244 GREECE 457 B.C. onnesus. The conquered Dorians made a piteous appeal to Sparta, the natural protector of all states of kindred blood. The Spartans were at this moment beginning to make some headway in their long struggle with the revolted Helots; and though Ithome was not yet taken, felt that they were in honor bound to aid their compatriots. Making a great effort, they dispatched an army of eleven thousand men, partly Laconians, partly Peloponnesian allies, by sea across the gulf of Corinth into Boeotia. Here they were joined by the Thebans and their friends, and marched into Phocis. After completely defeating the Phocians and driving them out of Doris, they set forth homeward. But their way lay through the territory of Megara, and when they arrived on its borders they were refused a passage. The Athenians had seen with suspicion a Spartan army in Boeotia, and, regarding war as inevitable, had determined to face its dangers at once, and to prevent the returning army from joining the Corinthians. They had obtained a thou- sand hoplites from Argos, and a considerable body of horse from Thessaly, and, joining these to the levies of Megara and Plataea and such force as Athens could spare, had posted themselves in front of the passes which led from Boeotia towards the Isthmus. It was said that some of the oligarchic party at Athens had been making overtures to the Spartans, but the traitors were few ; Cimon, though in exile, appeared in the Athenian army as soon as it had passed the border, and earnestly begged that he might fight as a volunteer in the ranks of his own tribe. The strategi refused him the favor, but ere he departed he adjured his friends to prove by their conduct in battle that their party contained no traitors. The armies met near Tanagra, and a hard-fought engagement ensued ; for a long time the day was doubtful, but in the heat of the fight the Thessalian cavalry deserted their allies, and lost the Athe- nians the victory. No less than a hundred of the friends of Cimon fell in the forefront of the battle, proving by their reckless courage that the Conservative party was unjustly accused of treason. The Spartans were never skillful at improving the results of a success, and their commander, the regent Nicomedes,^ contented himself with ravaging the Megarid, and then returned to Peloponnesus across the now unguarded passes of Geraneia. By her last stroke of policy Athens had now added Sparta and ' Nicomcdes was regent in behalf of the young king Pleistoanax, son of Pausanias. A T H E N S I N P W E R 245 454 B.C. the Boeotian League to the hst of her enemies. It was necessary to act quickly and promptly, or she would be crushed, when the full force of Boeotia and Peloponnesus was put into the field. The first step taken was to mark the suspension of party-feuds at Athens ; the party of Cimon had behaved so well at Tanagra that their con- duct had won the confidence of their very opponents. Pericles himself proposed the decree which revoked the ostracism of his great rival. Then, long before the campaigning season had arrived, Myronides, with the full force of Athens at his back, burst into Boeotia. The inroad was quite unexpected, for the winter was not yet done. No aid from Corinth or Sparta was at hand, but the Thebans and their supporters from the other Boeotian cities met the invaders at Oenophyta in the valley of the Asopus. After a hard struggle they were beaten, and the land lay exposed to the con- queror. The successes of Myronides were rapid and startling; a discontented party existed in every Boeotian town, which regarded the rule of their oligarchs with hatred. These partisans of democ- racy joined the Athenians, and town after town threw open its gates. Even Thebes, the center of the oligarchic party, fell into the hands of the invaders. Myronides then set up democratic consti- tutions in every city, and handed over the government to the par- tisans of Athens ; the great families, for the most part, retired into exile. It would seem probable that the Boeotian League was dis- solved, and a separate treaty concluded by Athens with each indi- vidual state ; at any rate, the complete autonomy of all towns, small and great, was secured, and the paramount influence of Thebes in the district destroyed. When Boeotia fell into the hands of Athens, the Locrians of Opus also cast off their oligarchy, and sent a hun- dred hostages from their leading families to be kept at Athens. The Phocians, who had been at war with Thebes, were also glad to enter the Athenian alliance. Thus at a single blow Athens had become a great land power, and secured dominion over all the dis- tricts as far as Mount Oeta. Moreover, she was well backed by a party in each state, who regarded their predominance at home as bound up with her success. Meanwhile the siege of Aegina was drawing to a close ; in spite of all their operations on the mainland, the Athenians had stead- fastly kept up the blockade, and, after nine months of waiting, the provisions of the garrison began to fail. Except one reinforcement of three hundred hoplites, they had received no help from Pelopon- 246 GREECE 457.454 B.C. nesus, and their own resources were quite exhausted. The ancient rivals of Athens were obHged to sue for peace, which they only obtained on condition of destroying their walls, giving up their war- galleys, and entering the Confederacy of Delos as tribute-paying members. Sparta seems to have taken little trouble to support her allies outside Peloponnesus, but within it her efforts were at last drawing to a successful end. After ten years of revolt the Helots were driven to bay ; their last bands were besieged in Ithome and finally permitted to depart under an agreement never to return to Pelo- ponnesus. An Athenian fleet under Tolmides was at that moment ravaging the coasts of Messenia, and the defeated rebels were taken on board. Tolmides soon after captured the town of Naupactus on the Aetolian coast, and here he settled the exiled Messenians with their families, to serve as an outpost for Athens on the Corinthian Gulf. It would seem that not even the capture of Ithome could give Sparta sufficient breathing-space to recover her strength and to strive for the hegemony of continental Greece. For the next three years she made no attempt to force the passes of the Megarid and attack Athens. Nor could she even defend Peloponnesus; she had to see her own naval arsenal at Gythium burned, and to hear of the ravaging of the territories of her Dorian dependents of Sicyon and Epidaurus. She could not even prevent Troezen and the coast cities of Achaia from openly joining the Athenian alliance; it would seem, indeed, that Argos alone sufficed to keep her in check while Athens was extending her dominion right and left. There is no knowing where the extension of the Athenian power would have stopped, if a fearful disaster had not intervened to weaken its growth. In 454 B.C. a large Athenian expedition, not less than two hundred galleys, was again dispatched to Egypt to aid King Inarus. But at that moment the satrap Megabyzus in- vaded that country with a stronger army than the Great King had previously devoted to its conquest. The Athenian fleet sailed up the Nile as far as Memphis, and got so far from the sea that they were finally cut off from their retreat, and besieged with their Egyptian allies in the isle of Prosopitis. Megabyzus diverted one of the branches of the Nile which encircles the island, and crossed over on foot ; a desperate struggle ensued, and, after burning their ships, the main body of Athenians were cut to pieces. The survivors de- ATHENS IN POWER 24.7 452-449 B.C. fended themselves so vigorously that the Persian granted them quar- ter, and thus a few scattered fugitives escaped across the desert to Cyrene, and brought the news to Athens. By the end of 452 B.C. the belligerents in Greece had arrived at a standstill, and by the mediation of Cimon a truce for five years was brought about between Sparta and Athens, together with their respective allies. That no definitive peace was concluded was due to the action of Corinth, who would not consent to recognize the new position of Athens on her borders. The agreement, therefore, only amounted to a prolonged armistice, based upon the actual posi- tion of the various powers. This moment marks the highest tide in the fortunes of Athens. Her influence was predominant in Megaris, Boeotia, Locris, Phocis, Achaia, and Troezen, while Argos was her firm ally. Her empire on land covered as large an expanse as that of Sparta, while at sea every city in the Aegean and Pro- pontis from Aegina to Byzantium did her homage.* Freed from their war with Sparta, the Athenians turned to revenge their defeat in Egypt. Cimon was once more at home, and had regained no small portion of his old power. He found it easy to persuade his fellow-citizens that the massacre of Prosopitis called for vengeance, and obtained a fleet of two hundred vessels and a free commission to attack what portion of the Persian empire he might choose. He determined to fall on the Phoenician cities of Cyprus, which still maintained their allegiance to Artaxerxes. Accordingly he laid siege to Citium ; while lying before its walls he was stricken down by disease, and felt his end approaching. But on his very deathbed he was able to give the directions which re- sulted in two brilliant victories ; the Phoenician fleet which came to raise the blockade of Citium was defeated off the neighboring port of Salamis, and shortly after a land army was routed on the shore. The expedition, thus deprived of its leader, returned to Athens, and made no further attack on Asia. Cimon's untimely death he was still in the full vigor of man- hood preserved him from seeing the commencement of a series of disasters which were about to befall his country. The Athenian land empire was to be lost as rapidly as it was won. It was an impossibility that such old enemies as the Boeotians should ever be faithful allies to Athens ; the democratic governments which had * A district on the Bay of Adramyttium in Aeolis was the only piece of land that interrupted the continuous line of Athenian allies in Asia. 248 GREECE 447 B.C. been set up in the various cities of that land grew more and more unpopular. Not only were they hated by patriotic Boeotians as the tools of Athens, but they made themselves odious by their misgov- ernment. At last, in 447 B.C., an insurrection broke out against the democratic party in the towns of Northern Boeotia. All the oli- garchic exiles hastened home to join the rebels, who made their stronghold at Orchomenus. The Athenians dispatched Tolmides with not more than a thousand hoplites to support the Boeotian democrats. But as he marched along the shore of Lake Copais be- tween Haliartus and Coroneia, he was surprised by the oligarchic army, who fell on him and routed him by the force of superior numbers. Tolmides himself fell on the field, but several hundreds of his soldiery were taken prisoners, and to secure their lives the Athenians were forced to conclude a treaty with the victors, by which they engaged not to interfere any more in Boeotian affairs. They were therefore compelled to look on while their democratic partisans were expelled from the various cities, and the old consti- tution was reintroduced. Once more oligarchy was restored, and Thebes took up her old position as managing partner in the league. Locris immediately followed the example of Boeotia, and disclaimed her dependence on Athens. Nor was this all ; the cities of Euboea, who had long been quiet and obedient members of the Delian confederacy, now thought that a favorable opportunity for freeing themselves from their tribute and their dependence on Athens had come. Histiaea, Eretria, Styra, Carystus, and the other towns of the island rose in concert. So press- ing was the emergency considered, that Pericles himself took the command of an army which hastened across to reconquer the island ; but scarcely had he reached it when he was recalled by the equally disastrous news that Megara had revolted. That city had entered the Athenian alliance of her own free will, and had been saved by it from falling under the power of Corinth. But with signal perfidy her inhabitants not only broke off their connection with Athens, but surprised and massacred a body of Athenian troops which lay within their walls. It was a small consolation that their port of Nisaea remained in the hands of Athens. Corinth, Epidaurus, and Sicyon lent their encouragement to their revolted Dorian kinsmen. Nor was this the end of the misfortunes of Athens; it was remem- bered that the five years' truce with Sparta was on the eve of expir- ing, and ominous preparations for war were being made in Pelo- ATHENS IN POWER 249 446 B.C. ponnesus. The expectation was well gounded; Athens' extremity was Sparta's opportunity, and when the five years were over war was promptly declared. In the spring of 446 B.C. the young king Pleistoanax and his guardian Cleandridas led an overwhelming force from Pelopon- nesus into the Megarid, and prepared to attack Attica. They had reached Eleusis when they suddenly halted, and after a few days returned home. It was soon rumored abroad that bribery had been at work. Spartan generals were notoriously venal, and it is probable that the report was true, which related that Pericles had entered into secret relations with the enemy, and paid a vast sum to Cleandridas, perhaps to Pleistoanax also, on the condition that they should find excuses for causing the expedition to fail. This at least is certain, that when the Peloponnesian army returned, the ephors apprehended and tried both the king and his guardian, con- victed them, and sent both into banishment. When this danger was passed, Pericles took fifty ships and five thousand hoplites, and hastened across to Euboea. The main force of Athens, both by land and sea, was left behind to guard against attack from Corinth or Peloponnesus. With the force that was entrusted to him Pericles carried out a most brilliant cam- paign ; he retook city after city till the whole island was subdued, and finally strengthened the hold of Athens on the land across the Euripus by planting a second Cleruchy therein. The land for this settlement was taken from the exiled oligarchs of Histiaea. But Euboea was the only one of her numerous losses which Athens was destined to recover. The odds against her were so great that Pericles himself shrank from the idea of continuing the contest. He let it be known at Sparta that Athens was ready to treat for peace on the basis of abandoning her claim to any empire by land. When negotiations were found to be feasible, an embassy headed by Callias was sent to negotiate with the ephors. They con- ceded everything on land that Sparta and her allies could ask, and a " Thirty Years' Peace " was concluded between the belligerents, Athens recognized the hegemony of Sparta in Peloponnesus, while Sparta undertook not to interfere with the Confederacy of Delos. All Athenian alliances with outlying states, such as Achaia or Troe- zen, were abrogated, and the garrisons which she maintained in Nisaea and certain other outlying fortresses withdrawn. Megara and Boeotia were recognized as free and autonomous states, and 250 GREECE 445 B.C. enrolled among the allies of Sparta. To sum up the conditions of the peace, we may say that Athens gave up everything on land, asking in return nothing but that her naval supremacy should be left untouched. Not long after the conclusion of the " Thirty Years' Peace " Athens concluded another important piece of negotiation. Now that Cimon was dead there was no one among her statesmen who desired to prosecute the never-ending war with Persia. The cam- paigns in Egypt had failed so signally and cost so many lives that no further land operations were likely to be undertaken, while by sea Persia had nothing more to lose. Accordingly Callias, the suc- cessful negotiator at Sparta, was sent up to Susa to propose con- ditions of peace to King Artaxerxes. Athenian vanity in after years fabled that Callias extorted such conditions as he chose from the Persian, even so far as to make him promise to send no war- vessels west of the Cyanean rocks at the mouth of the Bosphorus^ and the Chelidonian cape in Lycia. But, as a matter of fact, no formal treaty seems to have been concluded, and Callias on his re- turn was prosecuted for willful mismanagement of the negotiation. However, by a working agreement with the satraps of Asia Minor, a modus vivendi was established. The Athenians and their con- federates abstained from any further attacks on Persian territory, while the satraps remained contented with the inland and made no attempt to regain the coast. Nevertheless the names of the lost cities of Ionia and Caria still remained inscribed on the tribute-roll of the Great King, and the Persian power awaited its opportunity to reassert all its old rights. Chapter XXV THE YEARS OF PEACE, 445-431 B.C. THE " Thirty years' Peace " concluded between Athens and Sparta in 445 B.C., though not destined to endure for half of its appointed time, gave Greece some fourteen years of comparative quiet. The war which it terminated had not brought about any final balance of power ; it had merely settled that Sparta should retain a hegemony on land, and that Athens should confine her empire to the sea. Which was the stronger had not yet been decided, and till this was known it was impossible that any per- manent peace should be established. Nevertheless, the two great powers having made trial of each other's strength, and discovered that the final struggle for mastery would be long and exhausting, were in no hurry to recommence hostilities. It required the accu- mulated grievances of fourteen years to bring them again into collision. At Athens these years coincided with the zenith of the power and influence of Pericles, who was practically first minister of the republic for the whole period, though he had several times to undergo attacks on his policy and to suffer temporary eclipses of his popularity. Now that Cimon was dead there was no one in the state who could hope to vie in personal influence with Pericles. The conservative party could only oppose to him Thucy- dides, son of Melesias, a statesman of far inferior capacity and power. In the democratic party there was no one, since the murder of Ephialtes, who in any measure approached the importance of the great leader. He was, in fact, so pre-eminently the leading man in the state that his enemies did not scruple to call him its tyrant, and to insinuate that his appearance, demeanor, and oratory bore a marked resemblance to those of Peisistratus, In his domestic policy Pericles set himself to work out to its full extent the movement which he had begun by his attack on the -Areopagus. He set to work to thoroughly democratize all the in- stitutions of the state, to do away with all the checks which limited 251 252 GREECE 445-431 B.C. the omnipotence of the Ecclesia in poHtical and the Dicasteries in judicial matters. While he himself was alive the consequences of this policy were not immediately apparent, for the people were so habitually ready to follow him that its decrees seldom lacked the unity of purpose which marks the action of a single mind. As long as the Ecclesia let itself be guided by one leader the real effects of a purely democratic constitution did not make themselves felt. It was only after his death, when the assembly found itself urged in many different directions by a crowd of statesmen who agreed in nothing but their mediocre ability, that the defects of " government by plebiscite " became visible, and measures that indicated energy or vacillation, desire for war or desire for peace, were passed in chaotic succession, according as the passion of the moment decreed. One of the first measures of Pericles was the complete vulgar- ization of the archonship. In 456 B.C. it was opened to the Zeu- gitae, having been up to that time confined to the wealthier classes. Nor was this all. Very soon men who were not even possessed of the modest income of a Zeugites appeared as candidates, and were not refused. The only formality retained was that when the lot fell on them they were not registered as Thetes, but as Zeugitae. Among the most characteristic of the features of the policy of Pericles were the laws which subsidized the poorer citizens for their trouble in attending to the affairs of the state. Instead of holding that only those who interested themselves in such matters should be encouraged to take part in public business, Pericles de- sired to attract every citizen to the Ecclesia and the law courts, and used the most direct means to secure their attention by pro- viding them with pay out of the public purse. At some date early in the fifth century the Heliaea, which Cleisthenes had instituted as the supreme court of justice for the state, had been divided into the smaller bodies known as Dicasteries. It was probably because of the large increase of business which came before it as the ar- chonship gradually lost credit and men ceased to be satisfied to take their lawsuits before the six junior archons for trial that this division took place. The work of the Dicasteries was still more in- creased when Pericles and Ephialtes stripped the magistrates of well-nigh all their judicial powers. But the largest rise in the num- ber of suits needing a court to decide them must have resulted from the gradual increase of the custom of sending cases pending be- tween members of the Confederacy of Delos to be tried at Athens. YEARSOFPEACE 253 445-431 B.C. It was but natural that legal disputes between two of her subject allies should be settled by the head of the league ; but not only these, but all cases in which an Athenian was either plaintiff or defendant, and finally, as it would appear, all important suits even though they were between citizens of the same city were called up to the supreme court of justice. The vast number of trials on hand must have proved a heavy tax on the time and patience of those citizens who were drawn as jurymen, and found themselves set down for a year's work in the Dicasteries. But Pericles changed the face of affairs by paying the Dicast, and thereby made his position one to be sought rather than avoided. The sum given was at first one obol an amount which seems small to us, but was enough to be of consequence to a poor Athenian ; it w^as afterwards raised to three, nearly the same as the hoplite's daily pay. From this time forward the Dicasteries became the almost permanent abode of many citi- zens, particularly of those of the poorer classes who were past the age of military service, and therefore had no other duty which could override the liability to act as jurymen. Forty years later the leaders of the democracy began to pay the Ecclesia as well as the Dicasteries, a step which was a logical carrying out of Pericles's idea. The Athenian democrats boasted that by means of these sub- sidies a knowledge of law and politics was diffused through the whole body of citizens, and a level of political intelligence reached with which no other state in Greece could vie. This was to a certain extent true ; but there is a limit to the educating influence of politics or lawsuits, and it may well be doubted whether that country was likely to be well governed where every citizen aspired to be a pro- fessional statesman and judge, and was paid for his aspirations. The enemies of Pericles summed up the results of his legislation by saying that it made the Athenians idle, loquacious and money- loving. It led men, they complained, to spend more time than was right in hanging about the Pnyx and the law-courts; it set every one practicing public oratory or judicial pleading; it induced Athe- nians to think that they ought to be paid for carrying out the pri- mary duties of citizenship liabilities which ought to be regarded as sacred trusts rather than as work deserving remuneration. Prob- ably the opponents of Pericles had the greater share of reason on their side; it is likely that the state suffered more from the en- couragement of amateur statesmanship than it gained by the in- 254 GREECE 445-431 B.C. creased amount of political intelligence which prevailed in the mul- titude. The system of subsidizing the poor did not stop short in the Ecclesia and the Dicasteries ; it was carried by Pericles himself into other spheres of life. He was the author of laws by which the state charged itself with numerous doles and payments on the occasion of public festivals. It is said that these measures origi- nated in his opposition to Cimon ; the wealthy conservative states- man had been accustomed to throw open his parks and gardens to the multitude, and to keep free house for his demesmen. Pericles's private means did not permit him to practice bribery on such a magnificent scale, and he is said to have adopted the idea of supply- ing from the public purse what was not forthcoming from his own. He is recorded as having been the proposer of a number of grants of public money made at festivals, in order that the peor might not only witness state pageants, but might even buy themselves meat and wine at the public expense whenever days of public re- joicing came round. It was, in short, an anticipation of the system whereby Rome in a later age was demoralized by the doles and games of her emperors. The worst feature of such grants and of all kindred institutions was that the money did not really come out of the treasury of the Attic state, but out of that of her allies, the confederates of the league of Delos, for without their accumu- lated tribute the distributions would have been impossible. A not less efficacious method for draining the treasury was discovered when Pericles set to work to strengthen and beautify Athens out of the common funds of the league. We have already spoken of the third Long Wall which he built between the upper city and the Peiraeus ; but this was one of the least ambitious of his ventures in stone and mortar. Far more important among his achievements were the noble public buildings with which he adorned Athens. Some of these lay in the level parts of the city ; such was the Odeum at the foot of the southeastern cliff of the Acropolis, whose roof copied, according to legend, from the vast and gor- geous tent of Xerxes sheltered musical performances. Others lay in the Peiraeus, such as the great Corn Hall and the Deigma, or exchange for merchants. Even outside Athens magnificent tem- ples were commenced at Rhamnus, Eleusis, and Sunium. But by far the most important group of buildings which Pericles took in hand were those situated on the Acropolis. At its western end, YEARS OF PEACE 255 445-431 B.C. where alone the slope was accessible, the architect Mnesicles was set to build the Propylaea, or entrance halls of the citadel. These works alone cost two thousand talents. They consisted of a mag- nificent flight of marble steps, seventy feet broad, leading up to a double colonnade, through which the visitor entered the Acropolis. This central colonnade was flanked by two projecting wings carried along the edge of the cliff, and opening with smaller rows of col- umns on to the central staircase. The northern wing contained a celebrated chamber called the Pinacotheca, from its being covered with frescoes of the great painter Polygnotus. After passing through the Propylaea, the visitor found himself facing the colossal bronze statue of Athene Promachos, which rep- resented the guardian goddess of the city in full armor, with out- stretched spear and shield. This great work of Pheidias was more than fifty feet in height, and was raised twenty feet more by its pedestal, till it overtopped the temple roofs ; the golden plume of Athene's helmet was to be seen far out at sea, and formed a well- known landmark to the sailors of the Gulf of Aegina. Beyond the statue of Athene Promachos stood the greatest of the works which Pericles called into being the famous Parthenon, the largest and most beautiful, though not the most revered, of the temples on the Acropolis. The neighboring temple of Athene Polias^ contained the sacred wooden image of immemorial antiquity which was the palladium of the city, the holy olive tree which had sprouted forth again after it had been felled by the ax of the Per- sian and the living snake which symbolized the presence of the goddess. But if the Parthenon did not gather around it any of the old superstitious awe which the neighboring building called forth, it symbolized to every Athenian the imperial greatness of his city. Not only was its glorious decoration paid for out of the funds of the subject allies, but its walls themselves served as the treasury for the hoarded tribute money which gave Athens her strength, while the inscriptions which set forth the amount that each member of the Delian League paid to the central power were engraved with- out. The architecture of the Parthenon was the work of Ictinus, its sculptures and reliefs that of Pheidias. Not only did the great sculptor place in the " pediments," or eastern and western gable- ends of the temple, elaborate groups representing the birth of Athene and the strife of Athene and Poseidon, but he filled the ^ Better known as the Erechtheum. 256 GREECE 445-431 B.C. ninety-two " metopes," or square spaces which lay above the capitals of the columns and beneath the edge of the roof, with as many separate compositions, showing the battles of the ancient heroes with the Amazons and the Centaurs. Moreover, within the outer colonnade of the Parthenon he traced along the upper portion of the wall of the temple itself an endless procession of graceful figures, representing the ceremonies of the Panathenaic festival the setting forth of the priests and magistrates, the maidens and knights of Athens, to do honor to Athene on the day of her great- est festival. No less than four thousand square feet of surface were covered by the works of the sculptor's untiring hand. While the hinder part of the temple, called the Opisthodomos, served as a vast strong-room for the treasures of the state, the front half formed the actual sanctuary. Here was placed the most gorgeous of the works of Pheidias a colossal figure of Athene, wrought not in marble or bronze, but in ivory and gold. Her robes alone con- tained forty talents' weight of gold ($48,750), and her armor was studded with precious stones of great price. But the mere monetary worth of this imposing figure was as nothing compared with its artistic value, as the masterpiece of the greatest sculptor of the an- cient world ; there was nothing in Greece which could compare with it, save the colossal Zeus at Olympia which Pheidias constructed a few years later. If Pericles sinned against international morality in using the treasures of the Delian League for the adornment of Athens, it must at any rate be confessed that he applied the em- bezzled talents to no unworthy end. The final developments of Pericles's constitutional changes did not come about till the party w^hich opposed them had been com- pletely swept out of the field. We have already mentioned that after the death of Cimon the leadership of the conservative and philo-Spartan party fell into the hands of his kinsman, Thucydides, the son of Melesias. This statesman kept up a bitter opposition to all the proposals of Pericles; he taught his followers to sit close together in the assembly, and compensate for their lack of numbers by their simultaneous shouts and well-drilled applause. But this custom of herding together also served to betray to their enemies their decided inferiority in voting strength. The democrats nick- named them " the Few," and were encouraged to persevere by the manifest majority which they possessed. It was in vain that Thu- cydides denounced all the measures of Pericles in terms of warm YEARSOFPEACE 257 '?45-431 B.C. moral indignation, declaring that he had brought dishonor on Athens by inducing her to turn to her private use moneys that were contributed for the public benefit of Greece; and that all the world would consider it the act of a tyrant city to use the gold of the allies in subsidizing her proletariate and adorning her streets with temples and monuments : " When Athens wasted talents by the thousand from the Delian treasury in gilding her statues and carving her shrines, she was but acting like a light and vain woman decking herself with ill-gotten jewels." Pericles made his usual reply that as long as Athens kept off Persian invasions she was entitled to spend what she chose out of the funds of the Delian League, and suppressed the fact that all operations against Persia had been abandoned since he came into power. The continual bickering between the democrats and the followers of Thucydides lasted till the year 443 B.C., when the persistent but fruitless opposition of Thucydides was brought to an end by a recourse to ostracism. The stronger party voted his exile, and Pericles was left without any opponent of importance. The foreign policy which was pursued by Athens under the direction of Pericles was directed to vigorous extension of her power in all directions, except indeed in those continental districts close at hand, where interference would have brought about an im- mediate war with Sparta or Thebes. The organization of the Delian League had now been per- fected. It embraced all the coast cities of Asia Minor from Artane, just outside the Bosphorus in Bithynia. down to Calydna in Lycia. Similarly in Europe an unbroken chain of Athenian tributaries stretched along the Thracian and Chalcidian shores from Byzan- tium to Aeneia. All the islands of the Aegean, except the insig- nificant Dorian states of Melos and Thera, were also numbered among the confederates. Even outside these limits there were many cities which had joined the league ; Nymphaeum in the distant Tauric Chersonese (Crimea), and Clenderis in Cilicia, were mem- bers of the Athenian alliance no less than Eretria or Aegina. Among the two hundred and forty-nine cities whose names appear on the tribute lists which have been dug out from the ruins of Athens, only three Samos, Lesbos, and Chios had refused to compound their original contingents of ships for a money payment, and still possessed a war-navy. The remaining two hundred and forty-six were divided for financial purposes into five groups. 258 GREECE 445-431 B.C. known as the Thracian, Insular, Hellespontine, Ionian, and Carian tribute-districts. At fixed times tax-collecting galleys sailed round the Aegean and Hellespont and gathered in the contributions due from each city, which were finally paid over to the Hellenotamiae and stored in the Acropolis of Athens. The synodic meetings seem to have^ dropped entirely out of use; if any occurred they were mere formal assemblies, at which no one except Athenian deputies ap- peared. The total annual sum which the tribute brought in during the ascendency of Pericles was about six hundred talents ; the only outgoings for league purposes were the nioneys required to keep sixty Athenian galleys constantly cruising in the Aegean. Hence it was possible for no less than nine thousand seven hundred talents to accumulate in the Acropolis, in spite of the large sums which were spent on Athenian state-doles, pageants, and public edifices. The amount due from each city was carefully revised every four years, and that justice on the whole prevailed in the assessment appears from the fact that places like Aegina or Naxos, against which Athens might have been expected to feel a grudge, are not rated on a heavier scale than their more docile fellow-subjects. It was not the fact that they were overtaxed, but the fact that they were taxed at all for Athenian objects, which made the tribute so hateful to the allies. We have already spoken of the Cleriichies which were planted by Pericles in Euboea after the rebellion of the year 446 B.C. Simi- lar garrisons of Athenian citizens were also placed by him in other localities, notably in the Thracian Chersonese, the old patrimony of Miltiades. But such settlements were not the only means which he devised for extending the influence of Athens ; actual colonies were also sent forth to well-chosen spots. Amisus and Sinope in Paphlagonia were strengthened by bands of emigrants dispatched under Athenian guidance. The site of Ennea Hodoi on the Stry- mon, so fatal to the arms of Athens twenty-nine years before, was seized for a third time, and fortified in 437 b.c. This time the Thracians proved unable to dislodge the settlers, and Hagnon became the oekist of the new town of Amphipolis. The Athenian element among the population was in this case but small, but the nationality of the oi^cial founder served to constitute Am- phipolis a nominal daughter-state of Athens. The same was the case in another colony of equal importance in the far West. For seventy years the site of tlie great city of Sybaris on the lapygian YEARS OF PEACE 259 445-431 B.C. shore had been lying desolate, and the surviving families of Syba- rite origin had been dwelling scattered through Italy. Pericles now collected them, associated with them a certain number of Athenian emigrants and a much larger body of lonians and other Greeks, ^'iS^'-'w- -2^\ / THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE Islands sbaded did not pay tribute and planted a new Sybaris close to the ruins of the old city. Several very distinguished men joined in the colonization of Sybaris; among them were the historian Herodotus, the philosopher Pro- tagoras, and the orator Lysias. After a short time quarrels arose between the citizens of old Sybarite blood and the settlers from the 260 GREECE 445-431 B.C. East ; the attempt of the fonner to form themselves into an oli- garchy was put down, and, to mark the changed character of the state, the victorious party changed its name to Thurii (443 B.C.). Other attempts were made to secure an opening for Athenian com- merce in the West, by concluding treaties with Segesta, Leontini, and Rhegium (454-433 b.c). After 445 B.C. only one important campaign disturbed the ad- ministration of Pericles. This was the revolt of one of the three last states of the Delian League which still maintained a war-navy. Samos had engaged in a dispute with Miletus about the boundaries of her territory on the mainland. The decision of the question was referred to the Athenians, who awarded the land to ]\Iiletus. But the oligarchy of Samos refused to give up their claim to the terri- tory, and remained obdurate till a fleet of forty ships sailed across from Athens and entered their harbor. The commander was Peri- cles, who promptly put down the oligarchic government, established a democracy, and took off a hundred hostages, whom he deposited at the Athenian Cleruchy of Lemnos. This high-handed action provoked the national sentiment of the Samians ; the remaining oligarchs called in the aid of the satrap Pissuthnes, overturned the new democratic constitution, and disavowed their membership of the Delian League. A few ships sailed hastily across to Lemnos and liberated the hostages, and then open war on Athens was pro- claimed. Undeterred by the memory of the fates of Naxos and Thasos, the Samians thought that they could regain their complete autonomy, and called on the other members of the Delian confed- eracy to join them in revolt. Of the whole body of allies, however, only Byzantium was bold enough to declare its secession and face the wrath of Athens. The moment that the news of the Samian rising arrived at Athens an expedition was sent off to attack the rebels. A fleet of sixty ships, among whose ten commanders Pericles held the chief place and the poet Sophocles was also numbered, crossed the Aegean, met the Samian fleet off the island of Tragia, and defeated it. Soon after Pericles was largely reinforced from Athens. Chios. and Lesbos, till he had a hundred and twenty-five vessels with him, and was able to blockade Samos by sea and land. But a false rumor that the satrap Pissuthnes had ordered up the Phoenician fleet in- duced him to detach half his force to watch for its approach along the Lvcian coast. The Samians seized this opportunity, came YEARS OF PEACE 261 443-431 B.C. boldly out of their harbor with seventy ships, and engaged the blockading squadron, which they completely routed. For fourteen days they held the mastery of the sea, and were able to send out messengers to beg for aid from all quarters, and especially from the Spartans. But soon Athenian reinforcements came flocking from all directions, and the blockade was renewed. The Samians held out with desperate energy ; in spite of a number of new siege- engines which were constructed for Pericles by Artemon, the most celebrated engineer of the time, they maintained their defense with complete success. It was not till nine months were passed, and it had become completely certain that no help from without was ap- proaching them, that the islanders in 439 B.C. capitulated. They were treated in accordance with the precedents of Naxos and Thasos, being compelled to raze their walls, give up their war-ships, and pay an indemnity of a thousand talents. Byzantium surrendered the moment that the fate of Samos was known. The appeal of the Samians to Sparta had nearly brought about a general war in European Greece. The ephors had summoned together a congress of their allies, and many states had deemed the opportunity favorable for an attack on Athens, But the Corin- thians prevailed on the Spartan government to hold back, induced, it is said, by the fact that they themselves were in difficulties with their subject allies, and dreaded the precedent of encouraging re- volt. It was to be another series of grievances, and not the wrongs of Samos, that was to cause the renewal of war in Greece. Chapter XXVI RIVALRY OF SPARTA AND ATHENS, 435-432 B.C. AS late as the year of the revolt of Samos the balance of ZJk opinion among the allies of Sparta was still in favor of JL .^ preserving" peace with Athens; but very shortly after the scales had begun to incline in the opposite direction. The causes which led to this change of feeling were very various. In Sparta itself a new generation was now coming to the front, which had grown up since the truce of 445 B.C. These younger men did not remember the dangers and difficulties of the time that had followed the great earthquake of 464 b.c. and the revolt of the Helots. More- over, a dozen years of unbroken peace had sufficed to restore the power of Sparta, and to consolidate once more her ancient hege- mony in Peloponnesus. There was no longer any fear of seeing a renewal of those Athenian attempts to win territory within the Isthmus which the elder men could remember. In the depth of his heart well-nigh every Spartan felt a grudge against Athens for having built up an empire which even since the loss of her do- minion on land was sufficient to overshadow the comparatively loose and ill-defined hegemony which his own city possessed in Peloponnesus. He was jealous that any Grecian state should be able to vie with Sparta, and anxious to fight out to a final decision the question whether that state or Sparta were really the stronger. It was remembered that the Spartan discipline and the Spartan constitution existed for the sole object of producing warlike effi- ciency, yet for more than a dozen years no war had been waged. Nevertheless, some further impulse from without was required to induce the slow-moving Lacedaemonians to plunge into war. They needed the pressure of circumstances to drive them to take the decisive step. Among the allies of Sparta there were several states which had standing grievances against Athens. The Thebans could never forget the ten years of xA.thenian supremacy in Boeotia. and longed for their revenge ; moreover, they had always before their eyes the town of Plataea, once a member of their own confederacy, but now 362 SPARTA AND ATHENS 263 446-439 B.C. an Athenian outpost pushed forward beyond Cithaeron. The Me- garians had a more recent and a more tangible grievance. Athens had never forgiven them their revolt in 446 B.C., and the treacher- ous massacre of their Athenian garrison. Though compelled to make peace with them, in common with the other allies of Sparta, in 445 B.C., she had taken the first opportunity to do them an ill turn. Utilizing as excuses some disputes about fugitive slaves and debatable lands on the frontier, she had picked a quarrel with Megara. Then, covering her designs with one of those supersti- tious pleas which were so well known in Greek diplomacy, she had accused the Megarians of sacrilege, for tilling some frontier-land dedicated to Demeter. Finally, as a punishment for this alleged sacrilege, she had closed her ports and markets to Megarian mer- chants, and compelled all her subject allies to do the same. These proceedings inflicted a deep wound on her Dorian neighbor. Me- gara had always been a naval state, with a considerable trade both to east and west. The prohibition to visit the harbors of any of the members of the Delian confederacy destroyed half her com- merce at a blow. The whole state languished and decayed in con- sequence; again and again embassies were sent to beg the aid of Sparta, and to beseech her to compel the Athenians to rescind the obnoxious decree. But for some time no result followed these petitions. There was yet another state, not far from Megara, whose con- dition was likely to provoke discontent at Sparta. Aegina, once the equal and the rival of Athens, and for many years a member of the Peloponnesian alliance, had been compelled, in the days of Sparta's weakness, to become a mere dependency of Athens and to join the Delian confederacy. Though no formal embassy could be sent by her, there can be little doubt that lier Dorian oligarchy contrived to keep her unhappy condition before the eyes of the ephors, and to make private petition for release from the Athenian yoke. But in spite of all their grievances, it was neither Thebes, Megara, nor Aegina which was to play the chief part in driving Sparta into a new struggle with Athens. Corinth, the state which in 439 B.C. had been the strongest partisan of peace, was destined to become, under the stress of circumstances, the chief advocate of war. We have already had occasion to mention the fact that Corinth was far more successful than other Greek states in keeping her colonies in a state of dependence. The chain of cities which she 264 GREECE 439-435 B.C. had founded along the western coast of Greece was_, with one ex- ception, retained under her power. Ambracia, Leucas, Anactorium, and the other colonies were united by a close alliance to their mother-city; they formed a commercial union whose currency was interchangeable, and a political confederacy whose resources were always used in common. Corinth was the managing partner in the alliance, and her colonies were content to follow her guidance. But to the north of the other Corinthian cities lay one colony which had always taken a different line. Corcyra had from her first foundation been hostile to her mother-city. After a severe struggle she had made herself independent in the seventh century; the tyrant Periander had once reduced her to obedience, but after his death she had again torn herself free from the Corinthian alliance. Lying as she did full in the course of the trade route from Corinth to Tarentum and Syracuse, she was frequently able to interfere with the commerce of her mother-country, and used her power to the full. It was not unnatural, then, that Corinth and Corcyra were bitter enemies. On the Illyrian shore, some distance to the north, lay the town of Epidamnus, better known in later days as Dyrhachium. The Corcyraeans had founded the place, but in accordance with the uni- versal usage of Greece had taken a Corinthian, the Heracleid Pha- llus, as the official oekist of the settlement. Epidamnus was in 435 B.C. engaged in one of those fierce civil wars between the oligarchy and the democracy to which every Greek state was liable. The popu- lace finally expelled their opponents, who took refuge with the neighboring Illyrian tribe of the Taulantii, and stirred them up to attack the city. Being cooped up within their walls by the bar- barians, and prevented from cultivating their territory, the Epi- damnian democrats were reduced to great straits ; accordingly they made application for help to the Corcyraeans, as their nearest neigh- bors and kinsmen. The Corcyraean government, however, refused to interfere in the party quarrel, and would not grant assistance. It then occurred to the Epidamnians that they were connected with Corinth also, from the fact that their oekist had been a Corinthian. Accordingly they sent an embassy to beg from the mother-city for the aid which they had been unable to obtain from the daughter. The Corintliians were delighted to have the opportunity of doing Corcyra an ill turn, by obtaining her nearest neighbor as an ally, and extending their influence up the Illyrian Gulf. If Epidamnus SPARTA AND ATHENS 265 435-434 B.C. were included in their commercial league, the harm that Corcyra could do them would be much diminished. Accordingly they re- ceived the Epidamnian ambassadors with effusion, and promised them prompt assistance. Not only did they equip a small fleet, and place on board of it a garrison for Epidamnus, but they invited emigrants to come forward to reinforce the thinned population of the place, and guaranteed them the protection of Corinth. This expedition reached Epidamnus, and greatly strengthened its power of resistance; but at the same time it called down on the town the wrath of Corcyra. The Corcyraeans were indignant that Corinth should trespass in waters which they considered to be their own, and resolved to put an end to the alliance of Corinth and Epidamnus by force. Accordingly they sent a fleet of forty ships to blockade the town from the side of the sea, and entered into an alliance with the Epidamnian oligarchs and the Taulantii, who were besieging it on land. This action on the part of Corcyra was certain to lead to open war. The Corinthians took up the challenge, equipped thirty ships of their own, called out contingents from their Leucadian and Ambraciot colonists, and obtained aid also from Megara, whose citizens debarred by Athens from eastern trade were eager to find new outlets to the west. Late in the year 435 B.C. a combined fleet of seventy-five galleys, under the Corinthian Aristeus, set sail to raise the blockade of Epidamnus. They were met off the prom- ontory of Actium by eight Corcyraean vessels, who completely de- feated them, with the loss of fifteen ships. On the same day Epi- damnus surrendered, the native population consenting to receive back their exiled oligarchy, while the Corinthian garrison were made prisoners of war. This check caused the wildest wrath at Corinth, and extensive preparations were at once set on foot to repair the disaster. The Corinthians spent the whole of 434 B.C. in strengthening and equip- ping their fleet, and by the spring of the next year had ninety galleys ready for sea. They bade their subject allies follow their example, and raised thirty-eight ships from them. This arma- ment, strengthened by a dozen Megarian and ten Eleian vessels, composed a fleet which Corcyra could not hope to withstand, al- though she was accounted the second naval power of Greece, and owned not less than a hundred and twenty triremes. The Corcyraeans had up to this moment held themselves aloof 266 GREECE 433 B.C. from Grecian politics; not even such a crisis as the invasion of Xerxes had been able to induce them to interest themselves in any- thing that went on to the east of Cape Malea. But when they had drawn upon themselves such a storm as was now impending, they were constrained to look around for allies. All the naval states of Western Greece were leagued with Corinth ; their Italiot neigh- bors across the sea had no war-fleets of importance. Nowhere could they discover any power except Athens which could afford them the help they needed. After many searchings of heart, and with great reluctance, the Corcyraeans resolved to apply to be ad- mitted into the alliance of Athens, although they thereby sacrificed the complete independence which had hitherto been their pride. In the early spring of 433 B.C. they dispatched envoys to solicit the conclusion of an offensive and defensive alliance. The moment that the news of this move arrived at Corinth, the government of that city sent a counter-embassy to persuade the Athenians to refuse the petition of their enemies. Thus it came to pass that on the day on which the Corcyraean ambassadors appeared before the Ecclesia with their propositions, the Corinthians were also present to set forth the arguments against the conclusion of the alliance. Thucydides has preserved for us the substance of the speeches made by the rival envoys on this occasion ; though expressed in his own language, they fairly represent the arguments employed during the debate, at which the historian himself was probably present. The Corcyraeans appealed entirely to the self-interest of Athens; they acknowledged that they had no moral claim for her assistance, but pointed out that they possessed the second largest navy in Greece, and that, if they w^ere allowed to fall under the power of Corinth, that navy might at any time be turned against Athens. They declared that war between Athens and the Pelopon- nesian alliance, of which Corinth was such a prominent member, was certain to break out ere long, and asked whether it was better that the Corcyraean fleet should be found on that day on the side of Athens, or on that of her enemies. As to the idea that the con- clusion of an alliance with themselves would bring on an imme- diate war with Corinth and Sparta, they declared that the reverse would be the case; for the Athenian and Corcyraean navies, if united, would be so powerful that the Peloponnesians would not dare to attack them. While the Corcyraeans spoke of profit and expediency, the SPARTA A N D A T H E N S i^6T 433 B.C. Corinthian envoys in their reply took a higher tone. They pointed out that Corcyra had always pursued a selfish and false policy, that she had been equally careless of the common interests of Greece and of the respect due to her mother-city, and that in the case of Epidamnus she had been actuated by mean jealousy. If any state might make an appeal for the friendship of Athens, it was Corinth, who had not only done her good services in past days/ but had only a few years before restrained Sparta from declaring war at the moment of the revolt of Samos. On that occasion Corinth had vindicated the rights of every sovereign state to punish its own sub- ject allies, and now she expected that Athens would do as much for her. If the treaty which the Corcyraeans desired was now con- cluded, there would be full precedent for the Peloponnesian alliance helping the next member of the Delian Confederacy that revolted. As to the plea that war was inevitable, and that even if Corcyra did not furnish a casus belli some other must, ere long, arise, they declared that unless iVthens provoked them they had no intention of attacking her, and that the majority of the members of the Peloponnesian alliance were of the same mind. After the ambassadors had spoken, Athenian orators took up the debate, which was protracted far into the second day. It vvas the speech of Pericles which decided the vote of the Ecclesia ; the great statesman had fully made up his mind that war must come sooner or later, and threw his weight on to the side of the Cor- cyraeans. In accordance with his advice a defensive alliance was concluded with them, which bound Athens to lend them her help if they were attacked. As an earnest of the protection which was thereby granted, Lacedaemonius. the son of the great Cimon, was sent with a small squadron of ten ships to cruise in Corcyraean waters. There can be no doubt that Athens put herself in the wrong by this action. The treaty with Corcyra was virtually a declaration of war on Corinth, whose fleet was just about to sail against that city. Of all the allies of Sparta. Corinth deserved the best treat- ment from Athens, and was the state which could be most easily conciliated, for the lines of Corinthian and Athenian commerce did not cross each other to any great extent. Even if war was really in- evitable, it was not worth while to precipitate it by high-handed ac- 1 As, for example, during the invasion of Attica by Cleomenes in 509, and the Aeginetan war of 489. 268 GREECE 433 B.C. tion which obviously broke the spirit of the Thirty Years' Truce. Nor was Corcyra an ally whose past history gave much promise of fu- ture good faith ; she had always played a purely selfish game, and as a matter of fact gave Athens very little assistance in the coming struggle. During the twenty-eight years of the war not a single Corcyraean galley rounded Cape Malea to help Athens in her strug- gle to maintain the empire of the Aegean. Though fully aware of the meaning of the new treaty, Corinth persisted in her intention of chastising her undutiful daughter-city. A few days after the ten Athenian ships under Lacedaemonius had reached Corcyra, the approach of the Corinthian fleet was signaled. Now that all its reinforcements had come in, from Megara, Leucas, and elsewhere, the armament mustered one hundred and fifty sail; the Corcyraeans put out to meet it with one hundred and ten ves- sels. With them sailed Lacedaemonius and his ten ships ; but the Athenian commander had determined to take no active part in the coming fight unless compelled, for he was under orders not to attack the Corinthians, and only to resist if circumstances com- pelled him. The fleets met off the coast of Epirus, at the island of Sybota, and battle was joined along the whole line, except at the extreme left flank of the Corcyraean squadron, where the ten Athenian ships kept maneuvering without coming to close quarters. After a hard fight, carried on with more courage than naval skill, the Corinthian right wing broke through the opposing line, and, although the Corcyraeans had some advantage at other points, decided the fate of the battle. More than half of the Corycraean fleet was sunk, taken, or disabled; and Lacedaemonius. who only took an active part in the fight when his allies w^ere already beaten, could not do much to protect their retreat. After pausing to re- arrange their disordered line of battle and to capture or slay the crews of the disabled Corcyraean ships, the Corinthians came on for a second attack, that must have been fatal to the defeated fleet, which did not now muster more than fifty or sixty seaworthy ships. But after advancing to within a short distance of the enemy, the victorious squadron was suddenly seen to back water, go about, and retreat down the Epirot coast. The cause of this maneuver was the sudden appearance of a second Athenian squadron, which had been sent out to reinforce Lacedaemonius. It mustered only twenty ships, but the Corinthians took them for the mere vanguard of a large fleet, and cautiously drew back. When the newcomers SPARTA AND ATHENS 269 433 B.C. had joined the Corycraean fleet, the Corinthian admiral sent out an ofiicer in a small boat to denounce the conduct of the Athenian com- mander, and to ask him whether he was intending to break the peace existing between Corinth and Athens. Lacedaemonius an- swered that he was not about to begin offensive hostilities, but intended to protect Corcyra. Thereupon the Corinthian, resolved not to precipitate a general war by hasty action, gave orders for his armament to steer homeward. Before starting he set up a trophy on the Epirot coast as a testimony to his victory in the battle ; the Corcyraeans also, we learn to our surprise, claimed a success because their enemies had retired, and set up another trophy on the southernmost headland of their island. Except the capture of a thousand prisoners from the conquered fleet, the Corinthians had made no gain from their carefully prepared expedition. The battle of Sybota made war between Athens and the Peloponnesian alliance practically certain, but the movements of Sparta were so slow that events were allowed to develop themselves for some months before the actual rupture came. The chief interest during this period lay in a series of events which took place in the northwestern Aegean. Perdiccas, King of Macedonia, the suc- cessor of that Alexander who took part in the invasion of Xerxes, had for some time been at variance with Athens. He endeavored to harm her by inducing the tributary cities of Chalcidice to revolt. Among the most important of these places was Potidaea, a Corinthian colony, which, in spite of its membership in the Delian Confederacy, was still so closely connected with its mother-country as to receive its annual magistrates from her. The Potidaeans were induced to lend a favorable ear to the proposals of Perdiccas by the encouragement which they received from Corinth. To revenge the Corcyraean treaty the Corinthians were ready to molest Athens in any way they could ; and secretly prepared an expedition of two thousand men, under their favorite general Aristeus. When this force arrived at Potidaea the town openly revolted, as did many of the smaller places in the neighborhood. However, an Athenian force which was then operating against Perdiccas was at once diverted against the rebel towns. In a battle fought in front of the walls of Potidaea the Athenians were victorious, though their general, Callias, was slain. They then laid siege to the town ; but it had been amply provisioned in preparation for the revolt, and proved able to resist for many months. 270 GREECE 432 B.C. Athens and Corinth were now virtually at war, though no open declaration of hostilities had yet been published. Before definitely committing herself to the struggle, Corinth had determined to make certain of the assistance of Sparta, her ancient protector. The Spartans had long been contemplating the approach of war, and were not unprepared for the appeal of their allies. Late in the year 432 B.C. the ephors allowed the Corinthians to set forth their grievances before a meeting of the Apella. The Megarians and other states who were at odds with Athens also appeared to make their wrongs known. The general drift of all the speeches was the same: Athens had become haughty and high-handed; she was an intolerably bad neighbor, whose one aim was to reduce and im- poverish every state which was not numbered among her subject allies ; the empire which she had built up was kept together in viola- tion of the natural law which made autonomy the sacred right of every Hellenic community; if her restless activity were not checked, the liberty of Greece was in danger. Some Athenian ambassadors, who chanced to be in Sparta on another mission, spoke before the Apella in defense of the conduct of their country ; but they could not deny the charge which was at the bottom of the accusations the fact that Athens had turned her hegemony over the states of the Aegean into an imperial dominion, where no pretense was made of granting her allies a share in the control of affairs. The Spartan king, Archidamus, also spoke against an immediate declaration of war, on the ground that the Peloponnesian states were as yet ill- prepared for a struggle with an enemy whose main power lay on the sea. But the large majority of the Spartans had long made up their minds ; their opinion was curtly stated by the ephor Sthene- lai'das, when he told the assembly " they must not suffer the Athe- nians to become any greater, nor sit still when their allies were be- ing wronged, but march with the aid of the gods against these wrongdoers." So certain was Sthenelai'das of the numerical su- periority of his party, that he actually took the step, unheard of before, of bidding the assembly divide, instead of merely listening to its tumultuous cries of assent or dissent.^ As he had foreseen, an enormous majority voted in favor of war. A formal congress of all the allies of Sparta was then held, to ratify the decision of the Apella. It was well known that the greater part of the states were quite ready to follow the lead of 2 See p. 64, as to the voting in the Spartan assembly. SPARTA AND ATHENS 271 432 B.C. their suzerain. Many places besides Corinth, Megara, and Thebes had their own private grudges against Athens ; EHs, Epidaurus, and Phhus, for example, had been interested in the success of the cam- paign against Corcyra, to whose expenses they had contributed. The Arcadian tribes were always ready for war which gave a promise of plunder, and yet was never likely to extend to the neigh- borhood of their own inland mountains. Accordingly the congress of allies proceeded to confirm the decision of the Spartan assembly; if any votes were given in favor of peace, they were so unimportant that no record of them has been preserved. Two diplomatic episodes occurred before the actual outbreak of hostilities. The Spartans first sent a message designed to shake the credit of Pericles with the more superstitious of his fellow citizens. It bade the Athenians, in the old formula, " expel the accursed family of the Alcmaeonidae." To this no reply w-as made except by a contemptuous tu quoque, in which the Spartans were told to " expiate the pollution they had brought on themselves by the starving of Pausanias in the temple of Athene, and by putting to death certain Helots who had taken refuge in the sanctuary of Taenarum." The Peloponnesian alliance then presented a peremptory note to Athens which contained three points. It required that the decrees against the Megarians should be repealed, that Aegina should be restored to her autonomy, and that the blockade of Poti- daea should be raised. The first demand was one which might possibly have been granted; but the last two struck at the whole principle of the Athenian naval dominion, bidding Athens permit secessions from the Confederacy of Delos a proceeding which her conduct in the cases of Naxos, Thasos, and Samos showed that she would never suffer. Naturally the demands were refused. A few days after the Spartans sent in an ultimatum, couched in the form of a demand that Athens should " restore their autonomy to the states of Greece." The Spartan ambassadors who came as bearers of the ultimatum expected a peremptory refusal of these demands, and must have been somewhat surprised when the Athe- nian peace party proved strong enough to raise a lively debate in the Ecclesia, for the purpose of taking the three points into con- sideration. During the seven or eight months which had elapsed since the battle of Sybota, the power of Pericles had been suffering a tem- 272 GREECE 432 B.C. porary eclipse. Now that war had become certain, all the classes which were likely to suffer from it felt ill-disposed towards the statesman whose advice had brought it on. The ill will shown against Pericles was so general that his enemies thought that a favorable opportunity had arrived for molesting him. Their at- tacks took the form of accusations against his friends and con- fidants. The philosopher x\naxagoras was accused of impiety, and the sculptor Pheidias of embezzlement, merely because they were honored with the friendship of Pericles. The former was obliged to leave Athens, the latter though he successfully proved by the test of the scales that he had not made away with any of the gold which had been given him for the statue of Athene Parthenos was retained in prison on another charge. He had introduced por- traits of Pericles and himself among the ancient heroes represented SPARTA AND ATHENS 273 432 B.C. in the " metopes *' of the Parthenon, and this was imputed to him as sacrilege. Before his second trial the unfortunate sculptor died in prison. The musician Damon, an intimate friend of Pericles since his youth, was accused of having spoken in favor of tyranny as a form of government, and suffered ostracism. A fourth attack was aimed at a personage still nearer and dearer to Pericles. The great statesman had been unhappy in his married life, and after divorcing his wife had been living in a connection not allowed by the tie of wedlock with a Milesian lady named Aspasia. The equivocal posi- tion of the mistress of Pericles made her an easy mark for slander, and she was indicted for impiety and evil-living. When she ap- peared before the dicastery, Pericles for once broke through his habitual reserve, and appeared in court to plead the cause of As- pasia. His biographers relate that during his oration he was seen to shed tears, for the first time on record during his public life: his evident emotion had its effect, and the trial resulted in a verdict of acquittal. At the moment that the Spartan ambassadors appeared in Athens to lay their ultimatum before the Ecclesia, the discontent felt against Pericles was still high, and it was this fact that led to the discussion of the three points. But after many speeches had been made, Pericles was able once more to assert his mastery over the assembly. He showed clearly enough that it was not the Me- garian decrees or the siege of Potidaea that were the real causes of the hostility of the Peloponnesians. The true reason for the hatred which Sparta felt towards Athens was her jealousy at the formation of the Athenian empire, which so much overshadowed her own local preeminence in Peloponnesus. The Corinthians and other maritime allies of Sparta were envious of the commercial prosperity of Athens. Neither Sparta nor her allies would ever be satisfied as long as the Confederacy of Delos continued to exist ; if the three points now brought forward were conceded, it would only cause the appearance of another and more stringent set of demands. The force of these arguments was soon felt ; it was recognized that for the last year war had been inevitable, and the Spartan ambassadors were sent back with the refusal that they had expected. A few days later the actual outbreak of hostilities occurred, apparently in the month of March, 431 B. c. B Chapter XXVII EARLY YEARS OF PELOPONNESIAN WAR, 431-429 B.C. EFORE passing on to describe the opening of the Pelopon- nesian war, it will not be out of place to recapitulate the resources of the two confederacies which were pitted against each other. The Spartans had enlisted in their cause the full force of their Peloponnesian allies ; that is, they were supported by Elis, Corinth, Sicyon, all the Arcadian states, Epidaurus, Hermione, Troezen, and Phlius : all the peninsula, in fact except Argos and Achaia, which remained neutral was ranked on their side. Outside the Isthmus they could count on the zealous assistance of Megara and the Boeotian League, while the Phocians, the Locrians, and the Cor- inthian colonies along the Acarnanian coast were also numbered among their allies. Every one of these powers could put a con- siderable body of hoplites in the field, and the Boeotians and Locrians could supply cavalry also. If the whole army of the alliance could have been mustered for a great battle, it would have amounted to more than a hundred thousand foot, with perhaps two thousand horse. But great battles on shore were very rare during the Peloponnesian war, and no such force was ever engaged at one time during the whole twenty-seven years of its course. By sea the Spartan alliance was comparatively weak ; except Corinth there was no first-class maritime power included in it. But Sicyon and Megara were each possessed of some scores of galleys, and Elis, Epidaurus, and even Sparta and the Boeotian League were not entirely without war vessels. It was not, however, in numbers alone that the allies of Sparta felt themselves weak at sea ; the morale and the training of their seamen were equally deficient. Their officers were unaccustomed to the management of a large fleet; their crews, except the Corinthians, had no recent experience of naval war. Moreover, the Athenian navy had developed in the last forty years a new system of tactics and maneuvers, while their enemies were still employing the same methods which had served at 274 PELOPONNESIAN WAR 275 431 B.C. Salamis. The old school of seamen had been accustomed to lay their vessels alongside of the enemy, and then to allow the hoplites and light troops on board to fight the matter out. The Athenians had altogether abandoned these tactics ; they had cut down the num- ber of marines whom a vessel carried, and trusted almost entirely to ramming. Their system was to secure by rapid and skillful maneuvering a favorable moment to drive their galley's beak into the enemy's side, or to crush into and disable his long projecting line of oars. The Peloponnesian had no conception of any other way of conquering his enemy than by grappling with him, while the Athenian loved a running fight, avoided close grips, and trusted to a rapid and unexpected charge. With these tactics the old-fash- ioned seamen of Corinth or Megara were at first utterly unable to cope. They knew their inferiority, and refused to engage unless they found themselves in largely superior force. Next to its acknowledged inferiority at sea, the greatest w^eak- ness of the Spartan confederacy lay in its financial poverty. Sparta herself possessed no monetary resources, and among her allies Corinth and Thebes alone had any accumulated wealth. The rest were " ready enough with their persons, but not at all ready with their purses." ^ So obvious was the financial difficulty of maintain- ing the war that, even before hostilities had begun, proposals were made that the league should borrow money from the temple treas- uries of Olympia and Delphi a course which those who made it would have been the first to denounce as sacrilege had it been brought forward on any other occasion. Thus it came to pass that Sparta could summon a very large army into the field for five or six weeks, but could not keep permanently on foot more than a few thousand men, for sheer want of money to pay them. She and her allies were invincible for a single battle or a frontier raid, but com- paratively helpless in carrying on a prolonged campaign. The position of Athens was very different. On land she had few allies; her trusty neighbors at Plataea, her dependents the Messenians of Naupactus, and the Acarnanians, who joined her because of their perpetual feuds with their Corinthian neighbors of Leucas and Ambracia, were the only friends on whom she could thoroughly rely. Corcyra, of course, was enlisted on her side, but proved of little assistance. Some of the Thessalian cities also had concluded alliances with her, but their forces never took the 1 Thuc. i. 141. 276 GREECE 431 B.C. field in her favor, and they practically remained neutral in the war. Her own military resources were very considerable, amounting- to twelve hundred horsemen and thirteen thousand hoplites fit to take the field, besides sixteen thousand more men past the prime of life or resident aliens who were available only for garrison duty at home. The Athenian fleet ready for sea amounted to not less than three hundred galleys in the highest state of efficiency, and the well- stored arsenal of Peiraeus was able to equip a yet larger number. The two Asiatic islands which still maintained a war navy Lesbos and Chios could reinforce their suzerain with a considerable squadron. With this exception the Confederacy of Delos con- tributed no naval or military assistance. The states which com- posed it had long ceased to maintain a fleet, while it would seem that Athens accounted their hoplites as too wanting in spirit or loyalty to make it worth her while to call them out in large num- bers. At any rate, Ionian troops were scarcely ever brought across the Aegean to reinforce the Athenian army for a campaign in Europe. The finances of Athens were in the most flourishing condition. She was enjoying an average annual revenue of about a thousand talents, of which six hundred consisted of the tribute of the Con- federacy of Delos, while the rest was obtained from various forms or domestic taxation. Moreover, she possessed a large accumular tion of hoarded wealth. Of the surplus of the tribute-money six thousand talents were lying in the Acropolis ready for instant use. This great treasure had a few years before amounted to as much as nine thousand seven hundred talents, but the lavish expenditure of Pericles for the adornment of Athens, together with the cost of the siege of Potidaea, had decreased it by more than a third. In considering the relative strength of Sparta and Athens, there was another element, no less important than their military and financial resources, to be taken into account. This was the feeling and disposition of their respective allies. Here Sparta had the advantage ; the greater part of the members of her alliance had an active dislike and fear of Athens, and looked upon the war against her as a crusade in favor of that " autonomy " which every Greek valued so highly. Among the subjects of Athens no such feeling against Sparta existed. The members of the Confederacy of Delos had long ceased to look upon their connection with Athens PELOPONNESIAN WAR 277 431 B.C. as an advantage. It was only the fear of sharing the fate of Thasos or Samos that kept them quiet ; if that fear could be removed, they were for the most part ready to secede. The victory of Athens over Sparta could bring them no advantage, while the continuance of the war might very possibly cause a diminution of trade and an increase of taxation. Of active hatred for specific acts of misgov- emment on the part of Athens there was little ; but. on the other hand, the yearning after autonomy was always present, to make them long for the break-up of the empire of their suzerain. The allies of Athens, therefore, were at the best passive supporters, and might easily be turned into rebels if the hardships of war bore heavily upon them, of if a fair chance of recovering their freedom was presented to them. The chief guarantee for fidelity was merely the fact that they were cut off from Sparta by an expanse of sea, and that while the Athenian fleet was undisputedly supreme they could not hope to obtain aid for a rebellion. The first blood shed in the struggle was spilled in Boeotia. Be- fore the final declaration of war had taken place, while men were still awaiting it, the Thebans made a treacherous attempt to seize Plataea. That town, like every Greek state, owned a discontented faction within its walls. The majority being attached to Athens, the minority were partisans of the Boeotian League. They entered into correspondence with the Theban government, and undertook to betray their city by opening one of its gates on the evening of a festival. On a night of wind and rain in March, three hundred Theban hoplites stole beneath the walls of Plataea, while the whole force of the city followed them some miles behind. The traitors admitted the advanced guard, who marched into the market-place and drew themselves up there, sounding their trumpets and bidding their herald proclaim that all true Boeotians should take arms and join them. But the oligarchic party in Plataea was not numerous, and the Thebans, instead of seizing the prominent men of the city, remained quietly waiting for their reinforcements to come up. Unluckily the showers of the night had caused the river Asopus to rise, and the main Theban army was detained beyond it, vainly seeking for a ford. The Plataeans, who had awakened at midnight to find their city betrayed, were at first in despair; but after a time they perceived that their enemies were but a handful, and plucked up courage. They mustered in the side lanes, clapped to the gates, and barricaded the issues from the market-place. In the dusk of 278 GREECE 431 B.C. the dawn a desperate street fight took place, when the Thebans per- ceived that they were entrapped, and strove to cut their way out. A few escaped by a postern gate, many were slain, but the majority were driven into a large granary, whence there was no exit, and forced to lay down their arms. Some hours afterwards, when all their countrymen were taken or slain, the Theban army appeared before the walls. Finding that they were too late, the Theban generals at once laid hands on all the inhabitants of the country-side, and held them as securities for the lives of their captured friends. The Plataeans then sent out a herald to upbraid their neighbors for their treach- erous attack, and threatened to put their prisoners to death if the hostages w^ere not given up and the Plataean territory evacuated. Accordingly the Thebans released the persons they had seized, and returned home across the border. The Plataeans drove off their cattle into Attica, brought all their movable property into the city, and then, with a cruel and delil^erate breach of faith, slew their prisoners, to the number of nearly two hundred. Thus with treachery, perjury, and deliberate massacre, in which it is difficult to blame one party more than the other, commenced the Pelopon- nesian war. When the first news of the attack on Plataea reached Athens, the strategi had set off at once to beg their allies to keep their prisoners safe, as a means of bringing pressure to bear on Thebes. The news of the massacre caused much discontent, but nothing could be done to repair the crime. War was now actually begun ; accordingly the frontier forts were put in a state of defense, the flocks and herds of Attica placed in safety across the water, in Salamis or Euboea, and the inhabitants received warning that they would soon have to take refuge within the walls of the city. From Plataea the women and children were removed, and only a small garrison of four hundred citizens and eighty Athenians remained behind to man the ramparts. The impending storm soon broke over Attica. A few weeks after the attempt on Plataea, the whole armed force of Pelopon- nesus mustered at the Isthmus, and set out on its march north- ward. Every state had sent two-thirds of its hoplites, and the whole amounted to some seventy or eighty thousand men. Arch- idamus, King of Sparta, though originally an opponent of the war, had been placed in command. After being joined by the con- PELOPONNESIAN WAR 279 431 B.C. tingents of Boeotia, he halted on the Attic frontier, and sent for- ward an ambassador named Melesippus to offer the Athenians one final chance of submission before war was let loose upon them. But on the motion of Pericles, the Ecclesia refused the envoy a hearing, and sent him back under guard to the frontier. When he was dismissed by his escort, the Spartan took leave of them with the solemn words, " This day will be the beginning of great evils for Greece," and returned to the camp of Archidamus. The Spartan king had calculated that the approach of an ir- resistible army would humble the spirit of the Athenians, and that when they saw that the ravaging of Attica was about to begin, they would offer terms of peace. He was so far right that there was a large party which looked with dismay on the prospect of an invasion, and the ruin of their country-side which must follow. But the landed interest at Athens was much less powerful than the com- mercial, and Pericles had succeeded in persuading the merchants, capitalists, and shipmasters of Athens that the war would bring them no great loss. He had from the first foreseen that, in the case of invasion, the open country of Attica must be evacuated, and abandoned to the enemy. He had familiarized his followers with the idea, and when the invasion took place, the terror on which Archidamus reckoned had long been discounted. Some days before the Spartan army arrived the Athenian proprietors had retired within the walls of the city, taking with them their families, their slaves, and all their household goods. There was nothing left but empty farmsteads for the enemy to destroy. After making an ineffectual attempt to storm the frontier fort of Oenoe, Archidamus descended from the spurs of Cithaeron into the plain of Eleusis, and began to burn and harry the land in the most systematic manner. It was now early June, and crops and fruits were well advanced towards maturity. The Peloponnesians spread over the face of the country, beat down the corn, felled the orchards and olive groves, and burned the deserted farms and villas. Working steadily south, they crossed Mount Aegialeus, entered the plain of Athens, and encamped hard by Acharnae, the richest and most populous of the Attic demes. When the smoke of the burn- ing town was blown towards the walls of Athens, and the bands of plunderers were seen scattered like locusts over the plain, there was great excitement in the city. Forgetful of their inferior numbers, the Athenians longed to leave the shelter of the city and fall on the 280 GREECE 431 B.C. invaders. The hoplites of Acharnae, and its neighborhood, who numbered three thousand spears, demanded a sortie. Groups of armed men mustered at the gates, and it required all the personal influence of Pericles to prevent the excited multitude from rushing out to court a certain defeat. It was the firm resolve of the great statesman to avoid all fighting in the open field, but he found a vent for the feelings of his fellow-citizens by planning two naval expeditions. One consisting of thirty triremes sailed up the Euripus, and made predatory descents on the coast of Boeotia and Locris. The other, mustering not less than a hundred ships, and carrying a thousand hoplites for land service, coasted round Peloponnesus, and did all the harm possible to the seaboard of Laconia, Messenia, and Elis. Then it was joined by fifty Cor- cyraean galleys, and passed up the coast of Acarnania, harrying the Corinthian colonies in that quarter. The presence of this powerful fleet in Western waters drew over to the Athenian alliance the four cities of Cephallenia, which had hitherto remained neutral. After remaining forty days in Attica, Archidamus drew off his army from the wasted land, and returned to Peloponnesus. The moment that he was gone Pericles sallied out from Athens with thirteen thousand men, marched into the Megarid, and paid off on the villages and farms of the Megarians all the ravages that Attica had been suffering during the last six weeks. This destruc- tive visit was regularly repeated every autumn during the first eleven years of the war ; sometimes the Athenians even supple- mented it by an additional raid in the spring. The events of the first year of the war made plain to everyone what had hitherto been suspected by few the fact that under ex- isting conditions the struggle must be prolonged indefinitely, for neither party had shown the power to strike an effective blow against its enemy. If the Athenians refused to meet the Pelopon- nesian army in the open field, and acquiesced in the abandonment of their home territory, there was no means of bringing pressure on them. The Spartans could not dream of besieging the vast circuit of the city and its maritime suburbs ; the walls were too strong for the siege artillery of those days, and the sea was always open for the supply of new resources. On the other hand, the Athenians had almost as little power to coerce the Peloponnesians ; no amount of ravagings of the Megarid or hasty descents on the coast of Laconia would appreciably affect the policy of an inland PELOPONNESIAN WAR 281 431 B.C. state like Sparta. Acute misery might be inflicted on the mer- cantile classes in Corinth or the farmers of the Eleian seaboard, but their sufferings would not disturb the stolid Lacedaemonian. Unless one side or the other found some more effective way of harming its enemy, the war might go on forever. Pericles had long foreseen that Sparta's ability to harm Athens was confined to the power of wasting Attica, and had made up his mind that after some years of ineffectual effort the enemy would be reduced to sue for peace. But he calculated that the struggle would be long, and as a measure of precaution induced the Ecclesia to vote that a thousand talents out of the treasures in the Parthenon should be put aside as a reserve fund, only to be used in the event of an attack on Athens by sea. With a similar object, a hundred triremes fully manned were always to be kept in home waters. The Spartans had not been so prescient as Pericles, and the utter failure of their first attack in bringing pressure to bear on Athens caused much dis- content. It was obvious that some new method of coercing the enemy must be found, unless the war was to last forever. Among the other events of the first year of the war was the expulsion from their native island of the Aeginetans. Aegina had been an unwilling member of the Confederacy of Delos since her conquest in 456 B.C., but her chief men were known to be in cor- respondence with Sparta, and Pericles dreaded the possible results of having a city ripe for revolt at the very gates of Athens. As long as Aegina was held by disaffected allies, it remained " the eye- sore of Peiraeus," and the Athenians now took the cruel and high- handed step of deporting its whole population. As Aegina had not justified this arbitrary action by an open revolt, much indignation was felt throughout Greece at seeing an ancient and famous city destroyed, merely to ease the suspicions of a jealous suzerain. The Spartans granted to the expelled inhabitants the land of Thyre- atis on their northern border, close to the frontier of Argolis. At the end of the campaigning season of 431 B.C. the Athe- nians held a solemn funeral celebration in honor of those citizens who had fallen in the numerous, if unimportant, skirmishes of the year. The oration in honor of the departed was spoken by Peri- cles; it was accounted the highest flight of his eloquence, and con- tained, besides its ostensible purport, a lofty panegyric on the social and political life of Athens. When the spring of 430 B.C. arrived the Peloponnesian con- 282 G R E E C E 430 B.C. federates prepared to repeat their incursion into Attica. The second year of the war might have been as uneventful as the first, if a great national calamity had not intervened to make it memorable. The army of Archidamus had hardly crossed the frontier, and the hosts of fugitive country-folk had only just taken refuge within the walls of Athens, when the plague broke out in the city. There ensued a fearful outbreak of pestilence, comparable in the fierceness of its ravages, though not in their extent, to the Black Death of 1348 or the London Plague of 1665, and far more dreadful than any of the visitations of cholera which our own times have known. The infection is said to have originated in Egypt, and to have been brought westward by merchants from inner Asia, where pesti- lence is almost always raging. It might, however, have passed Athens by, if everything there had not been prepared to make a disastrous outbreak easy. The city was crowded with refugees living in the most wretched and unsanitary condition. They had quartered themselves as best they could in the towers of the fortifi- cations ; the space betw^een the Long Walls was crowded with them ; every open square was crammed, and even such temples as were not kept locked up. They dwelt in booths and tents, even (we are told) in tubs, without any possible provision for cleanliness or comfort, and depending on a scanty and polluted water supply. In the heat of a stifling June, the filth and overcrowding had prepared the way for the pestilence. The moment that the infection was introduced it spread like wildfire. Thucydides has given a detailed account of the symptoms of this plague, which show it to have been a kind of eruptive typhoid fever. After seven or nine days of suf- fering, the victims, covered with pustules and racked with continual vomiting and unquenchable thirst, sank into their graves. Re- coveries, though not infrequent (Thucydides himself survived an attack), were few in comparison to the deaths. Hence the earliest symptoms of the disease brought on a state of reckless despair which led to much unnecessary loss of life. The physicians had nearly all fallen victims, and when all human skill was found un- availing, a selfish panic set in. Many refused to pay the least at- tention to the sufferings of their nearest relatives, and left them to perish untended. Moreover, under the moral and physical strain of the epidemic, the restraints of social order broke down, and men abandoned themselves to all manner of excess and debauchery. Crime and riot ran wild through the streets, while unburied corpses PERICLES CrM-irii 499 B. c. Died 429 B. c.) Dust III llic I'liticiiu Muscuin. Rome P E L O P O N N E S I A N W A R 283 430 B.C. lay in every corner and crossway. The cemeteries were ghastly sights; funeral trains might be seen fighting with each other for the possession of a pyre, and when a burning had begun the at- tendants fled, leaving the body half-charred, to pollute the neighbor- ing air. At least a quarter of tlie population of Athens perished in this horrible calamity, nor were its ravages confined to the city alone. The plague dogged the steps of two considerable expeditions which Pericles sent out to relieve the overcrowded city. A force of four thousand men, dispatched on shipboard to ravage the coasts of Troezen and Epidaurus, suffered heavily. The army lying before Potidaea which was still holding out, though now in the twenty- fifth month of its siege caught the infection from reinforcements which arrived from Athens, and fifteen hundred hoplites died in the camp. It was not till the approach of winter that the death- rate began to diminish. By an unreasoning but not unnatural impulse, many of the Athenians looked on Pericles, the author of the war, as responsible for the calamities of his country. In expression of the feeling of the mob, the demagogue Cleon actually brought a charge of pecu- lation against the great minister, and, to mark their anger, the Dicastery found him guilty of the preposterous charge. A vote of the Ecclesia even ordered the dispatch of envoys to Sparta, to sue for peace. This was, of course, refused by the enemy, and the Athenians gradually came round again to their old policy, and again elected Pericles as strategus. The plague had left the rest of Greece almost untouched ; nowhere were the conditions so favor- able for its spread as at Athens, and the mortality in the few places in which it appeared was therefore small. The Peloponnesians were able to harry Attica in June and July without catching the infection, and carried their incursions into every nook and corner of the land that had been left unvisited in the previous year. In the autumn of 430 B.C., after the Athenian fleets had gone hom.e, a considerable Peloponnesian squadron collected at Corinth, and ventured out into the Ionian Sea; but, though mustering a hundred ships, it did no more than execute a hasty descent on Zacyntlius, and then returned into the gulf. A more efficient method of harming Athens than such a timid excursion was devised in the same year by the Peloponnesians; they determined to endeavor to make an alliance v/ith the Great King; and to obtain from him 284 GREECE 430 B.C. Persian gold to supplement their own slender resources, Aristeus the Corinthian and five others set out to make the long land- journey to Asia which the preponderance of Athens at sea rendered necessary. On their way the envoys passed through Thrace, where reigned Sitalkes, a firm ally of Athens. Apprised of their arrival in his dominions, the barbarian king laid hands on them, and made them over to the Athenian envoy at his court. They were for- warded to Athens, and there put to death without a trial. This cold-blooded execution of non-combatants exasperated the Pelo- ponnesians to the highest pitch of fury, all the more because Aristeus was one of the most distinguished officers of their whole confederacy. The justification which the Athenians gave of their conduct was that the crews of several merchant vessels, which had been taken by Peloponnesian privateers, had suffered massacre : it was suspected that their real reason was personal hatred for Aristeus, arising from the trouble he had given them at Potidaea. A few months after the death of Aristeus, the town which he had induced to revolt fell into the hands of its enemies. Potidaea had now been under siege for about thirty months, and all its magazines had been exhausted. The walls were still intact, but there was hardly a crumb of food left in the city: we are told that some of the inhabitants had even been reduced to feed on the bodies of the dead. Seeing that there was no hope of help from Peloponnesus, the Potidaean leaders at last proposed a surrender. The Athenian generals, Xenophon and Hestiodorus, wishing to spare their army the hardships of another winter in the trenches, granted easy terms, on condition that the surrender should take place at once. Accordingly the Potidaeans, their families, and their Corinthian auxiliaries were permitted to depart whither they chose, though no individual was to take with him more than a single change of raiment and a fixed sum of money. The Athenian assembly was much discontented with this capitulation ; they bore a heavy grudge against the Potidaeans, as one of the causes of the war, and had been looking forward to wreaking their vengeance on them when the long-expected surrender took place. A few weeks more of blockade, as was very justly observed, would have compelled Potidaea to surrender at discretion, and placed all her inhabitants at the mercy of the besiegers, to be slain or sold as slaves. More than two thousand talents had been spent on the siege, and many lives had been lost in the trenches; we cannot, PELOPONNESIANWAR 285 429 B.C. therefore, wonder that Xenophon and his colleagues were severely censured by the home government. The fall of Potidaea was the last military event of 430 B.C., and must have occurred in the late autumn of that year. The third year of the war opened with an event destined to exercise the greatest influence on the policy of Athens. In the early summer of 429 B.C., two years and six months after the out- break of the war, Pericles died. The great statesman was struck down by the plague, which had reappeared with the hot weather. Although he recovered from the attack, he was left too weak to rally, and sank into his grave from sheer weakness a few weeks after. Since the previous year he had not been the same man. The plague had carried off his two sons, his sister, and most of his intimate friends. After the death of his younger son, Paralus, he shut himself up in his house, and was with difficulty induced to come abroad, or to take an interest in public business. The in- gratitude of the people, which had resulted in his trial and con- demnation on the charge of Cleon, must have added to his weariness of life. But down to the last he maintained his ascendency over the Ecclesia. Just before he died the Athenians gave him a signal proof of their renewed confidence. The death of his sons having left him without an heir, the revulsion of feeling which succeeded to their momentary anger took the form of a decree of the Ecclesia, which legitimatized a natural son whom Aspasia had borne to him. This youth, who bore the same name as his father, was reserved for a stirring career and an unhappy end. Pericles viewed his approaching end with philosophic calm. As he lay dying, his surviving friends spoke by his bedside of the great achievements of his life. They thought him far gone beyond the power of hearing and speech; but he presently raised himself and said, " I marvel that you so dwell upon and praise these acts of mine. Fortune had her share in them, and many other generals have done more. But you take no notice of that which is my real pride, that no Athenian ever wore mourning through me." Chapter XXVIII SIEGE OF PLATAEA, 429-427 B.C. THE death of Pericles deprived the Athenian democracy of the one guiding spirit whom it was accustomed to obey, and left it exposed to the varying impulses of half a dozen statesmen of second-rate ability. As long as Pericles lived, the war had been conducted towards a definite end on one simple and rigid plan. Sparta was to be wearied out, not struck down; therefore all action on land was to be avoided, all distant and hazardous enterprises eschewed ; the forces of Athens were to be kept in hand, and devoted solely to preserving her supremacy at sea, and preventing any communication between her enemy and her discontented subject allies across the Aegean. After a time prob- ably a very considerable time, but still one whose coming was inevitable the Peloponnesian confederacy would despair at its in- ability to harm Athens, would tire of seeing its commercial navy kept under perpetual blockade and its coast-land exposed to the constant descents of an enemy who eluded any counter-blow. Sparta's allies, if not Sparta herself, would then sue for peace, and Athens would be left with her empire unimpaired, beyond all con- tradiction the strongest state in Greece. The policy of Pericles, if it could have been consistently carried out, would probably have proved efficacious; but it was a policy particularly hard to enforce in a democratic state. We may, indeed, say that no statesman save the one who had for so long exerted the influence of his master-mind on the Ecclesia could possibly have put it in practice. It involved the constant exercise of tenacity and self-restraint, the two virtues in which a democratic assembly is notoriously wanting. It often exacted the neglect of tempting opportunities for action on land, or promising expeditions to distant regions ; it gave few opportunities for dis- tinction to the ambitious military men in whom the state abounded ; it brought the most cruel suffering on the agricultural classes of Attica, who were compelled to give up their farms year by year to 286 P L A T A E A 287 429 B.C. be ravaged by the invader. Hence it was certain that, when the gfuiding hand of Pericles was removed, the Ecclesia would be driven by anger, fear, or ambition into abandoning the narrow line of policy which he had marked out for it. We shall soon be able to trace the results of his removal, by noting the increasing scope and variety of the efforts of Athens during the few succeeding years. The Peloponnesian army, which marched up from the Isthmus about the time of the death of Pericles (June, 429?), did not repeat the ravages of the two preceding years. King Archidamus this time left Attica untouched perhaps the renewed outbreak of the plague in Athens frightened him and turned northward to strike at a smaller prey. Plataea had for the last two years been deserted by its inhabitants, and contained only a small garrison of some five hundred men. To oblige his Boeotian allies, Archi- damus had determined to dislodge this outpost of Athenian power. When his army sat down before their walls, the Plataeans protested that half a century before Pausanias the Spartan, after his great victory over the Persians, had pronounced the soil of Plataea hallowed ground, and guaranteed its perpetual autonomy. They therefore begged Archidamus to remember this sacred obligation, and to withdraw his forces. The king replied by an offer to leave them unmolested, if they would become allies of Sparta, or even if they would renounce their alliance with Athens and stand neutral in the war. To this the Plataeans answered that as their families and their goods had been removed to Athens, and were in the custody of their allies, they were not free agents ; but that, if they were per- mitted, they would send an envoy to beg from the Athenian Ecclesia leave to become neutrals. Archidamus then made a very liberal offer; he promised to allow the Plataeans to depart, after handing over the town and district to the custody of Sparta, together with a list of all the buildings, orchards, plantations, and so forth con- tained therein. They should be held in trust during the continu- ance of the war, kept in good order, and restored to the Plataeans on the conclusion of a general peace. He was even ready to guarantee an allowance to the exiled citizens from the proceeds of the cultivation of their land. The proposal tempted the Plataeans sorely, but they again required permission to communicate with Athens. Archidamus granted leave, and messengers went forth from the city, only to 288 GREECE 429 B.C. return with the answer that " Athens never deserted her alHes, and would not now neglect the Plataeans, but succor them with all her might. Wherefore the alliance must stand, and the attack of the Spartans be withstood." Accordingly the proposals of Archidamus were rejected, and the siege began. After running a continuous line of palisades around the little town, the Spartans commenced to throw up a mound against one portion of the wall, intending to raise it until it filled up the ditch and rose level with the battlements, so as to furnish a path into the city. To foil this design, the Plataeans kept raising the height of the wall as the mound grew, and, when this proved an inadequate defense, pierced through the lower course of their ramparts and ran a tunnel into the interior of the mound. Through this tunnel they removed the earth in such quantities that the mound kept crumb- ling and sinking in. The Spartans, however, foiled this method of defense by heaping on the mound, not loose mold, but crates and hurdles tightly wedged up with clay. Finding themselves in im- minent danger, the Plataeans next built a crescent-shaped wall in rear of the threatened point with materials taken from the deserted houses of the city. When, therefore, the mound had accomplished its purpose, the Spartans found themselves in front of a second line of wall. They then vainly attempted to set fire to the town. When this expedient also failed, the season was so far advanced that Archidamus gave up all hope of capturing Plataea in the current year. He resolved to turn the siege into a blockade, and to dismiss the greater part of his army homewards. Accordingly he sur- rounded the city with carefully planned lines of circumvallation, consisting of two substantial walls of unbaked brick, with towers at regular intervals ; they faced, the one inward and the other out- ward, in case any attempts might be made by the Athenians to raise the blockade. In front of each of the faces lay a ditch, while the space between the two walls provided dwelling-space for the troops. Leaving a force, consisting half of Boeotians and half of Pelo- ponnesians, to maintain these lines, Archidamus marched back to Corinth with the bulk of his army. During the summer, while the army of Archidamus remained in Boeotia, the Athenians had kept within the walls. But it is surprising to find that, when the main body of the enemy had de- parted, they made no attempt to relieve Plataea, in spite of the solemn assurances of assistance which they had given to its inhabi- P L A T A E A 289 429 B.C. tants at the time of the negotiations with Archidamus. But in the whole of 429 B.C. the Athenians made no expeditions near home ; the mihtary interest of the year is centered entirely in operations in the distant land of Acarnania, At the same time that Archidamus laid siege to Plataea,, a small Peloponnesian expedition under a Spartan officer named Chemus had crossed the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, and joined the land forces of the Leucadians and Ambraciots. They were bent on conquering the Acarnanians and the ]\Iessenians of Nau- pactus, the only continental allies whom Athens possessed in Western Greece. A long feud had existed between the Corinthian colonists on the shore and the Acarnanian and Amphilochian high- landers of the inland ; the former were continually encroaching on the territory of the latter, and had of late brought matters to a head by seizing Argos, the capital of the Amphilochian tribe. It was owing to this local quarrel, and not to any love for Athens, that the Acarnanians are found enrolled in the Athenian alliance. When Cnemus had been joined by the troops of Leucas and the other Corinthian towns, and had further strengthened himself by summoning to his standard a number of the predatory barbarian tribes of Epirus, he advanced on Stratus, the chief city of Acarna- nia. At the same time a squadron of Peloponnesian ships collected at Corinth, and set sail down the gulf towards Naupactus. The only Athenian force in these waters consisted of twenty galleys under an able officer named Phormio, who was cruising off the straits of Rhium, to protect Naupactus and blockade the Corinthian Gulf. Both by land and by sea the operations of the Peloponnesians miscarried miserably. Cnemus collected a very considerable army, but as he sent his men forward to attack Stratus by three separate roads he exposed them to defeat in detail. His center, composed of his Epirot auxiliaries, was routed by the Stratians, and the Greek troops on either flank were then compelled to retire without having struck a blow. By sea the defeat of the Peloponnesians was even more disgraceful; the Corinthian admirals Machaon and Isocrates were so scared, when they came across the squadron of Phormio at the mouth of the gulf, that, although they mustered forty-seven ships to his twenty, they took up the defensive. Hud- dling together in a circle, they shrank from his attack and allowed themselves to be hustled and worried into the Achaian harbor of 290 GREECE 429 B.C. Patrae, losing several ships in their flight. Presently reinforce- ments arrived; the Peloponnesian fleet was raised to no less than seventy-seven vessels, and three Spartan officers were sent on board, to compel the Corinthian admirals, who had behaved so badly, to do their best in future. The whole squadron then set out to hunt down Phormio. They found him with his twenty ships coasting along the Aetolian shore towards Naupactus, and at once set out in pursuit. The long chase separated the larger fleet into scattered knots, and gave the fighting a disconnected and irregular character. While the rear ships of Phormio's squadron were compelled to run on shore a few miles outside Naupactus, the eleven leading vessels reached the harbor in safety. Finding that he was now only pursued by about a score of the enemy the rest having stayed behind to take possession of the stranded Athenian vessels Phormio came boldly out of port again. His eleven vessels took six, and sunk one of their pursuers; and then, pushing on westward, actually succeeded in recapturing most of the nine ships which had been lost in the morning. This engage- ment, though it had no great results, was considered the most daring feat performed by the Athenian navy during the whole war. Phormio was soon after reinforced from Athens, and the Peloponnesians sailed back to Corinth. While they lay there, Brasidas, one of the Spartan officers serving on board the squadron, carried out a sudden and desperate feat of arms which gave earnest of his future achievements. Ever since the beginning of the war the Megarian navy had been lying in port, without daring to venture out into the Saronic Gulf. It amounted to forty vessels, of which many were old and leaky, but all could be used for a short cruise. Choosing the best of their crews, the Peloponnesian commanders marched them overland to Megara, each man carry- ing his oar and mat, and manned the galleys at nightfall. Then suddenly putting out to sea, they captured three Athenian galleys which were blockading the port of Nisaea, and afterwards landed on Salamis. That island had been considered a secure refuge by the Athenians, and was full of cattle and property that had been re- moved for safety out of Attica. All this the Peloponnesians swept ofif, and so promptly did they act that they re-embarked unharmed with their prisoners and spoil. The Athenians, who had thronged down in rage and uproar to man the galleys that lay at Peiraeus, were too late to catch a single one of the marauders. P L A T A E A 291 428 B.C. With the exception of a fierce but fruitless inroad made by the Thracian alHes of Athens into Macedonia, no other operations took place in 429 B.C. The winter passed uneventfully, and the war seemed as far as ever from showing any signs of producing a definite result. But although the Spartan invasion of 428 B.C. had no more effect than those of the preceding years, yet in the late summer there occurred an event so fraught with evil omens for Athens as to threaten the whole fabric of her empire. For the first time since the commencement of hostilities an important subject state made an endeavor to free itself by the aid of the Spartan fleet, Lesbos was one of the two Aegean islands which still remained free from tribute, and possessed a considerable war- navy. Among its five towns ^ Mitylene was the chief, and far exceeded the others in wealth and resources. It was governed by an oligarchy, who had long been yearning to revolt, and had made careful preparation by accumulating warlike stores and enlisting foreign mercenaries. Before their arrangements were quite com- plete, their neighbors of Tenedos and Methymna sent secret infor- mation to Athens of the intended rebellion. The Athenians at first hardly credited the news, and thought it a serious matter to have to add such a powerful state to the list of their enemies. They sent ambassadors to pacify the Mitylenaeans, but without any result. The whole island except Methymna, where a democ- racy ruled, rose in arms, and determined to send for aid to Sparta. The Athenians at once dispatched against Mitylene a squadron of forty ships under Cleippides, which had just been equipped for a cruise in Peloponnesian waters. This force had an engagement with the Lesbian fleet, and drove it back into the harbor of Mitylene. To gain time for assistance from across the Aegean to arrive, the Lesbians now pretended to be anxious to surrender, and engaged Cleippides in a long and fruitless negotiation, while they were repeating their demands at Sparta. But at last the Athenian grew suspicious, established a close blockade of Mitylene by sea, and landed a small force of hoplites to hold a fortified camp on shore. The autumn had now arrived, and the Lesbian envoys who had been sent to Sparta were conducted to Olympia, where the representatives of the various Peloponnesian states were just as- sembling to assist at the celebration of the games. Here they laid 1 Mitylene, Methymna, Antissa, Eresus, Pyrrha. J292 G R P: E C E 428-427 B.C. their grievances before the confederates, dwelling not so much on individual instances of oppression on the part of Athens as on the fact that her empire made impossible that autonomy which was the right of every state, and complaining that though they had only entered the Delian League to aid in freeing the Aegean from the Persians, they were now employed against their will in every private quarrel which Athens waged with another Greek city. Believing the revolt of the Lesbians to be the earnest of a general rising of all the vassals of Athens, the Peloponnesians determined to make a vigorous effort in their favor. The land contingents of the various states were summoned to the Isthmus though the harvest was now ripe, and the allies were loath to leave their reaping while it was also determined to haul over the Corinthian Isthmus the fleet which had fought against Phormio, and then to dispatch it to relieve Mitylene. It would seem that much of this temporary burst of activity among the Peloponnesians was due to the idea that Athens, in consequence of the plague and the four years of costly and indecisive war, was now brought very low in resources. They were soon undeceived ; the Athenians were furious at the idea that their vassals were now about to be stirred up to revolt, and strained every nerve to defend themselves. While the blockade of Mitylene was kept up, and a hundred galleys cruised in the Aegean to inter- cept any succors sent to Lesbos, another squadron of a hundred ships sailed round Peloponnesus and harried the coastland with a systematic ferocity that surpassed any of their previous doings. To complete the crews of the two hundred and fifty ships now afloat and in active service proved so great a drain on the military force of Athens, that not only the Thetes, but citizens of the higher classes were drafted on shipboard. Nevertheless the effect which they designed by this display of power was fully produced. To defend their own harvests the confederates who had met at the Isthmus went homewards, while the dismay at the strength of the Athenian fleet was so great that the plan of sending naval aid to Lesbos was put off for the present. Only a Lacedaemonian officer named Salaethus was secretly sent across to Mitylene, when winter had already arrived ; he was but a poor reinforcement when the Lesbians had been expecting a whole fleet to come to their aid. All through the winter of 428-7 B.C. the blockade of Mitylene was kept up, though its maintenance proved a great drain on the P L A T A E A 293 427 B.C. resources of Athens. On the land side a considerable force of hoplites under Paches strengthened the troops already on the spot, and made it possible to wall the city in with lines of circumvalla- tion. To provide funds for the siege, the Athenians, having now exhausted the greater part of the hoarded treasure of the Delian League, raised two hundred talents from among themselves by a property-tax, and also sent round galleys to collect extra contribu- tions from their allies. When the spring of 427 B.C. arrived, the Spartans determined to make a serious attempt to send aid to Lesbos; but the fear of imperiling all their naval resources in a single expedition kept them from dispatching a fleet of sufficient size. Only forty-two galleys, under an admiral named Alcidas, were sent forth from Corinth. This squadron managed to cross the Aegean without meeting the Athenians, by steering a cautious and circuitous course among the islands. But so much time was lost on the way that on arriving off Embatum in Ionia, Alcidas found that Mitylene had surrendered just seven days before. The circumstances of the fall of Mitylene were peculiar. Pro- visions had been growing scarce, and Salaethus, whom the Lesbians had placed in command, resolved to break the Athenian lines of investment by a sortie of the full force of the city. For this pur- pose he distributed full armor to all the lower classes of the city who had previously served only as light troops. But the proleta- riate of Mitylene had no interest in the war, which had been entirely the work of the oligarchy. They only thought of ending the semi-starvation from which they had been suffering of late. When they were provided with arms they refused to march, mustered in the market-place, and demanded with threats that all the provisions in the town should be placed in their hands, swearing to throw the gates open to the Athenians if any delay was made. The sedition grew so hot that the magistrates, in fear for their lives, resolved to make terms with the besiegers before the rioters anticipated them. Accordingly they merely stipulated with Paches that no one should be put to death until the Athenian Ecclesia should have come to a decision as to the fate of the city, and that when the matter was being debated they might be allowed to send envoys to speak in their defense. These terms amounted to a surrender at discretion, and were readily granted by the Athenian general. Placing the leading men of the oligarchical party in bonds at 294 GREECE 427 B.C. Tenedos, he let the rest of the people remain undisturbed, only throwing a strong garrison into the town. A few days after the capitulation Alcidas and his fleet arrived in Asiatic waters. Learn- ing of the fall of Mitylene, he made off southward, and, after inter- cepting many merchant vessels off the Ionian coast and brutally slaying their crews, returned to Corinth without having struck a single blow for the cause of Sparta. Paches soon reduced Antissa, Eresus, and Pyrrha, the three Lesbian towns which had joined in the revolt of Mitylene, and was then able to sail back, taking with him the Laconian general Salaethus, who had been caught in hid- ing at Mitylene, together with the other leaders of the revolt. When the prisoners arrived at Athens Salaethus was at once put to death without a trial. But the fate of the Lesbians was the subject of an important and characteristic debate in the Ecclesia. Led by the demagogue Cleon, the Athenians at first passed the monstrous resolution that the whole of the Mitylenaeans, not merely the prisoners at Athens, but every adult male in the city, should be put to death, and their wives and families sold as slaves. It is some explanation but no excuse for this horrible decree that Lesbos had been an especially favored ally, and that its revolt had for a moment put Athens in deadly fear of a general rising of Ionia and Aeolis. Cleon the leather-seller, the author of this infamous decree, was one of the statesmen of a coarse and inferior stamp whose rise had been rendered possible by the democratic changes which Pericles had introduced into the state. We need not brand him with ignominy, as did Aristophanes, for being low-born and ill- educated, or following a distasteful trade; but his character is sufficiently blackened by the acknowledged facts of his history. He had first made himself known as an uncompromising democrat, and a captious critic of everyone who held an office ; even Pericles himself had suffered from his boisterous assaults. Cleon was one of those men who, being gifted with very moderate abilities, en- deavor to thrust themselves to the front by the profession of a narrow and unscrupulous patriotism. He openly treated inter- national morality as non-existent, and proclaimed that his country's interest overrode all considerations of right and wrong. Cleon's ability was limited to a power of gauging very accurately the vary- ing moods of the Ecclesia. He rose to notoriety by making him- self the mouthpiece of the public opinion of the moment, and by P L A T A E A 295 427 B.C. always coming forward to lead the assault on any statesman or general who made himself obnoxious to popular prejudice. The chief victims of his invective were the remains of the old Conserva- tive party, whom he unceasingly accused of sympathizing with Sparta and designedly mismanaging the war. It is unfortunate for his reputation that his portrait has been drawn for us by two authors whom he had personally injured: he had driven the historian Thucydides into exile, and endeavored to deprive the comic dramatist Aristophanes of his citizenship. But even when we discount the wholesale charges of cowardice, corruption, cruelty, and shamelessness brought against him by these authors, it is obvious that he was a bane to his country. The statesman who preaches to the populace that they are infallible and omniscient, and at the same time encourages them to cast aside principle and guide themselves by self-interest alone, is the most pernicious product of democracy. Cleon's action at the Mitylenaean debate is a fair sample of the whole of his public life. At the end of the first day of debate the motion of Cleon had been passed, and a galley sent off to Paches at Mitylene, bidding him slay all the Lesbians; but on the next morning, when men thought over the matter in cold blood, there arose such a revulsion of feeling among the citizens of the better sort, that the prytaneis were induced to reassemble the Ecclesia, and bring forward the question of the fate of Mitylene for a second decision. Cleon stuck to his bloodthirsty resolution; he openly said that the Athe- nian empire rested on fear alone, and that the only way to keep the refit of the allies in a wholesome state of fear was to visit the Mitylenaeans with the harshest punishment that could be devised. If the assembly voted one thing one day and another the next, it would become the laughing-stock of Greece; while its imbecile good-nature would encourage other states to revolt, in the expecta- tion that, even if they were subdued, they would not fare very ill. Diodotus, the orator who came forward to answer Cleon, did not dare to appeal to the justice of the assembly, but rather strove to demonstrate that expediency required Athens to refrain from wholesale massacre. " Let the leaders be put to trial," he said, " but the rest left alone. If you condemn the common people of Mitylene, who took no part in the revolt, and as soon as they got possession of arms attacked the rebels, you are not merely slaying your benefactors, but committing a political blunder. At present 296 GREECE 427 B.C. the ruling classes in every allied state are ready to revolt, while the proletariate is, on the whole, well disposed towards Athens. But if you execute all the Mitylenaeans without distinction, the populace in every city will feel that their cause is the same as that of the nobles, and revolts for the future will be desperate and unanimous." Such arguments won over the Ecclesia to the side of mercy. The decree of Cleon was rescinded by a small majority, and a second galley sent off to stay Paches from the massacre which he had been directed to commence. But the first ship had now a start of a day and a night, and it was absolutely necessary to make all possible speed, or the reprieve would come too late. The friends and repre- sentatives of the Mitylenaeans promised the crew great rewards if they would only arrive in time; and, stimulated by their promises, the vessel made an extraordinarily rapid passage. The oarsmen took their food at the bench, and rested in relays, so that the ship's progress never slackened. By extraordinary exertions the bearers of the reprieve contrived to reach Lesbos only a few hours after Paches had received the first dispatch, and before he had time to put it into execution. Thus the majority of the Mitylenaeans were saved ; but all their leaders and prominent men, not less than a thousand in num- ber, were put to death : the mercy of the Athenian Ecclesia would have been called reckless bloodthirstiness in most other ages. The land of the Lesbians was divided into three thousand lots, of which a tenth was consecrated to the gods, while the rest were granted out to Athenian cleruchs, who became the landlords of the old owners, and permitted them to cultivate their own estates at a rent of two minae per annum. Nothing can illustrate more strongly the emotional and incon- sistent character of the Athenians than the fate of Paches, the conqueror of Alitylene. On his return home he was prosecuted before the Dicastery for having done violence to two Mitylenaean ladies, whose husbands he had put to death. The anger excited by this atrocity found such outspoken expression that the criminal fell on his sword before the eyes of his judges, in order to anticipate his certain condemnation to death. Yet the mob, which howled down Paches, had contemplated an outrage on a scale a thousand- fold greater than that which their victim had committed. In the winter and spring of 427 b.c, while the siege and fall of Mitylene were in progress, another blockade had been drawing P L A T A E A 297 427 B.C. to an end in a land nearer Athens. Plataea had now been besieged ever since the summer of 429 b.c, and as the Athenians had beHed their promises, and made no attempt to reheve the place, the garrison were drawing near the end of their stores. Starvation was growing so threatening by the end of the winter of 428-7 b.c.j that a large part of the garrison determined to make a desperate attempt to break out. Eupompidas, the Plataean commander, persuaded about fifty Athenians and a hundred and seventy of his own countrymen to follow him, though the prospect of having to cross two ditches and force two separate lines of wall might have appalled the most venturesome of men. They chose a moonless night, when rain was falling, and stole out of the city carrying scaling-ladders. They crossed the inner ditch unobserved, and had mounted the first wall before they were discovered by the sentinels. Then the alarm was given, and the besiegers began to come up in disorder from their various posts. The darkness, however, sent many astray, while those of the Plataeans who had not joined in the attempt made a sortie from the opposite side of the town to distract the enemy. Thus it happened that the adventurers were already descending from the second wall before the besiegers began to appear in force. While the majority were crossing the outer ditch, which was deep and full of floating ice, the rest stood at bay and kept back the approaching Boeotians. So silently and rapidly was the matter finished that the Plataeans got away in safety almost to a man, for two hundred and twelve out of two hundred and twenty slipped through. After escaping from the outer wall they avoided the direct road to Athens, by which they knew they would be pursued, and making a detour in the plain reached a hill-road far to the east, by which they escaped unmolested. This gallant and successful sortie left Plataea very scantily manned, but enabled the reduced garrison to hold out much longer on their limited stock of provisions. The siege was protracted not less than six months, till the summer of 427 B.C. was at its height. Then absolute starvation so weakened the Plataeans that the besiegers might have taken the place by storm, but they refrained from doing so on account of orders from Sparta, which bade them wait for a capitulation. The reason of this was that the ephors intended to make a distinction, if ever peace with Athens became necessary, between places which had been captured by force and those which made a voluntary surrender. At last the besieged were 298 GREECE 427 B.C. brought so low that they surrendered at discretion, on the ominous condition " that the Lacedaemonians should be allowed to punish the guilty." Five judges were sent down from Sparta, and the survivors of the garrison, two hundred Plataeans and twenty-five Athenians, were arraigned before them. The trial proved a pre- posterous farce ; the prisoners were asked one after the other " whether during the war they had done any service to the Lace- daemonians or their allies." On making the only possible reply, they were condemned without exception to suffer death. It was to no effect that their leaders pleaded in their behalf the many services which Plataea had done to the cause of Greece during past times, and especially in the Persian war. The Thebans, who had never forgiven the massacre of their two hundred citizens at the out- break of the war, answered with a flood of bitter invective, and put such pressure on their Spartan allies that the sentence v\^as at once carried out. Thus fell Plataea after two full years of siege, in the fifth summer of the war. The Thebans appropriated the territory of the conquered town, demolished its houses, and left nothing standing on the spot save the temple of Hera, and a sort of vast inn or caravansary for strangers, which they built with the stonework of the ruined dwellings. Chapter XXIX SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM, 427-424 B.C. THE same summer which saw the fall of Plataea and Mity- lene beheld the first grave instance of divergence from the policy of Pericles of which the Athenians had yet been guilty. Although they were conscious of the imminent danger in the Aegean which they had just escaped, they now proceeded to indulge in a rash and venturesome expedition far from home. In Sicily a war was at this moment raging between Syracuse with whom were allied Gela, Selinus, and Acragas, together with the Italiot town of Locri and a confederacy of the three Ionian cities of Naxos, Catana, and Leontini, joined with Camarina and the Italiots of Rhegium. We are assured that the interference of Athens in this distant strife was due to a desire to establish a foot- ing in Sicily, and to a plan for ruining the corn trade with the West, which formed the most profitable branch of the commerce of.Corinth. Twenty Athenian ships under Laches sailed round by Corcyra to Rhegium, where they joined the fleet of the Ionian cities, and next spring engaged in a desultory naval campaign which brought neither party any gain. The later months of 427 b.c. were also notable for a fierce sedition in Corcyra, where a party which favored peace with Corinth made a desperate rising, and strove to put down the democracy, which was responsible for the alliance with Athens and the con- tinuance of the war. The Spartans determined to strengthen their friends by sending to their aid the fleet which had failed to relieve Mitylene. But Alcidas once more arrived too late ; the Corcyraean oligarchs were put down, and the victorious democratic faction took a bloody and reckless revenge on their defeated opponents. Sev- eral hundreds, including many who were innocent of treason, were put to death without any regular trial or condemnation. The next year of the war, 426 b.c.^ was perhaps the least event- ful which had passed since the outbreak of hostilities. A second outbreak of the plague occurred at Athens, but it wrought no very 299 300 GREECE 426 B.C. great destruction of life in comparison with the awful visitation of 430 B.C. The most important event of the year was an expedi- tion as reckless though not so remote as that which had been sent to Sicily which marked once more the tendency of the Athenians to engage in distant adventures. Demosthenes, the general who was now in command of the squadron in the Corinthian Gulf which had once belonged to Phormio, determined to make an attack on the numerous an4 warlike tribes of Aetolia, who had up to this moment preserved their neutrality. The Messenians of Naupactus had persuaded him that their Aetolian neighbors were so uncivilized and so untrained to regular war that they would yield to a bold attack, and consent to join the Athenian alliance. Accordingly Demosthenes took with him, besides his own hoplites, forces from Naupactus and Zacynthus, and started up into the Aetolian hills. He captured a village or two, but presently the whole countryside turned out in arms, and the lightly equipped mountaineers so vexed and galled the invaders that Demosthenes was obliged to fall back. When once he began to retire he was so closely pressed that his whole army broke up, and fled in disorder to Naupactus with the loss of nearly half its numbers. It was of some solace to Athenian pride, but of little use to Athenian policy, that a few months later Demosthenes succeeded in retrieving his military reputation by a brilliant victory in Acarnania. The detachment of Peloponnesian troops which had been sent to that country in 429 B.C. had been once more joined by the hoplites of the Corinthian colonies on the coast, and was again attacking the Acarnanians. Demosthenes, massing the whole disposable forces of his allies, threw himself between the main body of the enemy and their reserves. On one day he defeated the Peloponnesians and slew their leader, Eurylochus ; on the next he fell upon the Ambraciot reinforcements which were advancing to aid the defeated force, and almost exterminated them. The blow to Ambracia was so great that in the opinion of Thucydides it was the heaviest which fell on any city in the whole war, and the proportion of the military strength of the place which was destroyed was almost incredibly large. But the victory led to an unexpected result ; the Acarnanians, knowing themselves to be free from any further danger from their neighbors of the seacoast, made a separate peace with them. The Athenian alliance had served their purpose in preserving them from conquest by the Corinthian colo- SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM 301 425 B.C. nists, and they had no longer any keen interest in the war. Thus Demosthenes, though he had crippled an enemy of Athens by his victor}^ had also taken off the edge of the devotion of a zealous and useful ally. The year 425 B.C. was destined to be more fruitful in decisive events than any which had preceded it since the opening of the war. These events, however, sprung not from the deliberate plans of either side, but from a mere chance. Early in the year the Athenians, still following their visionary scheme of establishing a foothold in Sicily, had determined to send out reinforcements to the west. A fleet of forty ships, under an officer named Euryme- don, v/as dispatched thither. Demosthenes, too, sailed with this squadron : he had returned to Athens since his victories in Acar- nania, and was now going back to his post. After Eurymedon and Demosthenes had rounded Taenarum, a storm compelled them to put into the Alessenian harbor of Pylos,^ and kept them wind-bound for several days. The sailors ventured ashore, and, to secure themselves irom sudden attacks of the Peloponnesians, threw up a light entrenchment on the rocky headland which forms the northern point of the Pylian Bay. The stay of the fleet was protracted far beyond the expectations of the admirals, and it presently occurred to Demosthenes that the extemporized fort might be strengthened and made a permanent base for incursions against the western shore of the Peloponnese. It was perched on an extraordinarily inacces- sible spot, commanded a good harborage, and lay in that Messenian district whose Helots had risen so often against the Spartan. Accordingly Demosthenes persuaded his men to entrench the head- land as best they could, piling stone on stone into a strong though rough wall wherever it was possible to ascend the slope on the land side, till the fort was made tenable against any ordinary assault. On the sea side the cliffs allowed of approach only on one narrow slip of beach, where lay the landing-place at which the x\thenians had gone ashore. When the work of fortification had been com- pleted, Eurymedon proceeded on his way to Sicily with thirty-five ships, leaving Demosthenes with five to hold the fort. The news of the occupation of Pylos soon reached Sparta, and the strength of the Athenian force which had landed was so exag- gerated by report that the ephors sent in hot haste to recall the Peloponnesian army which had marched a few weeks before to * Probably not the same as the Pylos of Nestor mentioned on p. 23, 302 GREECE 425 B.C. carry out the usual summer raid into Attica, Accordingly, King Agis with his host quitted their ravaging, and set out homeward. At the same moment the fleet, which had been so unfortunately tardy at Mitylene and Corcyra, was summoned up to complete the block- ade of Pylos on the sea-front. Demosthenes had just time to send ofif two vessels to report the approach of the enemy before he was completely invested and beset on all sides. The promontory of Pylos forms the northern horn of the bay of the same name ; facing it at a distance of a hundred yards, and fronting the whole expanse of the bay, lies the island of Sphacteria, a narrow rock some two miles in length, overgrown with under- wood and thickets. As this island was the natural point which an Athenian force, desiring to relieve Pylos, would choose as its base of operations, the Spartans determined to occupy it. Accordingly they sent over to it four hundred and twenty hoplites, together with the usual complement of light-armed Helots in attendance on their masters a force sufficient to make any landing difficult. The two narrow inlets to the north and south of the island they intended to bar with a close line of vessels moored across the entrance, but this design was not completed. Meanwhile the garrison at Pylos was exposed to several des- perate attacks. Knowing that an Athenian fleet would probably appear ere long to aid Demosthenes, the Spartan commanders made a vigorous attempt to take the fort by storm before it could be succored. The land and sea fronts were simultaneously assaulted ; on the former side the position was so strong that a small party of the besieged was able to keep the Peloponnesians at bay. But a desperate struggle took place on the narrow slip of beach where alone landing was possible. There Demosthenes and his hoplites stood in serried rows, while trireme after trireme tried to push itself up to the landing-place and to throw its fighting-men ashore. Only two or three vessels could approach at a time, and the front on which fighting could take place was so narrow that superiority of numbers was of no avail. After a prolonged encounter the Pelo- ponnesians backed water; the difficulty of the place had been too much for them; they had lost many men, and Brasidas, their best officer, had fallen back on his deck desperately wounded at the moment that he was endeavoring to leap ashore. The assault, indeed, had so signally failed that the Athenians set up a trophy to commemorate it, binding thereto the shield of Brasidas, which SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM 303 425 B.C. had fallen into the sea at the moment that its owner was struck down. Before the Spartans had time to construct siege-engines or commence a regular blockade of Pylos, an Athenian fleet appeared in the offing. Eurymedon had met the vessels which Demosthenes had sent off to seek him, and had turned back to relieve his col- league, after strengthening himself with the squadron which was stationed off the Acarnanian coast. The Peloponnesian admirals, instead of endeavoring to block the two entrances of the bay of Pylos, allowed the Athenian fleet to file into the harbor, and engaged it in the space of water between Sphacteria and the main- land. The forty-three vessels under the Spartan commander were defeated with ease by the fifty galleys of Eurymedon. Five were taken, and the rest driven to run ashore and seek the protection of their friends of the land army. The importance of this victory lay in the fact that the Spartan hoplites on Sphacteria were now com- pletely cut off from help, and imprisoned on their island. They included some of the most important citizens of the state, and were a very appreciable part of the small body of pure-blooded Lace- daemonians. Shut up on a desolate island, with provisions for a few days only in hand, they were obviously destined to fall into the power of the Athenians, unless something could be done to deliver them. When the news from Pylos reached Sparta, the ephors at once set out for the camp, and viewed the situation with their own eyes. So little confidence did their visit bring them that they at once proposed to Demosthenes and Eurymedon to conclude an armistice, and offered to send an embassy to Athens to treat for peace. The danger of four hundred of their own citizens had brought them at once to a state of despondency and humiliation which no amount of suffering inflicted on their allies would have produced. The Athenian commanders consented to grant a truce, and to allow the blockaded hoplites to be supplied with a bare ration of food, day by day, as long as the armistice continued. But they exacted in return that the Peloponnesian vessels, which were lying on shore by the camp, should be placed in their hands, as a security for the full observance of the terms of the truce. To this the ephors con- sented, and at once dispatched ambassadors to Athens to treat for peace. This was the one opportunity which was presented to the 304< GREECE 425 B.C. Athenians, during the war, of retiring from the contest with glory and profit. The Spartans announced that they were ready to revert to the status quo of 431 B.C., and to ratify a permanent peace; they pointed out that the war had hitherto been inconclusive, and that, if their overtures were now refused, the next turn of fortune might make the Athenians lament their lost chance. The proposal was one which Pericles would undoubtedly have accepted ; it left Athens with her empire and the commerce unimpaired, and proved that, even when all the land-powers of Greece banded themselves together, they had been unable to shake her dominion. But the firm hand and cool head of Pericles no longer swayed the Athenian assembly, and the windy demagogues who now ruled it were set upon pressing the advantage of Athens to the uttermost, without any regard for caution or moderation. Now, as at the time of the Mitylenaean debate, Cleon made himself the mouthpiece of the ultra-patriotic party ; he declared that Athens must not throw away her chance of making a hard bargain with Sparta, and proposed that, in return for peace, the Peloponnesians should surrender to Athens the districts which had formed part of the Athenian land- empire twenty years before. He demanded that Troezen, Achaia, and the ports of the Megarid Nisaea and Pegae all of which had been given up in 445 B.C., should be made over to their former suzerain. The Laconian ambassadors replied that the terms were inadmissible, but professed themselves ready to make advantageous proposals, if the Athenians would depute commissioners to treat with them, and not insist on the negotiations being carried on in the heated atmosphere of the Ecclesia. Cleon at once burst out with invectives. He insisted that the envoys were trifling with the people, and could have no honest intentions if they would not declare their whole mission in public. The feeling of the assembly was so obviously on his side that the Spartans withdrew in despair, and returned to report to the ephors the complete failure of their embassy. The rupture of negotiations at Athens was the signal for the resumption of hostilities at Pylos. The Spartans on the island, who had for twenty days been subsisting on the rations with which they were supplied in accordance with the terms of the truce, were again thrown on their own slender resources. No help for them seemed possible, more especially since Eurymedon, alleging some slight infraction of the truce by the hostile commanders, utterly refused SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM 305 425 B.C. to restore the Peloponnesian war-galleys which had been entrusted to him. His plea seems to have been quite untenable, but, having the vessels in his hands, he was master of the situation. While the Athenian fleet blockaded Sphacteria, two triremes being continually kept moving up and down its coast in opposite directions, the marines strengthened the fort at Pylos. A very large Pelopon- nesian army now lay before that work, but proved entirely unable to master it. A few days would have sufficed to starve out the garrison of Sphacteria had it not been for the extraordinary measures which the Spartans took to keep it supplied with food. On every dark or stormy night small vessels put out from various ports of Elis or Laconia and ran the blockade ; such high rewards were promised by the ephors for every sack of flour or skin of wine that could be thrown ashore that the merchants and seamen were ready to run any risk, and though many boats were taken, others continually succeeded in reaching the island. We are also assured that strong swimmers would frequently cross the bay at night from the main- land, dragging behind them skins filled with linseed or honey, and other food that would pack close. These expedients kept the men on the island supplied with a ration sufficient to maintain them, and the blockade was therefore protracted far beyond the expectation of the Athenians, who had looked for the immediate surrender of the garrison. After two months had gone by the autumn was drawling on, and it began to appear as if the storms of the equinox would ere long drive the Athenians from their bleak and dangerous harborage under the promontory of Pylos. The discontent felt at Athens over the miscarriage of the block- ade was now growing acute, and the people began to regret their refusal of the terms of peace which Sparta had offered. This induced them to turn their anger against Cleon, who had caused those terms to be rejected. The demagogue, wishing to divert their discontent, replied that the real fault lay with the generals at Pylos, who had showed a great lack of courage and enterprise, and might have reduced the island long ago if they had possessed ordinary vigilance and energy. " I could have taken Sphacteria myself," he added, " if I had been in command." This casual remark was at once taken up by the enemies of Cleon. " If it is so easy, why not go and try it ? " was shouted from the crowd. Then Nicias, son of Niceratus, one of the strategi, a rich citizen who 306 GREECE 425 B.C. detested Cleon's political methods, stepped on to the Bema, and formally proposed that the tanner should be sent to Pylos. This decree was only proposed at first as a piece of party sarcasm; the conception of Cleon at the head of a fleet was too ridiculous in the eyes of his opponents to be taken seriously. An absurd scene then ensued, as the demagogue kept declining the unexpected honor, and his enemies continued to press it on him with effusion. But to many of the multitude the notion of Cleon in command did not appear so preposterous as it did to Nicias ; and those who had been accustomed to follow the tanner's political lead, cried out in earnest that he was quite able to undertake the business. The proposal which had been brought forward in jest was ere long seriously taken into consideration, Nicias was unable to withdraw his motion, and Cleon found himself constrained to stand by his first unguarded words. Thus it came to pass that in the end the demagogue plucked up his courage, declared that he did not share that panic fear of Spartan heroism which other men seemed to feel, and staked his career on a promise to capture or destroy the garrison of Sphacteria within twenty days. He asked for no Athenian troops to help him, and undertook to finish the game with four hundred archers, some hoplites from Imbros and Lemnos who were then in the city, and a body of Thracian light infantry. Con- trol over these forces was granted him, and he sailed at once for Pylos. " The most sensible men at Athens," says Thucydides, " thought that they had now gained one of two good things. Either (as was most likely) Cleon would fail and be politically extinguished for ever; or else he would succeed, and a heavy blow be inflicted on Sparta." Cleon's undertaking was not so rash and ridiculous as men thought. He was quite right in believing that Spartans were after all not invulnerable and invincible heroes, but men who could be overwhelmed by stress of numbers like any other troops. The detachment on Sphacteria was composed of some few hundred men, and if attacked with sufficient vigor by four or five times its own force must finally succumb. It is said that Demosthenes had already been thinking of an attack on the island, and had only been prevented by the caution of his colleague. Just before Cleon arrived at Sphacteria, an accidental fire had destroyed most of the woods with which the island was overgrown, and deprived the Spartans of the greater part of their cover. Their SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM 307 425 B.C. numbers could be more clearly seen and their maneuvers more closely followed than had hitherto been possible. Cleon at once took general charge of the operations, handing over the execution of the details to Demosthenes. They resolved to overwhelm the Spartans by gross force of numbers. Eight hundred hoplites were landed by night, near the southern extremity of the island, and covered the disembarkation of the rest of the force. They cut off an outpost of thirty men which was posted in that direction, and were firmly established on shore before Epitadas, the Spartan com- mander, approached them with his main body of three hundred and fifty men. By this time eight hundred bowmen, the same number of peltasts, a body of Messenian light troops, and a large draft from the crews of the seventy ships at Pylos had been thrown on the shore. When Epitadas advanced against the hoplites a cloud of slingers and bowmen closed in on his flanks and rear, and so beset him with a rain of missiles that his small body of men were gradually brought to a standstill. They were now charging over ground covered by the smoldering ashes of the burned wood, and the dust and reek well-nigh choked and blinded them. As the Athenians would not close, but kept shooting them down from a dis- tance, their position became unbearable. At last, after Epitadas had been slain, his successor in command gave the signal for retreat, and the surviving Spartans cut their way through the light troops, and threw themselves into a ruined fort of prehistoric days, which lay at the north end of the island. Here they maintained them- selves for a short time; but presently some IMessenians, finding a way up a crag which overhung the fort, appeared on a spot which completely commanded the Spartan position, and commenced to pick off the enemy from the rear. The Spartans were now obviously doomed men, and Cleon and Demosthenes, holding back their troops for a minute, sent out a herald to bid them sur- render. To the surprise of those who believed that a Spartan never would lay down his arms, the majority of the survivors lowered their shields and waved their hands to show that they accepted the proposal. Their officers asked leave to communicate with the army on the mainland, and after doing so, and receiving the despairing advice to " take such measures as they could, so long as they were not dishonorable," completed a formal capitulation. Two hun- dred and ninety-two hoplites still survived out of the four hundred 308 GREECE 425 B.C. and twenty on the island; how many of their Helots were left is not known. No less than one hundred and twenty of the prisoners were members of the best families of Sparta. Thus had Cleon fulfilled his promise to the Athenian Ecclesia. We are told that his success was, " of all the events of the war, the one which caused most surprise in Greece." If this was so, it illustrates the exaggerated impression of Spartan valor which pre- vailed at the time, rather than the rashness or gool luck of Cleon. He landed on the island with more thousands at his back than Epitadas had hundreds, and yet his victory was considered remarkable. After their fleet returned with the prisoners on board, the Athenians thought that the whole game was in their hands. Cleon, inflated by his exploits, was more exacting than ever; and when a new Spartan embassy arrived to propose once more a general peace, and the restoration of their prisoners, the terms offered them were even harder than before, so that nothing could be done. The success at Sphacteria soon tempted the Athenians into action on land more daring than any they had hitherto performed. Before the year v/as out they landed several thousand hoplites near the Corinthian Isthmus, defeated the Corinthians in a pitched battle at Solygeia, and retired unmolested to their ships. Then coasting southward, they again landed in the territory of Epidaurus, and seized and fortified the peninsula of Meth5ne. About the same time the bloody scenes which had occurred at Corcyra two years before were repeated under circumstances of even greater atrocity than those of 427 B.C. The democrats, aided by an Athenian force, hav- ing suppressed a second armed insurrection of the oligarchic party, allowed their defeated enemies to capitulate on promise of their lives. Then they deliberately persuaded a few of the oligarchs to break their parole, and, on pretense that this invalidated the whole agreement, opened the prisons and butchered such of the three or four hundred prisoners as did not seek a speedier death by suicide. The Athenian general Eurymedon made no attempt to save the unfortunates, though he had been a party to the capitulation, and had pledged his word that they should be given a fair trial at Athens. Cleon was now at the height of his power. His ascendency in Athens was marked by a characteristic piece of legislation, show- ing his disregard for the allies. At one blow he doubled their SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM S09 424 B.C. tribute. This measure goes far to explain the revolts of the next few years. The year 424 B.C. opened with the brightest prospects for the Athenians, and for its first few months the tide of their successes continued to advance. The strategus Nicias, early in the year, captured the large but rugged island of Cythera, which lies off Cape Malea, facing towards the Laconian Gulf. It was at once enrolled as a member of the Delian League, and its harbors served as the starting-point for many raids on the opposite coast, till the truth of the old saying, " Well for Sparta if Cythera were sunk in the sea," was realized more keenly than ever. It was the darkest moment of the war for the Spartans; Athens would grant no reasonable terms of peace, and her obstinacy drove them to des- perate measures to defend themselves. To prevent the general revolt of the Helots, which they expected, they set the Crypteia, or secret police, working with even more than their usual cruelty; it is said that as many as two thousand victims were secretly dispatched by this means. In their anxiety to strike a blow which should be felt at Athens, whatever might be the cost, the ephors gave their consent to a new and hazardous scheme for sapping the foundations of the Confederacy of Delos. Athens possessed one group of subject allies who dwelt on the mainland of Europe, and could be approached without that sea voyage which had become the terror of every Peloponnesian. But these cities, the towns of Chalcidice and the Thracian shore, were separated from Phocis, the nearest state of the Spartan alliance, by a vast stretch of land, comprising Thessaly, where most of the towns preserved a friendly neutrality towards Athens, and the barbarian kingdom of Macedonia. It had never before occurred either to the Athenian or the Spartan mind that the towns of the Thracian tribute-district might be assailed from the inland. But now the task was to be essayed. Brasidas, the most enterprising officer that Sparta pos- sessed, was commissioned to levy a force which should march northward, and endeavor to rekindle the embers of war which still smoldered to the north of the Aegean. A few towns, which had revolted along with Potidaea, were still maintaining an obscure warfare against Athens, and would serve, if once they could be reached, as a base of operations. Seven hundred Helots, who had been promised their freedom if they volunteered for foreign service, 310 GREECE 424 B.C. formed the nucleus of Brasidas's army. So hazardous was the expedition considered that no state was asked to supply a con- tingent for it, and individual recruits were collected in scanty num- bers by the promise of high pay. Brasidas was at Corinth with about seventeen hundred men in hand when he was drawn north- ward, before he was ready, by the action of the Athenians. Still intent on their new policy of vigorous action on land, the Athenians had resolved to attempt the surprise of Megara. Some partisans of democracy within its walls liad consented, in the true Greek spirit of faction, to betray their city to the enemy. One night they threw open a postern in the " Long Walls " which connected Megara with its port Nisaea, and the Athenians, rushing in, secured the long walls, and next day but one captured Nisaea. They would probably have taken Megara itself, for the factions in the place had almost fallen to blows, if BrasidaS had not hurried up from the Isthmus with his own force and the levies of Corinth and Sicyon. He offered the Athenians battle in front of Megara, but they would not accept it, and, contenting them- selves with the capture of Nisaea, went off homewards. Somewhat later in the summer Brasidas, having finished his preparations, started off through Boeotia and Phocis, to attempt the hazardous march which had been planned for him. The expedition to Megara was only a foretaste of the energy which Athens had determined to put forth this year. She had determined to repeat the tactics of the heroic days of 456 B.C., and to endeavor to disable and overrun Boeotia by a blow struck after the ordinary campaigning season had closed, and when no aid from Peloponnesus could be readily obtained. The plan of campaign was comprehensi\'e and complicated. Demosthenes was to land at Siphae, on the Corinthian Gulf, with all the forces he could collect from the western allies of Athens. On the same day the general Hippocrates, with the entire home-levy of Attica, was to enter northeastern Boeotia, and strike at Tanagra. Simultaneously the town of Chaeronea was to be seized by a large body of exiled Boeo- tians of the democratic faction, who had undertaken to aid Athens. But the plan was far too intricate. All expeditions where forces starting from distant bases attempt to cooperate are especially liable to the mischances of war. Thus, it came to pass that the attempt to seize Chaeronea was betrayed by an informer, while in the rest of the scheme either Demosthenes was over-early or Hippoc- SPHACTERIA AND DELIUM 311 424 B. C. rates over-late. The former landed at Sipliae with his allies from Naupactus and the western islands, and drew out against himself the whole force of Boeotia ; for Hippocrates was yet far away, and had not crossed the border. Being too weak to fight, Demosthenes re-embarked ; but two days later Hippocrates, marching by Oropus and the shore of the Euboean Strait, appeared in the territory of Tanagra. He seized the temple and precinct of Apollo at Delium, close by the seaside, and employed four days in fortifying it, and in waiting for news of the diversions which ought to have synchro- nized with his invasion. On the fifth, nothing having occurred, he determined to 'return home, but had not got two miles from Delium when the Boeotian army appeared on his flank. After watching Demosthenes depart, it had turned northeastward, and was in full time to attack Hippocrates. The forces were not very unequal in numbers. The Boeotians had brought up eight thousand hoplites, a thousand cavalry, and ten thousand light-armed troops; the Athenians had about the same number of hoplites, but were con- siderably weaker in horse, though they had a vastly greater multi- tude of light-troops. The majority of the eleven Boeotarchs (or generals of the Boeotian League) had been against fighting, but Pagondas, one of the two Theban members of their body, had over- ruled the majority and forced on the combat. The army of Hippoc- rates had just time to form up, fronting westward and with its back to the sea, when the enemy came suddenly over the brow of a hill and charged. Ravines prevented the light-troops on the flanks from engaging, but the main bodies of each army closed and fought desperately for some time. Pagondas had drawn up his own Theban contingent in a dense column twenty-five deep; the rest of the Boeotians fought in the usual line-formation. Hence it came to pass that while the battle went hardly for the Boeotians on their left, where the Thespians were completely routed, on their right the Theban column crushed through the Athenian line, and rolled it downhill in disorder. An opportune cavalry charge checked the victorious Athenian right wing, and then the whole army of Hippocrates wavered and broke. A few fled northward to Delium; the rest took to the hills, and saved themselves on the spurs of Parnes. Nearly a thousand Athenians, including Hippoc- rates himself, had fallen in the conflict, while the Boeotians had lost about half that number. A fortnight after the battle the forti- fied post at Delium fell, the palisading with which the Athenians 312 GREECE 424 B.C. had surrounded it having been set on fire by the military engines which the Boeotians turned against it. This battle quite cured the Athenians of the taste for expedi- tions on land, which had been growing on them since the capture of Sphacteria. It also marked the limit of their good fortune. Never again did they win a considerable success, or find themselves in a position to make peace upon the terms which they had so rashly rejected at the moment of their triumph in 425 B.C. Chapter XXX BRASIDAS IN THRACE THE PEACE OF NICIAS, 424-421 B.C. EVEN before the battle of Delium had been fought, the end of the good fortune of Athens had been marked by other events. The wild and useless expedition to Sicily had come to a sudden termination. The Sicilian towns had grown tired of their purposeless strife, and concluded a general peace at Gela ; when this had taken place nothing remained for the Athenian squadron but to return home. Sophocles and Eurymedon, its com- manders, were prosecuted, unjustly enough, on their return, for having failed to prolong the war; they were condemned, the one to go into exile, and the other to pay a heavy fine. About the same time troubles appeared to be brewing in Asia Minor; the exiled Lesbian oligarchs got together in some force, and seized the towns of Sigeum and Antandrus in the Troad ; while at the same time a faction of the Samians, who had established themselves at Anaea, vexed the neighboring Ionian towns. But these symptoms of rebellion in the eastern districts of the Athenian empire were of small consequence compared with the troubles which were now rising in the north. We have already spoken of the departure from Corinth of Brasidas and his seventeen hundred Peloponnesian adventurers. Pushing on for some time through friendly territory, they met their first difficulties on the Thessalian frontier. Here the envoys of the Thessalian towns which favored Athens forbade the army to proceed. The Brasidas cajoled them with feigned negotiations, and then slipped past them and crossed the great plain in three forced marches. He was in the Perrhaebean hills, and far on his way towards Macedonia, before his stratagem was detected. In Macedonia he joined with King Perdiccas, an old enemy of Athens, who granted him a free passage into Chalcidice. Strengthening himself with the troops of the revolted towns in that direction, Brasidas at once commenced a 313 314 GREECE 424 B.C. campaign against the allies of Athens. He met with little active re- sistance; Ecanthus and Staglrns fell into his hands before the winter arrived, and even after the cold weather had set in the Spar- tan kept the field. His next attack was directed against Amphipolis, the new and flourishing Athenian colony on the Strymon, which commanded the only road that led eastwards from Chalcidice towards the cities of the Thracian coast, H once Amphipolis and its all-important bridge were in his hands, no limit could be set to the eastward extension of the revolt. Coming unexpectedly down to the Strymon, Brasidas seized the bridge by a daring coup de main during a snowstorm. He laid hands on many of the Amphipolitans who dwelt without the city walls, and on all the flocks and herds of the community. Moved with fear for their property and their friends, a party in the town proposed a sur- render; the Athenian governor was unable to command obedience, and the gates were thrown open. The historian Thucydides, who was in command of a small Athenian squadron which lay at Thasos, arrived too late to save the place. So rapidly had events gone on, that though only one day's sail from the town, he failed to come up in time, and only succeeded in preserving for Athens Eion, the port at the mouth of the Strymon, For his tardiness, which was prob- ably more the result of ill-luck than of negligence, Thucydides was prosecuted and exiled by a decree proposed by Cleon. Brasidas had not yet completed the full measure of his suc- cesses. Before the winter was done he had gained possession of nearly all the towns which lie on the coast of Mount Athos, and also of Torone on the central headland of the Chalcidic peninsula. These surrenders struck terror into the hearts of the Athenians, not merely on account of the actual importance of the losses though these were heavy enough but as showing the utter dis- loyalty which pervaded the whole body of their subject allies. When Brasidas presented himself before the walls of a town, there was always an oligarchic party which was zealous to admit him, while the democratic faction, which should naturally have been friendly to Athens, showed at most a passive disinclination to revolt, and would not strike a blow for its suzerain. Hardly a single town preserved its allegiance when attacked, unless there happened to be an Athenian garrison within its walls. The person- ality of Brasidas aided to no small extent in securing his successes ; he was no less distinguished for tact than for courage, and won BRASIDAS AND NICIAS 315 424 B.C. golden opinions by his generosity, moderation, and good faith. The power of his name began to grow mighty in Chalcidice, and it soon became evident that unless he were promptly crushed, or disarmed by the conclusion of a general peace, Athens would lose every one of her tributaries to the north of the Aegean. The battle of Delium had stripped Athens of her self-con- fidence; the loss of Amphipolis and Torone had made her contem- plate with equanimity the prospect of a peace. Accordingly when, early in the next spring (423 B.C.), Sparta again made overtures for a pacification, the Athenian Ecclesia for once showed itself reasonable. To afiford an opportunity for the conclusion of a final and definitive peace, the two powers agreed to a truce for twelve months. For the first time for eight years the Athenians w^ere able to put their neglected fields under the plow, with a reasonable prospect of reaping what they had sown. Nor was the boon less to the maritime states of Peloponnesus, who could now re- sume the coasting trade which had been forbidden to them for so long. Matters seemed in a fair way towards peace, when an un- expected complication occurred to postpone the negotiations. By the terms of the truce each party w^as to retain in its hands the places belonging to the enemy which it had captured; Thebes, for instance, still held Plataea, and Athens Cythera and Pylos. But at the very moment of the ratification of the truce, the important town of Sci5ne, in Chalcidice, opened its gates to Brasidas; the Athenians insisted that the place ought to be restored to them, while Brasidas maintained that, as the truce was unknown in Thrace when the place revolted, it did not come under the terms of the agreement. While this matter was in dispute, the still more im- portant city of Mende, the third in size of the Chalcidian commu- nities, followed the example of Scione. These events so excited the Athenian Ecclesia that it voted, on the motion of Cleon, that an expedition should be sent against Scione, and that, when the town was taken, its population should be exterminated. Thus it came to pass that although the truce was observed in Greece, and all around the southern Aegean, war still continued in the north. Nicias sailed with a considerable armament to Thrace, and recaptured Mende ; but he failed at Scione, and his troops w^ere still lying before its walls when the year's truce expired, early in 423 B.C. Hostilities then recommenced along the whole line of 316 GREECE 422 B.C. contact between Athens and her enemies ; but at home Httle of impor- tance occurred, save that the fortress of Panactum, which com- manded one of the passes of Cithaeron, fell by treachery into the hands of the Boeotians. In Chalcidice, however, the war came to its head. Early in the year Cleon appeared before Scione, at the head of a considerable army. His second venture in generalship was due to much the same causes as his first; now, as in 425 B.C., he had put himself at the head of the party of action, and was consequently made responsible for the conduct of the war. Probably the democracy had come to believe in his good luck, and hoped that, by some fortunate chance, he would put down Brasidas as easily as he had conquered Sphacteria. Cleon's first operations were not badly planned; he succeeded in retaking Torone and Galepsus, and then landed at Eion, and sat down opposite Amphipolis, where Brasidas had concentrated the main part of his forces. There he waited, while reinforcements of light-troops were being collected from Thrace; for he was weak in that arm, and very wisely refused to give battle till he was raised to an equality with the enemy. But the Athenian hoplites grumbled at their commander's inaction, and the tanner, who lived by following every breath of public opinion, did not dare to disregard their murmurings. Accordingly he started off with his whole force to reconnoiter the position of Brasidas, and to offer him battle. Brasidas drew his army into the town, and kept perfectly quiet, allowing the Athenians to march past his front without any molestation. Cleon rashly concluded that the enemy would not fight, and neglected every military precaution ; he himself went on ahead to explore the countryside to the north, while he left his army halted within a few score yards of the walls of Amphipolis, but not drawn up in battle array. Presently news was sent on to the demagogue that the streets near the gates of the town were crowded with armed men, and that an attack was im- pending. He at once hurried back to join his men, and ordered the army to retire and take ground to its left a command which caused the Athenians to defile once more before the gates of the town. This was what Brasidas had been expecting. " I see," he cried, " that those troops will not stand ; I know it from the waver- ing of their spears ; " and when the Aflienian center was opposite him, h^ launched a column out of each gate, and charged the BRASIDASANDNICIAS 317 422 B.C. enemy's line of march. Cleon's men were caught while executing a hurried movement of retreat, with their shieldless side exposed to the enemy. Many of therii broke at the first onset; the left wing, which headed the line of march, fled back to Eion without suffer- ing much loss ; but the right wing and the center, who were driven off their line of retreat by Brasidas's charge, were very severely handled. Cleon turned to fly, like the majority of his followers, and was speared as he ran by a Thracian peltast. Only the Athenian right wing made any attempt at resistance, and that body was soon overwhelmed by numbers, and scattered by a vigorous cavalry charge. The rout was very bloody. Six hundred Atheni- ans had fallen, and not a dozen of their opponents ; but among the few whose loss the victors had to mourn was their general. Brasi- das had received a spear-thrust in the side, and only lived long enough to hear that his victory was complete. The Amphipolitans buried him with the most splendid funeral rites, set up a temple to his memory, and vowed to honor him as their oekist, instead of Hagnon, the original Athenian founder of the city. The deaths of Cleon and Brasidas removed the chief obstacles to a general peace. When the Spartan was gone, the revolt in Chalcidice ceased to spread, for it was his personal influence which had from the first been its mainstay. At home in Sparta also Brasidas had always been at the head of the party of action, and his death greatly weakened its influence. On the other hand, when Cleon was removed, the strongest advocate of war in the Athenian Ecclesia disappeared, and the partisans of peace could bring for- ward their proposals without any fear of being overwhelmed by his blustering eloquence. The negotiations whidi had been inter- rupted by the events in Thrace were soon resumed, and brought to a successful issue. The Spartan king Pleistoanax, who had lately been restored after more than twenty years of exile, and the Athenian general Nicias, were mainly instrumental in the pacification, to which the latter has given his name. The treaty provided for a fifty years' peace, and enjoined a mutual restoration of prisoners and of places captured during the war, but this arrange- ment was not perfectly carried out; for the Thebans refused to give up Plataea, on the ground that it had not been taken by force, but had surrendered on capitulation. On a similar plea, therefore, Athens refused to give up the Corinthian colonies of Sollium and Anactorium, and the Megarian port of Nisaea. In 318 GREECE 421 B.C. her anxiety to secure the evacuation of the Athenian strongholds around Peloponnesus, and the release of the prisoners of Sphac- teria, .Sparta sacrificed the interests of the Chalcidian cities whom she had tempted to revolt ; she promised to surrender Amphipolis in return for Pylos and Cythera, and to break off her alliance with the other Thraceward cities. In their behalf she only stipulated that Athens should not coerce them by force, though she might, if she could, induce them to re-enter the Delian League of their own free will.^ Scione, which was still being invested by an Athenian army, was left to take its chance; and when it fell, a few months later, suffered the penalty which had been decreed for it eighteen months before by the law of Cleon; its men were slain and its women sold as slaves. As a matter of fact, Amphipolis was never given up to the Athenians, for Clearidas, who had succeeded Brasi- das in command, declared that he was not strong enough to sur- render it contrary to the will of its inhabitants, and contented himself with returning home with his Peloponnesian troops. In consequence of this infraction of the treaty, the Athenians refused to evacuate Pylos or Cythera. Thus it came to pass that although the prisoners on both sides were restored, the other clauses of the peace of Nicias were not fully carried out, and the main result of the pacification was to leave each party in possession of just so much as it was holding at the moment of the suspension of hostili- ties. Several of the most important allies of Sparta considered that they had been betrayed by their leader, and refused to ratify the treaty. The Thebans, therefore, contented themselves with concluding a temporary armistice with Athens, which was renew- able every ten days, and might at any moment be denounced at that short notice. The Megarians and Corinthians made no formal truce at all, but merely abstained from hostilities. Thus the first stage of the Peloponnesian war came to an end, just ten years after the first invasion of Attica by Archidamus in 431 B.C. Its results had been almost purely negative; a vast ([uantity of blood and treasure had been wasted on each side, but to no great purpose. The Athenian naval power was unimpaired, and the Confederacy of Delos, though shaken by the successful revolt of Amphipolis and the Thraceward towns, was still left ^ The Chalcidian towns thus granted a qualified freedom were Olynthus, Acanthus, Staglrus, Argilus, Sane, Singus, and a few more. Amphipolis, being never recovered by Athens, shared their lot. BRASIDAS AND NICIAS 319 421 B.C. subsisting. On the other hand, the attempts of Athens to accom- pHsh anything on land had entirely failed, and the defensive policy of Pericles had been so far justified. Well would it have been for Athens if her citizens had taken the lesson to heart, and contented themselves with having escaped so easily from the greatest war they had ever known. Chapter XXXI TRUCE OF NICIAS, 421-416 B.C. THE period during which the truce of Nicias was more or less observed amounted to nearly seven years, but they are hardly to be reckoned as a time of peace. " It is true," says Thucydides, " that the Athenians and Lacedaemonians abstained for six years and ten months from marching against each other's territory, but with that exception they did each other as much damage as they could. They actually came into contact at Mantinea and Epidaurus, and all the time hostilities were proceed- ing in Thrace just as before; so that if anyone objects to consider it a time of war, he will not be estimating it rightly." ^ But though there was no actual interval of peace after the treaty of 421 b.c.^ yet the main action of the great drama stood still, and the events of the years 421-415 B.C. formed a strange and incoherent interlude between the two acts of the Peloponnesian war. The parties in the struggle are grouped differently, a new set of motives influence the actors, and the original causes and objects of the war are lost sight of. One of the chief reasons which had made Sparta anxious to conclude peace with Athens was the fact that a thirty years' truce with Argos, which had been concluded in 451 B.C., was now draw- ing to an end, and that it was strongly suspected that the Argives were disposed to try the fortune of war. The ephors had been anxious to end one conflict before they were involved in another. Their suspicions were not misplaced. Argos had accumulated new strength in her thirty years of rest, and thought that Sparta was so weakened and brought down by ten years of warfare that she might be faced with ease. Moreover, the Argive government had been sounding all the Peloponnesian states which were sup- posed to have a grudge against Sparta, and thought that they could find powerful allies. The Corinthians, who were grievously offended at the sacrifice of their colonies of Sollium and Anac- 1 Thuc. V. 25, 26. 390 TRUCE OF NICIAS 321 421-420 B.C. torium to Athens; the Mantineans, who had been frustrated by Sparta in an attempt to subdue their smaller neighbors, and the Eleans, who had also plunged into a quarrel with Sparta concerning the border-town of Lepreum, were all believed to be ready to join jn a rising to do away with the Lacedaemonian hegemony in the Peloponnesus. Amphipolis and the states of Chalcidice were thought to cherish similar feelings, owing to the way in which they were abandoned to the mercy of Athens by the peace of Nicias. Ambassadors were soon passing from state to state, with the final result that Argos, Elis, Mantinea, and the Chalcidians entered into an offensive and defensive alliance, which soon brought them into hostile contact with Sparta. Corinth drew back, and would not commit herself to war with her old suzerain, while the majority of the smaller states of Peloponnesus showed no desire to break with their Laconian allies. Hostilities commenced, late in the summer of 421 B.C., by a raid of King Pleistoanax into Arcadia, when he took several places belonging to Mantinea. But nothing of importance had been accomplished when the coming of winter brought about a suspen- sion of operations. By the outbreak of this war Athens was compelled to make her choice between two policies. It was doubtful whether she would do more wisely by standing aside from the struggle, and concentra- ting her energies on the recovery of the revolted cities of Chalcidice, or by taking advantage of Sparta's difficulties and renewing hostili- ties. In justification of the latter course, it could be argued that the Lacedaemonians had failed to observe the stipulations of the treaty, having neither restored Amphipolis nor compelled their Boeotian and Corinthian allies to ratify the terms of peace. On the other side, it was urged by Nicias and the philo-Spartan party that, before engaging in another war, Athens should reconquer what she had lost, and that the state was above all things in need of a period of rest, to bring her ruined countryside once more into cultivation. When the summer of 420 B.C. arrived, ambassadors both from Argos and from Sparta appeared at Athens to plead respectively the causes of war and of peace. Nicias and his party would probably have prevailed, and the Argive embassy would have been dismissed, had it not been for the machinations of a young statesman who now stood forward prominently for the first time on the political stage. 322 GREECE 420 B.C. Alcibiades, the son of Cleinias, was at this moment still a young man. " In any other state than Athens," says Thucydides, " he would have been considered far too young to become a serious figure in politics," But at Athens he had already made himself a name, and was a well-known figure on the Bema. He came of an ancient and wealthy stock, which traced its origin back to the old Salaminian kings, and was placed by his position among the first families of Athens. His handsome person and ready wit made him the idol of the " gilded youth " of the city, and his reck- less love of adventure and mischief was continually bringing him into notice. Any drunken escapade, any malicious practical joke, any ingenious piece of fooling that was perpetrated in Athens, was instantly credited to his account. He was continually indulging in freaks that put him in danger of the law courts ; but offenses that would have brought fine and imprisonment on any other citizen were visited lightly on the spoiled child of the people. His profligacy and insolence raised up many enemies, but with the masses he was immensely popular. His utter want of decorum only amused them. When he spoke before the Ecclesia with a pet quail tucked under his arm, it was considered an excellent jest ; when in the law court he casually snatched up and destroyed the indictment brought against one of his friends, he was laughed at and not prosecuted. But in his more serious moments Alcibiades frequently turned to politics, which he treated as an ingenious and amusing game, well suited for the display of his abilities. As a politician he might have been described as a second Themistocles, had not his inherent frivolity and fickleness placed him far below the great statesman of the times of the Persian war; but he had all the readiness, ingenuity, and persuasive power of his prototype. Like Themis- tocles he was a strong democrat. It is true that on his first entry into political life he had come forward as an oligarch and a friend of Sparta, and put his good offices at the disposal of the prisoners of Sphacteria; but the respectable Nicias and his philo-Spartan friends were appalled at the prospect of having to co-operate with a colleague of such approved disreputability ; they rejected his ad- vances, and advised the Spartans to have nothing to do with him. Alcibiades immediately performed a political somersault, and promptly appeared as an ardent democrat. It became his ambition to take up the fallen mantle of Cleon, and to be known as the people's friend and the mouthpiece of public opinion. He had not TRUCE OF NICIAS 323 420 B.C. only greater natural abilities than Cleon, but a double portion of his unscrupulousness. He soon became a considerable power in politics, and would have risen to the highest place if his levity and reckless vanity had not been too well known. In 420 B.C. Alcibiades was set on causing the Spartan embassy to Athens to fail, and on bringing about an alliance with Argos. His plan was characterized by shameless duplicity. He secretly visited the Lacedaemonian envoys, and assured them that if they acknowledged that they possessed full powers to agree to any terms of alliance which Athens might propose, they would find themselves forced to grant more than they could wish. But if they would say that they were merely authorized to report the Athenian proposals to the ephors, he would throw his personal influence on to their side, and obtain for them the restoration of Pylos, and anything else that they might desire. The unwary ambassadors believed his protestations; and, although they had announced only a few days before that they possessed full powers to treat, declared at the next meeting of the Ecclesia that no such authority had been granted to them. Then Alcibiades arose, and to the dismay of the simple Spartans proceeded to denounce them to the people as reck- less deceivers, who said one thing one day and another the next, and whose overtures should be received with contempt. The people shouted applause, and the embassy was wrecked. A few days later a decree was passed whereby Athens concluded an offensive and defensive alliance for a hundred years with Argos, Elis, and IMantinea. All that Nicias, who opposed the motion with such energy as he possessed, could obtain, was that war with Sparta was not actually declared, nor the truce formally denounced. But to make alliance with Argos was not very remote from entering into hostilities with Lacedaemon. The next two years were occupied by a desultory and sporadic war in Peloponnesus, in which both sides displayed an astonishing want of generalship and decision. The new confederacy possessed many advantages. Mantinea almost blocked the way from Sparta to Corinth and the other towns which remained faithful to their old suzerain; Elis and Argos threatened it on each flank; yet, whenever the Spartans made a serious attempt to force their way northward, they invariably succeeded. The allies could never agree for a common plan of campaign ; the Eleans wished to attack Lepreum and to carry the war into Messenia, while the Argives 324 GREECE 418 B.C. were intent on subduing their neighbors of Epidaurus and PhHus, and the Mantineans thought only of extending their power in Central Arcadia. But this want of common purpose among the allies led to no immediate disaster, for the Spartan King Agis, who directed the movements of the enemy, was quite unequal to his position. After many indecisive moves, he at last, in the summer of 418 B.C., succeeded in bringing matters to a head. While he himself, with the forces of Laconia and his Arcadian allies, slipped past Mantinea and appeared at the mouth of the southernmost of the three passes which lead down into the Argive plain, a second column from Corinth and Phlius debouched by the central pass, and a large body from the north, mainly consisting of Boeotians and Megarians, advanced down the main road which leads by Nemea. The Argives were completely outgeneraled and out- numbered, though they had received considerable contingents from Elis and Mantinea. Their army was, however, bent on fighting, and would doubtless have suffered a complete disaster if two of their leaders had not opened negotiations for a peace with Agis. Instead of using the advantages of his position, the Spartan king consented to treat, on the assurance that Argos was ready to lay down her arms, and submit her disputes with Sparta to arbitration. He therefore dismissed his army, and permitted the Argives to escape. A few days later there arrived at Argos a considerable Athenian force under Laches; and on very slight persuasion the Argive democracy was induced to disavow the agreement with Agis, on the pretext that it had been concluded without the consent of their allies, and to recommence hostilities. Thus the Spartans lost all the fruits of their campaign through the simplicity of their king. While the Peloponnesians were engaged in these operations, Athens had been halting between the two policies that were open to her. She had not thrown herself heart and soul into the Argive alliance, nor had she taken decisive measures to reconquer the rebellious cities of Chalcidice. At home she had offended Sparta, without materially harming her; for although the peace of Nicias was still so far observed that her fleets refrained from ravaging Laconia, yet small forces were continually sent to aid the Argives, and to support Athenian interests in other parts of Peloponnesus. In these operations Alcibiades made his first essays in military com- mand, and gained some credit for establishing the Athenian party TRUCE OF NICIAS 325 418 B.C. in possession of the Achaian town of Patrae. Meanwhile a desul- tory warfare was still going on in Chalcidice; but since the at- tention of Athens was mainly directed towards the south, no adequate force was directed against Amphipolis or Olynthus. In consequence nothing more was recovered after the capture of Scione, and several small towns joined the rebels. At last the Athenians acknowledged their weakness in this quarter by con- cluding a truce, renewable every ten days, with their revolted subjects. The Spartan ephors had been greatly angered by the failure of Agis at Argos; they had actually proposed to demolish his house and fine him ten thousand drachmae, but this punishment was not carried out; it was merely enacted that when again in command he should be bound to refer all important matters to a council of war an infringement of the royal prerogative such as had not before been known in Sparta. In spite, however, of his unpopu- larity, he was still retained in command, owing to the general dis- trust felt for his colleague Pleistoanax. Burning to avenge the perjury of the Argives, Agis resolved to give them battle whenever he found them. Although he had not been joined by any of his allies except the Tegeans and Heraeans, he brought the enemy to action not far from Mantinea. The Argives and Mantineans in full force, together with their subject allies and a body of thirteen hundred Athenians, were opposed to him ; the Eleans were absent, engaged in operations against Lepreum. The battle of Mantinea was a fair stand-up fight between two armies of almost equal force, in which the troops met front to front without any attempt to win tactical advantages, and settled the day in hand-to-hand fighting. Each side was found to have slightly outflanked its enemy on the right.^ The Tegeans on the Spartan right stretched beyond the Athenians, who held the left wing in the Argive army; similarly the Mantineans had outflanked the division of Laconian Perioeci, who formed the Spartan left. In each case the body that was outflanked suffered a disaster, but the fate of the La- conians was the worst, for Agis had contrived to cause a gap be- tween his center and his left wing, by ordering the latter to take 2 There was always a tendency in Greek armies to advance taking ground slightly to the right, so as to outflank the enemy at the extreme right wing. The last hoplite on the right wing pushed forward to the right, in order to avoid ex- posing his unshielded side to the enemy; his neighbors carried on the movement till it went all down the line. 326 GREECE 418 B.C. ground to the left at the moment of charging. Into the interval thus opened a regiment of a thousand picked Argive troops made their way ; they turned the defeat of the Spartan left wing into a rout, and pushed on into the camp of Agis, where they cut the baggage- guard to pieces. Meanwhile the native Spartan troops in the center had smashed to atoms the line opposed to them, where the main body of the Argives, and the Argive Perioeci from Orneae and Cleonae, were posted. Agis then assisted the Tegeaiis to com- plete the rout of the Athenians, and finally turned on the victorious right wing of the enemy, where he cut up the JNIantineans severely, and forced the Argive thousand off the field. Though tactically beaten, through the mismanagement of Agis, the Spartans fairly won the field by hard fighting. Their ancient valor was found to be undiminished, and the unmerited disrepute into which they had fallen since the surrender at Sphacteria was at once forgotten. In the fight eleven hundred hoplites of the allied army had fallen, among whom were numbered Laches and Nicostratus, the two Athenian generals. Of the army of Agis three hundred had been slain, all of them Spartans or Perioeci, for the Tegeans hardly lost a man. The defeat of Mantinea drove Argos into peace with Sparta ; soon afterwards the democratic government, discredited by the disasters it had brought upon the city, was overthrown by a sudden oligarchic rising, in which the regiment of the thousand, which had distinguished itself at Mantinea, took the chief part. But the Argive oligarchy proved unbearably insolent and brutal ; its leaders perpetrated murders and outrages which led in a few months to counter-revolution. The victorious democratic party soon found itself committed to a renewed war with Sparta, and was compelled to call in once more the aid of Athens. The Athenians and iVrgives now attempted to put Argos in safety by constructing long walls from the city to the sea. But soon a Spartan army appeared in Argolis, and they were compelled to abandon the attempt, which would have involved the building of a double wall not less than five miles in length. The new war proved as indecisive as that which had preceded it. Argos was completely overmatched, but the Spartans made no adequate use of their superiority, and contented themselves witli supporting their allies of Phlius and Epidaurus, and keeping the Argive armies at home. The Athenians dispatched no large forces TRUCE OF NICIAS 327 416 B.C. to Peloponnesus, and still avoided direct attacks on Laconia, though the exiled Messenians, whom they had established at Pylos, were not so forbearing. The chief event of 416 B.C. was the attack which the Athenians made on Melos. That island, though its name is found in the tribute-lists of the Confederacy of Delos, had of late years slipped out of control, and refused to aid in the war, because it was a colony of Sparta. With no other justification except that an autonomous island was an anomaly, the Athenians threw a strong force ashore and summoned the Melians to submission. When the islanders refused to surrender their independence their city was blockaded by sea and land. After a vigorous defense the place fell ; in brutal assertion of the right of the stronger, the Athenians slew off the whole male population, and sold the women as slaves. This action was perhaps the most atrocious political crime com- mitted in the whole war; Melos was a neutral state, had given Athens no offense, and had been attacked without any declaration of hostilities. Its destruction was the crowning achievement of Athenian lust for empire, and every right-minded man in Greece saw the vengeance of Heaven for the massacre of Melos in the unbroken series of disasters which thenceforward attended the Athenian arms. Chapter XXXII EXPEDITION TO SICILY, 415-413 B.C. IT might have been expected that while the Chalcidian cities were still unsubdued, and while Sparta was gradually freeing herself from her home troubles, Athens would have refrained from any further indulgence in those distant and hazardous expedi- tions which had proved so profitless hitherto. But this was not to be; inspired by its accustomed hopefulness, and led on by the volatile Alcibiades, the Ecclesia now proceeded to undertake an adventure which far surpassed in recklessness anything that it had previously sanctioned. Peace at home was precarious, for the Boeotians might at ten days' notice renew hostilities, and Corinth and Magara were also free from any permanent engagement. The Spartans were known to have been bitterly provoked by the Athenian alliance with Argos and by the appearance of Athenian troops in the Peloponnese, and had fair grounds for repudiating at any moment the treaty of 421 B.C. The fields of Attica were only just resuming their ancient aspect of cultivation. The de- pleted treasury of the Delian League was far from showing the superabundant masses of bullion which it had contained before the beginning of the war. Yet, in spite of these obvious facts, Athens proceeded to stake her whole empire on a single reckless cast, and to imperil the reality of power in the Aegean while grasping at a shadow of conquest in the waters of the West. It was now eight years since the first Athenian expedition to Sicily had been brought to an ignominious end by the conclusion of peace between the belligerent states in the island. Since that time new troubles had arisen. In Western Sicily a war had broken out between the Dorian state of Selinus and the bar- barian city of Segesta. In Eastern Sicily Syracuse had taken ad- vantage of civil strife among her Ionian neighbors of Leontmi, and destroyed their city; but the exiled Leontines were keeping up a desultory warfare against their oppressor from such strongholds as they could retain. Both the Segestans and the Leontines had been allies of Athens, and it was natural that in their hour of 3?8 EXPEDITION TO SICILY 329 416-415 B.C. distress they should bethink them of the great imperial city, who had before shown that her arm was long enough to reach out and deliver blows in the distant West. About the middle of the year 416 B.c.^ a Segestan embassy appeared at Athens to ask for assist- ance, and to promise lavish supplies of money and vigorous military aid to any force that should be sent to help them. The Ecclesia voted that envoys should be sent to Sicily to investigate the state of affairs; this was done, and in the spring of 415 B.C. their report was laid before the assembly. They brought sixty talents of silver, as an earnest of the resources which Segesta would put at the dis- posal of Athens, and gave a glowing account of the wealth and strength of the city. It is said that while in Sicily they had been victimized by an elaborate scheme of deception practiced by their hosts, who passed off on them all the silver-gilt vessels in their temples as solid gold, and made a sumptuous display of private riches by sending round to every house at which the envoys were entertained all the plate which could be borrowed in the city. Blinded by this ostentatious show of wealth, the ambassadors held out magnificent prospects to the Ecclesia; the Segestans who ac- companied them renewed their appeal, and some of the exiled Leontines came forward to back their petition. The Conservative party at Athens put forth all their power to oppose the grant of aid to the Segestan envoys. Nicias, now as always acting as their spokesman, denounced the idea of interfer- ing in Sicilian affairs as preposterous. But, led on by Alcibiades, the assembly voted that sixty ships should be sent to Sicily, in order " to assist the Segestans, to join in re-establishing Leontini, and to carry out such other measures in Sicily as should be best for the Athenians." The last clause of the decree was no idle piece of verbiage, but covered a design fully worked out in the mind of Alcibiades, though only partially apprehended by his followers of reducing the whole of the Sicilian states to dependence on Athens. The idea had entered the teeming brain of Alcibiades that Sicily was so honeycombed by intestine feuds that state might be systematically turned against state till all were subdued. He thought that the expedition of 427 B.C. had failed merely for want of strength and guidance, and that a large armament, used with sufficient unscrupulousness and decision, would easily achieve his end. He got himself nominated as one of the three commanders of the expedition ; the other two were Lamachus, a skillful but poor 330 GREECE 415 B.C. and uninfluential soldier of fortune, and Nicias. The name of the latter must have been inserted by the vote of the opponents of Alcibiades, who would not have clogged himself with such an uncongenial colleague. Appointed against his will to conduct a war which he had denounced, Nicias cast about for means to prevent the expeditio:i from setting out. The bent of his mind inclined as his conduct in 425 B.C. with reference to Cleon and Sphacteria had shown towards diplomacy rather than straightforwardness. Accordingly he refrained from any further open opposition to the Sicilian scheme, and only strove to disgust the people with it, by enlarging on its difficulties, and magnifying the land and sea forces w'hich would be necessary to carry it out. But, to his horror and disgust, the Ecclesia, now as in 425 B.C., took him at his word. If sixty galleys seemed too small a squadron to him, he should be given a hundred; if the force of hoplites voted in the first bill was in- sufficient, he should be allowed to fix the number for himself. Alci- biades completed the victory of his side by a fiery speech, in which he appealed to the national pride in the prestige of Athens, and promised his countrymen an easy victory over the mixed multi- tudes of the faction-ridden cities of Sicily. Accordingly the decree was passed that the armament should be prepared, and that its size and scope should be settled by the three generals who had been elected to command it. Alcibiades's vanity and ambition led him to ask for control over as large a force as the people w'ould grant him, while Nicias though he did not believe in the possibility of success had come to the conclusion that a powerful armament would fail less disas- trously than a weak one. Accordingly the generals agreed in demanding the most ample resources. Besides the hundred Athe- nian vessels voted to them, they raised thirty-four more from the subject allies; two thousand two hundred Athenian hoplites formed the core of the land force ; to them were added about tw^o thousand allies, with five hundred Argives and two hundred and fifty Man- tineans, whom Alcibiades succeeded in enlisting in the Peloponnese. Of slingers and bowmen from Rhodes, Crete, and elsewhere, they hired thirteen hundred. Athens had once or twice sent out larger expeditions for some short campaign near home, but such a force had never been dispatched on a distant adventure fully equipped for many months of service. EXPEDITION TO SICILY 331 415 B.C. Public opinion in the city was so thoroughly convinced of the feasibility of the conquest of Sicily and of the unlimited possibili- ties of private money-getting that would follow, that everyone was eager to have a hand in the business. The trierarchs spared no expense in the fitting out of their vessels ; the hoplites who were drawn for the expedition considered themselves favored by fortune ; numerous merchants made ready to accompany the fleet in their own ships, in order to get the first choice of the new lines of trade that were to be opened, Alcibiades, whose windy promises buoyed everyone up, had promised that the fall of Selinus and Syracuse should be a mere prelude to the subjection of all Sicily, the con- quest of Carthage, and the absorption of the whole commerce of the Western Mediterranean. Most men were ignorant of the size and power of the Siceliot cities, and even those who knew were carried away by the enthusiasm of the hour. In pure heedlessness and lightness of heart the Athenians committed themselves irre- vocably to the adventure that was to be their ruin. The expedition was not, however, destined to set forth under favorable auspices. Just as the dockyards and arsenals of Athens were completing the last equipments of the fleet, and the generals were on the eve of putting their men on shipboard, a mysterious outrage threw all Athens into perturbation. There were scattered throughout the city, before the doors of private houses, as well as at every street corner and in every place of public resort, quantities of Hermae, or busts of the god Hermes, consisting of pillars about five or six feet high, with their upper portions hewn into the semblance of that deity's head and shoulders. They were as common and as faithfully reverenced as the shrines of the Madonna at the street corners of a modern continental town. In a single night unknown hands played havoc with all these images, cliipping and hacking away every vestige of human shape from them. It is said that only one bust in the whole city escaped mutilation. Next morning there was a universal cry of wrath at the sense- less and profane outrage. It was not merely the superstition of the Athenians that was roused ; the vast number of the figures that had been harmed proved that scores of persons must have been concerned in the afi^air, and the city was frightened to find that a large band of secret conspirators was lurking in its midst. The first cry of the public voice was that Alcibiades was the only 332 GREECE 415 B.C. person in Athens capable of such a wild and impious freak. But public opinion was almost certainly wrong; there was much method in the madness of Alcibiades. Reckless as he was. he must have been most desirous at this moment that his expedition should start with every favorable omen. It is far more likely that the enemies of Alcibiades did the deed, knowing that it would be laid at his door, and perhaps hoping that it might stop the expe- dition. Large rewards were at once offered for information as to the outrage, and a special commission was appointed to conduct the inquiry; but the secret was well kept, and no evidence was forth- coming. A quantity of information, however, cropped up concern- ing other recent pieces of sacrilege, the most prominent of which was a profane parody of the Eleusinian mysteries, in which Alci- biades had taken the leading part. At the next meeting of the Ecclesia, a citizen named Pythonlcus rose to charge Alcibiades with this crime, to argue that he must also have mutilated the Hermae, and to demand his instant prosecution. The young general denied the accusation, and asked for a prompt trial ; but it was refused him, for his own side thought the proposal preposterous, and his enemies preferred to bring charges against him in his absence, when he could not refute them. Accordingly Alcibiades set sail with the other generals, at the head of the expedition. Their departure was a magnificent and impressive scene, for the whole city thronged down to Peiraeus to bid God-speed to the great armament which was to win Athens a new empire in the West. The heralds proclaimed silence, and public prayer was made for the success of the expedition; seamen and officers joined in pouring libations to the deities of the sea, and as they chanted the hymn of departure the great multitude on shore joined in. Then all the fleet simultaneously weighed anchor, and the swifter galleys raced with each other as far as Aegina before falling in to the column of route. The scene was long remembered. It was the last day of unalloyed hope and exultation that a whole generation of Athenians was to know. The fleet rounded ^lalea and steered an uneventful course as far as Corcyra, where it picked up a large convoy of store ships and merchantmen which had been sent on before to that place of rendezvous. Then, after dispatching three vessels to Sicily to warn the Segestans and Leontlnes of their approaching arrival, the generals crossed the SUPPLIANT PRAVIXC, BEFORE THE STATTE OF ZEUS Painting by G. Poillcux-Saint-Angc EXPEDITION TO SICILY 33S 415 B.C. Ionian Sea at its narrowest, and pushed along the Calabrian coast toward Tarentum. The SiceHots had long refused to credit the designs which Athens was entertaining. They believed that at the most a small squadron, like those which Laches and Eurymedon had brought across in 427 and 425 was likely to visit their waters, and made little or no preparations to resist it. Knowing that the strong anti-Syracuse alliance which had existed twelve years before had now ceased to be, they thought that an Athenian army would get no foothold in the island, and would soon be constrained to return. It was not till the fleet of invasion reached Corcyra that they recognized that a real danger was impending over them, and learned the true size and scope of the expedition. The Syracusans, on whom the brunt of the attack was likely to fall, then at last began to make preparations for war, sending out garrisons to the forts which kept down their Sicel subjects, and dispatching envoys to all the cities in the island for the purpose of forming a Pan- Siceliot alliance to preserve their common autonomy. But if the Athenian generals had acted with reasonable promptitude, they would have found Syracuse still far from ready for an immediate struggle. Nicias and his colleagues were now coasting down the shores of Italy; they found the Italiot states determined to preserve a jealous neutrality. Towns like Thurii and Metapontum, which were bound to Athens by old ties of alliance, only granted the armament water and an anchorage; Tarentum and Locri denied them even those small boons. It was not till they reached Rhegium that they could find a state which would allow them to purchase provisions in a market outside its walls. While they lay in the Rhegine territory they received a discouraging report from the vessels which had been sent on to Segesta. Instead of proving to be wealthy and powerful, the Segestans were found to be unable to contribute more than thirty talents to the support of the allies they had summoned. This depressing intelligence affected the generals in different ways. Nicias held that, as a cold welcome awaited them in Sicily, they should content themselves with striking a blow at Selinus, and then return home, and justify themselves to the Ecclesia by plead- ing the mistaken nature of their instructions. Lamachus proposed to sail straight to Syracuse before the enemy had realized the near- 334 GREECE 415 B.C. ness of their approach, and to endeavor to capture or cripple the city by a sudden attack. Alcibiades held the first scheme pusillani- mous and the second rash, and proposed to open negotiations with the various towns which had a grudge against Syracuse, to incite the Sicels to rebel, and meanwhile to endeavor to get possession of some city in the western part of the island as a place of arms and a base of operations against Syracuse. This fatal " middle cour.^c " was adopted. Nicias's proposal would have brought the armament safely, if ingloriously, home; that of Lamachus would have offered some chance of a victory, and brought matters quickly to a head. But Alcibiades's plan, by the long delays which it necessitated, ruined the purpose of the expedition. In pursuance of the plan of Alcibiades, the Athenians spent the remaining months of the summer in coasting round Sicily in search of allies, and allowed everyone to learn their numbers, their objects, and their plans. They were unable to wnn any town to themselves except Naxos and Catana ; the latter was compelled per- force to join them, for while negotiations were going on a party of Athenians slipped in at an unguarded postern door in the wall, and left the Catanaeans no choice but alliance or destruction. Cam- arina and Messene, allies of Athens in 427 B.C., would have nothing to do w'ith their old friends. Some slight forays into the territories of Syracuse and Gela failed completely. The only military achieve- ment of the Athenians was to capture the small Sician town of Hyccara, whose inhabitants they sold as slaves a proceeding which brought them some gain, but taught every state in the island w^hat it had to expect in the event of an Athenian success. While this dilatory campaign was in progress, the Salaminia, one of the two Athenian state-galleys, arrived in Sicily with orders for Alcibiades to consider himself under arrest, and to return at once to take his trial for the matter of the profanation of the mys- teries. Since the departure of the fleet, the Athenian government had been making desperate efforts to unravel that mystery; their offers of rewards and indemnity to any informers who should pre- sent themselves produced a crop of venal and untrustworthy wit- nesses. Scores of persons were thrown into prison on such testi- mony, and the unending series of arrests led to something like a panic in the city. The whole business has been not inaptly compared to the stir in England which followed the so-called '' Popish Plot " of 1679. The Titus Oates of Athens was the orator Andocides, EXPEDITION TO SICILY 335 415 B.C. Finding himself arrested and in danger, he proceeded to make a pretended confession, on condition that his own life should be spared. He named himself and many other persons as guilty of the sacrilege. His story was confused and improbable, but the authorities were ready to take any evidence that presented itself. Hastily accepting the whole tale as true, the Athenians brought to trial and executed everyone within their reach whom Andocides denounced. The next thing was to investigate the profanation of the Eleusinian mysteries in which Alcibiades had been declared to be implicated. His political enemies, the demagogues Peisander and Charicles. cried loudly for his punishment, and he was accord- ingly summoned to return and appear for trial. He started home- ward from Catana, with several of his friends who were also ac- cused, but on arriving at Thurii very wisely gave his conductors the slip, went into hiding, and is next heard of as crossing the sea and appearing at Sparta to do what harm he could to his ungrateful country. He had, of course, been condemned to death in his ab- sence, his flight being taken as convincing evidence of guilt. When Alcibiades was removed, we might have expected that one of the schemes which Xicias and Lamachus had recommended would have been put into action. But this was not to be; all that the generals did was to land near Syracuse, defeat the Syracusan army in the plain south of the city, and then to sail back again to Catana and go into winter quarters. The descent was perfectly objectless, unless it was to serve as the immediate prelude to the siege. All that it did was to reveal to the Syracusans the nearness of the danger, and to induce them to take more vigorous measures for defense than they had hitherto thought necessary. Syracuse, as it then stood, consisted of two portions. The narrow-necked peninsula of Ortygia, the oldest part of the place, projecting into the sea on its long spit of land, formed the inner and lower city. The larger and newer quarter, the " Outer City," lay around the heads of the two harbors. The two quarters seem each to have had its separate wall, the one cutting off the peninsula from the mainland, and forming an inner line of defense (b on the map) ; the other, whose exact line is uncertain, forming an outer circle (perhaps as a a in map). To the north lay the bare limestone plateau of Epipolae, a long spur of upland which runs down from the mountains of the interior, and overlooks the two harbors and the city around them. During the winter of 415-414 B.C. it occurred 336 GREECE 414 B.C. to the Syracusans that, if once the enemy seized Epipolae, they would be able to blockade the city with little difficulty, owing to the narrowness of the front of the defenses. Accordingly, during the four months' respite which the inaction of the Athenians gave them, the Syracusans worked hard to construct a new wall. Starting from the sea on the north, they built a line of fortifications right across Epipolae from north to south, including all the eastern part of the plateau, and forming a strong line of defense, with a much longer front than that of the previous city-wall (c c in map). Nor did the Syracusans neglect other precautions. They placed in chief command Hermocrates, their best general, renewed old EXPEDITION TO SICILY 337 414 B.C. alliances with their neighbors, and sent for aid to Sparta and Cor- inth. At Corinth, their mother-city, they met with a favorable reception, and were at once promised assistance. At Sparta the ephors hesitated for some time, but were at length convinced by the arguments of Alcibiades, who had joined the Syracusan embassy, and did all in his power to further its objects. He explained to the ephors the full scope of the Athenian designs on Sicily, and pointed out how they could be most easily frustrated. He recommended that a Spartan ofificer should be sent to Syracuse with some troops at his back to encourage the Siceliots. ^Moreover, he advised the open renewal of war with Athens, now that so large a part of her resources was diverted to the West. But above all he laid stress on the advantage of seizing and fortifying the commanding posi- tion of Decelea on the brow of Mount Parnes, and of retaining it as a permanent post for the molestation of Athens, to play in Attica the part that Pylos had played in Laconia. ]\Iuch of this advice the ephors were ready to take. They did not declare immediate war on Athens, but they resolved to send a force under Gylippus. an officer of distinction, to assist the Syracusans; Athenian auxiliaries had been found in the Argive line of battle at Mantinea, and Athens could not complain if Laconians and Corinthians were seen fighting in the Syracusan ranks. Four ships were ordered to be prepared for Gyllippus at once, to sail from Corinth ; others were to follow. When spring come round, Nicias and Lamachus received from Athens a reinforcement of cavalry, in which arm they had hitherto been deficient. They also raised some horse from the Segestans, Catanaeans, and Sicels till they had altogether six hundred and fifty. Thus strengthened, they landed at Leon, a village a few miles north of Syracuse, and advanced towards the town. Before them lay a line of heights, the northern slope of the plateau of Epipolae. The cliff could only be ascended at certain points, and the Syracusans had placed there a guard of six hundred men. But this force was caught unprepared, for everyone had been expecting the Athenians to disembark south, not north, of the city. Accordingly, the in- vading army had reached the brow of Epipolae before they were attacked, and succeeded in driving off the defenders and establish- ing themselves on the plateau, facing the new Syracusan wall. The fleet came to anchor at Thapsus, a little to the north of Leon. Nicias and Lamachus had resolved to wall in Syracuse with lines of circumvallation, in the orthodox fashion of Greek siege- 338 GREECE 414 B.C. craft. The ground over which their lines would have to run was settled by the contour of the new wall which the Syracusans had built in the winter; opposite it, at a distance just beyond bowshot, the Athenian lines were to be constructed. The northern half of their extent would cut across the high plateau of Epipolae; the southern half would lie on the slope where Epipolae sank down towards the Great Harbor, and on the marshy plain by the seashore. Nicias began by constructing a fort called Labdalum at the highest point on Epipolae, and then a large circular entrenchment (e in map) somewhat further south. The latter was to be the central point of the line of circumvallation, lying at an equal distance from the open sea on the north and the Great Harbor on the south. Instead of coming out and offering battle, the Syracusan generals had determined to endeavor to frustrate the attempt to build them in, by throwing out counter-walls from the city, across the ground where the Athenian lines were to be drawn. They accordingly built, towards the southern brow of the plateau of Epipolae, a stockade running east and west (h on the map), south of the central fort which Nicias had erected. The Athenian works could not be con- tinued unless this entrenchment was captured and destroyed ; ac- cordingly a vigorous and successful attempt was made to storm it, when the Syracusans at midday were intent on their rest or their meal. The counter-wall was destroyed, and the Athenian line of circumvallation completed southward from the circular fort as far as the foot of Epipolae. The Syracusans, still persevering with the same plan of resist- ance, now built a second counter-wall on the low marshy ground near the Great Harbor (j on the plan). This also the Athenians assaulted, but they did not on that occasion surprise the enemy, who came out in full force into the open, and fought a general action in defense of the counter-wall. Again, however, the Athe- nians were victorious; the Syracusans were scattered and routed, and their entrenchment carried by storm. But in the midst of the battle Lamachus was slain, so that the sole command of the Athe- nian army now devolved upon Nicias. This was an immense mis- fortune for Athens; the fallen general was a man of energy and decision and a practiced soldier, while the survivor was more of a politician than a military man, and though fit enough for fair- weather campaigning, was prone to doubt and irresolution at criti- cal moments. Moreover, he hated the task which had been put upon EXPEDITION TO SICILY 339 414 B.C. him and believed in his own heart that it was impossible. To add to his troubles, he was suffering from a painful internal disease, which frequently confined him to his tent. Having driven the Syracusans within their walls, the Athenian army was now in a position to complete the lines of circumvallation. Nicias had brought round the fleet from Thapsus to the Great Harbor, had landed all his stores, and drawn his ships ashore on its beach. He therefore thought it most important to complete the southern portion of the lines, so as to cover the fleet; the northern section, towards the open sea, he left unfinished till he should have fully built the rest. Thus it came to pass that while the circumval- lation from the brow of Epipolae to the Great Harbor was elabo- rately complete, with a double line of wall, that which ran from the central circular fort to the northern sea was full of gaps, and in places hardly even commenced. This was to prove of fatal impor- tance during the next few weeks. The Athenians had now reached the height of their good for- tune, though this only amounted to having shut up the Syracusans in their city; the real siege had yet to begin. Nevertheless the moral effect of their success was considerable; a faction in Syra- cuse had already commenced to talk of asking terms of peace, and reinforcements were beginning to join the invaders from sev- eral states hitherto neutral, even from distant Etruria. Just at this moment a new factor intervened in the struggle. Gylippus had started from Corinth with his four ships when the spring came round, and had now arrived in Sicily. He landed at Himera, hardly hoping to save Syracuse, for rumor had reported that the city was now entirely circumvallated. Finding that this was not yet the case, he resolved to throw himself into it. He added to the seven hundred men whom he had brought with him several thousand more from Himera, Selinus, and Gela, and marched rapidly towards Syracuse. Coming upon the unfinished portion of the Athenian lines, on the northern side of Epipolae, he passed through one of the gaps and threw himself into the town. The whole Syracusan army came out to join him, and then offered the Athenians battle. Nicias would not accept the challenge, find- ing himself outnumbered now that Gylippus's army had arrived. He lay with his troops under arms near the circular fort on the south side of Epipolae, and made no movement when Gylippus laid hands on the unfinished wall to the north, pulled it down, and began 34-0 GREECE 414 B.C. to build with its materials a counter-wall running out from the Syracusan lines of defense towards the highest ground on Epipolae. He allowed his fort at Labdalum to be surprised and captured, and thus entirely lost command of the northern slope of the plateau. Presently the Syracusan counter-wall reached the level of the Athenian lines, just north of the circular fort ; if it could be con- tinued any further, Nicias could not hope to recover his lost ascend- ency, and would himself be besieged rather than besieging. It required two sharp engagements to settle the question, but in the second Gylippus was wholly victorious, and the counter-wall was carried past the critical point. During the succeeding month the Syracusans prolonged it more and more to the west, till it finally reached Euryelus, the narrow and lofty western summit of Epip- olae; at the more exposed points on its front it was strengthened with four forts (k k in map). The misfortunes of Nicias w^ere only just beginning. A few days later twelve Peloponnesian triremes ran the blockade, and entered the small harbor in safety. They announced that more ships were to follow, a promise which encouraged the Syracusans to think of launching their own fleet; they possessed some forty or fifty vessels, which had not yet ventured out of port, for fear of the overwhelming forces of the Athenians. The stir which was soon visible in the Syracusan arsenal disturbed Nicias, for his own squadron was now in very bad condition. The galleys had been lying on the beach for some months far from any dock, and were growing leaky. The crews were out of condition, and many of the slaves and mercenaries who filled the lower benches had begun to desert since the fortune of the armament seemed at an end. Nicias now began to take defensive measures, in case Gylippus should be emboldened to take the offensive. He occupied the penin- sula of Plemmyrium, which runs out into the sea opposite Ortygia, and removed to it the greater part of his stores and a considerable portion of the fleet. Three forts were erected in commanding posi- tions to ])rotect the new depot. If the unfortunate general had possessed sufticient moral strength to carry out his own plans, he would now have put his troops on shipboard and sailed home, aban- doning the whole enterprise. But Nicias was a man of irresolute nature, and terribly afraid of responsibility. He dreaded the recep- tion which would have awaited him at Athens, and instead of de- parting, as his own impulse urged, contented himself with sending EXPEDITION TO SICILY 341 414 B.C. dispatches home to describe his evil pHght, and to ask for further orders. " Unless Athens," he wrote, " was ready to send to his assistance a very large expedition in the shortest possible time, or to allow him to return, he foresaw a disaster." Autumn was now at hand, and the time required for sending to Athens and receiving an answer was so great that it was obvious that the spring would have arrived before any orders sent from home could be carried out. The dispatches of Nicias reached Athens at a most unfavorable moment, for it had just become evident that the renewal of the war with Sparta was at hand. Exasperated by the sending of Pelopon- nesian troops to Syracuse, the Athenians had, in the summer of 414 B.c.^ openly broken the truce with Sparta by sending a fleet of forty ships to harry the coast of Laconia. Prasiae, Epidaurus, Li- mera, and other places had been sacked and burned ; the ephors had sworn vengeance, and it was known that the great inroads into Attica, which had ceased since 421 B.C., were to recommence next spring. It might have been expected that when the old strife with Sparta was about to be renewed, the Ecclesia would have com- manded the instant return of the army in Sicily for service nearer home. But, blinded by their usual overconfidence and hopefulness, the Athenians resolved to persevere in the attack on Syracuse. They refused to recall Nicias or to bring home the army, and sent out word that he should have reinforcements sufficient to bring the siege to a successful end. Demosthenes, the most distinguished general that Athens possessed, was to head the new expedition, which was almost to rival the first in its strength and resources. Eurymedon was sent forward at midwinter with ten ships to inform Nicias of the approaching aid. Meanwhile at Syracuse the winter of 414-413 b.c. was passing by. No decisive event had happened, but the Athenian army was visibly growing weaker, while Gylippus had raised several thousand men, from the Siceliot cities allied with Syracuse, to strengthen his already superior force. He had also persuaded the Syracusans to launch every war-vessel that could possibly be made seaworthy, and not less than eighty galleys were now lying ready for service in the two harbors. When the spring arrived, he assumed the offensive; marching inland, he worked right round to the rear of the Athenian camp, and established himself, under cover of the night, close to their depot at Plemmyrium. \A'hen the dawn came, his ships left the harbor and offered the Athenians battle ; a violent S42 GREECE 413 B.C. conflict took place at the mouth of the Great Harbor, which ended in the defeat of the Syracusans. But while Nicias was intent on the sea-fight. Gylippus had fallen upon the forts at Plemmyrium, stormed all three, and got possession of the vast stores which had been heaped together on that peninsula. So far, too, were the Syra- cusans from feeling discouraged by the result of the naval engage- ment, that a few days later they sent out a squadron of twelve ships to cruise in the open sea. These vessels fell in with some Athenian ships, which were conveying treasure to Nicias, and destroyed sev- eral of them. Meanwhile King Agis, with a large Peloponnesian army, had invaded Attica in April, and ravaged the whole country. He had taken the advice of i\lcibiades, and established a permanent Spartan garrison at Decelea. Nevertheless the Athenians had not slackened in their determination to send help to Nicias, and while the Spartan army was still in the land, had sent forth Demosthenes and his ex- pedition. He had seventy-five triremes, five thousand hoplites, of whom twelve hundred were Athenians, and a large force of liglit- troops. On his way he obtained considerable reinforcements from Acarnania and also from Italy; for, owing to domestic revolutions, the states of Metapontum and Thurii had just changed their policy and concluded an alliance with Athens. About the same time that Demosthenes sailed forth the Spartans dispatched several small squadrons, with about two thousand troops on board, under orders to cross the open sea to Sicily and run the Athenian blockade. When the news of the approach of Demosthenes reached Syra- cuse, Gylippus and his Syracusan colleagues resolved to make a determined attempt to crush Nicias before he could receive his re- inforcements. The Syracusan army, divided into two bodies, at- tacked the Athenian camp both from the city and from the inland ; at the same time their fleet offered battle with eighty ships in the Great Harbor. The forces of Nicias were now so weakened that he could man only seventy-five ships, though forty or fifty more lay empty on the beach. The attempt on the Athenian camp failed, but by sea, after two days' hard fighting, the Syracusans had the mastery, and compelled the enemy to seek refuge on shore under the protection of his land army, leaving seven or eight galleys be- hind him. The victory of the Siceliots was ascribed to tl)e manner in which they had equipped their fleet; they had cut down and strengthened the bows of each ship, and made their beaks short and EXPEDITION TO SICILY 343 413 B.C. Strong instead of long and sharp. When a Syracusan and an Athenian vessel came into direct collision, stem to stem, it resulted that the weaker beak of the latter made little impression on the solid bows of the other, while the shorter but stronger beak usually broke through the slighter frame of the Athenian ship. These direct col- lisions were bound to occur very frequently in the confined space of the Great Harbor, which gave the Athenians little room for the skirmishing tactics in which they excelled. Within a few days of the sea-fight Demosthenes arrived with his great armament, and once more threw the balance of power on to the side of the Athenians. Being a man of vigor and decision, he overruled the dilatory Nicias, and commenced offensive opera- tions the moment that his men were on shore. He first brought military engines to bear on the Syracusan counter-wall, which shut the Athenians off from the plateau of Epipolae, and then tried to storm the works. His attack was repulsed, but his resources were not at an end. Marching inland under cover of the night, he ascended the hillside beyond Euryelus, the westernmost point of Epipolae, where the Syracusan counter-wall ended. This circuitous route brought him to the rear of the enemy's position, where his attack was wholly unexpected. He captured a fort, drove back the forces left to guard the wall, and pushed on for some time, carrying all before him. But presently his troops fell into disorder, the enemy rallied, and a desperate and confused conflict was carried on in the darkness. It terminated in the rout of the Athenians, who suffered terribly as they fled along the steep cliffs, and lost as many men by the precipices as by the sword of the enemy. The defeat cost so many lives, and demoralized the army to such an extent, that Demosthenes at once decided that nothing remained possible but instant retreat. Nicias, however, withstood him, and insisted that the position was not yet hopeless, and that Syracuse would ere long ask for terms from sheer inability to bear any longer the in- tolerable pressure of the war. But soon the reinforcements from Peloponnesus joined Gylippus, and at the same time a fever, bred in the marsh beside the Athenian camp, began to thin the invader's ranks. Even Nicias now consented to abandon the siege, and gave orders for embarkation. But, on the night before the day of departure, a total eclipse of the moon occurred. The soothsayers, who were called in to interpret the omen, proclaimed that the army must remain quiet for thrice nine days. Nicias. who was in- 344 GREECE 413 B.C. tensely superstitious, nisisted on following their advice, and the em- barkation was postponed for the period named. This was the last stroke needed to complete the ruin of the Athenians. The obvious preparations for departure in the invader's camp had raised the spirits of the Syracusans to the highest pitch of exultation, and they commenced a series of attacks which made the position of Nicias and Demosthenes more and more difficult. Their fleet, though little more than half as strong in mere numbers as that of the Athenians, was incessantly active. Its vigor and daring grew so great that at last seventy-six Syracusan vessels routed a squadron of eighty-six which Eurymedon led out against them, slew that officer, and took eighteen of his shij^s. The next action of Gylij^pus showed that he had got beyond the idea of merely driving the Athenians away, and had begun to think of annihilating them. He rapidly threw across the narrow mouth of the Great Harbor, between Ortygia and the northernmost point of Plemmyrium, a barrier composed of merchantmen moored stem to stern, so as to completely shut in the Athenian fleet. This drove even Nicias to desperate and immediate action. Every seaworthy ship that the invaders could muster was drawn down to the sea ; large drafts both of hoplites and of light-armed troops were sent on board, and a supreme effort w^as made to crush the Syracusans by gross force of numbers. A hundred and ten galleys, with Demosthenes at their head, sailed forth to burst the barrier at the mouth of the harbor, while Nicias kept guard in the camp on shore. The Syracusans, though they could only send out eighty vessels, did not decline the combat. The two fleets grappled together in the confined space of the harbor, and lay locked in close conflict for hours. The whole of Syracuse crowded to the walls of Ortygia to view the fight, while the Athenian land army mounted the ramparts of their camp to watch the decision of their fate. The stake at issue was so heavy that the victory was disputed with far greater obstinacy than had been seen in any previous engagement. The Athenians had ruin staring them in the face, if they could not burst the barrier and force their way to sea; the Syracusans were borne up by the self-confidence which their previous successes had generated, and determined not to lose the fruits of their long strug- gle. There was little maneuvering possible, and the fight resembled a land battle on the sea, for the vessels drifted into knots, and lay wedged together, while the hoplites fought hand to hand in their EXPEDITION TO SICILY 845 413 B.C. attempts to board. At last the resolution of the Athenians began to fail them ; in spite of their superior numbers they had made no head- way, and had not even approached the boom. With a simultaneous impulse every vessel that could get loose backed v^ater, turned, and made for the shore. The land army, with one loud groan of de- spair, ran down from the camp to the beach, to aid in dragging the ships into safety. Sixty came safely to land, fifty were left in the power of the enemy, or lay at the bottom of the harbor. The Syra- cusans had suffered almost as severely in proportion to their num- bers, for nearly thirty of their vessels were sunk or utterly dis- abled. Demosthenes made one final appeal to the defeated armament. He pointed out that the Athenian vessels which survived still out- numbered the enemy, that the victors were completely exhausted, and that the only real chance for escape lay in bursting the barrier. But when he ordered the seamen once more to embark, they sullenly refused to return to the battle ; nothing more could be done at sea. The only remaining course for the Athenians was to burn their fleet, evacuate their camp, start inland, and attempt to reach Catana by a march of forty miles through the hills and defiles of the Syra- cusan territory. Clear-headed men foresaw that the attempt must end in ruin, for the army was demoralized, the roads were bad, and a victorious enemy in overwhelming numbers was ready to start in pursuit. But to give the retreat any chance of success it must be commenced at once, before the Syracusans had time to beset the passes through which the army must thread its way. Misled, how- ever, by false reports of the intentions of the enemy, Nicias refused to start the night after the battle, and even the next day was occu- pied in sorting over the stores, packing up treasure and provisions, and settling the details of the march. On the third morning the whole army started forth in a great hollow square, with the baggage in the center. Nicias led the van, Demosthenes the rear. Vast quantities of stores were abandoned, and the apathy and careless- ness displayed was so great that the larger part of the fleet was left unburned for the enemy to tow away at leisure. Not only were the corpses of those who had fallen still lying unburied on the shore, but several thousand wounded were left behind, in spite of the pitiful appeals for aid which they addressed to their departing coun- trymen. The whole mass of combatants and non-combatants hurried away without any thought than that of saving their own 346 GREECE 413 B.C. persons. " They were quite disheartened and demoralized," writes Thucydides, " and resembled nothing but a whole city starved out and endeavoring to escape ; and no small city, too, for, counting the whole multitude, there were not less than forty thousand on the march." Meanwhile the two days of delay had permitted the Syracusans to seize all the difficult passes, throw up works against the fords, and break down the bridges on every road which the Athenians could take. Moreover, they had planted parties of cavalry where- ever the ground was open and level, so that no one could straggle from the ranks of the retreating force. On the first day the army forced the passage of the river Anapus and advanced five miles, not without suffering severe losses. On the second day they reached the foot of a pass called the Acraean Cliff, and found it strongly held by the enemy. The third and fourth days were spent in attempts to force this defile, which proved entirely unavailing; W'hile the head of the army was fighting in the pass, the rear was being galled by unceasing cavalry charges, and shot down from a distance by the light-armed troops of the Syracusans. Finding the Acraean Cliff impregnable, the Athenians now fronted to the rear, and started off in a new direction ; as they could not reach Catana, they would endeavor to make their way to the friendly Sicels of the interior. The march now lay southward ; before it could begin Nicias had to cut his way through the Syracusan corps which had been hanging on his rear, a feat which he accomplished only with heavy loss. The food of the retreating army was now well-nigh exhausted, and there was no spirit for fighting left in them ; the whole force was ready to disband, and many thousands had already deserted and taken to the hills, in the hope of finding their way to Catana. When night came the generals ordered fires to be lighted to deceive the enemy, and led off their remaining troops with such speed as they could. Nicias, with the smaller half of the army, got clear away and gained some miles on his pursuers; but Demos- thenes, who had lost his way in the darkness, w-as struggling along far to the rear. In the morning the Syracusans found the enemy vanished, and started off in hot haste to pursue him. They came up with Demosthenes's corps as it was making its way through a narrow defile. The Athenians made little resistance; many were cut down, the main body took refuge in a walled enclosure which they held for a few hours. Then, finding themselves entirely sur- EXPEDITION TO SICILY 347 413 B.C. rounded, they laid down their arms on condition that their Hves should be spared. Six thousand men were taken here; a much larger number had fallen or been captured before the final surrender. Demosthenes threw himself upon his sword when the surrender took place ; but the w^ound was not mortal, and he was borne back, still living, to Syracuse. Meanwhile Nicias, relieved for a day from the pressure of the enemy on his rear, had forced the passage of the river Cacyparis, and made considerable progress southward. But on the next day the Syracusan horse reappeared to molest his march, and brought him news of the capture of Demosthenes. Gylippus now bade the Athenian surrender ; but Nicias, making a final effort, pushed on as far as the river Asinarus, though his men were now so famished and weary that it was hard to get them to move. By the time that the river was reached the Syracusans had gone round and occupied the further bank. Hundreds of the Athenians perished in the stream as they strove to cross ; as many were trodden down in the narrow ford by their comrades as fell by the darts of the Siceli- ots. Soon the resistance ceased ; Nicias gave himself up to Gylip- pus, and such of his followers as were granted quarter by the exultant enemy were sent to join the troops of Demosthenes in cap- tivity. A few scores at most escaped to the hills and reached Catana. " Thus ended," says Thucydides, " the greatest adventure that the Greeks entered into during this war, and in my opinion the greatest in which Greeks were ever concerned; the one most splen- did for the conquerors and most disastrous for the conquered ; for they suffered no common defeat, but were absolutely annihi- lated, land army, fleet and all, and, of many thousands only a handful ever returned home." The Syracusans used their victory in no gentle spirit. In spite of the remonstrances of Gylippus, they put to death the two un- fortunate generals who had fallen into their hands. ^ All Greece lamented Nicias, " the most respectable man of his age," whose private virtues, moderation, and love of peace should have earned him a better fate. But in troublous times incompetence incurs a greater punishment than crime. It 'cannot be denied that the half- > Thucydides says that they were actually executed; other authorities, that they slew themselves to avoid the ignominy of a public execution, having been forewarned of their fate by Gylippus, or by the Syracusan general Hermocrates. 348 GREECE 413 B.C. hearted and dilatory proceedings of Nicias were the chief cause of the great disaster in which he perished. It is doubtful whether the supineness with which he conducted his operations at first, or the obstinacy which he displayed in refusing to bring the expedi- tion home when fortune had turned against him, was the more fatal to the expedition. At any rate, this respectable man dragged down to death his able colleague Demosthenes, lost his country the largest and finest armament it had ever sent out, and ultimately brought about the downfall of its imperial power. The prisoners who had fallen into the hands of the Syra- cusans were hardly better treated than their generals. They were shut up for safe custody in the quarries which abounded on the hill- sides of Epipolae, with no protection from the sun or the rain, and a very insufficient ration of bread and water, only half the ordinary dole of a slave, to keep body and soul together. Worn out by their late exertions, and exposed to absolute famine, they began to die off like flies as the unhealthful weather of the autumn set in. The Syracusans let the corpses lie unburied among the surviving pris- oners till the stench bred an infectious fever that threatened to spread into the city. After seventy days, all but the native Atheni- ans and those of their allies who were Siceliots were sold by auction as slaves. The remainder were exposed to the miseries of the quar- ries for eight months till the greater portion of them perished. Those who still survived seem then to have been sold into slavery like their companions. We read that pity for their fate, and ad- miration for the calm courage with which they supported their mis- fortunes, finally led to the release of the greater number of them. But hardly one in ten of those who had sailed forth in such ex- uberant hopefulness to subdue Sicily ever saw his home again. Chapter XXXIII DECLINE OF ATHENS, 413-41 1 B.C. THE final disaster of the Athenians in Sicily had befallen them about the middle of the month of September; some weeks later confused rumors of it began to spread through Greece, reaching Sparta and Corinth long before they arrived at Athens. We are assured by Plutarch that the news first came to those who were most concerned in it in the most casual way. A seafaring stranger landed at Peiraeus and entered a barber's shop, where he began speaking of the deaths of Nicias and Demosthenes as events already known to everyone. The barber no sooner heard the story than he ran up to Athens to give information to the magistrates. But when he was brought forward, interrogated as to the particulars of the disaster and told to produce his informant, the poor man was at a loss. There was no one to corroborate his tale, and as the news seemed perfectly incredible to those who had seen the two magnificent armaments sail forth against Syracuse, he was treated as a forger of false news and sentenced to be ex- posed on the wheel. He had been suffering the torture some time, when several soldiers, who had escaped from Sicily before the final surrender, appeared to bear out his tale. But even when well- known and respectable citizens, who had seen the fatal end of the expedition, came straggling back to Athens with full particulars of the disaster, the people refused to credit them. It seemed im- possible that so large and strong a fleet and army could perish so utterly. Nevertheless the situation had to be faced. It was of no use to mob the orators who had promoted the expedition, or to denounce the soothsayers and diviners who had prophesied its success. What had to be done was to take stock of the remaining resources of the city, and to see if the naval and commercial empire of Athens could yet be preserved. The survey did not promise well; nearly two hundred ships out of a navy that had never numbered more than three hundred had been engulfed in the disaster. There remained 34.9 350 GREECE 418 B.C. to Athens only a squadron of twenty-six vessels at Naupactus, and some thirty or forty more ready for service in home waters. Three thousand seven hundred hoplites had been lost out of a force that, since the great plague, did not muster more than ten or eleven thousand men fit for foreign service. Moreover, the finances of the state had been drained to the very bottom by the expense of sending forth the second expedition so soon after the first. Of all the funds that had been stored in the Acropolis, there remained only the thousand talents that Pericles had set aside, to be used only if Athens were to be attacked by a hostile fleet. The soil of Attica had just been ravaged by an army of overpowering strength, and the fort at Decelea showed that the Spartans were about to adopt a new and annoying method of warfare. Already some thousands of slaves had deserted to that post, which offered them a close and easy refuge from their masters. Nor was this all. At any moment a Peloponnesian squadron might insult the scantily guarded coast of Attica, and ere long the confederate fleet which had conquered at Syracuse might be ex- pected to appear in overwhelming force in the waters of the Aegean. Athens might well have despaired, and sent to ask from her enemies what terms they would be pleased to grant her. It is sur- prising to learn that she showed no signs of doing so ; on the con- trary, crippled and beggared though she was, she nerved herself for a second struggle, not less lengthy and far more desperate than that which had raged between 431 b.c. and 422 B.C. The deadly fear of the moment, says Thucydides, drove the democracy into a mood of discipline and self-restraint to which it had long been a stranger. A committee of public safety was elected and entrusted with absolute power for the crisis ; every source of expenditure in the city that could be dispensed with was cut down ; the thousand talents which Pericles had laid by were voted as supply for building a new fleet; contributions of money and ship-timber were requisi- tioned from the allies, and garrisons were sent to Euboea and cer- tain other strategical points. All this preparation would have been useless if the Spartans had taken time by the forelock and attacked Athens by sea and land the moment that the result of the fighting at Syracuse was known. But Sparta was ever dilatory ; her rulers resolved to make a great effort, but took their time to prepare it. Instead of in- DECLINE OF ATHENS 351 412 B.C. stantly blockading Peiraeus with every vessel they could muster, they decided to spend the winter in constructing a fleet of over- whelming strength, and to defer operations till the spring. It seems not to have occurred to them that while they were building new triremes their enemies also would have time to do the same. Naturally, when the news arrived that the dockyards of Corinth and Gytheum and Aulis were busy, the Athenians commenced to lay down new keels in every slip that Peiraeus could provide; by the midsummer of 412 B.C. they calculated on having a hundred vessels ready for sea. The winter of 413-412 B.C. was spent in these preparations on each side, and Athens obtained the respite which she so much needed. But meanwhile the members of the Confederacy of Delos were realizing the position; in well-nigh every state there was a powerful oligarchic faction eager for independence, which had long been waiting for an opportunity to revolt from Athens. The democratic party in each city, on the other hand, preserved but a passive and unenthusiastic Loyalty towards its suzerain, and was quite unprepared to make any sacrifice in her behalf. The reverses of Athens gave to the one faction a motive for instant rebellion, and laid before the other a chilling prospect of additional taxes and contributions if they adhered to their ancient mistress. Accord- ingly most of the leading states of Ionia sent secret emissaries to Sparta or Thebes, offering to cast off the Athenian yoke the moment that a Peloponnesian fleet should appear in Asiatic waters. The Chians sent emissaries to Sparta and opened negotiations with the ephors through the medium of Alcibiades, who was the close friend of Endius, the most prominent member of the Ephoralty. The Lesbians and Euboeans made a similar application to King Agis, who was occupied in Northern Greece and had planted his headquarters at Decelea. Pharnabazus, the Persian satrap of the lands on the Hellespont, sent, in behalf of himself and of several Greek cities in his neighborhood, to beg for the dispatch of a fleet to the Propontis. Tissaphernes, the satrap of Lydia, made a similar request, and supported the demand of the Chians. Each of these barbarians had come to the conclusion that the break-up of the Athenian empire would give him an opportunity of recovering some of the lost coast-land of his satrapy. They vied with each other in promising assistance, both in men and money, if once a Peloponnesian fleet should cross the Aegean. 852 GREECE 412 B.C. The Spartans resolved to send first to Chios, the most power- ful of the disaffected states, and afterwards to aid Lesbos and the cities of the Hellespont, But, instead of concentrating their fleet, they sent out small squadrons piecemeal, just as each could be got ready for sea. The first which sailed consisted of twenty Cor- inthian ships, but this was intercepted and blockaded off the Argive coast by the Athenian home-fleet. However, the Spartan admiral, Chalcideus, slipped out from Gytheum with five vessels, taking with him Alcibiades as a volunteer, and safely reached Chios. That great city at once revolted, and placed its fleet of thirty ships at the disposal of the Spartan. Clazomenae, Erythrae, and Teos soon followed the example of Chios; it was to no effect that the Athe- nians hurried off every galley that could possibly be got to sea. The mischief was done before the first of them could reach Ionia. A desultory naval campaign now began off the Asiatic coast; it was full of unforeseen turns of fortune, for each side was alter- nately receiving reinforcements from home, and obtaining a pre- carious superiority over the enemy. The balance of success, how- ever, lay with the Spartans. Although they failed at Mitylene, which revolted but was recaptured, they won great successes in other quarters. Miletus, still a great town, though no longer the metrop- olis of Ionia, joined them with enthusiasm ; lasus, which resisted them, was taken by storm. At the approach of autumn their su- periority was made more marked by the arrival of a considerable fleet from Syracuse. The Siceliots had determined to repay Athens for her unprovoked aggression in 415 b.c.^ and sent their favorite general, Hermocrates, with twenty-two ships to aid in revo- lutionizing Ionia. It says more for the facility than for the Hellenic patriotism of the Spartan admirals that they entered into very humiliating terms of alliance with the Persian satraps of the neighborhood. An agreement drawn up between Chalcideus and Tissaphemes actually stipulated that, in return for supplies of money, Sparta should help the Persian to take back "all that the Great King's forefathers had held in Asia " ; a phrase which, if pressed to its logical meaning, would have surrendered Miletus, Clazomenae, and the other mainland towns into the power of King Darius. Asty- ochus, who succeeded Chalcideus, thought the wording of the treaty objectionable, and substituted for the original clause another, which merely declared that " the Lacedaemonians and their allies DECLINE OF ATHENS 353 411 B.C. should not proceed to attack any city which belonged to King Darius or his ancestors." This change relieved the Spartans of the obligation to assist the Great King in recovering the Greek towns which had once been his, but bound them to stand by and permit the restoration of the Persian power, if the satraps were strong enough to effect it. Though less disgraceful in form, the second treaty was as despicable in spirit as the first. The first year of war after the Syracusan disaster had failed to ruin Athens ; it had seen the revolt of some of her most important allies, but she still kept up the fight, favored by the dilatoriness and want of fixed purpose which the Spartan Government and the Spartan commanders had alike displayed. The respite had allowed her to build and launch a formidable fleet, and she was now in a position to struggle on, putting off by her desperate efforts the final day of disaster, which was bound to arrive at no very distant date. For when once the great Ionian towns had committed them- selves to revolt, there was no hope that the Athenian empire could be kept together. For the ensuing period of the war the operations of the Athenians were carried on from the base of Samos. In that island the democratic faction had just risen, and massacred some hun- dreds of oligarchs. This action bound them by the tie of fear to their suzerain, for they knew that the victory of Sparta would be followed by the reestablishment of a philo-Laconian oligarchy, which would take ample revenge for the late slaughter. Samos was nearer to Athens than any other of the great Ionian ports, and lay in an advantageous position, enabling its possessors to intercept communications between the two chief areas of revolt the north- ern, which centered at Chios, and the southern, which lay around Miletus. In the early spring of 411 B.C. a further disaster befell the Athenians by the revolt of the three cities of the great island of Rhodes. The Athenians from Samos sailed to recover the island, but, when faced by the combined force of the Peloponnesian and Chian fleets, declined the battle, on account of their decided inferi- ority in numbers. After this, however, the success of the Spartans came to a standstill ; their monetary resources had been exhausted by the expense of keeping a great armada at sea for a whole year, and their chief paymaster, the satrap Tissaphernes, was beginning to slacken in his granting of subsidies. 354 GREECE 411 B.C. The Persian is said to have been turned from his zeal for the Spartan cause by the advice of Alcibiades. That volatile per- sonage had sailed for Asia with the full intention of doing all in his power to spread the revolt; but renegades are always distrusted by those they serve, and Alcibiades had, in addition, made himself personally hateful to some of the leading men in Sparta. His crowning offense is said to have been that he seduced the wife of King Agis. He soon found that he was regarded with suspicion by his colleagues, and after an unsuccessful engagement in front of Miletus, which had been entered into by his advice, was constrained to quit the Spartan camp, in fear for his life. He betook himself to the court of Tissaphernes, with whom he soon contrived to in- gratiate himself, by the perfect knowledge both of Spartan and Athenian plans which he displayed, and by the ingenuity with which he pushed the satrap's interests. He pointed out to the Persian that if he lavished his resources on the Peloponnesian fleet, and allowed the Athenians to be crushed, he would find that he had only replaced the Athenian empire by a Spartan empire. Athens was a naval power desirous only of holding the seacoast; but the Lacedaemonians, who had always aimed at empire on land, would be dangerous neighbors, likely to covet the conquest of the inner districts of Asia Minor. The wisest course would be to let the two Greek powers wear down each other's resources, and mean- while to lay hands quietly on every Ionian town that could be secured, and hold it nominally against the Athenians, but really for the Great King. Tissaphernes saw the force of this advice, and promptly cut down by half the supplies of money he had been furnishing to the Spartans. He also kept them inactive by promising the aid of a Phoenician fleet which never arrived ; and when the commanders complained to him, put them off with personal bribes, but did not do anything for their armament. Finding Tissaphernes so ready to take his advice, Alcibiades began to think out a new method of turning his influence with the satrap to good account. A short experience of the narrow meanness of Spartan life and the soulless pomp of an Oriental court had set him longing for the free and liberal atmosphere of Athens. He began to dream of securing his return from exile by propitiating Athenian public opinion by some extraordinary service. Had it been only the matter of the mysteries that stood charged to his score, the people might easily DECLINE OF ATHENS 355 411 B.C. have pardoned him; but some striking feat was needed to atone for his flight to Sparta and his too effective advice that Decelea should be fortified. It occurred to Alcibiades that if he could draw Tissaphernes over to the Athenian alliance, and induce the Persian to open his purse for the needs of the well-nigh bankrupt city, his pardon might possibly be granted. Accordingly he began to sound his private friends in the Athenian armament at Samos, to see how they liked the idea. He found that there was a strong party in the camp who were longing to get rid of the democratic government at Athens; it was the democracy which had been responsible for the Sicilian expedition, and the wealthier and landed classes were now suffering for its sins by the ruin of their estates. Accordingly he found it easy to spread a report among the malcontents that if the present constitu- tion were overturned in Athens, and an oligarchic government in- stalled in its place, he could undertake to bring over Tissaphernes to the Athenian alliance ; without a change the Persian could not be won, for he had a rooted distrust of democracies. The intrigue prospered even better than Alcibiades had ventured to hope; many officers of note in the force at Samos furthered it with zeal, and a deputation of them, headed by the General Peisander, sailed across to Athens to enlist recruits in its favor. The only man who op- posed the scheme was Phrynichus, another of the generals, and he set himself against it, not because he disliked an oligarchy, but merely because he had a personal grudge against Alcibiades. The main mass of the army was imperfectly informed about the intrigue ; and though it suspected and disliked the proposals of the conspirators, it was content to let matters take their course, if thereby the aid of Persia could be secured. Peisander and the oligarchs from Samos made no secret of their plans at Athens ; they boldly laid the proposals of Alcibiades before the Ecclesia ; they pointed out that if affairs went on as they had been doing of late, the ruin of Athens must be close at hand, while the Persian alliance would save the state. The price to be paid, the sacrifice of the cherished democratic constitution, was heavy; but was not any sacrifice preferable to destruction? One after another the enemies of Alcibiades rose to recall the misdeeds of the renegade statesman ; demagogues denounced his lawless insolence, and priests expatiated upon his sacrilegious out- rages, and warned the people not to draw down the wrath of 356 GREECE 411 B.C. Heaven by recalling him. But of every speaker Peisander asked the same unanswerable question Was it not true that the Spar- tans were superior at sea, that the allies were revolting-, that the treasury of the state was empty; if so, could they suggest any better way of staving off the impending ruin? After a long and tumultuous debate, the people, convinced against their will, voted that Peisander and ten commissioners with him should sail to Asia, and open negotiations with Alcibiades and Tissaphernes, on such terms as they could secure. Before starting, Peisander set working all the oligarchic in- fluences which could be utilized in Athens for the overthrow of the constitution. He stirred up the numerous political clubs, which existed for purposes of influencing elections and trials, and ex- horted them to unite and act without fear or scruple when a favor- able moment arrived. The rhetorician Antiphon, a skillful wire- puller who took no ostensible part in politics, but was deep in all the secrets of the party, was entrusted with the management of the conspiracy. Other leaders were soon forthcoming, among them many men who had never been suspected of any disloyalty to the democratic constitution, and everything was prepared for a vigor- ous coup d'etat. But when Peisander and his colleagues had returned to Asia and arrived at the court of Tissaphernes, a new complication arose. Alcibiades found that he had much less influence with the satrap than he had supposed, and could not prevail on him to take any steps towards concluding an alliance with Athens ; all that the Persian would do was to stint his supplies to the Peloponnesians, and keep their fleet idle. When placed in the dilemma, and forced to confess that he was either unwilling or unable to carry out his promises, Alcibiades took refuge in evasions. He pretended that Tissaphernes was still willing to conclude a treaty, but proposed as preliminary conditions that the Athenians should surrender to him all the subject-cities on the mainland of Asia. When his exor- bitant demand was reluctantly granted, he began to ask for the Asiatic islands also, and made himself so impracticable that the ambassadors in great wrath broke off the negotiations and re- turned to Samos. While these intrigues were in progress the war dragged itself slowly on, without any important action. As the Spartan fleet lay immovable at Rhodes, the Athenians from Samos succeeded in DECLINE OF ATHENS 357 411 B.C. establishing a blockade round Chios, and even landed troops on that island, but did not make any great progress towards its re- duction. Elsewhere the war stood still. The failure of Peisander's negotiations with Alcibiades placed the oligarchic party in a very difficult position. They had made all arrangements for a revolution, and gone so far that it was difficult to stop. At home the clubs had been hard at work; pro- prosals had been mooted to entrust the conduct of the war to some less unwieldy body than the Ecclesia, to abolish all payments to dicasts and ecclesiasts, and to save the scanty revenue of the state to maintain the soldiers and seamen in active service. These pro- posals provoked opposition from the democratic party; but when Androcles, the leading demagogue of the day, and several of his supporters were promptly slain by assassins, the people were cowed, and open resistance to the oligarchic agitation almost entirely ceased. Conscious that a great plot was on foot, but ignorant of its extent and objects, the mass of the citizens waited passively to see what was going to happen. Emboldened by the impunity which they were enjoying, the oligarchs resolved to carry out their plans, even though Alcibiades had played them false. Many of them felt all the more confident from not having the over-subtle exile on their side; and several men of importance, including the ex-General Phrynichus, joined the party when once they knew that Alcibiades was not to have any control over its actions. It was resolved that a simultaneous attempt should be made to win over to the oligarchy the fleet at Samos and the city of Athens. At Samos the plot failed ; when the oligarchs, allied with the aristocratic party among the Samians, rose in arms under the General Charminos, they found themselves too weak for their task. After slaying a few of their opponents, among them the exiled Athenian demagogue Hyperbolus, who had been for some time resident at Samos, they were put down by force of numbers. The Samian democracy and the majority of the Athenians from the fleet combined against them, and crushed them without any serious fighting. The moment that the rising was suppressed, the victors sent home the state-galley called the Paraluis with the news. When the Paralus arrived at Athens, that city was found to have fallen into the hands of the oligarchs. The revolution at 358 GREECE 411 B.C. Athens had been conducted with more dexterity and less violence than that at Samos. Peisander, Antiphon, and Phrynichns had determined to avoid open fighting if possible. When they knew that the Ecclesia had been frightened and paralyzed by the sudden murder of Androcles and other democratic leaders, they brought forward a motion that ten ^ commissioners should be appointed to lay before the people a scheme of constitutional reform. This proposal was carried ; a few days after, the commissioners, who had been carefully chosen from among the oligarchs, summoned the Ecclesia to meet, not on the Pnyx, but at the temple of Poseidon at Colonus, a suburb a mile without the city. The democracy, suspecting some snare perhaps an attack from the garrison of Decelea would not trust themselves outside the walls of Athens, and a packed and scanty meeting at Colonus was able to vote away the time-honored constitution of Cleis- thenes. On the proposal of Peisander, a bill was carried to elect five men as presidents, who again should choose a hundred, and each of these hundred three men more, and that the whole body, four hundred strong, should assume the government of the state in place of the archons and the senate. They were to be responsible to a body of five thousand full citizens, chosen by themselves; the rest of the Athenians were practically disfranchised.^ When the assembly had dispersed, without a single voice be- ing raised against the bill, the Four Hundred marched on the Pry- taneum, follov^^ed by a body of hoplites who had been secretly got together for their assistance. They found the senate in session, and summoned it to disperse ; the senators were no less terror- stricken than the people, and obeyed the command; as they went out each was given the public allowance of money due to him for the remainder of his term of office. We do not hear that a single man dared to resent the insult. Having cleared out their prede- cessors, the Four Hundred did solemn sacrifice, and assumed all the functions of government. Their first step was to send to King Agis at Decelea, to inform him that a philo-Spartan oligarchy was installed in power, and anxious to treat for terms of peace. Agis, however, instead of treating, made a rapid march on Athens, thinking to find it in 1 Thucydides says ten: the new lluhrsca rwv 'Adrjvaiiov thirty. - So Thucydides. The rather confused account in the UoXirsia ruiv *AOi^vaiwv says that the 400 were elected by the tribes, 40 by each. DECLINE OF ATHENS 359 411 B.C. open sedition, and easily to be captured by a vigorous coup de main. His plan, however, v^as foiled; the gates were closed and the walls manned, so that, after losing a few men in a sally, he was fain to return in haste to Decelea. When the Four Hundred again made overtures to him, he received them with greater re- spect, and forwarded their envoys to the ephors at Lacedaemon. The Paralus arrived at the Peiraeus, with the news of the sup- pression of the oligarchic rising in Samos, shortly after the Four Hundred had taken over the conduct of affairs. Fearing lest the democracy should be encouraged to revolt when the events at Samos became known, the new rulers imprisoned some of the crew of the Paralus, and sent the rest off at once to cruise round Euboea, But Chaereas, the captain of the vessel, escaped and re- turned at once to Samos, where he laid the news of the revolution before the army. A great burst of democratic feeling swept through the ranks of the soldiery when the tale of Peisander's intrigues was heard ; they deposed all the generals and trierarchs who were suspected of oligarchic leanings, and placed at their head two officers named Thrasybiilus and Thrasyllus, whose loyalty was undoubted. At a solemn assembly the whole army swore " to hold to the democracy, to live in concord, to zealously prosecute the war with Sparta, and to be foes to the Four Hundred, and have no intercourse with them." All the Samians of the democratic party took the same oath, being as much interested as the Athenians themselves in the suppression of oligarchic plots. Thrasybiilus and his colleagues reasoned that as the whole naval force of Athens was in their hands, they should be able to rescue the mother-city from her oppressors. If the Four Hundred held out against them, they could easily make Samos, and not Athens, the seat for the time being of the Athenian empire ; for the allied states would pay their allegiance and hand over their tribute to the party which controlled the fleet of Athens, not to that which sat helpless and isolated within her walls. In short, the army claimed to represent the Athenian state, and resolved to make no account of the usurp- ing Four Hundred. Thrasybiilus and Thrasyllus now proposed the recall of Alci- biades from exile, intending to enlist his influence with Tissaphernes on the side of the democracy. Their proposal was welcomed by the army, and, after four years of banishment, Alcibiades appeared once more in the assembly of his countrymen. He came full of 360 GREECE 411 B.C. protestations of his good will, and of his ability to bring over his friend the satrap to the Athenian cause; his promises gained such credit that he was at once elected as a colleague to Thrasybiilus and Thrasyllus, and granted full powers to treat with Tissaphernes. Accordingly he sailed off to find the satrap, who lay at this moment far southward in the Pamphylian city of Aspendus. Tissaphernes had found the Peloponnesian admirals wrought up to a dangerous pitch of wrath by the inactivity to which he had reduced their fleet, and by his constant interviews with Al- cibiades; accordingly he had at last determined to bring up the Phoenician fleet to their aid. There were more than a hundred Phoenician vessels lying at Aspendus when i\lcibiades arrived at the place. Nevertheless, the Athenian contrived to persuade the satrap to send the ships away, though he had only just brought them on to the scene of action. The fleet returned home, and the Spartans were more than ever enraged with their faithless ally. The most important result of this diplomatic success, however, was to restore Alcibiades to the full confidence of the army at Samos who believed that he had given conclusive proof of his absolute control over the mind of Tissaphernes a control which he was in reality very far from possessing. Meanwhile, everything at Athens was conspiring to ruin the cause of the Four Hundred. Their authority received a desperate shock when the news of the events at Samos became known. Dis- sensions, too, broke out among their own body. The more violent party under Phrynichus and Antiphon proposed to strengthen their position by throwing themselves into the hands of the Spartans, and by calling Peloponnesian troops within the walls ; for this purpose they began to construct a fort at the mole of Eetionea in the Peiraeus, built so as to facilitate the entry of the enemy. Their desperate treason was opposed by a more moderate faction, headed by Theramenes, a supple statesman who was always to be found on the safe side. Luckily for Athens, the Spartans were still sus- picious of the good faith of the Four Hundred, and were so tardy in taking advantage of the civil strife in the city that they once more lost their opportunity. The first blow to the oligarchy came from the assassination of Phrynicus ; as he left the senate house he was stabbed by a young soldier, who escaped, though the deed was wrought at midday in the midst of the market-place. A few days later a body of hoplites broke into open mutiny, seized and demol- DECLINE OF ATHENS 361 411 B.C. ished the suspected fort at Eetionea, and placed Theramenes at their head. This crisis induced the Four Hundred to take measures to render their power more popular, by calling the assembly of the Five Thousand into existence : hitherto they had neglected to sum- mon it. But it was too late; open war seemed about to break out in the city; the oligarchs held the senate house, while the mal- contents lay round the temple of the Dioscuri, to the south of the Acropolis. Suddenly, however, the face of affairs was changed by the alarming news that a fleet of forty-two Peloponnesian ships was threatening Peiraeus. Abandoning their dissensions, both parties ran down to the harbor and commenced to launch every war-vessel that could be found. The Spartan admiral Agesan- dridas had come prepared to take advantage of the treachery of Phrynichus; but Phrynichus was dead, and his fort at Eetionea destroyed. Accordingly the Spartan left Peiraeus behind, rounded Sunium, and made for Euboea, whose malcontents had long been praying for aid to enable them to revolt. Thirty-six Athenian ships, manned in hot haste and very imperfectly fitted out, chased Agesandridas up the Euboean strait, and brought him to action off Eretria. The fight resulted in the complete rout of the ill- found and ill-handled Athenian fleet; only fourteen vessels suc- ceeded in escaping from the disaster. The moment that the result of the battle was known, every city in Euboea revolted to the Spar- tans, with the single exception of Histiaea, which was held by Athenian cleruchs. To bind the island to the mainland and obviate the possibility of conquest, the Euboeans and their conti- nental neighbors of Boeotia combined to throw a bridge over the narrowest point of the Euripus, just opposite Chalcis. The loss of Euboea was a terrible blow to Athens ; since Attica had become unsafe, it had been customary to keep in that spacious island all the flocks and herds which supplied the city, and to utilize it as a storehouse conveniently placed at the doors of Athens. The news of its revolt almost made the Athenians despair; even the disaster at Syracuse had caused less dismay, for that had taken place far away, while the battle of Eretria had been fought in the home-waters of the navy of Athens, and almost under the eyes of her citizens. The immediate result of the revolt of Euboea was the final overthrow of the Four Hundred, for everyone cast the responsi- 362 GREECE 411 B.C. bility for the disaster on the shoulders of those whose factious \-iolence had thrown the city off her guard. An assembly once more met on the Pnyx, the ancient gathering-place of the de- mocracy, and formally deposed the usurping government. The body of the Five Thousand was suffered nominally to exist ; but as it was enacted that every citizen possessing a suit of armor should be included in the number, a modified democracy was in reality restored. The same assembly passed a decree authorizing the return of Alcibiades from exile, and approving of all the ac- tions of the army at Samos. When their deposition was decreed, the Four Hundred dis- persed and fled. Peisander and most of his colleagues made their way to Decelea ; one of them, the General Aristarchus, signalized his defection by inducing the blockaded garrison of Oenoe, a strong fort on the northern border, to surrender to the Boeotians, on a false report of a general pacification. A few of the more notable members of the Four Hundred were caught, brought to trial, and executed. Of all the most prominent was the rhetorician An- tiphon, whose speech in defense of his actions was considered the most stirring burst of eloquence ever heard in an Athenian law- court. Nevertheless he was condemned, and expiated his treason by a well-deserved death. Thus fell the Four Hundred, after a stormy and inglorious rule extending over no more than four months. The net result of their conspiracy was a small gain the abolition of pay for civil duties, and the great loss the aban- donment of Euboea.^ ^ In the whole matter of the Four Hundred Thucydides is here followed rather than the Uohreia raJv 'AOfj^atajv. But the latter certainly appears to be drawing from official documents, though quoting them in a very confused way. Chapter XXXIV SURRENDER OF ATHENS, 404 B.C. IT might have been expected that the civil strife caused by the usurpation of the Four Hundred would have brought about the ruin of Athens. But once more the slackness and want of enterprise of the Spartan commanders came to the rescue of their enemies. In the western Aegean, Agesandridas, who had swept the Athenian home-fleet off the water, accomplished nothing more than the revolt of Euboea. Though completely commanding the sea, he made no attempt to blockade Athens a feat which he could have accomplished with ease, for there were now only twenty ships ready for service at Peiraeus. After lingering some time by the Euripus, he set sail eastward to reinforce the Peloponnesian fleet in Asia. " Truly," as Thucydides observes, " the Spartans were a very convenient people to be at war with" ; they generally did what their enemy most desired. Meanwhile the Athenians at Samos had been planning an expe- dition to expel the Four Hundred from the mother-city, a design from which they were turned by Alcibiades, who persuaded them to persevere in the defense of Ionia, and to let matters at home right themselves. This advice was accepted, and the Pelopon- nesian fleet was not left to work its will unresisted, as would have been the case if the expedition to Athens had been carried out. By giving this counsel Alcibiades did a real service to his country for the first time in his whole political career. As the autumn drew near, the Peloponnesian admiral Mindarus gave up all hopes of help from Tissaphernes, and resolved to shift the scene of action northward. He knew that the Hellespontine cities were ripe for revolt, and hoped for hearty aid from Pharna- bazus, the Persian satrap of Northern Asia Minor, who had proved himself a zealous and trustworthy ally of Sparta. The Spartans had already been provided with a base of operations on the Helles- pont, for two small expeditions had been sent thither a few months before, and had brought about the rebellion of Abydos and Byzan- tium. Accordingly Mindarus, steering a westward course out into 363 364 GREECE 411 B.C. the Aegean, so as to escape the notice of the Athenian fleet at Samos, started with seventy-three ships for the Hellespont. He intended to reach the straits, seize all the cities on their shores, and block the way for the corn-ships from the Enxine, that brought to Athens the supplies of food on which her inhabitants were mainly supported. A storm delayed the Spartan, and when he reached the Hellespont the Athenians from Samos were close on his heels. The generals Thrasybulus and Thrasyllus had put to sea with every ship they could muster, and by calling in detachments from all sides had got together a fleet nearly as strong as that of Min- darus. They brought him to action in the narrow waters between Sestos and Abydos, at the promontory of Cynossema, hard by the tomb and chapel of the legendary Trojan queen Hecuba. After a hard fight Mindarus was beaten, and his fleet compelled to run ashore under the walls of Abydos, leaving twenty-one vessels in the hands of Thrasyllus. But though checked, the Spartan was not crushed; he was encouraged by the revolt of several cities on the Propontis, and he hoped to renew the struggle by the aid of Agesandridas's fleet from Euboea, now hastily summoned to his aid, and of some reinforcements from Rhodes which were on their way to him. The squadron from Euboea was caught in a storm off Mount Athos. and almost entirely destroyed ; but the force from the south reached the Hellespont, though pursued by Alcibiades, who had collected a small fleet at Cos and Samos. Seeing his rein- forcements at hand, Mindarus put out from Abydos to join them, A battle ensued, which remained undecided till Alcibiades was seen coming up in the distance. Then the Peloponnesians turned tail and once more sought refuge by running ashore; there they were joined by a Persian force under Pharnabazus, who did his best to save the stranded ships. But the Athenians persisted, and towed off in triumph thirty galleys, a full third of the fleet of Mindarus. Believing that the Spartan was now thoroughly disabled, Thra- syllus and Alcibiades dispersed their fleet and went into winter quarters. Alcibiades took the opportunity to pay a visit to his old friend Tissaphernes ; but the satrap had lately received a rebuke from Susa on account of his double-dealing policy, and was in no mood to welcome the Athenian. Instead of meeting his whilom councilor with effusion, he cast him into chains and sent him to Sardis, But a month later Alcibiades found means to escape from the citadel, rode off in safety to the coast, and rejoined the fleet. SURRENDER OF ATHENS 365 410 B.C. When the spring of 410 b.c. came round, Mindarus, having been reinforced, again put to sea with sixty sail. But the Athenians had already begun to concentrate for his destruction. As he lay opposite Cyzicus, the Athenian fleet of eighty-six vessels stole up, in a day of storm and rain, which allowed them to come upon him unawares. While the Athenian center under Alcibiades kept Mindarus employed, the wings under Tharsybiilus and Theramenes slipped round the Spartan to cut him off from the shore. Seeing this maneuver Mindarus turned and forced his way through to the land, where the army of Pharnabazus was coming to his succor. But the Athenians pressed hard on him and cut off many vessels; and when he ran the remnant ashore, Alcibiades dis- embarked and engaged him in a land fight. After a desperate struggle the Peloponnesians and Persians were completely routed; Mindarus fell, and every single ship in his fleet was taken or sunk, except the few Syracusan vessels, and these were burned by their own crews to prevent their capture. The victory seemed decisive of the fate of Asia Minor. In its incidents and its 'completeness alike it recalled to Athenian minds Cimon's triumph at the Eury- medon fifty-six years before. All the misdeeds of Alcibiades were forgiven and forgotten, now that he had won for Athens the most complete victory which had graced her arms in the whole war. For the first time since the news of the Syracusan disaster had reached them, the Athenians were able to breathe freely, and to look beyond the needs of the moment. The enemy's main armament had been destroyed; the Hellespont was reopened; and it seemed to require only due expenditure of time to reduce, one after another, the revolted cities of Asia. K anything could have been wanting to restore the confidence of Athens, it was supplied by a dispatch from Hippocrates, the Spartan who had been second in command to Mindarus, which was intercepted on its way to the ephors. " The ships are gone," ran the laconic document ; " Mindarus is slain; the men are starving; we know not what to do." The mob of shipless seamen under Hippocrates were thrown on the charity of Pharnabazus, whose subsidies alone stood between them and disbandment or destruction. It is not surprising to learn that, on the receipt of the news of the battle of Cyzicus the Lacedaemonians thought for a moment of peace. Endius, the Spartan friend of Alcibiades, came to Athens 366 GREECE 410-408 B.C. to sound the mind of the Ecclesia. and to lay before it proposals for a general cessation of hostilities. The terms offered were, as was but natural, founded on the actual state of affairs. Rhodes, Chios, jMiletus, the Euboeans, and the other revolted allies of Athens, were to retain their independence; but Sparta was ready to evacuate Decelea, and to promise to leave undisturbed those members of the Confederacy of Delos who still clung to Athens. Endius must have felt sure that the Athenians would be glad to get rid of the war at any price. They had been living for three years on the brink of destruction, and when an honorable peace, involving no further surrender of territory or prestige, was offered them, might have been expected to accept it. But the hopefulness and light-hearted confidence of the Ecclesia was once more too strong. Led on by the demagogue Cleophon, the people voted that they would listen to no terms which left their revolted allies in- dependent, and Endius was accordingly dismissed. This was a fatal mistake; the resources of Athens had run so low that she should have embraced any opportunity of peace; her success was but momentary, and the next turn of the wheel of fortune was destined to render an honorable conclusion of the war impossible. But for the moment all looked well for Athens. Pharnabazus, indeed, strained his resources to the utmost in the endeavor to maintain the great body of Peloponnesian seamen who had been thrown upon his hands, and set to work at once to provide them with ships. But they were far from any friendly arsenal there was none nearer than Chios shipwrights were few, and the timber for the vessels had actually to be felled on Mount Ida before any further measures could be taken. For more than a year the Athenians were completely free from any trouble at sea, and had full leisure for re-establishing their ancient naval dominion. Nothing, however, could have marked more strongly the utter exhaustion of Athens, and the hopelessness of the struggle in which she was engaged, than the small profit she was able to draw from the victory of Cyzicus. For two years the enemy never dared to risk a naval engagement ; the officers whom the ephors dispatched to Asia were men of little mark or ability ; the revolted allies were cowed and disheartened. On the other hand, Alcibiades and Thrasyllus were both men of energy and decision, and their troops were flushed with a splendid victory. Yet all that was accom- plished in the years 410-408 B.C. was the reconquest of those cities SURRENDER OF ATHENS 367 410-408 B.C. on the Hellespont and Propontis which had revolted at various times during- the stay of Mindarus in those parts. Perinthus and Selym- bria were subdued in the autumn of 410 B.C.; the great island of Thasos returned to its allegiance in the following- winter; in 409 B.C. Alcibiades ravaged the whole coast-land of the satrapy of Pharnabazus, and laid siege to Chalcedon, the city which commands the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. Meanwhile Thrasyllus turned south and attacked the revolted cities of Ionia ; but Colophon was the only place which he succeeded in recapturing, and in front of Ephesus he received a severe repulse from the Ephesians, joined with the Persian troops of Tissaphernes, who was once more in- clining to the Spartan alliance. In the autumn of 409 B.C. Thrasyl- lus sailed up the Hellespont and rejoined Alcibiades; their united force took Chalcedon in the spring of the following year, and six months later recovered Byzantium, after a long siege which lasted till the inhabitants, now at starvation point, threw open the gates in defiance of their Spartan governor. Thus the Bosphorus, Helles- pont, and Propontis were at last completely freed from the enemy, and the corn-ships of Athens came through once more from the Euxine without having to dread any disturbance on their voyage. After the fall of Byzantium, Pharnabazus, who had been bearing the whole financial strain of the war for more than two years, felt himself so reduced that he offered to retire from the Spartan alliance and to make peace with Athens. This was the most promising symptom v^^hich the war had shown of late, but it was destined to have no ultimate effect. Further than this the successes of Alcibiades did not go. When the Hellespont was at last clear, he made no attempt against the Ionian cities, feeling apparently that the reduction of Chios or Miletus was hopeless. Instead of sailing south, he turned home- wards, and led his fleet back to the Peiraeus. It was with some hesitation that he ventured to approach his native city ; even though he had been elected general in his absence, and, though he was conscious of having two years of good service behind him, he still dreaded the wrath of the democracy, and remembered the curses which had been heaped upon him, and the sentences which were still hanging over his head. His reception, however, was all that he could have ventured to hope. His friends and relations thronged down to the harbor to welcome him, and escorted him in triumph to the city. The senate and the Ecclesia gave him a 368 GREECE 410-108 B.C. solemn hearing, in which he vindicated himself from the old charge of sacrilege, and swore that he was innocent of all that had been laid to his account. His sentence was thereupon revoked, and all his civic rights restored. Not only was his term of office as general renewed, but he was entrusted with sole and absolute con- trol over a considerable armament one hundred ships and fifteen hundred hoplites and authorized to use it as he thought best. He first employed it to escort the procession which annually went from Athens to Eleusis for the celebration of the Eleusinian mys- teries. Ever since the Spartans had seized Decelea, the sacred cortege had been compelled to proceed to Eleusis by sea ; but under the protection of Alcibiades's troops the procession once more marched with its ancient pomp along the line of the Sacred Way. After making a fruitless attempt to recover the island of Andros, which had revolted to Sparta in spite of her late mis- fortunes, Alcibiades returned to Asia, where he found that an important change in the spirit of affairs had lately set in, and that the star of Athens was once more on the wane. Two causes co- operated for this end. The first was the dispatch from Sparta of a really able general to take charge of the war in Ionia. Lysander, the son of Aristoclitus, was the most remarkable man that Sparta had produced for a century. His family was impoverished ; his father was one of those citizens who had forfeited from poverty part of their civic rights, and his youth had been passed in obscurity. But by sheer energy and force of character he had made his way to the front, and had at last been appointed to the office of nauarchiis, or high admiral. Lysander was not inferior in courage or ability to Brasidas, the only other Spartan of genius who appeared during the war. But his character was quite different from that of the hero of Amphipolis, His ambition was wholly personal ; he had no sympathy for Hellenic liberties, or care for the interests of his allies. If he served Sparta well, it was only because the growth of her power favored his own aggrandizement. His means were as unscrupulous as his ends were selfish, and treachery and cruelty were no less prominent in his actions than acuteness and decision. Lysander would have been under any circumstances a danger- ous foe to Athens, but at the moment at which he appeared in Ionia another factor was introduced into the politics of Asia Minor SURRENDER OF ATHENS 369 408-407 B.C. which made him doubly formidable. The court of Susa, resenting the endless double-dealing of Tissaphernes, had at last superseded that satrap, and sent down in his stead Cyrus, the second son of the reigning king, Darius II. The young prince was not only entrusted with the satrapy of Lydia, but given a general control over all the neighboring governors. Cyrus, from his first arrival, showed himself ruled by one desire the wish to pay off on Athens all the trouble she had caused to his ancestors since the days of Marathon and Salamis. He at once put a stop to Pharnabazus's negotiations with Athens, and summoned the Spartan commander- in-chief to Sardis. When Lysander arrived Cyrus declared to him that he had five hundred talents ready to assist in equipping a new fleet, and that, if these were not enough, he would provide more out of his own private means, " even though he were driven to coin into darics the golden throne on which he sat." It was at first settled that he should subsidize the Peloponnesian fleet to the extent of paying three obols a day to each seaman, but soon after, at the request of Lysander, to whom he had taken a great personal liking, he raised the sum to four obols, an allowance greater than the Athenians were then able to pay their men. Small reinforcements had gradually been crossing the Aegean during the last two years the most considerable of them a squad- ron of twenty-five Syracusan vessels so that Lysander was ere long at the head of ninety galleys, which he collected at Ephesus. Alcibiades, with the hundred vessels which the Athenians had given him, took his post at Notium, to prevent the Spartan from putting to sea. Presently, however, Alcibiades was called away to Phocaea, and sailed off, leaving his fleet in charge of Antiochus, a satellite and boon-companion of his own, whom he placed over the heads of all the officers of the fleet, though he had only been serving as master on board the flag-ship, and had never had any experience in command. Alcibiades bade his follower avoid fighting; but the moment he was gone Antiochus sailed, in mere bravado, into the harbor of Ephesus, and rowed past the Spartan fleet, challeng- ing Lysander to come forth and meet him. A few vessels put out at once to chase the presumptuous intruder; then, seeing the enemy on the move, some Athenian ships from Notium came to the rescue of their commander. Gradually the whole of both fleets were drawn into an engagement, in which Lysander won an easy victory over the ill-managed Athenian squadron. Antiochus was 370 GREECE 407 B.C. slain, and fifteen of his galleys sunk or taken ; the rest retired to Samos. Here they were rejoined by Alcibiades, who had been spending his time in a high-handed and ill-judged attempt to levy extra contributions from the cities of Aeolis. Lysander refused a second battle, and resumed his old position at Ephesus, so that nothing had really been lost by the recklessness of Antiochus. Nevertheless there was such a strong feeling against Alcibiades roused at Athens, on account of his criminal negligence in entrust- ing his boon-companion with the command of the fleet, and of his unwise exactions in Aeolis, that his enemies succeeded in getting him deposed by a vote of the Ecclesia, which once more placed the conduct of the war in the hands of the ten strategi. Alcibiades sailed off to the Thracian Chersonese, where he was the owner of a large domain and castle, and spent the remaining years of the war in retirement. Among the generals who superseded Alcibiades, the most prominent men were Thrasyllus, long noted as a democratic leader ; Pericles, the son and namesake of the great statesman, and an officer named Conon, who now for the first time appears in high command. It was Conon, however, who took charge of the fleet at Samos, which had lately been under the orders of Alcibiades. About the same time that the change in the Athenian com- manders took place, the Spartan fleet also received a new admiral. Lysander's year of office had run out, and the ephors adhering to the rule that no one should be made nauarchus twice, replaced their able servant by an officer named Callicratidas. The system of con- stant change was evil, but in this particular case led to no great harm, as Callicratidas w^as an energetic and efficient commander. But Lysander, piqued at his deposition, made his successor's task as hard as he could contrive, by prejudicing the mind of Cyrus against him, and by restoring to the Persian's treasury all that remained unspent of the money which had been lent him for the pay and equipment of the Peloponnesian fleet. Thus Callicratidas found on his arrival the military chest empty, and the seamen clamoring for their pay. When he went up to Sareli.s to ask Cyrus for a subsidy, he was kept so long waiting, without even obtaining an audience, that he had to depart, " cursing the necessities of the Greeks, which compelled them to fawn on barbarians for money, and declaring that if he ever got home he would do his best to reconcile Athens and Sparta." ^ However, by persuading the ^ Xenophon, Hellen, i. 6, 6. SURRENDER OF ATHENS 371 406 B.C. Cliians and Milesians to grant him a small contribution, Callicrat- idas was able to pay his men some of their arrears and to get his fleet to sea. The Athenians were at the moment very scat- tered ; some lay at Samos, while the main body, under Conon, were engaged in harrying the coasts of the revolted states of Aeolis. Callicratidas, after gathering in all the scattered divisions of the Spartan fleet, had no less than a hundred and seventy galleys with him the largest force that had yet been seen during the war. He sailed north and landed on Lesbos, where he took the town of Methymna by storm. There his moderation was shown by his refusal to sell the Methymnaeans and their Athenian garrison into slavery, as his allies urged him. Next day Conon, with seventy Athenian ships, came in sight; underrating the Spartan fleet, he ran right into the jaws of danger, and only turned to fly when it was too late, after his retreat on Samos had been cut off. He was compelled to take shelter in the harbor of Mity- lene, after a running fight, in which he lost nearly half his ships, and only saved the remainder by hauling them ashore under the ramparts of the town. Callicratidas immediately blockaded the place by sea and land, and counted on taking it with no great difficulty, for the Athenian seamen were certain to exhaust in a few weeks the food of a town which had not been prepared to stand a siege. Conon succeeded in sending out a swift vessel, which ran the blockade, and arrived at Athens with the tidings of his danger. But it seemed unlikely that he could be saved, for there was no Athenian fleet in existence fit to cope with the great armament of Callicratidas. A few dozen ships were lying at Samos, but there was no other considerable squadron at sea. However, the Athe- nians, with their usual vigor and perseverance, resolved to make an attempt to rescue their general. The arsenal of the Peiraeus hap- pened at the moment to be full of vessels undergoing repair, or far advanced in construction ; it was resolved to send out everything that was in any way seaworthy, and to give battle to Callicratidas. The Ecclesia voted that every man of full age, slave or freeman, should go on board ; even the knights, for the first time on record, were sent to sea. In less than thirty days there were a hundred and ten vessels manned, though the crews were raw and the equip- ment inadequate. Eight of the ten strategi took the command, and the fleet pushed across the Aegean to Samos, where it picked 372 GREECE 406 B.C. Up nearly fifty galleys more, most of them belonging to Samos and the other loyal states of Ionia. On hearing that the Athenians had reached Asia, Callicratidas resolved to attempt to maintain the blockade of Mitylene, and at the same time to meet the enemy in battle. Leaving his second-in-command, Eteonicus, with fifty ships, to keep Conon in check, he took post with one hundred and twenty off the southernmost cape of Lesbos. The same night the Athenian fleet came in view, sailing northward along the main- land. Next day the battle took place off the Arginusae, a cluster of small islands which lie south from Lesbos. The Athenian generals were forced, by the inexperience of their crews, to adopt the tactics which had once been peculiar to their enemies they drew up their fleet in a dense line without intervals, and endeavored to come to close quarters at once and to prevent the enemy from maneuvering. Callicratidas, on the other hand, came on with his ships in open order, resolved to turn the flanks of the Athenians or to break their line. When the superior numbers of the enemy became visible, the master of his galley besought him to turn back ; but Callicratidas, buoyed up by confidence in his own bravery and in the skill of his seamen, merely replied that " flight was disgrace- ful, and that if he fell Sparta would be none the worse for his death." The fleets were soon locked in close combat, and after a w^hile the numerical superiority of the Athenians began to tell. Calli- cratidas was thrown into the sea by the shock of a hostile galley, as he stood by his prow preparing to board, and was seen no more. No less than seventy Peloponnesian ships were destroyed or taken ; the fight had been at close quarters, and when the day went against them they were unable to get away : only fifty escaped to Chios. No more than fifteen Athenian vessels had been sunk, but a dozen more lay waterlogged, and requiring prompt assistance. There would seem to have been great confusion in the Athe- nian fleet after the battle was won. The generals resolved to push on at once to Mitylene, and to catch Eteonicus and his squadron before he could escape to sea. But after they had started a gale sprang up, and induced them to put back and haul their fleet ashore for the night. One consequence of this indecision was that Eteonicus was able to slip off unharmed to Chios. Another was that the dozen Athenian ships which had been disabled in the SURRENDER OF ATHENS 373 406 B.C. battle went down with all their crews, without having received any succor.2 It might have been expected that the Athenians would have forgotten all the shortcomings of their generals in the moment of victory. Their hastily equipped vessels had won the day, relieved Mitylene, and saved Conon. The conquerors of Arginusae ex- pected nothing but praise and glory. But the point which was seized by public opinion at Athens, was that, by gross neglect on the part of someone or other, a dozen ships, manned by hundreds of citizens, had been suffered to perish unaided after the battle. The demagogues Archedemus and Timocrates brought this accusa- tion against the generals with such effect that they were immedi- ately deposed from office. Six of them, among whom were Thrasyllus and Pericles, returned to Athens to justify themselves before the people. But when they appeared, a general clamor was raised against them, and Theramenes ^the converted oligarch who had played such a prominent part in the deposition of the Four Hundred proposed that they should be brought to trial for their criminal negligence in failing to rescue their fellow-citizens. To this the generals replied that the storm had been too much for them, but that, as a matter of fact, they had commissioned Theramenes himself, and ThrasybCilus, with ten ships, to see to the wrecks. Theramenes and the other persons named utterly denied having received any such orders, and it seems likely that this part of the generals' defense was an afterthought ; in their first dispatches they laid the blame on the storm alone. But the storm cannot have been very violent, since it did not prevent Eteonlcus and his Spartan ships from putting to sea; and it was probably the disorder and confusion into which the raw^ and ill-equipped fleet had fallen after a day's hard fighting that really caused the loss of the disabled galleys. After the debate as to the responsibility of the generals had proceeded to great length, the Ecclesia was adjourned. The next morning happened to be the festival of the Apaturia, a day dedi- cated to solemn family gatherings. The number of persons who appeared in black at these meetings, as having lost relatives in the 2 For an occurrence in modern history somewhat similar to the events at Arginusae, compare the storm on the night after Trafalgar, which sent so many ships to the bottom. But the English Government did not court-martial Colling- wood for neglecting to obey Nelson's dying words, and moor his tiect. 374 GREECE 406 B.C. late battle, was so great that the whole city was shocked and excited, and the feeling against the generals rose to boiling point. When the Ecclesia reassembled, a senator named Callixenus brought for- ward a decree which was not only unjust, but entirely unconsti- tutional. It proposed that, " as both the accusers and the generals had been heard at length, the people should at once proceed to vote, and that if the generals were convicted the penalty should be death." This decree not only proposed to cut short the defense of the generals, but violated one of the best-known enactments in the Athenian constitution,^ which provided that accused persons should be indicted and sentenced one by one, and not condemned or acquitted by a verdict dealing with several persons simultaneously. The decree of Callixenus met with much opposition ; several citizens protested against its illegality, and threatened to prosecute its author for his open disregard of the constitution. But the mob was so violent, and the threats used against the opponents of the bill so terrifying, that they finally gave way. Some of the Pryta- neis refused to put the question to the vote, and were only coerced by a menace which Callixenus made, that if they persevered they should be included in the generals' sentence. Even then the phi- losopher Socrates, who happened to be serving as one of the Prytaneis, refused to assent to the proposal. But his protest was disregarded; the question was put, and the unfortunate generals condemned to instant execution. Thus perished, by a most unjust and cruel perversion of justice, Pericles the son of Pericles, Thrasyl- lus, the victor of Cyzicus, and four more officers, Leon, Diomedon, Erasinades, and Aristocrates, No long time after the people re- pented of their madness, and ordered the impeachment of Callix- enus and several of his supporters. However, the author of the infamous decree escaped without a trial, owing to the disasters which fell upon Athens at the time ; but we learn with satisfaction that he remained an object of public execration, and finally died of hunger in the street. After the death of Callicratidas the Spartan Government made another attempt to come to terms with Athens, offering once more peace on the basis of " uti possidetis/' The proposal was again defeated by Cleophon, who " came into the Ecclesia drunk and with armor on, swearing that he would not allow it, unless the Spartans gave up all their gains." So the ephors had to continue the war, ' Known from its author's name as the Psephism of Canonus. SURRENDER OF ATHENS 375 405 B.C. and replace Lysander in command ; but in order to preserve the rule that no one should be nauarchus twice, he was given, as a nominal superior, an officer named Aracus (405 B.C.). Lysander joined to the wrecks of the fleet of Callicratidas all the vessels he could collect from the Asiatic allies of Sparta. He also obtained large supplies of money from Cyrus, who threw open his treasury the moment that his friend was restored to command. So far did the Persian prince's enthusiasm for the Spartan cause lead him, that when he was summoned up for a time to Media, to visit his sick father, he made over the administration of the reve- nues of his satrapy to Lysander, and bade him take all that he needed. With the funds obtained from this source many scores of new ships were built at Antandrus. Still the Spartan fleet was not yet equal in numbers to that which Conon, and the other officers who had replaced the victims of Callixenus, could put into line of battle. Accordingly the Spartan did not at once risk an engage- ment, but resolved to carry out the plan which Mindarus had at- tempted in 410 B.C., and to block the Hellespont against the Athenian corn-ships. He slipped northward, and falling on the rich town of Lampsacus, on the Asiatic side of the strait, took it by storm, and made it the base of his operations. The Athenians soon got the news. Conon and his colleagues called in every galley they could muster, and appeared off Lampsacus with a fleet of no less than a hundred and eighty vessels. For four days they offered Lysander battle, but the Spartan kept his ships- under the shelter of the walls of Lampsacus, and refused to put out to meet them. Accordingly the Athenian generals established themselves just opposite to him, on the shore of the Thracian Chersonese, and waited for him to make some further move. The Athenian vessels were moored off a barren and uninhabited beach, at a spot called Aegospotami; the nearest town to it was Sestos, two miles away, from which all the supplies for the fleet had to be procured. When Lysander kept quiet day after day, the Athenian commanders grew careless, and suffered their men to disembark in the afternoon and to disperse to Sestos and other neighboring places, in search of provisions. Alcibiades, whose castle lay a few miles away, marked this dangerous negligence, and came down to warn the generals, and to recommend them to remove to Sestos, a position almost as convenient for observing Lysander as was Aegospotami. But the generals Tydeus and 376 GREECE 405 B.C. IMenander replied that they commanded the fleet and not he, and that his presence was not wanted. Accordingly he departed. The very next day Lysander, waiting till the afternoon was far spent, and the Athenian seamen scattered all over the Chersonese, suddenly put out from Lampsacus and rowed at full speed across the strait. When his approach was observed, the Athenians began to rush on board ; but long before they were ready Lysander was upon them. Some vessels had two banks of oars manned, some one, some were still moored, when the Peloponnesian fleet ran in among them. There was practically no fighting; Conon, with the few Athenian ships that were ready for sea, fled southward. The rest were taken with hardly any resistance, though the greater part of the crews escaped ashore. A hundred and seventy vessels fell into Lysander's hands, with more than four thousand prisoners, including three or four of the Athenian admirals. Lysander had the whole body of prisoners massacred on the day after the battle, alleging in excuse the cruelty with which some captured Corinthian seamen had been treated a little while before. Conon, fearing, with good reason, the wrath of his country- men, fled with eight vessels to Euagoras, King of Salamis in Cyprus, with whom he took service. But he sent home the Paralus, one of the state galleys which had escaped in his company, to bear the tidings to Athens. The fatal news arrived at the Peiraeus as evening fell. " The noise of wailing," wrote Xenophon, who was probably in Athens at the time, " spread all up the Long Walls into the city, as one passed on the tidings to another; that night no one slept, for not only were they lamenting for their dead, but they were thinking of what they themselves had done to the Melians and the Scionaeans and the Aeginetans, and many others of the Greeks, and reflecting that they must now suffer the same fate." The situation of Athens was perfectly desperate. Her sole fleet was destroyed, her arsenals were stripped bare, her corn- supply was cut off. Lysander did not delay a moment after the battle, but sailed at once to Byzantium and Chalcedon, which sur- rendered at the first summons. After arranging for the closing of the Bosphorus against Athenian vessels, he went against Mitylene in person, while he sent Eteonicus to Thasos and the other towns which adhered to Athens in the direction of Thrace. Nowhere was any resistance made. Each city, when the Spartans appeared. SURRENDER OF ATHENS 377 404 B.C. threw open its gates and gave up its Athenian garrison as prisoners. Within a few w-eeks after Aegospotami, Samos was the only place which still held out for Athens. The Samian democracy, having massacred so many of their Philo-Spartan fellow-citizens, were prevented from surrendering by dread of the revenge which they knew would follow. When Asia Minor was cleared of Athenian garrisons, Lysan- der sailed with two hundred ships into the Gulf of Aegina, and established the blockade of Peiraeus. Simultaneously King Agis came down from Decelea with the full levy of Peloponnesus, and encamped over against Athens on the land-side, pitching his tent in the Academeia, a celebrated gymnasium outside the walls. Even at this supreme moment the courage of the Athenians did not fail them. Hoping against hope, they blocked up the mouths of their harbors, manned their walls, summoned every avail- able man under arms, and proclaimed an amnesty ^ for all political and civil criminals who would join in the defense of the city. When the senator Archestratus advised an immediate surrender at dis- cretion to the Spartans as the only available course, he was promptly thrown into prison. But Athens was without money, ships, allies, or corn, and the end could not long be delayed. After some months of blockade, when many had already died of starvation, they sent ambassadors to the ephors, offering to become allies of Sparta and to renounce all claims to their old naval empire, but requiring that they should be left with the Long Walls and the fortification of Peiraeus intact. The ephors refused to see the envoys, and told them not to come again till they had grown wiser. A little later the Ecclesia commissioned Theramenes to go on a private mission to Lysander, and to ascertain from him what terms the ephors were likely to grant. Theramenes, who was once more intriguing for an oligarchic revolution in the city, re- mained no less than three months with Lysander, waiting till the famine had grown intolerable. Then he returned, ,and reported that he could get no definite information, but that the ephors would receive an embassy, if it was invested with full powers to agree to any terms. Accordingly the Ecclesia dispatched Thera- menes and nine other envoys to Sparta. On their arrival the full congress of the Peloponnesian alliance was assembled, to debate on the lot of Athens. The representatives of Corinth and Thebes 1 It was this amnesty which saved Callixenus from condemnation. 378 GREECE 404 B.C. urged that no mercy should be shown to the tyrant city, now that she was brought low; they would have treated her as she had treated Melos and Scione, and made an end of her altogether. But the Spartan Government, with unexpected moderation, announced that it would not consent to the utter annihilation of a city which, in spite of all its crimes, had done good service for Greece in ancient days : Athens should be rendered harmless forever, but not destroyed. Accordingly the terms which were laid before the Athenian ambassadors were that Athens should demolish the Long Walls and the fortification of Peiraeus, become a subject ally of Sparta, swear to furnish her with a contingent of troops whenever called upon, recall her oligarchic exiles, and consent that her navy should be restricted to twelve vessels. Hard as these conditions were, they were at any rate better than the utter destruction which many of the Athenians had been dreading. The war-party had been melting away as the famine grew more and more dreadful, and its last leader, the demagogue Cleophon, had been killed in a riot. When Theramenes reappeared in the city, and announced that Sparta had consented to grant terms of peace, a shout of joy went up from the famishing multi- tude, and few cared to ask fo;* the details of the treaty. Next day the Ecclesia ratified the agreement, and the gates were thrown open to the enemy. Lysander landed with great pomp at Peiraeus, and took posses- sion both of the upper and the lower city. He destroyed the arsenal, took away the few w^ar-galleys which lay in the harbor, and burned those w^hich were upon the stocks. Then the work of demolishing the fortifications was taken in hand ; in presence of the Peloponnesian army and navy the Long Walls were breached, while triumphant music and choric dances testified to the exultation of the conquerors. A shout went up from the victorious ranks that Greece was freed of her tyrant, and that every city could at last be sure of her autonomy. Thus ended the Peloponnesian w^ar, on the sixteenth day of the month Munychion, 404 b.c.^ twenty-seven years after the attempt of the Thebans on Plataea, which had marked its commencement. Chapter XXXV SPARTAN SUPREMACY IN GREECE, 404-396 B.C. FRO]\I the day of Salamis to the day of Aegospotami Greek history possesses a dramatic unity which it does not display in any other age. A great problem was worked out in those seventy-six years whether the Greeks were capable, under favorable circumstances, of subordinating civic and tribal jealousies to the general interests of the Hellenic race, and of combining into a great federal state. All the events of the period group them- selves around the growth, culmination, and destruction of the Athenian empire. No city had ever such an opportunity of for- warding the unity of Greece as had Athens in the middle of the fifth century. Her supremacy was established, not by force, but by the free and willing accession of hundreds of states. The lonians and Islanders, in gratitude for their liberation from the Persian yoke, placed themselves entirely at her disposal. Half the cities of Greece were drawn within the circle of her influence, and ere long there were signs that the rest might follow. In 457 B.C. the union of the whole Hellenic race on both sides of the Aegean into a confederacy centering round Athens seemed quite possible. We have seen that this prospect was never to be realized; the states which had once regarded Athens as their savior and pro- tector, were found, after a while, joining eagerly with her ancient enemies, and straining every nerve in the endeavor to cut them- selves loose from their alliance. They had their wish ; Athens succumbed under a series of unparalleled disasters, and sank from an imperial city to a second-rate provincial town. Was the failure of the great experiment in the direction of the unity of Greece due to the crimes and blunders of Athens, or to the inherent impossibility of the task she had undertaken? On the one hand, there can be no doubt that Athens did not persevere in her original resolve to deal justly and fairly with the cities which had put themselves into her hands. Although her rule was not oppressive or severe, it was essentially selfish ; she administered 379 380 GREECE 404 B.C. the states of the Confederacy of Delos for her own private benefit, involved them in wars with which they had no concern, and spent their money lavishly on purely Athenian objects. In short, she made herself a tyrant city, though her tyranny was after the model of Peisistratus and not of Periander. Sometimes she even indulged in acts of cruelty and oppression of the most flagrant character, as in her dealings with Aegina, Sci5ne, and Melos. But, in spite of all the faults and crimes of Athens, it is prob- able that the breaking up of the Confederacy of Delos must be ascribed to another cause. The really fatal obstacle in the way of Grecian unity was the character of the Greeks. The passion for local autonomy was so deeply rooted in their breasts that it domi- nated every other feeling. Neither glory nor gain could compensate them for that curtailment of their municipal liberties which a federal union made necessary. Even if every state of the Delian confederation had been allowed a fair share in the management of public affairs, we may be certain that discontent and secession would have followed. Much more was this bound to be the case when " representation did not accompany taxation," and when Athens made no pretense of allowing her allies to participate in the adminis- tration of the League. The Spartans had caught the spirit of the times when they bade Athens, at the commencement of the Pelopon- nesian war, " to restore their liberty to the states of Greece," and proclaimed that the struggle was a crusade in behalf of local auton- omy. This watchword rallied to the Spartan cause every dis- contented member of the Delian League, and to it we may fairly say that Spartan's final triumph was due, for without the aid which she received from the revolted allies she could never have guided the war to the conclusion at which it actually arrived. It remained to be seen how Sparta, after posing for so long as the enemy of tyranny and the protector of local liberties, would deal with Greece in the day of her triumph. A bitter disappointment awaited the states which had been so simple as to believe that the Lacedaemonians had laid aside their ancient selfishness. Lysander soon showed them that they had only changed a light taskmaster for a stern one, and that the empire of Athens was to be replaced by the empire of Sparta. Some of his first measures, indeed, were intended to conciliate the public opinion of Greece; he restored the few surviving Aeginetans and Melians to the homes from which they had been expelled by Athens, and gave back Naupactus to the SPARTAN SUPREMACY 381 404 B.C. Locrians, driving out its Messenian inhabitants, who now took refuge in Libya. But such acts were few and far between; the greater part of Lysander's doings were of a very different character. While the war was still raging in Asia, and the efforts of Athens were still to be feared, it had been most natural that Spartan garrisons should be placed in the cities of Ionia and the Hellespont, and Spartan governors put at the head of their military forces. These governors, or Harmosts/ as they were called, were to be found everywhere at the end of the war. Their authority was backed by the support of committees chosen from among the most philo- Spartan citizens of each state bodies which were known as Dechar- chies, from their usually consisting of ten members. When the war was ended, it was generally expected that the Decarchies would be dissolved, and the Harmosts and their troops recalled. But Lysander had no such intention ; he had taken great pains to organize the system, had selected Harmosts from among his own personal followers, and carefully superintended the choice of the Decarchies. When Athens had long fallen, and the months were passing by, the Greeks of Asia found their cities still occupied by foreign troops, and their constitutional magistrates impeded in their functions by the irresponsible committees of ten. Gradually it began to dawn upon them that the system was intended to be permanent, and that, instead of the occasional visits of the Athenian tax-gatherer, they were to experience the continual presence of the Spartan Harmost. The Decarchies and the Lacedaemonian governors played into each other's hands; the former ruled the state as a strict oligarchy, and if any democratic feeling manifested itself, promptly put it down by the swords of the garrison; the Harmost, in return for his assistance, was allowed to peculate and plunder to his heart's content a gratification which most Spartans keenly appreciated. Such a form of government soon became un- bearable to the cities of Asia, most of whom had long been accus- tomed to a democratic constitution, while all contained a strong democratic element in their population. It was not long before they discovered that Sparta's little finger was thicker than Athens's loins, and learned to curse the day in which they changed their masters. 1 M/o/^OfTTi;?, organizer, had been a name originally applied to the com- missioners whom Sparta kept resident among the towns of the Perioeci in Laconia. 382 GREECE 404 B.C. But the oppression of the Harmost and the Decarchy was not the worst that the cities of the Asiatic mainland had to fear. Sparta had conquered only by the aid of Persia, and was bound by stringent treaties to give her ally a free hand. Accord- ingly, Cyrus and Pharnabazus proceeded ere long to encroach upon the Hellenic cities of the coast, while Lysander stood aside or tacitly approved their doings. Persian mercenary troops had been admitted into many places while the war was in progress, and when it was over held the town in behalf of the satrap. Even great cities like Ephesus and Miletus found themselves in danger; the Milesians had to rise in arms and fight a battle in their own streets before they could get quit of the Persian garrison. Many of the smaller towns actually fell back into slavery to the bar- barian, after seventy years of liberty under the Athenian rule. Sparta would do nothing to preserve her allies, except wdiere she had a Harmost on the spot, and was herself in practical possession. Meanwhile Lysander, whose command had been renewed, was administering the towns of the Aegean as if he had been an abso- lute monarch. His satellites and flatterers did their best to turn his head with their fulsome applause. After he had captured Samos (the town held out a few months longer than Athens) he w^as actually saluted wnth divine honors ; altars were erected and hymns addressed to him. He ruled despotically, without making any reference to the home government, and by means of the Harmosts made his influence felt in every town : it w^as the nearest approach to a personal monarchy that Greece had seen for centuries. Ly- sander was, in fact, repeating the career of Pausanias on the same stage where his predecessor had moved seventy years before. His fate was destined to be the same as that of the victor of Plataea ; after two years of dominion he provoked the ephors to desperation by his disregard for their orders. They summoned him home, laid before him countless charges of insubordination and misgov- ernment, and bade him defend himself. Lysander made no reply, but quitted the city, and betook himself for a time to Libya. When he returned shortly after, no further attempt w^as made to molest him ; having become a private citizen again, he was no longer con- sidered dangerous. But Lysander was skilled in intrigue; finding himself unmolested, he set to work to form a party in the state with a view to the reformation of the constitution and the removal of the ephoralty; he grounded his main hope on the assistance of SPARTAN SUPREMACY 383 404 B.C. Agesilaus, brother of the reigning king, Agis, who was his inti- mate personal friend and admirer. The removal of Lysander made no difference in the character of the Spartan rule; the ephors proved as unscrupulous as the great naiiarch had been, wliile the Harmosts were, if anything, a trifle more oppressive now that they were no longer working under the eye of a master. How the cities of Greece fared while Sparta was supreme may be fairly judged from the single example of the fate of Athens. It will be remembered that when she threw open her gates to Lysander, one of the conditions which she had to accept was the return of her exiles. They were a large body, the remains of the partisans of the Four Hundred, who had fled to the Spartan camp when their conspiracy failed, and had dwelt with the enemy ever since. It was soon known that the old democracy was not to be allowed to survive, and that the Spartans were determined to put the state into the hands of men whom they could trust. No one was surprised when an oligarch named Dracontides rose in the Ecclesia, and proposed that a committee of thirty citizens should be chosen to revise the constitution. When opposition was offered, Lysander himself appeared in the assembly, reminded them that they were in his power, and bade them take counsel for their per- sonal safety, and not cavil upon points of constitutional law. This threat silenced all opposition, and the list of thirty names which Dracontides brought forward was carried without demur. It included the names of many of the returned exiles, and was, of course, composed entirely of oligarchs. The most prominent mem- bers were Critias, an exile and an old member of the Four Hun- dred, and Theramenes, who had once more swerved back to oli- garchy when he saw that the tide was now running in its favor a conversion quite in keeping with his nickname of the " Turn- coat."2 The thirty commissioners, on whom later generations bestowed the name of the " Thirty Tyrants," were designed to play at Athens the part w'hich the Decarchies carried out in the states of Asia. Though nominally appointed only to revise the constitution, they took possession of every function of government, and showed no intention whatever of laying down their power. They abolished 2 Kodop'Mx;, from the name of the buskin, which would fit the right or the left foot equally well. 384 GREECE 404 B.C. the Dicasteries and the Ecclesia, and placed all jurisdiction in the hands of the Boule, which they had first purged of every mem- ber who was not a declared oligarch. Having thus prepared the judicial machinery for making away with anyone who should dare to oppose them, they proceeded to strengthen their position by asking Lysander to grant them a Spartan garrison. Accordingly seven hundred Peloponnesians entered the town under a Harmost named Callibius, and took possession of the citadel. The next step of the Thirty was to commence a systematic per- secution of prominent citizens who were noted for their democratic tendencies. Several officers who had served with distinction dur- ing the late war were condemned to death on futile pretexts. Others the most prominent of whom was Thrasybulus, the gen- eral of the democracy at Samos were driven into exile. The man. however, of whom the Thirty stood in the greatest fear was Alcibiades, who might at any time return to Athens and head a democratic rising. He was out of their own reach, but they besought Lysander to see to him ; the Spartan passed on the request to the satrap Pharnabazus, who caused Alcibiades to be assas- sinated as he was traveling through Phrygia on his way to visit the court of Susa. The first proscriptions which the Thirty took in hand were purely political, but ere long they began to extend the sphere of their operations. Men who had taken no prominent part in poli- tics, but were personally objectionable to members of the Thirty, were soon included in the list of victims. Then followed many whose only crime was that they were wealthy and that their lands or their treasure were coveted by some prominent oligarch ; among these the most noted name was that of Niceratus, son of the gen- eral Nicias, who was reputed the richest man in Athens. After these atrocities many of the Thirty felt that they had gone far enough, and proposed to halt in their career of crime. Theramenes, who perceived that, in spite of the Spartan garrison, the Athenian people would be driven to a rising in sheer despair, was especially urgent on the side of moderation, and his colleagues soon began to suspect that he was on the eve of one of his periodical con- versions. Crilias, however, backed by the more desperate members of the gang, was determined to persevere. The only precaution which they took was to disarm the populace before proceeding to further SrARTAN SUPREMACY 385 404 B.C. extremities. Having first drawn up a list of three thousand citi- zens whom they thought they could trust, they proclaimed that this body alone should enjoy full civic rights. Then they held a review of the whole armed force of the city, summoning the three thousand to meet in the market-place, while the rest of the citizens were scattered in small bodies in different posts. One after another these bodies were confronted by the Laconian hoplites of Callibius, and bidden to lay down their arms. They obeyed, and were sent away disarmed to their homes, while their weapons were stored in the Acropolis. Thus the three thousand were the only armed force left in the state. Having thus stripped the people of their arms, Critias and his faction launched out in the wildest excesses, and Athens experi- enced a perfect reign of terror. Day by day citizens were arrested, tried on the most frivolous charges, and condemned to death. No man of property could call his life his own, for the appetite of the Thirty for confiscation and plunder seemed insatiable. It was not only citizens that suffered ; the wealth of the metics, or resident aliens, marked them out as fair game, and ere long they w^ere being imprisoned and slain by the score. The legislation of the Thirty was as despotic as their administration; by one law they even forbade everyone, except members of the Three Thousand, to dwell in Athens, and directed all other classes to disperse to the country demes. Everyone except Critias and his immediate followers felt that the state of affairs was too monstrous to last. Theramenes grew more and more energetic in his protests against the policy of the majority, till they came to consider him as utterly unbearable. Critias then resolved to rid himself of his over-squeamish col- league ; he armed a considerable body of his friends and dependents, and brought them to the doors of the council chamber while the senate was in session. He then propounded two decrees, one allow- ing the Thirty to put to death, without trial, anyone who was not a member of the Three Thousand, the other expelling from the Three Thousand anyone who had opposed the Four Hundred in 411 B.C. The decrees were obviously aimed at Theramenes, who sprang to his feet and began to defend himself. When he ap- peared to be carrying the senate with him, Critias ordered his armed men to enter the house, crying out that he would not allow the senate to be deceived by specious words, and that his friends were 386 GREECE 404 B.C. come to see that justice was done on a traitor. " It is," he added, "now enacted that no one in the Hst of the Three Thousand shall be put to death without a regular vote passed by you, but I hereby strike out the name of Theramenes from the list, and thus we are able to condemn him to death," Theramenes sprang- to the altar which stood in the midst of the council-chamber, and clung to it, adjuring the senators by every plea, human and divine, to see that he was not made away with in this atrocious style. But the ministers of death tore him from the sanctuary, dragged him straight to prison, and compelled him to drink the fatal hemlock. He died with a courage that surprised his enemies a bitter taunt at Critias on his lips. His fate served to show the Athenians that not even the most studious trimming and time-serving would enable a man to be sure of his life while the Thirty were in power. Even before Theramenes was dead, the storm was brewing which was to sweep Critias and his satellites from the helm of affairs. So many citizens had by this time fled abroad, that Thebes, Megara, and the other cities near Athens were crowded with refu- gees. At Thebes they were so numerous that after a time Thrasy- biilus, who had settled in that town, was able to gather a hundred men resolute enough to make a desperate attempt to free Athens. Some Boeotian friends supplied him with arms and provisions for this little band; and he then crossed the Attic frontier and seized the deserted fort of Phyle. The Thirty at first paid little attention to the adventurers, but presently sent an expedition to storm the castle. Its first assault failed, and a heavy fall of snow drove it back to Athens. When a second force was sent out, Thrasy- bulus, whose band had now swelled to seven hundred men, fell upon it in the night and put it to the rout. Encouraged by this success, the exiles marched boldly on, and threw themselves into Peiraeus. The walls of the harbor-city had been destroyed by Lysander, but its streets afforded great facilities for defense. Thrasybulus ranged his men on the slope of the hill of Munychia, and waited to be attacked; hundreds of citizens had now joined him, but they were destitute of armor, and were forced to make themselves wicker shields, and to turn to account any mis- cellaneous weapons that came to hand. Presently the forces of the Thirty were seen coming down from Athens; Critias himself led on the Three Thousand, while Callibius supported him with the SPARTAN SUPREMACY 387 404 B.C. seven hundred Peloponnesians of the garrison. They advanced in a sohd column along the street which leads up the hill of Munychia, and met the exiles on the slope. But their superior numbers were of no avail in the narrow way, while the missiles which were showered upon them from over the heads of Thrasy- bCilus's men told fatally on their crowded ranks. After a few minutes of hand-to-hand fighting the oligarchs gave way, and rolled backwards towards Athens, leaving Critias and seventy more dead on the hillside. This disastrous failure led to fierce dissensions among the defeated party. The surviving members of the Thirty and the other partisans of Critias, finding themselves in the minority, had to fly to Eleusis, which they had already prepared as a fortress in time of need by slaying all the Eleusinians no less than three hundred in number who were known to be partisans of de- mocracy. Here they made ready to defend themselves, and sent urgent appeals for aid to Sparta. To succeed them ten more oli- garchs were elected, who still refused to come to terms with Thrasy- biilus. Some desultory fighting took place outside the walls of Athens, but it was soon ended by the news that a Spartan army and fleet were approaching. It remained to be seen what course the Spartan Government would adopt, and of this there was con- siderable doubt. Lysander's party were for aiding the Thirty to reconquer Athens, and Lysander himself hurried to the spot to support his proteges. But the relations between the nauarch and the ephors were at that moment drawing towards their final rupture, and, luckily for Athens, any measure that Lysander favored was sure to be bitterly opposed. Accordingly the ephors sent out King Pausanias to take over the command of the army in Attica, know- ing that he was a declared enemy of Lysander's policy. Pausanias was a man of generous sentiments and approved moderation ; he had the old Spartan hatred of tyranny, and was determined to do nothing for the detestable gang at Eleusis. Instead of falling upon the democrats at Peiraeus and crushing them, he undertook to reconcile them to the party which held the city of Athens. Even when he became involved in a skirmish with the troops of Thrasy- bfdus, and saw several Spartan officers slain, he was not to be diverted from his pacific design. With some trouble he induced both sides to accept his good offices. The ten oligarchs in the city were replaced by another board who were ready to treat for 388 GREECE 403-402 B.C. peace, and then Pausanias, after settling the terms of reconcihation, took his army home. By the new agreement all the existing magis- trates in the city were deposed and superseded by regularly-elected strategi ; all the exiles were restored to their property and civic rights, while the oligarchs and their followers were to be allowed to depart to Eleusis undisturbed. To mark the end of the time of troubles, a solemn thanksgiving was held, and new archons chosen. The name of Pythodorus, who had held the post of eponymous archon under the Thirty, was solemnly expunged from the official lists of the state, and the period during which he pre- sided was denominated " the year of anarchy." Thus sixteen months after Lysander had captured Athens the old constitution was restored to the much-tried city (September, 403 B.C.). The Thirty came to an ill end. Abandoned by Sparta, they still held out at Eleusis for a long time; but at last they were re- duced to ask for terms. When their leaders came into the Athe- nian camp to endeavor to enter into a negotiation, they w^ere sud- denly fallen upon and slain by the infuriated soldiery. The rest escaped abroad and died in exile. Athens was now once more a democracy, but she still remained a humble vassal of Sparta, bound to follow her lead in all matters of foreign policy, and to send her contingents of men and ships whenever called upon. Years were to elapse before the city that had once ruled the Aegean was able to exercise any influence on the affairs of Greece. The settlement of the internal quarrels of the Athenians was by no means the only task that fell to the lot of Sparta in the years immediately following the Peloponnesian war. In 402 B.C. she fell upon Elis, partly in revenge of the old injury caused by the disloyal behavior of the Eleans in the Mantinean war, partly on account of new causes of quarrel. In two campaigns the troops of Elis were beaten out of the field, her territory ravaged from end to end, and all her subject districts taken from her and restored to independence. But events of far greater importance were occurring in Asia Minor. In 404 b.c. King Darius 11. of Persia died, and was suc- ceeded by his eldest son, Artaxerxes II. Cyrus, his younger son, the friend and ally of Lysander, had long been scheming to obtain the crown, through the influence of his mother, the Queen Pary- satis, w^ho had done her best to induce her husband to pass over SPARTAN SUPREMACY 389 403-402 B.C. his first born and leave the throne to her favorite. When his plans were foiled by the death of Darius, the ambitious young prince determined to obtain by force what he could not win by intrigue. He made large levies of native troops in his satrapies, but rested his main hopes on collecting a strong body of Greek mercenaries. Cyrus was a man of brilliant talents, and had learned, by continual intercourse with his Spartan friends, the best ways of dealing with Hellenes. His personality was so attrac- tive and his service so profitable that he had no difficulty in getting together as many men as he needed. Over thirteen thousand hop- lites, under Clearchus, once Spartan Harmost of Byzantium, and other chiefs were at last gathered beneath his banner. Knowing the dread with which the Greeks regarded the vast distances of the Persian empire, Cyrus did not tell his mercenaries the real object of his march, but persuaded them that he was about to attack the predatory tribes of Southern Asia Minor. Insensibly he led them eastward till they found themselves close to the Eu- phrates, and so far committed to the expedition that it was hard to turn back. A heavy increase of pay soon persuaded them to pass on into Mesopotamia and commence their march on Susa. King Artaxerxes and his army did not make their appearance till Cyrus was within a few days' journey of Babylon. But hard by Cunaxa the Persian host came suddenly in sight, stretching for miles over the plain, and outnumbering by tenfold the army of Cyrus. A battle immediately followed, in which the Greeks on the right wing of the rebel army routed all that was opposed to them. But Cyrus himself was slain as he pushed forward with a handful of horsemen in a foolhardy attempt to pierce Artaxerxes's body-guard and end the struggle by the death of his brother. The native troops of the rebel prince at once dispersed, and the Greeks found themselves stranded in the midst of Mesopotamia, hundreds of miles from the sea, without a cause for which to fight or a guide to show them the way home. When they attempted to negotiate for an unmolested retreat, the satrap Tissaphernes lured Clearchus and their other leaders to a conference and massacred them. All that they could do was to close their ranks, elect new officers among them Xenophon, the historian of the expedition and attempt to force their passage northward into the Armenian mountains, where the power of Persia could hardly reach them. In spite of the continual attacks of the horsemen of Tissaphernes, 390 GREECE 399 B.C. the Greeks contrived to make their way along the Tigris and past the ruins of Nineveh, till they were able to leave the plains and their harassing enemy behind. But when they plunged into the mountains of Armenia their task was no easier ; almost without exception the tribes of the hill country turned out in arms against them. Passes were blocked and villages burned at their approach, and they had to fight for every inch of their way. When the winter fell, and they found themselves compelled to wade through miles of snow-drift in the country of the fierce Carduchians, their courage had almost failed them. But they hardened their hearts, pushed steadily northward, and were at last rewarded by the sight of the Euxine stretching at their feet. A few days more brought them to Trapezus, and put them once more in touch with the Hellenic world after twelve months of wandering. But even now their troubles were not ended; every Greek city looked with suspicion on a band of unemployed mercenaries still ten thousand strong, and the army was refused help, sent on bootless errands, and finally stranded in Thrace in a desperate and starving condition. Just as it was about to disperse, war broke out between Persia and Sparta, and the remnant of the much-tried army of Cyrus was taken into the pay of the Lacedaemonian general, Thibron (399 b.c). A graphic account of the extraordinary wanderings of the Ten Thousand has come down to us from the pen of Xenophon the Athenian, one of the generals chosen after Cunaxa to replace the victims of the treachery of Tissaphernes. We can judge from it the vivid impression which the adventures of the companions of Cyrus made on the Greek mind. They had proved that it was possible to penetrate, without meeting with opposition, into the heart of the dominions of the Great King, and that a Greek army of adequate size, under skillful generalship, might be trusted to go anywhere and do anything in Asia. It was not long before the lesson was turned to use, for war with the Persian had just been declared by the Spartan Government. Before Cyrus had started on his expedition he had made application for assistance to his old friends in Sparta; his request was granted, and although it was destined to bring him no assistance a Spartan fleet was sent to the coast of Cilicia. This action had not brought on any actual col- lision with Persia, but it had provoked Artaxerxes, and made war inevitable. After Cunaxa had been fought, the king dispatched Tissaphernes to Asia Minor, investing him with all the power which SPARTAN SUPREMACY 391 399 B.C. had formerly been in the hands of Cyrus. Immediately on his ar- rival the satrap set to work to subdue the Greek towns on the Ionian and Aeolian coast, to which he claimed a right under the terms of his treaty with Astyochus in 412 B.C. Knowing that they were bound to come into collision sooner or later with the king, the Spartans resolved to declare war before the cities fell. Accordingly, when Tissaphernes laid siege to Cyme in the early spring of 399 B.C., the ephors sent to its aid a small army composed of one thousand Laconian Perioeci, three thousand Peloponnesians, and three hundred cavalry requisitioned from Athens.^ Thibron, the officer placed in command, was directed to enlist in his army the contingents of all the states of Ionia; but he found them ill- disposed to help him, on account of the way in which they had been treated since the fall of Athens. The only important rein- forcement which he was able to raise was composed of the remains of the Ten Thousand. Even with their aid he accomplished no more than the deliverance of some of the Greek towns of Aeolis. But when the feeble Thibron was succeeded by Dercyllidas, an officer of energy and merit, the tide of war took a decided turn in favor of Sparta, and place after place in the Troad and Aeolis fell before the new general. In the next spring he shifted his operations southward, having reduced Pharnabazus, the satrap of the Helles- pont, to such straits that he was glad to conclude a truce. Der- cyllidas had now to do with Tissaphernes and the Persian forces in Lydia and Caria ; he found this enemy also more inclined to negotiate than to fight. When bidden to " leave the Greek cities free," Tissaphernes did not refuse, but only made conditions about the simultaneous withdrawal of the Spartan army and of his own from the coast-land. No permanent understanding, however, had been reached, when affairs suddenly took a new turn. A new reign had at this moment commenced in Sparta. King Agis, the commander of so many expeditions during the Pelopon- nesian war, had lately died ; he left a son, Leotychides, to whom the crown would naturally have passed. But ugly rumors prevailed about the parentage of this prince ; it was asserted by many that he was no true son of Agis, but the offspring of Alcibiades, who was known to have seduced the king's young wife during his stay at 3 The knights at Athens had strongly supported the Thirty, and the govern- ment punished them on this occasion by selecting the whole three hundred from among the prominent oligarchs. 392 GREECE 399-397 B.C. Sparta. Accordingly Agesilans, the brother of Agis. put forward a claim to the throne. He was warmly supported by Lysander, who had long been his guide and companion, and believed that he had found in him a fitting Instrument for bringing about the reform of the Spartan state-system. Agesilaus had reached the age of forty, but had never yet held any command or office of im- portance. He was of small stature and insignificant appearance : moreover, he was lame of one foot. Though he had won consid- erable popularity from his courteous and kindly disposition, no one looked upon him as a man of mark ; it was universally believed that he was a mere tool of Lysander. The contest for the throne was, therefore, a new trial of strength between the ephors and the victor of Aegospotami. It was decided before the Apella, less by inquiry into evidence than by appeals to prophecies and oracles. When the supporters of Leotychides produced a . enerable saying which warned Sparta against " a lame reign," and referred it to Agesilaus's personal deformity, Lysander skillfully turned the argu- ment against them by declaring that the words really meant the reign of a king of doubtful pedigree. Finally the vote went in favor of Agesilaus, who ascended the throne late in the year 399 bx. Lysander had in reality provided himself with a master and not with a servant, for the new king concealed beneath his insig- nificant exterior more energy and intelligence than any Spartan ruler since the unfortunate Cleomenes. Agesilaus had resolved to assert the old power of the royal house, and had availed himself of the support of Lysander only for his own purposes. However, he and his councilor were entirely at one in their views on foreign policy ; both were eager to push on the war against Persia, having a fixed belief that the expulsion of the Great King from the whole of Asia Minor would be a feasible task. Accordingly they used their influence in the state to secure the appointment of Agesilaus as the successor of Dercyllidas, and in 397 B.C. carried their point. The king was authorized to take with him thirty Spartans as a council of war, with Lysander at their head, and to raise two thousand Laconian perioeci and six thousand troops of the allies for service across the seas. When the contingents for this expedition were called in, the first grave symptoms of discontent against the Spartan hegemony that had yet been noted made themselves visible. Thebes, Corinth, and Athens all refused to supply the force that was demanded from SPARTAN SUPREMACY 393 397 B.C. them. The Athenians alleged poverty and weakness; the Cor- inthians unfavorable omens from their national gods; but the Thebans made no excuses, and simply sent a blank refusal. Nor was this all ; Agesilaus was anxious to commence his undertaking the first important invasion of Asia by a Hellenic army that had occurred for ages with a solemn and impressive ceremony. Be- fore departing he went to Aulis on the Euripus, the port from which Agamemnon had set forth to the siege of Troy, and offered sacrifice to the gods of the land in imitation of his mythical predecessor. The ceremony was hardly completed, the fires were still burning, and the victims not wholly consumed, when a party of Theban horse rode up, cast down the altars, extinguished the flames, and bade the king in the rudest way to depart from their territory. Agesilaus was constrained to go on board at once, and sailed away to meet his troop-ships, which were lying off the southern cape of Euboea. From that day he nourished a fierce and not inexcusable hatred against the whole Theban race. When Agesilaus landed in Asia he was at once met by envoys from Tissaphernes, who made great protestations of their master's desire to satisfy the Spartan Government. The satrap had taken fright at the arrival of such large reinforcements for the army of Dercyllidas, and was anxious to avert the impending attack. For a short time Agesilaus listened to his proposals, and consented to conclude a truce, but ere long he discovered the hollowness of the negotiations into which he had been entrapped, and set to work in good earnest to subdue the Lydian and Mysian inland which lay behind the Greek cities of the coast. Before actual operations be- gan, the king was compelled to engage in a trial of strength with Lysander. When the victor of Ageospotami arrived at Ionia he had at once been surrounded by crowds of his old dependents, who ignored the king and paid court to his councilor alone. Agesilaus soon showed resentment by deliberately refusing all petitions pre- ferred in behalf of Lysander's friends, and by rejecting any advice that came to him from that quarter. Ere long a stormy scene ensued ; Lysander taunted the king with ingratitude, and was bidden in return to remember that the friend who presumes too much on past services becomes unbearable. Finding Agesilaus quite beyond his control Lysander was driven, when he came to a calmer mood, to solicit employment in some region where his humiliation might not be too evident. The king consented, and 394 GREECE 396 B.C. gave him command of the Spartan forces on the Hellespont, where he did good service against Pharnabazus, until he was called home at the end of the year. Now that he was freed from the tutelage of Lysander, Age- silaus proceeded to conduct the war on his own system. He made Ephesus his headquarters and base of operations, and from it struck alternately north and south, carrying his incursions up to the gates of Sardis, and penetrating far into Mysia and Caria. He drove Pharnabazus out of Dascylium, the capital of his satrapy, and com- pelled him to migrate inland with all his family and treasures. A rapid pursuit and a fortunate engagement enabled him to seize the Persian's camp and all the wealth it contained a sum which sufficed to maintain his army for several months. The troops of Tissaphernes also suffered such constant reverses at the hands of Agesilaus that King Artaxerxes was fain to believe that his repre- sentative was designedly mismanaging the war. Accordingly he had the old satrap beheaded, and appointed in his stead an officer named Tithraustes. But the new governor fared no better than his predecessor; Agesilaus refused to listen to proposals for an accommodation, and pushed his incursions farther and farther in- land. Moreover, he stirred up the native tribes, especially the Paphlagonians, against their suzerain, and raised numerous aux- iliary troops from among them. Even discontented Persians of rank began to pass over to his camp, and to array their retainers among the Spartan auxiliaries. The whole of Western Asia Minor seemed to be slipping out of the hands of the Great King, The Greeks of Ionia, when they saw how the war was going were induced to view the Spartan domination with kinder eyes ; they began to make con- tributions of money with some approach to enthusiasm, and even enlisted in considerable numbers in the ranks of Agesilaus. A large and efficient body of cavalry was formed from among them, by inviting their chief men to serve in that arm ; some came them- selves, but the majority furnished and paid substitutes, who proved much more amenable to discipline than the Ionian oligarchs would have been. But the chief use to which Agesilaus intended to turn the Asiatic Greeks was to make them provide him with a fleet. By a special grant from Sparta he was given the authority of nauarch as well as that of general. Then he requisitioned one hundred and twenty ships from the Ionian and Carian cities, and placed his brother-in-law Peisander at their head. This force was intended SPARTAN SUPREMACY 395 396 B.C. to fall upon the south coast of Asia Minor ; while the Spartan army, now more than twenty thousand strong, and in high spirits and efficiency, marched eastward to conquer the central districts of the peninsula. To all appearance the Persian power in Asia Minor was now doomed. But Agesilaus was not destined to forestall Alexander the Great. There was one resource still remaining to the Great King: he might stir up war in Europe to distract the attention of the Spartans from Asia. This line was now adopted. Tithraustes sent across the Aegean a Rhodian named Timocrates, giving him fifty talents of silver, and bidding him use it to rouse the leading men in the states that were known to be discontented with the Spartan dominion. The mission was happily timed, and its success effectually stopped the operations of Agesilaus, and gave the Per- sian power a new lease of life for fifty years. Chapter XXXVI REVOLT FROM SPARTA, 395-387 B.C. THE emissary of Tithraustes found the task of stirring up a diversion in Europe an easy one. The states which had used Sparta as their instrument for the overthrow of Ath- ens had long been chafing against the new ruler whom they had given themselves. More especially was feeling running high in the larger cities, which had policies and ambitions of their own, but were compelled to subordinate them to the interests of the Lacedae- monians. Adhering in one point at least to the programme which they had published at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the ephors had set themselves to encourage local autonomy, by isolating state from state among their allies, and by supporting cantonal in- dependence, so long as it was consistent with a general deference to the commands of Sparta. It resulted that the smaller states throughout Greece looked to Sparta for protection from their larger neighbors, while the latter found the Spartan supremacy a com- plete bar to any further extension of their power and influence. In Boeotia, for example, there were always two parties ; Thebes was continually striving to turn the loose league of cities into a centralized confederation dependent on herself, but Orchomenus, Thespiae, and the other towns which clung to their local independ- ence, could always check her by calling in the aid of Sparta. Roughly speaking, the larger states of Greece were anxious to rid themselves of their new suzerain, and obtain a free scope for their ambition, while the smaller were ready to support Sparta, oppressive though she might be, in order to guarantee themselves from the worse evils of servitude to their immediate neighbors. The Thebans had shown their discontent some years before by the insult which they had inflicted on Agesilaus, and were now the leaders in open revolt against Sparta. Their most pop- ular statesman, Ismenias, influenced by patriotism and ambition even more than by the Persian gold of Timocrates, determined to put himself in communication with the malcontents in other states, 396 REVOLT FROM SPARTA 397 399 B.C. and to bring about a collision. Having assured himself of the co- operation of Argos who, now as always, was hungering after the lands of her neighbors of Epidaurus and Phlius and of Corinth, he took the decisive step. The Locrians of Opus, old dependents of Thebes, were encouraged to raid upon the lands of the Phocians, a tribe whose loyalty to Sparta was undoubted. The injured Pho- cians appealed to their suzerain, while Thebes at once sent her army into the field to assist the Locrians. Sparta then declared war, without knowing that she was thereby committed to a struggle not merely with Thebes, but with Corinth and Argos, whose gov- ernments had not yet declared themselves. While King Pausanias, with the contingents of the Pelopon- nesus, was directed to cross the Isthmus and invade Boeotia from the south, Lysander was once more drawn from his retirement and placed in command of a second army. With a small Laconian contingent he crossed the Corinthian Gulf and threw himself into Phocis, where he gathered together the mountain tribes, the Mali- ans, Phocians, and Oetaeans, for a raid into the plain of the Cephis- sus. The Orchomenians, too, broke away from the Boeotian League, joined the Spartan, and declared war on their Theban neighbors. Before a blow had been struck the Thebans succeeded in en- listing another ally in their cause. Athens had been for the last eight years endeavoring to live down her civil broils and to fall back into her old manner of life. But the crimes of the Thirty were not easy to forget, and a bitterness pervaded political life which had exceeded anything that had prevailed in the days before the Peloponnesian war. Prosecutions which, whatever their form, were really inspired by political grudges were always rife. The best known among them is that which led to the condemnation and death of the philosopher Socrates. Though personally blameless, he had been the tutor and associate of Critias, Theramenes, Pyth- odorus, and others of the worst of the oligarchs. Moreover, his philosophic inquiries into every sphere of moralty and policies shocked conservative citizens, and his restless love of disputation had made him many personal enemies. When prosecuted by the democratic leader Anytus for " corrupting the youth and practicing impiety," he vindicated his manner of life, but would make no further defense; he was condemned by the dicastery, and drank the fatal hemlock (399 B.C.). 398 GREECE 395 B.C. Many of the best citizens of Athens thought that a foreign war was the best way of rousing their fellows from civil bickerings, and Thrasybialus, the hero of 403 B.C., was zealous to repay Thebes for the assistance she had given the exiled democracy in that year. Accordingly, though her navy was non-existent and her Long Walls were still in ruins, Athens was induced to join the Theban alliance and declare war once more on her old enemy. The campaign of 395 B.C. began with an inroad by Lysander into Boeotia. Expecting to be joined on a fixed day by King Pausanias, he led his Phocians and Malians down into the plain, and attacked Haliartus. But while he lay at its gates the townsmen made a sortie, a great Theban army came up in his rear, and in the sudden fray he himself was slain and his forces dispersed. Pau- sanias, who appeared next day, found the body of the great general lying unburied by the wall, and was constrained to ask for a truce to perform the last offices for the dead, and to consent to evacuate Boeotia if that boon was granted him. For his lateness in arriv- ing and his tameness in consenting to turn back without fighting, the king was impeached the moment he reached Sparta. He fled from trial, and was condemned in his absence, just as his father, Pleistoanax, had been fifty-one years before. His son, Ages- ipolis, a youth of seventeen or eighteen, succeeded to the kingly power. In Lysander Sparta lost her ablest general, and the only man who could have rescued her from internal decay. But his personal ambition had always been such a disturbing factor in Lacedae- monian politics that the ephors felt more relief than regret at his fall. Saved from the fear of his genius, they could go on in their old narrow ways, and work out to the end the doom which its cast- iron constitution was preparing for Sparta. The state was already in great danger ; it was only a few years before that a general rising of the inferior citizens and Helots against the government had been frustrated by the slaying of Cinadon, who had organized the plot. But, unwarned by conspiracy within and revolt without, the ephors went on in the old paths, and kept Spartan policy in its usual groove of selfishness and indifference to the rights of others. When the result of the battle of Haliartus was known, Argos and Corinth published their declaration of war, in which not long after the Acarnanians, the Euboeans, and many of the Thessalian REVOLT FROM SPARTA 399 394 B.C. cities joined. The Spartans found themselves forced to fight for their hegemony in Peloponnesus, as well as for their empire in Greece. Realizing the gravity of the crisis, they sent to Asia to summon back Agesilaus and his army, for every available man would be v^anted at home. When the spring of 394 B.C. came round, the forces of Laconia and of those allies who remained faithful were sent, under the regent Aristodemus, to march on Corinth and block the way of invaders from the north. The army, however, arrived too late ; twelve thousand Boeotians and Athenians had already crossed the Isthmus, and had been joined by the levies of Corinth and Argos. The allied host, twenty thousand hoplites with a strong force of cavalry and light-armed, lay on the Corinthian border, and was about to move southward. They had been planning a sudden raid into Laconia, pursuant to the advice of the Corinthian Timolaus, who bade them " not to strike at the wasps when they are flying around, but to run in and set fire to their nest." But while they were settling the de- tails of the march, the Spartan army had already reached Sicyon, and was offering them battle. Aristodemus had called up the levies of Arcadia, Elis, Achaia, and the small states of the Argive peninsula ; he had nearly as many hoplites as the allies, and was determined to fight. The armies came into collision by the brook Nemea, four miles westward from Corinth. The incidents of the fight were not unlike those of the last battle which Sparta had fought in Peloponnesus. Now, as formerly at Mantinea, the Lace- daemonians themselves broke and trampled down the enemy op- posed to them, while their allies fared badly and were driven off the field. Once more the Lacedaemonians kept their ranks and retrieved the day, while the victorious wing of their opponents scattered itself in reckless pursuit. Thus it came to pass that though of the Spartans only eight fell, their allies had lost eleven hundred men, while the enemy, slaughtered up to the very gates of Corinth, left nearly three thousand dead on the field. Meanwhile Agesilaus had received the orders of the ephors to return home, and had reluctantly given over his great scheme for the invasion of Asia. Leaving his brother-in-law Peisander in charge of the fleet, and an officer named Euxenus with four thousand men to maintain the war against Tithraustes, he as- sembled his army on the Hellespont, driven out of Asia, as he bitterly complained, not by force of arms, but by the ten thousand 400 GREECE 394 B.C. golden bowmen ^ which the satrap had sent across to Thebes and Argos. Crossing the straits, he led his men homewards by the long coast-road through Thrace and Macedonia. The force he took with him was strong, confident, and well disciplined ; the veteran mercenaries who had served under Cyrus, and the Pelo- ponnesians who had followed Agesilaus to Asia, were equally enthusiastic for their leader. Forcing his way through hostile Thessaly, in spite of the hordes of cavalry which hung around him, Agesilaus reached the friendly land of Phocis, about a month after the battle of Corinth had been fought. The Phocians and the discontented Boeotians of Orchomenus joined him, and he then advanced along the valley of the Cephissus. At Coronea, where the Boeotian plain narrows down between the hills of Helicon and the marshes of Copai's, he found the enemy barring his further progress. In spite of their late defeat, the Thebans were bent on fighting; they had sent in haste for their Argive and Athenian allies, and mustered in strength beneath the walls of Coronea. Here was fought the most desperate action that Greece had seen since Thermopylae. The Theban troops, who charged as at Delium in a dense column on the right of the allied army, broke the ranks of their separatist countrymen of Orchomenus ; but on all other points of the line Agesilaus won the day. The king then threw himself between the victorious Thebans and their line of retreat; but the enemy merely closed their ranks, and pushed for- ward into the midst of the Spartan host, determined to force their way through. Their column wedged itself into the hostile line, but could not break it. The fight stood still ; the front ranks on either side went down to a man, and the press grew so close that the combatants had to drop their spears and fight on with their daggers. Agesilaus himself was thrown down and well-nigh trampled to death before his body-guard could draw him out from among the corpses. At last, after a struggle of a length unpre- cedented in Greek battles, the survnvors of the Theban column forced their way through the Spartan line and reached the slopes of Helicon. Agesilaus had the glory of a victory as the Thebans confessed by demanding the usual truce for the burial of the dead but his men had suffered as severely as the enemy, and instead of pushing on into Boeotia he turned back to Delphi. There he offered Apollo the tithe of his Asiatic spoils, a sum of no less than a hun- 1 The Persian gold Daric bore the figure of the Great King holding a bow. REVOLT FROM SPARTA 401 394 B.C. dred talents ($120,000), and then crossed over to Peloponnesus by sea. On the evening before the battle of Coronea Agesilaus had received from Asia a piece of intelligence which he carefully con- cealed from his army. It was to the effect that his brother-in-law Peisander had been defeated and slain in a sea-fight off Cnidus, and that the cities of Ionia and Caria were one after the other revolting against Sparta. After Agesilaus had left Asia, the Persian satraps had re- covered their confidence, and determined to assume the offensive. They possessed a considerable squadron of Phoenician vessels, which the king had placed under the command of the Athenian Conon, who had been an exile in Cyprus since the disaster of Aegos- potami, Pharnabazus went on board ship he was the first satrap who had taken to the sea for fifty years and set forth with Conon to meet the Spartan fleet. They came on Pei- sander off Cnidus, and found him ready to fight, for though an inexperienced seaman he had all the courage of the true Lacedae- monian. The Persians considerably outnumbered the enemy, and obtained an easy victory, for the Ionian captains in the Spartan fleet, sick of harmosts and war-taxes, made no serious resistance. They fled at the first shock, and left their admiral to his fate. Peisander fell, and half his galleys were sunk or taken. Pharnabazus and Conon then sailed up the coast of Caria and Ionia, summoning the Greek cities to cast off the Spartan yoke and assert their autonomy. Town after town Cos, Ephesus, Samos, Chios, Mitylene expelled its harmost and threw open its gates. Only Abydos, where the able Dercyllidas had collected the wrecks of many Spartan garrisons, held out against the victorious admirals. By the close of 394 B.C. it was the sole remaining token of all the conquests of Lysander and Agesilaus, and the Spartan empire in Asia was at an end. The war in Greece now resolved itself into a series of bicker- ings for the possession of the roads across the Isthmus. The Corin- thians, supported by occasional assistance from Athens and Argos, endeavored to hold the narrow line four miles broad from sea to sea between Cenchreae and Lechaeum. The Lacedaemonians, from their base at Sicyon, kept sending out expeditions to burst through and to seize posts in the rear of Corinth, from which a blockade of the city would be possible. But though they broke down 402 GREECE 393 B.C. the " Long Walls " which connected Corinth with the sea, harried the whole Corinthian territory from end to end, and inflicted end- less misery upon its inhabitants, they made little or no progress towards bringing the war to an end. The only thoroughly success- ful operation which they carried out in the whole war was directed at an outlying member of the Theban alliance, and had no influence on the main course of events. It was an expedition of Agesilaus into Acarnania, by which the tribes of that country were forced into submission, and became allies of Sparta (391 B.C.). Meanwhile the pauses in the progress of the war had brought great gain to at least one power. In the spring of 393 B.C. Conon and Pharnabazus had brought across the Aegean a squadron of Phoenician and Ionian ships; after harrying the coast of Laconia they came into the Gulf of Aegina. As there was no Spartan fleet to fight, Conon obtained from the satrap permission to employ the seamen of his squadron and a considerable sum of money in aiding the Athenians to rebuild the fortifications of Peiraeus and the " Long Walls," which had remained in ruins since Lysander breached them in 404 b.c. Three or four months' hard labor suf- ficed for their reconstruction, and when this was accomplished the Athenians set to work to build warships in the long-deserted slips of their ruined arsenal. By the next year we find them able to send out a modest squadron of ten vessels, the first that had sailed out of Peiraeus for twelve years. Two years later they could put Thrasybijlus in command of forty, a force large enough to have some influence on the course of the war. It was not destined that the struggle the " Corinthian war," as men called it, because its operations centered around the walls of Corinth should be brought to an end by any events in Europe. Neither party showed any signs of reducing its enemy, and the petty warfare might apparently have gone on forever. The only incident worth recording in these dreary years was one which had some importance in the history of Greek military art, but no influ- ence on the course of Greek politics. The Athenian general, Iphic- rates, had applied himself to perfect the equipment and tactics of the light-troops called pcltasts. He had endeavored to assimi- late them to the hoplite, without loading them with the heavy armor which made quick movement impossible to the troops of the line. Though he furnished them with corselets of quilted linen, and small shields, instead of metal breastplates and large oval bucklers, he REVOLT FROM SPARTA 403 392 B.C. gave them a pike and sword even longer and stronger than those of the hopHte. After performing some minor exploits with these troops against the heavy infantry of Phlius and Mantinea, Iphic- rates ventured to measure them against a body of Spartans. He caught a mora (battalion), four hundred strong, which had been serving on escort duty, as it defiled along the shore below the walls of Corinth, and beset it on all sides with his peltasts. When the Spartans charged, his men gave way; but they returned when the enemy's impetus was exhausted, hung around him, galled him with missiles, and finally brought him to a standstill. Harassed and exhausted, much as their countrymen at Sphacteria had been thirty-five years before, the Lacedaemonians halted to defend themselves on an isolated hillock, where they were first worried by the peltasts, and then broken by a body of Athenian hoplites which came up from Corinth. Two hundred and fifty of them fell ; the remainder escaped to Lechaeum. Thus a whole Spar- tan battalion had been not merely slain off such things as that had happened before but driven to headlong flight by the despised mer- cenaries of Iphicrates. This was a fact which made the strongest impression on the mind of Greece. It induced every state to pay more attention for the future to its light-armed troops, who had previously been deemed worthy of little notice; it won for Iphic- rates a reputation which he hardly deserved, and it led to a some- what undue depreciation of Spartan courage. The real moral, that hoplites should never be sent out alone, but always accompanied by a due proportion of light-armed troops, seems to have escaped the notice of the contemporary observer. Twenty cases with the same moral could be quoted in the fifth and fourth centuries,^ yet no general seems to have grasped their meaning before Alexander the Great. While the war had come to a standstill in Europe, really de- cisive events were taking place across the Aegean. The Lacedae- monians had lost all their possessions in Asia, except Abydos, and were therefore in a position to resume their old alliance with Persia; having none of the Great King's ancient possessions any longer in their hands, they could approach him without being required to part with anything. In 392 B.C. an officer named Antalcidas was dis- patched to Sardis, and obtained a hearing from Tiribazus, who had succeeded Tithraustes as satrap in Lydia. He pointed out that the 2 Cf. especially the disaster of Demosthenes in Aetolia 404 GREECE 390-388 B.C. war had ceased to bring the Great King profit, and that the Persian fleet under Conon was now being used, not to serve Persian interests, but merely to build up again the power of Athens, whose interests must infallibly bring her ere long into collision with the satraps. Tiribazus was convinced by these arguments ; he recalled Conon, threw him into prison ^ for misusing the forces intrusted to him, and went up to Susa to persuade King Artaxerxes to make peace with Sparta. But negotiations with an Oriental power are always lengthy, and while the attitude of the Persian court was still doubtful, the ephors raised a new army and fleet and sent them across the Aegean. This force seized Ephesus, and once more gave Sparta a foothold in Ionia ; shortly after an insurrection in Lesbos threw all the cities of that great island, save Mitylene, into Lacedaemonian hands (390 B.C.). By this time the Athenians had finished building their new navy, and forty ships under Thrasybulus arrived in Asiatic waters to check the restoration of Spartan supremacy east of the Aegean. Thrasybulus performed no great miltary service, but he succeeded in uniting the Byzantines, Rhodians, and Chalcedonians in a naval league with Athens a union which hopeful men trusted might prove the commencement of a new Delian League. Before the year was ended, however, he was slain by the people of Aspendus, on whose land he had been levying a forced contribution. For more than a year a sporadic naval warfare continued to rage over the whole Aegean, from Aegina to Ephesus, and from Abydos to Rhodes. But here, too, just as in the land war in Greece, the adversaries seemed to have come to a standstill. At last, in the spring of 388 b.c.^ Tiribazus returned from Susa he had been absent no less than three years with full permission from the Great King to carry out his philo-Spartan policy. He at once made an alliance with Antalcidas, who had been his original ad- viser, and placed the Persian fleet at the disposition of the Lace- daemonian. Uniting it to his own, Antalcidas swept the Aegean from north to south, chased the Athenian squadron back to Pei- raeus, and showed himself undisputed master of the seas. But Sparta had no longer any desire to proceed with the war ; she was conscious that her momentary advantage had been gained not by her own strength, but by that of Persia, and was anxious to 3 Conon escaped from prison, but died not long after. REVOLT FROM SPARTA 405 387 B.C. seize a favorable opportunity to put an end to hostilities. In the spring of 387 B.C. Tiribazus invited all the belligerents to send deputies to a peace congress at Sardis. All accepted, for none of them had any great wish to protract the war. Athens was fright- ened by the prospect of the loss of her newly restored trade and the blockade of her ports ; Corinth had been nearly ruined by the harry- ing of her territory; Argos had gained nothing by a long-pro- tracted struggle; Thebes thought that she had made an end of Spartan interference in Boeotia, the main object of her declaration of war. When the envoys arrived, Tiribazus laid before them a declaration which he had drawn up in conjunction with Antalcidas. The document ran as follows : " King Artaxerxes deems it just that the cities in Asia should belong to him, and of the islands Clazomenae ^ and Cyprus ; the other Greek cities, both small and great, are to be independent ; only Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros are, as of old, to belong to the Athenians. Whatsoever states shall not accept this peace, upon them I shall, in conjunction with those who accept it, make war by land and by sea, with ships and with money." By agreeing to these terms, Sparta gave up all pretense of posing as the defender of Hellas against the barbarian. She sur- rendered the cities of Asia to the Great King, because she could no longer help to keep them for herself. Resigning herself to the loss of her power east of the Aegean, she fell back on the old hegemony of Peloponnesus, which had been hers from time im- memorial. This hegemony she felt herself able to maintain, but for its full establishment an interval of peace was necessary. If the peace could be bought only by sacrificing the lonians to Persia, they must be sacrificed; since their rebellion in 394 b.c. Sparta felt no atom of interest in their fate a disinterested regard for the wel- fare of Hellas was never her foible. The threat of having to face Persia and Sparta combined was too much for the confederates. When their envoys reported to them the terms offered by Tiribazus, one after another consented to accept them. Thebes held out longest, for her envoys refused for some time to subscribe to the treaty, unless they might sign in the name of the whole Boeotian League. The Spartans refused to allow this, alleging the terms of the treaty, which said that " all Greek cities, both small and great, should be * The old town of Clazomenae was on the mainland, but a citadel and new quarter had been built on an island connected ]py a causeway with the shore. Hence Tiribazus could call it an island. 406 GREECE 387 B.C. independent " a clause which they read into a prohibition of the hegemony of Thebes in Boeotia. But finding that all their allies had left them, and frightened by the threats of Agesilaus, who declared his intention of at once invading Boeotia, the Thebans signed the inglorious document. Thus ended the " Corinthian war," a struggle which wrought damage to Hellas at large for it ended in the loss of her Ionic members without profiting any one of the states which had en- gaged in it. Sparta had lost her naval supremacy and her mastery of the Aegean, but her adversaries had not gained by her disasters. The only power which had come happily out of the business was Persia, who had at last recovered the Ionian cities, lost so long ago as 480-470 B.C., and now found herself once more mistress of the Aegean. But luckily for Greece King Artaxerxes was a most un- enterprising monarch, and never cared to push to its end the oppor- tunity which was now granted him. Antalcidas incurred the discredit of being held responsible for the treaty, and from him it took its name, " the Peace of Antal- cidas." Another but a more inglorious Lysander, he won the ap- proval of his own countrymen, and the curses of all Greece besides, for having yoked Sparta to the barbarian, and secured her triumph by sacrificing Greek cities by the score. His ignominy was shared by the ephors; Agesilaus alone, who advocated the continuance of the war, had no part in it. But even Agesilaus looked upon the peace as profitable to the country. When it was said in his hearing that " the Lacedaemonians had played into the hands of the Medes," he replied, " No ; say rather that the Medes are playing into the hands of the Lacedaemonians." But whether the Medes Laconized or the Lacedaemonians Medized, Ephesus and Miletus and all their sister-towns were struck out of the list of free Hellenic communities, and incorporated once more in a Persian satrapy. Chapter XXXVII THE GREEKS OF THE WEST, 413-338 B.C. WHEN the great expedition of Nicias and Demosthenes had been shattered against the walls of Syracuse it was universally believed that a new period of splendor and prosperity was opening for the cities of Sicily. The unpro- voked attack of Athens on their liberties had shown them the danger of civil strife, had taught them to combine, and had proved that when combined they were irresistible. Selinus, Himera, Gela, and most of the other Siceliot towns had contributed their contin- gents to the Syracusan army, and shared in the glory of the great victory. Syracuse, who had borne the brunt of the attack, had learned that, strong though she was, she was not strong enough to save herself without the aid of her lesser neighbors. Bound to- gether by their late comradeship in arms, and warned by the dangers they had passed through, it might have been expected that the Siceliots would settle down to a life of peace and progress. This was not to be; within four years after the execution of Nicias, Sicily was to undergo a series of disasters which maimed her strength and cut short her energies forever. Half her cities were to be destroyed by the stranger, the remainder stripped of their liberty, and handed over to a tyrant whose deeds recalled the worst days of the rule of Gelo and Hiero. When the rejoicings which followed the overthrow of the Athenian armament had ceased, two schemes engrossed the atten- tion of the Syracusans and their allies. To punish Athens for her interference in the affairs of the West, a Siceliot fleet should sail eastward and carry the war into the waters of the Aegean. Ac- cordingly two squadrons were sent forth, in 412 and 411 b.c, under Hermocrates, the Syracusan general who had most distinguished himself during the siege. These vessels, as we have already seen, shared in the good and evil fortune of the Spartan armaments of Chalcideus and Mindarus. Even stronger than the desire for chastising Athens was the determination of the Siceliots to punish those traitor-cities among 407 408 GREECE 410 B.C. themselves who had espoused the Athenian cause. Syracuse under- took the chastisement of her old enemies of Naxos and Catana; their fields were ravaged, and their walls beleaguered, yet for two years they contrived to hold out. Selinus meanwhile fell on the Segestans, and endeavored to wreak her vengeance on the alien city which had so long maintained herself alone among the Greek communities. But Segesta seemed fated to bring evil after evil upon Sicily. With ruin impending upon her now as in 417 B.C., she determined to call in another ally. Where the Athenian had failed the Carthaginian might succeed. Accordingly the Segestans sent message after message to Africa, to interest in their cause the great Phoenician city, whose harbor looked forth on the western shore of Sicily. The Carthaginians had avoided meddling with their Hellenic neighbors since the awful disaster which their army had suffered before the walls of Himera just seventy years ago. But now they were in a warlike mood ; the disaster of the Athenians at Syracuse had roused in them fear of the growing might of Syracuse, and their counsels were dominated at the moment by Hannibal, an ambitious general who had a grudge against the Siceliots. He was the grandson of that Hamilkar who had fallen at Himera in 480 B.C., and had sworn to avenge the fate of his ances- tor. In 410 B.C. he was one of the two suffetes, or supreme magis- trates, of Carthage, and he easily persuaded his countrymen to listen to the appeal of Segesta, and to entrust him with an army destined for the invasion of Sicily. Accordingly, in the summer of 410 B.C. a Carthaginian auxiliary force landed at Segesta and drove off the Selinuntines from the environs of the town. But this was only the prelude to the great invasion. In the following spring Hannibal crossed over from Africa with one of those vast and miscellaneous mercenary hosts which Carthage was accustomed to gather when she went to war. Hannibal was not a general of the school of Nicias ; he did not falter for a moment in his operations, but marched straight on Selinus almost before his landing was known. The battering-ram was set to work on a score of points at once, breaches were ere long broken in the walls, and a hundred thousand wild Libyans, Span- iards, and Gauls mounted to the assault. For nine days the Selinuntines held the breaches, and sent messenger after messenger to hurry on the forces of Syracuse and Acragas, wliose aid had THE WEST 409 408 B.C. been promised them. On the tenth day the defense broke down, the enemy poured into the town, and a horrible massacre took place. The barbarians filled the streets with sixteen thousand corpses, drove off the rest of the inhabitants as captives, and swept away everything in the city that was not too hot or too heavy to be moved. The Siceliot army, which had gathered at Acragas to march to the relief of Selinus, was thunderstruck. In ten days a great and well-fortified city had been struck out of the roll of Greek com.- munities. The generals were scared. Instead of taking the field to oppose Hannibal, they dismissed their army and sent to ask for terms of peace. But the Carthaginian had not yet executed half his purpose. Before the Siceliots had guessed his design, he had marched across the island and laid siege to Himera. The Himer- aeans, seeing the fate of Selinus impending over them, cried aloud for instant succor. But Hannibal w^as so prompt that no more than four thousand Syracusan troops had time to reach the city. The Greeks strove to keep back the enemy by a vigorous sally, but it failed, and the place in a few days became untenable. The non- combatants were hurried away by sea ; the Syracusans escaped by land, but ere the town was half evacuated the besiegers burst in. Hannibal leveled the whole place walls, temples, and houses to the ground, and executed three thousand captive hoplites on the spot where his grandfather had been slain in 480 B.C., as a solemn offering to the gods of Carthage. Within three months after his landing Hannibal sailed back to Carthage, his ships laden deep with captives and spoil, leaving behind him two heaps of ruins where once had stood the two westernmost Hellenic cities of Sicily. His return was anxiously looked for in the next spring, but for reasons to us unknown it was delayed. The Siceliots, free for a short space from the impending ruin, did not employ their time in getting ready to resist the next wave of invasion. They fell to mutual recriminations over the causes of their military failures in the preceding year. At Syracuse the factions actually came to blows. Hermocrates, the hero of the Athenian siege, had been sent into exile, but he had a large follow- ing in the city, and was able to make attempt after attempt to force his way back, and to overthrow the faction in power. In the end of 408 B.C. he was admitted within the gates by treachery, but in the street-fight that ensued he was slain, and his followers were forced out of the half-won city. 410 GREECE 406 B.C. The mantle of Hermocrates fell on one of his partisans, a young Syracusan named Dionysius. He was of mean birth, and owned no family wealth or influence ; but he was a man of mark, not merely a gallant soldier, but a ready speaker, and even a poet of some note. The defeated faction placed him at its head, but instead of continuing the open war, Dionysius prevailed on them to lay down their arms and bide their time. In the spring of 406 B.C. the Siceliots heard to their dismay that the impending storm was about to break upon their heads. Hannibal, with an even larger army than he had led in his first campaign, was making ready to land upon their shores. This time they were somewhat better prepared than in 409 b.c.^ and when the Carthaginian marched against Acragas, the second city of the island, he found it defended by a large confederate army of thirty-five thousand men drawn from every state in Sicily. For seven months the war stood still beneath the ramparts of Acragas, and battle after battle was fought on its sloping uplands. The Greeks were ill handled by their generals; the Carthaginians were held back by a plague which broke out in their foul and crowded camp and car- ried off thousands, including their commander Hannibal himself. Things were at a deadlock till the winter, when the invaders, now under the command of an ofiicer named Himilco, succeeded in cut- ting off the food-supply of the Siceliots. This brought about the evacuation of the town : the whole population, a great crowd of two hundred thousand persons, stole away by night, while the army protected their retreat. The place, with all its wealth that was not portable, fell into the hands of Himilco. The exiled Acragantines scattered themselves all over Sicily, the main body settling down on the deserted site of Leontini, which was made over to them by a vote of the Syracusan assembly. When the Syracusan generals led home their contingent from Acragas, they were assailed with a storm of reproaches for their mismanagement. The attack was headed by Dionysius and the other surviving chiefs of the faction of Hermocrates, who now saw that their time was arrived. Scared by the near approach of the Carthaginians, the Syracusan assembly deposed their officers, and elected in their stead Dionysius and a wholly new board. The one faction having failed to conduct the war with success, they threw themselves into the hands of the other. But Dionysius had in his mind not so much the repulse of Himilco as the seizure of THE WEST 411 406 B.C. supreme power at Syracuse. His conduct during the next year has many points of similarity to that of Napoleon Bonaparte in a similar case. Under the pretense of strengthening the military force of the city, he hired many hundred mercenaries, whom he attached to his own person; then he induced the assembly to vote him full authority over his colleagues, so that he became practically dictator. The final step was taken soon after ; an alarm was raised that his life was in danger from assassins; an illegal and informal meeting of the assembly was held, far outside the walls of the city, and packed with the partisans of Dionysius. They voted their leader a bodyguard of a thousand men, and prolonged his po^ver for an indefinite period. Syracuse now found herself in the hands of a tyrant, though Dionysius disclaimed the title, and made great professions of his attachment to the cause of democracy. The Syracusans acquiesced for the moment in the loss of their liberty, because they felt that a strong hand was needed to direct the war against the oncoming Carthaginian army. Himilco was already thundering at the gates of Gela, whose territory was actually con- terminous with that of Syracuse, and in a few months might present himself before the walls of their own city. The tyranny of Dionysius lasted for no less than thirty-eight years a period of storm and convulsion, civil strife and foreign war it brought countless evils on Sicily, but on the whole it served its purpose. After long struggles the tyrant brought the Carthagin- ians to a standstill, and at his death left Acragas and all the other towns which had fallen to the enemy, save Selinus and Himera, once more in Hellenic hands. Dionysius was neither to be counted among the worst nor among the best of tyrants. He often showed unexpected clemency to a vanquished foe; he was not personally violent, intemperate, lustful, or avaricious ; he took good care of all who served him well, and wrought much for Syracuse as well as for himself. He was not insensible to gratitude, or incapable of personal affection. Himself an author of some merit, the writer of tragedies which won the first prize at the Athenian Dionysiac festival, he loved to surround himself with literary men. As a builder, he was almost equal to Pericles; as a general, he inaugu- rated a new epoch in the Hellenic art of war. But all these qualities were spoiled by the countervailing vices of Dionysius. His cool and steadfast determination to hold on to his tyranny led him again and again through seas of blood. The 412 GREECE 405 B.C. citizens of Syracuse who suffered death at his hands were numbered by thousands rather than by hundreds. The financial exigencies of his wars drove him to grinding extortion; he is said to have taxed the Syracusans every year to the extent of one-fifth of their property, and his confiscations were enormous. He was capable of outbursts of cruelty which shocked the Hellenic mind flogging prisoners to death, crucifying them, or fixing them to his military engines. His callousness to religious sentiment provoked even greater wrath : he never shrank from plundering or burning a temple, and on one occasion sold to his enemies, the Carthaginians, the most hallowed treasures of the greatest shrine of Italy. Above all, his suspicions made him hated. Driven into a state of appre- hension by continual plots and outbreaks, he came to trust no man. His spies were always at work, scenting out imaginary conspiracies ; his dungeons always full of citizens imprisoned on suspicion. He grew so wary that he never stirred abroad without a mercenary guard; he had every visitor to his palace searched for concealed weapons, even to his own nearest relations, and such is the story would not even allow a barber to approach his person with a razor. The well-known tale of Damocles illustrates well enough, whether it be true or false, the state of nervous tension to which the tyrant was reduced. That courtier, having expressed his envy of the prosperity of Dionysius, was invited to a banquet, placed in the seat of honor, robed like a king, and sen^ed with the choicest wines and viands. But in the midst of the feast his host bade him look upward. Damocles did so, and found a heavy sword suspended over his head by a single hair, and threatening every moment to fall. " Such," said Dionysius, " is the life of a tyrant." The reign of Dionysius was one long struggle against the power of Carthage. Four desperate wars with that state occupied his energies. His other achievements, brilliant and startling though they appeared, were but interludes between the acts of the greater drama. It is strange to find that the first efforts of Diony- sius were the least successful ; though he had been allowed to seize sovereign power precisely because the Syracusan generals had failed to hold back Himilco, yet his earliest campaign (405 B.C.) was quite as unsuccessful as that of his predecessors. He lost a battle before Gela, and was compelled to evacuate both that town and Camarina, whose inhabitants had to flee by night, and to join the exiled Acragantines at Leontini. But chance came to the tyrant's THE WEST 413 404-395 B.C. aid: the plague which had raged in the Carthaginian camp in the previous year broke out again ; Himilco saw half his army stricken down, and in fear for his conquests made peace with Dionysius, restoring the territories of Gela and Camarina, and only adding that of Acragas to the Carthaginian dominions in Sicily. For the next five years Dionysius was occupied in a bitter struggle with his unwilling subjects; plots and insurrections broke out again and again. The whole city once fell for a moment into the hands of the rebels in 404 B.C. The tyrant recovered it : but in 403 B.C. a large force from Rhegium and Messene joined the Syra- cusan exiles, got possession of the mainland quarters of the town, and besieged Dionysius in the island-citadel of Ortygia. But the military skill and unscrupulous energy of the tyrant brought him out of the struggle stronger then ever. Not only did he make his throne firm, but he fell upon his neighbors, and in a short space conquered Naxos, Catana, and the Sicel tribes of the interior. He then felt himself strong enough to renew the war with Carthage, but, as a measure of precaution, first enlarged the fortifications of Syracuse so as to include the whole plateau of Epipolae, taking within the new wall all the upland where the fighting during the Athe- nian siege had gone on. Thus he tripled the extent of the city ; and though the new quarters were not filled with houses, they were spacious enough to serve as a place of refuge for the whole popu- lation of southeastern Sicily in time of war. Dionysius's second attack on Carthage opened with a series of victories (397 b.c), but just as he seemed to have the whole island in his grasp, an un- expected fleet and army of the enemy fell on Messene and took it by storm. Dionysius, attacked in the rear, had to abandon his conquests in the west of Sicily, and rush back to defend Syracuse from an invasion from the north. In front of Catana he gave battle to Himilco, who again, as in 406 b.c, headed the invaders; there he was utterly defeated, and the enemy pushed on to besiege Syracuse. But the new walls stood the city in good stead; the tyrant had been taken by surprise rather than crippled, and his resources were not materially lessened. He stood firmly at bay behind his fortification for many months, till the plague that had twice before smitten the Carthaginians again came to his rescue. So fearful was its violence that Hamilco and his officers actually fled from it, leaving their army to perish wholesale by the ravages of the pest and the sword of Dionysius (395 B.C.). The tyrant 414 GREECE 420-383 B.C. then marched out of his stronghold, and took one by one every Carthaginian stronghold in the island, except the towns of Lily- baeum and Drepantim at its western extremity. Freed from the barbarian, Dionysius at once turned on his neighbors, and subdued every independent state in the island. By 391 B.C. he was master of the whole of Sicily save the two fort- resses in the west; and his conquests were confined to him by a solemn peace, in which Carthage formally resigned all she had gained since 410 B.C. Dionysius now turned his arms further afield. The Italiot Greeks were at this moment in a state of depression, owing to the recent encroachments of a new enemy from the north. About 420 B.C. the Sabellian tribes of Central Italy had begun to quit their mountain valleys and to press southward and seaward. At the very moment that Nicias was besieging Syracuse they fell upon Cumae, the northernmost Italiot city, and destroyed it (415 B.C.). They reduced Neapolis and other towns of the neighborhood to the status of tributaries, and then pushed further south. A tribe who bore the name of Lucanians headed the advance ; they pressed into the southern peninsula of Italy, took the great city of Posei- donia (circ. 395 B.C.), and began to encroach on the territories of Thurii, Croton, and Metapontum. The Italiots leagued themselves together to resist the oncoming wave of barbarism, but with poor success. In 390 b.c. their united forces experienced a crushing defeat at the battle of Laiis, and the bodies of ten thousand hop- lites covered the field. It was when the Hellenic cities of Italy were facing northward to resist the Lucanians that Dionysius fell upon their rear. His progress was rapid and easy; the distracted Italiots were beaten in the open field, their cities were besieged, and generally captured, and the Syracusan yoke was extended over all the states as far north as Croton. In some cases Dionysius removed the inhabitants bodily, to people the empty spaces within the new walls of Syracuse; in others, where the resistance had angered him, he sold the whole population as slaves. Everywhere he plundered temples and private dwellings with perfect impartiality. Pious Greeks held that the crowning atrocity of his life was com- mitted when he took the precious robe of Hera a masterpiece of the embroiderer's art which formed the pride of her temple near Croton, and sold it to the Carthaginians for 120 talents ($135,000). In 383 B.C. Dionysius became involved in a third war with THE WEST 416 368-367 B.C. Carthage ; it lasted but a single year, and led to no decisive results, save that Selinus fell back into the hands of the barbarian. But the Carthaginians could advance no further east, and it was evident that Dionysius's power formed a complete barrier to their making further conquests in Sicily. A fourth war, which broke out in 368 B.c.^ was equally indecisive ; the Syracusans seized all the Carthagin- ian territory up to the gates of Lilybaeum, but were unable to take that fortress, so that peace had once more to be concluded on the basis of uti possidetis in 367 b.c.^ just after the decease of Dionysius. The last twenty years of Dionysius's rule were outwardly full of prosperity. Syracuse seemed the greatest and most flourishing city in the Greek world, and formed the center of an empire reach- ing from Croton to Acragas. Twenty thousand veteran merce- naries served beneath the Syracusan banner, so that Dionysius was even able to interfere with events across the Ionian Sea, and is found several times influencing the course of politics in old Greece. His magnificent embassies attracted the admiration of the lovers of pomp and the hatred of the lovers of liberty when they appeared at the Olympic games. He took in hand schemes of extraordinary scope, such as that of building a wall right across the southern pen- insula of Italy from sea to sea, in order to keep out the advancing Lucanians. In the midst of all his toils of state he found time to compose poems and tragedies, and wrote with sufficient merit to win the first prize at Athens, in the Dionysia of 386 B.C. But his life, if brilliant and many-sided, was anxious and wearing; his suspicions gave him no rest, and in 367 B.C. he died, aged not much over sixty, leaving a secure throne, a full treasury, and a veteran army to his son and namesake, Dionysius II. Dionysius the younger, though not destitute of ability, was far from possessing the restless energy and grim determination of his father. He cared little for military matters, and thought more of the splendor than the power of the tyrant's position. Vain, idle, and capricious, he was ready to hand over authority to others, pro- vided that he reaped the credit, and was not troubled with the cares of administration. But he would not trust any man for long. At first he put the government in the hands of his wife's father, Dion a grave personage of a philosophic turn of mind, who tried to convert the Syracusan tyranny into a model monarchy, and brought over the philosopher Plato to train Dionysius into an ideal king. 416 GREECE 367-346 B.C. The young tyrant took keenly to philosophy for a short time, but found his teachers too tiresome and exacting, and ere long banished Dion and sent Plato home. For seven or eight years Dionysius held his father's empire together without any conspicuous failures; for, although indolent and vain, he was neither cruel, reckless, nor stupid. But he was not the man either to win the loyalty or to awe the minds of his subjects; and when Dion who had been for several years employed in gathering men and money in old Greece suddenly landed in Sicily, a general insurrection took place. First the smaller Siceliot towns threw open their gates to Dion, then the Syracusans rose, and after a sharp fight drove the tyrant's merce- naries into the citadel of Ortygia. Dionysius, who had been absent on an expedition to Italy, returned to find himself master of noth- ing more than the island fortress. The siege of Ortygia lasted for many months, and Dion suffered several reverses before he suc- ceeded in starving out the tyrant's garrison. Dionysius himself escaped to Locri in Italy, the only one of his father's possessions which he had succeeded in retaining under his power. Dion was now master of Syracuse, and the insurgents who had aided him to expel his son-in-law eagerly waited for the grave philosopher to proclaim the liberty of his native city. But the temptations of power proved too much for Dion ; he installed him- self in the citadel, and showed no signs of dismissing his troops or re-establishing the democratic form of government. When a dema- gogue named Heracleides proposed to cast down the walls of Ortygia, Dion had him put to death. The Syracusans recognized that their efforts had merely replaced an indolent and easy-natured tyrant by an austere one. The city was ripe for rebellion, when the Athenian Callippus a follower of Plato, who had accompanied Dion on his return from exile treacherously slew his friend and fellow-philosopher (353 B.C.). Nine years of chaos followed in Sicily. A succession of mili- tary adventurers disputed with each other for the possession of Syracuse; and so far was liberty being restored to the state, that when, in 346 B.C., the exiled tyrant Dionysius presented himself before the gates of the city, a numerous faction hastened to admit him. His rule had, at any rate, been better than the anarchy which had succeeded it. But Dionysius had taken to habits of drunken- ness and debauchery, and showed himself far from being the easy- going prince that the Syracusans had expected. Moreover, he was THE WEST 417 346-339 B.C. unable to restore the dominion of his father over the other Sicilian cities, and his wars with them cost his subjects much blood and treasure. To add to the woes of the Siceliots, Carthage, who had kept quiet for twenty years, suddenly resumed her attacks on her Hellenic neighbors, and seemed likely to conquer them all, now that no vigorous central power bound the Sicilian cities into a single state. In these evil days the democratic party at Syracuse secretly sent to Corinth, their mother-city, to beg for aid against both the tyrant and the Carthaginians. There was a momentary lull in Greek politics at the time the Sacred war had just ended and the Corinthians consented to lend their help to free their daughter- state. They fitted out a small expedition, and gave the command of it to Timoleon, a stern republican, who had taken part in the slaying of his own brother when that brother endeavored to make himself tyrant of Corinth. Timoleon reached Sicily in safety, and in four brilliant cam- paigns completely liberated the island. He found Dionysius so hard pressed by his enemy Hiketas, tyrant of Leontini, that he was glad to leave Sicily under a safe-conduct, when a new enemy came to attack him. The ex-ruler of Syracuse retired to Corinth, where he long dwelt as a private citizen, an object of curiosity to the whole of Greece. He seems to have borne his fall with considerable equanimity. He showed no vain regrets for his lost power; and, when not engaged in a drinking-bout, employed his time in giving lectures on singing and recitation, or in instructing the boys of Corinth in the art of reading aloud. After he had expelled Dionysius, Timoleon was fiercely at- tacked both by the tyrant Hiketas and by the Carthaginians, who joined their forces to beleaguer Syracuse. Timoleon held them in check till their ill success drove them to suspect each other's faith. The Carthaginians abandoned Hiketas, who was driven off, and after a while besieged in his capital of Leontini and forced to capitulate. Then Timoleon was able to turn against the barbarian enemy. He advanced into the west of the island with a small army of twelve thousand men, and met the Carthaginians, who out- numbered him fivefold, on the banks of the Crimesus. Allowing the enemy to advance unmolested for some time, he suddenly fell upon them while their forces were divided by a ravine and the flooded river. The victory was as decisive as that which Gelo had 418 GREECE 338-336 B.C. won a hundred and forty years before under the walls of Himera. For thirty years the Carthaginians dared not again assail their Hellenic neighbors. Timoleon laid down his power after expelling from Sicily the remaining tyrants, who had seized on the smaller towns during the years of anarchy. He spent an honored old age in the city which he had freed, and had the happiness to die before Syracuse was again troubled by aspirants for tyranny, or molested by the enemy from Africa (336 B.C.). While Sicily had been saved by Timoleon, the Italiots had been far less fortunate. When the Dionysian dynasty fell, the cities recovered their independence, but found themselves exposed to the inroads of the Lucanians, whom the power of Dionysius had long kept in check. The invaders gradually forced their way southward, took the towns of Terina and Hipponium (355 B.C.), and estab- lished themselves firmly in the southern peninsula of Italy, where the sub-tribe of the Bruttians, the vanguard of the oncoming host, formed themselves into a powerful state. Locri, Rhegium, and Croton were barely able to preserve for themselves a small terri- tory close around their own walls. The Tarentines, further to the north, made a better fight, and beat off the Lucanians for some years by calling into their aid King Archidamus of Sparta, the son of the great Agesilaus. When he fell in battle (338 B.C.) he was replaced in command of the Tarentine armies by Alexander, Prince of Epirus, a brilliant warrior, who obtained success after success against the Lucanians and Bruttians, and so broke their power that, though always dangerous, they no longer appeared irresistible to the Italiot states. It was Rome, and not the Lucanians, who was destined to extinguish the liberty of the cities of Magna Graecia; and the arms of Rome were still far off. Chapter XXXVIII LAST YEARS OF SPARTAN HEGEMONY, 387-379 B.C. THE peace of Antalcidas proved quite as profitable to Sparta as the most sanguine of her statesmen had ventured to hope. By it she had dehberately sacrificed the remnant of her possessions in Asia, but at that cost she had broken up the formidable coalition which menaced her supremacy in Europe. The terms of the treaty which announced that " every Hellenic city was to be free and independent " left her own power untouched, because her relations with her smaller neighbors were based, not on bonds of federation, but on separate treaties with each individual state. Moreover, the allied cities were not kept to their allegiance by garrisons, or forced to pay tributes; they were held down each by the Laconizing party within its own walls. Ostensibly, then, the allies of Sparta were " free and independent," and the treaty made no difference in their status. On the other hand, the bonds which had united the enemies of Sparta were broken by the provisions of the peace of Antalcidas. The Boeotian League, which Thebes had tried to keep together by coercing her smaller neighbors, at once flew to pieces. When the peace was proclaimed well-nigh every town in Boeotia threw over the league, asserted its complete independence, and assumed all the attributes of autonomy ^ in a way which had not been seen since 447 B.C., the year in which Thebes had reconstructed the confederacy. Not contented with seeing her enemy crippled in this way, Sparta induced the remnants of the Plataeans, who had dwelt in Attica ever since 430 b.c.^ to return to the site of their ruined city, and to rebuild it in spite of Thebes. It was not only in Boeotia that the peace of Antalcidas brought about changes; in Peloponnesus, Argos and Corinth had united during the war, and fused themselves into a federal state : they were now compelled 1 For example, they all began coining money in their own names, which Thebes had not allowed since the league was reformed after the defeat of Athens in 447 B.C. 419 420 GREECE 422-392 B.C. to separate, and the Laconizing party in Corinth soon brought back their city to its old dependence on Sparta. When affairs had settled down in Greece, and the Spartans once more found themselves firmly established in their old position, they soon showed how little they cared for the wording of the treaty of 387 B.C. when it affected themselves. Ere two years had passed they fell on their Arcadian neighbors, razed the walls of Mantinea, and compelled its citizens to exchange a democratic for an oligarchic form of government. Not long after they turned on Phlius, and restored its exiled aristocracy by force of arms. Such was the way in which Sparta left her neighbors " free and inde- pendent." It was Agesilaus who now directed the policy of his country- men. He had won unbounded glory both by his Asiatic campaigns and by his later achievements in the Corinthian war; this made him the idol of the citizens. Moreover, his ambition was not political, but purely military ; he was therefore able to avoid all conflicts with the ephors, and lived on such good terms with them that they continually lent themselves to his plans. Agesilaus continued the narrow and jealous policy of which Lysander had once been the exponent. He cared nothing for the general needs of Greece, and made it the main object of his life that no state should ever be allowed to grow strong enough to cause Sparta a moment's uneasiness. Ere long this selfish policy was put into practice on a large scale. The Greiek cities on the Macedonian coast, since they had been liberated by Brasidas in 422 B.C., had preserved their independ- ence amid obscure wars with each other, and with the barbarian kings of the inland. At last, about 392 b.c, a number of the states, headed by Olynthus, had formed themselves into a confederacy called the Chalcidian League, from the fact that nearly all its mem- bers lay within the peninsula of Chalcidice. This body was already growing powerful it could put into the field eight thousand hop- lites and a thousand horse and appeared destined to absorb all the Greek states in its neighborhood. Frightened at its progress, the towns of Acanthus and Apollonia, which had no desire to enter the league, sent an embassy to Sparta to beg the ephors to assist them in maintaining their independence. The Chalcidian League had given no cause of offense, and was putting forth its activity in a district where Sparta had not interfered for forty years. SPARTAN HEGEMONY 421 392 B.C. Nevertheless, Agesilaus and his followers were quite ready to take up the quarrel, for the sole reason that they thought that the league might some day grow dangerous. There was a party at Sparta which opposed this reckless inter- vention in so distant a land, on grounds of expediency as well as of public morality. It was headed by the young King Agesipolis ; for, as was usual, the two royal houses had espoused different lines of policy. But Agesilaus and the supporters of vigorous action were far the more powerful, and carried a vote in favor of war at the next meeting of the Apella. It was resolved to raise an army of ten thousand men from among the allies of Sparta, for service against Olynthus and her sister-cities of the Chalcidian League. The main body was not to start till the following spring, but two officers, named Eudamidas and Phoebidas, were sent forward at once the month was now September with about two thousand men destined to garrison Acanthus and Apollonia. The march of Phoebidas took him through Boeotia, and he pitched his camp for one night not far from the walls of Thebes. While he lay there he was surprised by a visit from Leontiades, one of the two polemarchs who were the supreme magistrates in the Theban constitution. Leontiades, who was a violent partisan of oligarchy, was engaged at that moment in a bitter struggle with his fellow-polemarch Ismenias, the head of the democratic and anti- Laconian party in Boeotia. With the true Greek recklessness in matters of faction, Leontiades had resolved to crush his enemy at any sacrifice, even though it involved the ruin of his country. He came to Phoebidas by night, and offered to place him in possession of the Cadmeia, the citadel of Thebes, in return for aid against Ismenias. The Spartan commander was prompt, daring, and utterly unscrupulous; he instantly closed with the offer of Leon- tiades, and undertook to carry out his directions. The Theban pointed out that the next day was the festival of the Thesmophoria, during which the citadel was stripped of guards and handed over to the women of the city, who there celebrated certain rites at which men were not allowed to be present. He himself, as polemarch, was in charge of the gates, and would see that they were open at the preconcerted hour. Sparta and Thebes were at peace, no one suspected treachery, and the town would be taken completely unawares. The next day Phoebidas carried out this monstrous scheme. 422 GREECE 392 B.C. He got his troops in marching order, and started as if he was about to proceed northward on his way toward Chalcidice. But suddenly he swerved from his route, and appeared at midday before the gates of Thebes. There he met Leontiades, who admitted him into the town. The streets were empty in the noontide heat, no man offered opposition, and in a few minutes the Spartans had entered the citadel, and seized as hostages the great crowd of women who were celebrating the festival. Before anyone realized what had happened, Leontiades rode down to the senate house, and an- nounced to the astonished elders of Thebes that their city was in the hands of the Spartans. So great was the panic that no one dared resist the traitor; he was allowed to seize and imprison his rival Ismenias, and to summon a packed assembly of the people, which voted submission to the ancient enemy. Three hundred prominent members of the democratic party left the city at once, and fled to Athens ; but the bulk of the Thebans were so cowed that they acquiesced for the moment in the assumption of power by Leon- tiades and his friends. Thus was planned and executed the most flagrant breach of international morality that Greece ever knew a crime even more wanton than the Athenian capture of Melos, though it involved far less bloodshed than that horrid deed. Men hoped for a moment that Sparta, selfish though she might be, would disown her general's action. And, indeed. King Agesipolis and his fol- lowers, when the news arrived, clamored loudly for the punishment of Phoebidas and the evacuation of the Cadmeia. But Agesilaus promptly rose to defend the general ; he stated his views with the most repulsive and cynical frankness. " We must examine," he said, " the tendency of the action of Phoebidas. Let us consider whether it is advantageous to Sparta. If it is so, it was highly meritorious in him to carry it out, even though he had no authority or orders from home." The Spartans proved as immoral, though not as brazen-faced, as their king; they passed a decree which cen- sured Phoebidas for acting without orders, and imposed a fine on him ; but after this display of hypocrisy they voted in favor of the retention of the Cadmeia, and sent harmosts to Thebes to take command of the garrison. Ismenias they brought to Sparta, and put on his trial for " Medism " on account of his conduct in 395 B.C. It is needless to say that the unfortunate statesman was condemned and executed. SPARTAN HEGEMONY 423 379 B.C. The political extinction of the second state in Greece, which perished in a time of peace, and without being able to strike a blow in self-defense, caused terror everywhere. It seemed as if un- righteousness was about to prosper, since no state dared take Sparta to task, and for three years everything went well with her arms. The Chalcidians, indeed, made a brave defense; they defeated and slew Teleutias, the brother of Agesilaus, who led the first army against them. But King Agesipolis then took the field, captured Torone, and laid siege to Olynthus. He died of a fever before the city fell, but Polybiades, his successor in command, received its surrender. The Chalcidian League was then dissolved, and each of its members enrolled separately as a subject ally of Sparta (379 B.C.). The day was to come, ere that generation had passed away, when Sparta and every state in Greece was destined to lament bitterly the destruction of that vigorous confederacy. It had served to keep back the advancing power of the kings of Macedonia a power which was now left unchecked, and began first to encroach on its Hellenic neighbors, and then to rise into a public danger to the whole of Greece. The same year that saw the fall of Olynthus was destined to mark the end of the good fortune of Sparta. The city which she had most deeply wronged was fated to be her bane. Thebes had now been groaning for three years beneath the yoke of Leontiades and his partisans, the polemarchs Philippus and Archias. Her citizens had hoped at first that some fortunate chance might weaken Sparta, and free them. But when all went well with their oppres- sor, sheer desperation drove the most reckless of the Thebans into forming a conspiracy. The exiles of the democratic party, who mostly resided at Athens, got into communication with the mal- contents at home, and between them a daring and hazardous plot was devised. It was to commence with the assassination of Leon- tiades and the two polemarchs, and to end with an attempt to storm the citadel and expel the Spartan garrison. Seven exiles from Athens, headed by two young men named Melon and Pelopidas, were to undertake the actual slaying of the tyrants, while a citizen named Charon lent them his house as a hiding-place. Phyllidas, the secretary of the polemarchs, who, in spite of his official position, had strong sympathies with the exiles, undertook to forward the scheme. For this purpose he invited his employers to a supper, promising that they should not only drink deep, but enjoy the company of the 424. GREECE 379 B.C. most beautiful women in Thebes. He undertook to introduce the exiles into his house, muffled in female apparel, and left the rest of the business to their hands. On an appointed day the seven exiles passed into Thebes at dusk, disguised as country-folk; they stole one by one into the house of Charon, and remained there till the next evening, when Phyllidas was to give his supper. Before the hour had arrived, however, they were startled by hearing their host receive a sum- mons to appear before the polemarchs. Charon set out in much trepidation, for he feared that the conspiracy had been discovered. But the magistrates had received no definite information; they merely warned him that they had news from Athens that a plot was on foot, and cautioned him against engaging in it. At night- fall the unsuspecting polemarchs entered the house of Phyllidas, and gave themselves up to the pleasures of the table. In the midst of the feast, it is said, a courier arrived from Athens, bearing a dispatch for Archias which revealed the whole plot. But the doomed man thrust the paper unopened beneath the pillow of his couch, exclaiming, " Business to-morrow," an expression which became proverbial. When his guests were heavy with wine, Phyl- lidas introduced the conspirators, who entered the house shrouded in ample robes, and with their faces veiled. They reached the sup- per room unsuspected, and were greeted by the half-drunken guests as the women whom Phyllidas had promised to introduce. Then, casting aside their disguise, they rushed, dagger in hand, on the polemarchs and slew them with repeated blows. But the leader of the oligarchs still remained. Leontiades had not been bidden to the banquet of Phyllidas, and was spending the evening at home. Pelopidas and three more rushed to his house the moment that the polemarchs were dispatched, and knocked at the door. When it was opened they burst in, and found him just about to retire to rest. Leontiades was prompt and active; snatching down his sword from the wall, he leaped to the threshold of his bedroom and slew the first conspirator as he entered. He fought hand to hand with the others, and was only cut down by Pelodipas after a des- perate struggle. The tyrannicides now ran to the public prison, where they contrived to kill the jailer, and to liberate a hundred and fifty political prisoners who were lying in bonds awaiting their trial. These men they furnished with weapons, and then sallied out into SPARTAN HEGEMONY 425 379 B.C. the streets, proclaiming that the tyrants were slain, and inviting all true Thebans to take up arms and join them. So great was the detestation which the rule of Leontiades had inspired that the citi- zens came out in hundreds to join the conspirators. But all might yet have gone wrong if the Spartan officers in the citadel had kept their heads, for the disorderly mob of Thebans might easily have been dispersed by the fifteen hundred men of whom the garrison consisted. But the harmosts, instead of sallying forth, shut the gates of the Cadmeia, and contented themselves with giving shelter to the fugitives of the oligarchic party who ran to seek their succor. When the morning dawned the whole city was in the hands of the insurgents, and several thousand men were already mustering for an attack on the citadel. An informal public assembly had elected Pelopidas, Charon, and Melon as Boeotarchs, and voted its approval of the slaughter of the previous night. Assistance soon came to the Thebans the exiles from Athens joined them, volun- teers arrived from several of the Boeotian towns of the anti-Laco- nian party, and two of the Athenian strategi led an Attic force across Mount Cithaeron to aid in the siege of the citadel. These officers had not obtained any formal authorization from the Ec- clesia, but they knew that the bent of Athenian public opinion was strongly in favor of Thebes, and trusted to win approval by the success of their actions. The Spartan forces in the Cadmeia were now closely beset ; an attempt of the Plataeans to bring aid to them was defeated, and several assaults were delivered upon the wall. The stormers were beaten back, but their fierceness seemed to in- crease after each repulse, and the harmosts, who were men of utter incapacity, lost all hope of ultimate success. After three or four days they made overtures for surrender, which were gladly ac- cepted. Accordingly the garrison marched out of the citadel, leaving their friends, the Theban oligarchs, to be massacred by the mob, and took the road for the Isthmus. At Megara they met a large Peloponnesian army under King Cleombrotus, which was hastening to their succor. The Spartans were wildly enraged with the officers, who had made such a feeble defense in such a strong fortress as the Cadmeia. With a severity which can hardly be blamed, they put to death two of the harmosts, and sent the third into exile. Chapter XXXIX UPRISING OF THEBES, 379-371 B.C. ALTHOUGH Thebes had freed herself for the moment, /% there was no great expectation in Greece of her proving X JL aljle to defend the liberty she had regained. Sparta was at the height of her strength, and imvexed by any other enemy; if Thebes, with Corinth, Athens, and Argos to back her, had proved unable to overthrow the Lacedaemonian power in the struggle of 395-387 B.c.^ what chance was there of her success when she plunged into war without the aid of even her own Boeotian neighbors ? But however dark their prospects might appear, the Thebans were resolved to fight to the bitter end ; even destruction was pref- erable to submission to an enemy so treacherous and hypocritical as Sparta. Nor was the war so desperate as it seemed ; at this moment there was no Lacedaemonian general who possessed an atom of military genius save Agesilaus, and Agesilaus was now verging on old age he had reached his fifty-ninth year and was no longer always in the field. Thebes, on the other hand, hap- pened to have at her disposal the two most brilliant men that she ever reared a happy chance, for great names were always rare in Boeotia. The first of these was Pelopidas, one of the leaders of the late conspiracy a fiery young man, possessing more than an ordinary share of military talent. He was a brilliant leader of cavalry, quick to seize an opportunity and prompt at delivering a sudden blow. From his first campaign he won the hearts of his soldiers, and never failed to make them follow wherever he might lead. But first among his merits was the fact that, unlike most Greek generals, he was as unselfish as he was brave, and never refused to cooperate zealously with a colleague, or to carry out plans which were not his own. When Athens had owned Aristeides and Themistocles, and in another generation Cimon and Pericles, those great citizens had put themselves at the head of opposing factions, and done much to 26 UPRISING OF THEBES 427 379 B.C. neutralize each other's powers; but, to the singular good fortune of Thebes, it chanced that Pelopidas was the bosom-friend of the warrior-statesman Epaminondas, the best man that Boeotia ever reared. If Pelopidas was the right hand of Thebes, Epaminondas was her brain. He combined intellectual with moral excellence to a degree higher than was reached by any other Greek statesman in any age. Pericles only can be fairly compared with him, and the great Athenian was decidedly inferior to the Theban in the breadth of his sympathies ; for while Pericles worked for Athens alone, and showed no great regard for Greece, Epaminondas was as zealous in what he wrought for the general good of the Hellenic race as in his service to his own native city. Moreover, Pericles was at the best an average general, while Epaminondas showed the highest military skill, and revolutionized the whole art of war among his countrymen. Epaminondas came of an ancient but impoverished family, and through all his brilliant career lived a life of honorable poverty. But though poor, he had acquired the best culture of the age; he had studied music, rhetoric, and philosophy, without be- coming vain, affected, or unpractical. No Greek was ever more free from the vices which beset the statesman; ambition and self- interest never exercised the slightest influence on his actions. His sense of honor was so strong that he even refused to take an active part in the plot which freed his native city, because it involved vio- lence, treachery, and assassination. When, however, the oligarchs had been slain, he was the first citizen of Thebes that came out in arms to join the insurgents, and his eloquent pleading drew over many adherents to the cause of liberty. But Epaminondas was not merely just, patriotic, and unselfish; he possessed the broadest political ideas of any Greek statesman that ever lived. It was his aim to induce all the Hellenic cities to live together in unity, without that continual strife for pre-eminence and domination which had hitherto been the curse of the race. He did not fight in order to destroy Sparta, or to make Thebes mistress of an empire; he desired only to curb the former's power of doing harm, and to place his own city first among the band of her equals. Indeed, his want of that selfish and aggressive local patriotism which characterized the average Greek was the one thing which hampered his influence at home. The Thebans sometimes complained that he loved Hellas more than his native town ; and though the taunt was untrue, it serves to indicate the bent of his character. In 379 B.C. Epaminon- 428 GREECE 379-378 B.C. das was merely known as a man of mark and a friend of freedom ; that he was also a great general and a great statesman the history of the succeeding years will show. Thebes had been liberated late in the year, and it was in the very depth of winter that King Cleombrotus led into Boeotia a Pelo- ponnesian army hastily raised for the purpose of relieving the garrison of the Cadmeia. When the king found that the citadel had fallen, he displayed great irresolution. After penetrating into the Theban territory and stopping there sixteen days without offer- ing battle, he suddenly disbanded his army and returned home, leaving, however, a force of several thousand men to protect Thespiae the most friendly to Sparta of all the towns of Boeotia. This detachment was commanded by a rash and reckless officer named Sphodrias, who now did his best to bring trouble on Sparta. The Athenians were, on mature reflection, much frightened at their own boldness in having unofficially aided *n the hueration of Thebes. To disarm the wrath of Sparta they punished the two strategi who joined the Boeotians, and endeavored to clear the state of all complicity in their actions. Sphodrias chose this moment, when Athens was anxious for peace, to inflict on her the worst of insults. He formed a wild scheme for surprising the city by night, and seizing it in the same way that Phoebidas had seized Thebes five years before. Accordingly, he secretly drew his men down to the Attic frontier, and made a forced march on Athens. But his management was as bad as his intentions; daylight surprised him when he was in the middle of the Thriasian plain, ten miles from the city, and he then turned ignominiously and retreated to Megara. But his plan stood revealed, and roused the Athenians to the wildest wrath. They reflected that there was no use in en- deavoring to conciliate a city whose generals were capable of such acts, and boldly declared war on Sparta.^ Thus Thebes was pro- vided with a powerful ally in her hour of need. In the early summer of 378 B.C. the ephors prevailed on Ages- ilaus to take the field. The old king gathered a large army and marched to crush Thebes. He found the passes of Cithaeron guarded by a mixed force of Athenians and Thebans, but forced a way through with his usual skill. Descending into the plain, he 1 Spliodrias was prosecuted at Sparta for his action, but acquitted on the recommendation of Agcsilaus, who now (as previously in the case of Phoebidas) pleaded that the offender had striven to do his best for Lacedaemon. UPRISING OF THEBES 429 378-376 B.C. found that the Thebans had drawn a strong line of entrenchments along their frontier; but this hindrance, too, he succeeded in pass- ing, and so penetrated close to Thebes. But the enemy, though they would not give him battle, hung so closely on his heels that he could not form the siege of the city, awl finally had to retire with nothing accomplished. To the Thebans this year's fighting brought one cause of exultation ; in the autumn they surprised and slew their old enemy Phoebidas. Next year Agesilaus reappeared with a larger army, and again forced his way into the Theban territory; he laid it waste with the utmost barbarity, felling fruit- trees, blocking wells, and burning every building in the district; but once more he was unable either to make the Thebans fight or to besiege their city. In short, as a contemporary remarked, the king had only given his enemies an instructive lesson in the art of war, and done them no material harm. These two campaigns lowered the prestige of Sparta to a vast degree; her best general, with the whole force of Peloponnesus at his back, had proved himself un- able to make any impression on a foe whom he had expected to crush at the first encounter. Moreover, on his return, Agesilaus met with an accident at Megara which confined him to his bed for many months, and so shook his health that for several years he was not able to take the field.^ Cleombrotus replaced him at the head of the army of invasion in 376 b.c.^ but, having little or no military skill, was not even able to force the passes across Cithaeron, and returned without having set foot in Boeotia. Meanwhile the Athenians had been prosecuting a naval war against the allies of Sparta with some success. They had renewed the maritime league with Byzantium and Rhodes which Thrasy- bulus had formed in 390 b.c._, and had induced several other states, including Chios and Mitylene, to join it. The members of this alliance agreed to furnish ships and money for an attack on Pelo- ponnesus, and appointed a joint board to sit at Athens and direct the war. In order to avoid recalling the odious memories of the Con- federacy of Delos, the name of the war fund was changed from " tribute " {f6po?rsis pace, their left wing far in advance, according to Epaminondas's new order of battle. The fighting opened by a cavalry charge on the extreme left flank, by which the Boeotian horsemen drove the Laconian off the field. Then the heavy column of Theban hoplites came into action ; it bore down with perfect accuracy on the point where the king and his native Spartans were stationed. The first shock of the charge thrust it deep into the line of the enemy. Cle- ombrotus himself fell, and was borne off the field by his body- guard, but for a moment the battle stood still. The Spartan line UPRISING OF THEBES 435 371 B.C. held together like iron, and would not give back a foot, while the Perioeci beside them began to close in on the flank of the Theban column. This movement was checked by Pelopidas, who had been stationed in the rear of the Thebans, in command of three hundred chosen hoplites, known as the " Sacred Band," with special orders to move out and protect the main body in case of any such attempt. Meanwhile the critical moment of the fight had come; the Spartans, though they fought and fell every man in his place, could no longer resist the pressure of the massive Theban column, " Give me a step more," cried Epaminondas to his men, "and the day is ours! " With one final heave the Thebans burst through the enemy's line, and rolled it up to right and left. The day was won. In the few minutes of desperate fighting four hundred out of the seven hundred Spartans had fallen, including nearly every officer in the field. Over a thousand Laconian Perioeci lay dead beside them, and the rem- nants of the right wing rushed back in confusion towards the Spartan camp. The result which Epaminondas had foreseen im- mediately came to pass; the Peloponnesians in the center and left wing of Cleombrotus's army would not stand firm, when they saw their dreaded masters beaten from the field. Although the Boeo- tian center had hardly come into touch with them, and the right wing was still some way off, they gave ground and retreated in good order to the camp. The few surviving Spartan officers tried to make them return to the fight, pointing out that they still out- numbered the Boeotians ; but they utterly refused to face the enemy in a second struggle. Then it became necessary to acknowledge the defeat, and the heralds went forth to ask from Epaminondas a truce to bury the dead. So ended the day of Leuctra, the first battle in which a Spartan king and army had been worsted in fair fight by inferior numbers in the open field. It gave the death-blow to the military system which had ruled in Greece down to that day, and cast the whole fabric of the Spartan domination in ruins to the ground. Never again was the Peloponnesian confederacy to muster in force at the command of its suzerain for a campaign beyond the Isthmus, nor a king of the race of the Heraclidae to set a host in battle array on the plain of Boeotia. Chapter XL THEBAN PREDOMINANCE, 371-362 B.C. THE news of the battle of Leuctra set all Greece in commo- tion ; every city in the land began at once to cast about and revise its policy in view of the altered aspect of affairs. Sparta alone affected to treat her defeat as one of the ordinary chances of war: when the fatal tidings reached the city, the ephors prohibited all public signs of grief. The festival of the Gymno- paidia was at its height, but they refused to allow it to be inter- rupted. When they sent to each home the names of those who had fallen, they added an order that the women w^ere to refrain from open lamentations. Next day the relatives of those who had been slain were to be seen in the streets with calm and serene coun- tenances ; while those whose sons and brothers survived hid them- selves in shame, because their kinsmen had transgressed Spartan custom by escaping with their lives from a lost field. A few days later the ephors called out an army to march to the relief of the force in Boeotia, which was now blockaded in its entrenched camp. To provide an adequate corps of Spartans they were obliged to send into the field every citizen up to fifty-eight years of age. But this last levy of Lacedaemon was not fated to fight, for they met their friends already on the march home, and returned with them. Epaminondas had refused to allow his troops to storm the camp of the defeated army. Knowing the profound discourage- ment which pervaded the Peloponnesian host, he preferred to allow it to break up, without wasting any lives in further fighting. Many of the demoralized allies deserted their comrades without delay; the remainder were so ill-disposed that the Spartan officers humbled themselves to ask for a free departure. The moment that it was conceded they slunk off by night, and retreated by forced marches till they met the force that had been sent out to succor them. The leniency with which the Theban general treated the enemy seems to have been caused in a large measure by the fact that, just 4^6 THEBAN PREDOMINANCE 437 371 B.C. after Leuctra had been fought, a new army had appeared in Boeotia. This force belonged to Jason of Pherae, a personage whose move- ments had of late grown important. The great but faction-ridden race of the Thessalians was for the moment united under his hand, and constituted a power whose attitude Thebes was bound to watch with the keenest vigilance. Jason was the son-in-law and successor of a citizen of Pherae, named Lycophron, who had made himself tyrant of his native town about 405 b.c. When he died he left his principality and his large army of mercenaries to Jason, who, in a checkered and eventful reign of about twenty years, gradually re- duced all Thessaly under his scepter. In 373 b.c. Pharsalus, the last independent city in the land, fell into his hands; he then re- organized the Thessalian League, which had long been a mere name, and had himself formally created Tagus, or generalissimo, of the confederation. By his firm but just rule he bound together thirty bickering cities into a powerful federal state. When united, the Thessalians were the most numerous race in Greece, so ere long Jason could take the field with eight thousand horse, twenty thousand hoplites, and a great multitude of light troops. His strength was very threatening to his neighbors, and it was all- important to Thebes to know what his intentions were with regard to the war with Sparta. He finally declared himself on the Theban side, and when the campaign of 371 B.C. opened, set out southward, announcing that he was about to join Epaminondas; but, whether intentionally or not, he came just too late for the battle of Leuctra. When he arrived he refrained from attacking the Spartans, and ad- vised their free dismissal. His army was so large and his inten- tions so doubtful that the Thebans did not breathe freely till he had departed. It did not reassure them to learn that on his return march he had sacked the Phocian town of Hyampolis, and seized the strong fortress of Heraclea-Trachis, the outwork of the pass of Thermopylae. Uncertainty as to the future conduct of Jason kept the Theban Government from committing itself too incautiously to the prose- cution of the war with Sparta. For the present they did nothing more than make things sure at home. Epaminondas marched against Orchomenus, which had clung to Sparta to the last, and then against Thespiae, whose contingent had been withheld from the army that fought at Leuctra. Both places submitted; then the Thebans, incensed at the disloyalty to Boeotia which each of 438 GREECE 370 B.C. them had displayed, talked of putting their inhabitants to the sword. But Epaminondas brought his countrymen to a better mind ; Orchomenus was merely deprived of its walls, and the Thespians were banished instead of slain. Meanwhile, the states which bordered on Boeotia had taken the results of Leuctra to heart ; the Phocians, Locrians, Euboeans, Aetolians, and Arcana- nians all concluded treaties of friendship and alliance with Thebes, and promised the aid of their troops in the next campaign against Sparta. At one city only were the Theban ambassadors received with coldness, and denied a friendly hearing. The Athenians, though they had so lately been leagued with Thebes, showed marked dis- gust at the complete triumph achieved by their former allies. They would have preferred a balance of power to the complete triumph of either party. The next year (370 B.C.) was crowded with important events both in the Peloponnesus and in Northern Greece. When the spring came round, Jason of Pherae announced his intention of ap- pearing at Delphi during the approaching Pythian festival. Os- tensibly he was merely about to do sacrifice to Apollo in honor of the union of Thessaly, and countless victims were collected for the hecatombs which were to mark his gratitude to Heaven. But he was also to be accompanied by a large army, and the states of Central Greece were much alarmed at the prospect of his arrival. The Delphians themselves are said to have inquired of their oracle " what they were to do if Jason touched the temple-treasure " ; the answer came that " the god himself would see to the matter." And, indeed, Jason never reached Delphi. As he sat in state at Pherae giving audience to petitioners, seven young men approached him in the guise of litigants, and while he listened to them sprang upon him and slew him with dagger thrusts. His throne fell to his brothers, Polydorus and Polyphron, men of little merit or dis- tinction, who showed no signs of carrying out his ambitious schemes. Meanwhile the Peloponnesus was full of stir and change, for the ancient state-system of the peninsula had at last broken up, and in many districts at once local autonomy was asserted. Tlie Mantineans rebuilt the walls which had been cast down in 385 b.c. In Tegea civil war broke out, and the Laconizing party were massacred by their opponents. The Eleians took the field T PI E B A N r R E D M I N A N C E 439 370 B.C. to conquer the small neighboring states whom Sparta had prevented from falling into their hands. In Argos the confusion was at its worst. The rival factions, however, instead of com- bining to declare war on Sparta, fell to blows with each other; the oligarchic party was crushed, and the democrats began a series of massacres, in which no less than twelve hundred citizens were slain without any pretense of trial or judgment. This slaughter known as " the reign of Club-law " (axuTaJ.'.fTp.6i^ was the worst out- break of mob violence ever known in Greece, and cost more lives than even the great Corcyrean sedition. For the first time in their history the Spartans made no vig- orous attempt to strike down their revolted allies, before help from the north should reach them. The ephors found themselves re- duced to the resources of Laconia alone, and were unable to put more than a few thousand troops into the field, for many of the Perioeci were discovered to be disaffected and untrustworthy. So great was the want of men that the survivors of Leuctra were allowed to retain their full rights of citizenship, which they had forfeited by their flight from the field; but, as King Ages- ilaus observed, " on this one occasion the laws must be allowed to sleep." Only one stroke was attempted against the rebel states. Agesilaus, though now sixty-seven years of age, led a small army against Mantinea. So low were the spirits of the Spartans fallen that he was considered to have done well when he drove the Mantineans within their newly built walls, and ravaged their territory. Isolated revolts of Peloponnesian towns had been common enough, and if the rising of 370 B.C. had been like those of 421 and 395 B.C., Sparta might have hoped for better days. But the rebel towns of Arcadia now showed a disposition which they had never before exhibited; instead of striking for local independence, they began to federate themselves. Mantinea and Tegea, acting for once in union, joined with well-nigh all the smaller states in the land to revive the ancient Arcadian League, which had prac- tically ceased to exist ever since Sparta became the ruler of Pelopon- nesus,^ Nor was the union merely formal ; the tribes and cities resolved to sacrifice their local ties, and to join in building a federal 1 It must have existed in some purely formal fashion till about 430 B.C., as coins are found bearing its title down to that date, though it is never mentioned in history after the second Messenian vt'ar, 644 b.c. 440 GREECE 370 B.C. capital, which all should acknowledge as the center and pledge of Arcadian unity. A spot was chosen in the valley of the Helisson, a tributary of the Alpheus, in the largest and most fertile plain of the land, and there the ground-plan of a spacious city was marked out by a body of commissioners chosen equally from the various states. They named it Megalopolis, " the great city," as an augury of its future strength and power. Within it place was assigned for settlers from various parts of Arcadia, while the Parrhasian tribe within whose boundaries it was built were invited to remove thither en masse. For the future government of the country, it was provided that a numerous delegation from each city should assemble from time to time at Megalopolis, to settle all federal busi- ness : this body was unhappily for the future of the league made of unwieldy size, no less than ten thousand in number. ' In addition, a federal army and revenue was established ; the states agreeing to tax themselves in order to maintain five thousand liop- lites, called the Epanti, as a standing force. Two only of the Arcadian states adhered to Sparta and refused to come into the league Heraea, whose former prominence in Western Arcadia was overshadowed by the new capital ; and Orchomenus, who cherished an ancestral hatred for the Mantineans. Isolated in the midst of their federalist neighbors, these states had much ado to preserve their independence. In the late summer of 370 b.c.^ when Central Greece had been freed from all danger of disturbance by the death of Jason of Pherae, Epaminondas led down into the Peloponnese a great army, where Locrians, Euboeans, Phocians, and all the other new allies of Thebes served side by side with his Boeotian troops. His arrival served to show which states had finally broken with Sparta, and which were still resolved to hold with their old suzerain. The Arcadians, Ele'ians, and Argives at once joined him in arms; the Achaians preserved an impassive neutrality: only the people of Corinth, Sicyon, Epidaurus, Hermione, and Phlius shut their gates, and maintained their loyalty to Sparta. Epaminondas had resolved not to waste time in reducing the allies of Sparta, but to march straight on the enemy's stronghold in the valley of the Eurotas, and bring the war to a close by crushing the Lacedaemonians or forcing them to accept terms of peace. The Argives, Eleians, and Arcadians joined him at Mantinea, and the invasion of Laconia was at once taken in hand. THE BAN PREDOMINANCE 441 370 B.C. Not less than seventy thousand men set out on the expedition; it was the largest army that Greece had seen since the muster at Plataea in 479 B.C. The season was late, and Epaminondas's legal term of office as Boeotarch w'as just at its end; but his col- leagues, persuaded by Pelopidas, agreed to continue the campaign under his leadership, and to allow him the glory of ending the w^ork which he had begun at Leuctra. The situation of the Lacedaemonians was now apparently hopeless. Sparta was a long straggling town, unprotected by wall or ditch ; she was cut off from her few remaining allies, unable to put two thousand citizens into the field so low had the number of the Spartiates sunk uncertain even how far she might depend on her own Perioeci, and assailed by foes who had the grudges of many generations to satisfy. Nevertheless the ephors showed no signs of yielding ; once more they gave the conduct of the war to Agesilaus, and bade him do his best. Amid the wailing of the women, " who had never before seen the smoke of an enemy's camp fire," the last army of Lacedaemon was put into the field. The old king, in spite of the risk of rebellion, promised freedom to every Helot who should take up arms this gave him six thousand troops ; he called out such of the Perioeci as were faithful, contrived to gather round him some scanty reinforcements sent from Corinth and Orchomenus, and stood at bay behind barricades thrown across the outlets of the town. Resisting with equal firmness the counsels of the timid, who bade him make peace, and of the desperate, who wished to sally out and end the Spartan race in a new Thermopylae, he maintained a cautious defensive position. Epaminondas circled round the town, looking for an unguarded entry, but every street bristled with spears, and when he attempted to force his way in, near the temple of the Dioscuri, he met with a bloody repulse. Impressed by the courage of the enemy, or perhaps unwilling to " put out one of the eyes of Greece," the Theban passed on down the Eurotas valley without delivering a general assault on the town. Burning village after village of the Perioeci, he finally came to the sea, and destroyed Gytheum, the naval arsenal of the Spartans. Then, turning northwestward, he crossed Mount Taygetus and passed on into Messenia. Here he had a long-projected task to execute. Before the invasion began, he had proclaimed his intention of rescuing Mes- senia from the Spartan yoke and re-establishing its ancient inde- 442 GREECE 369 B.C. pendence. He had summoned to his side the descendants of the Messenians who had been driven by Lysander from Naupactus and even those of the earher exiles who had settled in Sicily. Now he was able to fulfill his promise: marching to Mount Ithome, the ancient sanctuary and citadel of the land, where Aris- todemus had fortified himself in the first Messenian war, he laid the foundations of a city on its southern slope, and marked out the walls of an Acropolis on its summit. The Helots rose in arms to join their exiled brethren who had returned from the west, and all united to hail Epaminondas as the founder of a new nation. Messene became the sister-town of Megalopolis, and exhibited a strength and vigor to which the Arcadian city never attained. From the first the new foundation completely served its purpose ; the power of Sparta now stopped short at Mount Taygetus, and the old masters of Messenia were never able even for a moment to reconquer the lands of their revolted serfs. The spring of 369 B.C. was already at hand when Epaminondas returned from his Peloponnesian expedition. He had thus out- stayed the legal term of his office by nearly four months an informality for which his political opponents in Thebes endeavored to impeach him on his arrival ; but they were hooted down by tlie voice of public approval, and Epaminondas was re-elected Boeotarch for the current year. Athens, as we have already mentioned, had received with marked disfavor the news of the battle of Leuctra ; but sullen though she might appear at the success of her late allies, it Vv^as not expected that her envy would lead her into breaking off all her recent ties, and joining herself to the waning cause of Sparta. Such, nevertheless, was to be the case ; after endeavoring in vain to induce the Peloponnesian cities to form a league of neutrals, in- stead of joining the Theban alliance, she finally took the decisive step of receiving a Spartan embassy which came Vo pray for help. All the old pleas that Cimon had cited in a similar crisis just a hundred years before were adduced to move the pity of the Athenians, and fell upon not unwilling ears. The Ecclesia by a large majority voted an alliance with Sparta, and Iphicrates now well advanced in years, but still able to take the field was commissioned to lead an Athenian contingent into the Pelopon- nesus. The terms of accommodation with Sparta, in order to mark the absolute e(|uality of the two contracting powers, contained the THEBAN PREDOMINANCE 443 369 B.C. absurd provision that the command of the alHed forces, both by sea and land, should be entrusted alternately to Spartan and Athe- nian officers at intervals of five days. The strength of the new treaty was put to the test when Epaminondas set out for a second invasion of Peloponnesus in the summer of 369 b.c.^ about three months after the conclusion of the first raid. The allies resolved to endeavor to hold the line of the Isthmus against him. Accordingly they hastily repaired the old rampart which ran from sea to sea, and set themselves to guard the two roads which led to it, the Athenians holding the eastern path along the gulf of Aegina, the Lacedaemonians the western one on the shore of the gulf of Corinth. But Epaminondas, by a skillful attack made in the dusk of dawn, completely broke through the line on the Spartan side, and made his way into the peninsula. The Arcadians, Argives, and Eleians marched up to join him, and their united army laid siege to Sicyon, one of Sparta's few remain- ing allies. That city ere long opened its gates to them ; but they were less successful in an attempt on Epidaurus, and suffered a decided reverse when they attempted to take by surprise the great and strong city of Corinth. Here Epaminondas was brought to a standstill ; the enemy refused to give battle, but were yet so strong they had just been reinforced by some mercenary troops sent by Dionysius of Syracuse and so firmly based on the fortress in their rear, that they could not he neglected. Hence the summer went by without any decisive event, and all that Epaminondas had gained was the possession of Sicyon, and the security that Messene and Megalopolis might finish their walls unmolested, while the Lace- daemonian army was employed in the north. On his return home he was coldly received, and not re-elected Boeotarch.^ The next year saw Thebes engaged in a new series of com- plications, which distracted her attention from the affairs of Peloponnesus, and caused her to strike less vigorous blows against Sparta than she would otherwise have done. Polyphron and Poly- dorus, the brothers of Jason of Pherae, had met with violent deaths, and their place was now held by their kinsman, Alexander.-*^ The new tyrant was not destitute of ability, but he was so reckless and 2 His enemies accused him of having spared the flying Spartans in the fight at the Isthmus, when he might have slain them all a charge rather to his credit than otherwise. 3 Son-in-law of Jason and also a distant relative. 444 GREECE 363 B.C. savage that he soon shattered the confederacy which Jason had taken so many years to organize. The nobles of Larissa broke out into rebelHon, and called in the king of Macedonia to their help, so that for the first time in history Macedonian troops were seen within the borders of Hellas. Other towns summoned Thebes to their aid. Disregarding their old alliance with Jason, the Thebans sent an army across Mount Othrys, to settle the affairs of Thessaly. Pelopidas, who was in command, drove the Macedonians from Larissa, and compelled the tyrant of Pherae to acknowledge the independence of the cities which had revolted fromi him (368 e.g.). But this interference was to be the beginning of many troubles for Thebes. Alexander never forgave it, and waited his opportunity for revenge. When Thessaly was quiet, Pelopidas marched on into Macedonia, and compelled its monarch to conclude peace, and to give as hostages for his fidelity thirty noble youths, including his own brother Philip, destined just thirty years after to enter Thebes as a conqueror instead of a captive. While the Theban arms were occupied in the north, the war in Peloponnesus had not slackened. But its incidents had not been such as Epaminondas would have desired. The two chief allies of Thebes Arcadia and Elis fell to strife over the allegiance of the Triphylians, whom the former acknowledged as members of their league, while the latter claimed them as ancient subjects. The Arcadians were thus left unaided, when their general, Lycomedes of Mantinea, took the field against the Spartans. After obtaining two considerable successes Lycomedes found himself faced at Midea by a Laconian army under Archidamus, the son of King Agesilaus, a young man who possessed all the vigor and some of the genius of his father. The Arcadians suffered a complete de- feat, which was rendered very bloody by a body of Celts, lent to the enemy by Dionysius of Syracuse, who gave no quarter to the flying masses. Of the native Spartans not one man fell, hence they named their victory " The Tearless Battle" (368 B.C.). The Thebans did not appear to avenge the slaughter of their allies, because they had other work in hand in the north. Alex- ander of Plierae had just kidnaped Pelopidas, and thrown him into prison, as he was passing through Thessaly on state business. To rescue their favorite general, the Thebans sent seven thousand men against the tyrant; but this force suffered a check, and only escaped destruction because its leaders besought Epaminondas, who was THE BAN PREDOMINANCE 445 368-367 B.C. serving in the ranks as a mere hoplite, to take the command out of their hands, and rescue the army. That great general extricated the troops, and got them safely back through the passes of Othrys. On hearing of this mismanaged business, the Theban assembly deposed the incompetent generals, fined each of them ten thousand drachmae, and gave the command to Epaminondas. After re- ceiving reinforcements he marched again into Thessaly, and in a few days reduced Alexander to such straits that he surrendered Pelopidas and asked for terms of peace (winter of 368-7). The result of the " Tearless Battle " raised the Spartans from the hopeless dejection into which they had fallen since Leuctra, and encouraged them to persevere with the war. They were also buoyed up by hopes of aid from Persia, for Ariobarzanes, satrap of the Hellespont, had just sent them a sum of m.oney and two thousand mercenary troops. But their expectations from this quar- ter were not fulfilled; in the next year the Thebans sent Pelopidas as ambassador to Susa, and induced the Great King to withdraw his patronage from Sparta and transfer it to themselves. The send- ing of this embassy was one of the few unworthy steps taken by Thebes during her hegemony; for she utilized the favor of King Artaxerxes II. by getting him to issue a rescript, in which, as guarantor of the terms of the peace of Antalcidas, he presumed to dictate to the Greeks, and commanded the Arcadians to relinquish their pretensions against EHs, the Lacedaemonians to acknowledge the independence of Messene, and the Athenians to lay up their war navy. Naturally the states concerned disregarded these commands ; for, as Antiochus the Arcadian indignantly remarked, " the Great King has an infinite number of bakers, cooks, cup-bearers, and door- keepers, but of men fit to face Greek hoplites not one." But though Artaxerxes was weak and far away, the Thebans were strong and near at hand, and their arms were ready to support the terms of the rescript. In 367 B.C. Epaminondas, now again Boeotarch, made his third inroad into Peloponnesus. Concerting measures with the Argives, he forced the lines of Corinth by a joint attack from outside and from within. Then marching into Achaia he induced its cities who had hitherto been neutral to join the Theban alliance, on the understanding that their internal constitution should not be meddled with. The Theban Government, however, broke these terms, and sent garrisons and harmosts into the towns, in spite of the remon- 446 G R E E C K 397 D.C. strances of Epaminondas. This ill-faith had its deserts, for the Achaians soon rose in arms, drove out their garrisons, and joined the Spartans as zealous allies ; thus the results of the campaign of 367 B.C. were entirely wasted. But the Thebans were perhaps consoled by a fortunate chance, which enabled them in the same autumn to seize Oropus, the frontier town of Attica, on the Euboic Strait a place over which Boeotian and Athenian had waged countless conflicts. This loss greatly irritated the Athenians, who called on their Peloponnesian allies to aid them to recover Oropus ; but the Spartans and Corinthians had too much to occupy them at home, and refused to stir. Their apathy provoked the Athenians into a treacherous attempt to seize the Acropolis of Corinth, which met with a well-deserved failure. The incident, however, so frightened the Corinthians that they retired from the war, obtaining from Thebes terms which allowed them to preserve neutrality. Their neighbors of Phlius and Epidaurus at once followed their example. Sparta would have felt the defection of Corinth very deeply, if she had not succeeded in replacing her by Elis, a yet more power- ful ally. The Eleians and Arcadians, after four years' bickering about their frontiers, had at last broken into open w^ar. As Ar- cadia was violently hostile to Sparta, the Eleians immediately made peace and alliance w'ith that power. This somewhat changed the aspect of affairs in Peloponnesus ; the friends of Thebes Argos, Arcadia, and Messene being no longer much more powerful than her enemies Achaia, Elis, Lacedaemon. The first conflicts of the new war, however, were decidedly in favor of the Arcadians, and next year they felt themselves so strong that they ventured on an action wdiich had not been attempted since the days of Pheidon of Argos, three hundred years ago. It was the year of the Olympic festival, and the usual multitude had gathered from every part of the Greek world to attend the great celebration. When the opening day drew near, the Arcadians marched down the Alpheus valley, and seized Olympia, proclaiming that they, and not the Eleians, should for the future preside over the games. Tliis roused Elis to f-ury; the whole force of the state, strengthened l3y volunteers from Achaia, moved on Olympia, where they found a large Arcadian and Argive army waiting to oppose them. In the midst of the festival " the chariot race was over, and the wrestlers T H E B A N PREDOMINANCE 447 363 B.C. were contending between the stadium and the altar " the Eleians burst into the sacred precincts, driving the routed Arcadians before them. But the latter rallied among the buildings, casting missiles from the porticos and from the roof of the great temple of Zeus, and at last brought the Eleians to a standstill. Next day the con- flict was renewed, the Arcadians defending- themselves behind bar- ricades composed of the costly tents and booths which the holiday- making public had erected. They finally drove off the enemy, and completed the interrupted festival ; but no blessing rested on a triumph which the majority of the Hellenes regarded as sacri- legious, since the Eleians were the rightful guardians of the sanctuary. To maintain their hold on Olympia and protect the subjects of Elis whom they had taken into their league, the Arcadians found themselves compelled to keep their standing army, the five thou- sand Epariti, continually in the field. This cost so much money that the finances of the confederacy gave out, and in a moment of need the generals laid hands on the temple treasure at Olympia, and expended much of it on pay and warlike stores. The majority of the federal council voted approval of the measure, but several states chief among them the great town of Mantinea refused to condone the sacrilege. Thus strife arose in Arcadia. The council ordered the imprisonment of the magistrates of Mantinea, on which that city shut its gates against the troops of the league. Public opinion, however, was so much on the side of the Mantineans that the majority submitted, and not only acknowledged their fault, but actually made peace with Elis, restoring Olympia and relin- quishing all claims to its guardianship (363 B.C.). The Arcadians concluded this peace without asking or obtain- ing the consent of their allies of Thebes, although they had Boeotian troops serving in their midst. This slight was deeply felt by the Thebans ; even the equably-minded Epaminondas denounced it as little better than treachery. But their indignation carried them into unjustifiable lengths; a Theban officer, conspiring with the magistrates of Tegea, seized and threw into prison a number of the notables of Mantinea and other places, who were visiting Tegea for a feast in commemoration of the peace with Elis. The prisoners were soon released, but the mischief was done, and the reparation came too late, for Mantinea made peace with Sparta and broke away from the Arcadian League. 448 GREECE 362 B.C. This crisis startled the Thebans, and roused them into sending a great army into Peloponnesus in the next spring. Epaminondas once more headed it, but his old colleague was no longer at his side ; Pelopidas had fallen in battle a few months before. For the third time Alexander of Pherae had come into conflict with Thebes, and Pelopidas, burning to avenge the personal insults the tyrant had put upon him in 368 B.C., had obtained permission to lead the attack upon him. As his army left the gates of Thebes an eclipse occurred, and the soothsayers forbade the expedition to proceed. Unable to get the men to follow, Pelopidas rode off almost alone to Thessaly, and summoned the subjects of Alexander to revolt against their master. The moment that he had been joined by a few thousand men he marched to attack Pherae. The tyrant met him at Cynoscephalae with a great army of mercenaries which doubled the forces of the insurgents. But the vigor of Pelopidas carried all before it; he broke the enemy, and was pressing them hard, when he caught sight of Alexander endeavoring to rally his guards. Forgetting the duty of a general, Pelopidas sprang for- ward to cut the tyrant down, but he was encompassed and slain before his follow^ers could force their w^ay to his help. The Thes- salians mourned him as the founder of their liberty, and buried him with great pomp on the scene of his last victory, Alexander was stripped of all his possessions save Pherae, and reduced to impo- tence; shortly afterwards he was murdered by his wife and his brothers-in-law. For the Peloponnesian campaign of 362 B.C. both sides mus- tered in great strength, Epaminondas crossed the Isthmus with a great host of Boeotians, Thessalians, Euboeans, and was joined at Nemea by the full force of Argos. Then turning west he picked up the contingents of the Arcadian League and Messene, and ad- vanced with thirty thousand men to Tegea. In that position he lay between Sparta and her new allies, the Mantineans, and forced them to communicate with each other by circuitous and difficult mountain ways. However, the Lacedaemonians resolved to succor ]Mantinea ; they placed the aged Agesilaus once more in command, and dis- patched him with their whole available force to join their allies. On this movement Epaminondas had calculated. When he heard that Agesilaus was well started on his long march, he broke up his camp at Tegea and pounced upon Sparta. He was within an ace of taking the city without a blow, " like a nest when the parent- THEBAN PREDOMINANCE 449 362 B.C. birds are away/' ^ but his clever combination was frustrated by treachery. A deserter left the Theban camp by night and reached Agesilaus, to whom he revealed the whole scheme. The old king hurried back at full speed, and by superhuman exertions reached Sparta just before the enemy arrived. Now, as in 370 B.C., he occupied the main outlets with troops, and stood on the defensive. Epaminondas, attacking several points at once, succeeded in thrust- ing one column as far as the market-place ; but as the others were repelled, he was forced to withdraw, and to give up all hopes of taking the town by assault. Hastily changing his plan of operations, the Theban now resolved to make a dash at Mantinea, before the Spartans had time to reinforce it. Accordingly his army slipped away by night, and marched on the unsuspecting city. But chance again intervened ; the Athenians had dispatched a considerable contingent, some six thousand men, to join the Spartans, and the cavalry at the head of this army had entered Mantinea just before the Theban horse ap- peared before its gates. Though weary with their march they had come forty miles by mountain roads that day the Athenians sallied out, and fell upon the enemy with such vigor that they drove them back on Tegea. The Spartans had followed Epaminondas, and now slipped past him and joined the Mantineans and Athenians. A force from Elis and Achaia also arrived, so that the allies mustered twenty thousand foot and two thousand horse an army less by one-third than that of the Theban, yet capable, under cautious management, of keeping him in check. But rash counsels prevailed in the camp, for the Mantinean generals wished to fight, to preserve their terri- tory from plunder. Accordingly, when Epaminondas advanced from Tegea, the allied host drew itself up and offered him battle, their right w'ing resting on Mantinea, their left on a wooded height to the southward. The Mantineans and Spartans held the right, the place of honor, the Athenians the left, w^hile the Eleians and Achaians formed the center; they were drawn out in a con- tinuous line with a thousand cavalry on each flank. Epaminondas had advanced from Tegea somewhat late in the day, and when the enemy saw him holding back and halting his men beneath the hills which face Mantinea, they made the errone- ous but natural deduction that he was not about to fight till the * Xenophon, Hellen. vii. 5, 8. 450 GREECE 362 B.C. morrow. Accordingly the ranks of the hoplites were broken, and the horsemen began to unbridle their horses. The Theban had expected something of the kind, and when he saw the enemy about to retire, suddenly flung his army upon them at a run. His order of battle was the same which had given him victory at Leuctra. The bulk of the cavalry were massed on his left ; next came a heavy column of Boeotians, many shields deep, which ad- vanced parallel with the cavalry; while the center and right wing, composed of the Arcadians, Argives, and Messenians, hung back, and moved more slowly. The Euboeans, formed in a detached body, climbed the hill on the enemy's right, and threatened the flank of the Athenians. All went as Epaminondas had wished. His cavalry on the left drove the Spartan horse out of the field; next the Boeotian column, which he himself headed, plowed through the Mantinean and Spartan ranks " as a war-galley plows through the waves with its beak." ^ But a desperate Spartan named Anticrates, stand- ing firm among his fiying comrades, singled out the great general, and thrust him through the breast with his pike. When the news ran down the line that Epaminondas had fallen, his victorious troops halted in their career and made no attempt to complete the victory. Indeed, they allowed the Athenians to gain some advantage on the extreme right, a success on which the allies afterwards grounded a preposterous claim of victory in the main battle. Epaminondas was carried out of the fight with the broken spear still fast in his wound. His attendants bore him to a rising ground in the rear, which commanded the whole battlefield. When he recovered consciousness he asked if his shield was safe, and cast his dying eyes over the scene. He sent in haste for lolaidas and Daiphantus, his destined successors in command; the answer came that both had been slain. " Then," said the dying hero, " you had better make peace." So saying, he bade the spear-head be drawn from his wound ; a flow of blood followed, and he breathed his last. So. died Epaminondas, and with him the greatness of Thebes; never were the fortunes of a city and its leading statesman more closely bound together. The Thebans themselves seem to have looked to the future with dread, for they obeyed their general's dying words, and concluded a peace with their enemies ere the ^ Xenophon. Hcllcn. vii. 5. 23. THEBAN PREDOMINANCE 451 362 B.C. summer was over. Athens, Elis, Achaia, and Mantinea signed on the one side; Thebes, Argos, and the Arcadian League on the other. Sparta had to be left out of the agreement, for the ephors obstinately refused to acknowledge the independence of ]\Iessene. The great war, however, was at an end, and the noise of arms which had sounded all over Greece died away into a petty bickering for border-forts on the slopes of Taygetus. Chapter XLI THE PEACE OF 362 B.C. TO PHILIP'S INVASION, 362-352 B.C. THE predominance which Thebes had enjoyed in Greece for the nine years which followed the battle of Leuctra had never amounted to a formal hegemony, like that which Sparta had once exercised. Nor had it involved the organization of a large body of strictly dependent allies, such as Athens had gathered around her in the days of the Confederacy of Delos. Thebes had taken the lead merely because she was the strongest state among the enemies of Sparta, the central power on which the others leant for support. Epaminondas, the guiding spirit of the time, had deliberately accepted this position, and labored to make his native city not a " tyrant state," but the first among many equals. When, therefore, the war came to an end, after the battle of Mantinea, the Greek states found themselves lacking an acknowl- edged leader, and went each upon its own way, without having to pay regard to the wishes of any suzerain or superior. The his- tory of the succeeding period, therefore, was singularly destitute of unity and cohesion. In Peloponnesus the annals of the next few years are almost a blank. Since Sparta had ceased to be the center of Greece, the tale of her petty wars with her neighbors seems to have ceased to interest the historians of the ancient world. Especially was this so after the death of the aged Agesilaus, the last link which connected her with the glorious past. That great warrior died not in the valley of the Eurotas, but on the sands of Libya. Sparta was in dire need of money for her war with Messene, and when Tachos an Egyptian prince who had rebelled against Persia offered her subsidies in return for a force of Greek hoplites, Agesilaus coun- seled the acceptance of the tender. He went to Egypt himself with the promised succors, and at the age of eighty-four conducted his last campaign on the banks of the Nile. Having quarreled with Tachos, he deposed him in favor of his cousin Nectanebis, who 452 PHILIP'S INVASION 453 361-353 B.C. thereupon presented him with two hundred and thirty talents for his services. Agesilaus set out to take the money home, but died on the way in a desert haven on the Libyan coast. In spite of all his courage and skill, he had been the evil genius of his country, and had brought upon her all the woes that the oracle had fore- told * for the "lame reign" (winter of 361-360). Among the other Peloponnesian states the Arcadian League should have taken the first place. But that bod)'- practically went to pieces within twenty years of its foundation, owing to the jealousy which the older towns felt for Megalopolis, the new federal capital. That city was so left to itself that in 353 B.C. it succumbed to an attack of the Spartans, and was only restored to freedom by the aid of a Theban army. The elder states so systematically sapped the strength of their younger rival that at last, as a sarcastic poet observed, " the great city became a great desert '' ( lpriiJ.ia ixeyaXrj'oziv ij ShyaXdrroXi?) . With no leader or suzerain to check their bickerings, the Arcadians soon reduced themselves to a state of complete insignificance. A new evil began to appear in Peloponnesus about this time, in the form of desperate attempts at the establishment of tyrannies. The success of Dionysius of Syracuse on one side of the sea, and of Jason of Pherae on the other, set many ambitious men on the old tack, though tyrants had practically ceased out of the land for two hundred years. Euphron of Sicyon was the first who attempted to enslave his country by force of arms ; he failed and was assassi- nated (367 B.C.). Timophanes of Corinth (circ. 360 B.C.) won a greater celebrity from the circumstances of his death. After he had safely established himself in power, his brother Timoleon and two of his friends obtained an interview with him. When they were in private, they solemnly summoned him to give up the tyranny; when he refused, Timoleon stepped aside and wrapped his face in his mantle, while the other two cut his brother down. Thus Corinth recovered her liberty. Other cities in other parts of Greece were not so fortunate; Euboea, in particular, fell almost entirely into the hands of tyrants. Of the various states which had engaged in the war of 371-362 B.c.^ Athens had, with the exception of Thebes, fared the best. Although she had lost Oropus, she made conquests of far greater worth; in 365 B.C. she had succeeded in conquering Samos, which 1 See p. 392. 454 GREECE 365-357 B.C. had fallen into the hands of Persia, but, instead of freeing her old allies, established in the island a large cleruchy of her poorer citi- zens. She had also picked up a good many outlying possessions on the north coast of the Aegean, including part of the Thracian Chersonese, the Macedonian towns of Pydna and Methone, and the more important city of Potidaea. Since the final ruin of Sparta, Athens remained the only naval power in Greece ; for Thebes, though so powerful on land, only once sent a fleet to sea (363 b.c). If the Athenians had been wise, they would have admitted the towns they had lately conquered into the maritime league which they had founded in 378 B.C. But the old memories of the Confederacy of Delos were their bane; they were never able to get out of their heads the idea of re-establishing an empire, and preferred ruling unwilling subjects to obtaining willing allies. Tlie Asiatic towns which had joined with Athens to form the league of 378 b.c. looked on in disapproval as the actions of their great ally became more and more arbitrary. The planting of a cleruchy at Samos, a gross violation of one of the fundamental clauses in the treaty of confederation, was particularly offensive to them. But they did not break out into open strife with Athens till 357 b.c. when all the chief cities of the league Chios, Byzantium, Rhodes, and Cos among them simultaneously declared war upon her. Hop- ing to cow the confederates by a vigorous attack on the strongest of them, the Athenians opened the war by an attempt to seize Chios. The veteran general Chabrias, the victor of Naxos, led sixty vessels into the harbor of that city, and endeavored to effect a landing. But, pushing too far ahead of the main body, he was slain, and his armament retired with loss. The victorious allies then laid siege to Samos, in order to expel the Athenian cleruchs ; to relieve the place, the old generals Iphicrates and Timotheus the fonner must have been seventy years of age led out a second fleet; but on arriving at Samos they found the enemy too strong, and retired. For this cautious action they were impeached by their colleague Chares, and tried by the Ecclesia, which, unmindful of old services, treated them both harshly. Iphicrates, though acquitted, was de- prived of his command, and Timotheus sentenced to a ruinous fine of a hundred talents. Having thus got rid of the generals of the elder generation, the Athenians put the conduct of the war into the hands of their accuser Chares, an able but volatile and untrust- worthy man, whose character somewhat recalled that of Alcibiades. PHILIP'S INVASION 455 355-353 B.C. The new commander made no progress with the reduction of the allied towns, and, finding money run short, sold the services of his army to Artabazus, satrap of the Hellespont, who had just revolted against his master. King Ochus. By successful expeditions against the Persians he filled his military chest, but meanwhile the war against the allies stood still. Presently the Athenians heard that the Great King, in wrath at the aid given to the rebel satrap, was fitting out three hundred Phoenician galleys destined to aid the allies. Struck with fear at the news, they dismissed Chares, asked the pardon of the king, and made peace with their enemies. Rhodes, Chios, and all the other revolted allies were allowed to withdraw from the league, but Athens retained Samos and the cities along the Thracian and Mace- donian coasts, which were reckoned her subjects and not her con- federates (355 B.C.). The newly gained independence of the states, which now threw off their connection with Athens, was not long enjoyed by two of the chief cities; Rhodes and Cos were conquered within two years by Mausolus, prince-satrap of Caria, and thus passed into the vassalage of Persia. While Athens was engaged in the Social war, another set of troubles had been distracting her attention. She had fallen to blows with Philip, King of Macedonia, and was rapidly losing to him her scattered possessions along the north coast of the Aegean. It is strange that the Macedonian kingdom had not commenced at an earlier date to interfere with effect in the concerns of the Greek states, which lay in a straggling line along its coast. But though king after king had endeavored to turn the wars and civil strifes of the Hellenic cities to account, not one had as yet made any permanent conquests. It was not from want of resources in the kingdom nor of ambition in the kings, but from the various evils which beset a semi-barbarous state at the period of its development towards a higher civilization. The Macedonians, though they seem to have been not very distant kinsmen of the Greeks,^ had always been considered for- eigners. Yet they were not savages like their neighbors to east and west, the Thracians and Illyrians, but lived in the fourth century much the same sort of life that the Hellenic tribes had lived in the tenth. They formed a limited monarchy of the ancient sort, where 2 The few fragments remaining of the Macedonian dialect show that it re- sembled Aeolic Greek, but the race must have been very mixed. 456 GREECE 399-359 B.C. the king sought the counsel of the nobles, and laid his resolves for ratification before the assembly of the people. Though some of the Macedonian tribes were rough highlanders, yet those who dwelt in the plains of the Axius and Haliacmon were not unacquainted with city life, and had founded the considerable towns of Aegae and Pella. Three hundred years of contact with the Hellenic colonies on the coast had profoundly influenced the Macedonians, more especially their upper classes; they had caught from their neigh- bors some tincture of Greek manners, and learned to appreciate the amenities of civilization. The majority of the nobility had adopted Greek names, such Archelaus, Pausanias, Lysimachus, Ptolemaeus. They had begun to call their national gods by Greek titles and were usually acquainted with the Greek language. The royal family were the leaders in the Hellenization of Macedonia ; they laid claim to a remote descent from the Dorian princes of Argos. King Alexander, who served in the army of Xerxes, so far vindicated his Greek pedigree that he was permitted to take part in the Olympic games, a privilege never granted to a barbarian. Archelaus, the grandson of Alexander, was even more distinguished as a lover of things Greek; he enter- tained in his court the poets Agathon, Choerilus, and Euripides, employed Zeuxis to cover the walls of his palace with frescoes, and invited though in vain the philosopher Socrates to come to Pella and instruct the youth of Macedon. After the death of Archelaus (399 B.C.), the kingdom was for many years distracted by civil wars, and during the reign of Amyntas, the father of the great Philip, it seemed likely that the Illyrians from the inland and the Chalcidian League from the coast would actually divide Macedonia between them. Sparta saved the kingdom of Amyntas by destroy- ing the Chalcidian League, and within a few years Macedonia had so far recovered her strength that she actually made an attempt to conquer Northern Thessaly, which was only repulsed by the arms of Pelopidas. The weakness of Macedonia up to this time had been caused by the proneness of her people to civil wars. The succession to the crown had been settled by the sword quite as frequently as by hereditary right ; any member of the royal house, if he could find a powerful body of followers, might hope to tear the scepter from the last king's heir. The numerous and warlike nobility of the land were as proud and captious as the baronage of the Middle Ages, PHILIP'S INVASION 457 359 B.C. and any slight might cause them to take up arms in the cause of a pretender. Hence the throne of Macedonia was a thorny seat, and happy was that king who died in his bed. We have already mentioned that Philip, the third son of Am)mtas, was given as hostage to Pelopidas while yet a boy, and taken to Thebes. He spent several years there in honorable cap- tivity, allowed to turn the time to account as he might choose, but debarred from returning home. Philip was a lad of extraordinary parts; not only did he become versed in Greek literature and phi- losophy, and master the Greek tongue so thoroughly as to be reckoned one of the first orators of his age, but he gained an insight into Greek statecraft and a knowledge of the art of war such as none of his contemporaries attained. Thebes was in these years the center of Hellenic politics, and Epaminondas the first general of the age, but it was not every lad of sixteen who could have turned his opportunities of observation to such use as did the young Mace- donian exile. After spending some three or four years in Thebes, Philip was called back to Macedon by the misfortunes of his house. His eldest brother, King Alexander H., had been murdered, and Alex- ander's successor, his second brother Perdiccas, was, after a short reign, slain in battle with the Illyrians. Perdiccas left a son, but the boy was very young, and Philip was appointed his guardian and regent of the kingdom (359 B.C.). It was no easy task which Philip had to take up, at the early age of twenty-three. Two pretenders of the royal blood disputed his nephew's crown, while the Illyrians, who had just slain his brother Perdiccas, were breaking in on the northwest frontier of the kingdom. But the young regent was quite able to cope with the difiiculties which beset him. Nature had endowed him with every quality which a ruler of Macedon needed. The rudest of his subjects could not but admire the prince who always led his army in person, and was the best horseman, the boldest swimmer, the keenest hunter, in the land; nor was he liked any the worse for loving the wine-cup over well a national foible. But Philip was not a mere soldier; from his youth up he preferred dissimula- tion to force. He had studied the subtleties of Greek statecraft and took a keen intellectual pleasure in outwitting an adversary, especially when that adversary was a Greek politician. All methods of arriving at an end were equally good to him; he disowned a 458 GREECE 359-358 B.C. treaty or broke an oath with a frank levity which astonished even the most cahous of the statesmen of Greece, Corruption was his favorite weapon ; he had fathomed the depths of Greek venahty, and ahvays commenced a war by hiring some faction-leader among his enemies to lend him aid. " No town is impregnable," he said, " if once I can get a mule-load of silver passed within its gate." Philip's deep cunning was long unsuspected by his contemporaries, on account of the free, courteous, and open deportment which he displayed ; it was hard to believe that a man could look so honest and mean so ill. Nor were his good qualities all assumed. He was never cruel for cruelty's sake ; he was a firm friend and a liberal master; his courtesy and good-nature were genuine and not as- sumed; and if he despised Greek factiousness and venality, he had a real admiration for Greek culture and civilization. Within two years after Philip had assumed the regency of Macedonia he had cleared away both the pretenders who claimed the crown and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Illyrians. Having thus won unbounded popularity, he quietly deposed his nephew and had himself proclaimed king (358 B.C.). His next step was to reorganize the national army, which had hitherto been a mere tumultuous tribal gathering. The numerous and fiery nobles were encouraged to join the king's horse-guard, and honored with the title of his "companions" (eratpoi), while the picked men of the tribal levies were enregimented into light and heavy corps of infantry. Taking to heart the system of Epaminondas, the king formed the core of his army out of regiments trained to fight in deep columns, and armed with a ponderous pike treble the length of the Greek lance so long, in fact, that the spear-heads of the third and fourth rank projected in front of the charging column as well as those of the first. This heavy phalanx never failed to bear down the or- dinary Greek line of hoplites by sheer weight of impact. Philip's ambition, when he had firmly seated himself on the throne, was first directed towards securing for Macedonia a harbor, the aim which so many of his predecessors had vainly sought to attain. He determined not to molest at first the Chalcidian cities, which lay in a compact body in the center, but to make an attempt either on one of the scattered Athenian possessions or at some isolated autonomous town. Chance enabled him to do both ; he found the Athenians plotting an expedition against the city of Amphipolis, on which they had never ceased to nourish designs PHILIP'S INVASION 459 358 B.C. since it revolted to Brasidas sixty-five years ago. Philip at once opened negotiations with them, and offered to put Amphipolis into their hands, if they would give him in exchange their port of Pydna on the Thermaic Gulf. The Athenians agreed, for the exchange was manifestly in their favor, and looked on while Philip laid siege to Amphipolis, which fell into his hands in a few weeks. He then presented himself before the gates of Pydna, which was surrendered to him ; when this was done he promptly disavowed his agreement, and kept both places in his own hands. Knowing that this meant instant war with Athens, he fell on Potidaea, the most important Athenian possession in those parts, and seized it before any succor could arrive. Instead, however, of keeping it himself, he handed Potidaea over to the Olynthians, the leading Chalcidian state, and thus embroiled them with Athens. Just at this moment the Social war broke out, and while the Athenians were engaged in it they had no leisure to punish Philip or his accomplices of Olynthus. Thus the Macedonian king was able for three years to prosecute his designs without molestation : he soon showed that they were likely to lead him far afield. Now that he possessed Amphipolis and its all-important bridge over the Strymon, the road to Thrace was in his hands. Crossing the river, he plunged into the hills, and conquered one by one the Thracian tribes as far east as the Nestus. The main purpose of this expedi- tion was to regain possession of the mines of Mount Pangaeus, the richest gold-producing region known to the ancient w^orld. When the district was subdued, the king built in its midst a new town, named after himself, Philippi, which served at once as a center for the mining, and as a fortress to keep down the Thracians. Within a few years the gold was coming forth so rapidly that the king derived from the mines no less than a thousand talents per annum ($1,220,000). Hence came the abundant coinage of staters, which first accustomed the Greeks to a national gold currency, and un- locked for Philip the gates of so many hostile towns. While Philip was conquering the Thracians, and Athens was contending with her recalcitrant allies, Thebes, the power which had lately been predominant in Greece, was involving herself in a maze of troubles from which she had now no Epaminondas to deliver her. Thebes and Phocis had been bitter enemies of old, and though the Phocians joined the Theban alliance after Leuctra, they did so from necessity and not from choice. In 362 B.C. they 460 GREECE 356 B.C. had so far let their real feelings appear that they had neglected to send a contingent to the allied army which fought at Mantinea. The Thebans bore them a grudge for this, and waited for an oppor- tunity of repaying it. The chance came in a few years; the Del- phians accused certain Phocian landholders of having trespassed upon and tilled waste ground dedicated to Apollo, and brought the case before that venerable but effete body the Amphictyonic As- sembly, which still sat from year to year, and sometimes interfered in politics. The Amphictyons, being wholly under the control of Thebes and Thessaly, voted that a heinous sacrilege had been com- mitted, and inflicted a heavy fine on the Phocians. The fine was left unpaid; whereupon it was doubled, and the Amphictyons threatened the recalcitrant state that unless instant satisfaction was made, its lands should be declared escheated to the god and become the property of the temple. This brought matters to a crisis ; the Phocians were a vigorous' and high-spirited people, who would not endure to be bullied by their enemies under this hypocritical pretext of religion. Led by two ambitious chiefs named Philomelus and Onomarchus, they quietly armed, and when all was ready for war, seized Delphi and its temple by a night surprise. Philomelus sought out and slew the Delphians who had been the accusers of Phocis, and then compelled the priests to set the oracle working at his dictation, so that Apollo pronounced a blessing on the captors of his sanctuary. It seemed efficacious, for when the Locrians of Amphissa, the next neighbors of Delphi, came to drive out Philomelus, they suffered a bloody defeat. The Phocian leaders were quite aware that their action in- volved a war with Thebes and Thessaly, and knew that their own levies were quite insufficient to cope with those formidable powers. But the seizure of Delphi put the enormous temple-treasures in their hands, and the men who had $12,500,000^ in hard bullion at their disposal were not likely to want mercenaries. Accordingly when the Amphictyons met, and put Phocis under the ban for sacrilege, Philomelus retorted by a manifesto in which he justified his action, and promised high pay to every hoplite in Greece who would join the Phocian ranks. Then began the " Sacred war," which, in spite of its name, was not a crusade of all Greece against Phocis, but 3 It is extraordinary that, out of the enormou.-, coinage struck from the temple-money, only a few triobols and copper pieces survive. PHILIP'S INVASION 461 354 B.C. merely an attempt of the Thebans, Thessalians, and Locrians to crush their neighbor state. The Phocians, indeed, got quite as much sympathy from the outside world as their enemies. Sparta would have helped them had she been able ; and Athens, when free from troubles of her own, was not indisposed to co-operate. When actual hostilities commenced the Phocians proved quite able to Ijold their own. Philomelus, indeed, fell in battle in the first year of the war, but his successor, Onomarchus, kept the field with ten thousand mercenaries at his back, and not only protected Phocis, but carried the war far into the enemy's country. In Thessaly he bribed the tyrants of Pherae, the successors of Alex- ander, to desert their national league, and take his part; aided by liberal supplies of Delphic temple-treasure, they proved strong enough to hold the Thessalians in check. Meanwhile Onomarchus fell on Boeotia, and to the great surprise of those who remem- bered the days of Epaminondas beat the Thebans in the open field. Then, turning on the smaller members of the Thessalo- Theban confederacy, he harried the lands of the Locrians, Dorians, and Oetaeans, till not a farmstead was left unburned in all their valleys. Thus utterly discomfited, the enemies of Phocis took a fatal step : they asked the assistance of Philip of Macedon. It was Thessalians, the nobility of Larissa, who actually invited him to cross Mount Olympus and trespass on the soil of Hellas; but the Thebans, who did not disown the invitation, must take their share of the blame. Of late Philip had been flourishing exceedingly. Athens had been brought so low by her defeat in the Social war that she was unable to protect her outlying possessions, and saw Methone her last port in Macedonia taken in 354 b.c.^ after a long siege, in which the king lost one of his eyes by an arrow. Philip's plans enlarged as his power grew greater; he increased his army, com- menced to build a fleet, and strengthened his frontier against the barbarian tribes of the inland; not least among his successes he counted the fact that his chariot had been victorious at the Olympic games. Now he was ready to take any chance that came up for obtaining a foothold in Greece. When Philip advanced against Pherae, he found himself op- posed by Phayllus, the brother of Onomarchus, who had marched north in, order to join the Pheraeans. This general Philip drove 462 GREECE 352 B.C. back, but presently Onomarchus himself came on the scene, with the main army of the Phocians. He met the Macedonians, routed them in two engagements, and drove Philip home across the moun- tains. Then, turning back to Boeotia, he stormed Coroneia, and induced Orchomenus to desert the Thebans and declare itself in- dependent. This was the high-water mark of Phocian success during the ten years of the Sacred war. Within a few months of his first check Philip again appeared in Thessaly with a new army of twenty thousand men. Ono- marchus marched against him, and met him hard by the port of Pagasae. The fortune of war had changed; the Macedonian phalanx broke through the Phocian mercenaries ; Onomarchus him- self fell with six thousand of his men, and Philip then expelled the tyrants of Pherae, and declared their city free and autonomous but, under the pretense of military necessity, he occupied with Macedonian garrisons the city of Pagasae and several places more on the Magnesian Peninsula, thus making himself master of the keys of Thessaly. Meanwhile Philip's success had frightened all those states in Greece who were not committed to the Theban alliance. That a barbarian king should march far into Hellenic soil and plant his garrisons almost on the Euboean Strait appeared intolerable to all who were not blinded by hatred of the Phocians. Accord- ingly, when Philip moved southward to complete his victory by occupying Phocis, he found Thermopylae held by an Athenian army and fleet, while troops from Achaia and Sparta joined the wrecks of the Phocian army, which had rallied round Phayllus, who had been appointed general of the Phocian League in place of his deceased brother. There were still plenty of cups and tripods unmelted in the temple-store at Delphi, so Phayllus could ere long hire and send into the field as large a mercenary host as that which had perished with Onomarchus at Pagasae. Finding Thermopylae impregnable, Philip turned back, foiled for the first and almost the last occasion in his life by an Athe- nian armament. Seeing that the times were not yet ripe in Central Greece, he let the Sacred war shift for itself, and went off on quite another quest. His campaign had brought him the possession of the Thessalian fortresses, and with that result he was, for the present, satisfied. Meanwhile there was work for him to do further north. Chapter XLII PHILIP AND DEMOSTHENES, 352-344 B.C. FOR five years after his check at Thermopylae, King PhiHp refrained from carrying his arms into Greece, and allowed the Sacred war to drag out its weary length without his interference. Although the Phocians had lost their foothold in Thessaly, yet in the south their strength was little diminished; Phayllus, and after his death his nephew Phalaecus, the son of Onomarchus, still contrived to hold Thebes in check, and even to maintain a hold on the captured Boeotian towns of Coroneia and Orchomenus. As long as the temple-treasure lasted, it seemed that the Phocian leaders and their mercenaries were likely to hold their own; but after five or six years of war the great hoard was ap- preciably diminished, and men began to reflect that some day it would run dry. This reflection encouraged the Thebans to persist, although meanwhile they were bearing all the brunt of the war, while the Thessalians and King Philip had slackened in their first zeal when their own immediate objects were attained. The Macedonian monarch had turned his restless mind once more to schemes of Thracian conquest. Ere the year which saw his Thessalian campaign had reached its end, we find him pushing his border eastward along the north coast of the Aegean, and seizing now the territories of some native kinglet, now those of an isolated Greek city, now an outlying Athenian fortress. His furthest raid took him as far as the shore of the Euxine, but his power was not actually established beyond the neighborhood of the city of Aenus. The Athenian possessions in the Thracian Chersonese and the independent cities on the Propontis were still untouched. In the following years Philip pushed far westward; he beat the Illyrians in battle, built forts among them, compelled many of their tribes to do him homage, and then forced the princes of Epirus to acknowledge his supremacy. This rapid development of Philip's power to east and west left the Greek cities of Chalcidice- Olynthus and her sister towns in 463 464 GREECE 352-350 B.C. a perfectly isolated condition, occupying a precarious position of independence in a slip of territory enclosed between the sea and the Macedonian border. Philip had treated them with scrupulous politeness ever since Olynthus had joined him against Athens, and committed herself to his side by accepting the gift of the Athenian town of Potidaea. But as the king became more and more power- ful, the Chalcidians began to grow uneasy ; they saw him annex city after city of their Hellenic neighbors, and began to suspect that all they had gained by allying themselves to Philip was the privilege of being devoured a little later than the rest. It was not likely that the sovereign who had so readily laid hands on Amphipolis and Pydna, Maronea and Pagasae would refrain forever from designs on Olynthus. Accordingly the Chalcidians began to retire from their friendship with Philip ; they concluded a peace with Athens in 352 b.c.^ and a little later gave harborage to a rebel Macedonian prince the king's step-brother who fled to them for refuge. These steps showed Philip that he could no longer rely on the friendship or neutrality of Olynthus and her confederates when he made his next attack on Greece. While his Thracian and Illyrian campaigns were in progress he left them alone, but after all had been made secure to east and west, his armies began to gather in a menacing fashion on the borders of Chalcidice. Seeing the end at hand, the Olynthians sent an embassy to Athens, to beg their former enemy to lend them instant assistance. The Athenians had of late been conducting the war against Philip in the most careless and half-hearted way; they sent a small force of mercenaries now and again to harass his army in Thrace, but seemed to care little what successes he gained so long as the war lay far from the gates of Athens. While he was seizing their northern possessions they had given their whole attention to an unnecessary and futile expedition to Euboea, destined to drive out the tyrants who occupied Chalcis and Oreus. Although their general Phocion won a brilliant victory at Tamynae over the con- federate Euboeans, the general result of the campaign was utter failure and useless expense (350 B.C.). When the Olynthian envoys reached Athens the question came before the Ecclesia whether things should be allowed to drift on, as they had done for the last ten years, or whether a vigorous offensive war should be begun against Philip. In favor of the latter alternative were made the three great orations of Demosthenes, ^H^^P^I r^Mi DEMOSTHENES (Porn circa 385 B. c. Died 322 b. c.) Bust in the Vatican. Rome PHILIP AND DEMOSTHENES 465 354-351 B.C. whose name begins from this moment to be more and more closely identified with all the phases of Athenian politics. Demosthenes was a member of the wealthy middle class; his father, who had been the owner of a shield factory, died leaving him in the hands of guardians who mismanaged and dissipated his inheritance. When he came to years of discretion, Demosthenes plunged into a series of lawsuits with the fraudulent trustees, and acquired, while urging his private wrongs, the taste for public speaking which was to make him the greatest political orator of the age. But at first his success was not equal to his energy; his awkward bearing, over-rapid delivery, and imperfect articulation spoiled the effect of excellent discourses, and he came down from the Bema lamenting that " while any drunken sea-captain could get a hearing, he, who had really something to tell the Athenians, was hooted down in a moment." His friends encouraged him to per- sist, assuring him that however bad his manner might be, yet the matter of his speeches was worthy of Pericles. Accordingly Demosthenes set himself to acquire the arts of the public speaker; he did not disdain hints on elocution from his friend the actor Satyrus, and practiced declamation under the most unfavorable circumstances. A tradition says that he would go down to the sea- shore during storms, and strive to make his voice heard above the roar of wind and waves, in order to learn the pitch necessary for addressing the boisterous assembly of his fellow-citizens. When he was able to set forth his views with a suitable delivery, the intrinsic merit of his speeches made itself felt at once, and he soon became the leading orator of the war-party at Athens. Demosthenes had fed his imagination on the great deeds of Athens in the previous generation ; his favorite reading was the history of Thucydides, and the aim which underlay all his political action was the restoration of his native city to the leading place among Hellenic states. His first important political harangues were devoted to advocating the reorganization of the fleet, which had fallen into a deplorable condition of inefficiency in the Social war (354 B.C.). A little later he is found encouraging the Athe- nians to send help first to Megalopolis (352 B.C.), and then to Rhodes (351 B.C.), in order to vindicate the old claim of Athens to be the friend and helper of all oppressed cities. Indeed, the chief fault of his policy was that he often strove to induce the impover- ished and languid city of his own day to carry out the schemes that 466 GREECE 347 B.C. would have suited the Athens of 420 b.c. Not being, as the states- men of the elder generation had been, a soldier as well as a poli- tician, he was prone to lose sight of military necessities in his zeal for attaining some cherished political end. As the character and designs of King Philip gradually grew plainer, the policy of Demosthenes tended more and more to resolve itself into an anti-Macedonian crusade. His oration on the state navy has received the name of the " First Philippic," because of the drift of its contents; and in his later speeches the name of Philip is mentioned with ever-increasing frequency, till his misdoings became the sole burden of the orator's discourse. When the Olynthian ambassadors begged for the assistance of Athens, Demosthenes urged not only that previous grudges should be forgiven, and an alliance concluded with them, but that a large Athenian army, not mere mercenaries, but citizen hoplites, should be sent to attack Macedonia. He succeeded in only half his pro- ject; the alliance was made, but the succor sent was hopelessly in- adequate first a small fleet of thirty-eight ships under the erratic Chares, then four thousand mercenary peltasts headed by Chari- demus, a Euboean general taken into Attic pay, who was more than once suspected of playing his employers false. Thus insufficiently aided, the Chalcidian towns fell one by one into the hands of Philip, The Olynthians alone dared to face the king's army in the open field, but they were twice routed, and after the second battle two traitors, bought with Macedonian gold, opened the gates to the victor. Philip burned Olynthus, and sold many of its citizens into slavery, in return for the ingratitude which he alleged that the state had shown him. Some of the smaller Chalcidian towns shared its fate. The Atli^nians seem to have been more surprised than vexed at the fall of Olynthus; in spite of the harangues of Demosthenes it was hard to interest them in a war so far from home. A large party in the state only thought of the material interests of Athens, and were ready to sacrifice everything else if only her trade and commerce were left untouched, and these could best be secured by making peace with Philip on such terms as he chose to give. An- other section, though not influenced by such sordid motives as the first, thought that Athens was too weak and exhausted to go crusading against Philip for the public good of Greece, and dis- couraged all vigorous action as profitless and doomed to failure. PHILIP AND DEMOSTHENES 467 346 B.C. This party was headed by Phocion, the last Athenian who com- bined successfully the functions of orator and general. Though brave and honest, he was a hopeless pessimist; he was too much of a philosopher to be in harmony with the multitude, and more- over held democracy in such contempt that he believed that no good thing could ever come from the Athenian Ecclesia. He par- ticularly detested the fiery and emotional harangues of Demosthenes, and opposed him so bluntly, yet so efficiently, that the orator was wont to say, whenever his adversary mounted the Bema, " Here comes the cleaver that will hack my periods to pieces." The Athenians had expected, when Olynthus fell, that Philip would turn his arms against the Thracian Chersonese, the last of their northern possessions. They were afraid, too, that, now that so many seaports were in his hands, the king would endeavor to send out ships to molest their commerce : on one occasion, indeed, some Macedonian privateers had actually made a descent on Attica, and carried away the Paralus, one of the two state-galleys, as it lay anchored off Marathon, But they were agreeably surprised when Philip, instead of urging on the war, showed an unmistakable inclination to make peace. Though unable to discover the king's motive, the majority of the Athenians were eager to humor his bent, and, on the motion of a speaker named Philocrates, an em- bassy of ten members was sent to Pella, to learn the terms on which he wished to treat. Among the envoys were Philocrates, the mover of the motion, Demosthenes, and his rival, the orator Aeschines. Philip received them with great courtesy, dazzled them with the splendor of his court and the strength of his resources, and seems to have secured the enthusiastic admiration of several of their num- ber by the simple expedient of bribing them heavily. The embassy returned to Athens full of the king's praises, but unable to report that they had agreed on terms of peace. Before coming to an agreement, Philip had determined to extract all the benefit he could from the war; knowing that Athens would no longer molest him on the eve of peace, he rushed off to Thrace, and in a hurried cam- paign completed the subjection of the princes of that country. Meanwhile he had sent ambassadors to Athens, who kept his enemies amused by protracted haggling over the terms of pacifica- tion. When Thrace was conquered his conditions were at last formulated ; they amounted to a recognition of the status quo. He was to retain all his conquests, new and old, Athens was to give 468 GREECE 346 B.C up all claim to her lost possessions, and keep only what was still in her hands. Moreover, the pacification, though it was to extend to all other allies of Athens, was not to include the Phocians. The Athenians only assented to this last clause because Philocrates and Aeschines, who had fingered Philip's money, solemnly assured them that the stipulation w^as merely formal, the king having no intention of injuring Phocis, but being much more likely to turn his arms against Thebes. Under this impression the Ecclesia ratified the terms of peace, and sent off the ten envoys to Pella for the second time, to administer the corresponding oath of alliance to Philip. The majority of the ambassadors, in spite of the remonstrances of Demosthenes, lingered so long on their voyage that they took three weeks in reaching the Macedonian capital ; there they waited a month more, because Philip was still absent in Thrace. Finally when he appeared they did not insist on his ratifying the treaty at once, as Demosthenes urged them to do, but accompanied him into Thessaly, and only administered the oath to him at Pherae. For this dilatory action the ambassadors had the best of reasons ; they were carrying out their corrupt agreement with Philip, who had paid them to keep his intentions hidden from the Athenian people till it was too late to oppose him. The object of the king's advance to Pherae was demonstrated the moment that the peace had been signed. Within a few days he was at Thermopylae, and had seized the pass, w^hich the Phocians were unable to defend now^ that no Athenian force came to their aid. The mountain-barrier once pierced, the resistance of Phocis suddenly collapsed. Phalaecus, finding himself at close quarters v/ith the Mecedonians, determined to surrender without a blow. He obtained permission to depart w'ith his eight thousand merce- naries, and such of the Phocians as thought it wise to follow him. Taking ship he passed away, first to Peloponnesus, then to Crete, where he fell at the siege of Cydonia. The Phocians, thus basely deserted by their leader, threw them- selves on the mercy of Philip; twenty-two cities one after another opened their gates to him when he presented himself before their walls. Remembering the fate of Olynthus, they awaited with no small apprehension the doom that might be meted out to them as the plunderers of Delphi. The king's intentions proved to be less harsh than might have been expected; it was not his detestation of Phocian impiety, but PHILIP AND DEMOSTHENES 469 345 B.C. his desire to hold the gates of Greece, that had brought him to Thermopylae. Advancing to Delphi, he summoned the Amphic- tyonic assembly to meet in its old seat, which it had not seen for ten years. The delegates came, burning to avenge themselves on the Phocians, and proposed the most savage measures against their conquered foes; the Oetaean delegates, for example, wished to cast all Phocian males of military age over the precipices of Parnassus. But Philip restrained their fury, and toned down the sentence to a comparative mild shape. The towns of Phocis, except Abae, were to be dismantled, and their inhabitants forced to dwell apart in villages of not more than fifty hearths. The whole race was disarmed, a strip of their frontier-land was made over to the Boeotians, and they were commanded to pay fifty talents a year to Apollo, till they should have restored the entire sum which they had taken from the Delphian treasure a consummation which would arrive in about two hundred years. The other resolves of the Amphictyons were far more im- portant than their decrees against the conquered enemy. They transferred the two Phocian votes in their assembly to King Philip, thereby making him a recognized member of the Hellenic state system, and gave him a share in the presidency of the Pythian games, a distinction which he was Greek enough to value as not much less important than a great political success.^ For the future the king was theoretically acknowledged as the equal of his Hellenic neighbors, and might claim a right to aspire to the same hegemony among them that Sparta, Athens, or Thebes had once enjoyed. Delphi was soon full of festal pomp, when the Thebans and Thessalians joined the king in celebrating the Pythian games. But at Athens there was wrath and dismay, for the people had now discovered why Philip had been so anxious to make peace, and were cursing their own stupidity and the treachery of the envoys who had aided the king to hoodwink them. For a moment there was actually some prospect of their renewing the war with ]\Iacedon, so bitter was their impotent rage. But Demosthenes, who was now in greater credit than ever, because he had opposed the policy of his colleagues in the embassy, set his face against a war which must be entered into without allies and without preparation, and suc- ceeded in diverting the anger of his fellow-countrymen on to their treacherous ambassadors. Philocrates, the head of the embassy, 1 Philip was so proud of the victory of his chariot at the Olympic games that he commemorated its success on the whole of his gold coinage. 470 GREECE 344 B.C. fled from Athens the moment that he was impeached. Aeschines stood his trial, and by a most skillful defense just succeeded in escaping an adverse verdict; the dicastery was so evenly divided that a transference of sixteen votes would have entailed his con- demnation. Philip was now free to extend the scope of his ambition; the conquest of Phocis and the peace with Athens enabled him to turn his arms in new directions. His first operations tended to dis- illusionize his old friends the Thessalians, who had fondly imagined that they would be quit of him now that the Sacred war was over. Instead of withdrawing his garrisons from the places near Thermop- ylae and on the Pagasaean Gulf, the king took advantage of some slight civil disturbance, and occupied the citadels of Pherae and other cities. Then " Decarchies," after the pattern of those of Lysander, were put in power, and Thessaly found itself practically incorporated with the kingdom of Macedon. The free access into Southern Greece which Philip had gained by seizing Thermopylae was next turned to account, and the Macedonian arms were ere long seen in the Peloponnesus. The Peloponnesians had only themselves to thank for the intro- duction of the stranger into their well-guarded peninsula. It was their own appeal which gave him the chance of entering. The first offenders were the oligarchic party at Elis ; finding themselves beset by an exiled democratic faction, who had bought the services of the mercenary bands that had once followed Phalaecus, they recklessly sought aid from the king, and concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with him. The Macedonian auxiliaries who came to their aid were soon employed elsewhere; Argos and Messene were at war with Sparta, whose able king Archidamus (the son of the great Agesilaus) was pressing them hard. They proffered them- selves as allies to Philip, borrowed his troops, and by their aid drove the Spartans back into the valley of the Eurotas (344 B.C.). It was in vain that Demosthenes crossed into Peloponnesus and visited Argos and Messene to warn their statesmen against alliance with the Macedonian, and to remind them what had been the fate of Philip's friends of the Olynthian League. Content with their momentary triumph over Sparta, they refused to look forward, and paid no heed to the Athenian orator. They thought that they had utilized for their own purposes the aid of the Macedonian, and had no conception that they had bound themselves perpetually to the service of a master. Chapter XLIII END OF FREEDOM, 344-336 B.C. THE embassy of Demosthenes to Peloponnesus marks the beginning of a new struggle between Philip and the Athe- nians. It did not suit Philip to precipitate a rupture till he had established a firm footing in Central and Southern Greece. The Athenians, on the other hand, had made up their minds not to fight unless they could enlist powerful allies ; but although each party avoided an open declaration of war, they spent five years in constant bickerings, and endeavors to raise up troubles for each other. It cannot be said that the Athenians showed themselves a whit more scrupulous than the king; they had learned to meet Philip with his own weapons, and Demosthenes was always stirring them up to counteract every move of their enemy. His expedition to Peloponnesus, though it proved fruitless, was very offensive to Philip, who sent an envoy to complain that it was hard that the ambassadors of a friendly power should go about endeavoring to form alliances against him. The Athenian Ecclesia made no further reply than to send a commission to Pella, charged with the duty of demanding back some places of which they claimed to have been wrongfully deprived in the peace of 346 B.C. The king treated the commissioners with studied rudeness, but took no further notice of his quarrel with Athens. Philip was too much engaged on the western side of Greece to be ready for a new war on the Aegean. He was just about to invade Epirus, where he had determined to overthrow King Aryb- bas, and to place on his throne a rival claimant, Alexander, the brother of his own Epirot wife Olympias. Having accomplished this, he pushed his arms as far southward as the Ambracian Gulf. Meanwhile the Athenians were not idle; they harbored the ex- pelled king of Epirus, sent troops to the aid of the Acarnanians, who were threatened with invasion, and dispatched emissaries into Thessaly to foment a revolt against Philip in that country. This last move brought the king home in haste; he crossed Mount 471 472 GREECE 341 B.C. Pindus, appeared suddenly in the plain and overawed all the malcontent towns, whom he punished by placing over them as " tetrarchs " four Thessalian nobles of his own party, whose rule was nothing more than a tyranny in disguise. It is strange that the king was not yet provoked into declaring war on Athens ; he bore patiently with her intrigues, and even offered to surrender Halonesus, an island off Thessaly which the Athenians claimed as their own. The only reward for his prudence was that in the next year he had to submit to an even more flagrant violation of neutrality. News was brought him that Diopeithes, the Athenian general in command in the Thracian Chersonese, had not only been molesting his merchant vessels, but had actually invaded Macedonian territory, pillaged the country, and sold his prisoners as slaves. This could not be passed over ; the king at once sent a peremptory demand for satisfaction to Athens, and simultaneously began moving his main army in the direction of Thrace. The moment had now arrived at which the Athenians were forced to choose between peace and war. If they recalled and pun- ished Diopeithes, the present troubled and insincere peace might be protracted ; if they refused, they must face the consequences and arm for a long and bitter struggle. The party of material inter- ests, and the followers of Phocion, who opposed the war on prin- ciple, joined with the corrupt friends of Philip in urging the Ecclesia to appease the king. But Demosthenes came forward, and in his two great speeches, the first " Concerning the Chersonese," the other known as the " Third Philippic," bore down all opposition. He recapitulated Philip's aggressions for the last fifteen years, re- counted his broken oaths and agreements, and boldly bade the Athenians pay him back in his own coin. " Philip," he said, " pre- tends to keep the peace while his armies are seizing or destroying Hellenic cities one after the other. Let Athens too keep the peace in name, but imitate the king by prosecuting a vigorous war in reality." Then he proceeded to expound plans for concluding alli- ances with Philip's enemies, for raising a permanent force for foreign service, and for providing funds by a stringent property tax. The orator carried the Ecclesia away with him. Diopeithes was thanked instead of being recalled, and Philip was left to do his worst. Hostilities at once broke out in Thrace, though war was not formally declared by either party. Demosthenes, whose activity END OF FREEDOM 473 341-340 B.C. during the next three years was untiring, sailed at once to Byzan- tium, and succeeded in enlisting in the Athenian alliance that im- portant city, now threatened by Philip's Thracian conquests. His next move was to cross into Euboea and conclude an alliance with the Chalcidians, who had taken alarm at the extension of Philip's influence in their island through his partisans the tyrants of Oreus and Eretria. In the end of the year Demosthenes sailed, in com- pany wuth Callias of Chalcis, to Western Greece, and obtained the promise of aid from Achaia, Acarnania, and Leucas, while the more important cities of Corinth and Megara gave in their adherence a little later (winter of 341-340 b.c). Meanwhile Philip had turned from the conquest of Inner Thrace,^ where he had been engaged at the outbreak of hostilities, and marched against the Hellenic cities of the Propontis, Perinthus, and Byzantium. He intended to seize them, and then to block the passage of the straits to the Athenian corn-ships from the Euxine, as Lysander had done seventy years before. He first laid siege to Perinthus, a strong town seated on a rocky peninsula jutting out into the sea. This siege occupied him for many months ; he met with a most obstinate resistance, for, even after the walls had been stormed, the citizens resisted behind barricades built across their steep and narrow streets. Reinforcements flowed into the town from Byzantium ; the Persian satraps of Asia Minor, jealous of the ap- pearance of a new power in their neighborhood, sent men and money across the water, and an Athenian general took charge of the de- fense. Foiled in many attempts to break into the town, Philip sud- denly raised the siege and marched on Byzantium, which he trusted to find unguarded, for its citizens had sent a large contingent to the aid of Perinthus. The Byzantines, however, were on their guard; the king found the walls manned, and discovered that he had only exchanged one siege for another. He persisted, however, in his enterprise, fixed his engines before the ramparts, threw a boom across the Golden Horn to prevent the ships of the besieged from getting out, and brought up his own fleet from the Aegean to form the blockade on the side of the sea. One desperate attempt to escalade the land-wall on a dark night failed, it is said, owing to the sudden appearance of a light in heaven (perhaps the Aurora 1 He had founded in 342 B.C. the town of PhilippoHs, on the Upper Stry- mon, as his outpost in this direction, and seems to have been in those parts for most of the year 341 B.C. 474. GREECE 339 B.C. Borealis), which the Byzantines took as a special token of divine aid. Meanwhile the Athenians, unceasingly stirred tip to action by Demosthenes, were carrying all before them in the south. With the aid of the Chalcidians they swept the troops of Philip and of the tyrants of Oreus and Eretria out of Euboea. Then landing in Thes- saly, they stormed the fortress of Pagasae, and made prize of a great number of the king's merchant vessels. When the news of the siege of Byzantium arrived, they at last declared open war on Philip, and preparations were made for an expedition to the Bosphorus. A squadron sent ahead under Chares drove off the Macedonian fleet, but did not raise the siege. A large force was then placed under Phocion, who, though he had opposed the declaration of war, was far too patriotic to refuse his best help to his native city in her hour of danger. With a hundred and twenty triremes behind him, Phocion passed up the Hellespont and sought out the Macedonians. Pliilip then gave up the siege in despair his ranks were thinned and his men demoralized and plunged inland out of the reach of the enemy. Probably he was forced in the hour of disaster to take every precaution to hold down his wild subjects in Inner Thrace. Philip for the second time in his career had suffered a hu- miliating check, and the joy at Athens over the defeat of the ancient enemy was correspondingly great. Demosthenes, who had so con- stantly predicted the possibility of a victory which most men con- sidered unlikely, was at the summit of his career. After the victories in Euboea, his joyful fellow-citizens had voted him a golden crown for civic virtue, and no one for the future ventured to dispute his ascendency with the Ecclesia. All the decrees he proposed passed without a question, even one which devoted to the war-chest the The5ric fund, or sum annually set apart by the state for public fes- tivals and ceremonies. Perhaps the most useful of Demosthenes's measures was reform in the machinery for providing the state navy which worked so well that not a ship was lost or disabled during the whole course of the war. For nine months Philip was lost to sight after his repulse from Byzantium. Posted in the Thracian inland, he was fighting hard to preserve his dominions from the wild Scythians and Triballs v/ho lay along his northern frontier. It was not till late in the summer of 339 b.c. that he emerged from the northern darkness END OF FREEDOM 475 339 B.C. victorious but well-nigh disabled for active serv'ice by a wound received in battle with the Triballi. Meanwhile the Athenians had been harassing the coast-line of his wide possessions, but had taken no decisive measures to attack him at home. Some of their allies, among them the ungrateful Byzantines, had grown convinced that the war was practically over, and had actually sent home their con- tingents after making a declaration of neutrality. Unfortunately the triumph of the Athenians was destined to be short-lived, and events were ripening for an unforeseen disaster. The new troubles sprang from an unexpected quarter. The orator Aeschines, in spite of his narrow escape from a condemnation for treason in 343 b.c, had retained credit enough in the city to be named as one of the xA.thenian delegates at the Am- phictyonic meeting of 339 B.C. While acting in this capacity at Delphi, he had a violent altercation with the deputies of the Locrians of Amphissa. Whether carried away by the unhappy inspiration of the moment, or suborned as his enemies declared by Mace- donian gold. Aeschines suddenly accused the Locrians of having* committed sacrilege against Apollo. They had, so he declared, imi- tated the evil deeds of the Phocians by trespassing on waste land sacred to the god, and building houses, barns, and potters' kilns upon it. Stirred up by the orator's fiery periods, a great mob of Delphians, accompanied by most of the Amphictyonic deputies, went down to the debatable ground, and burned or cast down all the buildings upon it. While they were thus engaged, the Locrians, armed and in great wrath, came up from their city of Amphissa. fell upon the mob, wounded some, captured many, and drove the rest in rout back to Delphi. Next day the Amphictyons prorogued their ordi- nary meeting, and called a special assembly to take into considera- tion the sacrilege and violence of the Locrians. The special as- sembly was of a most unrepresentative kind; Demosthenes had persuaded the Athenians to withdraw their delegates, while the Thebans stayed away because they were old friends of the Am- phissians. The main part of the delegates who appeared were from the Thessalian, Oetaean, and ]\Ialian states, who were all more or less under Macedonian influence. They put the Locrians under the ban, declared war on them, and soon afterwards appointed King Philip their commander-in-chief, and begged him to take charge of the business. It seems likely that the whole of this comedy had been arranged beforehand, that Aeschines had been paid to stir 476 GREECE 338 B.C. up a disturbance, and that the Amphictyons had from the first no other purpose than to find an excuse for bringing Phihp's army- down into Central Greece. The king was quite ready to take up the game ; the heads of his cokimns were soon passing the defiles of Othrys, and he himself the moment that his wound was healed came southward to assume the command. When he reached Thermopylae the anxiety of the Athenians became painful; it was quite impossible to know whether Philip would really move against Amphissa, or whether he was aiming at Athens, having secured by an agreement with the Thebans the permission to pass through the neutral territory of Boeotia. The doubt was soon solved ; one autumn evening a courier reached Athens with the news that the king's vanguard had seized and was fortifying Elateia, the dismantled Phocian city on the Boeotian frontier which commanded the road down the valley of the Cephissus. Demosthenes has left us a vivid picture of the con- sternation which the tidings caused. Some ran to drive the buyers and sellers out of the market-place, some burned the wicker booths which encumbered it, others caused the trumpeters to sound the alarm round the city, others rushed to the houses of the strategi to bid them assemble. The Ecclesia met almost before daybreak, but when it was gathered no man dared face the crisis, till Demosthenes stood forward and comforted the desponding crowd by a vigorous harangue. While bidding them take all possible measures for the defense of the city, he pointed out that the danger was perhaps not so close as they imagined. Everything depended on the The- bans; if they were secretly allied with Philip the war must come into Attica, but if they were not, it might still be kept far off. He him- self volunteered to set out at once, to implore the Thebans not to grant the king a free passage, or, if possible, to induce them to join the Athenian alliance. It is the greatest testimony to the power of his oratory that he actually succeeded in carrying out the more difficult of the two alternatives. Macedonian ambassadors stood forward in the Theban assembly promising all manner of bribes the Boeotians and the Athenians had been ill neighbors to each other for the last thirty years, and a powerful army hung on the frontier ready to cross it the moment that Philip's requests were refused. Yet the orator induced the Thebans to send away the king's ambassadors and conclude an offensive and defensive alliance with Athens. ENDOFFREEDOM 477 338 B.C. Fighting at once began on the Boeotian frontier, and for sev- eral months an indecisive struggle was carried on upon each of the two main routes which lead from the Phocian hills towards Thebes. The Locrians of Amphissa, supported by ten thousand mercenaries hired by Athens, watched the southern route near the Gulf of Corinth that which Cleombrotus the Spartan had used in the campaign of Leuctra. The whole home-levy of Athens and Thebes held the narrow front in the valley of the Cephis- sus between the spurs of Cnemis and Parnassus, where so many battles had already taken place in Greek history. Ere long they were joined by large contingents from the states which Demos- thenes a year before had drawn into the Athenian alliance Corinth, Megara, Achaia, and the rest; the whole army would seem to have numbered somewhat over thirty thousand men. Philip's force was about the same; he had calculated on assistance from Peloponnesus, but his allies, the Eleians and Argives, preferred to wait till the for- tune of war ran definitely in his favor before committing themselves. In two partial engagements the confederate army had the best of the fight, and it was with good hopes of victory that its generals the Athenians Chares and Lysicles and the Theban Theagenes drew up their forces in front of Chaeroneia for a decisive battle, on the 2d of August, 338 B.C. The details of the struggle are not so well known to us as those of many less decisive conflicts in Grecian history. We gather that in the confederate host the Thebans held the right wing, the Athenians the left, while the Corinthians and other smaller con- tingents formed the center. In the Macedonian army the king faced the Athenians, and his son Alexander a youth of eighteen who now saw his first field had the Thebans opposite him. It would seem that Philip had resolved to throw the main weight of his army upon the enemy's right; he dreaded the Boeotian phalanx which had wrought such wonders at Corneia, Leuctra, and Mantinea. While the king fought cautiously with the Athenians, and even gave ground before their first attack, his son delivered a series of furious charges upon the Thebans. The memories of Epaminondas and Pelopidas were not dead, and the Boeotians made a gallant fight; but their short spears were unable to cope with the enormously long pikes of the Macedonian phalanx, while their cavalry was out- numbered and driven off the field. Theagenes, the Theban general, was slain, the three hundred chosen hoplites of the " Sacred Band " 478 GREECE 338 B.C. fell to a man, and then the Boeotians broke before the cavalry of Alexander. The rout of the confederate right left the center ex- posed, and ere long it was driven off the field. Finally the Athenians, who had been waging a not unsuccessful fight with Philip, were almost surrounded, so that to escape capture they had to disperse and fly. A thousand of them were slain, two thousand taken pris- oners; the Thebans' loss, mainly in dead, was even greater, and the allies in the center also suffered heavily. So ended this well- fought battle, for which Greece had no cause to blame her soldiers ; but she might well ask herself in shame why Athens, Thebes, and Corinth were left almost alone to fight the battle of Hellenic liberty. Elis and Argos, Arcadia and Messene, were standing apart in sel- fish prudence; Thessaly sent her horsemen to help the Macedonian stranger. Once more the narrow spirit of local ambition had proved the evil genius of Greece ; but now it was no passing trouble which it had brought upon the Hellenes, but the doom of permanent sub- jection to the half-barbarian kingdom in the north. Philip had now achieved the ambition of his lifetime; Athens and Greece were at his feet, and his exultation burst forth for the moment in the most unseemly guise. The evening after the victory he spent in a royal drinking bout, and at night he is said to have reeled off to the battle-field and to have danced among the corpses, while he trolled out as a song the preamble of a decree of Demos- thenes which happened to have the rhythm of a verse. A bystander recalled him to his better self by reminding him that " the gods had given him the part of Agamemnon to play, though he seemed to prefer to take up that of Thersites," But when the king had sobered down, he showed an even greater moderation in the hour of victory than he had displayed in 345 B.C. after the conquest of Phocis. When Thebes surrendered to him, a few days after the battle, he only claimed from her a treaty of alliance, the recognition of the autonomy of the smaller Boeotian cities, and the right to place a Macedonian garrison in the Cadmeia. Athens fared even better; the citizens, buoyed up by the hopeful energy of Demosthenes, who would not despair even in the hour of disaster, had prepared for a fierce resistance behind their walls. But when Philip sent back their prisoners without a ransom, and let it be known that the only thing he required was the cession of the Thracian Chersonese and the signature of a treaty acknowledging his hegemony, the desire to resist died away. When the peace had been signed Philip gave END OF FREEDOM 479 338 B.C. to Athens, as a pledge of his good will, the town of Oropus, which the Boeotians had taken from her thirty years ago. Megara and Corinth followed the example of Athens in promptly submitting to the king, and he was soon able to summon within the walls of the latter town a congress of all the states of Greece. Not a single city refused to send her delegates to do hom- age to the king save Sparta alone, who retained all her ancient pride, though she had now become a small and decayed state, oppressed by wars with her Argive and Messenian neighbors. There was something grand in the struggle of the Spartans against the over- whelming odds that Philip brought against them. Though all Greece followed the Macedonian banner. King Agis III. led out his little army with as much confidence, and fought with as dogged a courage, as had Leonidas or Agesilaus in the days of old.^ Sparta paid for her obstinacy by seeing Thyrea and the Sciritis, the prizes of her ancient victories in the sixth and seventh centuries, torn from her grasp and given to her Argive and Arcadian enemies. The congress which met at Corinth under King Philip's presi- dency, in the autumn of 338 B.C., was the most representative body which Greece had ever seen. Even the great assembly of 481 b.c.^ which had gathered on the news of the approach of Xerxes, had counted less members. It was only the strong hand of the master that could gather together the delegates of every Hellenic state for a common end ; of their own accord the blind and selfish cities would never have combined for any purpose, however great and good. The king laid before the deputies the draft of a document which practically formed Greece into one great federal state, under Mace- donian presidency. Every city was to be " free and autonomous," but in the same sense that Antalcidas had used the word fifty years before. Each was bound to Macedon by * a stringent treaty of alliance, but a very considerable degree of local freedom was allowed ; for example, Philip did not call for the banishment of Demosthenes or any other statesman who had opposed his plans, or impose new constitutions on unwilling states. A federal council was established to aid the king in administering the land, and the Amphictyons who had twice served Philip so well were consti- tuted the supreme legal arbiters between state and state. All this seemed fair and wise; but the other aspect of affairs was marked 2 Archidamus, the father of Agis, was slain in Italy on the same day as the battle of Chaeroneia. 480 GREECE 336 B.C. by the establishment of permanent Macedonian garrisons at Thebes, Corinth, Chalcis, and Ambracia, and by the clause which declared Philip supreme commander of the warlike forces of the whole con- federacy, and made disobedience to him into treason. Thus Greece received a formal constitution a thing which neither Sparta, Athens, nor Thebes had ever been able to force upon her. It was a far better one than might have been expected from the antecedents of the man who drafted it, but Philip's versatile mind was capable of unexpected acts of moderation and even of generosity. In spite of occasional outbursts of Macedonian bar- barism, he had become very Hellenic in his methods of thought, and so far as was compatible with his own ends paid a sincere attention to Greek prejudice in drawing up the treaty of Corinth. If fairly worked by a conscientious ruler, it would have been a far more just and promising basis for the union of Greece than were any of the arrangements which Sparta and Athens had tried to force on their reluctant neighbors. To provide the new Greek federation with a common end, likely to stir up national enthusiasm but not to prove dangerous to his own hegemony, Philip gave out that he was about to take up the old plans of Cimon and Agesilaus, and to lead the whole force of Greece eastward for a grand attack on the old national enemy, the Persian king. How far the project excited genuine zeal in Greece we cannot exactly tell, but sea and land contingents were voted with alacrity by the congress, and it was calculated that, if every state did its best, two hundred thousand men could be col- lected to overrun Asia. The scheme was to take effect in 336 B.C., the intervening year being devoted to the necessary prepara- tions. But Philip was never destined to cross the Plellespont. He was to enjoy the fruits of his victory for less than two years, and to die without having accomplished any of his new plans. The summer of 336 B.C. was come; a Macedonian force under the generals Attains and Parmenio had actually crossed into i\Iysia, and all Greece was filled with the preparations for the invasion, when the news suddenly arrived that Philip had been assassinated. It was not the outraged patriotism of any of the Greeks that had inspired the deed, but the private grudge of one of the king's own subjects. Philip, in violation of Hellenic usage, had married several ENDOFFREEDOM 481 336 B.C. wives, both Greek and foreign; but his recognized consort was the Epirot Princess Olympias, mother of his heir, Alexander the Great. This lady the king had just divorced and sent back to Epirus, to the great wrath of her fiery son. In her stead he had taken as his chief wife Cleopatra, the niece of his general, Attains. The friends of Olympias and Alexander were much enraged with Philip for wrecking the hopes which they had built on their favor with the late queen, and cast about for a means of revenge. They found a young Macedonian noble named Pausanias, who had just suffered an outrage at the hands of Attains, the new queen's uncle. The young man had sought justice from Philip, but it had been denied him, and he was filled with ungovernable resentment against both king and general. It required small persuasion to turn his anger into action. Philip was celebrating at Aegae the marriage of one of his daughters. On the second day of the festival there was a splendid procession, in which, as men noted with disapproval, the king's image was presumptuously borne along in company with those of the twelve great gods of Olympus. He himself walked in the procession crowned and robed in white, but quite unprotected, for he had bidden his guards to keep apart, " because he had sufficient security in the good will of all Greece." As he entered the theater Pausanias sprang out from among the spectators and thrust him through with a short sword which he had hidden under his cloak. The king fell dead; the assassin tried to make off, but stumbled in his flight, and was cut down before he got to his feet. So died King Philip, in the forty-seventh year of his age and the twenty-fourth of his reign, when all the world was expecting from him even greater exploits than he had already performed. Greece thought for the moment that she was once more free; Athenian patriots, forgetting the mercy that had been shown them two years before, began to get ready their sacrifices and libations. But a man who had grasped the real lesson of the times rebuked them. " Nothing," said Phocion, " shows greater meanness of spirit than expressions of joy on the death of an enemy. Remember that the army you fought at Chaeroneia is lessened by only one man." He was right. Philip was dead, but Philip's army and Philip's system were alive, and, what was more, the Greeks were perfectly unchanged. Their petty jealousies were as lively as ever, their border-feuds as venomous, their statesmen as venal and short- i82 GREECE 336 B.C. sighted. In spite of all our sympathy for individuals such as Demosthenes, we cannot feel that the chaotic state system which had prevailed since the death of Epaminondas deserved to survive. Greece under Philip would have been happier, richer, and better governed than that Greece, split up into twenty bickering states, which combined with kaleidoscopic variety into new political forms every three or four years, whose history we have been investi- gating. TIIK Vorxr, ALEXANDER TAMES I'.Lt El' H A LI'S. THE HORSE AFRAID OF OWN SIIADnW. I'A' FACIXC HIM TOWARD THE S T .\ I\unli:ig /'v /'. Sch('iiiii;.:r Chapter XLIV ALEXANDER THE GREAT, 336-323 B.C. THE Greek world knew little of the young man whom the sudden death of Philip had called to the throne of Mace- donia. That he was fiery and headstrong no one who had seen him charge the Theban phalanx at Chaeroneia, or heard him wrangle with his imperious father, could doubt. But nothing more was known of him : he was believed to be a rash, conceited boy, fit perhaps to lead a squadron of horse, but for nothing more. Demosthenes congratulated the Athenians that " Margites " had come to the throne of Macedon, applying to the new king the name of a stupid, quarrelsome boaster in a well-known comic poem ascribed to Homer. But the power of Philip had in reality fallen into the hands of a man even greater than Philip himself one of the most extraor- dinary characters that Europe has ever known, a man whose personality was to be impressed on the history of the world for a thousand years, ^ and whose biography forms an epic poem in real life. Alexander had been brought up under influences that would have fired even a less enthusiastic soul than his. His mother, Olympias, a princess of Epirus, was a fiery, ambitious woman with a dash of superstition in her mind. She taught Alexander that he was through the Epirot kings descended from Achilles, the hero of the tale of Troy, and bade him rival the great deeds of his ancestor. His first tutor is said to have won his heart by always calling him by the name of the prince in the Iliad, and styling Philip Peleus, and himself Phoenix 'the traditionary preceptor of Achilles. There is no doubt that Alexander had the tale of Achilles on his brain: more than once in his life we shall mark the effect of this ancestor-worship on his behavior. Pie knew the Iliad by heart, always carried a copy of it with him on his campaigns, and modeled his own character on that of the fiery Homeric chiefs. But there ^ The permanent effect of Alexander's work in the Hellenization of Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt endured till the Mohammedan conquest of those countries in the seventh century a.d. 483 484 GREECE 333 B C. were other strains in his character besides that of the generous knight-errant of the old romances : he had a strong infusion of the unscrupulous energy of Philip : those who crossed his path or merely incurred his suspicion he swept away without pity or remorse. As he grew older he grew as conscienceless as his father, and far more cruel than Philip had ever been. Alexander, how- ever, was more than adventurous and unscrupulous as fifty con- quering kings besides him have been he was also imbued with a broad desire for knowledge of all sorts ; there was a taste for dis- covery and research in him : he sought information of all sorts for its own sake, and loved to organize almost as much as to conquer. This side of his disposition must have developed freely under the teaching of Aristotle, the great philosopher whom Philip made his tutor when he reached the age of thirteen. The omnivorous appe- tite for knowledge which inspired Aristotle, and ranged over every subject from botany to metaphysics and from constitutional history to morals, seems to have influenced Alexander also to no small extent. The clever, inquisitive, restless Greek mind was developed in the pupil as in the teacher. But the quality which enabled Alexander to leave his mark on history was his military talent. He was a heaven-born general, and was besides brought up with every advantage that he could have desired. He learned from his father how to deal both with Greek and barbarian enemies, and how to handle with perfection the great military machine which Philip had organized for him. Alexander was one of the generals who win by rapid strokes and daring expedients. His long marches were perhaps the most char- acteristic part of his career : urged on by him his armies appeared to be able to annihilate time and space: the rapidity of their motion was almost incredible : he was on the spot when his enemies believed him to be hundreds of miles away. And when once arrived, Alex- ander had an eagle eye for seizing the moment to strike : he hardly ever made a mistake: his attacks, however reckless, succeeded to a miracle. He was above all things a cavalry general : it was the irresistible charge of his heavy life-guards, with himself in the van leading them on. that always won his battles. The steady Mace- donian phalanx, with its impenetrable hedge of spears, was only the secondary tool in the hewing out of his victories. While the great mass of infantry rolled like a hedgehog into the midst of the enemy, occupied their attention, beat off their attacks, and ARISTOTLE (Rurn 384 B.C. Died 322 b. c.) Marble bust in the Capitolinc Museum, Naples ALEXANDER 485 336 B.C. exhausted their energy, it was always the wild onset of the king and his " Companions " of the Macedonian horse that settled the day. But the Greeks had as yet no knowledge of the man with whom they had to deal. That he was determined and unscrupulous they soon realized, when the news came that at the moment of his accession he had executed everyone likely to be a rival to him: his father's infant son by Cleopatra, Attalus the uncle of Cleopatra, Amyntas the heir of his father's elder brother, and several more. But murders were common in the Macedonian royal house, and Alexander's conduct was as yet nothing exceptional. It was his next step that made men speak of him with respect. The moment that Philip was dead all Greece gave a sigh of relief, and prepared to forget the Macedonian and recommence its usual intrigues and wars. Sparta began to stir; Argos and Elis armed themselves; the Ambraciots expelled their Macedonian gar- rison; the Athenians burst out into patriotic oratory, and com- menced an intrigue with Persia to get money to raise a fleet. But before anything more serious was done, Alexander swooped down among them with thirty thousand men at his back. Caught unpre- pared, the Greek states were compelled to renew with him the treaties they had made with his father, and to elect him to the position of supreme commander of the Hellenic confederacy. After a short stay at Corinth to meet the congress of allies, and a rapid march round Peloponnesus, he hastened home again. The bar- barians on the northern frontier of Macedon had broken loose and required his curbing hand. (Autumn of 336 B.C.) In six months Alexander accomplished almost as much against his wild northern neighbors as Philip had done in ten years. One short campaign crushed the Thracians and Triballi, and carried the Macedonian arms even beyond the Danube. Another subdued the warlike Illyrians, and compelled them to do homage as vassals of the Macedonian crown. But while Alexander was absent in the northern wilds, a false rumor of his death reached Greece: the Thebans at once broke out into revolt and besieged the Macedonian garrison in their citadel. They sent for aid to their neighbors of Athens. Demosthenes, now as always, urged on war with Macedon, and the temper of the Ecclesia was not unfavorable. But Athens was cautious and dilatory ; nothing positive was done, save that Demosthenes crossed into Peloponnesus and persuaded the 486 GREECE 336-335 B.C. Arcadian League and Elis to declare in favor of Thebes. But while Demosthenes was talking Alexander acted. Before it was known that he was not dead he suddenly appeared in Boeotia. He had marched right through from Illyria, over countless passes and valleys, covering in thirteen days two hundred and fifty miles of indifferent road. The Thebans, unaided by any ally, boldly faced the king: they fortified an entrenched position in front of their city and fought a decisive battle outside the gates. Outnumbered and outgeneraled, the Thebans were doomed to fail. They were beaten, and the Macedonians entered the gates with the flying enemy. A desperate street-fight followed, but Alexander at last cut his way to the market-place. Six thousand Thebans fell, and the whole city was in the hands of the conqueror. The king was determined to make an example of the place : he bade his Greek allies, the Phocians and other neighbors and enemies of Thebes, sit in judgment on the vanquished. They voted as the king intended that Thebes should be destroyed. Thirty thou- sand Thebans were ruthlessly sold into slavery ; the walls and houses were cast down, and the territory divided among the smaller Boeotian towns. Thus perished the city of Epaminondas, the victim of its own rashness and of the procrastination of its allies. Alexander spared only the temples and the house of the poet Pindar : long after, however, he repented of his cruelty, and attributed to the anger of Bacchus, the tutelary god of Thebes, the drunken frenzy which sometimes disfigured his later years. The Athenians and the other Greek states of the Theban party had done nothing more than pass decrees against Alexander, and the king declared that he should require nothing more than the punishment of the leaders of the anti-Macedonian party. His demand for the instant surrender of eight leading citizens of Athens, including Demosthenes, was soon softened down by the intercession of Phocion into a consent that two Athenians only should be banished. The same was the case with Elis and Arcadia, who had committed themselves in much the same way as Athens ; a few leaders were punished and the states left unharmed. By the use of one severe example, followed by a display of clemency, Alex- ander brought the Greeks into the frame of mind in which he desired to see them they were now convinced that they had to deal with a master-mind, and would be loath to recommence their intrigues while the ruins of Thebes lay before their eyes. ALEXANDER 487 335-334 B.C. The autumn of 335 b.c. was now far spent; and the king announced that he should not till the next year take up the great scheme for the invasion of Asia which his father had begun to carry out. The Macedonian force which Philip had sent across the Hellespont in 337 b.c. was still holding on to some of the coast towns of Mysia : Alexander now began to reinforce it, but deferred the departure of his main army till the spring of the oncoming year. Nothing could be more inspiring to the enthusiastic mind of Alexander than the idea of an attack on the realm of the Great King. Such a scheme at once brought him on to the ground where his hero-ancestor, Achilles, had fought and died. It gave him the opportunity of surpassing the successful Asiatic campaigns of Agesilaus, who was still reckoned the greatest general that Greece had known. It also furnished him with a plausible excuse for calling upon the states of Greece for their hearty aid: was he not about to avenge on their behalf the invasion which Xerxes just a hundred and fifty years before had launched against the Hellenic fatherland? The war was to be at once a crusade of Hellenism against barbarism, a buccaneering adventure into the golden realm of the fabulously wealthy " Great King," and what was not without an attraction for Alexander a plunge into the unknown for beyond the coast-land Asia was still untrodden ground to the Greeks. The prince who sat on the Persian throne was now Darius III. There had been much murder of late in the palace of Susa, and Darius, who was only the third cousin of his predecessor, had been suddenly called from a private station to occupy the throne, owing to the extinction of the elder branch of the royal house. He had now been reigning for two years, and had given no sign of capacity, either for good or evil ; but, tried in the balance, he was found to be entirely destitute both of military ability and of moral courage. Though not absolutely a coward, he was so wanting in decision and . initiative that no one could have been more fitted to lose an empire. In the spring of 334 B.C. Alexander marched to the Hellespont with the veteran army which his father had organized. Some 30,000 foot and 4500 horse followed his banner, of whom about half were Macedonians; the rest consisted of 1200 Greeks and 7000 barbarian auxiliaries Tracians, Illyrians, and other wild tribes from the 488 GREECE 335-334 B.C. Balkans. They formed about two-thirds of the strength of the Macedonian monarchy; the remaining third, 12,000 foot and 1500 horse, under Antipater, were left behind to guard the capital and overawe the unruly Greeks. For two years Persia and Macedon had already been at war, but Darius had made no adequate preparation to repel invasion; indeed, he hardly expected it: no Asiatic could have foreseen that a young man of twenty-two, whose name he had but just learned, was about to revolutionize the whole East. The Phoenician fleet was not called up to block the Hellespont, nor were the satraps of Asia Minor strengthened with aid from the inland. They had to bear the storm as best they could on their own resources. To meet Alexander, Arsites of Phrygia, Mitrobarzanes of Cappadocia, and Spithridates of Lydia, had collected twenty thousand native horse, and about ten thousand Greek mercenary foot, to defend their borders. Meanwhile, Alexander crossed the Hellespont with his army, and landed near Troy, at the spot where tradition placed the harbor of the host of Agamemnon. He honored the supposed tomb of his ancestor Achilles with solemn rites ; hanging a garland on it, and running, thrice, naked round the barrow, in accordance with an ancient local custom. At Ilium he did solemn sacrifice to Athene, and hung up his arms in her temple, taking down instead some ancient armor that was said to have been dedicated by the heroes of the Trojan war. Then, full of memories of Homeric battles, he went forth to meet the hosts of Asia. The satraps were waiting for him in a position they had chosen on the river Granicus, ten miles inland from the Propontis, near the town of Zeleia. Mentor, the leader of the Greek mercenaries, had besought the Persians to retire before Alexander without a battle, wasting the country around them and declining to engage till they should have mustered greater strength. But the stupid satraps were bent on fighting at a disadvantage. Instead of choosing a plain where their cavalry could act, they placed themselves on the rugged bank of a fordable river, and prepared to dispute its passage. Their infantry was in the second line; their masses of cavalry, which were almost useless for defending a position, lined the steep slope at the water's edge. The eye of Alexander caught at once the defect in the enemy's array : his infantry advanced to the river's edge and began to cross ALEXANDER 489 335-334 B.C. in face of the Persian horse ; they were charged when they reached the further bank, but their long sarissas beat off the cavalry with heavy loss. Then Alexander himself plunged into the water with his horse-guards and scrambled up the steep slope in front of him. Their assault was irresistible: though the Persian nobles swarmed round him, fighting their best, and dying manfully upon the lances of the horse-guards, they could make no long stand. But for a moment the melee was hot ; one Persian noble lopped off the king's white plume; another, the satrap Spithridates, had forced himself behind Alexander and was raising his saber to stab him in the back, when Cleitus, a Macedonian officer, cut off his hand. The Persian leaders soon fell; their horsemen fled in disorder, and then the Macedonians were able to surround the unfortunate Greek mer- cenary infantry in the rear. Alexander gave them no quarter, alleging that they were traitors in arms against the Hellenic con- federacy of which he was general, and only two thousand escaped death. The whole loss of the Macedonians in the fight at the GranTcus was only one hundred and twenty men : on the Persian side about two thousand horsemen had fallen, and the whole body of infantry had been cut to pieces. But the most important item in their loss was that well-nigh every Persian officer of rank had been slain; two of the three satraps had fallen in the battle ; the third, Arsites, escaped alive, but committed suicide next day rather than face his master. There was no one left to command in Asia Minor, and the defense of the whole peninsula was completely disorganized. Town after town surrendered to Alexander when he proceeded to march south from the Hellespont first Sardis, then Ephesus, then all the other cities of Ionia. The king needed to do nothing but accept the submission of their inhabitants and nominate new governors. In one quarter only was there opposition: Memnon, the captain of the Greek mercenaries of Darius, had escaped from the Granicus and thrown himself into Miletus. He maintained himself there for some weeks, and had to be besieged in due form ere he would evacuate the place. Meanwhile a Phoenician fleet had come up, two months late: it should have arrived in the spring and blocked the Hellespont. Aided by this fleet Memnon held first Miletus and then Halicarnassus, and gave Alexander much trouble. Hali- carnassus had to be stormed after a desperate defense the first real trouble that the Macedonians had met in Asia and even when it 490 GREECE 334-333 B.C. fell Memnon and his garrison escaped on shipboard, to give further trouble in the Aegean. (Autumn of 334 B.C.) Alexander employed the last months of 334 B.C. in completing the subjection of western Asia Minor, Leaving his main body to winter at Ephesus, he marched with a chosen corps through Caria and received the homage of its native rulers : then he pushed in the depth of winter along the Lycian and Pamphylian shore, meeting hardly any hindrance save from the inclemency of the season. One most hazardous march took him round the sea-swept path that winds along the cliffs of Mount Climax: the road was covered, but the king refused to turn back, and made his way through water that reached to the waist, despising the waves that threatened to sweep away his whole host. He thus reached the cities of the Pamphylian coast. Perga and Side promptly submitted, and the tribes of the neighboring highlands soon followed their example. The king then turned north, and, crossing the snow-clad passes of the Pisidian mountain in early March, came out on to the great Phrygian plateau just as spring began. At Gordium, the old capital of Phrygia, Alexander was joined by his main army, which the veteran general Parmenio led up from Ephesus, It had been largely recruited by drafts from Macedon and Greece, and was now even stronger than when it crossed the Hellespont a year before : the marvelous success of the king had made recruiting easy, and volunteers were numerous. Alexander's stay at Gordium is mainly notable for the incident of the " Gordian knot." In the town there was preserved an ancient chariot, said to have been constructed by Gordius, the first king of Phrygia. Its pole was fastened to its yoke by a strand of cornel bark, twisted in a complex knot. Local tradition held that the man who should untie the knot was destined to be king of all Asia. Alexander heard the tale, gazed for a moment at the puzzle, and promptly solved it by drawing his sword and cutting the knot asunder. The bystanders, both Phrygian and Greek, raised a cry that the proph- ecy was now fulfilled, and were confirmed in their idea when a heavy thunderstorm followed denoting, as they supposed, the assent of Zeus. It seemed for a short time as if Alexander might be detained in Asia Minor by the operations of Memnon and the Persian fleet in the Aegean. That enterprising chief conquered in the spring the islands of Chios and Lesbos, expelling their Macedonian garrisons. ALEXANDER 491 333 B.C. He then proposed to sail across to Greece and raise rebellion against Alexander, with the help of Agis, King of Sparta ; but just at this moment he died. With his death all energy seemed to abandon the Persian fleet, and Alexander, freed from this danger at the critical moment, was free to plunge farther into Asia. King Darius had done nothing all the winter, while his restless adversary had been conquering western Asia Minor. But he had summoned the full muster of the host of all the satrapies to meet at Babylon in the spring of 333 B.C. He was now on his march up the Euphrates with an armament almost as large as that of Xerxes. Rumor gave him six hundred thousand men, and some of the troops were good fighting material, more especially a body of nearly thirty thousand Greek mercenaries, hired from every quarter where hoplites could be found. While Darius was coming westward Alexander was hurrying to meet him. A rapid march from Gordium across the central plateau of Asia Minor brought him to the foot of the passes of Mount Taurus. It was expected that the governor of Cilicia would have manned them with all the forces of his satrapy; but the cowardly wretch his name was Arsames fled at Alexander's approach, and abandoned the rugged defile of the Cilician Gates wnthout a blow. The Macedonian army at once poured down from the hills into the fertile Cilician plain and seized Tarsus. Here Alexander was detained by a sharp fit of illness. He had plunged, at the end of a hot march, into the icy-cold mountain stream of the Cydnus; a chill seized him and fever followed. He was treated by a physician named Philippus, but was long in rallying. A secret letter informed him that his doctor had been hired by Persian gold to poison him. But so great was Alexander's confidence in Philippus that he drank off the next potion he pre- scribed, and then handed him the letter to read. After this the king rapidly recovered his strength, and was soon in the field again. Meanwhile Darius was at hand with all his hosts, and only Mount Amanus, the range which separates Syria from Cilicia, lay between the armies. Two main passes pierce the chain, the " Syrian Gates " to the south, leading from Myriandrus to Sochi, and the " Amanic Gates " to the north, leading from Issus to Sochi. Alex- ander was convinced that his enemy intended to fight in the great plain of northern Syria, where his masses of cavalry could act 492 GREECE 333 B.C. freely. It never entered his head that Darius would enter the mountains and engage on ground so unfavorable to his unwieldy numbers. Accordingly, Alexander marched down the narrow coast-plain between the Amanus and the sea, and made for the " Syrian Gates " in order to cross into Syria. But, meanwhile, Darius also had set out to meet his enemy, and passing the moun- tains by the " Amanic Gates," came down on Issus in Alexander's rear, captured the depots and sick of the Macedonian army, and threw himself across their line of communication with Asia Alinor. This mattered little to Alexander; he only rejoiced that his enemy had consented to pen up his multitudes between the sea and the hills, on the narrow shore between Issus and Myriandrus. Abandoning the " Syrian Gates," the king faced about, and retraced his route back towards Issus. Behind the river Pinarus, ten miles south of Issus, he came upon the Persian host, ranged line behind line with a front of only ninety thousand men. The Greek merce- naries and the native Persians, both horse and foot, were in the fighting line; the troops of the subject nations blocked the roads for mile on mile to the rear, quite out of the game. Alexander's army was numerous enough to fill the space of two miles between the sea and the hills without overcrowding. Placing the phalanx in the center, leading the right wing of cavalry himself, and giving the left, on the sea-flank, in charge to the old Parmenio, Alexander advanced to attack the enemy. The battle of Issus, though more toughly contested than that at the Granlcus, was not less decisive. The phalanx pushed into the midst of the Persian line, and engaged in a fierce strife with the Greek mercenaries of Darius. Parmenio by the seashore waged an up-hill fight against the main body of the Persian horse, and was forced to give ground. But Alexander himself in a series of fierce charges broke through the left wing of the enemy, and then turned to attack his center from the flank and rear. When King Darius saw the Macedonian lancers pressing nearer and nearer to the lofty chariot wherein he sat, his presence of mind deserted him ; he leaped down and mounted a horse. Seeing the chariot empty the Persians imagined the king slain ; a cry ran down the ranks that all was lost, and the fighting line broke up in confusion. The subject nations in the rear did not stop to strike a blow, but promptly fled to the hills. Darius himself, almost the first among the fugitives, abandoned his camp, his treasures, and his harem, and fled to ji ^ c -* J> t* g ; ^ '-^ 7 K- ^ "^ U o >= A o ** * * 3 ? ^' w' ^ > S "3 S . ;:r -^ ,:r ^ ALEXANDER 493 333 B.C. Thapsacus on the Euphrates. There was a great slaughter of the fugitives, and of the native Persians and Greek mercenaries in the front line nearly half must have fallen. A moderate estimate placed the loss in Darius's army at thirty thousand men. Of the Macedonians not more than four hundred and fifty were left on the field. In the Persian camp were found three thousand talents ($3,- 500,000), the first large spoil of money that had fallen into Alexan- der's hands, great stores of plate and jewels, and a capture of far greater importance the harem of Darius, including his mother Sisygambis and his queen-consort Statira. Alexander treated these ladies with great courtesy and consideration : not only did their forlorn situation appeal to his natural magnanimity, but he might also reflect that they would be most valuable hostages in any future dealings with Darius. When he stood victorious at the head of the Gulf of Issus Alexander had two paths open to him. He might strike eastward and pursue Darius to Babylon, leaving Syria unsubdued on his flank, or he might turn south and subdue Syria and Egypt before proceeding to attack the heart of the Persian empire. Alexander chose the latter alternative: the character of Darius was now known to him, and he thought that he might safely neglect him for many months after the crushing defeat he had just undergone. His conjecture was correct ; within a short time Darius was humbly asking for peace, ofifering ten thousand talents as a ransom for his family, and the hand of his daughter Barsine, with all the provinces west of Euphrates as her dower. Alexander told his officers of the Persian's proposition. " I should accept, were I Alexander," exclaimed the veteran Parmenio. " And so should I, if I were Parmenio," answered the king. The Macedonian generals were already dazzled with the vastness of their conquests, but their young master looked upon what he had obtained as a mere earnest of greater things to come. He sent away the Persian ambassadors, and prepared to go on with the war. It was in front of Tyre that the envoys had found Alexander. All northern Syria had submitted to him without a blow, and of the Phoenician cities, Sidon, Byblus, and Aradus had opened their gates. But Tyre, jealous of the semi-independence it enjoyed under the Persian rule, had proffered homage, but refused to admit a Macedonian garrison within its walls. The king answered that 494 GREECE 333-332 B.C. he must enter the city, as he intended to sacrifice to Melcarth whom the Greeks identified with their own Heracles in his ancient temple on the Tyrian island. To this the Tyrians replied that no foreigner could come within the walls, but that a shrine of Melcarth, yet more ancient and venerable than their own, could be found in the ruins of old Tyre on the mainland. Alexander was in no mood to brook such a reply, and announced that he would enter by force of arms. Tyre was a strong place renowned for the long sieges it had undergone one Assyrian king had blockaded it in vain for more than twenty years. It lay on an island seven hundred yards out in the sea, and was girt by walls coming down to the water's edge and rising a hundred and fifty feet above the waves. The Tyrians possessed a well-equipped fleet of a hundred ships, which had just returned from the Aegean, for the nev/s of Issus had caused the Persian armament in the western waters to break up. Alexander had as yet no fleet with him, and strove to take Tyre by running a mole out from the mainland across the shallow strait which protected the island city. At first the work was easy, but presently the mole reached deeper water, and began also to come within range of the military engines planted on the walls. The workmen were swept off in such numbers that Alexander had to construct wooden towers to protect the head of the mole ; but when these were constructed the Tyrians set them ablaze by means of a fire-ship, and then pushed out in boats, and destroj^ed the greater part of the causeway. Convinced that he must command the sea if he wished to conquer Tyre, Alexander compelled the Sidonians and Cypriots to send him their fleets, and presently sent two hun- dred and ten vessels to drive the Tyrians within their harbor. After this the work was simplified ; the mole was renewed on a larger scale, and driven forward to the very foot of the walls. The Tyrians fought with the frantic courage of which Semitic races have often shown themselves capable, as bravely as the Cartha- ginians withstood Scipio, or the Jews the Romans of Titus. But the end was inevitable : a breach was made and the city was stormed a*fter a siege of less than seven months. The Mace- donians lost four hundred men, but eight thousand Tyrians were cut down in the streets. Two thousand prisoners were hanged by the ruthless conqueror, and the rest of the population sold into slavery. (July ? 332 b.c.) ALEXANDER 495 332-331 B.C. When Tyre fell, all the lands to its south were struck with terror. The Jews in Palestine did homage to the king, and with them all the cities of the Philistines, save Gaza alone, the southern fortress which blocked the road to Egypt. A faithful governor named Batis held this town for Darius : he resisted for three months and sorely angered Alexander. When the place fell the king determined to imitate his ancestor Achilles in the least praiseworthy of his actions : he had Batis bound to the tail of his chariot and dragged him along till he died, because Achilles had dealt in the same way with the corpse of Hector. Cruelty from this moment seems to have grown upon Alexander more and more. Egypt fell without a blow : its inhabitants regarded the Mace- donians as deliverers from the Persian yoke, against which they had so long striven, and welcomed them as friends. Alexander made a triumphal entry into Memphis, and then sailed down the Nile to its western mouth, where, struck with the capacities of the spot, he drew out a plan for the foundation of a great maritime city, and christened it by his own name. Thus came into being the seaport of Alexandria, by far most enduring of all the monu- ments which Alexander reared for himself. While staying at Alexandria, the king resolved to visit the famous oracle of Zeus Ammon in the Libyan desert. With a picked corps of troops he marched for five days across the sands, and came in safety to the palm groves of the fertile oasis which shel- tered the temple of the god. The oracle hailed him as the son of Zeus, and bade him go forth and conquer all the world, for none should be able to withstand him till the day when he should be taken up to the gods. His companions were bidden to salute him as more than mortal, and to offer him sacrifice. This hyperbolical flattery seems to have been the first thing which turned the head of Alexander : it was noted that he took the greeting of the oracle in all seriousness, and was in future much pleased when anyone saluted him as the son of Ammon. In the spring of 331 B.C. Alexander retraced his steps from Egypt through Palestine and Syria back to the Euphrates. He crossed the great river at Thapsacus, and then, pushing yet farther east, passed the Tigris also. This he did in order to avoid the Mesopotamian desert, and to be able to march on Babylon by a route where provisions should never fail. Darius had been granted nearly two years to assemble a new 496 GREECE 331 B.C. army, and had now gathered a force even greater than that which fought at Issus. He was determined this time to fight on the level plains, where his hordes would not be cramped for want of space to deploy, and awaited Alexander in the flat sandy country in front of the town of Arbela, at a spot known as Gaugamela (the house of the camel). There the whole force of the East was found drawn out in battle array the king in the midst in his war-chariot, sur- rounded by his body-guard, and with the remnant of his Greek mercenaries on either side : to the north and south of him stretched long lines of Median, Bactrian, Persian, and Indian cavalry, while behind him were drawn up the infantry of the eastern satrapies, in numbers numberless. War-chariots and elephants were stationed at intervals in front of the army, and it was hoped that their onset might break up the close array which was the strength of the Macedonians. To meet this great host Alexander had only forty thousand foot and seven thousand cavalry. It was evident that he must be outflanked to right and left by the enormous numbers opposed to him. Accordingly he advanced in an order which somewhat re- sembled a hollow square. The phalanx made the front line, flanked on the right by Alexander and his chosen Macedonian horse, on the left by Parmenio and the cavalry of the allied Greeks. The sides of the square were formed by bodies of Greek, Thracian, and Illyrian infantry and horse : their orders were to beat off all flank attacks, and to see that the king was not assailed from the rear. The hinder side of the square was formed by a thin line of Thracian infantry. In this array the Macedonians plunged into the midst of the Persian host, aiming the chief point of their impact at the king himself. The elephants and chariots gave no trouble, but when the enemy's cavalry closed in on either flank, there was very sharp fighting all over the field. Parmenio was encompassed and almost beaten by the Persian right wing. One great body of Parthian and Indian horse burst through between two brig^ades of the pha- lanx, and would have done much harm had it not fallen to plunder- ing the Greek camp. But in the center Alexander himself won his way forward with the same irresistible impetus that he had displayed at Granlcus and Issus. With his body-guard and the right brigades of the phalanx he pierced into the Persian ranks till he drew near to the chariot of Darius. Once more the imbecile ALEXANDER 497 331 B.C. Persian concluded that it was better to survive and fight another day. Though his men were still doing their best, he left his chariot, mounted his charger, and fled away. His host fled after him, and Alexander was once more the victor. He had conquered a host of a million men, and slain forty thousand of them, with no greater loss than five hundred killed and four or five thousand wounded ! When Alexander won his third and crowning victory over the Great King, the spell which had held the Persian empire to- gether, for two hundred years seemed suddenly dissolved. The rumor ran far and wide over all the eastern satrapies that the house of the Achaemenidae was doomed, and everywhere the native princes declared themselves independent, and the satraps strove to turn their provinces into petty kingdoms. It was no more with the Persian empire that Alexander had to deal ; such an entity no longer existed. He had now to deal with a bewildering chaos of tribes and cities, defending, or refusing to defend, the newly ac- quired freedom. Darius fled to Ecbatana in Media, but he could not collect a new army: only a few thousantl personal retainers of his own and of the satraps who still clung to him mustered around his person. Moreover his life and his crown were alike in danger : his cousin Bessus, satrap of Bactria, had determined to dethrone him as he richly deserved and to see whether a new sovereign could not save the heritage of the Achaemenidae. Meanwhile, Alexander marched on Babylon, where the Chal- daeans opened the gates of the city, and received him with gar- lands, sacrifices, and hymns of honor. Babylon had never forgiven the two sacks it had undergone at the hands of the Persians in the sixth century, and looked upon Alexander as a liberator. It might have been expected that Susa, the home of Cyrus and the chosen abode of his successors, would have shown a different spirit. But the spell of Arbela was on the Susians; they yielded without re- sistance, and placed in Alexander's hands the immense royal hoard stored in the palace of Darius a sum amounting to no less than fifty thousand talents, or $57,500,000, the savings of nine genera- tions of the house of Achaemenes. Alexander now halted for a short time to reorganize the em- pire he had won, for no one now doubted that he was the " Great King," and Darius a luckless pretender to a crown that was no longer his own. The principle which the conqueror adopted was to confirm in their civil authority all the satraps who ' submitted 498 GREECE 331-330 B.C. to him, but to join with the native ruler a Greek officer, who took over miHtary charge of the district. Thus at Babylon and Susa the satraps, Mazaeus and Abulites, were left in power, but Avere watched by the two generals Apollodorus and Archelaus. The Macedonians did not wholly approve of this arrangement; they thought that all places of emolument should be reserved for them- selves, and grudged to see their ruler taking upon him the pomp of the Great King, and acknowledging Asiatics as faithful and deserving subjects. Persia proper yet remained to be conquered : it was defended, not by the wretched Darius, who was hiding at Ecbatana, but by Ariobarzanes, the last hero that the Persian realm produced. Fight- ing for his own hand rather than for any master, Ariobarzanes summoned the last levy of the old royal race into the field. The remnants of the native Persian host manned the passes that lead from Susa to Persepolis, and for five days held Alexander in check at a defile called the " Susian Gates." But this Persian Ther- mopylae ended as disastrously as its Hellenic prototype. Alexander found a circuitous track which turned the pass, and came out un- expectedly in the defenders' rear. The Persian host was cut to pieces after a brave defense: only Ariobarzanes himself forced his way through with a few companions and strove to defend the gates of Persepolis. There he died as the last leader of a lost cause should die, overborne by numbers and fighting to the last. If Darius had been a man, he, and not the satrap, should have had this glorious end. (February? 330 B.C.). Alexander deliberately gave up Persepolis to fire and sword, not because it had resisted, but for cold-blooded reasons of state policy. Nothing, he deliberately wrote home, could show so well that the Persian domination was over as the sack of the Persian capital and the massacre of its inhabitants. Probably in his heart Alexander rejoiced that, unlike his model Achilles, he had sur- vived to gloat over the sack of his own Troy. To the Greek world he vouchsafed to represent the atrocity as the long-delayed retribu- tion for the destruction of Athens by Xerxes a hundred and fifty years before. So Persepolis became even as Nineveh, and the Persian empire disappeared as completely as the Assyrian. An even greater treasure than had been captured at Susa, no less than one hundred and twenty thousand talents, was borne off in triumph from the ruined city. ALEXANDER 499 330-329 B.C. King Darius had survived his kingdom, but it was now the keenest desire of Alexander to see his rival at his feet begging for mercy. After the sack of Persepolis he started northward to seek Darius at Ecbatana : the Persian fled at his approach, and sought to hide himself in the lands beyond the Oxus, Disgusted at his cowardice, his few surviving followers cast him into chains, and resolved to proclaim his ambitious cousin, Bessus, King of the East. But Alexander followed hard on their heels, overtook them and almost captured the dethroned king. Bessus, however, seeing him at hand, stabbed his captive and fled. Alexander came up just in time to see his rival expire, and was careful to deal with him as Achilles had with Hector, surrendering his body for hon- orable burial to his aged parent. Queen Sisygambis. Alexander was destined to survive his rival for just seven years, a period spent, save its last fifteen months, in one long series of campaigns among the hills and plains of Tartary, Afghanistan, and the Punjab. The man could never rest while there were lands to conquer : we cannot speculate how far to the east he might not have penetrated had not his own army at last mutinied and refused to proceed any farther. The first four years were spent in reducing to submission the eastern provinces of the Persian empire. Bessus had to be dealt with first: he had now assumed the crown, taken the royal name of Artaxerxes, and established himself as king in Bactria. It took Alexander just a year to destroy the usurper and conquer his kingdom, which extended from Artacoana (Herat) to Maracanda (Samarcand). In May, 329 B.C., the murderer of Darius was surrendered to Alexander by his own dispirited adherents. The king placed a wooden collar on his neck, flogged him in public at Bactra (Balkh), his late capital, and then executed him. Bessus had not been subdued without some hard fighting and yet harder marching; one winter march across the snow-clad Paropamisus range, which divides Bactria from Aria, was long remembered for its terrors, and has been compared not unaptly to Hannibal's famous passage of the Alps. Ere yet Bessus had been slain, Alexander had wrought a deed more cruel and unjustifiable than any he had yet committed. Among his chief generals was Philotas, son of the veteran Parmenio who had served so well at Issus and Arbela. This officer was a man of a very free and outspoken disposition: he had ventured many times to carp at Alexander's growing vanity and recklessness, and 500 GREECE 329-328 B.C. had given great offense by saying that but for his father and him- self Asia would not have been conquered. Alexander suddenly accused him of having been privy to a conspiracy against his life, and put him to the torture. Placed on the rack Phildtas broke down and confessed that he and his father Parmenio had indeed been plotting against the king. He was then tried and executed, while a messenger was sent off to Ecbatana to slay the aged Parmenio, who had been left behind as governor of Media. The old man was stabbed in the back while reading a dispatch handed to him by the messenger. It is certain that he had never plotted against his master, and probable that his son was equally innocent. Alex- ander seems to have slain the son from offended vanity, and then to have murdered the father lest he might resent his son's cruel end. The conquest of Bactria had taken place in 329 b.c. : in the following year Alexander subdued Sogdiana, the last Persian sa- trapy to the northeast, and carried his arms beyond the old Persian border into the land of the nomad Scythians. Having forced their king to do homage, he built the new city of Alexandroeschata ("Alexander's farthest") to cover the frontier, and turned south. His next expedition was to be directed against India. Ever since his visit to the oracle of Ammon, Alexander's pride and vanity had been increasing. Of late he had taken to assuming divine honors as his right, dressed himself, to the deep disgust of his comrades, in the purple robe and tiara of an Eastern king, and surrounded his person with Oriental courtiers. He married, too, as his chief wife for he had started a harem not a Greek, but the beautiful daughter of a Bactrian nobleman : the heir to his throne, men murmured, would be a half-bred Asiatic. At the same time he began to levy Oriental troops in large numbers, and not only formed auxiliary regiments of them, but drafted them into the ranks of the phalanx and the horse-guard. This drove the Mace- donian veterans to madness. One strange scene marks the char- acter of this discontent. The king and his generals drank deep one night, celebrating the festival of the Dioscuri. Flatterers, made fluent by the wine-cup, began to beslaver the king with the fulsome praises that he loved. At last Cleitus, commander of the horse- guard, could stand it no longer; he told Alexander to his face that he owed his victories to the army that his father Philip had created, and to the generals he had trained, that Parmenio and Philotas, whom he had slain, had enabled him to conquer Asia, and that he ALEXAXDER THE GREAT. AS HELIOS (norn 356 B. c. Died 3J3 b. c. ) Marble bust in the Capitoline Museum, Rome ALEXANDER 501 328-326 B.C. would not be alive that day if his own arm had not saved him from the saber of Spithridates at the Granicus. The king and Cleitus were both flushed with drink, and the wrangle ended in a tragedy. Alexander sprang from his seat and seized a sword; his friends dragged him back and hurried Cleitus from the room. But the angry general rushed back again with a fresh taunt in his mouth, and Alexander, seizing a pike, struck him dead. The king's trans- port of murderous frenzy was followed by a violent revulsion of feeling: he flung himself in tears on his couch, and refused to eat for three days but he did not give up his Oriental habits or his drinking bouts. Alexander's Indian expedition added the fertile province of the Punjab to his dominions. It was won by force of arms from several chiefs, of whom the most noteworthy was Porus, the brave king of the land to the east of the Hydaspes (Jhelum). Confiding in his fifty thousand foot, his three hundred chariots, and his hun- dred and thirty war-elephants, the Indian king advanced to defend the line of the Hydaspes against the Macedonians. He was con- quered, but his defeat cost a thousand men to Alexander, a greater loss than he had suffered when fighting the myriads of Darius at Issus and Arbela. Porus was wounded and taken prisoner, but Alexander, in whom generous instincts were still strong, not only pardoned him, but gave him back his kingdom with a new province added to it in 327 B.C. There were other realms to conquer beyond the eastern bounds of the dominions of Porus. Accordingly we find Alexander urging on his weary battalions towards the unknown lands of the sun- rising, of which no Greek had hitherto so much as heard the names. The Indian princes in the valley of the Ganges would soon have felt the weight of his arm, if an unexpected obstacle had not intervened. On the banks of the Hyphasis, easternmost of the five rivers of the Punjab, the Macedonians broke out at last into open mutiny. For seven years the king had been dragging them farther and farther from their homes, and now they would go not one step more, despite his threats and promises. Unlike their master, they did not thirst for more worlds to conquer, but yearned to rest and enjoy what they had already won. Their resolve was inflexible, and Alexander had to turn back in 326 B.C., cloaking his disgust with a seasonable announcement that the omens for farther advance had become unfavorable. 502 GREECE 326-325 B.C. The king was far too restless and adventurous to return by the way he had come. He resolved to reach Babylon by a new route, following the Indus to its mouth, and then striking westward through Gedrosia (Beluchistan). He prepared a fleet on the Indus and then made his army escort it down the river. On their way fleet and army co-operated in subduing the independent tribes of the lower Punjab and Scinde. In storming the citadel of the Malli (Mooltan) the king ran a greater personal risk than he had ever before incurred. Leading the forlorn hope of the stormers, as was often his wont, he had reached the top of the wall with only three companions, when the ladder broke behind him. He leaped down among the enemy, and was received with a hail of arrows at short range : one pierced his corselet and penetrated into the region of the lungs; another slew one of his three followers. The two sur- vivors, Peucestes and Leonnatus, fought desperately over his body against a crowd of Indians, till the stormers reared new ladders and burst in to rescue their unconscious leader, and massacre the whole garrison. The king's life was at first despaired of, but his wonderful constitution enabled him to recover, and in a few weeks he was on foot again. (November? 326 b.c.) Alexander reached the mouth of the Indus after subduing all the princes of Scinde. He built a town, which he named Alexandria, at a well-chosen spot in the Delta, and destined it to be a great military and commercial port to command the Indian Ocean. From thence he dispatched his fleet under his admiral Nearchus to ex- plore the Erythraean Sea and the Persian Gulf, as far as the mouths of the Euphrates, for he was filled with ideas of opening up a sea route between India and Babylon. He himself determined to make a similar tour of exploration, but on land. He took a chosen body of troops, and endeavored to pick out a road between the mountains of Gedrosia and the sea. The main body of his army marched under Craterus by the ordinary road farther inland, which leads from India to Persia, by Arachosia (Candahar) and Drangiana (Seistan). Some of Alexander's luck seems to have deserted him when once he turned back and set his face homewards. x\t the outset of his return journey he had received the only serious wound he ever knew, and now, in the midst of it, he made a march which was one continued disaster. He lost himself in the unexplored deserts of Beluchistan, and marched for sixty days over sterile valleys and ALEXANDER 503 326-325 B.C. Still more sterile hills where neither food nor water were to be had. We hear of marches of forty miles between well and well, and of whole companies left stricken down by sunstroke at the roadside. All the baggage animals died, the sick and wounded were abandoned for want of transport, and the stragglers, all of whom perished, were numbered by the thousand. Before Alexander struggled through to Carmania, the border-province of Persia, he is said to have lost three-fourths of the corps which had marched with him. This was almost the first warning that he had ever received of the dangers of reckless exploration : it was hopeless to expect to feed an army in a desert where even a small caravan could only have passed with difficulty. When once the Gedrosian desert had been crossed, the march to Persepolis and Susa presented no difficulties, and by the spring of 325 B.C. the king was once more in the heart of his empire. His advent was followed by a strict investigation of the conduct of the native satraps and Greek generals who had been governing Asia in his absence. Many of both classes were dismissed for peculation and cruelty, and several, both Greeks and Asiatics, were actually put to death for their misconduct. Alexander survived only two years to enjoy the fruition of the empire he had created. But he lived long enough to give an earnest of what his intentions had been. He never desired to return to Pella, to dwell as a patriarchal king among the free-spoken Mace- donians. It was his ambition to build up a new Graeco-Asiatic state, wherein the barbarians would have their share as well as the Hellenes. He set himself to be the civilizer and protector of his Oriental subjects, and framed his whole demeanor so as to appeal to their imagination and sympathy. Nor did he fail : in Persian legends of a later age the " two-horned Iskender," as he was called, (because he loved to be represented wearing the horns of his "father" Zeus Ammon), became a native hero, and was claimed as one of the glories of Persia ! One of the chief schemes which Alexander framed for teaching Greek and Asiatic to dwell peace- ably together was the encouragement of mixed marriages. He gave Persian princesses with great dowries to his chief officers, and bestowed a handsome gift on each one of ten thousand soldiers who had taken Asiatic wives. He himself had already wedded the Bactrian Roxana, and now added to his harem Statira, the eldest daughter of Darius HI., and Parysatis, the daughter of Ochus, 504. GREECE 326-325 B.C. Darius's predecessor on the throne. Another method which he de- vised for welding Greek and Oriental was to found new cities all over his empire, in which a nucleus of disbanded Greek soldiery and adventurous Greek merchants were encouraged to settle far afield, and mix with the native inhabitants. Some twenty of such towns, mostly called Alexandria, rose all over the eastern provinces, and many of them have survived as great centers to our own day, such as the Egyptian Alexandria, Candahar (Alexandria Aracho- tiae), and Herat (Alexandria Areion). The results of Alexander's work in this scheme were rapid and striking: a half-Hellenic race was developed all through his wide dominions, and for a century it looked as if Hellenistic civilization was destined to dominate the whole East. But this was not to be; the Greeks were not numerous enough to raise the permanent level of Oriental civiliza- tion, or to incorporate the Asiatics with themselves. Asia Minor and Syria only were permanently Hellenized: everywhere else the native element slowly worked out the Greek intermixture, and fell back into its old ways. But the strength of the work of Alexander, even in the farthest East, may be gauged by the fact that Greek kings survived in India down to 25 b.c, and that among the Parthians Greek was still the official language in the second century after Christ. It must not be supposed that the soldiers of Alexander appre- ciated his schemes, or were pleased to see the Orientals treated as their equals. Their discontent found vent in a great mutiny at Opis, near Babylon, in the summer of 324 b.c. When, after raising many new regiments of Asiatics, the king proposed to send home the bulk of his veterans to Greece, loaded with gifts and pensions, the soldiery took his conduct as a sign that he wished in future to do without Hellenic troops, and rule his Greek subjects by means of an Oriental army. The mutineers sarcastically bade him send away all his Macedonians and prosecute his wars with a following of Persians and the invaluable aid of his father Zeus Ammon. Alexander's speech to the mutineers was long remembered as a masterpiece of fiery eloquence. He bade them go if they pleased, for he could do without them. He reminded them that his father Philip had found them poor skin-clad shepherds on the Mace- donian hills, and had raised them to be rulers of Greece, while he himself had done four times as much, made them the kings of the earth, and placed all the wealth of the East at their disposal. All ALEXANDER 505 324-323 B.C- he had won was divided with them, and he had kept nought for himself but his purple robe and diadem and his glory, a glory in which they appeared to have no wish to share. The king's elo- quence triumphed, the mutineers were quelled, and allowed him to execute their ringleaders without a murmur. After the mutiny was over Alexander planned to visit and regulate all his newly conquered provinces. He sailed down the Euphrates to the mouth, to meet the fleet of Nearchus on its arrival from India. He then marched to Ecbatana, where his favorite comrade Hephaestion died, and was honored with the most mag- nificent funeral that the world has ever seen it is said to have cost twelve thousand talents. Next he subdued the robber tribes in the hills between Susiana and Media, and returned to winter at Babylon. At the gates he was met we are told by the chief prophets of Chaldaea, who besought him not to enter their city, as they had read in the stars that evil would follow him if he came to Babylon at that conjuncture. He disregarded the prophecy and spent some time in the city which he had chosen as his capital. But in the spring he went down to explore the water-ways of the marshy delta of the Euphrates, where he was planning new harbors and canals. In the marshes he caught a malarious fever, which was destined to be fatal. He despised it at first, overestimated his strength, and endeavored to fight down the disease by hard drink- ing, to which he had grown all too prone. This was too much for a constitution tried by thirteen years of incessant campaigning. A collapse followed, and in June, 323 b.c, only eleven days after his first seizure, the conqueror of the East expired, leaving his king- dom to an infant son and a crowd of ambitious and unscrupulous generals. Alexander was taken away in the midst of his activity; he was only thirty-two, and had been looking forward to many another year of conquest and adventure. At the moment of his death he was planning an expedition against Arabia, and much wider schemes w^ere running in his brain. If one of them, an expedition against Italy, had been carried into effect, the history of the world might have been altered to an inconceivable extent. It has always been a favorite speculation with historians, both ancient and modern, to imagine what would have happened if Alexander had been brought into contact with the rising power of Rome, then in the midst of her Samnite wars. 506 GREECE 323 B.C. Meanwhile the outlook of Greece had been completely changed. The Macedonian conquest of the East had revolutionized the re- lations of the little Hellenic states both with each other and with the outer world. The old system of local autonomy, and constant wars to maintain the balance of power, had now become impossible. Civic patriotism had received a blow, but, in return, the Mace- donian conquest offered many compensations, both to the state and to the individual. If a man consented to forget that he was an Athenian or a Corinthian, and merely to remember that he was a Hellene, what could afford him greater pride than to watch the great empire of the East overrun by an army which, if guided by a Macedonian prince, was largely officered by Greek generals, and composed in two-thirds of its strength of Greek hoplites and pel- tasts? What could be more inspiring than to see that the old Hellenic genius for colonizing was not extinct ; to behold the con- querors laying hands on every province from the Aegean to the Indus, and covering them with Greek cities as great and as vigorous as any that had ever existed in the Hellenic fatherland? For the individual who consented to enter the service of the Macedonian the prizes were unnumbered and unlimited. For soldier and gen- ALEXANDER 507 323 B.C. eral, for poet or painter, for scribe or rhetorician, for merchant or seaman, there was instant, honorable, and lucrative employment. Those who threw themselves into the new life of the days of the conquest of Asia looked back on the old times of the " balance of power " and its endless wars as something petty and absurd. Shortly after Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela, news came to him of a battle in Greece. Agis, King of Sparta, had fallen, and with him five thousand brave men more ; but Alexander turned to his generals and said, " It seems that while we have been conquering the Great King, there has been some ' battle of mice ' in Arcadia." When the empire of the world was being won in the East, fights between Greek and Greek at home, for border fort or a strip of meadow land, seemed mere ebullitions of jealous folly. In telling the tale of Alexander we have already almost lost sight of Greece. From this time onward its history no longer stands alone, but becomes a part of the larger whole. The causes which set the course of events working are no longer to be found in Greece herself, but must be sought far afield. A siege of Athens or a sack of Corinth follows in strict consequence of some political change in Asia or Egypt. The history of Greece, in short, cannot be written except as a part of that of the whole Hellenized world from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Indus. The style of Polybius must replace that of Thucydides. The subject is no longer the simple chronicle of events around the Aegean that we have recorded hitherto, and needs another method and a separate treatment. FROM ALEXANDER TO THE PRESENT DAY By G. Mercer Adam Chapter XLV ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS AND THE GREEK LEAGUES, 323-146 B.C. /IFTER the death of Alexander the Great at Babylon in JJL 323 B.C., the question arose who should be his successor, A. JL as he left no children, though a posthumous child was ex- pected by Roxana, one of his two wives. On his dying- couch, Alexander, by giving his ring to his oldest general, Perdiccas, had indicated the man whom he himself desired to intrust with the affairs of his mighty empire, and who, in the event of his Bactrian spouse having a man-child, should have supreme com- mand during the regency. This disposition of affairs if we except Perdiccas's guardianship of the infant child was, how- ever, not carried out, owing to jealousies among the cavalry and the infantry commanders of the army; and hence the nobles were obliged to acknowledge Alexander's feeble-minded half- brother, Philip xA-rrhidaeus, as monarch, with the nominal provision that the throne would in time revert to Roxana's child, the infant Alexander. The career of this Philip Arrhidaeus the illegitimate son of Philip IL was, however, alike undistinguished and brief, for both Macedonia and Greece continued, nominally at least, to be under Antipater, one of Alexander's generals, who succeeded Per- diccas in the regency on the latter's death in 321 b.c. ; while Philip's own end came by murder in B.C. 317. Other misfortunes ere long pursued the family of Alexander, for his widow Roxana ruth- lessly did away with the Emperor's Persian wife, Statira, the daughter of Darius; while she herself and the infant king were shut up in Amphipolis and were subsequently (311 B.C.) murdered by order of Cassander, Antipater's son, who was meanwhile waging war against Alexander's rival successors. Olympias, the mother of Alexander, took part against Cassander, and was put to death by him in 316 B.C.; while Alexander's sister, Cleopatra, was murdered in 308 b.c. by Antigonus, when on her way to marry his rival, Ptolemy Soter, in Egy^pt. To such violent ends did all the 511 512 GREECE 323 B.C. members of Alexander's family come; while the supreme con- trol of his kingdom was contended for by his chief generals, who had apportioned among themselves the nominal sovereignty of the several Greek states and of Alexander's conquests. This division gave the satrapy of Egypt to Ptolemy I., Thrace to Lysimachus, Syria and Asia Minor (Great Phrygia) to Antigonus, and the un- subdued country south of the Euxine (Cappadocia and Paphla- gonia) to the Greek Eumines, who had been Alexander's private secretary. Athens and Macedonia were under Antipater, who was afterwards associated with Craterus. Later on, the number of kingdoms was reduced and rearranged ; while on the death of Anti- pater, in 318 B,c._, Macedonia and Greece fell to the general Poly- sperchon, though intrigued against by Cassander, who, obtaining from Antigonus a fleet and army, defeated Polysperchon and re- stored the Piraeus to the Athenians, thus securing for a time the latter's good will. Meanwhile in Greece there had been incipient revolts against Macedonian domination, inspired partly by the patriotism of De- mosthenes, and partly by the intrigues of Persian satraps. At Athens, especially, hostility to the ascendent influence of Macedonia was revived on the death of Alexander. This was provoked by the conqueror's decree, issued before his death, that every Greek state was to recall its exiles, an order fraught with menace to the local administrations of each Greek city. The decree led to the outbreak of the brief Lamian war (323-322 B.C.), in which a Greek force under the Athenian general, Leosthenes, defeated the Macedonian Antipater and compelled him to seek refuge within the walls of Lamia. Llere he was besieged by the revolted Greeks, first under Leosthenes, and, wdien the latter was mortally wounded in a sally of the garrison, then under Antiphilus. The siege was raised, and Antiphilus compelled to meet and fight a Macedonian relief column approaching Lamia, in which the Greeks were victorious. Antipater, meanwhile, escaped with his garrison from Lamia, and being reinforced by another relieving contingent, composed largely of Alexander's veterans just returned from Asia, he gave fight to the Greeks at Crannon, in Thessaly, and defeated them. The result was disastrous to Greek strivings after independence and fatal to the leaders of the anti-]\Iacedonian party at Athens, among whom were Hyperides and Demosthenes. The latter, being forced to flee from arrest on the arrival in the city of a Macedonian garrison, was ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS 513 318-308 B.C. subsequently driven to end his life by poison, sucked from the tip of a writing-reed which the great orator and statesman carried con- cealed about his person. His ally and fellow-orator, Hyperides, was later slain at Corinth by Antipater's orders. Besides these tragic results of the Lamian war, over 10,000 Greek citizens \vere transported to Africa, Thrace, and Italy; while the Greek cities had to sue for Macedonian clemency, obtained by Phocion, at the cost of many humbling submissions, including the establishment of for- eign garrisons in their midst. ]\Iacedonian supremacy, on the whole, however, was not over-irksome in Greece ; and the constitutions granted the several towns, in the main, w'orked well. Aetolia for a time held out for independence, and though invaded by Antipater and Craterus. her people sought refuge in the mountainous parts of their country, and on the abandonment of the invasion man- aged to maintain their liberty. Otherwise, Greece became wholly subject to Macedonia, though in the dissolution of Alexander's empire and the struggle that w^ent on for possession of power by the conqueror's generals, the Hellenes were left pretty much to themselves, and their fair country was reduced for a long period to political insignificance. In the Mediterranean islands, in Egypt and Asia, and even in Italy, on the other hand, the Greeks came to the front and rose in influence and prosperity. Under the foster- ing protection of the Ptolemies, Hellenic energies were at this period especially manifest at Alexandria; Antioch, also, became a great seat of Greek culture; while the Rhodians, as a maritime people, rose to importance in the Aegean. Chios also grew in wealth, and, with Byzantium, maintained a considerable navy. Nor was Greek influence, even at this era of decline, confined merely to material things : Hellenic culture was a high factor of the time, and on the Romans especially Greek civilization and Greek literature were becoming potent influence. The Greek tongue became the literary language of the day. Athens drew cultivated Romans to it, as the home of art, philosophy, and literature, and Roman rule in all directions came to disseminate the culture and intellectual life of Greece. Nor was Christianity, in its early growth and progress, the loser by all this, but was greatly aided by the diffusion of the Greek language and civilization. Ere political extinction fell upon Greece after the Lamian war, another would-be liberator arose in the person of Demetrius Poli- 514 GREECE 308-294 B.C. orcetes, the " besieger of cities," who is not to be confounded with Demetrius Phalereus, the contemporary Athenian orator and poH- tician who had been placed by Cassander at the head of the admin- istration of Athens and had restored its aristocracy to influence. Demetrius Pohorcetes was the son of Autigonus and a man of liigli mihtary genius. In 307 B.C. he captured and liberated Athens, which so pleased the citizens that they raised altars to him as a god, while he also gained their favor by restoring democracy and by driving the Macedonian garrison out of Munychia. In 306 b.c. he set out, at his father's bidding, to liberate Cyprus from the Egyp- tians, and by a brilliant marine victory over Ptolemy at Salamis he gained possession of the island. Failing in his assault on Rhodes, which lasted a year, Demetrius returned to Greece, and ex])elled Cassander's forces from the Peloponnesus. In 303 B.C. he bound the Greek states against Cassander and his allies in a league of which he and his father, Antigonus, were the heads. Later on he sought to attack Macedon, but this brought Cassander, with Lysimachus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus, upon him and his father; and in the battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia, Antigonus was worsted and lost his life. Demetrius barely escaped a like fate. The effect on Greece of this disaster was adverse to Demetrius's interests, though he continued to seek liellenic favor, and retained the possession of his fleet. His prospects were improved by a quarrel which broke out between Ptolemy and Seleucus, and the latter leagued himself with Deme- trius, who renewed his efforts to win back Greece, now (297 b.c.) with Macedon relieved by death from the rule of Cassander. Athens at this time was under the tyrannous rule of Lachares, a creature of Cassander, and to save the city from his violence Demetrius invested the town by land and water. After a year's siege, Lachares took flight and the city surrendered, when it was occupied by the troops of the now victorious Demetrius, who once more became master of the country. Macedonia meanwhile had its internal troubles. Philip, Cassander's eldest son. wdio had suc- ceeded his father, died two years after his succession, namely in 295 B.C., and a dispute arising between Antipater and Alexan- der, Cassander's younger sons, Alexander appealed for aid to Demetrius Pohorcetes. In response to this call, the latter marched into Macedonia, but instead of assisting Alexander he assas- sinated him and made himself king (294 b.c). The conse- quences of this atrocity pursued him throughout his seven years' ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS 515 287-168 B.C. reign, for the old league which had long been adverse to him took the field against him, aided by the Epirot prince, Pyrrhus, who had fought on Demetrius's side at Ipsus. Demetrius was finally expelled from Macedonia, while the kingdom fell to Ly- simachus of Thrace, thus reducing the number of half-Greek king- doms to three Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. Demetrius mean- while fell into the hands of his son-in-law, Seleucus of Syria, who kept him in a comfortable captivity until his death, which oc- curred 283 B.C. Seleucus himself, three years later, was treach- erously murdered by Ptolemy Ceraunus, a wandering son of Ptolemy of Egypt. This son of Ptolemy now seized the Macedonian throne, but was shortly afterwards slain in battle against the Gauls, who at this period came in great hordes to the East and found a home in Asia Minor, in the region called after them Galatia. Alexander's immediate successors and favorite generals had now all passed away, as had the members of his own family the royal dynasty of Macedonia. The latter kingdom now (278 B.C.) fell by seizure to Antigonus Gonatas, son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, though the occupancy of the throne was contested by Pyrrhus, who had, at the invitation of Tarentum, been adventuring conquests in Italy. In the war between the two, which was carried on on Greek soil, Pyrrhus was killed (272 B.C.) in a street fight at Argos, by a woman wdio hurled a tile at him from a house-top, and so Antig- onus established himself unopposed on the throne of Macedonia, which his dynasty occupied until a collapse came with the new rule of Rome (168 b.c). Meanwhile the affairs of the Greeks in Sicily, after Timoleon's death (337 b.c), had fallen into disorder and confusion. About twenty years later, Syracuse, which for long had had trouble with the Carthaginians, who occupied the western portion of the island, was under the ruthless rule of the soldier Agathocles and his mer- cenaries. The plight of the city at this juncture encouraged the Carthaginians to renew their assaults upon it and upon its tyrant. The latter, seeking to induce them to abandon the siege of the city, was bold enough to cross over to Africa to fight the Carthaginians in their own country. This project, though persisted in for some years, partially failed of its effect, for the Carthaginians continued to invest Syracuse, and Agathocles, returning to Sicily, concluded a peace with them, but on the condition that they would confine them- selves to their own district on the west of the island. Agathocles, 516 GREECE 289-146 B.C. who now assumed the title of king, for a time interfered with affairs in Italy, associated with Pyrrhus, who had become his son-in-law ; but in 289 B.C. the Sicilian king died, and Pyrrhus, after some fur- ther fighting with the Romans, succeeded him (about 278 B.C.). Later on, Pyrrhus left Sicily and returned to Italy, when Sicily, after the Punic wars, fell under tlie power of Rome, and Greek independent life on the island forever passed away. The later history of Pyrrhus and his death at Argos we have already chron- icled. His career in Italy, where he aided the Tarentines against the Romans, was closed at Beneventum, where the Romans in- flicted upon him a great defeat (275 B.C.). About the year 280 B.C. a fresh impulse had been given to Greek independence of Alacedonia by a remarkable confedera- tion of Greek cities in Achaia, on the southern shores of the Corinthian Gulf. This was no less than the revival of the old Achaean League, which had been dissolved by policy of Philip of Macedon and his more famous son, Alexander. Tlie confederation, in its revived form, existed from 280 B.C. to the final loss of Greek freedom, in 146 B.C., when Rome became dominant in Greece, The league became noAV political rather than religious, and had for its object, besides especial hostility to ^lacedonian domination, the design of uniting all the cities and states of the Peloponnesus against that hated control as well as the restoration and maintenance of Greek independence. It was also inspired by hostility to the encroachments of Rome. The confederation at first consisted of the towns of Achaia, but later Athens and Corinth and the Dorian town of Sicyon joined the league; while later still it embraced all the chief towns of the Peloponnesus, and for a time even Sparta, the bitter enemy of the league under its usurping tyrant. Activity w^as given to the operations of the confederacy by the Sicyon statesman and general, Aratus, who, in 251 B.C., brought his native city into the movement, and after being elected strategus, or commander-in-chief, also brought in Corinth. About this time there sprang up another federation in oppo- sition to Macedonian rule, and a rival to that of Achaia, yet of lesser importance. This was the revival of the ancient Aetolian League, a union of the cities of northern Greece, including those of Aetolia, to the north of the Corinthian Gulf, with the chief towns of Acarnania, Locris, and part of Thessaly. Between this rival federation and that of Achaia there was much jealousy, a circum- ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS 517 r?44-213 B.C. Stance that sadly interfered with the success which might have crowned the efforts of both leagues against Macedonia, had they been united and stood by each other. Another circumstance that hindered the operations of the more influential Achaean Confedera- tion was the enmity of Sparta, which state, degenerate as she had become, sought to be supreme in the Peloponnese. Under Agis IV.. an attempt was made, about the year 244 b.c, to reform the state and re-establish the institutions of Lycurgus ; but to this his colleague, Leonidas, and the luxury-loving Spartans were so op- posed that they put the king to death. Then it was that the King Cleomenes III. arose, who from his reforms and his high military talent had been styled the last great Spartan. Being opposed to Aratus and desiring that Sparta should hold her supremacy among the Greek states, Cleomenes unhappily attacked the Achaean League and pressed so heavily upon it and upon Aratus that the league called to its aid Antigonus Doson, King of Alacedon. The result was that Cleomenes was given battle at Sellasia, in Laconia, by the Achaeans and Macedonians, and, though he fought bravely, he and his Spartans were utterly routed, while he himself had to seek safety in Egypt. Sparta was then (221 B.C.) taken possession of by Antigonus; and though for the time it was powerless to inter- fere with the league, its nominal independence was respected, and that in spite of the fact that the Spartan monarchy had ceased to exist. Shortly after this the end also came to the career of Antigonus Doson, who on his death, in 220 B.C., was succeeded on the ]\Iace- donian throne by Philip V. This young monarch, son of Demetrius II., reigned for over forty years, and became an effective ally of the Achaean League, in his hostility alike to the Aetolians and to the Romans, the latter of whom were at the time harassed in Italy by the Carthaginians under the great Hannibal. Though Philip V. took up the Achaean cause against the Aetolians and defeated them in battle, he subsequently (217 B.C.) made peace with them, and showed Achaia that he cared more for his own ambitions than he did for the confederacy whose interests he had espoused. This ere long was made clear, when, finding Aratus, the head of the league, in his way, he caused him to be poisoned 213 B.C. In his fear of the growing power of Rome, whose arms, in spite of Carthaginian aggression in Italy, might any day be expected in Greece or Alace- donia, Philip Y. continued to support the Achaean League, which 518 grp:ece 197-189 B.C. was also hostile to the great republic on the Tiber. The Romans, disliking this attitude of Philip, naturally formed an alliance with the Aetolians, and after the victory at Zama over Hannibal, gained by their general, Scipio Africanus, and the peace dictated to Carthage which brought the second Punic war to a close, they turned upon the Macedonian king, and at Cynoscephalae, Thessaly, totally defeated Philip and compelled him to retire from Greek soil and confine himself to his own Alacedonian possessions. This oc- curred in 197 B.C., but though Philip's defeat freed Greece from Macedonian dominion, it at the same time put the country in the fetters of Rome. The Aetolians, though allies of Rome, were the first to realize this, for feeling chagrined that their aid in the battle of Cynoscephalae did not bring their league any compensation or increase of territory, they made overtures to the Syrian king, Antiochus the Great, who was himself at enmity with Rome. Antiochus came to Greece in 192 B.C. to aid the Aetolians, but a year later the Romans defeated him at Thermopylae. They after- Vv-ards defeated him again at Magnesia, Lydia, and he had to accept humiliating terms ; while the Aetolians were forced to seek safety in the town of Ambracia, where, however, they were be- sieged by the Roman legions, and were compelled to surrender and become the subject allies of Rome. This brought an end, in 189 B.c.^ to the Aetolian League. For over forty years after the dissolution of the Aetolian League the Achaean League maintained a weary and futile struggle for Greek independence. For a time its prospects were hopeful under the able generalship of Philopoemen of Megalopolis, " the last of the Greeks/' as he has been termed ; but the league henceforth declined in power, as did Macedonia, w^hile the power of Rome steadily grew, helped by internal factions among the Greeks and by Roman intrigue. The factions within the league not only perversely impaired its strength, but materially interfered with its success. So serious a menace did this become that a Ro- manizing element w^ithin it gradually manifested itself, a portion of the league favoring alliance with Rome, while the more patri- otic part resisted it. The opponents of Rome were led by Philop- oemen. while the leader of the Romanizing faction was at this time Deinocrates. Philopoemen, however, was strategus, and while he lived he deservedly had much influence. He it was who forced Sparta to join the league, an act which was followed by the ALEXANDER'S SUCCESSORS 519 183-150 B.C. adhesion of the states of Ehs and Messenia. The latter, however, under Roman influence, was induced to withdraw from it, and this being resented by Philopoemen, he marched against it, only to find himself entrapped by the Messenians, who led him in chains to their chief city, where he was forced to drink poison (183 B.C.). This dastardly act provoked the league to severe reprisals, for it ordered Lycortas, now strategus, to invade and lay waste their country, while Deinocrates and his principal officers were driven to take their own lives. Besides thus avenging their leader's death, Messenia was once more brought into the Achaean League. Shortly after, in 179 B.C., Philip V. died, his uneasy spirit nursing to the last the hope of again taking the field against Rome. His son, Perseus, succeeded him. Perseus, who wms the last King of Macedon, inherited his father's distrust and dislike of the Romans, and not many years were suffered to pass before he began to make w^arlike preparations against them. Learning speedily of this, Rome at once declared war upon Macedon, in which the Achaean League was forced to take part with the Roman legions, and in 168 B.C., at the battle of Pydna, Perseus was de- feated and carried in captivity to Italy. Some years after this, his ancient kingdom, that had long defied conquest, and had so ruthlessly trampled on the liberties of Greece, was itself wiped out and humbled to the status of a Roman province. Upon Greece and tlie League the defection of Macedonia had lamentable conse- quences, for Rome not only became increasingly dominant, but it exiled many of the more influential Greeks who were known to favor Macedonia rather than the power on the Tiber, while about a thousand Achaeans were carried as hostages to Italy. With the fall of Macedonia the end of Greek freedom drew near. Its crushed condition could hardly be better shown than by stating that the chief Hellenic cities, especially those on the coast, were powerless to prevent the carrying away to Italy, by rapacious Roman soldiers and sailors, of the priceless works of Greek art, together with the gold and other treasure of its rich citizens ; while many of the inhabitants, unscrupulously suspected of hostility to Rome, were either exiled or sold into slavery. Among the exiles of note was the historian Polybius, whose writings are the au- thority of the period. To him Greece was, in 150 b.c, indebted for the return to their homes of many of these exiles whose 520 GREECE 150-147 B.C. souls yearned to see once more their Hellenic shores, though now sadly changed by the turmoil of faction and the devastation of foreign conquest. The last act of the drama of Greek independence represents the Achaean League's expiring hostility to Sparta, which resulted in the league's collapse and the submission of all Greece to Rome. The facts are these : the Achaeans, now under Diaeus as strategus, quarreled with Sparta over the question of its boundaries, and that state appealed directly to the Roman senate, instead of through the channel of the federated league. The latter, at the same time, made its own representation of facts to Rome, when Sparta with- drew from the league, and the league, in its design to coerce Sparta, put its forces in motion and worsted Sparta in the field. Meanwhile the Roman senate sent a commission to Corinth 147 B.C. to look into and report on the matter, the result of which was the issue of an edict of the senate enforcing the separation of not only Sparta, but Corinth, Argos, and other Greek cities, from the league. At this, Diaeus, acting for the league, threw himself with a large body of Achaean troops into Corinth, and Rome re- taliated by investing them and the city. The siege was conducted by MetelluSj who offered favorable terms to the besieged to sur- render; but Diaeus was stubborn and even put to death a number of his own officers who advised capitulation. At this juncture the Roman consul, L. Mummius, brought to Corinth fresh levies and proceeded with the siege himself. In a sally from the city a great battle was fought on the Isthmus, when Diaeus was disastrously defeated and fled to Megalopolis, where he died by his own hand. Mummius, who thus completed the Roman conquest of Greece, now entered Corinth, and, stripping the city of its rare art treasures, which he sent to Rome, he set fire to it and leveled it to the ground. The Achaean League was at the same time broken up ; indeed, all Greek leagues were henceforth forbidden ; its army was disbanded and a tax was laid upon the whole country; while Greece and Macedonia became a Roman province. Chapter XLVI UNDER ROMAN RULE, 146 B.C.-476 A.D. ROMAN dominion over Greece was, on the whole, both mod- erate and just, and the Greeks themselves were glad to - be delivered from the distractions of internal faction. Each Greek state was left its own government, though heavily bur- dened by taxation. Ere long, moreover, the Greeks were to need the protection which Roman arms gave them and the assiduous care which they received from Rome under its Emperors. To the first of these, Augustus, Greece was indebted for separation from Macedonian jurisdiction and became an independent province of Rome, consisting not only of the Peloponnesus, but of Central Greece. The cities, for some centuries at least, were allowed to have their own constitutions. Under Augustus the Pan- Hellenic organizations, such as the Assemblies, the Festivals, and the Olympic Games, were revived and maintained, and even the forming of leagues was permitted. Sparta and Athens, in acknowledgment of their notable past history, were, it ought to be said, not included in the new province of Achaia, but were left in- dependent; and to Athens, as still the home of literature, art, and philosophy, Romans with cultured tastes came for education and a life of literary ease, which they could not well enjoy in the turbu- lent capital. Aside from its glorious literature, Greek influence was also directly felt in Rome, in the homes at least of the wealthy, where the instructors of Roman youth were Greeks, imbued with Hellenic culture and inspired by Greek ideals. As the old era drew to its close, Greece was, for a time at least, again the theater of strife, caused by the wars with Rome and its client states in the East undertaken by Mithridates, King of Pontus. The ambitions of this able monarch, who had sub- jugated the peoples on the eastern shores of the Euxine, mur- dered 80,000 Italians, and made himself master of the Roman prov- ince of Asia, had roused the wrath of Rome, especially as Athens and many in Greece desired to hail him as a deliverer. War against him was declared by Rome, and Mithridates, crossing over 521 522 GREECE 86 B.C. -285 A.D. to Greece, was met by the great Roman general Sulla. In two battles in Boeotia, Mithridates was beaten and driven out of Greece, while Athens in revolt was besieged and stormed. This occurred in 86-85 B.C. Two years later and again in 74 B.C. Mithridates gave the Romans trouble ; but its generals, Lucullus and the great Pompey, defeated and crushed him and drove him to a violent death. His kingdom, PontuSj was now incorporated with Bithynia and the kingdom of Syria, which later, in 63 B.C., was annexed as a Roman province. About a generation later Egypt also was absorbed in the empire of Rome, when Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemy dynasty, ended her life with the Roman Antony, at Alex- andria, after the disastrous fight at Actium in 30 B.C. The city of Corinth Vv^as rebuilt by Julius Caesar and made the Grecian capital, thus becoming again a busy sea-port. The old era closes under the rule of Augustus Caesar, who lived on until 14 a.d., and, with the new chronology, or more correctly four years earlier, the birth of Christ occurs, which was to revolu- tionize, by the Christian creed, the morals, the philosophy, and the religious thought of the world. In 33 a.d., in the nineteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, and Paul, the chief of Plis apostles, spread the knowledge of Christianity throughout many countries of the ancient world, including Syria, Rome, and Asia Minor. But this belongs to Roman rather than to Grecian history, and we pass from it to pursue our especial narrative. During the imperial regime of Rome, that is, from the rule of Augustus, which began 29 b.c, to the era of Diocletian, in 285 A.D., Grecian history has little of note to record. This is not to be wondered at, for since the Roman state had developed into a great world-power, Hellenic affairs counted for little; while Gaul and the Germanic tribes began to give trouble, Spain also called for supervision, and Syria needed checking in her interferences with Roman administration in Judaea. Rome had moreover to give attention to her possessions in the far East, such as Parthia and Armenia, and to Egypt, whence her legions now carried Roman influence into Arabia and Ethiopia. The wide extent and heavy burdens of the empire were such that Greece in her era of subjection could look for little attention from Rome, save the surveillance and exactions of the imperial tax-collector. Otherwise, the yoke of her conqueror was not a heavy one, ROMAN RULE 623 29 B.C.-285 A.D. and, though under military control, Greece still had, to some extent, her own local administrations and municipal institu- tions. Under Augustus, and more especially under some of his successors, the country, as Felton in his " Greece, Ancient and Modern," points out, was treated with considerable favor, and made use of a clement authority to soften the bitterness of its decline. " Even Nero, the amiable fiddler of Rome," says Felton, " was proud to display the extent of his musical abilities in Greek theaters. . . . The noble Trajan allowed the Greeks to retain their former local privileges, and did much to improve their condi- tion by his wise and just administration. Hadrian was a passion- ate lover of Greek art and literature. Athens especially received the amplest benefits from his taste and wealth. He finished the temple of the Olympian Zeus; established a public library; built a pantheon and a gymnasium ; rebuilt the temple of Apollo at Megara; improved the old roads of Greece and made new ones. . . . Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius showed good will to Greece. The latter rebuilt the temple at Eleusis, and improved the Athenian schools, raising the salaries of the teachers and in various ways contributing to make Athens, as it had been before, the most illustrious seat of learning in the world. It was in the reign of this emperor, in the second century of our era, that one of the greatest benefactors of Athens and all Greece lived Herodes Atticus, distinguished alike for wealth, learning, and eloquence. Born at Marathon, . . . educated at Athens by the best teachers his father's wealth could procure, he became, on going to Rome in early life, the rhetorical teacher of Marcus Aurelius him- self. Antoninus Pius bestowed on him the consulship; but he preferred the career of a teacher at Athens to the highest polit- ical dignities. . . . and he was followed thither by young men of the most eminent Roman families, from the emperor's down. ... At Athens, south of the Ilisus, he built the stadium and the theater of Regilla. ... At Corinth he built a theater; at Olympia an aqueduct; at Adelphi a race course, and at Ther- mopylae a hospital. Peloponnesus, Euboea, Boeotia, and Epirus, too, experienced his bounty." In spite of all this the glory of Greece had set. Her magnificent literature still dominated the civilized world, and in that literature the poetry and the drama, the art and letters of Rome sought in- spiration and example. It was under Greek influences that at this 524 GREECE 29 B.C. -285 A.D. period Roman letters began to rise, as they did with a great jjoiind under Augustus, stimulated by the munificent patronage of his minister, Maecenas. It was during this period also that the great Roman poets, Horace, Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus, as well as the his- torian Livy, lived and were followed at a later time by the satirist Juvenal, and Tacitus, the historian, all worthy successors of the earlier Roman men of letters Cicero, Caesar, Lucretius, and Lu- cullus. Roman law shortly after this (on the passing of the Flavian dynasty) was perfected and brought to its commanding place in the judicial systems of the ancient world; wdiile Roman citizenship be- came a term of respect as well as of appreciation and honor. Tlie importance of the latter ^vill be manifest when we remember that Roman dominion at this era, with its social as well as its political bonds and the civilizing influences it effected, particularly after the establishment of Christianity under Constantine. extended northward to the Rhine and the Danube, and eastward through southern Europe and northern Africa, Egypt, and Syria, to the Euphrates. After the death of Augustus Caesar Greece continued its now almost somnolent existence under his successors of the Julian house Tiberius, Caius (Caligula). Claudius, and Nero. It was in Greece Nero sought an appreciative audience for his dilletante accomplishments, journeying there in 66 a.d.^ and joining in the Greek festivals. This last Roman emperor of the Julian house deservedly came to his end by his own hand, and though he gave Greece her freedom, it was only to be annulled in the next reign. EFnder the Flavians a Jewish war occurred, and in the historic siege of Jerusalem by Titus (70 a.d. ) the city was completely destroyed, and Judaea was detached from Syria and made a separate Roman province. Greece met with continued Roman indifference under the other emperors of the Flavian family, Rome in Titus's brief reign being occupied in the west with extending Roman dominion in Britain, and by tlie other chief incident of his era the calamitous eruption of Vesuvius, which entombed the famed cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Under the quasi-continuation of the Flavian dynasty, " the good emperors," as they are called. Greece was given more attention, particularly by Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and the moralist, Marcus Aurelius. Under these emperors and their predecessor, Trajan, literature flourished, and science and phi- losophy were encouraged. Parthia, however, gave Rome trouble ROMAN RULE 525 29 B.C.-285 A.D. at this period, while a Jewish war broke out, in which Judaea greatly suffered and the Jews were heavily taxed and cruelly dis- persed. Hadrian, as is well known, indulged at this era his taste for building important structures, both at Rome and at Athens ; while in his journeys throughout his empire he paid heed to the wants of his subjects and sought to do them justice. Greece he repeatedly visited, and with a noted preference, shown also by his successors, the Antonines, who endowed public charities, promoted art and science, and extended the good administration of the law. Under Marcus Aurelius, the last of " the good emperors," Greece was especially favored, owing to his bent as a philosopher, famed for his noble spirit and high ethical attainments, preserved to us in his Meditations, which were originally written in Greek. Un- der him and his predecessor, Antoninus Pius, the higher instruc- tion in the schools of philosophy w^as placed imder the charge of the emperors, who defrayed the cost. This revered and medita- tive sage reigned wisely and ably over his one hundred and twenty millions of people, and protected the empire from the predatory designs of German barbarians. Though far from being kindly disposed to the Christians, whom, from religious conviction, he persecuted, he was philanthropic and peace-loving, and lived only for the happiness and v^-eal of his subjects. His successor and son, Commodus, was unhappily a man of an utterly different type, inheriting obviously some of the depraved vices of his mother, the profligate wife of Marcus Aurelius. His reign lasted for twelve years, and was ended by his life being taken by his favorite mistress, who poisoned him. Under him and his successors, Roman imperialism had to struggle with revolu- tions and an adverse fate, for the third century was marked by revolts, insurrections, tyrannies, and the misdoings of an unruly mercenary soldiery. The Persians at this time overthrew Roman rule and founded a monarchy of their own; while the Goths, Franks and Alemanni invaded various distant parts of the empire (the Goths overrunning Greece and Asia Minor) and threatened its dissolution. The Emperor Aurelian (270-275) did much to check these and other invasions and to restore the military suprem- acy of the Roman nation. Aurelian also brought captive to Rome, after conquering her kingdom, the famed Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who aimed at the sovereignty of the Eastern world, liis successor, M. Aurelius Probus^ one of the many emperors who 526 GREECE 282-323 A.D. unlawfully seized the throne of Rome, also did good service in repelling the Teutons, and, where he could, he encouraged them to settle on and till Roman soil, and even enter the very miscellaneous Roman army, which had now become Roman only in name, for it was recruited from Oriental and, in the West, from half-barbaric soldiery. By his own mutinous men M. Aurelius Probus was slain, in 282. After a brief succession of soldier-emperors. Cams, Nu- merianus, and Carinus, there opens a new era in the rule of the empire, under Diocletian. Diocletian, who came to the throne in 284 A. D., addressed himself to the task of saving the shaken empire from dissolution by the astute device of dividing it among associate-rulers or regents, two of whom continued to be styled emperors, with the title of Augustus, and two subordinates to be distinguished by the affix of Caesar, each with his own chief admin- istrative city or capital. This splitting up of the monarchy did not work well, and it was subsequently discontinued, when tested by the difficulties inherent in the question of succession. It, how- ever, served the immediate purpose, which was the better to guard Roman supremacy, threatened as it was at so many points by grasping or envious enemies. " Speaking roughly, this fourfold division of the empire," says the historian Freeman, " answered to Italy itself and the neighboring countries," the capital of which was Milan, instead of Rome. " the western provinces (Gaul, Spain, and Britain)," whose capital was periodically Trier (Treves) in Gaul and Vork in Britain ; " with the Greek and the Oriental provinces." the chief cities of local administration being Antioch in Syria and Xicodemia in Asia Minor. Diocletian and his fel- ^w-emperor abdicated in 305 a.d., when their subordinates were raised to the rank of imperatores, and two new appointees filled the junior posts of the Caesars. This partnership rule lasted for some years, though on Constantine's becoming Caesar, in 306, and attaining the rank of Augustus, two years later, a new force in the empire came to the front, which, in 323 a.d., dissolved the combina- tion administration and raised Constantine to the sole and supreme power in the state. The signal events in the reign of Constantine, surnamed " the Great," are the choice of ancient Byzantium, on the Bosphorus (the modern Constantinople), as the new capital of the empire, and the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the state. ROMAN RULE 52T 323-395 A.D. Great were the influence and vitality given to Christianity by Constantine's conversion and by the union of the church with the state, together with the emperor's personal reverence for the ordi- nances of his new faith. To recognize Christianity and invest it with supreme importance, so soon after its suppression and the relentless persecution of its adherents by Diocletian and Galerius, were acts not only of a man of great tolerance, but those also of an eminently vigorous and enlightened mind. His interest in the new faith, which, he was shrewd enough to foresee, might do more for the unification and perpetuation of the Roman empire than the disintegrating vices of paganism, was not confined to the formal recognition of it by the state, but was extended also to interest in its doctrines and in the great councils of the church, such as that of Nicaea, which he convened and presided over, as well as to intimacy with the early fathers of the church, and to the support of schools of theology, such as that at Alexandria. In spite of this attitude of Constantine, and later on of Theodosius the Great, who not only cemented the union of the church with the state, but sup- pressed paganism and closed its temples, the progress of Chris- tianity was in no little degree hindered by divisions among its great teachers such as those that separated the Arians, whom Constan- tine favored, and the followers of the orthodox Athanasius and by the heresies that ere long crept into the church. Notwithstanding these divisions and the check which it received from Julian, " the apostate." who sought to root out the new faith and restore declin- ing paganism, Christianity made way throughout and beyond the bounds of the empire ; while it greatly stirred the minds of men, not only among its eminent professors, the zealous Latin and Greek fathers of the church, but also among thoughtful, educated laymen, whose hearts became open to its teachings. After the time of Constantine Christianity gained further prestige in the reign of Theodosius the Great, under whom the final separation of the Eastern and Western empires occurred. In his day the church loomed up as the dominant power in the world, for that emperor not only repressed pagan rites and sacrifices and confiscated pagan temples, but exacted from the bishops and presby- ters of the church subscription to the Nicene creed. For his own shortcomings particularly the crime of putting to death many thousands of the people of Thessalonica who had been in revolt the emperor did ecclesiastical penance and made humble submission to 528 GREECE 395 A.D. St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. A great soldier himself and the son of one, his career is notable for his struggle with the Goths, who again overran parts of the empire. These Theodosius defeated in battle, and after driving them out of Greece and Thrace he induced them to settle in Moesia (corresponding somewhat to modern Bul- garia and Servia) and to become allies of Rome pledged to serve her in war. With his death, in 395 a.d. almost the close of the fourth century occurred the separation of the Roman dominions into a Greek or east-Roman and a west-Roman empire. The western portion now began to fall to pieces, as a consef[uence of invasion from barbarian tribes and the very composite character of the people. In the division of the empire two sons of Theodosius continued for a time to rule, Honorius reigning in the East. In treating of Greece in subjection to Rome, we have dealt necessarily more with events affecting Greater or Colonial Greece than with Greece itself, which at that period and for long afterwards, if we except the incidents of Teutonic and other in- vasion, had little or no history of its own to record. The condi- tion of Hellas, or Greece proper, was and long remained a humilia- tingly dependent one, though her people who had emigrated from it, either freely or under compulsion, were practically the dominant power in the East. There, as writers on Grecian history have pointed out, the Roman empire became Greek, though the Greek nation in name became Roman. " Even in Asia,'' as it has been remarked, " the despotism of Rome was much modified by the municipal system of the Greek colonies and by the influence of Greek culture." What the effect of the latter was on educated Romans, and to what extent it favorably influenced some of the emperors Hadrian for example has been already noted ; while, on the other hand, it has been indicated how far the Roman occupation of Greece was tolerated by her own people, as a relief from and a pro- tection against the party distractions and general turbulence of the times. Roman dominion in Greece w-as never acquiesced in, how- ever, as was that of Macedonia before and after the era of Roman subjection, and for the obvious reason that Greece assimilated the Macedonians as it never assimilated the Romans ; nor did the Romans, within Hellas at least, ever assimilate the Greeks. In Asia and in Egypt, as well as in the other eastern provinces and colonies of Greece and Macedonia, Greeks and ^Macedonians became almost one people. The effect of this was long seen in the East, ST. AMIiKi;.-::. lUSHol' (Jl- MII.AX. KEFLSES the emperor TliEOUOSIUS ADMISSION INTO HIS CHURCH I\u:itin5 hy Cchlij,-! Fiigcl ROMAN RULE 529 369-378 A.D. both to its advantage and to the advantage of the Greeks and Macedonians themselves, down to the era of Mohammed. In the West, on the other hand, the effect of Roman conquest was different, for there it had to do with peoples far inferior to the Greeks and Macedonian-Greeks, and, being much less civilized and without any strong bonds of national and social life, they not only easily came under the sway of the conqueror, but received the impress of new institutions and in no little degree imbibed new manners, cus- toms, and tastes. The Greeks, moreover, though they degenerated under their Roman conquerors, retained another and distinguishing feature in their character, which showed itself when overrun, as they occa- sionally were, by barbarians. This was the spirit which ani- mated them in seeking to resist and repel from their country the Goths and Huns who successively invaded it. This spirit was espe- cially manifest at the era of the " wandering of the nations," when the Germanic tribes, ignoring the Rhine frontiers of the Roman dominions, swept down over Roman territory. Of these tribes, the Goths were again most troublesome in the reigns of the last of the Western emperors, as they had been under the Valentinian dynasty. Greece was at this period inundated by them, though the Greeks fought bravely in their effort to save their cities from assault and pillage and to drive off the invaders. Peace between these hordes and Rome was not made until 369 a.d. Meantime, they had been converted nominally to Christianity, and had extended their power far into Russia. Some seven years later (376 a.d.), the Goths were them- selves the victims of foreign invasion, for at this period they were pounced upon by the Huns (Mongolians), who had left their own country bordering on China and made their appearance in Europe. Uniting with the Alani, whom they had defeated, the Huns then fell upon the Visigothic (Western Goths) nation in the province of Moesia. The latter, seeking to repel or escape from the savage invaders, sought Roman aid and crossed the Danube ; but being badly treated by the Romans they turned upon them, beat them badly, and committed many depredations. At this, the emperor Valens determined to give further battle to the Visigoths, whose forces had meanwhile been recruited by the Eastern Goths (Ostro- goths) ; he met them in battle at Adrianople in 278 a.d., but lost his own life and the lives of a large portion (some 60,000) of his 630 GREECE 395-462 A.D. army. After this the Goths advanced even to the walls of Con- stantinople, where they turned westward and ravaged the Euro- pean provinces of the Greek empire and committed frightful atroci- ties. A truce for the time was made with the Goths by the Emperor Theodosius, but, after the latter's death, in 395 a.d., the Visigothic king. Alaric, invaded Greece in the following year, but was com- pelled to retire to Epirus in 397. In this invasion the empire was ably served by the Vandal Stilicho, guardian of the young Emperor Ilonorius, the younger son of Theodosius the Great. Alaric w^as, however, to give more trouble to the Romans, for in 400 a.d. and in the immediately succeeding years he repeatedly invaded Italy, and after twice besieging Rome he at last (410 a.d.) captured and sacked it. The Huns, under their famous leader and king, Attila, " the Scourge of God " as he was called, were met and beaten in Gaul, in 451 A.D.J by the Roman general Aetius. Meantime the Goths gave the Romans more trouble, for Alaric being succeeded by his brother- in-law, Athanulf, the new king of the West Goths, made a plunder- ing raid through southern Italy, conquered Aquitaine, in Gaul, and after signing a treaty with the Emperor Honorius and marrying his sister he crossed into Spain to suppress a revolt of the Vandals and Suevi against the empire. 1lie Vandals, under their king Genseric, at this period crossed from Spain to Africa and there despoiled Rome of her dominions; while his fleet proceeded eastward along the Mediterranean and ravaged the coasts of both Italy and Greece. At this era, when Roman dominion was threatened on all sides and the western empire was about to fall, Attila and his Huns invaded Gaul in 451, then under the rule of the Roman emperor of the West, Valentinian III. Here, in Gaul, near Chalons-sur-Marne, a terrible battle was fought which rescued Europe from enslave- ment under the all-conquering Tartar " a struggle for life and death," as Ereeman speaks of it, " between the Aryan and Turanian races and Christianity and civilization, and all that distinguishes Europe from Asia and Africa." Victory rested with neither side, though the slaughter was pitiful. Attila, fearing to renew the fighting, retreated, and, recrossing the Rhine, returned into Hungary. Erom there he passed in the following year (452 a.d.) into Italy, where he captured and pillaged Aquilaeia and slaugh- tered thousands. He laid waste other districts of the country and sacked cities until the Romans were obliged to make peace, after ROMAN RULE 531 453-476 A.D. Italy had become almost a desert, so frightful were the ravages of the Huns. . In 453 a.d. Attila died suddenly after a drunken debauch, and his power fell with him. In this era of disaster and devastation Rome suffered from other depredations, chiefly by the Vandals in Gaul, Spain, Northern Africa, and in Rome itself; while the Teutonic tribes established their power even on Russian soil. In the general wreck, the Roman empire of the West, with the forced abdication of Romulus Augustulus, who was deposed by Odoacer, came to an end, and the era of the Dark or Middle Ages may be said to begin (476 a.d.). Chapter XLVII THE MIDDLE AGES AND TURKISH YOKE, 476-1821 GRECIAN history in the early part of the Middle Ages offers little of its own to record, save in connection with the Greek, Eastern, or Byzantine empire, of which it continued to form a part. That empire, on the extinction of its western division, was now once more united and ruled from Con- stantinople. Rome and all Italy, as the result of contact with barbarism, came under the rule of Odoacer (descended from one of the Germanic tribes on the Danube), subordinate to Zeno, who was at this period Byzantine emperor. Odoacer's rule in Italy, however, did not last very long, for it was interrupted by the marauding expeditions of Theodoric the Goth, who after invading the Roman provinces of Macedonia and Epirus made an over- whelming descent upon Italy, and in three battles, fought in 489- 490, defeated Odoacer. The latter now shut himself up in Ravenna, and after a siege of two years he surrendered in 493, and was assassinated. Until 526, when he died, the Gothic king governed both Goths and Romans. The fortunes of the empire after this revived under Justinian, perhaps the greatest of the Byzantine emperors, and famed for the notable body of Roman law, known as the Justinian Code, which he was instrumental in compiling and enacting. The splendid church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, moreover, owes its origin to Justinian's taste and love of building. Under this eminent and enlightened ruler, who reigned between the years 527 and 565, much of the lost territory of the Roman dominion was recovered by his great general, Belisarius, including Sicily and the whole of Italy, the southern parts of vSpain, and northern Africa, where an end was put to the Vandal kingdom. In the east, Justinian also engaged in wars with the Persians, in which, though at first victorious, as at the great battle at Daras (in 529) he afterwards suffered repeated defeats, which cost much money and the humiliation of having to make 53'2 TURKISH YOKE 553 538-741 A.D. more than one peace with Persia. Later on in the century and early in the following one the tables were terribly turned, how- ever, on the Persians. After they had ravaged under two of their kings, aided by the Avars, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and had captured and held Constantinople for ten years, the Persian host were annihilated (622-628) by the Emperor-General Hera- clius, so that the Roman-Byzantine power won back all that had been taken from it. Meanwhile, in the southwest of the empire Northern Italy was conquered by tlie Lombards, a German race. They formed a kingdom there in 538 under Alboin, which afterwards included portions of Central Italy and even some districts south of it. This kingdom, though overthrown by Charlemagne in 774, to-day still forms the region of Italy called Lombardy. Other foes from whom the Byzantine empire suffered in the seventh and eighth centuries were the Saracens, a predatory Arab tribe, followers of Mohammed (570-632), the founder of Islam, and the Slavs, a people whose original habitat was what is now Bulgaria, the region round the lower Danube. About the same era Greece came to be the theater of invasion of the Slavonic states, by the people of which the country was first overrun and ravaged, and then occupied and settled, from the Peloponnesus northward through the kingdom of Alacedonia, Illyria, and the Danube. At this period the East, and to some extent the West, came under the domination of a new power that of the Saracens or Arabs and with their appearance also arises the religion of Mohammed, the prophet and reformer of Mecca. Between the Eastern empire and this Semitic people, under the caliphs or suc- cessors of the founder of Islam, there was a lengthened period of conflict, in which the provinces of Syria and Egypt were conquered by the Saracens, and the cities of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and An- tioch were lost to Byzantium. Persia also fell before the Saracenic invasion. These incursions exended from 632 to 651, when Persia became a ]\Iohammedan country. Later on. Northern Africa, Spain, and the southern parts of Gaul also fell before their conquer- ing arms, together with several of the Mediterranean islands, and Scinde, on the western borders of India. Further, the city of Constantine, on the Bosphorus, was laid siege to by the Saracens in the years from 718 to 720, but was saved by Leo III., the Isaurian, who was Byzantine emperor between the years 718 and 741. Leo 534> GREECE 774-814 A.D. III. justly gained fame for inflicting this important defeat on the Saracens at Constantinople, and for driving the invaders back from the Byzantine capital. He is also noted for his stern opposition to " image-worship " in the contemporary Eastern church, a practice introduced by a sect at this period, and combated by what are known as Iconoclasts. It has to be said, however, that in prohibiting and severely repressing image-worship, which Emperor Leo deemed idolatrous, he incensed against himself the Roman pontiffs of the era Popes Gregory II. and III. and in conse- (juence lost to the Eastern empire much of its hold upon Italy, to- gether with its temporal and spiritual authority over the old capital of Rome. With the loss of what hold the empire still had upon Italy, which this quarrel between the popes and Leo the Isaurian caused for the Lombards, as we have seen, had conquered its northern portions the empire of the East was narrowed down at this period to Southern Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and the provinces below the Danube. A further change soon came about, for the popes, in their strife with the emperors at Constantinople, called for aid from the Carlovingians, a dynasty of French kings of German origin. Under King Pepin, son of Charles Martel, they came to the assist- ance of the popes against the Lombards. Under Pepin's son, Charles the Great (Charlemagne, as he was usually called), the Lombard kingdom w-as conquered during 774, and, maintaining Prankish rule in Italy, he became nominal head of the Western empire. This assumption of lordship was authoritatively brought about and emphasized in 800, when the Romans of Italy chose Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) to be emperor, and he was crowned by Leo III. at St. Peter's, Rome, emperor of the Romans. The consequence of ihis act was the final and official division of the Eastern or Byzantine empire, which in name at least had been for a long period under two separate emperors, one reigning over the West, and the other over the East, but which was now con- fined to the Greek-speaking peoples of Europe and Asia. Charles the Great's chief work now, besides the extirpation of the Avars from the regions about the Danube, as he had previously driven the Saracens southward to the Ebro, was the creation of his mighty Teutonic-Roman empire. After his death, which oc- curred in the year 814, his successors could not keep his possessions together, and many portions of them began to crumble away. Ger- TURKISH YOKE 535 843-1204 many, however, takes its rise as a modern nation at this period (843 A.D.), while in Gaul, the western part of the Carlovingian empire, begin the foundations of modern France. In Spain, the kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Leon were founded in the eleventh century ; while the Romance languages, with their different dialects, now began to arise and take the place of the corrupt Latin, then the vernacular of Italy, Gaul, and Spain. With the rise of the modern nations came the growth of the papal power and its interference, ecclesiastically, in their rulers' affairs. This attitude of the occupants of the Holy See, and their purpose in seeking to put the spiritual above the temporal power of the rulers of the era, are especially seen in the career of the great Hildebrand (Gregory VII.), though his assumption deserves less credit than the work he did in a benighted age as a reformer of the abuses of his time. The period is marked by the divergence in matters of doctrine between the Eastern and Western churches, especially after the church took to evangelizing and missionary work among the Northern heathen. With the rise of the modern peoples in Northern and Western Europe the Normans also came upon the scene. When the Danes, the Norse sea-kings, first invaded Britain and became the scourge of the land the Normans had left Norway to settle in the north of France, whence, under Duke William, they soon proceeded to conquer and take up their abode in England. About this period the same peoples carried their conquests and settlements into south- ern Italy, established themselves securely there and in Sicily, under Robert and Roger, the sons of Tancred. Roger assumed the title of king of Sicily, and later Robert Guiscard sacked and burned Rome, attempted the conquest of the Byzantine empire, and with his fleet ravaged Greece. Meanwhile, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Crusades were launched against Mohammedan dominion in the East, the movement having especially for its design the liberation of the Holy Land from the infidel and the establishment of a Christian kingdom in Palestine. The fourth Crusade (from 1202-04), in- stead of pursuing the objects which had called it into knightly and religious action, turned against the city of Constantinople, then torn by dissension, captured it, and set up the Latin empire under Baldwin, Count of Flanders, with the supremacy of the Roman church. The Eastern or Byzantine empire now came to an end 536 G K E E C E 1205-1461 or, more correctly, was broken into small, separate fragments, for it was later on re-established. Latin (French and Italian) king- doms were here and there now set up ; while Prankish governments ruled in Greece, one of which, the dukedom of Athens, lasting from 1205 to 1456. Similarly the Venetians also invaded Greece, and possessed themselves of many important and prosperous places, such as Crete, Euboea, and Corfu, while in the Cyclades the Italian duchy of Naxos was formed. The Morea was about this period recovered by the Byzantines, and the knightly order of St. John occupied the island of Rhodes. The principality of Achaia was meanwhile formed under the French knight William de Cham- ylitte, with the aid of Geoffrey de Villehardouin. In the latter and his family it possessed vigorous rulers, until set aside by the Neapolitan dynasty of Anjou, which usurped dominion over the principality until it and all Greece were engulfed in the piracies and ravages of the Mohammedan power the Ottoman Turks who besieged and stormed Constantinople, and made it their capital in 1453. Three years later Athens came into the possession of and was occupied by the Turks, under Mohammed II., when its duchy was abohshed, and the Parthenon was turned into a mosque. The Greek or Byzantine empire was broken up on the fall of Constantinople during the fourth Crusade (in 1200), aided by the Venetians, an enterprising maritime and commercial people who came to the forefront of European history at this period, and who for a time made their force felt in the Mediterranean, especially in the contests with the Turkish or Ottoman power. Though Constan- tinople was recovered and the empire established again in 1261 by the Emperor Michael Paloeologus, it was shorn of much of its for- mer dominion and glory. Many portions of it fell to the Moham- medans, and the new power of Venice fastened upon its coasts and many of its islands in the Mediterranean ; while independent Greek empires rose and flourished for a time in Nicaea, and in Trebizond, until swallowed up, in the fifteenth century, by the conquests of the Turks. The Greek empire of Nicaea, though small at first, rapidly widened and became important enough to have the imperial crown bestowed upon its emperors until the year 1261 when it was merged in the empire at Constantinople. During its existence it had the rivalry both of Constantinople and Trebizond, but was strong enough not only to hold out for a time against them, but to rescue the provinces from national and foreign usurpers. The TURKISH YOKE 537 1281-1571 Trebizond empire, which existed from 1204 to 1461. when it was reduced to a Turkish province, was ruled by members of the Comnenus family, whose heads claimed the title and rank of Roman emperors. It lived longer than its rival empire, Nicaea, partly by paying tribute for a time to the Turkish Sultan and owning vassalage to him. During 1280, however, it gained its independence, and for nearly a century afterwards was a pros- perous commercial power, until obliged again to pay tribute, this time to the [Mongol conqueror Timour. Not until 1461, did it too succumb to an adverse fate, falling before the Ottoman Mohammed II. in the conquest of Constantinople. Greece itself, meanwhile, was under the oppression of the Mo- hammedan power, which, since the destruction of the Seljuk Turks by the Aloguls, now came under the more famous Turkish dominion of the Ottoman sultans. Following upon the fall of Constantinople, Mohammed II. conquered the Peloponnesus (the Morea) and the greater part of Greece. It was against this Turkish power that the Venetians, at this time contesting the supremacy in the Medi- terranean with the Genoese, did battle, defending Christendom against them. ]\Iany Greek cities suffered severely from the infidel, especially noble Corinth, which in 1445 was given to the flames and its inhabitants, to the number of 60,000, were carried into slavery in Asia, when Amurath II. (Murad) invaded and subdued the Peloponnesus. Under the son of this sultan, Mo- hammed II., much of Europe fell woefully into Turkish power. In this humiliation Greece was also a heavy sufferer, her coasts being ravaged by the Turks; while by the year 1460 not a little of the interior fell into their hands. The empire of Trebizond, as we have seen, was conquered by Islam in 146 1, with the island of Lesbos (Mitylene) in the following year. Euboea, the largest island of Greece in the Aegean, was taken in 1471. Others of its possessions were in part held by Venice, together with Crete and Corfu; while still other portions remained in the power of Prankish princes. The Turkish wars with Persia extended through most of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, varied at periods by treaties of peace and again by bitter strife. In 1571 the tide began to turn against the Turks, for in that year a great naval vic- tory was won over them, near the Greek town of Lepanto, by the combined fleets of Italy and Spain, under Don John of Austria. 538 GREECE 1204-1669 After this in wars in Hungary and Croatia, in Poland, and in Persia, the Ottomans were uniformly victorious, and as uniformly ruth- lessly cruel. About the middle of the seventeenth century the Turks, in their wars with the Venetian republic, threatened the island of Crete, which by concession had in 1204 become the possession of Venice. Though for the next twenty-five years this island was stoutly defended by the republic, with the aid of volunteers from Western Europe, it was finally wrested from it by the Turks. In the struggle for the possession of Crete, Greece unfortunately gave her sympathy to the Turks, and in consequence was frequently in- vaded and plundered by the Venetian galleys, as well as by Chris- tian corsairs in the Levant. On one occasion the Morea was denuded by the Venetians of 5000 of its people, who were carried off as slaves. The conquest of Crete, which was com- pleted by the year 1669, was a serious loss to Greece, since that island was within the scope of lier territory and had been a part of the Byzantine empire. That victory rested with the Turks was in part due, as has been said, to the side taken by Greece against Venice, and shov^^s how denationalized and spiritless the Greeks had now become. In this domination of the Turk, Europe was, how- ever, the gainer in one particular, for after the Ottoman capture of Constantinople Greek scholars took flight from the intellectual seat of empire on the Bosphorus and disseminated their culture and learning- over the West. But Europe was a gainer in other ways and from other cir- cumstances, for we part now from its medieval and reach the era of its modern aspects, influenced by the discovery of the New World and by the spirit of enterprise and adventure in other lands, as well as by the intellectual progress of the European nations and the freedom given to men's energies, writings, and thoughts. The former was helped by the settlement of the nations and their progress in the ways of peace, as well as by those of expanding commerce and industry, and more especially by their development in constitutional government. The latter particularly manifested itself in the period of the Renaissance, which now had set in, and in the revolt from superstition and barbarism, though the old idolaters lingered long among the " pagans " or villagers. It was further aided by the general spread of Christianity, which was soon to reach the important era of the Reformation. The age of vio- lence and tyranny was now fast passing: and one of public rights, TURKISH YOKE 639 1453-1821 with mental and moral freedom and liberal ideas, was about to begin. Over much of the East darkness still lowered, and was destined to continue for many years; but, even there, there were gleams of light and the prospective coming of a better day; while in the West the better day had already dawned, and hope kindled at the prospect of a more progressive and more happy time. That Greece under the Moslem yoke had had a checkered his- tory was probably due to the lack of national aspiration. Her peo- ple seem to have bowed their necks to every succeeding conqueror. Hence their succumbing before Saracen and Turk, and even before Franks, Spaniards, and Venetians. After the fall of Constanti- nople and the annihilation of the Byzantine empire by the Turks in 1453, the subjugation of Greece quickly followed; the Frankish duchy of Athens was abolished and the Parthenon at Athens was degraded to the services of a Turkish mosque. Euboea, in 1470, was taken from the Venetians by the Otto- man Turks, while the Cyclades, at the period an Italian princi- pality, were absorbed by them in 1566, and a century later Venice lost Crete. Once more the tide turned for a time in favor of the Venetians, who, under their distinguished general, Francesco Morosini, regained rule in the Peloponnesus in 1687 a.d. At this time Athens was devastated by a Venetian bombardment and the beautiful Parthenon was partly destroyed. By the peace of Carlo- witz, in 1699, the allied powers of Austria, Russia, Poland, and Venice forced Turkey to relinquish the Morea to the Venetians, which they retained until up to 171 5, when the Turks once more recovered rule in the Greek peninsula. Three years later the Turks regained the whole of Greece and kept it for a century further, until the War of Liberation, in 1821. This Turkish hold upon Greece was maintained in spite of Russian sympathy for the Greeks and the efforts of the Muscovite power practically to aid them. One reason of Russian failure to interest the Greeks in effecting their emancipation was partly fear of that Northern power and its ambitions, which sought to add Greece to its already extensive dominions, as well as to make the Greek people Russian subjects ; another reason was the fear of so eminently warlike a race as were the Ottoman Turks, into whose service many enterprising though unpatriotic Greeks had entered, and had even embraced Mohammedanism. Greece suffered in its long period of national self-effacement, and especially during the 540 GREECE 1453-1821 earlier and later periods of Turkish domination. The prominent fact in Greek history during these ages is the disappearance and seeming destruction of the nation. Whoever might hold the su- preme power in Greece, the Greeks were sure to be the sufferers. When the Turks spread their conquests from Constantinople on to the rest of the empire, the capture of each city was followed by the slaughter of all able-bodied men and the carrying off of the women and children to the harem or slave-market. And the Western Christians were no more tender than the Ottomans. The Greeks because they did not acknowledge the Pope, were the object of special vengeance on tlie part of the Venetians and in the island of Crete suffered the most abominable barbarities. The Turks pun- ished the Greeks because they submitted to the Venetians, and the Venetians punished them because they submitted to the Turks. Moreover, the Aegean was infested by pirates, who, whether Turks, Italians, or Greeks, had no mercy on the peaceful inhabitants of the mainland. Human life was disregarded, and men and women were of value only as salable articles in the slave-market. The utter destruction or transference of the Greek population presents a pic- ture of terrible sufferings. Add to this the destruction of vast masses and the removal of Greek people to Italy or Sicily or some other place of refuge. Almost all the famous families that ruled the islands of the Aegean escaped from them when they were attacked by the Turks. The Knights of St. John left Rhodes to find a final settlement in Malta. Among the number who thus left their native land were nearly all the learned men, who sought in the West a refuge from Turkish rule, and opportunities for the pursuit of learning. This learning was taken up, however, only by the emigrating Greek, who found in the West not only the peace necessary to pursue letters, but conditions favorable to the prosecution of studies. They were encouraged by the interest in the noble lit- erature of Greece, manifested by the educated peoples with whom these scholarly emigrants found an asylum, and they carried v/ith them the strong Greek love of culture. In Greece itself, it ought to be said, however, that though the people, distracted and menaced as they ever were by foreign oppressors, did little or nothing to re- vive Greek independence, save with outside aid, there were still por- tions of the inhabitants who fretted under their bondage and held aloof, so far as possible, from their conquerors. ]\Iany Greeks, more- A SILIOTE AXl) TIKKISTT POLniER IX MORTAL COMnAT 0\ TTIF. V.UCK OF A PRFXIPICE P:ihif!ng by R. Caton lyooiliille TURKISH YOKE 541 1803-1822 over, maintained their independence as pirates in the Aegean, while there were others whose spirits were not utterly broken by the humil- iating plight of their country. Though combined action among them- selves was under the circumstances of their condition almost im- possible, these elements of the people longed once more for freedom, and eagerly scanned the signs of the times for a chance to recover their independent nationality. Among the Suliotes, a Graeco-Al- banian patriarchal tribe inhabiting the mountainous districts of Albania, this feeling for Greek independence showed itself towards the close of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth cen- turies, especially in resistance to Ali Pasha, the Turkish vizier of Janina. This tyrant, who subdued the Suliotes in 1803, sought to make himself an independent ruler in his pashalic, and with that object intrigued with Russia, France, and Great Britain against Turkey, but was relieved of his office and assassinated by the Turks. The Suliotes meanwhile continued their resistance to Ottoman rule, and in 1822 they were removed from Suli to Greece, where they took a heroic part in the War of Greek Independence. The impulse towards revived nationality was aided by the now widespread impatience with wrongdoing, by the spirit of free- dom abroad among the nations, and by the ideas which gave rise to that eventful catastrophe, the French Revolution. Secret so- cieties in Greece, moreover, added to the ferment within its borders, particularly through the medium of the secret national league, the lletaeria Philike, which was founded in 1814. The movement for Grecian liberation was further aided by the intrigues of Russia, and the abortive efforts of Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, an officer in the Russian service. In 1821 he raised the standard of rebellion in Moldavia, and at the same time a revolt also broke out in the Morea. Chapter XLVIII THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, 1821-1829 1 ^HE strug-g-le of the Greeks for national life and independ- ence was a lengthy, pitiful, but heroic one, happily aided after a time by the interference of humane European gov- ernments. The gallant efforts of the Greeks were exerted against an oppressive and enslaving power now on the wane and growing weak, while the Greeks and the Christian nations that assisted them had become both merciful and strong. Though Ypsilanti's rising in Moldavia did not meet with success, the revolt in the Peloponnesus bore fruit, and ere long extended to the islands of the Aegean, par- ticularly to Hydra and Spezia, and was joined in by northern and central Greece, as well as by Athens, the latter's chief city and capital. With the co-operation of the Greek islands, the Greeks gained the valuable aid of a well-manned fleet, with the auxiliary of their dreaded fire-ships, and soon carried consternation among the Turks and brought disaster to their navy. Later on the Greek rising gained the sympathy and active aid not only of Russia, the Greeks' co-religionist, and of France, but also of Great Britain, under Can- ning, its secretary for foreign affairs and later its premier. To this was added the support of a number of Philhellenes, including the poet Byron, who contributed his money and sacrificed his life to the Greek cause at Missolonghi. For years the struggle was carried on single-handed, amid many discouragements and woeful loss of life, and the historic country became the theater of the most direful atrocities and was given over to Turkish rapine and lust of blood. The contest entered upon by the Greeks was a bold as well as patriotic one, for they were unequally matched against the Turks. The Ottoman empire put in the field army after army against the little nation a nation composed at that period of not more than 900,000. The struggle was all the more heroic on the part of the Greeks since not only were they immensely inferior in numbers to the Turks then a people of twenty-five millions but were also without money or the resources of war. They had no fortresses or 49 INDEPENDENCE 543 1821 garrisons, as places of refuge and defense ; and at the outset of the war and for long afterwards had no allies or helpful power to back them. The Turks, on the other hand, though weaker than they had been before their war with Russia and Austria, were yet a formidable as well as a fanatical and merciless power, and were able later on in the struggle to call on Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, for assistance, which he was able efifectively to give them with a finely disciplined army, under his son Ibrahim. This assist- ance but for European intervention would have been utterly and disastrously fatal to the Greeks. More than this, Egypt brought to Turkish aid in the strife a considerable navy twelve frigates and two eighty-four-gun ships in addition to the vessels the Turks sent from Constantinople, besides a large transport fleet in which to conduct the Egyptian reinforcements to various ports on the Greek coast. In spite of this aid received by the Sultan, and the inequality of fighting resource between the Mussulmans and the people of Greece, the Greeks entered vigorously and enthusias- tically on the struggle for independence, aided ere long by loans of money raised in England, at usurious rates of interest, and by such sympathy as was extended to them by the Christian nations of Europe. When the war began, not only Greece, but Ser\'ia and Mon- tenegro and many of the Turkish pashalics vvcre in revolt against the Sultan. In many instances this brought upon the Greeks and their neighboring Christian allies dire punishment and the crudest massacres. The Danubian principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia had raised the standard of the Cross, and the peoples of the islands in the Aegean turned their mercantile vessels into those of corsairs to prey upon the Turk. Soon all Greece and the regions to the north and northeast of it were in arms : 6000 Greeks banded themselves together in Thessaly, while many mountaineers rose in jMacedonia, and 30,000 took up arms in Salonica and laid siege to its capital, but were repulsed and had to flee to the mountains. Mean- while news of the risings had reached Constantinople, wdiere the excitement among the Christians was great, though it brought a terrible reckoning from the Turks, who butchered them by thou- sands, even entering the Greek churches and slaying their bishops and clergy. In Asia i\Iinor, at Smyrna, and in Cyprus the massa- cres were peculiarly atrocious and added to the general hatred and loathing of the Turks. Ypsilanti was defeated at Dragaschan, and 5U GREECE 1821-1825 had to take to flight ; while in the peninsula the Greeks lost Athens, and 15,000 of them perished at Patras. In Salonica, 3000 were butchered by Turkish scimitars, and nearly 10,000 women and chil- dren were sold as slaves. Still the Greeks wrought havoc by their fleet in the Aegean, while on the mainland they hoisted their flag at Missolonghi and fortified it, took Navarino and Napola de Mal- vasia and repulsed many thousand Ottomans at Valezza. At the siege of Tripolitza, in the Peloponnesus, where the Greek patriot Kolokotronis was in command, the Turkish fortress fell and many thousand Turks were ruthlessly slain, neither sex nor age being respected. With these successes and losses the first year of the war closed in 1821, independence was declared and a constitutional government set up under the Greek general and statesman, Alex- der Mavrokordatos. In the following year occurred the Turkish massacre on the island of Chios (Scio), an atrocity without parallel during the war, which cost the lives of 30,000 Greeks and the loss of all their homes. Nearly 50,000 women and children were abducted as slaves for the Costantinople and Alexandria harems. The massa- cre w'as partly avenged by the Greek fleet, under Admirals Andreas Aliauh's and Constantine Canaris, who, with their fire-ships, burned the flagship of the Turkish admiral and destroyed many ships of the squadron. For a time the fighting was very desultory on both sides, if we except the gallant defense by the Greeks of Missolonghi, under Marco Bozzaris, which cost the Turks nearly 12,000 lives, al- though later, in 1826. the town again fell into their hands and those of their Egyptian allies. Another success was achieved by the Greeks, in the assault and capture of Napoli di Romania by Kolo- kotronis, and many hundred cannon, with much ammunition, came at the same time into the hands of the victors. In the campaign of 1825, the Turks were aided by the Egyp- tian forces, now co-operating with them, and together they launched a great expedition, military and naval, against the Greeks. In spite of dissensions among the insurgents, w^ho were also weakened greatly by the continued strain of the war, the Turks had few gains to record during the year. The Greeks at this period were enabled to pay their sailors and troops by the expedient of a loan in the London money market, which they were able to effect, but Corinth and Athens had meanwhile fallen before Turkish assault, and in the year 1826 Missolonghi, after a prolonged siege and a INDEPENDENCE 545 1826-1829 heroic defense by the Greeks, succumbed to Its besiegers, under Reschid Pasha. With its fall the Greeks lost nearly 10,000 men in killed, wounded, and prisoners. This disaster, however, brought relief to the much-enduring Greeks by stimulating the inter- vention of England, in which she was joined by Russia, now under Czar Nicholas. Public sentiment in both these nations was now so strong for interference that an understanding was come to between them to put an end to the war, and in this deci- sion they were at once joined by France. Overtures for peace were made to the Sultan by the allies, to which, however, he would not listen, and orders were then given by the combined powers to their respective fleets to prevent further depredations on the Greek coasts by the Turks, who were about to renew their attacks on the Morea. With these instructions the allied fleets entered the port of Navarino, where the Turkish and Egyptian ships were at anchor. The allied admirals were ordered not to precipitate a fight, but to hold off for a parley. When nego- tiations were about to open, an accidental shot from a Turkish vessel brought on a general action, the result of which was the an- nihilation on October 20, 1827, of the entire Turko-Egyptian navy. This victory, under Admiral Codrington, settled the fate of Greece and ultimately gave her her freedom. It at the same time definitely settled the question of mediation, for the allied powers then with- drew their ambassadors from Constantinople, and the following year saw the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war. The Greeks, under the protection of the allied powers, established a government at Athens and elected Capo dTstrias as president. For two years longer the Turks remained in possession of the Greek fortresses, but were forced by French troops to withdraw, and were afterwards driven out of the Morea. Finally, by the treaty of Adrianople (September, 1829), the Porte acknowledged the independence of Greece; and in the following year, at a conference of the allied powers in London, the extent of the new kingdom was arranged and Greece took its place among the nations. Chapter XLIX THE PRESENT KINGDOM, 1829-1910 MEANWHILE the allied powers had not been able to secure a prince to accept the throne of Greece until their choice finally fell upon Otho, the second son of King Louis of Bavaria. This selection was ratified by the Greek National Assem- bly, and the youthful prince he was not then of age arrived in Feburary, 1833, at Nauplia, then the seat of the Hellenic govern- ment. For the next two years the country was under a regency, at the expiration of which Otho assumed the reigns of govern- ment and transferred the capital to Athens. Under King Otho, Greece was ruled without a constitution, but in 1843 one was demanded from the young monarch by the united voice of the army and the people. A constitution was formulated and under this instrument the royal executive government was adminis- tered for twenty years, when a reaction against the king set in and the provisional government declared the throne vacant. Bowing to this decision of the nation, Otho and his queen pro- ceeded on board a British man-of-war, which took them to Bavaria. Later, the provisional government ordered the election, by universal suffrage, of a new constitutional king, the result of w^hich was the choice of Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Vic- toria of England. As, however, there were reasons which prevented a prince of any of the families of the protecting powers from accept- ing the crown of Greece, the choice was without effect. Meanwhile, by joint protocol of the allied powers, the throne was again declared vacant, and by a later protocol (June, 1863), an offer was made of it to Prince George of Denmark, second son of King Christian IX. and a brotlier of Alexandra, the present Queen of England. By him the throne was accepted, the national assembly of Greece mean- while ratifying the proceedings, the more readily as the Ionian Islands, then under the protectorate of Britain, were surrendered to Greece and incorporated in the kingdom. At a later time Greece gained a further increase of territory, by the action of Turkey in giving up Arta in Epirus and the larger part of Thessaly. 546 PRESENT KINGDOM 647 1864-1867 Since her liberation from bondage to Turkey Greece has done what she could to assume a suitable place among the nations, al- though with a limited territory, shut in by a faulty frontier, and a small population (to-day only two and a half millions). Almost three times as many Greeks are to be found in the Ottoman empire and tributary states and other adjacent provinces or protectorates. But her people have not the qualities to reinstate the nation in anything like its ancient eminence; her public men have in nowise distinguished themselves; while in finance she has cut a rather sorry figure, with a heavy debt, which she makes no adequate provision to reduce or liquidate, and a customs administration which is notor- iously loose and faulty. The taxes are indifferently and unfairly collected notwithstanding the fact that the country is really rich enough to pay its way honorably and with credit to itself. Although possessed of a productive agricultural country, with large herds of cattle, much of the soil is left in its virgin state, and what is tilled, if we except the estates of the large vine-growing companies, is done in an obsolete and slipshod fashion. With improved methods in this respect, including an extended area of irrigation, many sections of the country could be made to yield magnificently, and the profitable grape culture might be more largely increased. As yet Greece has but few manufactures, which, if established, her extent of timber lands, abundance of minerals, and possibilities in the way of silk culture might easily encourage, and thus materially add to her wealth and income. Meanwhile, rather foolishly the risen nation aims at military conquest, reannexing of peoples ethnologically her kin, and the re- covery of historic lands once her own. But for these ventures she lacks at once the means and the skilled generalship in her army to give her success. In time, with attention to the development of her own internal resources and to raising the national standing and character of her people, she might, in any future rearrangement of the " Sick Man's " dominions, profit considerably provided that the struggle among the European powers for large slices of Turkish territory, in any reapportionment arising out of what is diplomat- ically known as " the Eastern Question," leaves some chance for so small and comparatively unimportant a nation as Greece. Over this modern kingdom of Hellas King George of Denmark rules. In 1867 he took for his queen Olga, daughter of the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, brother of the late Emperor Alexander 548 GREECE 1864-1910 II. Of King George's six children, the eldest son, and the heir- apparent, is Prince Konstantinos, Duke of Sparta, born in 1868, who married in 1889 Princess Sophia of Prussia, sister of the Emperor of Germany. In 1 88 1, by constraint of the guardian powers, Turkey ceded the greater part of Thessaly to Greece. This was a welcome acces- sion of her ancient territory. Meanwhile, troubles in Crete, which though subjugated by Turkey as far back as 1669 had been continu- ously revolting under Turkish misrule, culminated in 1895, and the sympathy of the ancient mother country resulted in an attempt at annexation. Greek troops were landed on the island, but this action was resisted by the watchful powers then treating with Turkey. For the time being Greece withdrew her claim, but the autonomy prom- ised for the island was unsatisfactory, and the Greeks undertook to settle the issue by force of arms. The logical result, in the face of the Turkish strength and the unpreparedness of the aggressive nation, was a humiliating defeat to Greece, after a bitter campaign of thirty-one days. Turkey's de- mand for Thessaly was not allowed by the powers, although the frontier was rearranged somewhat to the advantage of the Otto- man empire, and a large indemnity of $18,000,000 was imposed on the defeated nation. The powers now stepped into a share in the control of the financial affairs of Greece, and an International Finan- cial Commission was established at Athens to protect the interest on the large external debt, the revenues from the state monopolies, salt, petroleum, etc., together with specified duties, being assigned to the Commission for that purpose. Crete was decreed autono- mous, and Prince George was constituted its governor. ]\Ieanwhile, undeterred by political turmoil, the archaeological exploration of the island had been .systematically pursued with results tliat from the year 1890 began to assume extraordinary importance, especially in their bearing on Mycenaean civilization. One effect of the Turkish disasters was the deposition in Greece of the minister Delyanni, whom King George dismissed to appease the popular clamor. The politics of modern Greece, as might he expected from this people descended from a race marked by political restlessness and strongly given to faction, have been diverse and often turbulent. Until 1890 the chief party leaders were Theotokis and, in the Opposition, Delyanni. In 1890 tlie Xeo-Hellenic party arose under Ralh', being a division from the Opptjsition. In P R E S E N T K I N G D M 549 1864-1910 1902 the elections returned a tie between the Delyannists and the Theotokists. Delyanni was instructed to form a cabinet, and though then eighty years old, the minister assumed the responsi- bilities of office. Theotokis succeeded him in 1903, quickly followed by Ralli, but again came into office after a short term of the latter. Under Theotokis in 1904 the reorganization of the national army was agitated and measures looking to increase and betterment were introduced. In the following year the aged Delyanni was assas- sinated by a young Greek on account of a trivial effect of his policy. The year 1905 was further marked by the important meeting of the Currant Convention, which assured a reasonable rate for their prod- uce to the cultivators of the currant-growing district. It also wit- nessed a commercial treaty with Great Britain, establishing that country's relations under the "favored nation" clause. Meanwhile there occurred an ethnic rupture between the Roumanians and Greeks, which finally ended in the termination of their mutual commercial agreements. In 1905, the assembly of the Island of Crete proclaimed a union with Greece which was objected to by Great Britain, Russia, France, and Italy; but since August 14, 1906, these powers have recognized the right of the King of Greece to propose the High Commissioner for the island. On October 13, 1908, the Cretans again announced their union with Greece, but the powers with- held their assent although they evacuated the island on July 27, 1909. For nearly one month the Cretans flew the Greek flag, ad- ministered Greek law, and acted as if they were Greek subjects. The Young Turk regime at Constantinople insisted that Crete should remain Turkish property even at the expense of a war with Greece. Several notes passed between the foreign offites at Athens and Constantinople and at times diplomatic relations were nearly severed. On August 18, 1909, at the request of the Porte, a party of sailors from the warships of the four protecting powers landed at Cannae and hauled down the Greek flag from the fort. Greece has had considerable trouble, also, with Macedonian complications owing to the fact that Greeks have been taking refuge in the Balkans to such an extent that new homes had to be provided for five thousand of them. In order to do this, in 1907, the three towns of Anchialos, Euxecnoupolis and Phillippopolis were founded and the refugees established in them. As early as 550 GREECE 1864-1910 1908, troubles with Turkey were looming in the near future and the country was agitated over discussions relative to the improve- ment and reorganization of the navy, but no definite action was taken. These foreign troubles, however, were complicated by in- ternal dissensions, and in the conflict between the crown and the military element, on August 31, 1909, Prince Nicholas, third son of the King of Greece, sought to placate the warring elements by asking permission to resign his post as inspector-general of artillery. Following this, on October 15, the Greek Chamber of Deputies voted bills for abolishing the right of royal princes to be military commanders. This same fall another internal disturbance distracted the country, for Typoldos, a lieutenant of a torpedo boat destroyer flotilla, rebelled, attacked the government forces at Salamos, but was finally defeated and court-marshaled. The re- opening of trouble in Crete was evidenced on December 9, when the protecting princes refused to grant Turkey's request for inter- ference. The new year, 1910, opened with expressed hostility from Turkey, and war seemed iminent between Greece and that country. The internal dissenions between the king, the ministry and the National Assembly or Bule, as it is called, on the one side and the Military League on the other, made a complication that was not favorable to the Greeks themselves. The burning of the royal palace at Tatoi, near Athens, on January 6, 1910, v.-as looked upon as a disaster of ill omen. To-day the kingdom of Greece includes, besides the Pelopon- nesus, Thessaly, and Northern Greece, the islands, Euboea and Sporades, the Cyclades, Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia, and embraces 25,014 English square miles. The poprdation, covering Greeks and the Hellenized Albanians, amounts, in round numbers, to 2,630,000, which for purposes of legislation and communal control were grouped in 1899 into 26 monarchies, subdivided again into 69 districts and 442 communes. Athens, the capital, has a popu- lation of about 168,000, the next larger towns being Piraeus (the port of Athens), Patras, Corfu, Larissa, Volo, Trikkala, and Hermopolis. The cabinet or ministry of the kingdom consists of the Premier and Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs, together with the departments of Justice, Public Instruction, Interior, \\'ar, and ]\Iarine. The present revenue and expenditures, which about bal- P R E S E N T K I N G D M 551 1864-1910 ance, amount to close upon one hundred and sixteen million cur- rency drachmai each. The currency drachmai varies from twelve and one-half to fifteen cents, while the gold drachmai is estimated at about the value of twenty cents. The governments of the old protecting powers, Great Britain, France, and Russia, make an annual allowance to the nation's civil list and exercise some degree of financial control, in the interest of the external debt of the king- dom. The constitution, adopted in 1864, vests the legislative power in a single chamber, called the Bule, consisting at present of 235 representatives, elected by manhood suffrage for a term of four years. The legislative assembly has no power to alter the constitution : it must meet annually for not less than three nor more than six months, and no sitting is valid unless at least one-half of the members are present; while bills become law only on being passed by an absolute majority in their favor. The religion of the bulk of the inhabitants of Greece and the islands is that of the Greek Orthodox Church, which is ruled by a council called the Holy Synod. Complete toleration and liberty of worship are guaranteed to all other sects. King George I. is allowed to adhere to the Protestant Lutheran faith in which he was brought up, but according to the laws of the country his successors on the throne must belong to the national church. Of the state religion there are to-day about 2,000,000 adherents ; other Chris- tians, chiefly Roman Catholics, number 15,000; while according to most recent estimates there are nearly 6,000 Jews, 25,000 Moham- medans, and 750 of different religious beliefs. The status of edu- cation is better in theory than it is in practice. According to law, which in the country districts is not strictly enforced, all children between the ages of five and twelve must attend school ; but of the army recruits 30 per cent, are illiterate and 15 per cent, can read only. Besides private schools, education by the state is repre- sented by about 3,263 primary schools, attended by close upon 210,570 pupils. There are also 285 so-called Greek schools, with some 22,039 pupils and 833 teachers. The gymnasiums number 39, with 5,556 pupils. There are besides two agricultural schools and a trade and industrial academy. The University of Athens, founded in 1836, is attended by about 3,000 students, over a fourth of the number being Turks. Its faculty consists of 57 professors and 48 lecturers. The state appropriates annually about $700,000 552 GREECE 1864-1910 for higher and middle education, and maintains at Corfu a prepara- tory school for officers of the reserve army; and at Athens there is a school of cavalry, a military school for cadets, as well as a school for under-officers. The regulations provide for an army of from 120,000 to 130,- 000 men on a war footing. Service is compulsory and universal, commencing in the twenty-first year and lasting thirty years two years in the active army, ten in the reserve, eight in the ter- ritorial, and ten in the territorial reserve. The territorial army is intended primarily for home defense but certain classes may be drafted to the field in time of war; it has no definite organiza- tion and the men receive no training. For the regular army the country is divided into three zones or regions, each of which fur- nishes a complete division. The troops and field artillery have recently been re-armed with modern rifles and guns. The navy of Greece is manned partly by conscription from the men of the sea- coast and partly by enlistment, the period of service being two years. Greece possesses no first-class battleships, although some modern vessels are "projected," and her navy ranks about fifteenth in comparison with those of the world. It is equipped in its vari- ous branches by about 4,000 men, the commissioned officers not quite reaching 600. It has three old battleships, eight torpedo gunboats, and twelve torpedo boats. There is besides a large mer- chant navy, consisting of sailing vessels and steamers, chiefly car- rying from and to the ancient seaport of Piraeus the trade of the eastern Mediterranean, the Bosporus, and the Black Sea. The chief articles of export from Greece embrace, besides ores, currants, olive oil, wines and cognac, figs, olives, sponges, silk and cocoons, gall nuts, tobacco, and gunpowder. The annual value of these exports (a total of about $25,000,000) is exceeded by the yearly value of the imports, which is close upon $29,000,000, chiefly cereals, yarn, and woven stuffs, coal and other minerals, live stock, fish, raw hides, wood and timber, paper, chemicals and colors, glass and earthenware, with sugar, coffee, rice, and other commodities. The railways open for traffic in the kingdom have a mileage of about 845 miles, with over 200 miles additional under construc- tion. The mileage of internal communication by roads is about 3,000 miles; these have latterly been improved and are now being added to. The post and telegraph systems are also being extended : P R E S E N T K I N G DOM 552a 1864-1910 the length of the telegraph lines, land and submarine, now exceeds 5,100 English miles. There is also open for traffic the canal across the isthmus of Corinth, about four miles in length, constructed at a cost of over $5,000,000. The land of Greece is chiefly in the hands of peasant proprietors, and though of unusual fertility, it is as yet only partially, and that indifterently, cultivated. There are a few large proprietors, and also the corporations interested in special products, such as the currant, the annual crop of which exceeds 150,000 tons. There are also the wine, olive, and fig-growing industries, which are large ; silk culture and tobacco raising are being encouraged, but the picking of acorns, which are used in tanning, is gradually being abandoned, owing to artificial substi- tutes. The marketable ores produced are mainly manganese iron ore, hematite, zinc ore, lead ore, and galena, besides copper, barytes, salt, sulphur, emery, gypsum, kaoline, and marble. In the whole of Greece the average production of cereals an- nually is wheat 7,000,000, and barley 3,000,000 bushels; rye, 8,500,000 bushels, besides maize and mazlin. Greece, on her farms and pasture lands, has also over 100,000 horses, 375,000 cattle, and 3,000,000 sheep. These data will give a fairly adequate idea of the present con- dition of the Hellenic kingdom, and the prospect of growth for herself and her tributary islands. Granted continued peace and unity within her borders, with the mind and energies of her people patriotically and sustainedly directed, the future of Greece cannot fail to be bright. In her favor, she has the good will and sym- pathy of the chief Christian nations of Europe, and of all liberty- loving and right-thinking people. How long Turkey will remain a menace to her, no one can predict, but if she keeps honestly and restrainedly on her own course, developing her own resources, and refraining from embroiling herself in external quarrels, she will not lack what she has hitherto had in ample and considerate measure the active sympathy and aid of powerful and disinter- ested allies and friends. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY The reader of history, apart from the student of history, has need for an eclectic bibliography only. With the volnniinous literature of the subject of Greece and Grecian history, and especially with that portion of it which for want of a better name may be termed controversial, the average reader has only a partial concern. But in one of its many purposes this volume would distinctly fail if its perusal did not awaken sufficient interest in the subject to send the reader off to his library shelves, there to follow some special period in fuller detail or to compare, contrast, or reconcile equally worthy views. This history of Greece, supplementing Oman's account with a summary of events from the death of Alexander to the present day, is intended as a readable general survey. But it is exceedingly important that the reader should bear in mind and, as opportunity or interest dictates, make substantial use of the fol- lowing list of books selected from the most noteworthy single works dealing with the history of Greece. GENERAL HISTORIES Abbott, Evelyn. " History of Greece." 2 vols. Putnam. Beloch, Julius. " Criechische Geschichte." Strasburg. 1899. Among the more modern histories of Greece, dealing with the general subject and based on substantial scholarship. Busolt, Georg. " Criechische Geschichte bis cur Schlacht hci Chacroucia." Gotha, 1893. Ranking with Beloch as representative of the first scholarship and historical genius of the day. Unfortunately, however, neither of these authors is as yet accessible in translation. Bury, John B. " History of Greece." Macmillan. Recent and authoritative. Curtius, Ernst. "History of Greece." Ward tr. 5 vols. Scribner. Important among the general histories of the earlier generation, but not, of course, in line with later philological research. Opposes Grote in many respects and interesting by contrast. Duncker, M. " History of Greece to the End of the Persian War." London and Edinburgh, 1883. Of exceptional importance for the period covered. Grote, George. " Plistory of Greece." New ed., rev. Little, Brown & Co. One of the greatest histories, and the first worthy history of the subject. Marked by a power of generalization and combination. Grote is especially strong in the earlier period and his marked democratic sympathies are noticeable throughout, giving him a strong advantage in estimating his subject. Thirlwall, Connop. " History of Greece." 8 vols. Strong in the later history and for that reason, as well as for his charac- teristic aristocratic view-point, a good complement to Grote. While histori- cally and in quality of interest Thirlwall is considered to fall short of Grote, he has the advantage of a better literary style. 555 556 BIBLIOGRAPHY Holm, Adolf. " History of Greece from the Commencement to the Close of the Independence of the Greek Nation." 4 vols. ^Macmillan, i8g8. Holm's work is as acceptable to the scholar as it is useful to the general reader, and no better history of its size and scope exists. jMitford, William. "History of Greece." As the precursor and inspiration of Grote, Mitford has his place in any bibliography of Greece, but otherwise, though interesting, his ]);\'judiccs and conclusions hardly give him any modern importance. A^IONG THE SHORTER GENERAL HISTORIES ARE: Cox, Sir George W. " General History of Greece to the Death of Alexander." (Epochs of Ancient History Series.) Longmans. This is one of the very best of the briefer histories and is especially adapted to the needs of the general reader. Fyffe, Charles Allen. "History of Greece." (Primer.) American Book Company. Like all in the "Primer" series, this is an excellent and useful concise manual. Harrison, James Albert." The Story of Greece." Putnam. A readable narrative in the " Story of the Nations " style. Alorcy, William C. "Outlines of Greek History." New York, 1903. In essence a text-book, but contains commendable sununaries and some excellent considerations on the subject of Greek life and culture during the different periods. Timayenis, T. T. " Greece from the Earliest Times to the Present." 2 vols. Appleton. This develops the history of Greece in a spirited narrative, and is especially valuable for the section dealing with modern times. SPECIAL PERIODS Of the special periods of the historical age, it may be said that, for the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides' own account will, perhaps, always remain superior to any modern work. For the events immediately following, probalViy 'lliirlwall and Freeman have given the most successful treatment among standard authors. For the period of Roman occupation, the works of Hertzburg and Finlay might be suggested as of most importance. A general list of books helpful on the special periods and phases of Greece would include : Abbott, Evelyn. "Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens." (Heroes of the Nations.) New York. A masterly .sketch. Bickford-Smith, R. A. H. " Greece under King George." London, 1893. Berard, V. "La Turqitie et I'liellcnisme couicmporainc." Paris, 1900. Bikelas, Y)." La Grccc By::antine et modcnic." Paris, 1893. Bocckh, Augustus. " The Public Economy of the Athenians." 3d German ed. 1886. ' Practically indispensable to the student of Greek affairs, showing much original investigation and thought and hardly diminished in value by sub- sequent scholarship. Cox, Sir George.'' The Greeks and the Persians." Longmans. "The Athenian Empire." Longmans. BIBLIOGRAPHY 557 Curtius, Can. A. M. '" The Macedonian Empire." Longmans. These last three are all in the Epochs of Ancient History Series and con- stitute good summaries. Finlay, George. " History of Greece from the Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time.'' 7 vols. Oxford. Learned, accurate and severely critical, Finlay's work is the standard for the period from 146 B.C. to his own time (1864). Freeman, E. A. " History of Federal Government in Greece." Vol. I. London, 1893. This first volume contains the general introduction to the subject and a history of the Greek federation, and though a fragment it possesses extreme importance as such. Especially interesting for comparison with American civic ideas. Gardner, E. A. " Ancient Athens." Macmillan. Lloyd, W. Vv'atkiss. " The Age of Pericles." 2 vols. Macmillan. Though perhaps deficient in style, this work is scholarly and soimd. Mahaffy, J. P. "Alexanders Empire." (Story of the Nations). Putnam. " The Greek World Under Roman Sway." Macmillan. The Ptolemaic epoch has come to be Mahaffy's own. ^Marked by great scholarship, all of the works of Mahaffy are distinct contributions, and the charm of a rare literary style enhances their reading value. Greco-Turkish War of 1897. From Official Sources by a German Staff Officer. English tr. London, 1897. Jebb, Richard Claverhouse. " -Modern Greece." Ridgeway, William. " The Early Age of Greece." Cambridge, 1901. Note also this author's contributions on the Mycenaean Age appearing from time to time in the Journal of Hellenic Studies. Sankey, C. " The Spartan and Theban Supremacy." Longmans. \ good summary. One of the Epochs in Ancient History Scries. Samuelson, James. *" Greece: Present Condition and Recent Progress." London, 1894. Sergent, L. " Greece in the Nineteenth Century." London, 1897. Tricoupis, S. " History of the Greek Revolution." The best for its period, preserving the national standpoint. Wheeler, B. I. "Alexander the Great." (Heroes of the Nation.) Putnam. A good narrative account of Alexander's invasion. GREEK LIFE AND CULTURE The literature of so fascinating a subject as Greek life and art is naturally very extensive. From the highly technical dissertations of archaeologists and scholars down to the essays in appreciation by enthusiastic admirers, the dis- cussion of Greek civilization proves its absorbing interest in every phase and no better field is offered for parallel reading. For ethnological disquisition a valuable article by Stephanos is available in the Dictionnairc encyclopedique de sciences inedicales (Paris, 1884), entitled, "La Grece au point de vuc naturel, etlviiologiqiie, anthropologique, de mographique." For a consideration of the influence of Egj-pt on Aegean civilization, see Evans's " The Eastern Question in Anthropolog}'." (1896.) Of the following books, the titles will sufficiently indicate their special bearing : Collignon, JNIaxime. " Histoire de la sculpture grecquc." Paris, 1897. Ranking as practically the best history of the subject. 558 B I B L I O G R A V H Y Davidson, Thoma?. " Education of the Greek People." Appleton. Diehl, Charles. "Excursions archiologiques in Grece." Paris, 1893. Felton, C. C. " Greece, Ancient and Modern." Houghton, jNIifflin & Co. Volumes of essaj'S dealing with the literature, social life and political institutions of Greece, charming in style and of exceeding popularity, but allowance must be made for the varying conclusions of subsequent research. Furtwangler, Adolph. " Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture." Scribner. This book has a unique value for its classification and shrewd identification (conjectural) of surviving pieces. Freeman, Edward A. " Sketches of Travel in Greece and Italy." Putnam. " Greater Greece and Greater Britain." Macmillan. Gayley, Charles M. '" Classic Myths." Ginn. Modeled on Bulfinch, and for the general reader an improvement on its model. Goll, H. ''Kulturbilder aiis Hellas tind Rome." Leipsic, 1878. Descriptive rather than critical and accessible to the reader of easy German. Gardner, Ernest Arthur. " Hand Book of Greek Sculpture." Macmillan. Gardner, Percy. " New Chapters in Greek History." Putnam. An authoritative summary of recent archccological results bearing on the life, religion and arts of Ancient Greece. Gladstone, William E. " Studies in Homer and the Homeric Age." Though chiefly technical and showing familiarity with the minutiae of Greek scholarship, this book is interesting and the chapter on the politics of the Homeric age is one of peculiar value. Hogarth, David George. " Mycenaean Civilization." New volume. 9th ed. Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the light of modern scholastic claims, based on archaeological develop- ments ; this article should be consulted by all means. Hall, H. R. " The Oldest Civilization of Greece." Jebb, R. C. "The Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry." Macmillan. Guerber, Helene Adeline. " Myths of Greece and Rome." American Book Co. Fairly comprehensive, and in style unusually good and readable. Lubke, Wilhelm. " Outlines of the History of Art." New ed. Dodd, Mead & Co. This should be available for reference. Overbeck, Johannes Adolf. "Gcschichte dcs gricchischen Plaslik." Leipsic, 1894. A standard of the old school. The work of a specialist and hence more elaborate than Lubke's. Perrot, George, and Chipiez, Charles. " Histoire de l\lrt." A great authority and the work should be a familiar one for reference. MahafTy, Jolm Pentland. " Old Greek Education." American Book Co. "Old Greek Life." (Primer.) American Book Co. " Social Life in Greece." Macmillan. " Survey of Greek Civilization." Macmillan. "Greek Life and Thought." Macmillan. " History of Classical Greek Literature." Macmillan. All of Prof. Mahafify's works are books of profit and delight. Moulton, Richard Green. " The Ancient Classical Drama." Oxford. A critical study of an important subject. Pater, Walter. " Greek Studies." Macmillan. Essays on sculpture and architecture. Valuable in substance and no less in their inspiration to an appreciation of the Greek spirit. Rodd, J. Rennell. "The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece." London, 1892. BIBLIOGRAPHY 559 Symonds, J. A. " Studies and Sketches in Italy and Greece." London, 1898. Schleimann, Heinrich. " Ancient Mycene." New and enl. ed. Scribner. " Ilios." Harper. " Troja." Harper. The works of this foremost archaeologist are not to be overlooked in their bearing on the art and civilization of the ancient Greeks. Schuchhardt, Carl. '' Schleimann's Excavations." Seller's tr. ^lacmillan. Summarizing in an admirable manner the results of Prof. Schleimann's archaeological research. Tarbell, Frank Bigelow. " History of Greek Art." iVIacmillan. A little book of value out of proportion to its size. In general to be con- sidered the very best of the briefer works. Tsountas, Chrestas. and Manatt, J. Irving. " The Mycenean Age." Houghton. Wordsworth, C " Greece : Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical.'' Scribner. Zeller, Edward. '" Outlines of Greek Philosoph3\" Holt. A good outline. For more extended history and discussion compare this author's volumes on specific phases of Greek philosophy. SOURCES The literary sources of Greek history derive an increased significance in the light of modern archaeological developments, and while comparisons of these two distinct sources of historic information undoubtedly make a more special appeal to the classical student or scholar, no intelligent reader can be blunt to an appreciation of the new interest attached to Greek literary source material when measured by the modern " archaeological test." Homer, for the mythological and heroic ages, is the one chief source, and some good translation, e.g., Chapman's metrical version or Butcher and Long's prose rendering, should be read in parts as interest dictates. Herodotus is an indispensable source book, and is most creditably reliable as far as his actual observations extend. Pausanias constitutes our " cicerone and tourist " and is a wealth of miscellaneous information relating to the topography, history and general culture of Greece. Strabo is our geographer. Polybius, for general accuracy, is one of the most important of the ancient writers. Thucydides still ranks as the best historian of the Peloponnesian War. Xenophon's " Anabasis," " Hellenica" and the minor works as well, are all important. Plato and Aristotle provide our knowledge of the various schools of Greek philosophy and still afford matter for modern speculative thought. Aristotle, moreover, in his " Politics " preserves the constitutions of the Greek states and the discovery in 1891 of a genuine treatise by him on the constitution of Athens, almost complete as to text, furnished a new " source " and revolutionized many previous scholarly conclusions. This manuscript, the lloXireia riov ^Affr^vaiivv, was probably writ- ten at the end of the first century a. d., and its genuineness is undoubted. (See note page loi.) Plutarch, though not writing until the latter half of the first cen- tury A. D., besides his ethical and religious reflections, affords us most interesting retrospective views of men who in his time were already " illustrious ancients." INDEX INDEX Abdera: founded, 82 Abydos : battle of, 364 Acarnania : geography of, 10 ; campaigns of Demosthenes in, 300; conquered by Agesilaus, 402; joins Aetolian League, 516 Achaia: geography of, 17 ', revives Achaean League, 516; created a French principality, 536 Achaean League: revival of, 516; Philip V of Macedon allied v^rith, 517; ex- piration of, 520 Achaians, The : Homeric importance of, 32; conquered by Dorians, 48; claimed as leaders of Dorian inva- sion, 49; migration to Asia Minor, 52; send colonies to Italy, 84; join Theban alliance, 445; join Sparta, 446 Achaeus : m34hical founder of Hellenic clan, 24 Acheloiis : largest river of Greece, 5, 10 Achilles: home of, 9; in Homeric poems, 29, Z2> Acragus (Agrigentum) : founded, 84; ty- rants of, 216; resists Gelo of Syra- cuse, 217; taken by Hiero, 219; taken by Carthaginians, 410 Actium : battle of, 522 Adeimantus : Corinthian admiral, 199 Adrianople : Valens defeated at, 529 ; treaty of, 545 Aegean civilization : account of, 20 Aegina : geography of, 16 Aeginetans : at war with Athens, 154; second war with Athens, 173 ; at bat- tle of Salamis, 202; third war with Athens, 240 ; conquered, 245 ; ex- pelled from their island, 281 ; re- stored by Lysander, 380 Aegospotami: battle of, 375 Aeolian colonization : in earliest authen- tic history, 31 Aeolus : mythical founder of Hellenic clan, 24 Aeschines: ambassador to Philip, 467; impeached, 470; stirs up Locrian war, 475 Aetolia : geography of, 10 ; Demosthenes' campaign in, 300; under Macedonian supremacy, 513; revives Aetolian League, 516 Aetolian League: revival of, 516; end of, Aetolians : in the great migrations, 48 ; migration to Asia Minor, 52 Africa : Greek colonization in, 86 Agamemnon : in Homeric poems, 29, 33 Agathocles : tyrant of Syracuse, 515 Agesandridas : Spartan admiral, 361. 363 Agesilaus : made king of Sparta, 392 ; at Aulis, 393; his successes in Asia, 394 ; returns to Europe, 399 ; at bat- tle of Coronea, 401 ; campaigns of, round Corinth, 402 ; supports Phoe- bidas, 422; invades Boeotia, 429; de- fends Sparta, 441 ; last campaign of, against Epaminondas, 448; expedi- tion to Egypt and death, 452 Agesipolis : king of Sparta, 378; death Agis n. King of Sparta : invades Argo- lis, 324; wins battle of Mantinea, 326; besieges Athens, 277 '> death of, 391 Agis III, King of Sparta : defeated by Philip, 479; in arms against Alex- ander, 491 ; slain in battle, 507 Agis IV: king of Sparta, 517 Agora, The : in Homeric times, 64 Agriculture : condition of, in modern Greece, 547; important products of, 550 563 564. INDEX Agrigentum : see Acragas Alalia: Phocaeans colonize, 125 Alaric, the Goth: invades Greece, 530 Alcaeus: Lesbian poet, 115 Alcibiades: character of, 322; tricks the Spartan ambassadors, 323 ; advo- cates the Sicilian expedition, 329; accused of sacrilege, 331; flies to Sparta, 335; goes to Asia, 352; joins Tissaphernes, 354; conspires with Athenian oligarchs, 355 ; recalled from exile. 359; enters Athens in triumph, 367 ; his naval victories, 364-366; banished, 370; murdered, 384 Alomaeonidae : curse of the, 100 Aletes : king of Corinth, 92 Alexander I of Macedon, 184; at Athens, 207 Alexander (III) the Great: at Chaero- neia, 477; quarrels with his father, 481 ; his character, 483 ; campaigns in the north, 485 ; conquers Thebes, 486; wins battle of the Granicus, 489; conquers Asia Minor, 490; wins Issus, 492; besieges Tyre, 493; in Egypt, 495 ; wins Arbela, 496 ; con- quers Babylon, 497; burns Persepo- lis, 498; slays Cleitus, 499; invades the eastern satrapies, 499; slays Phi- lotas, 501 ; in India, 501 ; his return march, 502 ; plans of, 503 ; death of, 505 Alexandria (in Egypt): founded, 495; Greek prominence in, 513; con- quered by Saracens, 533 Alexandro-eschata : founded, 500 Alexander of Pherae : his wars with Thebes, 443, 444; murdered, 448 Ali Pasha, vizier of Janina, 541 Alphabet, The : derived from Phoeni- cians, 27 Alyattes of Lydia, 116 Ambracia : at war with Athens. 300 ; gar- risoned by Philip. 480; rebels against Alexander, 485 Ambrose, St., Bishop of Milan, 528 Ameinias of Pallene, 203 Ammon : oracle of, visited by Alex- ander, 495 Amphiclus : establishes Greek settlement in Chios, 55 Amphictyon : mythical hero, 24 Amphictyonic Council : declares war on Phocis, 460; on the Amphissians, 475 Amphipolis: founded, 258; revolts from Athens, 314; battle of, 316; taken by Philip of Macedon, 458 Amurath II : subdues the Peloponnesus, 537 Amyntas I, king of Macedon: submits to Persia, 133 Amyntas II : king of Macedon, 456 Anacreon of Teos, 115 Anaxagoras : accused of impict}-, 272 Andocides, 334 Androcles : assassinated, 357 Andros, island of: colonization from, 80 Antalcidas : in Asia, 403 ; peace of, 404 Anthropomorphism : in Greek theology, 40 Antigonus : his share in Alexander's empire, 512 Antigonus Gonatas ; seizes Macedonian throne, 515 Antioch : Greek culture in, 513; made capital of Roman province, 526; con- quered by Saracens, 533 Antiochus : Athenian admiral, 369 Antiochus of Syria : defeated by Greeks, 518 Antipater: general of Alexander, 488; in Lamian war, 512; his share of Alexander's empire, 512; invades Aetolia, 513 Antiphilus: Greek commander, 512 Antiphon: heads conspiracy in Athens, 356; executed, 362 Aphrodite : adopted from Phoenicians, 28; confused attributes of, 39; wor- shiped at Cnidus, 52 Apollo: his oracle at Delphi, 12; in Greek theology, 40; Pythian games in honor of, 42; Dorian conception of, 50; worshiped by Doric llex- apolis, 56; honored by Croesus, 118; his temple at Mcgara rebuilt by Iladrian, 523 Aratus of Si<:yon, 516 Arbela : battle of. 496 Arcadia: geography of, 18. autochthon- ous claims of, 26 Arcadians: revolts of, 237; found Area- INDEX 565 dian League, 439; join Epaminon- das, 440; found Megalopolis, 440; at war with Elis, 446; fall into disunion, 453; oppose Alexander, 486 Arcadian League : founded, 439 Archaeology: value of, to Greek history, 20, 548 Archias of Thebes : murdered, 424 Archidamus, King of Sparta : besieges Plataea, 288 Archon: office of, created at Athens, 98; made subject to lot, 175; opened to Zeugitae, 252 Archidamus, King of Sparta, 270; in- vades Attica, 278, 282 Arctinus, and cyclic poems, 31 Ardys of Lydia, 116 Areopagus: council of Athens, 98; cedes political duties to Boule, 106; hum- bled by Pericles and Ephialtes, 239 Argeians : in Homer, 2^ ; in Egyptian inscriptions, 33 Arginusae : battle of, S72 Argo : legendary ship, 9 Argolis : geography of, 16 Argos: situation of, 10; in Dorian leg- end, 48 ; primacy in Peloponnesus, 58; struggle with Sparta, 74; resists Sparta, 76; reduction of, 77; wars with Sparta, 156, 237, 323, 398; allied to Epaminondas, 440; allied with Philip of Macedon, 470 Ariobarzanes : last hero of Persia, 498 Aristagoras: tyrant of Miletus, 133; slain, 136 Aristeides : his character, 159; ostra- cized, 176; at Salamis, 201; heads Athenian squadron, 222 ; starts the Confederacy of Delos, 227; his po- litical reforms, 230 Aristeus : at Potidaea, 269; slain, 284 Aristocracy: in Homeric Greece, 36 Aristodemus: Dorian hero, 48; in Spar- tan legend, 61 ; national hero of Messenia, 72 ; of Cumae, 95 Aristomenes : in second Messenian war, 74 Aristogeiton : attacks Peisistratidae at Athens, 112 Aristotle : tutor of Alexander, 484 Aristoteles : made Libyan king, 87 Army: of modern Greece, 549 Arsames : Persian satrap, 491 Arsites : Persian satrap, commands against Alexander, 488 Artabazus : satrap, 205, 211 Artaphernes : satrap of Lydia, 133, 158 Artaphernes the younger, 163 Artaxerxes : son of Xerxes, 231; Athens seeks peace with, 250 Artaxerxes II: succeeds Darius, 388; claims the cities of Asia, 405 Artemis : confused attributes of, 39 ; worshiped at Ephesus, 52 Artemisia, Queen : advises Darius, 202 Artemisium : battle of, 189 Ashtaroth : Phoenician model of Aph- rodite, 28 Asia Minor : connection with Greece, 20, 22, 23 ; piratical tribes of, harass Egypt, 25 ; Greek colonization in, 51 ; geography of, 52; assigned to An- tigonus after death of Alexander, 512; Greek prosperity in, 513 Aspasia : account of, 272 Assembly : the Spartan, 64 Assyria : religion of, compared to re- ligion of the Greeks, 40; power and fall of, 119, 120 Astyochus : Spartan admiral, 352 Assurbanipal : see Sardanapalus Athena: in Greek theology, 40; Lycur- gus enjoins worship of, 63 Athens : Homeric insignificance of, 33 ; early history of, 97; government of, 98; social order in, 99; war with Megara, 102 ; social order in time of Solon, 105 ; republic restored, 113; aids the lonians, 134; wars with Cleomenes, 141 ; with Aegina and Thebes, 143 ; reforms of Cleis- thenes in, 145 ; defeats the Persians at Marathon, 168; second war with Aegina, 173 ; occupied by Xerxes, 198; evacuated by the Persians, 206; Mardonius completes destruc- tion of, 208; reforms of Aristeides, 230; building up of her empire, 232; heads the Confederacy of Delos, 238; at war with Corinth and Ae- gina, 242 ; with Boeotia, 243 ; her successes, 244, 246 ; loses Boeotia and Euboea, 247 ; at war with Sparta, 248; makes the Thirty Years' Peace, 249; under Pericles, 251; colonies 566 INDEX of, 258 ; assists Corcyra, 267 ; en- gages in Peloponnesian war, 272 ; resources compared with Sparta's, 275 ; plague at, 282 ; debates in Ec- clesia at, 294, 296; rejects overtures of Sparta, 303 ; accepts temporary peace, 315; makes peace with Sparta, 317; allied to Argos and Elis, 321; sends expedition to Sicily, 328; de- cline of, 349 ; continues the war, 351; oligarchic conspiracy at, 355, 357 ; conspiracy of the Four Hun- dred at, 358; rejects terms with Sparta, 365 ; distress at, 371, trial of the generals at, 373; besieged by Agis and Lysander, 376; sur- renders, 378; causes of her down- fall, 379; under the thirty tyrants, 383, 385 ; delivered by Thrasybulus, 386; joins Boeotian League, 397; her walls rebuilt by Conon, 402; naval efforts of, 404; in peace of Antalci- das, 405 ; again allied to Thebes, 428; forms second naval league against Sparta, 429; makes peace with Sparta, 432; joins Sparta against Thebes, 442; attacks Corinth, 446; in the peace of 362 B.C., 451; engages in the Social War, 454; troubles with Philip of Macedon, 459, 461 ; makes peace with Philip, 467 ; second struggle with Philip, 472; war declared, 474; allied with Thebes, 475; submits to Philip, 478; beaten at Chaeroneia, 478 ; submits to Alexander, 486; in division of Alexander's empire, 512; Romans attracted to, 513, 521; joins Achaean League, 516; siege of, 522; adorned by Hadrian, 523 ; captured by Turks, 536; Prankish dukedom of, 536; captured by Turks. 539; mod- ern capital of Greece, 548 Athens, The University of, 549 Athos, Mount : Xerxes cuts a canal through, 183 Attains : general of Philip, 481 ; slain, 485 Attila : defeated by Aetius, 530 Attica : compared with Boeotia, 13 ; geography of, 14 ; autochthonous claims of, 26; early history of. 97 Aulis : Greek colonization from, 53 Austria-Hungary : in relation to mod- ern Greece, 548 Augustus : Greece separated from Mace- donia under, 521 Aurelian, the Roman emperor, 525 B Babylon : fall of, 126 ; revolts against Darius, 129; taken by Alexander, 497 _ Babylonia : relation of civilization to Greece, 21 Bactria : conquered by Alexander, 499 Barbarian : as distinct from Hellene, 25, 33 Bardis of Persia: slain bv Cambyses, 128 Batis: slain by Alexander, 495 Battus: royal house of Gyrene, 87 Belisarius : recovers dominion for Jus- tinian, 532 Beneventum: Pyrrhus defeated at, 516 Bessus : Persian usurper, 499 Boeotia : geography of, 12 ; settled, 47 ; loses Plataea, iii; makes war on Athens, 143; joins Cleomenes against Athens, 143 ; submits to Xerxes, 195 ; campaign against the Persians in, 206; conquered by Athens, 245 ; revolts against Athens, 248; joins Sparta in Peloponnesian war, 262; invaded by the Athenians, 310; invaded by Lysander, 398; in- vaded by Agesilaus, 400; League of, dissolved, 419; League of, recon- stituted by Thebes, 437; invaded by Phocians, 462; invaded by Philip of Macedon, 477 Boeotian League, 13, footnote; dissolved, 419; reconstructed, 437 Boges : Persian governor, 228 Boulc : created by Solon, 106; recast by Cleisthenes, 147; expelled by the Four Hundred, 358; restored, 362; recast by the Thirty Tyrants, 384; in modern Greece, 548 Bozarris, Marco: at Missolonghi, 544 Brasidas : at Salamis, 290; wounded at Pylos, 302; saves Megara, 310; cap- tures Amphipolis and other places, 313; killed in battle, 317 INDEX 567 Bronze Age, 22 Bruttians : conquests of the, 418 Byzantium : site fixed by oracle, 44 ; founded, 82; taken by Pausanias, 222; revolts against Athens, and is retaken, 260-261 ; second revolt from Athens, 363; retaken, 367; joins the Athenian League, 429; engages in the Social War, 454; besieged by Philip, 473; relieved by Phocion, 474; rise of, 513; made capital of Constantine, 526; see also Constanti- nople Byzantine Empire: breaking up of, 535 Byron, Lord: at Missolonghi, 542 Cadmeia: seized by Phoebidas, 422; re- covered, 425 Cadmus : significance of legend, 27 Callias of Athens, 250 Callias of Chalcis, 473 Callibius: aids "the Thirty" at Athens, 384 Callicratidas : Spartan admiral, 370; killed at Arginusae, ^tT^ Callimachus: at Marathon, 166, 168 Callippus: murders Dion, 416 Callixenus: impeaches the strategi, 374 Camarina: taken by Gelo, 217; restored, 220; taken by the Carthaginians, 412 Cambyses : king of Persia, 127 ; reduces Egypt, 127; death of, 128 Capo d'Istrias : elected president at Athens, 545 Cappadocia: assigned to Eumines, 512 Carduchians : fierce tribe of Asia Minor, 390 Carians : conquered by Persia, 125; join Ionian revolt, 135 Carlowitz, Peace of, 539 Carthaginians: invade Sicily, 218; second invasion under Hannibal, 408; wars with Dionysius, 412; war with Timo- leon, 417; war against Syracuse, Cassander: king of Macedonia, 511; . death of, 514 Catana: destroyed by Gelo, 219; joins the Athenians, 334; besieged by S}-- racusans, 408; battle of, 413 Catholics : see Roman Catholics Cephallenia : allied to Athens, 280 Chabrias : wins battle of Naxos, 430; slain at Chios, 454 Chaereas : adventures of, 359 Chaeroneia : battle of, 477 Chalcedon : taken by Alcibiades, 367 Chalcideus : Spartan admiral, 352 Chalcidice : settled, 79 ; revolts to Brasi- das, 309; league of, 420; league dis- solved by Sparta, 423 ; conquered by Philip, 464 Chalcis : colonial energy of, 79, 83 ; taken by Athenians, 154 ; at war with Athens, 163 ; revolts to Sparta, 361 ; allied with Athens, 473 Chalons-sur-Marne : battle at, 530 Chares : campaigns of, 454, 474 ; com- mands at Chaeroneia, 477 Charidemus : aids Athens, 466 Charlemagne ; the emperor, 533 ; crowned by the Pope, 534 Charminus : defeated at Samos, 357 Charon, the Theban, 423 Chios : colonized by Greeks, 55 ; His- tiaeus at, 136; fleet of at Lade, 137; revolts from Persia, 212; revolts from Athens, 352 ; beset by the Athenians, 357; revolts from Sparta, 401; joins Athenian naval alliance, 429 ; engages in the Social War, 454 ; taken by Memnon, 490; rise of, 513; massacre at, 544 Christianity: aided by diffusion of Greek culture, 513; established by Con- stantine, 524, 526; progress of, 527; accession of barbarians to, 529; influence of, 538 Cimmerians: devastate Lydia, 116 Cimon : Athenian general, 222 ; his vic- tories, 228; his character and policy, 232; victorious at the Eurymedon, 233 ; aids Sparta, 237 ; ostracized, 240; recalled, 247; last victories of, 247 Cinadon : conspiracy of, 398 Cithseron, Mount: 11, 12 Civilization of Greece; Aegean culture, 20; checked by Dorian invasion, 49 Cleopatra, the Egyptian : death of, 522 568 INDEX Cleopatra; wife of Philip of Macedon, 481 ; murdered, 511 Clazomcnac : taken by the Persians, 135 ; revolts from Athens, 352 Clcaridas : Spartan general, 318 Cleisthenes : expels Hippias from Athens, 112; leader of democrats at Athens, 140; exiled, 141; recalled, 141; his constitutional reforms, 144 Cleitus : saves Alexander's life, 489; murdered by Alexander, 501 Cleombrotus, king of Sparta : invades Boeotia, 428; slain at Leuctra, 434 Cleomenes I, king of Sparta : in expe- ditions against the Athenians, 141; defeats the Argives, 156; at Aegina, 163; death of, 173 Cleomenes III: last of the Spartans, 517 Cleophon : opposes peace, 366, 374 ; death of, 378 Cleruchies : Athenian system of, 144 note, 249, 258 Clearchus : leads expedition of the Ten Thousand, 389; slain, 389 Cleippides : Athenian general, besieges Mitylene, 291 Cleon : accuses Pericles, 283 ; advocates massacre of Lesbians, 294; his char- acter, 294 ; opposes peace, 304 ; at Spacteria, 306; killed at Amphipolis, 317 Climax, Mount: Alexander at, 490 Cnemus : Spartan general, 289 Codrus : patriot king of Athens, 98 Cnidus: founded, 56; battle of, 401 Codrington, Admiral, 545 Colonization : of lonians and Aeolians in earliest authentic history, 31 ; in- fluenced by Delphi, 44 ; in Asia Elinor, 51; age of, 78; under Alex- ander, 495, 504 Colophon : taken by the Athenians, 367 Conmierce : among Aegean peoples, 22 ; of Phoenicians, 26 ; in age of coloniz- ation, 78 ; effect of tyranny on, 95 ; Ionian activity in, 114; of modern Greece, sjq, 550 Commodus, Roman emperor, 525 Conon : Athenian admiral, 370; bcsie':,^ed in Mitylene, 371 ; llies to Cyprus, 376; takes service with Persia, 401; re- builds walls of Athens, 402; im- prisoned, 404 Constantino: Christianity established by, 524 Constantinople (Byzantium) : Goths ad- vance on, 530; Byzantine empire united under, 532; capture by Per- sians, 533; besieged by Saracens, 533; fall of 535, 536; result of fall of, 558; Turkish massacre at, 543 Constitution : of modern Greece, 548 Corcyra : founded, 83 ; rivalry with Corinth, 86; origin, 92; at war with Corinth, 265 ; asks aid of Athens, 266 ; sedition at, 299, 308 ; Spartan attack on, 431 Corfu : taken by Venetians, 536 ; in mod- ern Greece, 548 ; military school at, 549 Corinth: situation of, 16; allies with Sparta, 74 ; revolt from oligarchy in, 76; joins Laconian League, 76; colonies of, 86, 88; typical political history of, 92; aids Athens, 173; con- gress at, 178; at war with Athens, 242; at war with Corcyra, 265, 269; advocates Peloponnesian War, 269; battle near, 308; aids Sparta, 323 ; sends help to Syracuse, 339 ; ad- vocates destruction of Athens, 377; makes war on Sparta, 398; cam- paigns around, 402, 403 ; sends Tim- oleon to Sicily, 417; faithful to Sparta, 440; makes peace with Thebes, 446; tyranny at, 453; allied to Athens, 473 ; submits to Philip, 478; congress at, 479; joins Achaean League, 516; siege of, 520; made Grecian capital, 522; burned, 537; canal of, 550 Corinth, Isthmus of, 14 Coroneia: first battle of, 248; second battle of, 400 Cos, island of: colonized, 56 Craimon : Antipator's victory at, 512 Cresphontes, Dorian hero, 48, 60 Cretan script, 27 Crete: Island of, 19; early civilization of, 22 ; Phoenician settlements in, 27 ; early script in, 27; Dorian mii^^ra- tion to, 56; taken by Venetians, 536; taken by the Turks, 538; de- creed autonomous, 548 Crimesus : battle of the, 417 INDEX 569 Critias : leader of the Thirty Tyrants, 383 ; his misrule, 385 ; slain, 387 Croesus of Lydia : legendary visit from Solon, 108; account of, 117; war with Persia, 123 ; defeated by Sardis, 124; conquered by Cyrus, 124 Croton: conquers Sybaris, 215; Pytha- goreans at, 215; taken by Dionysius of Syracuse, 414 Crusades, the, 535 Crypteia, 309 Cumae : first Greek town in Italy, 82 ; settled, 83; battle of, 219; taken by Sabellians, 414 Cunaxa : battle of, 389 Curium : Greek colony of, 57 Currency : in time of Pheidon of Argos, 59 Current Convention, the, 548 Cyaxares : king of Medea, 120 ; empire of, 122 Cyclades, 18; Ionic colonization of, 54; captured by Turks, 539 Cyclic poems, the, 31 Cydnus : Alexander at the, 491 Cylon : conspiracy of, 99 Cynoscephalae : Philip V defeated at, 518 Cyme : named by Locrians, 53 ; taken by Persians, 135 ; besieged by Tissa- phernes, 391 Cypriot syllabary, 27, 56 Cyprus: early syllabary used in, 27, 56; Greek settlements in, 56; submits to Persia, 127; subdued, 135; joins the Ionian revolt, 135 ; invaded by Cimon, 247; submits to Alexander, 494; massacres in, 543; liberated from Egyptians, 514 Cypselus : tyrant of Corinth, 92 Cyrene : site fixed by oracle, 44 ; founded, 87;, submits to Persia, 128 Cyrus the Great : account of, 122 ; con- quers Lydia and Ionia, 124, 125 ; conquers Babylon, 126; estimate of, 127; death of, 127 Cyrus, the younger : governor of Asia Minor, 369; aids Lysander, 369; re- bels against his brother, 388; march of the "Ten Thousand" under, 389; killed, 389 Cythera : a Phoenician possession, 27 Cyzicus, settled, 80; battle of, 365 D Danai : in Homer, 23 1 i" Egyptian in- scriptions, 22 Danes, 535 Damocles : story of, 412 Daras : battle of, 532 Darius I : king of Persia, 128 ; becomes king, 128; reorganizes his empire, 130 ; invades Scythia, 132 ; incensed with Athens, 139; sends out Datis and Artaphernes, 165 ; dies, 172 Darius II : his treaty with Sparta, 352 ; sends Cyrus to Asia Elinor, 369; dies, 388 Darius III: ascends the throne, 487; at Issus, 492 ; makes proposals to Alex- ander, 493; at Arbela, 496; murdered by Bessus, 499 Datis : commander at Alarathon, 165 Debtors : Solon's legislation respecting, 104 Decarchies : in Asia Minor, 381 Decelea : seized by Spartans, 342 Delium : battle of, 311 Delos: confederacy of, 217; strengthened by Pericles, 238 ; synod and treasury of, removed to Athens, 241 ; organiz- ation of, 257; name of war fund changed on account of, 429 Delphi: oracle of, 11, 43; not referred to in Homeric poems, 33 ; influence on colonization, 88; protected by Solon, 103 ; ambiguity of, 123 ; bribed by Cleomenes, 163 ; prophecies of, be- fore Persian War, 179; attacked by Xerxes, 198; seized by the Phoceans, 460; delivered by Philip, 469 Delyanni : in politics of modern Greece, 548 Demaratus, king of Sparta, 143, 163, 190 Demes of Attica, 145 Demeter: in Greek theology, 39 Demetrius Poliarcetes : account of, 513, S14 Democracy : first established at Argos, ** 59; recurrence of, 95 Demosthenes : Athenian general, 300 ; in Acarnania, 301 ; fortifies Pylos, 302 ; takes Sphacteria, 307; sent to Sicily, 342 ; captured, 346 ; slain, 347 ; Athe- nian orator, 464 ; Olynthiac orations of, 466; sent on embassy to Pella, 570 INDEX 467; political activity of, 469; travels in Peloponnesus, 470; urges the Athenians to war, 472; persuades the Thebans to war, 476; stirs up Greece against Alexander, 485 ; in- cites revolt, 512 Dercyllidas : Spartan general, 391, 401 Dicasteries, the Athenian, 149, 252 Diodotus ; opposes Cleon, 295 Diomedes : in Homer, 2S Diocletian, Emperor, 522, 526 Dion: expels Dionysius II, 416; ban- ished, 416; killed, 416 Dionysius : in Greek theology, 39 Dionysius, the elder: his rise, 410; death of, 415 Dionysius, the younger: his reign, 415; exiled, 416; at Corinth, 417 Diopeithes : Athenian general, 472 Dodona : oracle of, 8, 43 Dorcis : Spartan admiral, 223 Dorians: country of, 12; conquer Pelo- ponnesians, 31, 47; in age of migra- tions, 46 Doris : conquered by Phocians, 244 Dorus : mythical founder of Hellenic clan, 24 Draco, laws of, 100; abolished by Solon, 107 Eastern question, the, 547 Eetionea : fort of, 361 Ecclesia, the : made powerful by Solon, 107; altered by Cleisthenes, 147 Ecbatana : Median capital, 123 Edonian Thracians : See Thracians, Edonian Education : in modern Greece, 549 Egypt: relation of civilization to Greece, 21; to Crete, 22; inscriptions in, relating to Greece, 25, 33 ; ravaged by Achaians and Danai, 33, 51 ; re- ligion of, compared to religion of Greeks, 40; Greek intercourse with, 87; reduced by Cambyses, 127; Athenian campaigns in, 240, 246; Agesilaus in, 452; conquered by Alexander, 495 ; assigned to Ptolemy I after death of Alexander, 512; Greek prosperity in, 513; absorbed by Rome, 522; conquered by Sara- cens, 533 ; aids Turks against Greeks, 544 Eion : conquered by Athenians, 228; Thucydides at, 314 Eira : fall of, 75 Elcusis : mysteries of, 332; seized by Thirty Tyrants, 387 Eleusinian mysteries : profaned by Alcibiades, 332 Elis : description of, 17 ; feud with Pisa, 74, 75 ; makes war on Sparta, 321, 440; wars of, with the Arcadians, 446; civil war in, leads to alliance with Philip of Macedon, 470 Endius, the Spartan: 351; envoy to Athens, 365 Epaminondas : patriot of Greece, 13 ; character of, 427; in congress at Athens, 431 ; commands at Leuctra, 432; invades Peloponnesus, 440, 443, 445 ; invades Thessaly, 444 ; at- tempts to take Sparta, 448; com- mands at Mantinea, 449; killed, 450 Epariti : in Arcadia, 440 Ephesus : Greek settlement of, 55; taken by the Persians, 126; recaptured after Ionian revolt, 137; Athenians defeated at, 367; Lysander at, 369; Agesilaus at, 394; submits to Alex- ander, 490 Ephialtes : Malian traitor, 192 Ephialtes : the Athenian, 238; murdered, 240 Ephors : introduced in Sparta, 68 Epidamnus : civil war at, 264 Epidaurus : at war with Athens, 240; allied to Sparta, 274, 324, 440; be- sieged by Epaminondas, 443 Epipolae : plateau of, 335 Epirus: geography of, 7; tribes of, at- tack the Acarnanians, 289; con- quered by Philip, 471 Epistates : office of the, 148 Epitadas : Spartan general, 307 Erechtheum : temple at Athens, 255 Eretria : colonial energy of, 79, 83; aids the Tonians, 134; taken by the Persians, 165 ; revolts against Athens, 248 ; battle of, 361 ; tyrants of, 473 INDEX 571 Etruscans (Tj'rrheni) : location of, 83; defeated at Cumae, 218; aid Athens, 339 Euagoras : of Cyprus, 376 Euboea: island of, 14; revolts from Athens, 248, 361 ; joins the The- bans, 438; wars in, 464, 474; taken by Venetians, 536; taken by Sara- cens, 537; taken by Turks, 539 Eudamidas : Spartan general, 421 Eumines : his share of Alexander's em- pire, 512 Euphron : tyrant of Sicyon, 453 Eupompidas : of Plataea, 297 Eupatridae, at Athens, 98, 99 Euripides : at the court of Archelaus, 456 Eurybiades : Spartan admiral, 186, 199 Eurymedon : battle of the, 234 Eurymedon : Athenian general, 303, 308 ; tried and condemned, 313; killed at Syracuse, 344 Euxine Sea : Greek settlements on shores of, 80 Factories: established by Phoenicians, 27 " Five Thousand " : at Athens, 358 Flavian emperors of Rome, 524 " Four Hundred " : conspiracy of, at Athens, 358; fall of, 361 France : in relation to modern Greece, 548 French Revolution : influence of, 541 Galatia: settled by Gauls, 515 Games, the Greek, 42 Gargaphia : fountain of, 209 Gaza : taken by Alexander, 495 Gedrosia : Alexander in, 502 Gela: tyrants of, 217; taken by Car- thaginians, 412 Gelo : of Syracuse, 217 George, of Denmark: accepts throne of Greece, 546 Germany: in relation to modern Greece, 548 Glaucus, the Spartan, 44 " Gordian knot," 490 Gordium : Alexander at, 490 Goths : invade Greece, 529 Government of Greece : in Homeric Greece, 34; institutions of Lycurgus, 62 ; under tyranny, 90, 95 ; under monarchy, 91 ; under oligarchy, 91, 98; in eighth century B. c, 98; Draco, 100; Solon and Peisistratus, 102; Cleisthenes, 140; of Athens in fifth century b. c, 232 ; under Spartan su- premacy, 380; under Romans, 521; under King Otho, 546; of modern Greece, 548 Graeco-Turkish War, the, 548 Gregory H, Pope, 534 Gregory HI, Pope, 534 Gregory VH, Pope, 535 Granicus : battle of the, 488 Great Britain : in relation to modern Greece, 548 Greece : geography, 3 ; Aegean civiliza- tion : origin of the Greek nationality, 20; Homeric poems and the Greeks of the Homeric Age, 29; religion of the Greeks : Olympia and Delphi, 38 ; the great migrations, 46; colonies in Asia, 51; Dorians in Peloponnesus the legislation of Lycurgus, 58; establishment of Spartan supremacy in Peloponnesus, 70 ; age of coloni- zation, 87 ; age of the tyrants, 90 ; early history of Attica, 97; Solon and Peisistratus, 102; the Lydian monarchy, 114; Cyrus and Darius, 119; Darius and the Greeks the Ionian revolt, 131; constitution of Cleisthenes, 140; European Greece jealousy of the states, 154; battle of Marathon to the invasion of Xerxes, 165 ; the invasion of Xerxes, 181 ; Salamis and Plataea, 195 ; Greeks of Italy and Sicily, 214; events in Asia Minor and Greece, 222; rise of Athenian empire, 232; Athens at the height of her power, 241; the years of peace, 251; rivalry of Sparta and Athens, 262; early years of the Peloponnesian War, 274; siege of Plataea, 286; Sphac- 512 INDEX teria and Delium, 299; Brasidas in Thrace, 313; the Truce of Nicias, 320; expedition to Sicily, 328; de- cline of Athens, 349; surrender of Athens, 363 ; Spartan supremacy in Greece, 379 ; revolt from Sparta, 396; the Greeks of the West, 407; last years of Spartan hegemony, 419; uprising of Thebes, 426; Theban predominence, 436; the Peace of 362 B. c, to Philip's invasion, 452; Philip and Demosthenes, 463 ; end of free- dom, 471; Alexander the Great, 483; Alexander's successors and the Greek leagues, 511; under Roman rule, 521 ; the Middle Ages and Turkish yoke, 532; the Greek War of Independence, 542; the present kingdom, 546 Greek Church, the Orthodox, 548, 549 Gyges of Lydia, 116 Gylippus: in Sicily, 339; defeats the Athenians, 344, 347 Gythium : taken by Athenians, 246; burnt by Thebans, 441 H Hadrian, the Roman emperor, 523, 525 Haliartus ; destroyed by Xerxes, 196; battle of, 398 Halicarnassus : founded, 56 ; siege of, 489 Hamilcar: invades Sicily, 218; killed, 218 Hannibal : takes Setinus, 408 ; takes Himera, 409; death of, 410 Harmodius : attempts overthrow of tyranny at Athens, 112 Harmosts : Spartan system of, 381 Harpagus : the Mede, 125 Hecataeus : ridiculed by Herodotus, 21 Hector: in Homer's Iliad, 29 Helen : story of, 29 Heliaea: at Athens, 147 Helicon, Alount, 11, 12 Helots: introduced in Sparta, 70; con- spire with Pausanias, 228; rising of, 237 ; subdued, 246 Hellas : restricted sense of, 7 Hellen : mythical founder Hellenes, 9; eponymous hero, 23 Hellenes : antiquity of, 3 ; Homeric limi- tation of name, 33 Hellenic Peninsula : description of, 3 Hellenotamiae: in Confederacy of Delos, 227, 258 Hellespont: bridged by Darius, 131; bridged by Xerxes, 183 ; Athenian operations in the, 222 ; made Spartan base of operations, 363 Hera: confused attributes of, 39; of Samos, 52 Heracles: divine ancestor of kings of Sparta, 21 ; adopted from Phoeni- cians, 28; temple of, at Tyre, 494 Heraclius : annihilates Persian forces, 533 Hermae : mutilation of, 331 Hermione : in the Spartan alliance, 274, 440 Hermocrates : of Syracuse, 347 ; in Asia, 352; slain, 409 Hermopolis : in modern Greece, 548 Herodes Atticus : his benefits to Athens, 523 Herodotus : quoted on Homeric theology, 38; ridicules chronology of Heca- taeus, 21; quoted, 54; on consti- tution of Lycurgus, 64; at Thnrii, 260 Hesiod : compared to Homer, 13, 38 Iletaeria Philike : founded, 541 Hiero: tyrant of Syracuse, 218 Hiketas: tyrant of Leontini, 417 Hittites : in Asia Minor, 52 Himera: victory of Gelo at, 218; de- stroyed by Hannibal, 409 Hipparchus : tyrant of Athens, in Hippias: tyrant of Athens, in; at Sparta, 155; joins the Persians, 164; at Marathon, 165 Hippocrates: defeated at Delium, 311 Histiaeus: favored by Darius, 132; at the Danube bridge, 132; fosters Ionian revolt, 133 ; slain, 138 Homeric poems : account of, 29 ; the Homeric problem, 30; historic value of, 31, 32; compared to Hesiod, 38 Honorius : Roman ruler of the East, 528 Huns, The : invade Greece, 529 Hymettus Mountains, 14 llyperbolus: Athenian demagogue, 357 Hyperides: Athenian orator, 512, 513 INDEX 573 K Iconoclasts, The, 534 Ictinus : architect of the Parthenon, 255 Ida, Mount, 19 IHad, the, 29 IHum (Troy) : Alexander at, 488 Inarus : Egyptian prince, 246 India : expedition of Darius to, 131 ; Alexander in, 501 Independence, Greek War of, 539, 542 International Financial Commission : established by the powers, 548 Ion : mythical founder of Hellenic clan, 24; significance of legends concern- ing, 26 Ionia : conquered by Persia, 125 ; revolt of, 134; freed by the Athenians, 212; submits to Alexander, 489 lonians : in relation to Pelasgians, 23 ; expelled by Achaians, 48; colonize Asia Minor, 31, 54 Ionian Islands : returned to Greece, 546 Iphicrates : at Corinth, 402 ; relieves Corcyra, 431; in Peloponnesus, 442; in the Social War, 454 Isagoras, the Athenian, 140, 151 Ismenias, the Theban, 397; executed by the Spartans, 422 Issus : battle of, 492 Italiots : history of, 214 Italy : Pelasgi spread to, 23 ; Greek col- onization in, 83 ; Greek prosperity in, 513; in relation to modern Greece, 548 Ithaca : home of Odysseus, 10 Ithome : peak of, 17 ; in Messenian wars, 72 ; stronghold of the revolted Helots, 237, 246; site of city of Messene, 442 Jerusalem : conquered by Saracens, 533 Jesus of Nazareth, 522 Jews, the : in modern Greece, 549 Julian emperors : Greece under the, 524 Jason of Pherae : career of, 437 ; mur- dered, 438 Justinian Code, the, 532 Justinian, the Byzantine emperor, 532 Kolokotronis : Greek patriot, 544 Konstautinos, Prince : crown prince of Greece, 548 Lacedaemon : see Sparta Lacedaemonius : Athenian admiral, 268 Lachares, tyrant of Athens, 514 Laches : Athenian admiral, 299 Laconia : geography of, 16 ; Dorian state in Peloponnesus, 60; invaded by the Thebans, 440 Lade: battle of, 137 Lamachus: Athenian general, 329; his plans of Sicily, 3^3 5 killed at Syra- cuse, 338 Lamian War, The, 512 Lampsacus : Lysander at, 375 Larissa : invites aid of Macedonians, 444 ; taken by Pelopidas, 444; appeals to Philip, 461 ; in modern Greece, 548 Laurium : silver mines of, 175 Lelantine War, 115 Leo III, Byzantine emperor: saves Con- stantinople from Saracens, 533 Leonidas of Sparta, 186; slain at Ther- mopylae, 193 Leontiades of Thebes : his treachery, 421 ; murdered, 424 Leontini : taken by Hiero, 219; captured by Syracusans, 328; appeals to Athens, 329 ; resettled by Syracusans, 410; in the hands of Hiketas, 417 Leosthenes : Greek general, 512 Leotychides of Sparta : made king, 163 ; at Mycale, 212 Leotychides the j-ounger, 391 Lepanto: battle of, 537 Lepreum : attacked by Elis, 321 Lesbos : Pelasgics displaced in, 53 ; sub- mits to Persia, 126; revolts from Athens, 291; subdued, 294; con- quered by Memnon, 490; taken by Saracens, 537 Lesches and the Cyclic poems, 31 Leucas : makes war on Acarnanians, 289 Leuctra : battle of, 432, 466 Libya : relation of civilization of, to Crete, 22 574 INDEX Liberation, War of: See Independence, Greek War of Lilybaeum: siege of, 415 Locri : founded, 84 ; in hands of Di- onysius II, 416 Locrians, the Amphissian, 460, 475 Locrians : subdued by Xerxes, 196 ; sub- dued by Athens, 245 ; make war on Phocis, 397; join Thebes, 438; beaten by Philomehis, 460; at Delphi, 475; join Aetolian League, 516 Locrians, Opuntian : revolt from Athens, 248; at war with Phocis, 397; con- clude treaty with Thebes, 438; harassed by Phocians, 461 Lombards : conquer Northern Italy, 533 Long Walls: of Athens, 242; destroyed, 378; rebuilt by Conon, 402 Lycomedes, the Arcadian, 444 Lycurgus: consults oracle of Delphi, 44; institutions of, 61, 62; attempt to revive institutions of, 517 Lycians : conquered by Persia, 126 Lydia: kingdom of, 114; conquered by Persia, 123 Lysander: made nauarchus, 386; wins battle of Notium, 369; allied with Cyrus, 375 ; wins battle of Aegos- potami, 376; takes Athens, 378; his influence in Greece, 381 ; disgraced by ephors, 382; goes with Agesilaus to Asia, 393; slain at Haliartus, 398 Lysicles : Athenian general, 477 Lysimachus : his share in Alexander's empire, 512 M Macedonia : submits to Persia, 133 ; allied to Brasidas, 313; invaded by Pelopidas, 444; people of compared to the Greeks, 455 ; in division of Alexander's empire, 512; assigned to Polysperchon, 512; supremacy in Greece, 513; resistance to supremacy of, 516; made R^man province, 519 Magi : The Zoroastrian priests, 122, 128, 129 Magnesia : Greek settlement of, 53 Malli : oppose Alexander, 502 Mantinea: feud with Tegea, 18; allied to Sparta, 237; at war with Sparta, 321 ; first battle of, 325 ; walls of, cast down by Sparta, 420; walls of rebuilt, 439; joins Sparta, 447; sec- ond battle of, 449 Manufactures : in modern Greece, 547 Mardonius : governor of Ionia, 139 ; per- suades Xerxes to retire home, 205 ; occupies Athens, 207; killed, 211 Marathon, battle of, 166 Marcus Aurelius, Kmperor, 523, 525 Mardonius : fights battle of Plataea, 209 Masistus, the Persian, 209 Massagetae : slay Cyrus, 127 Massilia : founded, 85 ; Phocaean colony, 125 Mausolus : takes Rhodes, 455 Mavrokordatos : Greek general, 544 Medes, The: rise of, 120; conquered by Cyrus, 123 ; rebellion of, 129 Megabyzus : conquers Egypt, 246; in Thrace, 132 Megacles : crime of, 100 Megalopolis: founded, 440; its wars with Sparta, 453, 465 Megara : made Dorian capital, 49 ; colo- nization from, 82; allied with Athens, 242; at war with Athens, 248; foments Peloponnesian war, 263; ravaged by Athenians, 280; saved by Brasidas, 310; at war with Philip, 473 ; submits to Philip, 479 Megara Hyblaea : destroyed by Gelo, 217 Melcarth: Phoenician model of Hera- cles, 28 Meletus : at war with Persians, 382 Melicertes : worshiped by Corinth, 28 Melos : island of, 19 ; a Phoenician pos- session, 27; conquered by Athens, Memnon : general against Alexander, 489 Mende : revolts from Athens, 315 Menelaus : in Homer's U'xad, 29, 33 Meros : colonized, 56 Messene in Sicily : founded as Zancle, 83; taken by Anaxilaus, 217; taken by Carthaginians, 413 Messenia: geography of, 17; Dorian state in Peloponnesus, 60; founded INDEX 575 by Epaminondas, 442; wars of, with Sparta, 71, 237, 470; allied to Philip, 470; joins Achaean League, 519 Messenian Wars, 71, 237, 470 Methone: taken by Philip, 461 Migrations, the great, 46 Miletus : settled by Greeks under Neleus, SS ; pioneer colony in Asia Minor, 80 ; attacked by Alyattes, 116; revolts from Persia, 134; destruction of, by Persians, 137; joins the Athenians, 212; revolts from Athens, 352; battle of, 354 ; taken by Alexander, 489 Miltiades, the Athenian, 132; plans desertion of Darius, 132; sketch of, 158; commands at Marathon, 166; his Persian expedition, 171 ; dies, 171 Mindarus: in Hellespont, 364; slain, 365 Minos: prehistoric king of Crete, 19, 22 Missolonghi: death of Byron at, 542; defense of, 544 Mithridates and war with Rome, 521 Mitylene : founded, 53; joins Ionic re- volt, 138; besieged by Spartans, 371; revolts from Athens, 291 ; siege of, 292; joins naval league, 429 Mohammedans : crusades against, 535 ; in modern Greece, 548 Mohammed, the prophet, 533 Mohammed II : conquests of, 537 Mohammed AH : assists Turks, 543 Monarchy, the : in Greek political history, 91 Money: early coinage changed by Solon, 104 Morea, the : recovered, 536 ; revolts from Turks, 542; evacuated by Turks, 545 Mummius, Lucius : completes Roman conquest of Greece, 520 Munychia : fighting in, 386 Mycale: battle of, 212 Mycale, Mount: sanctuary of Poseidon on, 55 Mycenae : archaeological remains of, 22 ; Homeric importance of, z^, 33; im- portance in prehistoric Greece, 49; obscurity after Dorian invasion, 59; taken by Argives, 237; recent dis- coveries respecting, 548 Myron : annalist of Sparta, 72 Myronides : defeats Corinthians, 243 : conquers Boeotia, 245 Mythology of the Greeks : Homer and Hesiod in relation to, 39 N Nabonadius : conquered by Cyrus, 126 Napoli di Romania : captured by Greeks, 544 Nauarch : office of the, 368 Naucratis : founded, 87 Naupactus : taken by Athenians, 246 ; sea fight off, 290; taken by Lysander, 380 Navarino : naval battle of, 545 Navigation : among the Phoenicians, 27 Navy: of Megara, 102: Polycrates famed for, 126; of Chios and Byzantium, 513; success of, in War of Independence, 542, 544; of mod- ern Greece, 550 Naxos : island of, 18; Persian expedi- tion against, 133 ; conquered by Persia, 165 ; revolts against Athens, 234 ; sea fight off, 430 ; created Italian duchy, 536 Naxos in Sicily : founded, 83 ; at war with Syracuse, 299; joins Athens, 334; beset by Syracusans, 408 Nearchus : Alexander's admiral, 502, 505 Nectanebis, king of Egypt, 452 Neleus : establishes Miletus, 55 Nemesis : Greek theory of, 124 Neo-Hellenic Party, the, 548 Neolithic Age : in Greece, 21 Nero : Roman emperor, 523 Nestor : in Homeric poems, 33 Nicaea : Greek empire in, 536 Nicaea : Council of, 527 Nicias : opposes Cleon, 305 ; captures Cythera, 309; peace of, 317; opposes Alcibiades, 322 ; opposes Sicilian ex- pedition, 329; sent to Sicily, 332; his plans, 333; besieges Syracuse, 2?>7\ his dilatoriness, 338; sends for aid, 340 ; refuses to raise siege, 343 ; cap- tured, 347; slain, 347 Niceratus : put to death, 384 Nicholas, czar of Russia, 545 576 INDEX Nicodemia: made capital of Roman province, 526 Nicodromus of Aegina, 173 "Nine Ways," the, 236 Nomophylaces : function of the, 239 O Ochus: king of Persia, 455 Odeum, the, 254 Odoacer: ends the Roman empire, 531; defeat of, 532 Odysseus: home of, 10; in Homeric poems, 29, 33, 82 Oenophyta : battle of, 245 Oetaeans: join Lysander, 397; at war with Phocis, 461 ; proposals of the, 469 Olga, queen of Greece, 547 Oligarchy: at Argos, 59; at Corinth and Sicyon, replaced by tyranny, 76; cause for emigration, 82 ; in Greek political cycle, 91 ; in Asia Minor, 114 Olympiad : as unit of time, 42 ; date of first, 58 Olympias : mother of Alexander, 481, 483, 511 Olympic Games : first mentioned, 59 ; re- ferred to by Pausanias, 60 Olympus, Mt. : height of, 4; abode of gods, 8; not referred to in Homer, 33 Olynthns : its freedom acknowledged, 318; forms Chalcidian League, 420; conquered by Sparta, 423 ; at war with Athens, 459; attacked and conquered by Philip, 466 Onomarchus : the Phocian, 460; his suc- cesses, 461 ; slain, 462 Oracles of Greece, the, 43 Orchomenus: archaeological remains of, 22; importance in prehistoric Greece, 49 Orchomenus in Arcadia: adheres to Sparta, 440 Orchomenus in Boeotia : seized by oli- garchs, 248; joins Spartans, 397; aids Agesilans, 400; holds out against Thebes, 430 ; taken by Epam- inondas, 437; taken by Onomar- chus, 462 Oroetes: satrap, 129 Oropus : taken by Thebans, 446 ; given to Athenians by Philip, 479 Orthodox Greek Church : see Greek Church, the Orthodox Ortygia, 335 Ossa, Mount, 8 Ostracism : system of, at Athens, 150 Otho : made king of Greece, 546 Othryades : Spartan victor, 76 Ottoman Turks : in Greece, 536 Ozolian Locrians: defeated by Philome- lus, 460 Paches : takes Mitylene, 293 ; slays him- self, 296 Pactyas : the Lydian, 125 Pagondas : commands at Delium, 311 Paleologus: recovers Constantinople, 536 Pan : legend of, 166 Pangaeus, Mount: gold mines of, 235; mines worked by Philip of Mace- don, 459 Paphos : Greek colony of, 57 Paphlagonia : assigned to luimenes after death of Alexander, 512 Paralus: Athenian galley, 353, 357, 359, 403, 503 ; captured by Macedo- nians, 467 Paris : in Homer's Iliad, 29 Parmenio: general of Alexander, 490; at Lssus, 492; at Arbela, 496; mur- dered, 500 Parnassus, Mount, 5, 11 Paros : island of, 18; attacked by Miltia- des, 171 Parthenon of Athens, 255, 536, 539 Parysatis, Queen, 388 Patras : in modern Greece, 548 Pausanias : commands at Plataea, 207, 210; at Byzantium, 223; deposed, 224; conspires with Helots, 228; starved, 229 Pausanias, King of Sparta : pacifies Athens, 387 ; invades Boeotia, 398 Pausanias, the Macedonian: slays Philip, 481 Pinacotheca, the : at Athens, 255 Peiraeus : founded by Themistocles, 161 ; its walls destroyed by Lysander, 378; INDEX 577 rebuilt by Conon, 402; restored to Athens, 512; in modern Greece, 548 Peisander: at Samos, 355; organizes conspiracy at Athens, 358; flies to the Spartans, 362 Peisistratidae : rulers at Athens, 94 Peisistratus : tyrant of Athens, 95, 109 Pella : founded, 456; Athenians treat with Philip at, 467 Pelasgi: in Hellenic tradition, 23; mean- ing of name, 24 ; displaced in Lesbos by Aeolians, 53 ; amalgamate with Greeks in Chalcidice, 79; in Italy, 83 Pelasgic Age : in Greek civilization, 23 ; religion of, 38 Pelasgus : eponymous hero of Pelas- gians, 23 Pelopidas : slays polemarchs, 423 ; char- acter of, 426; at Leuctra, 435; in Peloponnesus, 441 ; imprisoned, 444 ; conquers Thessaly, 444; slain, 448 Peloponnesus : geography of, 14 ; con- quest of, 31 ; Spartan supremacy in, 70; see also Sparta, Achaia, Elis, Arcadia, Argos, and (post-Hellenic) the Morea Peloponnesian War, 274 Pelion, Mount, 5 Pentelicus Mountains, 14 Pepin, " The Short " : assists the popes, 534 Perdiccas : of Macedon, 269 Periander : conquers Corcyra, 86 ; tyrant of Corinth, 93 ; ally of king of Lydia, 95 Pericles : sketch of, 238 ; conquers Eu- boea, 249 ; bribes the Spartans, 249 ; reforms of, 251; power of, 251; his buildings, 254; his system of cleru- chies, 258; conquers Samos, 260; ad- vocates alliance with Corcyra, 267; unpopularity of, in 432 b. c, 272 ; his policy in Peloponnesian war, 279; ravages Megarians, 280; prosecuted by Cleon, 283 ; death of, 285 Pericles, the younger : enfranchised, 285 ; made strategus, 370 ; executed, 374 Perinthus : captured by Athenians, 367; besieged by Philip, 473 Perioeci : introduced in Sparta, 70 Persepolis : sacked by Alexander, 498 Perseus: last king of Macedonia, 519 Persian Empire : founded, 120 ; rise un- der Cyrus and Darius, 122; organ- ized by Darius, 129; conquered by Alexander, 498; wars of Justinian with, 532; conquered by Saracens, 533; Turkish wars with, 537 Persians : see Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes Ochus Persephone : in Greek theology, 39 Phalanx, the Macedonian, 458 Phalaris: tyrant of Agrigentum, 94 Phalerum : Athenian harbor of, 161 Pharnabazus: asks aid at Sparta, 351; assists Mindarus, 363; equips the fleet, 366; defeated by Dercyllidas, 391; chased by Agesilaus, 394; at battle of Cnidus, 401 Phayllus, the Phocian : defeated by Philip, 461 ; death of, 463 Pheidias : decorates the Parthenon, 255, 256; accused of impiety, 272 Pheidon : king of Argos, 59, 74, 95 Philip n : taken as hostage to Thebes, 444; sketch of, 457; becomes king, 458; founds Philippi, 459; takes Amphipolis and Pydna, 459; invades Thessaly, 461 ; checked at Thermop- ylae, 462; takes Olynthus, 466; makes peace with Athens, 467; sub- dues Phocis, 468; his influence in Peloponnesus, 470; subdues Epirus, 470; besieges Perinthus and Byzan- tium, 473; retires into Thrace, 474; invades central Greece, 476; subdues Thebes and Athens, 478 ; wins battle of Chaeroneia, 478; calls congress at Corinth, 479; his plans, 480; as- sassinated, 481 Philip V of Macedon: account of, 517 Philippi : founded, 459 Philippics of Demosthenes, 466, 472 Philippides : legends of, 166 Philippopolis : founded, 473 Philippus, the Theban, 424 Philippus : Alexander's physician, 491 Philocrates : Peace of, 468 ; banishment of, 469 Philogenes : leader of Greek emigrants to Phocaea, 55 Philomelus : seizes Delphi, 460; slain, 461 Philopoemen, the " last of the Greeks," 518 578 INDEX Philosophy, Greek: in Asia Minor, 115; Pythagoreans in Italy, 215 Philotas : slain by Alexander, 500 Phocaea: colonizations of, 82, 85, 125; destroyed by Persians, 125 ; founds Alalia, 125 Phocion : campaign of, in Euboea, 464 ; opposes Demosthenes, 467 ; relieves Byzantium, 474; rebukes Demosthe- nes, 481 ; obtains Macedonian clem- ency for the Greek cities, 513 Phocis : geography of, 12 ; invaded by Xerxes, 195 ; at war with Sparta, 244 ; allied to Athens, 245 ; attacked by Thebes, 397; aids Lysander, 398; subdued by Thebans, 438; at strife with Boeotia, 459; fortunes of, in the sacred war, 460; subdued by Philip, 468 Phoebidas : seizes the Cadmeia, 421 ; tried, 422; slain, 429 Phoenicians : relation of to Aegean civi- lization, 26; influence on Greek re- ligion, 28, 40; decline of, 78; submit to Cambyses, 127; fleet of, employed by Persians, 136, 182, 234, 360; sub- mit to Alexander, 493 Phormio : naval victories of, 290 Phrygia : destroyed by Cimmerians, 116 Phrynichus (politician) : conspires with the Four Hundred, 358; his coup d'etat, 360; murdered, 360 Phrynichus (tragic poet), 137 Phyllidas, the Theban, 423 Pindar : greatest of lyric poets, 13 Pisa : feud with Elis, 74, 75 Plague at Athens, 282 Plataea : its troops at Marathon, 167 ; destroyed by Xerxes, 196; battle of, 209 ; taken by Athens, 262 ; attacked by Thebans, 277; siege of, 297; re- stored by Spartans, 419; again de- stroyed by Thebans, 430 Plato: visits Syracuse, 415 Pleistoanax : bribed by Pericles and ex- iled, 249; restored from exile, 317 Pnyx, the, 149 Polemarch : office of created at Athens, 98 Polycrates: tyrant of Samos, 95, 126; death of, 129 Polybius: Greek historian, 519 Pompeii : destroyed by Vesuvius, 524 Pontus : kingdom of, 522 Porus, King of India : opposes Alexan- der, 501 Poseidon: in Greek theology, 39; Isthmi- an Games in honor of, 42; sanctuary on Mount Mycale, 55 Potidaea: established, 80; revolts from Athens, 269; recaptured, 284; taken by Philip of Macedon, 459 Probouleumata : in Athenian constitu- tion, 147 Probus, M. Aurelius, Roman emperor, 525 Procles : leads Ionic settlement in Samos, 55 Propylaea : built by Pericles, 255 Prytanies : in Athenian constitution, 147 Psammetichus I of Egypt: employs Greek mercenaries, 87 Psammetichus II of Egypt, 127 Psyttaleia, island of, 201 Ptolemy I : shares Alexander's empire, 512 Ptolemy Ceraunus: seizes Macedonian throne, 515 Pydna: taken by Philip, 459; battle of, 519 Pylos, bay of, 17 Pylos (Messenia) : Athenians at, 301; fighting at, 302 Pyrrhus: king of Epirus, 515; becomes king of Sicily, 516 Pythonicus : accuses Alcibiades, 332 R Ralli : in modern politics of Greece, 548 Ravenna : siege of, 532 Religion of the Greeks : influence of Phoenicians on, 28; of Pelasgic Age, 38; compared to Egyptian and Assy- rian, 40; growth of morality in, 40; in Asia Minor, 52; of modern Greece, 549 Renaissance, the, 538 Rhegium : Messenians settle in, 73 ; founded, 84; tyrants of, 216; at war with Syracuse, 299; Athenians at, 333 Rhianus : epic poet of Sparta, 72, 74 Rhodes: Greek colonization of, 56; re- volts from Athens, 353; joins naval INDEX 579 league, 429; engages in Social War, 454 ; conquered by Mausolus, 455 ; maritime importance of, 513; De- metrius repulsed at, 514; occupied by Order of St. John, 536 Robert Guiscard : ravages Greece, 535 Roman Catholics : in modern Greece, 549 Rome: Greek culture in, 513; allies with Aetolian League, 518; Greece fav- ored by emperors of, 523; litera- ture of, in time of Augustus, 524; division of empire of, 526; fall of empire of, under Romulus Augus- tulus, 531 Romulus Augustulus : deposed by Odoa- cer, S3I Roumenians: rupture with, 549 Roxana: espoused by Alexander, 503; causes murder of Statira, 511 Russia: in relation to Greece, 539, 548; sides with Greece, 542 Sacred War: the first, 103; the second, 460 ; the third, 475 ; end of, 468 Salaethus: at Mitylene, 292; slain, 294 Salaminia: Athenian galley, 334 Salamis : Greek colony of, 57 ; taken by Megara, 102; battle of, 202, 247; ravaged by Spartans, 290 Samos : Ionic settlement of, 55 ; coloniza- tion from, 82; Polycrates tyrant at, 126; fleet of, at Lade, 137; recon- quered by Persians, 137; revolts from Persia, 212; revolts from Athens, 260; in Peloponnesian war, 353 ; Athenian fleet at, 355 ; sedition at, 357; taken by Lysander, 382; taken by the Athenians, 453 Sappho: Lesbian poetess, 115 Saracens, the : foes of Byzantine empire, 533 Sardanapalus : Greek story of, 120 Sardis : taken by Croesus, 124 ; burnt by the lonians, 135 ; submits to Alex- ander, 489 Satrapies : instituted by Darius. 130 Scione: revolts from Athens, 315; re- taken, 318 Scipio Africanus: Roman general, 518 Sciritis : taken from Sparta, 479 Scylax of Caryanda, 131 Scythia: invaded by Darius, 131; invaded by Alexander, 500 Scythians : Greek relations with, 81 ; Darius's expedition against, 131 Seleucis of Syria: account of, 515 Selinus : at war with Segesta, 328 ; aids Syracuse, 339; destroyed by Cartha- ginians, 408 Sellasia: battle at, 517 Selymbria: taken by Athenians, 367 Sestos : taken by Athenians, 222 ; Athe- nian fleet at, 364 Shalmaneser V: subjects Tyre, 78 Sicels : aid the Athenians, 337 Sicily : Greek colonization in, 83, 84 ; early history of, 214; wars in, 301; invaded by the Athenians, 328; re- newed wars in, 408; invaded by Carthaginians, 409; in the power of Dionysius I, 413 ; freed by Tinio- leon, 417; after death of Timoleon, 515; succumbs to Rome, 516; re- covered by Belisarius, 532 Sicyon : revolt from oligarchy in, 76 ; joins Laconian League, 77; tyranny in, 94; sends ships to Salamis, 199; attacked by Athenians, 246 ; taken by Epaminondas, 443; joins Achaeian League, 516 Sidon: subjected by Assyria, 78 Sinope : rise of, 81 ; destroyed by Cim- merians, 116 Sisygambis: mother of Darius III, 493, 499 Sitalces of Thrace, 284 Slavs: invade Byzantine empire, 533 Smyrna : Turkish massacre at, 543 Social War, the, 454 Social life of Greece: in Homeric times, 32 Socrates : opposes the decrees of Cal- lixenus, 374; death of, 397 Sollium : retained by Athens, 317 Solon : consults oracle of Delphi, 44 ; life of, 102; legislation of, 104; travels and later life, 108 Sophia of Russia, Princess : becomes consort of Greek heir apparent, 548 Sophocles, the tragedian: commands at Samos, 260 580 INDEX Spain: in relation to Aegean civiliza- tion, 22 Sparta : geography of, i6, 17 ; early state of, 61; social condition of, 66; disci- pline of, ascribed to Lycurgus, 66; supremacy of, 70, 379; struggle with Argos, 74; allied to Croesus, 123; re- fuses to aid Ionia, 134; expels Cleis- thenes, 141 ; at war with Argos, 156; sends troops too late for Marathon, 170; sends Leonidas to Thermopylae, 186; troops of, at Plataea, 209; at- tacked by revolted Helots, 246; sub- dues Helots, 246; at war with Athens, 247; makes peace, 249; supports the Corinthians against Athens, 271 ; resources of, at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, 274; after battle of Leuctra, 436; attacked by Epaminondas, 448; con- tinues war with Messene, 451; makes war on Megalopolis, 453 ; aids the Phocians, 462 ; attacked by troops of Philip, 470; refuses to submit to Philip, 479; opposes Alexander, 485, 491, 506; joins Achaean League, 516; attempts to regain supremacy, 517; end of monarchy in, 517 Spithridates : the satrap, 489 Sphacteria : blockaded, 303 ; captured, 307 Sphodrias : attempts to seize Athens, 428 Statira : Persian wife of Alexander, 511, 544 Sthenelaidas, the Ephor, 270 St. John, Knights of, 536, 540 Strabo : quoted, 15 Strategi : the Athenian, 148; privileges of, 174 Styx : mysterious river of Greece, 15 Susa: capital of Cyrus, 123; Themis- tocles at, 231; Pelopidas at, 445; taken by Alexander, 497 Sybaris : founded, 84 ; wealth of, 85 ; de- stroyed by Croton, 215; Thurii colo- nized by, 260 Sybota : sea-fight off, 268 Syracuse : founded, 83, 92 ; tyranny at, 94, 217, 219; at war with Catana, 299 ; destroys Leontini, 328 ; siege of, 337; victory of, over Athens, 346; sends ships to the Aegean, 352; at war with its neighbors, 408; war with Carthage, 408; subject to Dio- nysius I and H, 415; anarchy at, 416; freed by Dion, 416; freed by Timo- leon, 417; ruled by Agathocles, 515 Syria: assigned to Antigonus after death of Alexander, 512; conquered by Saracens, 533 Tactics, Greek Military : see under Alex- ander, Marathon, Mantinea (first battle of), Iphicrates and Epami- nondas Tanagra : battle of, 244 Tarentum: settled, Ti'i 84; wars of, with lapygians, 220; later wars with Lu- canians, 418 Taxes : in modern Greece, 547 Taygetus Mountains, 15 ' Tearless Battle," the, 444 Tegia: feud with Mantinea, 18; sub- mits to Sparta, 76; troops of at Plataea, 210; troops of at Mantinea, 325 ; battle at, 237 ; massacre at, 438; troubles at, 447 Temenus : Dorian hero, 48 Tempe, Vale of, 8; Xerxes in, 185 " Ten Thousand," march of the : see Cyrus " Ten Thousand " of Arcadia, 440 Teos : revolts from Athens, 352 Teucer: of Salamis, 57 Thales of Miletus, 115 Thasos : a Phoenician possession, 27; revolts from Athens, 235 ; revolts a second time and is recovered, '^(iT, taken by Etonicus, 2i7^ Thebes : predominence of, 13 ; rise in Boeotian League, 47; at war with Athens, 143, 244, 245; joins Xerxes, 196; troops of at Plataea, 211; taken by the Greeks, 211; freed, 248; foments Peloponnesian War, 262; makes attempt on Plataea, 277; troops of at Delium, 311; ad- vocates destruction of Athens, 377 ; insults Agesilaus, 393; war of with Sparta, 397, 428; suffers the Peace of Antalcides, 419; seized by Phoe- INDEX 581 bidas, 422; freed by tbe exiles, 424; supremacy of in Greece, 469; strife of with Phocis, 459; joins Athenian Alliance, 476; troops of at Chae- roneia, 477; taken by Philip, 478; destroyed by Alexander, 486 Theodoric, the Goth, 532 Theodosius the Great, 527 Theogony of Hesiod, 39 Themistocles : character of, 160 ; founds Peiraeus, 161 ; fosters Athenian navy, 175 ; convokes congress of Corinth, 178; commands in Thes- saly, 185 ; commands at Artemis- ium, 189; advocates evacuation of Athens, 196; disputes with the ad- mirals, 199; secret dealings of with Xerxes, 202, 205 ; his embassy to Sparta, 225 ; his exile and death, 230 Thcotokis: in modern politics of Greece, 548 Thera, Island of: 19; colonized by Dorians, 56 Theramenes : heads opposition in fac- tion of the Four Hundred, 360; ac- cuses the generals after Arginusae, 373; his embassy to Sparta, 2>71\ joins the Thirty Tyrants, 383; slain by Critias, 386 Thermopylae : Pass of, 11; Leonidas at, 186; battle of, 190; the Athenians seize, 462; Philip passes, 476; An- tiochus defeated at, 518 Thero of Acragas: 218 Thersites : in Homer's Iliad, 36 Thespiae: troops of, at Thermopylae, 193; burnt by Xerxes, 196; aids Sparta, 428; taken by Thebans, 430 ; destroyed, 437 Thessaly: geography of, 8: settled, 46; submits to Xerxes, 185 ; troops of desert Athens at Tanagra, 244; towns of allied to Athens, 275 ; Brasidas in, 313; Agesilaus crosses, 400; subdued by Jason, 437; Pelop- idas in, 444; Alexander in, 444: joins Thebes against Phocians, 460; Philip in, 462; becomes subject to Philip, 471 ; joins Aetolian League, 516; Turkey withdraws from, 546 Thesus : skeleton of discovered in Scyros, 233 Thetes: archonship opened to, 252 Thibron : general in Asia, 390 " Thirty Tyrants " at Athens : account of, 383 " Thirty Years Peace," the, 250 Thrace: assigned to Lysimachus, 512 Thracians, Edonian : slay Aristagoras, 136; defeat the Athenians, 236 Thrasybulus: tyrant of Miletus, 93 Thrasybulus, Athenian general : at Samos, 359; at Cj^zicus, 364; ex- iled, 384; leads attack on the tyrants, 386; his victory, 387; death of, 404 Thrasydaeus: tyrant of Acragas, 219 Thrasyllus: general at Samos, 359; takes Colophon, z^j Thucydides, son of Melesias : opposes Pericles, 256; exiled, 257 Thucydides (historian), son of Olorus: on Homeric kingdoms, 34; com- mands Athenian squadron, 314 Thurii: founded, 260; aids Athens, 342; at war with the Lucanians, 414; taken from Sparta, 479 Thyrea: given to the Aeginetans, 281 Tiglath-Pileser : captures Aradus, 78 Timocrates, of Rhodes : 395 Timolaiis, of Corinth: 399 Timoleon: liberates Sicily, 417, 418; slays his brother, 453 Timotheus: at Corcyra, 430; fails at Chios, 454 Timophanes : tyrant of Corinth, 453 Tiribazus : satrap, 403, 405 Tiryns : archaeological remains of, 22 ; importance in prehistoric Greece, 49 Tisamenus : in Dorian legend, 48 Tissapliernes : aids the Spartans, 352 ', intrigues with Alcibiades, 354; im- prisons Alcibiades, 364; superseded by Cyrus, 369; returns to Asia Minor, 390; besieges Cyme, 391; executed, 394 Tithraustes : satrap, 393, 394 Tolmides: harries Messenia, 246; slain at Coroneia, 248 Torone : founded, 79; revolts from Athens, 314; retaken by Cleon, 316 Tragedy, the Greek : anachronism of, 31 ; religious origin of, 41 Trajan, the Roman emperor, 523 582 INDEX Trapezus: founded, 8i; the "Ten Thousand " at, 390 Trebizond : Greek empire in, 536 Tricoupis : in politics of modern Greece, 548 Trikkala : in modern Greece, 548 Triphylia: disputed by Eleians and Ar- cadians, 444 Troad : Greek colonization in the, 53 Troezen : receives exiled Athenians, 197; allied to Athens, 247; aids Sparta, 274 Trojan Cycle: see Cyclic poems Troy: archaeological remains of, 22; story of, 29 Turks : see Ottoman Turks Tyranny: succeeds oligarchy at Co- rinth and Sicyon, 76; age of, 90; in Greek political cycle, 91 Tyre: subjected by Assyria, 78; stormed by Alexander, 494 Tyrians : see Phoenicians Tyrrheni: see Etruscans Tyrrheno-Pelasgi : displaced in Scyros by Athenians, 233 Tyrtaeus: Spartan poet, 72, 74 Vandals, the: 530 Velia (Hyele) : founded by Phocaeans, 125 Venetians, the : invade Greece, 536, 538 ; Morea relinquished to, 539; sever- ity of, tow^ard Greeks, 540 Vesuvius, eruption of, 524 Virgil: anachronisms of, 31 w Writing: early forms of in Crete, 22; alphabet introduced by the Phoe- nicians, 27; Cretan script, 27: Cypriot syllabary, 27, 56 X Xanthippus: accuses Miltiades, 171; commander at Mycale, 212 Xenophon: his expedition with the " Ten Thousand," 389 Xerxes : comes to the throne, 172 ; his character, 177; invades Greece, 181; returns to Asia, 206; assassinated, 231 Ypisilanti: Rebellion of, 541, 542; de- feated, 543 Zacynthus : ravaged by Corinthians, 283 ; allied to Athens, 300 ; ravaged by Iphicrates, 431 Zante : in modern Greece, 548 Zenobia, queen of Palmyra : 525 Zeugitae : class at Athens, 252 Zeus : oracle of at Dodona, 8 ; in Greek theology, 39; Olympian Games, 42; Lycurgus enjoins worship of, 63; temple of, commenced by Peisis- tratus. III; temple of, finished by Hadrian, 523 Zeno, the Byzantine emperor : 532 Zoroastrianism : religion of Persia, 121 ^' \s