VOLUME XII SLICE IV Grasshopper to Greek Language (continued 8)

II. For the period that extends from the end of the Heroic Age to the end of the Peloponnesian War27 the two principal authorities are Herodotus and Thucydides. Not only have the other historical works which treated of this Herodotus. period perished (those at least whose date is earlier than the Christian era), but their authority was secondary and their material chiefly derived from these two writers. In one respect then this period of Greek history stands alone. Indeed, it might be said, with hardly an exaggeration, that there is nothing like it elsewhere in history. Almost our sole authorities are two writers of unique genius, and they are writers whose works have come down to us intact. For the period which ends with the repulse of the Persian invasion our authority is Herodotus. For the period which extends from 478 to 411 we are dependent upon Thucydides’. In each case, however, a distinction must be drawn. The Persian Wars form the proper subject of Herodotus’s work; the Peloponnesian War is the subject of Thucydides. The interval between the two wars is merely sketched by Thucydides; while of the period anterior to the conflicts of the Greek with the Persian, Herodotus does not attempt either a complete or a continuous narrative. His references to it are episodical and accidental. Hence our knowledge of the Persian Wars and of the Peloponnesian War is widely different in character from our knowledge of the rest of this period. In the history of these wars the lacunae are few; in the rest of the history they are alike frequent and serious. In the history, therefore, of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars little is to be learnt from the secondary sources. Elsewhere, especially in the interval between the two wars, they become relatively important.

In estimating the authority of Herodotus (q.v.) we must be careful to distinguish between the invasion of Xerxes and all that is earlier. Herodotus’s work was published soon after 430 B.C., i.e. about half a century after the invasion. Much of his information was gathered in the course of the preceding twenty years. Although his evidence is not that of an eye-witness, he had had opportunities of meeting those who had themselves played a part in the war, on one side or the other (e.g. Thersander of Orchomenos, ix. 16). In any case, we are dealing with a tradition which is little more than a generation old, and the events to which the tradition relates, the incidents of the struggle against Xerxes, were of a nature to impress themselves indelibly upon the minds of contemporaries. Where, on the other hand, he is treating of the period anterior to the invasion of Xerxes, he is dependent upon a tradition which is never less than two generations old, and is sometimes centuries old. His informants were, at best, the sons or grandsons of the actors in the wars (e.g. Archias the Spartan, iii. 55). Moreover, the invasion of Xerxes, entailing, as it did, the destruction of cities and sanctuaries, especially of Athens and its temples, marks a dividing line in Greek history. It was not merely that evidence perished and records were destroyed. What in reference to tradition is even more important, a new consciousness of power was awakened, new interests were aroused, and new questions and problems came to the front. The former things had passed away; all things were become new. A generation that is occupied with making history on a great scale is not likely to busy itself with the history of the past. Consequently, the earlier traditions became faint and obscured, and the history difficult to reconstruct. As we trace back the conflict between Greece and Persia to its beginnings and antecedents, we are conscious that the tradition becomes less trustworthy as we pass back from one stage to another. The tradition of the expedition of Datis and Artaphernes is less credible in its details than that of the expedition of Xerxes, but it is at once fuller and more credible than the tradition of the Ionian revolt. When we get back to the Scythian expedition, we can discover but few grains of historical truth.

Much recent criticism of Herodotus has been directed against his veracity as a traveller. With this we are not here concerned. The criticism of him as an historian begins with Thucydides. Among the references of the latter writer to his predecessor are the following passages: i. 21; i. 22 ad fin.; i. 20 ad fin. (cf. Herod. ix. 53, and vi. 57 ad fin.); iii. 62 § 4 (cf. Herod. ix. 87); ii. 2 §§ 1 and 3 (cf. Herod. vii. 233); ii. 8 § 3 (cf. Herod. vi. 98). Perhaps the two clearest examples of this criticism are to be found in Thucydides’ correction of Herodotus’s account of the Cylonian conspiracy (Thuc. i. 126, cf. Herod. v. 71) and in his appreciation of the character of Themistocles—a veiled protest against the slanderous tales accepted by Herodotus (i. 138). In Plutarch’s tract “On the Malignity of Herodotus” there is much that is suggestive, although his general standpoint, viz. that Herodotus was in duty bound to suppress all that was discreditable to the valour or patriotism of the Greeks, is not that of the modern critic. It must be conceded to Plutarch that he makes good his charge of bias in Herodotus’s attitude towards certain of the Greek states. The question, however, may fairly be asked, how far this bias is personal to the author, or how far it is due to the character of the sources from which his information was derived. He cannot, indeed, altogether be acquitted of personal bias. His work is, to some extent, intended as an apologia for the Athenian empire. In answer to the charge that Athens was guilty of robbing other Greek states of their freedom, Herodotus seeks to show, firstly, that it was to Athens that the Greek world, as a whole, owed its freedom from Persia, and secondly, that the subjects of Athens, the Ionian Greeks, were unworthy to be free. This leads him to be unjust both to the services of Sparta and to the qualities of the Ionian race. For his estimate of the debt due to Athens see vii. 139. For bias against the Ionians see especially iv. 142 (cf. Thuc. vi. 77); cf. also i. 143 and 146, vi. 12-14 (Ladë), vi. 112 ad fin. A striking example of his prejudice in favour of Athens is furnished by vi. 91. At a moment when Greece rang with the crime of Athens in expelling the Aeginetans from their Island, he ventures to trace in their expulsion the vengeance of heaven for an act of sacrilege nearly sixty years earlier (see Aegina). As a rule, however, the bias apparent in his narrative is due to the sources from which it is derived. Writing at Athens, in the first years of the Peloponnesian War, he can hardly help seeing the past through an Athenian medium. It was inevitable that much of what he heard should come to him from Athenian informants, and should be coloured by Athenian prejudices. We may thus explain the leniency which he shows towards Argos and Thessaly, the old allies of Athens, in marked contrast to his treatment of Thebes, Corinth and Aegina, her deadliest foes. For Argos cf. vii. 152; Thessaly, vii. 172-174; Thebes, vii. 132, vii. 233, ix. 87; Corinth (especially the Corinthian general Adeimantus, whose son Aristeus was the most active enemy of Athens at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War), vii. 5, vii. 21, viii. 29 and 61, vii. 94; Aegina, ix. 78-80 and 85. In his intimacy with members of the great Alcmaeonid house we probably have the explanation of his depreciation of the services of Themistocles, as well as of his defence of the family from the charges brought against it in connexion with Cylon and with the incident of the shield shown on Pentelicus at the time of Marathon (v. 71, vi. 121-124). His failure to do justice to the Cypselid tyrants of Corinth (v. 92), and to the Spartan king Cleomenes, is to be accounted for by the nature of his sources—in the former case, the tradition of the Corinthian oligarchy; in the latter, accounts, partly derived from the family of the exiled king Demaratus and partly representative of the view of the ephorate. Much of the earlier history is cast in a religious mould, e.g. the story of the Mermnad kings of Lydia in book i., or of the fortunes of the colony of Cyrene (iv. 145-167). In such cases we cannot fail to recognize the influence of the Delphic priesthood. Grote has pointed out that the moralizing tendency observable in Herodotus is partly to be explained by the fact that much of his information was gathered from priests and at temples, and that it was given in explanation of votive offerings, or of the fulfilment of oracles. Hence the determination of the sources of his narrative has become one of the principal tasks of Herodotean criticism. In addition to the current tradition of Athens, the family tradition of the Alcmaeonidae, and the stories to be heard at Delphi and other sanctuaries, there may be indicated the Spartan tradition, in the form in which it existed in the middle of the 5th century; that of his native Halicarnassus, to which is due the prominence of its queen Artemisia; the traditions of the Ionian cities, especially of Samos and Miletus (important both for the history of the Mermnadae and for the Ionian Revolt); and those current in Sicily and Magna Graecia, which were learned during his residence at Thurii (Sybaris and Croton, v. 44, 45; Syracuse and Gela, vii. 153-167). Among his more special sources we can point to the descendants of Demaratus, who still held, at the beginning of the 4th century, the principality in the Troad which had been granted to their ancestor by Darius (Xen. Hell. iii. i. 6), and to the family of the Persian general Artabazus, in which the satrapy of Dascylium (Phrygia) was hereditary in the 5th century.28 His use of written material is more difficult to determine. It is generally agreed that the list of Persian satrapies, with their respective assessments of tribute (iii. 89-97), the description of the royal road from Sardis to Susa (v. 52-54), and of the march of Xerxes, together with the list of the contingents that took part in the expedition (vii. 26-131), are all derived from documentary and authoritative sources. From previous writers (e.g. Dionysius of Miletus, Hecataeus, Charon of Lampsacus and Xanthus the Lydian) it is probable that he has borrowed little, though the fragments are too scanty to permit of adequate comparison. His references to monuments, dedicatory offerings, inscriptions and oracles are frequent.

The chief defects of Herodotus are his failure to grasp the principles of historical criticism, to understand the nature of military operations, and to appreciate the importance of chronology. In place of historical criticism we find a crude rationalism (e.g. ii. 45, vii. 129, viii. 8). Having no conception of the distinction between occasion and cause, he is content to find the explanation of great historical movements in trivial incidents or personal motives. An example of this is furnished by his account of the Ionian revolt, in which he fails to discover the real causes either of the movement or of its result. Indeed, it is clear that he regarded criticism as no part of his task as an historian. In vii. 152 he states the principles which have guided him—ἐγὼ δὲ ὀφείλω λέγειν τὰ λεγόμενα, πείθεσθαί γε μὲν οὐ παντάπασι ὀφείλω, καί μοι τοῦτο τὸ ἔπος ἐχέτω ἐς πάντα λόγον. In obedience to this principle he again and again gives two or more versions of a story. We are thus frequently enabled to arrive at the truth by a comparison of the discrepant traditions. It would have been fortunate if all ancient writers who lacked the critical genius of Thucydides had been content to adopt the practice of Herodotus. His accounts of battles are always unsatisfactory. The great battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, present a series of problems. This result is partly due to the character of the traditions which he follows—traditions which were to some extent inconsistent or contradictory, and were derived from different sources; it is, however, in great measure due to his inability to think out a strategical combination or a tactical movement. It is not too much to say that the battle of Plataea, as described by Herodotus, is wholly unintelligible. Most serious of all his deficiencies is his careless chronology. Even in the case of the 5th century, the data which he affords are inadequate or ambiguous. The interval between the Scythian expedition and the Ionian revolt is described by so vague an expression as μετὰ δὲ οὐ πολλὸν χρόνον ἄνεσις κακῶν ἦν (v. 28). In the history of the revolt itself, though he gives us the interval between its outbreak and the fall of Miletus (ἔκτῳ ἔτεῒ, vi. 18), he does not give us the interval between this and the battle of Ladē, nor does he indicate with sufficient precision the years to which the successive phases of the movement belong. Throughout the work professed synchronisms too often prove to be mere literary devices for facilitating a transition from one subject to another (cf. e.g. v. 81 with 89, 90; or vi. 51 with 87 and 94). In the 6th century, as Grote pointed out, a whole generation, or more, disappears in his historical perspective (cf. i. 30, vi. 125, v. 94, iii. 47, 48, v. 113 contrasted with v. 104 and iv. 162). The attempts to reconstruct the chronology of this century upon the basis of the data afforded by Herodotus (e.g. by Beloch, Rheinisches Museum, xlv., 1890, pp. 465-473) have completely failed.

In spite of all such defects Herodotus is an author, not only of unrivalled literary charm, but of the utmost value to the historian. If much remains uncertain or obscure, even in the history of the Persian Wars, it is chiefly to motives or policy, to topography or strategy, to dates or numbers, that uncertainty attaches. It is to these that a sober criticism will confine itself.

Thucydides is at once the father of contemporary history and the father of historical criticism. From a comparison of i. 1, i. 22 and v. 26, we may gather both the principles to which he adhered in the composition of his work and Thucydides. the conditions under which it was composed. It is seldom that the circumstances of an historical writer have been so favourable for the accomplishment of his task. Thucydides was a contemporary of the Twenty-Seven Years’ War in the fullest sense of the term. He had reached manhood at its outbreak, and he survived its close by at least half-a-dozen years. And he was more than a mere contemporary. As a man of high birth, a member of the Periclean circle, and the holder of the chief political office in the Athenian state, the strategia, he was not only familiar with the business of administration and the conduct of military operations, but he possessed in addition a personal knowledge of those who played the principal part in the political life of the age. His exile in the year 424 afforded him opportunities of visiting the scenes of distant operations (e.g. Sicily) and of coming in contact with the actors on the other side. He himself tells us that he spared no pains to obtain the best information available in each case. He also tells us that he began collecting materials for his work from the very beginning of the war. Indeed, it is probable that much of books i.-v. 24 was written soon after the Peace of Nicias (421), just as it is possible that the history of the Sicilian Expedition (books vi. and vii.) was originally intended to form a separate work. To the view, however, which has obtained wide support in recent years, that books i.-v. 22 and books vi. and vii. were separately published, the rest of book v. and book viii. being little more than a rough draught, composed after the author had adopted the theory of a single war of twenty-seven years’ duration, of which the Sicilian Expedition and the operations of the years 431-421 formed integral parts, there seem to the present writer to be insuperable objections. The work, as a whole, appears to have been composed in the first years of the 4th century, after his return from exile in 404, when the material already in existence must have been revised and largely recast. There are exceedingly few passages, such as iv. 48. 5, which appear to have been overlooked in the process of revision. It can hardly be questioned that the impression left upon the reader’s mind is that the point of view of the author, in all the books alike, is that of one writing after the fall of Athens.

The task of historical criticism in the case of the Peloponnesian War is widely different from its task in the case of the Persian Wars. It has to deal, not with facts as they appear in the traditions of an imaginative race, but with facts as they appeared to a scientific observer. Facts, indeed, are seldom in dispute. The question is rather whether facts of importance are omitted, whether the explanation of causes is correct, or whether the judgment of men and measures is just. Such inaccuracies as have been brought home to Thucydides on the strength, e.g. of epigraphic evidence, are, as a rule, trivial. His most serious errors relate to topographical details, in cases where he was dependent on the information of others. Sphacteria (see Pylos) (see G. B. Grundy, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xvi., 1896, p. 1) is a case in point. Nor have the difficulties connected with the siege of Plataea been cleared up either by Grundy or by others (see Grundy, Topography of the Battle of Plataea, &c., 1894). Where, on the contrary, he is writing at first hand his descriptions of sites are surprisingly correct. The most serious charge as yet brought against his authority as to matters of fact relates to his account of the Revolution of the Four Hundred, which appears, at first sight, to be inconsistent with the documentary evidence supplied by Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (q.v.). It may be questioned, however, whether the documents have been correctly interpreted by Aristotle. On the whole, it is probable that the general course of events was such as Thucydides describes (see E. Meyer, Forschungen, ii. 406-436), though he failed to appreciate the position of Theramenes and the Moderate party, and was clearly misinformed on some important points of detail. With regard to the omission of facts, it is unquestionable that much is omitted that would not be omitted by a modern writer. Such omissions are generally due to the author’s conception of his task. Thus the internal history of Athens is passed over as forming no part of the history of the war. It is only where the course of the war is directly affected by the course of political events (e.g. by the Revolution of the Four Hundred) that the internal history is referred to. However much it may be regretted that the relations of political parties are not more fully described, especially in book v., it cannot be denied that from his standpoint there is logical justification even for the omission of the ostracism of Hyperbolus. There are omissions, however, which are not so easily explained. Perhaps the most notable instance is that of the raising of the tribute in 425 B.C. (see Delian League).

Nowhere is the contrast between the historical methods of Herodotus and Thucydides more apparent than in the treatment of the causes of events. The distinction between the occasion and the cause is constantly present to the mind of Thucydides, and it is his tendency to make too little rather than too much of the personal factor. Sometimes, however, it may be doubted whether his explanation of the causes of an event is adequate or correct. In tracing the causes of the Peloponnesian War itself, modern writers are disposed to allow more weight to the commercial rivalry of Corinth; while in the case of the Sicilian expedition, they would actually reverse his judgment (ii. 65 ὁ ἐς Σικελίαν πλοῦς ὃς οὐ τοσοῦτον γνώμης ἁμάρτημα ἦν πρὸς οὓς ἐπῄεσαν). To us it seems that the very idea of the expedition implied a gigantic miscalculation of the resources of Athens and of the difficulty of the task. His judgments of men and of measures have been criticized by writers of different schools and from different points of view. Grote criticized his verdict upon Cleon, while he accepted his estimate of the policy of Pericles. More recent writers, on the other hand, have accepted his view of Cleon, while they have selected for attack his appreciation alike of the policy and the strategy of Pericles. He has been charged, too, with failure to do justice to the statesmanship of Alcibiades.29 There are cases, undoubtedly, in which the balance of recent opinion will be adverse to the view of Thucydides. There are many more in which the result of criticism has been to establish his view. That he should occasionally have been mistaken in his judgment and his views is certainly no detraction from his claim to greatness.

On the whole, it may be said that while the criticism of Herodotus, since Grote wrote, has tended seriously to modify our view of the Persian Wars, as well as of the earlier history, the criticism of Thucydides, in spite of its imposing bulk, has affected but slightly our view of the course of the Peloponnesian War. The labours of recent workers in this field have borne most fruit where they have been directed to subjects neglected by Thucydides, such as the history of political parties, or the organization of the empire (G. Gilbert’s Innere Geschichte Athens im Zeitalter des pel. Krieges is a good example of such work).

In regard to Thucydides’ treatment of the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars (the so-called Pentecontaëteris) it should be remembered that he does not profess to give, even in outline, the history of this period as a whole. The period is regarded simply as a prelude to the Peloponnesian War. There is no attempt to sketch the history of the Greek world or of Greece proper during this period. There is, indeed, no attempt to give a complete sketch of Athenian history. His object is to trace the growth of the Athenian Empire, and the causes that made the war inevitable. Much is therefore omitted not only in the history of the other Greek states, especially the Peloponnesian, but even in the history of Athens. Nor does Thucydides attempt an exact chronology. He gives us a few dates (e.g. surrender of Ithome, in the tenth year, i. 103; of Thasos, in the third year, i. 101; duration of the Egyptian expedition six years, i. 110; interval between Tanagra and Oenophyta 61 days, i. 108; revolt of Samos, in the sixth year after the Thirty Years’ Truce, i. 115), but from these data alone it would be impossible to reconstruct the chronology of the period. In spite of all that can be gleaned from our other authorities, our knowledge of this, the true period of Athenian greatness, must remain slight and imperfect as compared with our knowledge of the next thirty years.

Of the secondary authorities for this period the two principal ones are Diodorus (xi. 38 to xii. 37) and Plutarch. Diodorus is of value chiefly in relation to Sicilian affairs, to which he devotes about a third of this section of his work Diodorus. and for which he is almost our sole authority. His source for Sicilian history is the Sicilian writer Timaeus (q.v.), an author of the 3rd century B.C. For the history of Greece Proper during the Pentecontaetia Diodorus contributes comparatively little of importance. Isolated notices of particular events (e.g. the Synoecism of Elis, 471 B.C., or the foundation of Amphipolis, 437 B.C.), which appear to be derived from a chronological writer, may generally be trusted. The greater part of his narrative is, however, derived from Ephorus, who appears to have had before him little authentic information for this period of Greek history other than that afforded by Thucydides’ work. Four of Plutarch’s Lives are concerned with this period, viz. Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon and Pericles. From the Aristides little can be gained. Plutarch, in this biography, appears to be mainly dependent upon Idomeneus of Lampsacus, an excessively untrustworthy Plutarch. writer of the 3rd century B.C., who is probably to be credited with the invention of the oligarchical conspiracy at the time of the battle of Plataea (ch. 13), and of the decree of Aristides, rendering all four classes of citizens eligible for the archonship (ch. 22). The Cimon, on the other hand, contains much that is valuable; such as, e.g. the account of the battle of the Eurymedon (chs. 12 and 13). To the Pericles we owe several quotations from the Old Comedy. Two other of the Lives, Lycurgus and Solon, are amongst our most important sources for the early history of Sparta and Athens respectively. Of the two (besides Pericles) which relate to the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades adds little to what can be gained from Thucydides and Xenophon; the Nicias, on the other hand, supplements Thucydides’ narrative of the Sicilian expedition with many valuable details, which, it may safely be assumed, are derived from the contemporary historian, Philistus of Syracuse. Amongst the most valuable material afforded by Plutarch are the quotations, which occur in almost all the Lives, from the collection of Athenian decrees (ψηφισμάτων συναγωγή) formed by the Macedonian writer Craterus, in the 3rd century B.C. Two other works may be mentioned in connexion with the history of Athens. For the history of the Athenian Constitution The constitutions. down to the end of the 5th century B.C. Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (q.v.) is our chief authority. The other Constitution of Athens, erroneously attributed to Xenophon, a tract of singular interest both on literary and historical grounds, throws a good deal of light on the internal condition of Athens, and on the system of government, both of the state and of the empire, in the age of the Peloponnesian War, during the earlier years of which it was composed.

To the literary sources for the history of Greece, especially of Athens, in the 5th century B.C. must be added the epigraphic. Few inscriptions have been discovered which date back beyond the Persian Wars. For the latter half Inscriptions. of the 5th century they are both numerous and important. Of especial value are the series of Quota-lists, from which can be calculated the amount of tribute paid by the subject-allies of Athens from the year 454 B.C. onwards. The great majority of the inscriptions of this period are of Athenian origin. Their value is enhanced by the fact that they relate, as a rule, to questions of organization, finance and administration, as to which little information is to be gained from the literary sources.

For the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, iii. 1, is indispensable. Hill’s Sources of Greek History, B.C. 478-431 (Oxford, 1897) is excellent. It gives the most important inscriptions in a convenient form.

III. The 4th Century to the Death of Alexander.—Of the historians who flourished in the 4th century the sole writer whose works have come down to us is Xenophon. It is a singular accident of fortune that neither of the two authors, Xenophon. who at once were most representative of their age and did most to determine the views of Greek history current in subsequent generations, Ephorus (q.v.) and Theopompus (q.v.), should be extant. It was from them, rather than from Herodotus, Thucydides or Xenophon that the Roman world obtained its knowledge of the history of Greece in the past, and its conception of its significance. Both were pupils of Isocrates, and both, therefore, bred up in an atmosphere of rhetoric. Hence their popularity and their influence. The scientific spirit of Thucydides was alien to the temper of the 4th century, and hardly more congenial to the age of Cicero or Tacitus. To the rhetorical spirit, which is common to both, each added defects peculiar to himself. Theopompus is a strong partisan, a sworn foe to Athens and to Democracy. Ephorus, though a military historian, is ignorant of the art of war. He is also incredibly careless and uncritical. It is enough to point to his description of the battle of the Eurymedon (Diodorus xi. 60-62), in which, misled by an epigram, which he supposed to relate to this engagement (it really refers to the Athenian victory off Salamis in Cyprus, 449 B.C.), he makes the coast of Cyprus the scene of Cimon’s naval victory, and finds no difficulty in putting it on the same day as the victory on shore on the banks of the Eurymedon, in Pamphylia. Only a few fragments remain of either writer, but Theopompus (q.v.) was largely used by Plutarch in several of the Lives, while Ephorus continues to be the main source of Diodorus’ history, as far as the outbreak of the Sacred War (Fragments of Ephorus in Müller’s Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum, vol.i.; of Theopompus in Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, cum Theopompi et Cratippi fragmentis, ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, 1909).

It may be at least claimed for Xenophon (q.v.) that he is free from all taint of the rhetorical spirit. It may also be claimed for him that, as a witness, he is both honest and well-informed. But, if there is no justification for the charge of deliberate falsification, it cannot be denied that he had strong political prejudices, and that his narrative has suffered from them. His historical writings are the Anabasis, an account of the expedition of the Ten Thousand, the Hellenica and the Agesilaus, a eulogy of the Spartan king. Of these the Hellenica is far the most important for the student of history. It consists of two distinct parts (though there is no ground for the theory that the two parts were separately written and published), books i. and ii., and books iii. to vii. The first two books are intended as a continuation of Thucydides’ work. They begin, quite abruptly, in the middle of the Attic year 411/10, and they carry the history down to the fall of the Thirty, in 403. Books iii. to vii., the Hellenica proper, cover the period from 401 to 362, and give the histories of the Spartan and Theban hegemonies down to the death of Epaminondas. There is thus a gap of two years between the point at which the first part ends and that at which the second part begins. The two parts differ widely, both in their aim and in the arrangement of the material. In the first part Xenophon attempts, though not with complete success, to follow the chronological method of Thucydides, and to make each successive spring, when military and naval operations were resumed after the winter’s interruption, the starting-point of a fresh section. The resemblance between the two writers ends, however, with the outward form of the narrative. All that is characteristic of Thucydides is absent in Xenophon. The latter writer shows neither skill in portraiture, nor insight into motives. He is deficient in the sense of proportion and of the distinction between occasion and cause. Perhaps his worst fault is a lack of imagination. To make a story intelligible it is necessary sometimes to put oneself in the reader’s place, and to appreciate his ignorance of circumstances and events which would be perfectly familiar to the actors in the scene or to contemporaries. It was not given to Xenophon, as it was to Thucydides, to discriminate between the circumstances that are essential and those that are not essential to the comprehension of the story. In spite, therefore, of its wealth of detail, his narrative is frequently obscure. It is quite clear that in the trial of the generals, e.g., something is omitted. It may be supplied as Diodorus has supplied it (xiii. 101), or it may be supplied otherwise. It is probable that, when under cross-examination before the council, the generals, or some of them, disclosed the commission given to Theramenes and Thrasybulus. The important point is that Xenophon himself has omitted to supply it. As it stands his narrative is unintelligible. In the first two books, though there are omissions (e.g. the loss of Nisaea, 409 B.C.), they are not so serious as in the last five, nor is the bias so evident. It is true that if the account of the rule of the Thirty given in Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens be accepted, Xenophon must have deliberately misrepresented the course of events to the prejudice of Theramenes. But it is at least doubtful whether Aristotle’s version can be sustained against Xenophon’s, though it may be admitted, not only that there are mistakes as to details in the latter writer’s narrative, but that less than justice is done to the policy and motives of the “Buskin.” The Hellenica was written, it should be remembered, at Corinth, after 362. More than forty years had thus elapsed since the events recorded in the first two books, and after so long an interval accuracy of detail, even where the detail is of importance, is not always to be expected.30 In the second part the chronological method is abandoned. A subject once begun is followed out to its natural ending, so that sections of the narrative which are consecutive in order are frequently parallel in point of date. A good example of this will be found in book iv. In chapters 2 to 7 the history of the Corinthian war is carried down to the end of 390, so far as the operations on land are concerned, while chapter 8 contains an account of the naval operations from 394 to 388. In this second part of the Hellenica the author’s disqualifications for his task are more apparent than in the first two books. The more he is acquitted of bias in his selection of events and in his omissions, the more clearly does he stand convicted of lacking all sense of the proportion of things. Down to Leuctra (371 B.C.) Sparta is the centre of interest, and it is of the Spartan state alone that a complete or continuous history is given. After Leuctra, if the point of view is no longer exclusively Spartan, the narrative of events is hardly less incomplete. Throughout the second part of the Hellenica omissions abound which it is difficult either to explain or justify. The formation of the Second Athenian Confederacy of 377 B.C., the foundation of Megalopolis and the restoration of the Messenian state are all left unrecorded. Yet the writer who passes them over without mention thinks it worth while to devote more than one-sixth of an entire book to a chronicle of the unimportant feats of the citizens of the petty state of Phlius. Nor is any attempt made to appraise the policy of the great Theban leaders, Pelopidas and Epaminondas. The former, indeed, is mentioned only in a single passage, relating to the embassy to Susa in 368; the latter does not appear on the scene till a year later, and receives mention but twice before the battle of Mantinea. An author who omits from his narrative some of the most important events of his period, and elaborates the portraiture of an Agesilaus while not attempting the bare outline of an Epaminondas, may be honest; he may even write without a consciousness of bias; he certainly cannot rank among the great writers of history.31

For the history of the 4th century Diodorus assumes a higher degree of importance than belongs to him in the earlier periods. This is partly to be explained by the deficiencies of Xenophon’s Hellenica, partly by the fact that for the Diodorus. interval between the death of Epaminondas and the accession of Alexander we have in Diodorus alone a continuous narrative of events. Books xiv. and xv. of his history include the period covered by the Hellenica. More than half of book xiv. is devoted to the history of Sicily and the reign of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. For this period of Sicilian history he is, practically, our sole authority. In the rest of the book, as well as in book xv., there is much of value, especially in the notices of Macedonian history. Thanks to Diodorus we are enabled to supply many of the omissions of the Hellenica. Diodorus is, e.g., our sole literary authority for the Athenian naval confederation of 377. Book xvi. must rank, with the Hellenica and Arrian’s Anabasis, as one of the three principal authorities for this century, so far, at least, as works of an historical character are concerned. It is our authority for the Social and the Sacred Wars, as well as for the reign of Philip. It is a curious irony of fate that, for what is perhaps the most momentous epoch in the history of Greece, we should have to turn to a writer of such inferior capacity. For this period his material is better and his importance greater: his intelligence is as limited as ever. Who but Diodorus would be capable of narrating the siege and capture of Methone twice over, once under the year 354, and again under the year 352 (xvi. 31 and 34; cf. xii. 35 and 42; Archidamus (q.v.) dies in 434, commands Peloponnesian army in 431); or of giving three different numbers of years (eleven, ten and nine) in three different passages (chs. 14, 23 and 59) for the length of the Sacred War; or of asserting the conclusion of peace between Athens and Philip in 340, after the failure of his attack on Perinthus and Byzantium? Amongst the subjects which are omitted is the Peace of Philocrates. For the earlier chapters, which bring the narrative down to the outbreak of the Sacred War, Ephorus, as in the previous book, is Diodorus’ main source. His source for the rest of the book, i.e. for the greater part of Philip’s reign, cannot be determined. It is generally agreed that it is not the Philippica of Theopompus.

For the reign of Alexander our earliest extant authority is Diodorus, who belongs to the age of Augustus. Of the others, Q. Curtius Rufus, who wrote in Latin, lived in the reign of the emperor Claudius, Arrian and Plutarch Historians of Alexander’s reign. in the 2nd century A.D. Yet Alexander’s reign is one of the best known periods of ancient history. The Peloponnesian War and the twenty years of Roman history which begin with 63 B.C. are the only two periods which we can be said to know more fully or for which we have more trustworthy evidence. For there is no period of ancient history which was recorded by a larger number of contemporary writers, or for which better or more abundant materials were available. Of the writers actually contemporary with Alexander there were five of importance—Ptolemy, Aristobulus, Callisthenes, Onesicritus and Nearchus; and all of them occupied positions which afforded exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the facts. Four of them were officers in Alexander’s service. Ptolemy, the future king of Egypt, was one of the somatophylaces (we may, perhaps, regard them as corresponding to Napoleon’s marshals); Aristobulus was also an officer of high rank (see Arrian, Anab. vi. 29. 10); Nearchus was admiral of the fleet which surveyed the Indus and the Persian Gulf, and Onesicritus was one of his subordinates. The fifth, Callisthenes, a pupil of Aristotle, accompanied Alexander on his march down to his death in 327 and was admitted to the circle of his intimate friends. A sixth historian, Cleitarchus, was possibly also a contemporary; at any rate he is not more than a generation later. These writers had at their command a mass of official documents, such as the βασίλειοι ἐφημερίδες—the Gazette and Court Circular combined—edited and published after Alexander’s death by his secretary, Eumenes of Cardia; the σταθμοί, or records of the marches of the armies, which were carefully measured at the time; and the official reports on the conquered provinces. That these documents were made use of by the historians is proved by the references to them which are to be found in Arrian, Plutarch and Strabo; e.g. Arrian, Anab. vii. 25 and 26, and Plutarch, Alexander 76 (quotation from the βασίλειοι ἐφημερίδες); Strabo xv. 723 (reference to the σταθμοί), ii. 69 (reports drawn up on the various provinces). We have, in addition, in Plutarch numerous quotations from Alexander’s correspondence with his mother, Olympias, and with his officers. The contemporary historians may be roughly divided into two groups. On the one hand there are Ptolemy and Aristobulus, who, except in a single instance, are free from all suspicion of deliberate invention. On the other hand, there are Callisthenes, Onesicritus and Cleitarchus, whose tendency is rhetorical. Nearchus appears to have allowed full scope to his imagination in dealing with the wonders of India, but to have been otherwise veracious. Of the extant writers Arrian (q.v.) is incomparably the most valuable. His merits are twofold. As the commander of Roman legions and the author of a work on tactics, he combined a practical with a theoretical knowledge of the military art, while the writers whom he follows in the Anabasis are the two most worthy of credit, Ptolemy and Aristobulus. We may well hesitate to call in question the authority of writers who exhibit an agreement which it would be difficult to parallel elsewhere in the case of two independent historians. It may be inferred from Arrian’s references to them that there were only eleven cases in all in which he found discrepancies between them. The most serious drawback which can be alleged against them is an inevitable bias in Alexander’s favour. It would be only natural that they should pass over in silence the worst blots on their great commander’s fame. Next in value to the Anabasis comes Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, the merits of which, however, are not to be gauged by the influence which it has exercised upon literature. The Life is a valuable supplement to the Anabasis, partly because Plutarch, as he is writing biography rather than history (for his conception of the difference between the two see the famous preface, Life of Alexander, ch. i.), is concerned to record all that will throw light upon Alexander’s character (e.g. his epigrammatic sayings and quotations from his letters); partly because he tells us much about his early life, before he became king, while Arrian tells us nothing. It is unfortunate that Plutarch writes in an uncritical spirit; it is hardly less unfortunate that he should have formed no clear conception and drawn no consistent picture of Alexander’s character. Book xvii. of Diodorus and the Historiae Alexandri of Curtius Rufus are thoroughly rhetorical in spirit. It is probable that in both cases the ultimate source is the work of Clitarchus.

It is towards the end of the 5th century that a fresh source of information becomes available in the speeches of the orators, the earliest of whom is Antiphon (d. 411 B.C.). Lysias is of great importance for the history of the Thirty The orators. (see the speeches against Eratosthenes and Agoratus), and a good deal may be gathered from Andocides with regard to the last years of the 5th and the opening years of the next century. At the other end of this period Lycurgus, Hyperides and Dinarchus throw light upon the time of Philip and Alexander. The three, however, who are of most importance to the historian are Isocrates, Aeschines and Demosthenes. Isocrates (q.v.), whose long life (436-338) more than spans the interval Isocrates. between the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and the triumph of Macedon at Chaeronea, is one of the most characteristic figures in the Greek world of his day. To comprehend that world the study of Isocrates is indispensable; for in an age dominated by rhetoric he is the prince of rhetoricians. It is difficult for a modern reader to do him justice, so alien is his spirit and the spirit of his age from ours. It must be allowed that he is frequently monotonous and prolix; at the same time it must not be forgotten that, as the most famous representative of rhetoric, he was read from one end of the Greek world to the other. He was the friend of Evagoras and Archidamus, of Dionysius and Philip; he was the master of Aeschines and Lycurgus amongst orators and of Ephorus and Theopompus amongst historians. No other contemporary writer has left so indelible a stamp upon the style and the sentiment of his generation. It is a commonplace that Isocrates is the apostle of Panhellenism. It is not so generally recognized that he is the prophet of Hellenism. A passage in the Panegyricus (§ 50 ὥστε τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὄνομα μήκετι τοῦ γένους ἀλλὰ τῆς διανοίας δοκεῖν εἶναι καὶ μᾶλλον Ἕλληνας καλεῖσθαι τοὺς τῆς παιδεύσεως τῆς ἡμετέρας ἤ τοὺς τῆς κοινῆς φύσεως μετέχοντας) is the key to the history of the next three centuries. Doubtless he had no conception of the extent to which the East was to be hellenized. He was, however, the first to recognize that it would be hellenized by the diffusion of Greek culture rather than of Greek blood. His Panhellenism was the outcome of his recognition of the new forces and tendencies which were at work in the midst of a new generation. When Greek culture was becoming more and more international, the exaggeration of the principle of autonomy in the Greek political system was becoming more and more absurd. He had sufficient insight to be aware that the price paid for this autonomy was the domination of Persia; a domination which meant the servitude of the Greek states across the Aegean and the demoralization of Greek political life at home. His Panhellenism led him to a more liberal view of the distinction between what was Greek and what was not than was possible to the intenser patriotism of a Demosthenes. In his later orations he has the courage not only to pronounce that the day of Athens as a first-rate power is past, but to see in Philip the needful leader in the crusade against Persia. The earliest and greatest of his political orations is the Panegyricus, published in 380 B.C., midway between the peace of Antalcidas and Leuctra. It is his apologia for Panhellenism. To the period of the Social War belong the De pace (355 B.C.) and the Areopagiticus (354 B.C.), both of great value as evidence for the internal conditions of Athens at the beginning of the struggle with Macedon. The Plataicus (373 B.C.) and the Archidamus (366 B.C.) throw light upon the politics of Boeotia and the Peloponnese respectively. The Panathenaicus (339 B.C.), the child of his old age, contains little that may not be found in the earlier orations. The Philippus (346 B.C.) is of peculiar interest, as giving the views of the Macedonian party.

Not the least remarkable feature in recent historical criticism is the reaction against the view which was at one time almost universally accepted of the character, statesmanship and authority of the orator Demosthenes (q.v.). Demosthenes. During the last quarter of a century his character and statesmanship have been attacked, and his authority impugned, by a series of writers of whom Holm and Beloch are the best known. With the estimate of his character and statesmanship we are not here concerned. With regard to his value as an authority for the history of the period, it is to his speeches, and to those of his contemporaries, Aeschines, Hypereides, Dinarchus and Lycurgus, that we owe our intimate knowledge, both of the working of the constitutional and legal systems, and of the life of the people, at this period of Athenian history. From this point of view his value can hardly be overestimated. As a witness, however, to matters of fact, his authority can no longer be rated as highly as it once was, e.g. by Schaefer and by Grote. The orator’s attitude towards events, both in the past and in the present, is inevitably a different one from the historian’s. The object of a Thucydides is to ascertain a fact, or to exhibit it in its true relations. The object of a Demosthenes is to make a point, or to win his case. In their dealings with the past the orators exhibit a levity which is almost inconceivable to a modern reader. Andocides, in a passage of his speech On the Mysteries (§ 107), speaks of Marathon as the crowning victory of Xerxes’ campaign; in his speech On the Peace (§ 3) he confuses Miltiades with Cimon, and the Five Years’ Peace with the Thirty Years’ Truce. Though the latter passage is a mass of absurdities and confusions, it was so generally admired that it was incorporated by Aeschines in his speech On the Embassy (§§ 172-176). If such was their attitude towards the past; if, in order to make a point, they do not hesitate to pervert history, is it likely that they would conform to a higher standard of veracity in their statements as to the present—as to their contemporaries, their rivals or their own actions? When we compare different speeches of Demosthenes, separated by an interval of years, we cannot fail to observe a marked difference in his statements. The farther he is from the events, the bolder are his mis-statements. It is only necessary to compare the speech On the Crown with that On the Embassy, and this latter speech with the Philippics and Olynthiacs, to find illustrations. It has come to be recognized that no statement as to a matter of fact is to be accepted, unless it receives independent corroboration, or unless it is admitted by both sides. The speeches of Demosthenes may be conveniently divided into four classes according to their dates. To the pre-Philippic period belong the speeches On the Symmories (354 B.C.), On Megalopolis (352 B.C.), Against Aristocrates (351 B.C.), and, perhaps, the speech On Rhodes (? 351 B.C.). These speeches betray no consciousness of the danger threatened by Philip’s ambition. The policy recommended is one based upon the principle of the balance of power. To the succeeding period, which ends with the peace of Philocrates (346 B.C.), belong the First Philippic and the three Olynthiacs. To the period between the peace of Philocrates and Chaeronea belong the speech On the Peace (346 B.C.), the Second Philippic (344 B.C.), the speeches On the Embassy (344 B.C.) and On the Chersonese (341 B.C.), and the Third Philippic. The masterpiece of his genius, the speech On the Crown, was delivered in 330 B.C., in the reign of Alexander. Of the three extant speeches of Aeschines (q.v.) that On the Embassy is of great value, as enabling us to correct the mis-statements of Demosthenes. For the period from the death of Alexander to the fall of Corinth (323-146 B.C.) our literary authorities are singularly defective. For the Diadochi Diodorus (books xviii.-xx.) is our chief source. These books form the most valuable part of Diodorus’ work. They are mainly based upon the work of Hieronymus of Cardia, a writer who combined exceptional opportunities for ascertaining the truth (he was in the service first of Eumenes, and then of Antigonus) with an exceptional sense of its importance. Hieronymus ended his history at the death of Pyrrhus (272 B.C.), but, unfortunately, book xx. of Diodorus’ work carries us no farther than 303 B.C., and of the later books we have but scanty fragments. The narrative of Diodorus may be supplemented by the fragments of Arrian’s History of the events after Alexander’s death (which reach, however, only to 321 B.C.), and by Plutarch’s Lives of Eumenes and of Demetrius. For the rest of the 3rd century and the first half of the 2nd we have his Lives of Pyrrhus, of Aratus, of Philopoemen, and of Agis and Cleomenes. For the period from 220 B.C. onwards Polybius (q.v.) is our chief authority (see Rome: Ancient History, section “Authorities”). In a period in which the literary sources are so scanty great weight attaches to the epigraphic and numismatic evidence.

Bibliography.—The literature which deals with the history of Greece, in its various periods, departments and aspects, is of so vast a bulk that all that can be attempted here is to indicate the most important and most accessible works.

General Histories of Greece.—Down to the middle of the 19th century the only histories of Greece deserving of mention were the products of English scholarship. The two earliest of these were published about the same date, towards the end of the 18th century, nearly three-quarters of a century before any history of Greece, other than a mere compendium, appeared on the Continent. John Gillies’ History of Greece was published in 1786, Mitford’s in 1784. Both works were composed with a political bias and a political object. Gillies was a Whig. In the dedication (to George III.) he expresses the view that “the History of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of Democracy, and arraigns the despotism of Tyrants, while it evinces the inestimable benefits, resulting to Liberty itself, from the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy.” Mitford was a Tory, who thought to demonstrate the evils of democracy from the example of the Athenian state. His History, in spite of its bias, was a work of real value. More than fifty years elapsed between Mitford’s work and Thirlwall’s. Connop Thirlwall, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, afterwards bishop of St David’s, brought a sound judgment to the aid of ripe scholarship. His History of Greece, published in 1835-1838 (8 vols.), is entirely free from the controversial tone of Mitford’s volumes. Ten years later (1846) George Grote published the first volumes of his history, which was not completed (in 12 vols.) till 1856. Grote, like Mitford, was a politician—an ardent Radical, with republican sympathies. It was in order to refute the slanders of the Tory partisan that he was impelled to write a history of Greece, which should do justice to the greatest democracy of the ancient world, the Athenian state. Thus, in the case of three of these four writers, the interest in their subject was mainly political. Incomparably the greatest of these works is Grote’s. Grote had his faults and his limitations. His prejudices are strong, and his scholarship is weak; he had never visited Greece, and he knew little or nothing of Greek art; and, at the time he wrote, the importance of coins and inscriptions was imperfectly apprehended. In spite of every defect, however, his work is the greatest history of Greece that has yet been written. It is not too much to say that nobody knows Greek history till he has mastered Grote. No history of Greece has since appeared in England on a scale at all comparable to that of Grote’s work. The most important of the more recent ones is that by J. B. Bury (1 vol., 1900), formerly fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, afterwards Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Mitford and Bury end with the death of Alexander; Gillies and Grote carry on the narrative a generation farther; while Thirlwall’s work extends to the absorption of Greece in the Roman Empire (146 B.C.).

While in France the Histoire des Grecs (ending at 146 B.C.) of Victor Duruy (new edition, 2 vols., 1883), Minister of Public Instruction under Napoleon III., is the only one that need be mentioned, in Germany there has been a succession of histories of Greece since the middle of the 19th century. Kortüm’s Geschichte Griechenlands (3 vols., 1854), a work of little merit, was followed by Max Duncker’s Geschichte der Griechen (vols. 1 and 2 published in 1856; vols. 1 and 2, Neue Folge, which bring the narrative down to the death of Pericles, in 1884; the two former volumes form vols. 5, 6 and 7 of his Geschichte des Altertums), and by the Griechische Geschichte of Ernst Curtius (3 vols., 1857-1867). An English translation of Duncker, by S. F. Alleyne, appeared in 1883 (2 vols., Bentley), and of Curtius, by A. W. Ward (5 vols., Bentley, 1868-1873). Among more recent works may be mentioned the Griechische Geschichte of Adolf Holm (4 vols., Berlin, 1886-1894; English translation by F. Clarke, 4 vols., Macmillan, 1894-1898), and histories with the same title by Julius Beloch (3 vols., Strassburg, 1893-1904) and Georg Busolt (2nd ed., 3 vols., Gotha, 1893-1904). Holm carries on the narrative to 30 B.C., Beloch to 217 B.C., Busolt to Chaeronea (338 B.C.).32 Busolt’s work is entirely different in character from any other history of Greece. The writer’s object is to refer in the notes (which constitute five-sixths of the book) to the views of every writer in any language upon every controverted question. It is absolutely indispensable, as a work of reference, for any serious study of Greek history. The ablest work since Grote’s is Eduard Meyer’s Geschichte des Altertums, of which 5 vols. (Stuttgart and Berlin, 1884-1902) have appeared, carrying the narrative down to the death of Epaminondas (362 B.C.). Vols. 2-5 are principally concerned with Greek history. It must be remembered that, partly owing to the literary finds and the archaeological discoveries of the last thirty years, and partly owing to the advance made in the study of epigraphy and numismatics, all the histories published before those of Busolt, Beloch, Meyer and Bury are out of date.

Works bearing on the History of Greece.—Earlier works and editions are omitted, except in the case of a work which has not been superseded.

Introductions.—C. Wachsmuth, Einleitung in das Studium der alten Geschichte (1 vol., Leipzig, 1895); E. Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte (2 parts, Halle, 1892-1899; quite indispensable); J. B. Bury, The Ancient Greek Historians (London, 1909).

Constitutional History and Institutions.—G. F. Schömann, Griechische Altertümer (2 vols., Berlin, 1855-1859; vol. i., tr. by E. G. Hardy and J. S. Mann, Rivingtons, 1880); G. Gilbert, Griechische Staatsaltertümer (2nd ed., 2 vols., Leipzig, 1893; vol. i. tr. by E. J. Brooks and T. Nicklin, Swan Sonnenschein, 1895); K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der griechischen Antiquitäten (6th ed., 4 vols., Freiburg, 1882-1895); Iwan Müller, Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (9 vols., Nördlingen, 1886, in progress; several of the volumes are concerned with Greek history); J. H. Lipsius, Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren (Leipzig, 1905, in progress); A. H. J. Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History (1 vol., Macmillan, 1896); Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1894 foll.).

Geography.—E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography amongst the Greeks and Romans (2nd ed., 2 vols., Murray, 1883), W. M. Leake, Travels in the Morea (3 vols., 1830), and Travels in Northern Greece (4 vols., 1834); H. F. Tozer, Lectures on the Geography of Greece (1 vol., Murray, 1873), and History of Ancient Geography (1 vol., Cambridge, 1897); J. P. Mahaffy, Rambles and Studies in Greece (3rd ed., 1 vol., Macmillan, 1887, an admirable book); C. Bursian, Geographie von Griechenland (2 vols., Leipzig, 1872); H. Berger, Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen (4 parts, Leipzig, 1887-1893); Ernst Curtius, Peloponnesos (2 vols., Gotha, 1850-1851).

Epigraphy and Numismatics.—Corpus inscriptionum Atticarum (Berlin, 1875, in progress), Corpus inscriptionum Graecarum (Berlin, 1892, in progress). The following selections of Greek inscriptions may be mentioned: E. F. Hicks and G. F. Hill, Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions (new ed., 1 vol., Oxford, 1901): W. Dittenberger, Sylloge inscriptionum Graecarum (2nd ed., 2 vols., Berlin, 1898); C. Michel, Recueil d’inscriptions grecques (Paris, 1900). Among works on numismatics the English reader may refer to B. V. Head, Historia numorum (1 vol., Oxford, 1887); G. F. Hill, Handbook of Greek and Roman Coins (1 vol., Macmillan, 1899), as well as to the British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins. In French the most important general work is the Monnaies grecques of F. Imhoof-Blumer (Paris, 1883).

Chronology, Trade, War, Social Life, &c.—H. F. Clinton, Fasti Hellenici (3rd ed., 3 vols., Oxford, 1841, a work of which English scholarship may well be proud; it is still invaluable for the study of Greek chronology); B. Büchsenschütz, Besitz und Erwerb im griechischen Altertume (1 vol., Halle, 1869; this is still the best book on Greek commerce); J. Beloch, Die Bevölkerung der griechisch-römischen Welt (1 vol., Leipzig, 1886); W. Rüstow and H. Köchly, Geschichte des griechischen Kriegswesens (1 vol., Aarau, 1852); J. P. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece (2nd ed., 1 vol., 1875).

(E. M. W.)

b. Post-Classical: 146 B.C.-A.D. 1800

I. The Period of Roman Rule.—(i.) Greece under the Republic (146-27 B.C.). After the collapse of the Achaean League (q.v.) the Senate appointed a commission to reorganize Greece as a Roman dependency. Corinth, the chief centre of resistance, was destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery. In addition to this act of exemplary punishment, which may perhaps have been inspired in part by the desire to crush a commercial competitor, steps were taken to obviate future insurrections. The national and cantonal federations were dissolved, commercial intercourse between cities was restricted, and the government transferred from the democracies to the propertied classes, whose interests were bound up with Roman supremacy. In other respects few changes were made in existing institutions. Some favoured states like Athens and Sparta retained their full sovereign rights as civitates liberae, the other cities continued to enjoy local self-government. The ownership of the land was not greatly disturbed by confiscations, and though a tribute upon it was levied, this impost may not have been universal. General powers of supervision were entrusted to the governor of Macedonia, who could reserve cases of high treason for his decision, and in case of need send troops into the country. But although Greece was in the provincia of the Macedonian proconsul, in the sense of belonging to his sphere of command, its status was in fact more favourable than that of other provincial dependencies.

This settlement was acquiesced in by the Greek people, who had come to realize the hopelessness of further resistance. The internal disorder which was arising from the numerous disputes about property rights consequent upon the political revolutions was checked by the good offices of the historian Polybius, whom the Senate deputed to mediate between the litigants. The pacification of the country eventually became so complete that the Romans withdrew the former restrictions upon intercourse and allowed some of the leagues to revive. But its quiet was seriously disturbed during the first Mithradatic War (88-84 B.C.), when numerous Greek states sided with Mithradates (q.v.). The success which the invader experienced in detaching the Greeks from Rome is partly to be explained by the skilful way in which his agents incited the imperialistic ambitions of prominent cities like Athens, partly perhaps by his promises of support to the democratic parties. The result of the war was disastrous to Greece. Apart from the confiscations and exactions by which the Roman general L. Cornelius Sulla punished the disloyal communities, the extensive and protracted campaigns left Central Greece in a ruinous condition. During the last decades of the Roman republic European Greece was scarcely affected by contemporary wars nor yet exploited by Roman magistrates in the same systematic manner as most other provinces. Yet oppression by officials who traversed Greece from time to time and demanded lavish entertainments and presentations in the guise of viaticum or aurum coronarium was not unknown. Still greater was the suffering produced by the rapacity of Roman traders and capitalists: it is recorded that Sicyon was reduced to sell its most cherished art treasures in order to satisfy its creditors. A more indirect but none the less far-reaching drawback to Greek prosperity was the diversion of trade which followed upon the establishment of direct communication between Italy and the Levant. The most lucrative source of wealth which remained to the European Greeks was pasturage in large domains, an industry which almost exclusively profited the richer citizens and so tended to widen the breach between capitalists and the poorer classes, and still further to pauperize the latter. The coast districts and islands also suffered considerably from swarms of pirates who, in the absence of any strong fleet in Greek waters, were able to obtain a firm footing in Crete and freely plundered the chief trading places and sanctuaries; the most notable of such visitations was experienced in 69 B.C. by the island of Delos. This evil came to an end with the general suppression of piracy in the Mediterranean by Pompey (67 B.C.), but the depopulation which it had caused in some regions is attested by the fact that the victorious admiral settled some of his captives on the desolated coast strip of Achaea.

In the conflict between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Greeks provided the latter with a large part of his excellent fleet. In 48 B.C. the decisive campaign of the war was fought on Greek soil, and the resources of the land were severely taxed by the requisitions of both armies. As a result of Caesar’s victory at Pharsalus, the whole country fell into his power; the treatment which it received was on the whole lenient, though individual cities were punished severely. After the murder of Caesar the Greeks supported the cause of Brutus (42 B.C.), but were too weak to render any considerable service. In 39 B.C. the Peloponnese for a short time was made over to Sextus Pompeius. During the subsequent period Greece remained in the hands of M. Antonius (Mark Antony), who imposed further exactions in order to defray the cost of his wars. The extensive levies which he made in 31 B.C. for his campaign against Octavian, and the contributions which his gigantic army required, exhausted the country’s resources so completely that a general famine was prevented only by Octavian’s prompt action after the battle of Actium in distributing supplies of grain and evacuating the land with all haste. The depopulation which resulted from the civil wars was partly remedied by the settlement of Italian colonists at Corinth and Patrae by Julius Caesar and Octavian; on the other hand, the foundation of Nicopolis (q.v.) by the latter merely had the effect of transferring the people from the country to the city.

(ii.) The Early Roman Empire (27 B.C.-A.D. 323).—Under the emperor Augustus Thessaly was incorporated with Macedonia; the rest of Greece was converted into the province of Achaea, under the control of a senatorial proconsul resident at Corinth. Many states, including Athens and Sparta, retained their rights as free and nominally independent cities. The provincials were encouraged to send delegates to a communal synod (κοινὸν τῶν Ἀχαίων) which met at Argos to consider the general interests of the country and to uphold national Hellenic sentiment; the Delphic amphictyony was revived and extended so as to represent in a similar fashion northern and central Greece.

Economic conditions did not greatly improve under the empire. Although new industries sprang up to meet the needs of Roman luxury, and Greek marble, textiles and table delicacies were in great demand, the only cities Social conditions. which regained a really flourishing trade were the Italian communities of Corinth and Patrae. Commerce languished in general, and the soil was mainly abandoned to pasturage. Though certain districts retained a measure of prosperity, e.g. Thessaly, Phocis, Elis, Argos and Laconia, huge tracts stood depopulated and many notable cities had sunk into ruins; Aetolia, Acarnania and Epirus never recovered from the effects of former wars and from the withdrawal of their surviving inhabitants into Nicopolis. Such wealth as remained was amassed in the hands of a few great landowners and capitalists; the middle class continued to dwindle, and large numbers of the people were reduced to earning a precarious subsistence, supplemented by frequent doles and largesses.

The social aspect of Greek life henceforward becomes its most attractive feature. After a long period of storm and stress, the European Hellenes had relapsed into a quiet and resigned frame of mind which stands in sharp contrast on the one hand with the energy and ability, and on the other with the vulgar intriguing of their Asiatic kinsmen. Seeing no future before them, the inhabitants were content to dwell in contemplation amid the glories of the past. National pride was fostered by the undisguised respect with which the leading Romans of the age treated Hellenic culture. And although this sentiment could degenerate into antiquarian pedantry and vanity, such as finds its climax in the diatribes of Apollonius of Tyana against the “barbarians,” it prevented the nation from sinking into some of the worst vices of the age. A healthy social tone repressed extravagant luxury and the ostentatious display of wealth, and good taste long checked the spread of gladiatorial contests beyond the Italian community of Corinth. The most widespread abuse of that period, the adulation and adoration of emperors, was indeed introduced into European Greece and formed an essential feature of the proceedings at the Delphic amphictyony, but it never absorbed the energies of the people in the same way as it did in Asia. In order to perpetuate their old culture, the Greeks continued to set great store by classical education, and in Athens they possessed an academic centre which gradually became the chief university of the Roman empire. The highest representatives of this type of old-world refinement are to be found in Dio Chrysostom and especially in Plutarch of Chaeroneia (q.v.).

The relations between European Greece and Rome were practically confined to the sphere of scholarship. The Hellenes had so far lost their warlike qualities that they supplied scarcely any recruits to the army. They retained too much local patriotism to crowd into the official careers of senators or imperial servants. Although in the 1st century A.D. the astute Greek man of affairs and the Graeculus esuriens of Juvenal abounded in Rome, both these classes were mainly derived from the less pure-blooded population beyond the Aegean.

The influx of Greek rhetoricians and professors into Italy during the 2nd and 3rd centuries was balanced by the large number of travellers who came to Greece to frequent its sanatoria, and especially to admire its works of art; the abundance in which these latter were preserved is strikingly attested in the extant record of Pausanias (about A.D. 170).

The experience of the Greeks under their earliest governors seems to have been unfortunate, for in A.D. 15 they petitioned Tiberius to transfer the administration to an imperial legate. This new arrangement was sanctioned, but Roman administration. only lasted till A.D. 44, when Claudius restored the province to the senate. The proconsuls of the later 1st and 2nd centuries were sometimes ill qualified for their posts, but cases of oppression are seldom recorded against them. The years 66 and 67 were marked by a visit of the emperor Nero, who made a prolonged tour through Greece in order to display his artistic accomplishments at the various national festivals. In return for the flattering reception accorded to him he bestowed freedom and exemption from tribute upon the country. But this favour was almost neutralized by the wholesale depredations which he committed among the chief collections of art. A scheme for cutting through the Corinthian isthmus and so reviving the Greek carrying trade was inaugurated in his presence, but soon abandoned.

As Nero’s grant of self-government brought about a recrudescence of misplaced ambition and party strife, Vespasian revoked the gift and turned Achaea again into a province, at the same time burdening it with increased taxes. In the 2nd century a succession of genuinely phil-Hellenic emperors made serious attempts to revive the nation’s prosperity. Important material benefits were conferred by Hadrian, who made a lengthy visit to Greece. Besides erecting useful public works in many cities, he relieved Achaea of its arrears of tribute and exempted it from various imposts. In order to check extravagance on the part of the free cities, he greatly extended the practice of placing them under the supervision of imperial functionaries known as correctores. Hadrian fostered national sentiment by establishing a new pan-Hellenic congress at Athens, while he gave recognition to the increasing ascendancy of Hellenic culture at Rome by his institution of the Athenaeum.

In the 3rd century the only political event of importance was the edict of Caracalla which threw open the Roman citizenship to large numbers of provincials. Its chief effect in Greece was to diminish the preponderance of the wealthy classes, who formerly had used their riches to purchase the franchise and so to secure exemption from taxation. The chief feature of this period is the renewal of the danger from foreign invasions. Already in 175 a tribe named Costoboci had penetrated into central Greece, but was there broken up by the local militia. In 253 a threatened attack was averted by the stubborn resistance of Thessalonica. In 267-268 the province was overrun by Gothic bands, which captured Athens and some other towns, but were finally repulsed by the Attic levies and exterminated with the help of a Roman fleet.

(iii.) The Late Roman Empire.—After the reorganization of the empire by Diocletian, Achaea occupied a prominent position in the “diocese” of Macedonia. Under Constantine I. it was included in the “prefecture” of Illyricum. It was subdivided into the “eparchies” of Hellas, Peloponnesus, Nicopolis and the islands, with headquarters at Thebes, Corinth, Nicopolis and Samos. Thessaly was incorporated with Macedonia. A complex hierarchy of imperial officials was now introduced and the system of taxation elaborated so as to yield a steady revenue to the central power. The levying of the land-tax was imposed upon the δεκάπρωτοι or “ten leading men,” who, like the Latin decuriones, were entrusted henceforth with the administration in most cities. The tendency to reduce all constitutions to the Roman municipal pattern became prevalent under the rulers of this period, and the greater number of them was stereotyped by the general regulations of the Codex Theodosianus (438). Although the elevation of Constantinople to the rank of capital was prejudicial to Greece, which felt the competition of the new centre of culture and learning and had to part with numerous works of art destined to embellish its privileged neighbour, the general level of prosperity in the 4th century was rising. Commercial stagnation was checked by a renewed expansion of trade consequent upon the diversion of the trade routes to the east from Egypt to the Euxine and Aegean Seas. Agriculture remained in a depressed condition, and many small proprietors were reduced to serfdom; but the fiscal interests of the government called for the good treatment of this class, whose growth at the expense of the slaves was an important step in the gradual equalization of the entire population under the central despotism which restored solidarity to the Greek nation.

This prosperity received a sharp set-back by a series of unusually severe earthquakes in 375 and by the irruption of a host of Visigoths under Alaric (395-396), whom the imperial officers allowed to overrun the whole land unmolested and the local levies were unable to check. Though ultimately hunted down in Arcadia and induced to leave the province, Alaric had time to execute systematic devastations which crippled Greece for several decades. The arrears of taxation which accumulated in consequence were remitted by Theodosius II. in 428.

The emperors of the 4th century made several attempts to stamp out by edict the old pagan religion, which, with its accompaniment of festivals, oracles and mysteries, still maintained an outward appearance of vigour, and, along with the philosophy in which the intellectual classes found comfort, retained the affection of the Greeks. Except for the decree of Theodosius I. by which the Olympian games were interdicted (394), these measures had no great effect, and indeed were not rigorously enforced. Paganism survived in Greece till about 600, but the interchange of ideas and practices which the long-continued contact with Christianity had effected considerably modified its character. Hence the Christian religion, though slow in making its way, eventually gained a sure footing among a nation which accepted it spontaneously. The hold of the Church upon the Greeks was strengthened by the judicious manner in which the clergy, unsupported by official patronage and often out of sympathy with the Arian emperors, identified itself with the interests of the people. Though in the days when the orthodox Church found favour at court corruption spread among its higher branches, the clergy as a whole rendered conspicuous service in opposing the arbitrary interferences of the central government and in upholding the use of the Hellenic tongue, together with some rudiments of Hellenic culture.

The separation of the eastern and western provinces of the empire ultimately had an important effect in restoring the language and customs of Greece to their predominant position in the Levant. This result, however, was long retarded by the romanizing policy of Constantine and his successors. The emperors of the 5th and 6th centuries had no regard for Greek culture, and Justinian I. actively counteracted Hellenism by propagating Roman law in Greece, by impairing the powers of the self-governing cities, and by closing the philosophical schools at Athens (529). In course of time the inhabitants had so far forgotten their ancient culture that they abandoned the name of Hellenes for that of Romans (Rhomaioi). For a long time Greece continued to be an obscure and neglected province, with no interests beyond its church and its commercial operations, and its culture declined rapidly. Its history for some centuries dwindles into a record of barbarian invasions which, in addition to occasional plagues and earthquakes, seem to have been the only events found worthy of record by the contemporary chroniclers.

In the 5th century Greece was only subjected to brief raids by Vandal pirates (466-474) and Ostrogoths (482). In Justinian’s reign irruptions by Huns and Avars took place, but led to no far-reaching results. The emperor had endeavoured to strengthen the country’s defences by repairing the fortifications of cities and frontier posts (530), but his policy of supplanting the local guards by imperial troops and so rendering the natives incapable of self-defence was ill-advised; fortunately it was never carried out with energy, and so the Greek militias were occasionally able to render good service against invaders.

Towards the end of the century mention is made for the first time of an incursion by Slavonic tribes (581). These invaders are to be regarded as merely the forerunners of a steady movement of immigration by which a considerable Slavonic immigrations. part of Greece passed for a time into foreign hands. It is doubtful how far the newcomers won their territory by force of arms; in view of the desolation of many rural tracts, which had long been in progress as a result of economic changes, it seems probable that numerous settlements were made on unoccupied land and did not challenge serious opposition. At any rate the effect upon the Greek population was merely to accelerate its emigration from the interior to the coastland and the cities. The foreigners, consisting mainly of Slovenes and Wends, occupied the mountainous inland, where they mostly led a pastoral life; the natives retained some strips of plain and dwelt secure in their walled towns, among which the newly-built fortresses of Monemvasia, Corone and Calamata soon rose to prosperity. The Slavonic element, to judge by the geographical names in that tongue which survive in Greece, is specially marked in N.W. Greece and Peloponnesus; central Greece appears to have been protected against them by the fortress-square of Chalcis, Thebes, Corinth and Athens. For a long time the two nations dwelt side by side without either displacing the other. The Slavs were too rude and poor, and too much distracted with cantonal feuds, to make any further headway; the Greeks, unused to arms and engrossed in commerce, were content to adopt a passive attitude. The central government took no steps to dislodge the invaders, until in 783 the empress Irene sent an expedition which reduced most of the tribes to pay tribute. In 810 a desperate attempt by the Slavs to capture Patrae was foiled; henceforth their power steadily decreased and their submission to the emperor was made complete by 850. A powerful factor in their subjugation was the Greek clergy, who by the 10th century had christianized and largely hellenized all the foreigners save a remnant in the peninsula of Maina.

II. The Byzantine Period.—In the 7th century the Greek language made its way into the imperial army and civil service, but European Greece continued to have little voice in the administration. The land was divided into four “themes” under a yearly appointed civil and military governor. Imperial troops were stationed at the chief strategic points, while the natives contributed ships for naval defence. During the dispute about images the Greeks were the backbone of the image-worshipping party, and the iconoclastic edicts of Leo III. led to a revolt in 727 which, however, was easily crushed by the imperial fleet; a similar movement in 823, when the Greeks sent 350 ships to aid a pretender, met with the same fate. The firm government of the Isaurian dynasty seems to have benefited Greece, whose commerce and industry again became flourishing. In spite of occasional set-backs due to the depredations of pirates, notably the Arab corsairs who visited the Aegean from the 7th century onwards, the Greeks remained the chief carriers in the Levant until the rise of the Italian republics, supplying all Europe with its silk fabrics.

In the 10th century Greece experienced a renewal of raids from the Balkan tribes. The Bulgarians made incursions after 929 and sometimes penetrated to the Isthmus; but they mostly failed to capture the cities, and in 995 their strength was broken by a crushing defeat on the Spercheius at the hands of the Byzantine army. Yet their devastations greatly thinned the population of northern Greece, and after 1084 Thessaly was occupied without resistance by nomad tribes of Vlachs. In 1084 also Greece was subjected to the first attack from the new nations of the west, when the Sicilian Normans gained a footing in the Ionian islands. The same people made a notable raid upon the seaboard of Greece in 1145-1146, and sacked the cities of Thebes and Corinth. The Venetians also appear as rivals of the Greeks, and after 1122 their encroachments in the Aegean Sea never ceased.

In spite of these attacks, the country on the whole maintained its prosperity. The travellers Idrīsī of Palermo (1153) and Benjamin of Tudela (1161) testify to the briskness of commerce, which induced many foreign merchants to take up their residence in Greece. But this prosperity revived an aristocracy of wealth which used its riches and power for purely selfish ends, and under the increasing laxity of imperial control the archontes or municipal rulers often combined with the clergy in oppressing the poorer classes. Least of all were these nobles prepared to become the champions of Greece against foreign invaders at a time when they alone could have organized an effectual resistance.

III. The Latin Occupation and Turkish Conquest.—The capture of Constantinople and dissolution of the Byzantine empire by the Latins (1204) brought in its train an invasion of Greece by Frankish barons eager for new territory. The natives, who had long forgotten the use of arms and dreaded no worse oppression from their new masters, submitted almost without resistance, and only the N.W. corner of Greece, where Michael Angelus, a Byzantine prince, founded the “despotat” of Epirus, was saved from foreign occupation. The rest of the country was divided up between a number of Frankish barons, chief among whom were the dukes of Achaea (or Peloponnese) and “grand signors” of Thebes and Athens, the Venetians, who held naval stations at different points and the island of Crete, and various Italian adventurers who mainly settled in the Cyclades. The conquerors transplanted their own language, customs and religion to their new possessions, and endeavoured to institute the feudal system of land-tenure. Yet recognizing the superiority of Greek civil institutions they allowed the natives to retain their law and internal administration and confirmed proprietors in possession of their land on payment of a rent; the Greek church was subordinated to the Roman archbishops, but upheld its former control over the people. The commerce and industry of the Greek cities was hardly affected by the change of government.

Greek history during the Latin occupation loses its unity and has to be followed in several threads. In the north the “despots” of Epirus extended their rule to Thessaly and Macedonia, but eventually were repulsed by the Asiatic Greeks of Nicaea, and after a decisive defeat at Pelagonia (1259) reduced to a small dominion round Iannina. Thessaly continued to change masters rapidly. Till 1308 it was governed by a branch line of the Epirote dynasty. When this family died out it fell to the Grand Catalan Company; in 1350 it was conquered along with Epirus by Stephen Dushan, king of Servia. About 1397 it was annexed by the Ottoman Turks, who after 1431 also gradually wrested Epirus from its latest possessors, the Beneventine family of Tocco (1390-1469).

The leading power in central Greece was the Burgundian house de la Roche, which established a mild and judicious government in Boeotia and Attica and in 1261 was raised to ducal rank by the French king Louis IX. A conflict with the Grand Catalan Company resulted in a disastrous defeat of the Franks on the Boeotian Cephissus (1311) and the occupation of central Greece by the Spanish mercenaries, who seized for themselves the barons’ fiefs and installed princes from the Sicilian house of Aragon as “dukes of Athens and Neopatras” (Thessaly). After seventy-five years of oppressive rule and constant wars with their neighbours the Catalans were expelled by the Peloponnesian baron Nerio Acciaiuoli. The new dynasty, whose peaceful government revived its subjects’ industry, became tributary to the Turks about 1415, but was deposed by Sultan Mahommed II., who annexed central Greece in 1456.

The conquest of the Peloponnese was effected by two French knights, William Champlitte and Geoffrey Villehardouin, the latter of whom founded a dynasty of “princes of all Achaea.” The rulers of this line were men of ability, who controlled their barons and spiritual vassals with a firm hand and established good order throughout their province. The Franks of the Morea maintained as high a standard of culture as their compatriots at home, while the natives grew rich enough from their industry to pay considerable taxes without discontent. The climax of the Villehardouins’ power was attained under Prince William, who subdued the last independent cities of the coast and the mountaineers of Maina (1246-1248). In 1259, however, the same ruler was involved in the war between the rulers of Epirus and Nicaea, and being captured at the battle of Pelagonia, could only ransom himself by the cession of Laconia to the restored Byzantine empire. This new dependency after 1349 was treated with great care by the Byzantine monarchs, who sought to repress the violence of the local aristocracies by sending their kinsmen to govern under the title of “despots.” On the other hand, with the extinction of the Villehardouin dynasty the Frankish province fell more and more into anarchy; at the same time the numbers of the foreigners were constantly dwindling through war, and as they disdained to recruit them by intermarriage, the preponderance of the native element in the Morea eventually became complete. Thus by 1400 the Byzantines were enabled to recover control over almost the whole peninsula and apportion it among several “despots.” But the mutual quarrels of these princes soon proved fatal to their rule. Already in the 14th century they had employed Albanians and the Turkish pirates who harried their coasts as auxiliaries in their wars. The Albanians largely remained as settlers, and the connexion with the Turks could no longer be shaken off. In spite of attempts to fortify the Isthmus (1415) an Ottoman army penetrated into Morea and deported many inhabitants in 1423. An invasion of central Greece by the despot Constantine was punished by renewed raids in 1446 and 1450. In 1457 the despot Thomas withheld the tribute which he had recently stipulated to pay, but was reduced to obedience by an expedition under Mahommed II. (1458). A renewed revolt in 1459 was punished by an invasion attended with executions and deportations on a large scale, and by the annexation of the Morea to Turkey (1460).

IV. The Turkish Dominion till 1800.—Under the Ottoman government Greece was split up into six sanjaks or military divisions: (1) Morea, (2) Epirus, (3) Thessaly, (4) Euboea, Boeotia and Attica, (5) Aetolia and Acarnania, (6) the rest of central Greece, with capitals at Nauplia, Jannina, Trikkala, Negropont (Chalkis), Karlili and Lepanto; further divisions were subsequently composed of Crete and the islands. In each sanjak a number of fiefs was apportioned to Turkish settlers, who were bound in return to furnish some mounted men for the sultan’s army, the total force thus held in readiness being over 7000. The local government was left in the hands of the archontes or primates in each community, who also undertook the farming of the taxes and the policing of their districts. Law was usually administered by the Greek clergy. The natives were not burdened with large imposts, but the levying of the land-tithes was effected in an inconvenient fashion, and the capitation-tax, to which all Christians were subjected was felt as a humiliation. A further grievance lay in the requisitions of forced labour which the pashas were entitled to call for; but the most galling exaction was the tribute of children for the recruiting of the Janissaries (q.v.), which was often levied with great ruthlessness. The habitual weakness of the central government also left the Greeks exposed to frequent oppression by the Turkish residents and by their own magistrates and clergy. But the new rulers met with singularly little opposition. The dangerous elements of the population had been cleared away by Mahommed’s executions; the rest were content to absorb their energies in agriculture and commerce, which in spite of preferential duties and capitulations to foreign powers largely fell again into the hands of Greeks. Another important instrument by which the people were kept down was their own clergy, whom the Turkish rulers treated with marked favour and so induced to acquiesce in their dominion.

In the following centuries Greece was often the theatre of war in which the Greeks played but a passive part. Several wars with Venice (1463-79, 1498-1504) put the Turks in possession of the last Italian strongholds on the mainland. But the issue was mainly fought out on sea; the conflicts which had never ceased in the Aegean since the coming of the Italians now grew fiercer than ever; Greek ships and sailors were frequently requisitioned for the Turkish fleets, and the damage done to the Greek seaboard by the belligerents and by fleets of adventurers and corsairs brought about the depopulation of many islands and coast-strips. The conquest of the Aegean by the Ottomans was completed by 1570; but Venice retained Crete till 1669 and never lost Corfu until its cession to France in 1797.

In 1684 the Venetians took advantage of the preoccupation of Turkey on the Danube to attack the Morea. A small mercenary army under Francesco Morosini captured the strong places with remarkable ease, and by 1687 had conquered almost the whole peninsula. In 1687 the invaders also captured Athens and Lepanto; but the former town had soon to be abandoned, and with their failure to capture Negropont (1688) the Venetians were brought to a standstill. By the peace of Karlowitz (1699) the Morea became a possession of Venice. The new rulers, in spite of the commercial restrictions which they imposed in favour of their own traders, checked the impoverishment and decrease of population (from 300,000 to 86,000) which the war had caused. By their attempts to cooperate with the native magistrates and the mildness of their administration they improved the spirit of their subjects. But they failed to make their government popular, and when in 1715 the Ottomans with a large and well-disciplined army set themselves to recover the Morea, the Venetians were left without support from the Greeks. The peninsula was rapidly recaptured and by the peace of Passarowitz (1718) again became a Turkish dependency. The gaps left about this time in the Greek population were largely made up by an immigration from Albania.

The condition of the Greeks in the 18th century showed a great improvement which gave rise to yet greater hopes. Already in the 17th century the personal services of the subjects had been commuted into money contributions, and since 1676 the tribute of children fell into abeyance. The increasing use of Greek officials in the Turkish civil service, coupled with the privileges accorded to the Greek clergy throughout the Balkan countries, tended to recall the consciousness of former days of predominance in the Levant. Lastly, the education of the Greeks, which had always remained on a comparatively high level, was rapidly improved by the foundation of new schools and academies.

The long neglect which Greece had experienced at the hands of the European Powers was broken in 1764, when Russian agents appeared in the country with promises of a speedy deliverance from the Turks. A small expedition under Feodor and Alexis Orloff actually landed in the Morea in 1769, but failed to rouse national sentiment. Although the Russian fleet gained a notable victory off Chesme near Chios, a heavy defeat near Tripolitza ruined the prospects of the army. The Albanian troops in the Turkish army subsequently ravaged the country far and wide, until in 1779 they were exterminated by a force of Turkish regulars. In 1774 a concession, embodied in the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji, by which Greek traders were allowed to sail under the protection of the Russian flag, marked an important step in the rehabilitation of the country as an independent power. Greek commerce henceforth spread swiftly over the Mediterranean, and increased intercourse developed a new sense of Hellenic unity. Among the pioneers who fostered this movement should be mentioned Constantine Rhigas, the “modern Tyrtaeus,” and Adamantios Coraës (q.v.), the reformer of the Greek tongue. The revived memories of ancient Hellas and the impression created by the French revolution combined to give the final impulse which made the Greeks strike for freedom. By 1800 the population of Greece had increased to 1,000,000, and although 200,000 of these were Albanians, the common aversion to the Moslem united the two races. The military resources of the country alone remained deficient, for the armatoli or local militias, which had never been quite disbanded since Byzantine times, were at last suppressed by Ali Pasha of Iannina and found but a poor substitute in the klephts who henceforth spring into prominence. But at the first sign of weakness in the Turkish dominion the Greek nation was ready to rise, and the actual outbreak of revolt had become merely a question of time.

Authorities.—General: G. Finlay, History of Greece (ed. Tozer, Oxford, 1877), especially vols. i., iv., v.; K. Paparrhigopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ ἔθνους (4th ed., Athens, 1903), vols. ii.-v.; Histoire de la civilisation hellénique (Paris, 1878); R. v. Scala, Das Griechentum seit Alexander dem Grossen (Leipzig and Vienna, 1904); and specially W. Miller, The Latins in the Levant (1908).

Special—(a) The Roman period: Strabo, bks. viii.-x.; Pausanias, Descriptio Graeciae; G. F. Hertzberg, Die Geschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft der Römer (Halle, 1866-1875); Sp. Lampros, Ἱστορία τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Athens, 1888 sqq.), vol. iii.; A. Holm, History of Greece (Eng. trans., London, 1894-1898). vol. iv., chs. 19, 24, 26, 28 seq.; Th. Mommsen, The Provinces of the Roman Empire (Eng. trans., London, 1886, ch. 7); J. P. Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway, from Polybius to Plutarch (London, 1890); W. Miller, “The Romans in Greece” (Westminster Review, August 1903, pp. 186-210); L. Friedländer, “Griechenland unter den Römern” (Deutsche Rundschau, 1899, pp. 251-274, 402-430). (b) The Byzantine and Latin periods: G. F. Hertzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands seit dem Absterben des antiken Lebens (Gotha, 1876-1879), vols. i., ii.; C. Hopf, Geschichte Griechenlands im Mittelalter (Leipzig, 1868); J. A. Buchon, Histoire des conquêtes et de l’établissement des Français dans les États de l’ancienne Grèce (Paris, 1846); G. Schmitt, The Chronicle of Morea (London, 1904); W. Miller, “The Princes of the Peloponnese” (Quarterly Review, July 1905, pp. 109-135); D. Bikelas, Seven Essays on Christian Greece (Paisley and London, 1890); La Grèce byzantine et moderne (Paris, 1893), pp. 1-193. (c) The Turkish and Venetian periods: Hertzberg, op. cit., vol. iii.; K. M. Bartholdy, Geschichte Griechenlands von der Eroberung Konstantinopels (Leipzig, 1870), bks. i. and ii., pp. 1-155; K. N. Sathas, Τουρκοκρατουμένη Ἑλλάς (Athens, 1869); W. Miller, “Greece under the Turks” (Westminster Review, August and September 1904, pp. 195-210, 304-320; English Historical Review, 1904, pp. 646-668); L. Ranke, “Die Venetianer in Morea” (Historisch-politische Zeitschrift, ii. 405-502). (d) Special subjects: Religion. E. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church (London, 1890). Ethnology. J. P. Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters (Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1830); S. Zampelios, Περὶ πηγῶν νεοελληνικῆς ἐθνότητος (Athens, 1857); A. Philippson, “Zur Ethnographie des Peloponnes” [Petermann’s Mitteilungen 36 (1890), pp. 1-11, 33-41]; A. Vasiljev, “Die Slaven in Griechenland” [Vizantijsky Vremennik, St Petersburg, 5 (1898), pp. 404-438, 626-670].