Volume I—A To Elba (continued 12)

E. G. Bulwer-Lytton, Athens: Its Rise and Fall, book 4, chapter 5, book 5, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: W. W. Lloyd, The Age of Pericles,

Plutarch, Pericles.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429. The Age of Pericles: Art.

"The Greeks … were industrious, commercial, sensitive to physical and moral beauty, eager for discussion and controversy; they were proud of their humanity, and happy in the possession of their poets, their historians, their orators and artists. It is singular, in the history of nations, to meet with a people distinguished at once by mercantile aptitude, and by an exquisite feeling and sympathy for works of art; to see the vanity of wealth compatible with a nice discernment for the true principles of taste; to behold a nation, inconstant in ideas; inconceivably fickle in prejudices, worshipping a man one day and proscribing him the next, yet at the same time progressing with unheard-of rapidity; within the space of a few years traversing all systems of philosophy, all forms of government, laying the foundations of all sciences, making war on all its neighbors, yet, in the midst of this chaos of ideas, systems, and passions, developing art steadily and with calm intelligence, giving to it novelty, originality, and beauty, while preserving it pure from the aberrations and caprices of what we now call fashion. At the time of the battle of Salamis, 480 B. C., Athens had been destroyed, its territory ravaged, and the Athenians had nothing left but their ships; yet so great was the activity of this commercial but artistic people, that, only twenty years afterwards, they had built the Parthenon."

E. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Discourses on Architecture, page 65.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429. The Age of Pericles: Domestic life. The Athenian house.

"For any one coming from Asia it seemed as if in entering Athens he was coming into an ant's nest. Possessing, at the epoch of its greatest power, the three ports of Munychia, Phalerum and the Piræus, it covered a district whose circumference measured two hundred stadia (twenty-four miles). But it was around the Acropolis that the houses were crowded together and the population always in activity. There wagons were passing to and fro, filled with merchandise from the ports or conveying it thither. The streets and public places in which people passed their lives presented a busy and noisy scene. Strangers, who came to buy or to sell, were continually entering or leaving the shops and places of manufacture, and slaves were carrying messages or burdens. {162} Women as well as men were to be seen in the streets, going to the markets, the public games and the meetings of corporate bodies. From the earliest hours of the day large numbers of peasants might be seen bringing in vegetables, fruit and poultry, and crying their wares in the streets. Houses of the higher class occupied the second zone; they generally possessed a garden and sometimes outbuildings of considerable extent. Around them were to be seen clients and parasites, waiting for the hour when the master should make his appearance; and whiling away the time discussing the news of the day, repeating the rumours, true or false, that were current in the city; getting the slaves to talk, and laughing among themselves at the strangers that happened to be passing, or addressing them with a view to make fun of their accent, garb or dress. The house of Chremylus, recently built in that second zone, was a subject of remark for all the idlers. Chremylus, who had lately become wealthy by means of commerce, and of certain transactions of more or less creditable character in the colonies, was an object of envy and criticism to most people, and of admiration for some who did justice to his intelligence and energy. He enjoyed a certain degree of influence in the public assemblies—thanks to his liberality; while he took care to secure the good graces of the archons and to enrich the temples."

[Image] Plan Of Athenian House.

"We have [in the accompanying figure] the ground-plan of the residence of this Athenian citizen. The entrance x opens on the public road. The site is bounded on either side by narrow streets. This entrance x opens on the court O, which is surrounded by porticos. At A is the porter's lodge, and at B the rooms for the slaves, with kitchen at C and latrines at a. From this first court: in the centre of which is a small fountain with a basin which receives the rain water, the passage D leads into the inner court E; which is larger and is likewise surrounded by porticos. At G is the reception room, at H the strong room for valuables, and at S the private altar. At F is a large storeroom containing provisions and wine; and at I the small dining room (triclinium); the cooking-room for the family being at J with latrines at b. The large triclinium is at K. The passage m admits to the gynæceum, containing the bedrooms P along the portico M, a common room for the women, with its small enclosed garden, and closets at e. The quarters for visitors are entered by the passage t, and consist of bedrooms V, a portico T, a small garden and closets f. At d is an opening into the lane for the servants, when required. The gardens extend in the direction Z. This house is situated on the slopes of the hill which to the south-west looks towards the Acropolis; thus it is sheltered from the violent winds which sometimes blow from this quarter. From the large dining-hall and from the terrace L, which adjoins it, there is a charming prospect; for, above the trees of the garden is seen the city overlooked by the Acropolis, and towards the left the hill of the Areopagus. From this terrace L there is a descent to the garden by about twelve steps. The position was chosen with a view to protection against the sun's heat and the troublesome winds. From the portico of the gynæceum are seen the hills extending towards the north, covered with houses surrounded by olive-trees; and in the background Mount Pentelicus. … In the dwelling of Chremylus the various departments were arranged at the proprietor's discretion, and the architect only conformed to his instructions. Thus the front part of the house is assigned to the external relations of the owner. In this court O assemble the agents or factors who come to give an account of the commissions they have executed, or to receive orders. If the master wishes to speak to any of them, he takes him into his reception room; his bedchamber being at R, he can easily repair to that reception-room or to the gynæceum reserved for the women and younger children. If he entertains friends, they have their separate apartments, which are shut off, not being in communication with the first court except through the passage t. All that part of the habitation which is beyond the wide entrance-hall D is consecrated to domestic life; and only the intimate friends of the family are admitted into the second court; for example, if they are invited to a banquet,—which is held in the great hall K. The master usually takes his meals with his wife and one or two members of his family who live in the house, in the smaller room I, the couches of which will hold six persons; whereas fifteen guests can be accommodated on the couches of the great hall K. Chremylus has spared nothing to render his house one of the most sumptuous in the city. The columns of Pentelican marble support architraves of wood, surmounted by friezes and cornices overlaid with stucco and ornamented with delicate painting. Everywhere the walls are coated with fine smooth plaster, adorned with paintings; and the ceilings are of timber artistically wrought and coloured."

E. Viollet-le-Duc, The Habitations of Man in all Ages, chapter 17.

{163}

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429. The Age of Pericles: Law and its Administration. Contrast with the Romans.

"It is remarkable … that the 'equality' of laws on which the Greek democracies prided themselves—that equality which, in the beautiful drinking song of Callistratus, Harmodius and Aristogiton are said to have given to Athens—had little in common with the 'equity' of the Romans. The first was an equal administration of civil laws among the citizens, however limited the class of citizens might be; the last implied the applicability of a law, which was not civil law, to a class which did not necessarily consist of citizens. The first excluded a despot; the last included foreigners, and for some purposes slaves. … There are two special dangers to which law, and society which is held together by law, appear to be liable in their infancy. One of them is that law may be too rapidly developed. This occurred with the codes of the more progressive Greek communities, which disembarrassed themselves with astonishing facility from cumbrous forms of procedure and needless terms of art, and soon ceased to attach any superstitious value to rigid rules and prescriptions. It was not for the ultimate advantage of mankind that they did so, though the immediate benefit conferred on their citizens may have been considerable. One of the rarest qualities of national character is the capacity for applying and working out the law, as such, at the cost of constant miscarriages of abstract justice, without at the same time losing the hope or the wish that law may be conformed to a higher ideal. The Greek intellect, with all its nobility and elasticity, was quite unable to confine itself within the strait waistcoat of a legal formula; and, if we may judge them by the popular courts of Athens, of whose working we possess accurate knowledge, the Greek tribunals exhibited the strongest tendency to confound law and fact. The remains of the Orators and the forensic commonplaces preserved by Aristotle in his Treatise on Rhetoric, show that questions of pure law were constantly argued on every consideration which could possibly influence the mind of the judges. No durable system of jurisprudence could be produced in this way. A community which never hesitated to relax rules of written law whenever they stood in the way of an ideally perfect decision on the facts of particular cases, would only, if it bequeathed any body of judicial principles to posterity, bequeath one consisting of the ideas of right and wrong which happened to be prevalent at the time. Such jurisprudence would contain no framework to which the more advanced conceptions of subsequent ages could be fitted. It would amount at best to a philosophy, marked with the imperfections of the civilisation under which it grew up. … The other liability to which the infancy of society is exposed has prevented or arrested the progress of far the greater part of mankind. The rigidity of primitive law, arising chiefly from its earlier association and identification with religion, has chained down the mass of the human race to those views of life and conduct which they entertained at the time when their usages were first consolidated into a systematic form. There were one or two races exempted by a marvellous fate from this calamity, and grafts from these stocks have fertilised a few modern societies; but it is still true that, over the larger part of the world, the perfection of law has always been considered as consisting in adherence to the ground plan supposed to have been marked out by the original legislator. If intellect has in such cases been exercised on jurisprudence, it has uniformly prided itself on the subtle perversity of the conclusions it could build on ancient texts without discoverable departure from their literal tenour. I know no reason why the law of the Romans should be superior to the laws of the Hindoos, unless the theory of Natural Law had given it a type of excellence different from the usual one."

H. S. Maine, Ancient Law, chapters 3-4.

"But both the Greek and the English trial by jury were at one time the great political safeguard against state oppression and injustice; and, owing to this origin, free nations become so attached to it that they are blind to its defects. And just as Ireland would now benefit beyond conception by the abolition of the jury system, so the secured Athenian (or any other) democracy would have thriven better had its laws been administered by courts of skilled judges. For these large bodies of average citizens, who, by the way, were not like our jurymen, unwilling occupants of the jury-box, but who made it a paid business and an amusement, did not regard the letter of the law. They allowed actions barred by the reasonable limits of time; they allowed arguments totally beside the question, though this too was illegal, for there was no competent judge to draw the line; they allowed hearsay evidence, though that too was against the law; indeed the evidence produced in most of the speeches is of the loosest and poorest kind. Worse than all, there were no proper records kept of their decisions, and witnesses were called in to swear what had been the past decisions of a jury sitting in the same city, and under the same procedure. This is the more remarkable, as there were state archives, in which the decrees of the popular assembly were kept. … There is a most extraordinary speech of Lysias against a man called Nichomachus, who was appointed to transcribe the laws of Solon in four months, but who kept them in his possession for six years, and is accused of having so falsified them as to have substituted himself for Solon. Hence there can have been no recognized duplicate extant, or such a thing could not be attempted. So again, in the Trapeziticus of Isocrates, it is mentioned as a well known fact, that a certain Pythodorus was convicted of tampering with state documents, signed and sealed by the magistrates, and deposited in the Acropolis. All these things meet us in every turn in the court speeches of the Attic orators. We are amazed at seeing relationships proved in will cases by a man coming in and swearing that such a man's father had told him that his brother was married to such a woman, of such a house. We find the most libellous charges brought against opponents on matters totally beside the question at issue, and even formal evidence of general bad character admitted. We find some speakers in consequence treating the jury with a sort of mingled deference and contempt which is amusing. 'On the former trial of this case,' they say, 'my opponent managed to tell you many well devised lies; of course you were deceived, how could it be otherwise, and you made a false decision;' or else, 'You were so puzzled that you got at variance with one another, you voted at sixes and sevens, and by a small majority you came to an absurd decision.' {164} 'But I think you know well,' says Isocrates, 'that the city has often repented so bitterly ere this for decisions made in passion and without evidence, as to desire after no long interval to punish those who misled it, and to wish those who had been calumniated were more than restored to their former prosperity. Keeping these facts before you, you ought not to be hasty in believing the prosecutors, nor to hear the defendants with interruption and ill temper. For it is a shame to have the character of being the gentlest and most humane of the Greeks in other respects, and yet to act contrary to this reputation in the trials which take place here. It is a shame that in other cities, when a human life is at stake, a considerable majority of votes is required for conviction, but that among you those in danger do not even get an equal chance with their false accusers. You swear indeed once a year that you will attend to both plaintiff and defendant, but in the interval only keep your oath so far as to accept whatever the accusers say, but you sometimes will not let those who are trying to refute them utter even a single word. You think those cities uninhabitable, in which citizens are executed without trial, and forget that those who do not give both sides a fair hearing are doing the very same thing.'"

J. P. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, chapter 13.

ATHENS: B. C. 445-429. The Age of Pericles: Political life. The democracy.

"The real life of Athens lasted at the most for 200 years: and yet there are moments in which all that we have won by the toils of so many generations seems as if it would be felt to be but a small thing beside a single hour of Periklês. The Democracy of Athens was in truth the noblest fruit of that self-developing power of the Greek mind which worked every possession of the common heritage into some new and more brilliant shape, but which learned nothing, nothing of all that formed its real life and its real glory, from the Barbarians of the outer world. Men tell us that Greece learned this or that mechanical invention from Phœnicia or Egypt or Assyria. Be it so; but stand in the Pnyx; listen to the contending orators; listen to the ambassadors of distant cities; listen to each side as it is fairly hearkened to, and see the matter in hand decided by the peaceful vote of thousands—here at least of a truth is something which Athens did not learn from any Assyrian despot or from any Egyptian priest. And we, children of the common stock, sharers in the common heritage, as we see man, Aryan man, in the full growth of his noblest type, we may feel a thrill as we think that Kleisthenês and Periklês were, after all, men of our own blood—as we think that the institutions which grew up under their hands and the institutions under which we ourselves are living are alike branches sprung from one stock, portions of one inheritance in which Athens and England have an equal right. In the Athenian Democracy we see a popular constitution taking the form which was natural for such a constitution to take when it was able to run its natural course in a common-wealth which consisted only of a single city. Wherever the Assembly really remains, in truth as well as in name, an Assembly of the whole people in their own persons, it must in its own nature be sovereign. It must, in the nature of things, delegate more or less of power to magistrates and generals; but such power will be simply delegated. Their authority will be a mere trust from the sovereign body, and to that sovereign body they will be responsible for its exercise. That is to say, one of the original elements of the State, the King or chief, now represented by the elective magistracy, will lose its independent powers, and will sink into a body who have only to carry out the will of the sovereign Assembly. So with another of the original elements, the Council. This body too loses its independent being; it has no ruling or checking power; it becomes a mere Committee of the Assembly, chosen or appointed by lot to put measures into shape for more easy discussion in the sovereign body. As society becomes more advanced and complicated, the judicial power can no longer be exercised by the Assembly itself, while it would be against every democratic instinct to leave it in the arbitrary power of individual magistrates. Other Committees of the Assembly, Juries on a gigantic scale, with a presiding magistrate as chairman rather than as Judge, are therefore set apart to decide causes and to sit in judgment on offenders. Such is pure Democracy, the government of the whole people and not of a part of it only, as carried out in its full perfection in a single city. It is a form of government which works up the faculties of man to a higher pitch than any other; it is the form of government which gives the freest scope to the inborn genius of the whole community and of every member of it. Its weak point is that it works up the faculties of man to a pitch so high that it can hardly be lasting, that its ordinary life needs an enthusiasm, a devotion too highly strung to be likely to live through many generations. Athens in the days of her glory, the Athens of Periklês, was truly 'the roof and crown of things;' her democracy raised a greater number of human beings to a higher level than any government before or since; it gave freer play than any government before or since to the personal gifts of the foremost of mankind. But against the few years of Athenian glory we must set the long ages of Athenian decline. Against the city where Periklês was General we must set the city where Hadrian was Archon. On the Assemblies of other Grecian cities it is hardly needful to dwell. Our knowledge of their practical working is slight. We have one picture of a debate in the popular Assembly of Sparta, an Assembly none the less popular in its internal constitution because it was the assembly of what, as regarded the excluded classes of the State, was a narrow oligarchy. We see that there, as might be looked for, the chiefs of the State, the Kings, and yet more the Ephors, spoke with a degree of official, as distinguished from personal, authority which fell to the lot of no man in the Assembly of Athens. Periklês reigned supreme, not because he was one of Ten Generals, but because he was Periklês. … In the Ekklêsia which listened to Periklês and Dêmosthenes we feel almost as much at home as in an institution of our own land and our own times. At least we ought to feel at home there; for we have the full materials for calling up the political life of Athens in all its fullness, and within our own times one of the greatest minds of our own or of any age has given its full strength to clear away the mists of error and calumny which so long shrouded the parent state of justice and freedom. {165} Among the contemporaries and countrymen of Mr. Grote it is shame indeed if men fail to see in the great Democracy the first state which taught mankind that the voice of persuasion could be stronger than a despot's will, the first which taught that disputes could be settled by a free debate and a free vote which in other lands could have been decided only by the banishment or massacre of the weaker side. … It must be constantly borne in mind that the true difference between an aristocratic and a democratic government, as those words were understood in the politics of old Greece, lies in this. In the Democracy all citizens, all who enjoy civil rights, enjoy also political rights. In the aristocracy political rights belong to only a part of those who enjoy civil rights. But, in either case, the highest authority of the State is the general Assembly of the whole ruling body, whether that ruling body be the whole people or only a part of it. … The slaves and strangers who were shut out at Athens were, according to Greek ideas, no Athenians; but every Athenian had his place in the sovereign assembly of Athens, while every Corinthian had not his place in the sovereign assembly of Corinth. But the aristocratic and the democratic commonwealth both agreed in placing the final authority of the State in the general Assembly of all who enjoy the highest franchise. … The people, of its own will, placed at its head men of the same class as those who in the earlier state of things had ruled it against its will. Periklês, Nikias, Alkibiadês, were men widely differing in character, widely differing in their relations to the popular government. But all alike were men of ancient birth, who, as men of ancient birth, found their way, almost as a matter of course, to those high places of the State to which Kleôn found his way only by a strange freak of fortune. At Rome we find quite another story. There, no less than at Athens, the moral influence of nobility survived its legal privileges; but, more than this, the legal privileges of the elder nobility were never wholly swept away, and the inherent feeling of respect for illustrious birth called into being a younger nobility by its side. At Athens one stage of reform placed a distinction of wealth instead of a distinction of birth: another stage swept away the distinction of wealth also. But the reform, at each of its stages, was general; it affected all offices alike, save those sacred offices which still remained the special heritage of certain sacred families. … In an aristocratic commonwealth there is no room for Periklês; there is no room for the people that hearkened to Periklês; but in men of the second order, skilful conservative administrators, men able to work the system which they find established, no form of government is so fertile. … But everywhere we learn the same lesson, the inconsistency of commonwealths which boast themselves of their own freedom and exalt themselves at the cost of the freedom of others."

E. A. Freeman, Comparative Politics, lectures 5-6.

"Dêmos was himself King, Minister, and Parliament. He had his smaller officials to carry out the necessary details of public business, but he was most undoubtedly his own First Lord of the Treasury, his own Foreign Secretary, his own Secretary for the Colonies. He himself kept up a personal correspondence both with foreign potentates and with his own officers on foreign service; the 'despatches' of Nikias and the 'notes' of Philip were alike addressed to no officer short of the sovereign himself; he gave personal audience to the ambassadors of other states, and clothed his own with just so great or so small a share as he deemed good of his own boundless authority. He had no need to entrust the care of his thousand dependencies to the mysterious working of a Foreign Office; he himself sat in judgment upon Mitylenaian rebels; he himself settled the allotment of lands at Chalkis or Amphipolis; he decreed by his own wisdom what duties should be levied at the Sound of Byzantion; he even ventured on a task of which two-and-twenty ages have not lessened the difficulty, and undertook, without the help of a Lord High Commissioner, to adjust the relations and compose the seditions even of Korkyra and Zakynthos. He was his own Lord High Chancellor, his own Lord Primate, his own Commander-in-Chief. He listened to the arguments of Kleôn on behalf of a measure, and to the arguments of Nikias against it, and he ended by bidding Nikias to go and carry out the proposal which he had denounced as extravagant or unjust. He listened with approval to his own 'explanations;' he passed votes of confidence in his own policy; he advised himself to give his own royal assent to the bills which he had himself passed, without the form of a second or third reading, or the vain ceremony of moving that the Prytaneis do leave their chairs. … We suspect that the average Athenian citizen was, in political intelligence, above the average English Member of Parliament. It was this concentration of all power in an aggregate of which every citizen formed a part, which is the distinguishing characteristic of true Greek democracy. Florence had nothing like it; there has been nothing like it in the modern world: the few pure democracies which have lingered on to our own day have never had such mighty questions laid before them, and have never had such statesmen and orators to lead them. The great Democracy has had no fellow; but the political lessons which it teaches are none the less lessons for all time and for every land and people."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Essays (volume 2): The Athenian Democracy.

"The individual freedom which was enjoyed at Athens and which is extolled by Pericles was plainly an exception to the common usage of Greece, and is so regarded in the Funeral Speech. The word 'freedom,' it should be remembered, bore an ambiguous meaning. It denoted on the one hand political independence,—the exercise of sovereign power by the State and of political rights by the citizens. In this sense every Greek citizen could claim it as his birthright. Even the Spartans could tell the Persian Hydarnes that he had not, like them, tasted of freedom, and did not know whether it was sweet or not. But the word also denoted personal and social liberty,—freedom from the excessive restraints of law, the absence of a tyrannous public opinion and of intolerance between man and man. Pericles claims for Athens 'freedom' in this double sense. But freedom so far as it implies the absence of legal interference in the private concerns of life was but little known except at Athens."

S. H. Butcher, Some Aspects of Greek Genius, pages 70-71.

{166}

"To Athens … we look … for an answer to the question, What does history teach in regard to the virtue of a purely democratic government? And here we may safely say that, under favourable circumstances, there is no form of government which, while it lasts, has such a virtue to give scope to a vigorous growth and luxuriant fruitage of various manhood as a pure democracy. … But it does not follow that, though in this regard it has not been surpassed by any other form of government, it is therefore absolutely the best of all forms of government. … Neither, on the other hand, does it follow from the shortness of the bright reign of Athenian democracy—not more than 200 years from Clisthenes to the Macedonians—that all democracies are short-lived, and must pay, like dissipated young gentlemen, with premature decay for the feverish abuse of their vital force. Possible no doubt it is, that if the power of what we may call a sort of Athenian Second Chamber, the Areiopagus, instead of being weakened as it was by Aristides and Pericles, had been built up according to the idea of Æschylus and the intelligent aristocrats of his day, such a body, armed, like our House of Lords, with an effective negative on all outbursts of popular rashness, might have prevented the ambition of the Athenians from launching on that famous Syracusan expedition which exhausted their force and maimed their action for the future. But the lesson taught by the short-lived glory of Athens, and its subjugation under the rough foot of the astute Macedonian, is not that democracies, under the influence of faction, and, it may be, not free from venality, will sell their liberties to a strong neighbour—for aristocratic Poland did this in a much more blushless way than democratic Greece—but that any loose aggregate of independent States, given more to quarrel amongst themselves than to unite against a common enemy, whether democratic, or aristocratic, or monarchical in their form of government, cannot in the long run maintain their ground against the firm policy and the well-massed force of a strong monarchy. Athens was blotted out from the map of free peoples at Chæronea, not because the Athenian people had too much freedom, but because the Greek States had too little unity. They were used by Philip exactly in the same way that Napoleon used the German States at the commencement of the present century."

J. S. Blackie, What does History Teach? pages 28-31.

"In Herodotus you have the beginning of the age of discussion. … The discourses on democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, which he puts into the mouth of the Persian conspirators when the monarchy was vacant, have justly been called absurd, as speeches supposed to have been spoken by those persons. No Asiatic ever thought of such things. You might as well imagine Saul or David speaking them as those to whom Herodotus attributes them. They are Greek speeches, full of free Greek discussions, and suggested by the experience, already considerable, of the Greeks in the results of discussion. The age of debate is beginning, and even Herodotus, the least of a wrangler of any man, and the most of a sweet and simple narrator, felt the effect. When we come to Thucydides, the results of discussion are as full as they have ever been; his light is pure, 'dry light,' free from the 'humours' of habit, and purged from consecrated usage. As Grote's history often reads like a report to Parliament, so half Thucydides reads like a speech, or materials for a speech, in the Athenian Assembly."

W. Bagehot, Physics and Politics, pages 170-171.

ATHENS: B. C. 440-437. New settlements of Klerouchoi. The founding of Amphipolis. Revolt and subjugation of Samos.

"The great aim of Perikles was to strengthen the power of Athens over the whole area occupied by her confederacy. The establishment of settlers or Klerouchoi [see KLERUCHS]. who retained their rights as Athenian citizens, had answered so well in the Lelantian plain of Euboia that it was obviously good policy to extend the system. The territory of Hestiaia in the north of Euboia and the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Skyros, were thus occupied; and Perikles himself led a body of settlers to the Thrakian Chersonesos where he repaired the old wall at the neck of the peninsula, and even to Sinope which now became a member of the Athenian alliance. A generation had passed from the time when Athens lost 10,000 citizens in the attempt to found a colony at the mouth of the Strymon. The task was now undertaken successfully by Hagnon, and the city came into existence which was to be the cause of disaster to the historian Thucydides and to witness the death of Brasidas and of Kleon [see AMPHIPOLIS]. … Two years before the founding of Amphipolis, Samos revolted from Athens. … In this revolt of Samos the overt action comes from the oligarchs who had seized upon the Ionian town of Priene, and defeated the Milesians who opposed them. The latter appealed to the Athenians, and received not only their aid but that of the Samian demos. The latter now became the ruling body in the island, fifty men and fifty boys being taken from the oligarchic families and placed as hostages in Lemnos, which, as we have seen, was now wholly occupied by Athenian Klerouchoi. But the Samian exiles (for many had fled rather than live under a democracy) entered into covenant with Pissouthnes, the Sardian satrap, crossed over to Samos and seized the chief men of the demos, then falling on Lemnos succeeded in stealing away the hostages; and, having handed over to Pissouthnes the Athenian garrison at Samos, made ready for an expedition against Miletos. The tidings that Byzantion had joined in this last revolt left to the Athenians no room to doubt the gravity of the crisis. A fleet of sixty ships was dispatched to Samos under Perikles and nine other generals, of whom the poet Sophokles is said to have been one. Of these ships sixteen were sent, some to gather the allies, others to watch for the Phenician fleet which they believed to be off the Karian coast advancing to the aid of the Samian oligarchs. With the remainder Perikles did not hesitate to engage the Samian fleet of seventy ships which he encountered on its return from Miletos off the island of Tragia. The Athenians gained the day; and Samos was blockaded by land and sea. But no sooner had Perikles sailed with sixty ships to meet the Phenician fleet, than the Samians, making a vigorous sally, broke the lines of the besiegers and for fourteen days remained masters of the sea. {167} The return of Perikles changed the face of things. Soon after the resumption of the siege the arrival of sixty fresh ships from Athens under five Strategoi in two detachments, with thirty from Chios and Lesbos, damped the energy of the Samian oligarchs; and an unsuccessful effort at sea was followed by their submission in the ninth month after the beginning of the revolt, the terms being that they should raze their walls, give hostages, surrender their ships, and pay the expenses of the war. Following their example, the Byzantines also made their peace with Athens. The Phenician fleet never came. … The Athenians escaped at the same time a far greater danger nearer home. The Samians, like the men of Thasos, had applied for aid to the Spartans, who, no longer pressed by the Helot war, summoned a congress of their allies to discuss the question. For the truce which had still five-and-twenty years to run Sparta cared nothing: but she encountered an opposition from the Corinthians which perhaps she now scarcely expected. … The Spartans were compelled to give way; and there can be no doubt that when some years later the Corinthians claimed the gratitude of the Athenians for this decision, they took credit for an act of good service singularly opportune. Had they voted as Sparta wished, Athens might by the extension of revolt amongst her allied cities have been reduced now to the condition to which, in consequence perhaps of this respite, she was not brought until the lifetime of a generation had been spent in desperate warfare."

G. W. Cox, History of Greece, book 3, chapter 1 (volume 2).

ATHENS: B. C. 431. Beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Its Causes.

"In B. C. 431 the war broke out between Athens and the Peloponnesian League, which, after twenty-seven years, ended in the ruin of the Athenian empire. It began through a quarrel between Corinth and Kerkyra, in which Athens assisted Kerkyra. A congress was held at Sparta; Corinth and other States complained of the conduct of Athens, and war was decided on. The real cause of the war was that Sparta and its allies were jealous of the great power that Athens had gained [see GREECE: B. C. 435-132 and 432-431]. A far greater number of Greek States were engaged in this war than had ever been engaged in a single undertaking before. States that had taken no part in the Persian war were now fighting on one side or the other. Sparta was an oligarchy, and the friend of the nobles everywhere; Athens was a democracy, and the friend of the common people; so that the war was to some extent a struggle between these classes all over Greece, and often within the same city walls the nobles and the people attacked one another, the nobles being for Sparta and the people for Athens. On the side of Sparta, when the war began, there was all Peloponnesus except Argos and Achæa, and also the oligarchical Bœotian League under Thebes besides Phokis, Lokris, and other States west of them. They were very strong by land, but the Corinthians alone had a good fleet. Later on we shall see the powerful State of Syracuse with its navy, acting with Sparta. On the side of Athens there were almost all the Ægæan islands, and a great number of the Ægæan coast towns as well as Kerkyra and certain States in the west of Greece. The Athenians had also made alliance with Sitalkes, the barbarian king of the interior of Thrace. Athens was far stronger by sea than Sparta, but had not such a strong land army. On the other hand it had a large treasure, and a system of taxes, while the Spartan League had little or no money."

C. A. Fyffe, History of Greece (History Primers), page 84.

The Ionian cities, called "allies" of Athens, were subjects in reality, and held in subjection by tyrannical measures which made the yoke odious, as is plainly explained by Xenophon, who says: "Some person might say, that it is a great support to the Athenians that their allies should be in a condition to contribute money to them. To the plebeians, however, it seems to be of much greater advantage that every individual of the Athenians should get some of the property of the allies, and that the allies themselves should have only so much as to enable them to live and to till the ground, so that they may not be in a condition to form conspiracies. The people of Athens seem also to have acted injudiciously in this respect, that they oblige their allies to make voyages to Athens for the decision of their lawsuits. But the Athenians consider only, on the other hand, what benefits to the state of Athens are attendant on this practice; in the first place they receive their dues throughout the year from the prytaneia; in the next place, they manage the government of the allied states while sitting at home, and without sending out ships; they also support suitors of the lower orders, and ruin those of an opposite character in their courts of law; but if each state had its own courts, they would, as being hostile to the Athenians, be the ruin of those who were most favourable to the people of Athens. In addition to these advantages, the Athenian people have the following profits from the courts of justice for the allies being at Athens; first of all the duty of the hundredth on what is landed at the Peiræeus affords a greater revenue to the city; next, whoever has a lodging-house makes more money by it, as well as whoever has cattle or slaves for hire; and the heralds, too, are benefited by the visits of the allies to the city. Besides, if the allies did not come to Athens for law, they would honour only such of the Athenians as were sent over the sea to them, as generals, and captains of vessels, and ambassadors; but now every individual of the allies is obliged to flatter the people of Athens, knowing that on going to Athens he must gain or lose his cause according to the decision, not of other judges, but of the people, as is the law of Athens; and he is compelled, too, to use supplication before the court, and, as anyone of the people enters, to take him by the hand. By these means the allies are in consequence rendered much more the slaves of the Athenian people."

Xenophon, On the Athenian Government (Minor Works, translated by Reverend J. S. Watson), page 235.

The revolt of these coerced and hostile "allies," upon the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, was inevitable.—The prominent events of the Peloponnesian war, in which most of the Greek States were involved, are properly narrated in their connection with Greek history at large (see GREECE: B. C. 431-429, and after). In this place it will only be necessary to take account of the consequences of the war as they affected the remarkable city and people whose superiority had occasioned it by challenging and somewhat offensively provoking the jealousy of their neighbors.

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ATHENS: B. C. 431. Peloponnesian invasions of Attica. Siege of Athens.

"While the Peloponnesians were gathering at the Isthmus, and were still on their way, but before they entered Attica, Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, who was one of the ten Athenian generals, … repeated [to the Athenians] his previous advice; they must prepare for war and bring their property from the country into the city; they must defend their walls but not go out to battle; they should also equip for service the fleet in which lay their strength. … The citizens were persuaded, and brought into the city their children and wives, their household goods, and even the wood-work of their houses, which they took down. Their flocks and beasts of burden they conveyed to Euboea and the adjacent islands. The removal of the inhabitants was painful; for the Athenians had always been accustomed to reside in the country. Such a life had been characteristic of them more than of any other Hellenic people, from very early times. … When they came to Athens, only a few of them had houses or could find homes among friends or kindred. The majority took up their abode in the vacant spaces of the city, and in the temples and shrines of heroes. … Many also established themselves in the turrets of the walls, or in any other place which they could find; for the city could not contain them when they first came in. But afterwards they divided among them the Long Walls and the greater part of the Piraeus. At the same time the Athenians applied themselves vigorously to the war, summoning their allies, and preparing an expedition of 100 ships against the Peloponnese. While they were thus engaged, the Peloponnesian army was advancing: it arrived first of all at Oenoe," where Archidamus, the Spartan king, wasted much time in a fruitless siege and assault. "At last they marched on, and about the eightieth day after the entry of the Thebans into Plataea, in the middle of the summer, when the corn was in full ear, invaded Attica: … They encamped and ravaged, first of all, Eleusis and the plain of Thria. … At Acharnae they encamped, and remained there a considerable time, ravaging the country." It was the expectation of Archidamus that the Athenians would be provoked to come out and meet him in the open field; and that, indeed, they were eager to do; but the prudence of their great leader held them back. "The people were furious with Pericles, and, forgetting all his previous warnings, they abused him for not leading them to battle." But he was vindicated by the result. "The Peloponnesians remained in Attica as long as their provisions lasted, and then, taking a new route, retired through Boeotia. … On their return to Peloponnesus the troops dispersed to their several cities." Meantime the Athenian and allied fleets were ravaging the Peloponnesian coast. "In the same summer [B. C. 431] the Athenians expelled the Aeginetans and their families from Aegina, alleging that they had been the main cause of the war. … The Lacedaemonians gave the Aeginetan exiles the town of Thyrea to occupy and the adjoining country to cultivate. … About the end of the summer the entire Athenian force, including the metics, invaded the territory of Megara. … After ravaging the greater part of the country they retired. They repeated the invasion, sometimes with cavalry, sometimes with the whole Athenian army, every year during the war until Nisaea was taken [B. C. 424]."

Thucydides, History; translated by B. Jowett, book 2; sections 13-31 (volume 1).

ATHENS: B. C. 430. The funeral oration of Pericles.

During the winter of the year B. C. 431-430, "in accordance with an old national custom, the funeral of those who first fell in this war was celebrated by the Athenians at the public charge. The ceremony is as follows: Three days before the celebration they erect a tent in which the bones of the dead are laid out, and everyone brings to his own dead any offering which he pleases. At the time of the funeral the bones are placed in chests of cypress wood, which are conveyed on hearses; there is one chest for each tribe. They also carry a single empty litter decked with a pall for all whose bodies are missing, and cannot be recovered after the battle. The procession is accompanied by anyone who chooses, whether citizen or stranger, and the female relatives of the deceased are present at the place of interment and make lamentation. The public sepulchre is situated in the most beautiful spot outside the walls; there they always bury those who fall in war; only after the battle of Marathon the dead, in recognition of their pre-eminent valour, were interred on the field. When the remains have been laid in the earth, some man of known ability and high reputation, chosen by the city, delivers a suitable oration over them; after which the people depart. Such is the manner of interment; and the ceremony was repeated from time to time throughout the war. Over those who were the first buried Pericles was chosen to speak. At the fitting moment he advanced from the sepulchre to a lofty stage, which had been erected in order that he might be heard as far as possible by the multitude, and spoke as follows:

'Most of those who have spoken here before me have commended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other funeral customs; it seemed to them a worthy thing that such an honour should be given at their burial to the dead who have fallen on the field of battle. But I should have preferred that, when men's deeds have been brave, they should be honoured in deed only, and with such an honour as this public funeral, which you are now witnessing. Then the reputation of many would not have been imperilled on the eloquence or want of eloquence of one, and their virtues believed or not as he spoke well or ill. For it is difficult to say neither too little nor too much; and even moderation is apt not to give the impression of truthfulness. The friend of the dead who knows the facts is likely to think that the words of the speaker fall short of his knowledge and of his wishes; another who is not so well informed, when he hears of anything which surpasses his own powers, will be envious and will suspect exaggeration. Mankind are tolerant of the praises of others so long as each hearer thinks that he can do as well or nearly as well himself, but, when the speaker rises above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous. However, since our ancestors have set the seal of their approval upon the practice, I must obey, and to the utmost of my power shall endeavour to satisfy the wishes and beliefs of all who hear me. I will speak first of our ancestors, for it is right and becoming that now, when we are lamenting the dead, a tribute should be paid to their memory. There has never been a time when they did not inhabit this land, which by their valour they have handed down from generation to generation, and we have received from them a free state. {169} But if they were worthy of praise, still more were our fathers who added to their inheritance, and after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this great empire. And we ourselves assembled here to-day, who are still most of us in the vigour of life, have chiefly done the work of improvement, and have richly endowed our city with all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and war. Of the military exploits by which our various possessions were acquired, or of the energy with which we or our fathers drove back the tide of war, Hellenic or Barbarian, I will not speak; for the tale would be long and is familiar to you. But before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of life our empire became great. For I conceive, that such thoughts are not unsuited to the occasion, and that this numerous assembly of citizens and strangers may profitably listen to them. Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbours, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognised; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbour if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for authority and for the laws, having an especial regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment. And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil; we have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year; at home the style of our life is refined; and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own. Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world, and we never expel a foreigner or prevent him from seeing or learning anything of which the secret if revealed to an enemy might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the Lacedaemonians come into Attica not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; we go alone into a neighbour's country; and although our opponents are fighting for their homes and we on a foreign soil we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength; the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all. If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? Since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace; the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act and of acting too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense both of the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger. In doing good, again, we are unlike others; we make our friends by conferring, not by receiving favours. Now he who confers a favour is the firmer friend, because he would fain by kindness keep alive the memory of an obligation; but the recipient is colder in his feelings, because he knows that in requiting another's generosity he will not be winning gratitude but only paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbours not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up; I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and idle word, but truth and fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these qualities have raised the state. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day. {170} For we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valour, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity. Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly fought and died; they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them; and everyone of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf. I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest proof the merit of these men whom I am now commemorating. Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying the city I have magnified them, and men like them whose virtues made her glorious. And of how few Hellenes can it be said as of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been found equal to their fame! Methinks that a death such as theirs has been gives the true measure of a man's worth; it may be the first revelation of his virtues, but is at any rate their final seal. For even those who come short in other ways may justly plead the valour with which they have fought for their country; they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited the state more by their public services than they have injured her by their private actions. None of these men were enervated by wealth or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a man, though poor, may one day become rich. But, deeming that the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honourably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonour, but on the battle-field their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory. Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens, and the living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit although they may pray for a less fatal issue. The value of such a spirit is not to be expressed in words. Anyone can discourse to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defence which you know already. But instead of listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it; who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonour always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an enterprize, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her feast. The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself a praise which grows not old, and the noblest of all sepulchres—I speak not of that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in word and deed. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men. Make them your examples, and esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war. The unfortunate who has no hope of a change for the better has less reason to throw away his life than the prosperous who, if he survive, is always liable to a change for the worse, and to whom any accidental fall makes the most serious difference. To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster coming together are far more bitter than death striking him unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the general hope. Wherefore I do not now commiserate the parents of the dead who stand here; I would rather comfort them. You know that your life has been passed amid manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed fortunate who have gained most honour, whether an honourable death like theirs, or an honourable sorrow like yours, and whose days have been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life. I know how hard it is to make you feel this, when the good fortune of others will too often remind you of the gladness which once lightened your hearts. And sorrow is felt at the want of those blessings, not which a man never knew, but which were a part of his life before they were taken from him. Some of you are of an age at which they may hope to have other children, and they ought to bear their sorrow better; not only will the children who may hereafter be born make them forget their own lost ones, but the city will be doubly a gainer. She will not be left desolate, and she will be safer. For a man's counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no children to risk in the general danger. To those of you who have passed their prime I say: "Congratulate yourselves that you have been happy during the greater part of those days; remember that your life of sorrow will not last long, and be comforted by the glory of those who are gone. For the love of honour alone is ever young, and not riches, as some say, but honour is the delight of men when they are old and useless." To you who are the sons and brothers of the departed, I see that the struggle to emulate them will be an arduous one. For all men praise the dead, and, however pre-eminent your virtue may be, hardly will you be thought, I do not say to equal, but even to approach them. The living have their rivals and detractors, but when a man is out of the way, the honour and good-will which he receives is unalloyed. And, if I am to speak of womanly virtues to those of you who will henceforth be widows, let me sum them up in one short admonition: To a woman not to show more weakness than is natural to her sex is a great glory, and not to be talked about for good or for evil among men. I have paid the required tribute, in obedience to the law, making use of such fitting words as I had. The tribute of deeds has been paid in part; for the dead have been honourably interred, and it remains only that their children should be maintained at the public charge until they are grown up: this is the solid prize with which, as with a garland, Athens crowns her sons living and dead, after a struggle like theirs. For where the rewards of virtue are greatest, there the noblest citizens are enlisted in the service of the state. And now, when you have duly lamented, everyone his own dead, you may depart.'

Such was the order of the funeral celebrated in this winter, with the end of which ended the first year of the Peloponnesian War."

Thucydides, History, translated by B. Jowett, volume 1, book 2, sections 34-47.

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ATHENS: B. C. 130-429. The Plague in the city. Death of Pericles. Capture of Potidæa.

"As soon as the summer returned [B. C. 430] the Peloponnesians … invaded Attica, where they established themselves and ravaged the country. They had not been there many days when the plague broke out at Athens for the first time. … The disease is said to have begun south of Egypt in Æthiopia; thence it descended into Egypt and Libya, and after spreading over the greater part of the Persian Empire, suddenly fell upon Athens. It first attacked the inhabitants of the Piæeus, and it was supposed that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns, no conduits having as yet been made there. It afterwards reached the upper city, and then the mortality became far greater. As to its probable origin or the causes which might or could have produced such a disturbance of nature, every man, whether a physician or not, will give his own opinion. But I shall describe its actual course, and the symptoms by which anyone who knows them beforehand may recognize the disorder should it ever reappear. For I was myself attacked, and witnessed the sufferings of others. The season was admitted to have been remarkably free from ordinary sickness; and if anybody was already ill of any other disease, it was absorbed in this. Many who were in perfect health, all in a moment, and without any apparent reason, were seized with violent heats in the head and with redness and inflammation of the eyes. Internally the throat and tongue were quickly suffused with blood and the breath became unnatural and fetid. There followed sneezing and hoarseness; in a short time the disorder, accompanied by a violent cough, reached the chest; then fastening lower down, it would move the stomach and bring on all the vomits of bile to which physicians have ever given names; and they were very distressing. … The body externally was not so very hot to the touch, nor yet pale; it was a livid colour inclining to red, and breaking out in pustules and ulcers. But the internal fever was intense. … The disorder which had originally settled in the head passed gradually through the whole body, and, if a person got over the worst, would often seize the extremities and leave its mark, attacking the privy parts and the fingers and toes; and some escaped with the loss of these, some with the loss of their eyes. … The crowding of the people out of the country into the city aggravated the misery; and the newly-arrived suffered most. … The mortality among them was dreadful and they perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every fountain craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. … The pleasure of the moment and any sort of thing which conduced to it took the place both of honour and of expediency. No fear of God or law of man deterred a criminal." Terrified by the plague, when they learned of it, the Peloponnesians retreated from Attica, after ravaging it for forty days; but, in the meantime, their own coasts had been ravaged, as before, by the Athenian fleet. And now, being once more relieved from the presence of the enemy, though still grievously afflicted by the plague, the Athenians turned upon Pericles with complaints and reproaches, and imposed a fine upon him. They also sent envoys to Sparta, with peace proposals which received no encouragement. But Pericles spoke calmly and wisely to the people, and they acknowledged their sense of dependence upon him by re-electing him general and committing again "all their affairs to his charge." But he was stricken next year with the plague, and, lingering for some weeks in broken health, he died in the summer of 429 B. C. By his death the republic was given over to striving demagogues and factions, at just the time when a capable brain and hand were needed in its government most. The war went on, acquiring more ferocity of temper with every campaign. It was especially embittered in the course of the second summer by the execution, at Athens, of several Lacedaemonian envoys who were captured while on their way to solicit help from the Persian king. One of these unfortunate envoys was Aristeus, who had organized the defence of Potidaea. That city was still holding out against the Athenians, who blockaded it obstinately, although their troops suffered frightfully from the plague. But in the winter of 430-429 B. C. they succumbed to starvation and surrendered their town, being permitted to depart in search of a new home. Potidaea was then peopled anew, with colonists.

Thucydides, History, translated by Jowett, book 2, sections 8-70.

ALSO IN: E. Abbott, Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens, chapters 13-15.

W. W. Lloyd, The Age of Pericles, chapter 64 (volume 2).

L. Whibley, Political Parties in Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

W. Wachsmuth, History Antiquities of the Greeks, sections 62-64 (volume 2).

ATHENS: B. C. 429-421. After Pericles. The rise of the Demagogues.

"When Pericles rose to power it would have been possible to frame a Pan-Hellenic union, in which Sparta and Athens would have been the leading states; and such a dualism would have been the best guarantee for the rights of the smaller cities. When he died there was no policy left but war with Sparta, and conquest in the West. And not only so, but there was no politician who could adjust the relations of domestic war and foreign conquest. The Athenians passed from one to the other, as they were addressed by Cleon or Alcibiades. We cannot wonder that the men who lived in those days of trouble spoke bitterly of Pericles, holding him accountable for the miseries which fell upon Athens. Other statesmen had bequeathed good laws, as Solon and Clisthenes, or the memory of great achievements, as Themistocles or Cimon, but the only changes which Pericles had introduced were thought, not without reason, to be changes for the worse; and he left his country involved in a ruinous war.".

E. Abbott, Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens, pages 362-363.

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"The moral change which had … befallen the Attic community had, it is true, even during the lifetime of Pericles, manifested itself by means of sufficiently clear premonitory signs; but Pericles had, notwithstanding, up to the days of his last illness, remained the centre of the state; the people had again and again returned to him, and by subordinating themselves to the personal authority of Pericles had succeeded in recovering the demeanor which befitted them. But now the voice was hushed, which had been able to sway the unruly citizens, even against their will. No other authority was in existence—no aristocracy, no official class, no board of experienced statesmen—nothing, in fact, to which the citizens might have looked for guidance and control. The multitude had recovered absolute independence, and in proportion as, in the interval, readiness of speech and sophistic versatility had spread in Athens, the number had increased of those who now put themselves forward as popular speakers and leaders. But as, among all these, none was capable of leading the multitude after the fashion of Pericles, another method of leading the people, another kind of demagogy, sprung into existence. Pericles stood above the multitude. … His successors were obliged to adopt other means; in order to acquire influence, they took advantage not so much of the strong as of the weak points in the character of the citizens, and achieved popularity by flattering their inclinations, and endeavoring to satisfy the cravings of their baser nature. … Now for the first time, men belonging to the lower class of citizens thrust themselves forward to play a part in politics,—men of the trading and artisan class, the culture and wealth of which had so vigorously increased at Athens. … The office of general frequently became a post of martyrdom; and the bravest men felt that the prospect of being called to account as to their campaigns by cowardly demagogues, before a capricious multitude, disturbed the straightforward joyousness of their activity, and threw obstacles in the way of their successes. … On the orators' tribune the contrast was more striking. Here the first prominent successor of Pericles was a certain Eucrates, a rude and uneducated man, who was ridiculed on the comic stage as the 'boar' or 'bear of Melite' (the name of the district to which he belonged), a dealer in tow and mill-owner, who only for a short space of time took the lead in the popular assembly. His place was taken by Lysicles, who had acquired wealth by the cattle-trade. … It was not until after Lysicles, that the demagogues attained to power who had first made themselves a name by their opposition against Pericles, and, among them, Cleon was the first who was able to maintain his authority for a longer period of time; so that it is in his proceedings during the ensuing years of the war that the whole character of the new demagogy first thoroughly manifests itself."

E. Curtius, History of Greece, volume 3, chapter 2.

"The characters of the military commander and the political leader were gradually separated. The first germs of this division we find in the days of Kimôn and Periklês. Kimôn was no mean politician; but his real genius clearly called him to warfare with the Barbarian. Periklês was an able and successful general; but in him the military character was quite subordinate to that of the political leader. It was a wise compromise which entrusted Kimôn with the defence of the state abroad and Periklês with its management at home. After Periklês the separation widened. We nowhere hear of Dêmosthenes and Phormiôn as political leaders; and even in Nikias the political is subordinate to the military character. Kleôn, on the other hand, was a politician but not a soldier. But the old notion of combining military and political position was not quite lost. It was still deemed that he who proposed a warlike expedition should himself, if it were needful, be able to conduct it. Kleôn in an evil hour was tempted to take on himself military functions; he was forced into command against Sphaktêria; by the able and loyal help of Dêmosthenês he acquitted himself with honour. But his head was turned by success; he aspired to independent command; he measured himself against the mighty Brasidas; and the fatal battle of Amphipolis was the result. It now became clear that the Demagogue and the General must commonly be two distinct persons. The versatile genius of Alkibiadês again united the two characters; but he left no successor. … A Demagogue then was simply an influential speaker of popular politics. Dêmosthenês is commonly distinguished as an orator, while Kleôn is branded as a Demagogue; but the position of the one was the same as the position of the other. The only question is as to the wisdom and honesty of the advice given either by Kleôn or by Dêmosthenês."

E. A. Freeman, Historical Essays, 2d series, pages 138-140.

ATHENS: B. C. 429-427. Fate of Platæa. Phormio's Victories. Revolt of Lesbos. Siege of Mitylene. Cleon's bloody decree and its reversal.

See GREECE: B. C. 429-427.

ATHENS: B. C. 425. Seizure of Pylus by Demosthenes, the general. Spartans entrapped and captured at Sphacteria. Peace pleaded for and refused.

See GREECE: B. C. 425.

ATHENS: B. C. 424-406. Socrates as soldier and citizen. The trial of the Generals.

"Socrates was born very shortly before the year 469 B. C. His father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor, his mother, Phænarete, a midwife. Nothing definite is known of his moral and intellectual development. There is no specific record of him at all until he served at the siege of Potidæa (432 B. C.-429 B. C.) when he was nearly forty years old. All that we can say is that his youth and manhood were passed in the most splendid period of Athenian or Greek history. … As a boy he received the usual Athenian liberal education, in music and gymnastic, an education, that is to say, mental and physical. He was fond of quoting from the existing Greek literature, and he seems to have been familiar with it, especially with Homer. He is represented by Xenophon as repeating Prodieus' fable of the choice of Heracles at length. He says that he was in the habit of studying with his friends 'the treasures which the wise men of old have left us in their books:' collections, that is, of the short and pithy sayings of the seven sages, such as 'know thyself'; a saying, it may be noticed, which lay at the root of his whole teaching. And he had some knowledge of mathematics, and of science, as it existed in those days. He understood something of astronomy and of advanced geometry; and he was acquainted with certain, at any rate, of the theories of his predecessors in philosophy, the Physical or Cosmical philosophers, such as Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, especially, with those of Anaxagoras. {173} But there is no trustworthy evidence which enables us to go beyond the bare fact that he had such knowledge. … All then that we can say of the first forty years of Socrates' life consists of general statements like these. During these years there is no specific record of him. Between 432 B. C. and 429 B. C. he served as a common soldier at the siege of Potidæa, an Athenian dependency which had revolted, and surpassed everyone in his powers of enduring hunger, thirst, and cold, and all the hardships of a severe Thracian winter. At this siege we hear of him for the first time in connection with Alcibiades, whose life he saved in a skirmish, and to whom he eagerly relinquished the prize of valour. In 431 B. C. the Peloponnesian War broke out, and in 424 B. C. the Athenians were disastrously defeated and routed by the Thebans at the battle of Delium. Socrates and Laches were among the few who did not yield to panic. They retreated together steadily, and the resolute bearing of Socrates was conspicuous to friend and foe alike. Had all the Athenians behaved as he did, says Laches, in the dialogue of that name, the defeat would have been a victory. Socrates fought bravely a third time at the battle of Amphipolis [422 B. C.] against the Peloponnesian forces, in which the commanders on both sides, Cleon and Brasidas, were killed: but there is no record of his specific services on that occasion. About the same time that Socrates was displaying conspicuous courage in the cause of Athens at Delium and Amphipolis, Aristophanes was holding him up to hatred, contempt, and ridicule in the comedy of the Clouds [13. C. 423]. … The Clouds is his protest against the immorality of free thought and the Sophists. He chose Socrates for his central figure, chiefly, no doubt, on account of Socrates' well-known and strange personal appearance. The grotesque ugliness, and flat nose, and prominent eyes, and Silenus-like face, and shabby dress, might be seen every day in the streets, and were familiar to every Athenian. Aristophanes cared little—probably he did not take the trouble to find out—that Socrates' whole life was spent in fighting against the Sophists. It was enough for him that Socrates did not accept the traditional beliefs, and was a good centre-piece for a comedy. … The Clouds, it is needless to say, is a gross and absurd libel from beginning to end: but Aristophanes hit the popular conception. The charges which he made in 423 B. C. stuck to Socrates to the end of his life. They are exactly the charges made by popular prejudice, against which Socrates defends himself in the first ten chapters of the Apology, and which he says have been so long 'in the air.' He formulates them as follows: 'Socrates is an evil doer who busies himself with investigating things beneath the earth and in the sky, and who makes the worse appear the better reason, and who teaches others these same things.' … For sixteen years after the battle of Amphipolis we hear nothing of Socrates. The next events in his life, of which there is a specific record, are those narrated by himself in the twentieth chapter of the Apology. They illustrate, as he meant them to illustrate, his invincible moral courage. … In 406 B. C. the Athenian fleet defeated the Lacedæmonians at the battle of Arginusæ, so called from some small islands off the south-east point of Lesbos. After the battle the Athenian commanders omitted to recover the bodies of their dead, and to save the living from off their disabled enemies. The Athenians at home, on hearing of this, were furious. The due performance of funeral rites was a very sacred duty with the Greeks; and many citizens mourned for friends and relatives who had been left to drown. The commanders were immediately recalled, and an assembly was held in which they were accused of neglect of duty. They defended themselves by saying that they had ordered certain inferior officers (amongst others, their accuser Theramenes) to perform the duty, but that a storm had come on which had rendered the performance impossible. The debate was adjourned, and it was resolved that the Senate should decide in what way the commanders should be tried. The Senate resolved that the Athenian people, having heard the accusation and the defence, should proceed to vote forthwith for the acquittal or condemnation of the eight commanders collectively. The resolution was grossly unjust, and it was illegal. It substituted a popular vote for a fair and formal trial. … Socrates was at that time a member of the Senate, the only office that he ever filled. The Senate was composed of five hundred citizens, elected by lot, fifty from each of the ten tribes, and holding office for one year. The members of each tribe held the Prytany, that is, were responsible for the conduct of business, for thirty-five days at a time, and ten out of the fifty were proedri or presidents every seven days in succession. Every bill or motion was examined by the proedri before it was submitted to the Assembly, to see if it were in accordance with law; if it was not, it was quashed: one of the proedri presided over the Senate and the Assembly each day, and for one day only: he was called the Epistates: it was his duty to put the question to the vote. In short he was the speaker. … On the day on which it was proposed to take a collective vote on the acquittal or condemnation of the eight commanders, Socrates was Epistates. The proposal was, as we have seen, illegal: but the people were furious against the accused, and it was a very popular one. Some of the proedri opposed it before it was submitted to the Assembly, on the ground of its illegality; but they were silenced by threats and subsided. Socrates alone refused to give way. He would not put a question which he knew to be illegal, to the vote. Threats of suspension and arrest, the clamour of an angry people, the fear of imprisonment or death, could not move him. … But his authority lasted only for a day; the proceedings were adjourned, a more pliant Epistates succeeded him, and the generals were condemned and executed."

F. J. Church, Introduction to Trial and Death of Socrates, pages 9-23.

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 406.

{174}

ATHENS: B. C. 421. End of the first period of the Peloponnesian War. The Peace of Nicias.

"The first stage of the Peloponnesian war came to an end just ten years after the invasion of Attica by Archidamus in 431 B. C. Its results had been almost purely negative; a vast quantity of blood and treasure had been wasted on each side, but to no great purpose. The Athenian naval power was unimpaired, and the confederacy of Delos, though shaken by the successful revolt of Amphipolis and the Thraceward towns, was still left subsisting. On the other hand, the attempts of Athens to accomplish anything on land had entirely failed, and the defensive policy of Pericles had been so far justified. Well would it have been for Athens if her citizens had taken the lesson to heart, and contented themselves with having escaped so easily from the greatest war they had ever known."

C. W. C. Oman, History of Greece, page 341.

"The treaty called since ancient times the Peace of Nicias … put an end to the war between the two Greek confederations of states, after it had lasted for rather more than ten years, viz., from the attack of the Bœotians upon Platææ, Ol. lxxxvii. 1 (beginning of April B. C. 431) to Ol. lxxxix. 3 (towards the middle of April B. C. 421). The war was for this reason known under the name of the Ten Years' War, while the Peloponnesians called it the Attic War. Its end constituted a triumph for Athens; for all the plans of the enemies who had attacked her had come to naught; Sparta had been unable to fulfil a single one of the promises with which she had entered upon the war, and was ultimately forced to acknowledge the dominion of Athens in its whole extent,—notwithstanding all the mistakes and misgivings, notwithstanding all the calamities attributable, or not, to the Athenians themselves: the resources of offence and defence which the city owed to Pericles had therefore proved their excellence, and all the fury of her opponents had wasted itself against her in vain. Sparta herself was satisfied with the advantages which the peace offered to her own city and citizens; but great was the discontent among her confederates, particularly among the secondary states, who had originally occasioned the war and obliged Sparta to take part in it. Even after the conclusion of the peace, it was impossible to induce Thebes and Corinth to accede to it. The result of the war to Sparta was therefore the dissolution of the confederation at whose head she had begun the war; she felt herself thereby placed in so dangerously isolated a position, that she was obliged to fall back upon Athens in self-defence against her own confederates. Accordingly the Peace of Nicias was in the course of the same year converted into a fifty years' alliance, under the terms of which Sparta and Athens contracted the obligation of mutual assistance against any hostile attack."

E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 2 (volume 3).

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 424-421.

ATHENS: B. C. 421-418. New combinations. Conflicting alliances with Sparta and the Argive Confederacy. Rising influence of Alcibiades. War in Argos and Arcadia. Battle of Mantinea.

See GREECE: B. C. 421-418.

ATHENS: B. C. 416. Siege and conquest of Melos. Massacre of the inhabitants.

See GREECE: B. C. 416.

ATHENS: B. C. 415. The expedition against Syracuse. Mutilation of the Hermæ (Hermai).

A quarrel having broken out in Sicily, between the cities of Segesta and Selinous, "the latter obtained aid from Syracuse. Upon this, Segesta, having vainly sought help from Carthage, appealed to Athens, where the exiled Sicilians were numerous. Alkibiades had been one of the most urgent for the attack upon Melos, and he did not lose the present opportunity to incite the Athenians to an enterprise of much greater importance, and where he hoped to be in command. … All men's minds were filled with ambitious hopes. Everywhere, says Plutarch, were to be seen young men in the gymnasia, old men in workshops and public places of meeting, drawing the map of Sicily, talking about the sea that surrounds it, the goodness of its harbors, its position opposite Africa. Established there, it would be easy to cross over and subjugate Carthage, and extend their sway as far as the Pillars of Hercules. The rich did not approve of this rashness, but feared if they opposed it that the opposite faction would accuse them of wishing to avoid the service and costs of arming galleys. Nikias had more courage; even after the Athenians had appointed him general, with Alkibiades and Lamachos, he spoke publicly against the enterprise, showed the imprudence of going in search of new subjects when those they already had were at the moment in a state of revolt, as in Chalkidike, or only waited for a disaster to break the chain which bound them to Athens. He ended by reproaching Alkibiades for plunging the republic, to gratify his personal ambition, into a foreign war of the greatest danger. … One of the demagogues, however, replied that he would put an end to all this hesitation, and he proposed and secured the passage of a decree giving the generals full power to use all the resources of the city in preparing for the expedition (March 24, 415 B. C.) Nikias was completely in the right. The expedition to Sicily was impolitic and foolish. In the Ægæan Sea lay the empire of Athens, and there only it could lie, within reach, close at hand. Every acquisition westward of the Peloponnesos was a source of weakness. Syracuse, even if conquered, would not long remain subject. Whatever might be the result of the expedition, it was sure to be disastrous in the end. … An event which took place shortly before the departure of the fleet (8-9 June) threw terror into the city: one morning the hermai throughout the city were seen to have been mutilated. … 'These Hermæ, or half-statues of the god Hermês, were blocks of marble about the height of the human figure. The upper part was cut into a head, face, neck and bust; the lower part was left as a quadrangular pillar, broad at the base, without arms, body, or legs, but with the significant mark of the male sex in front. They were distributed in great numbers throughout Athens, and always in the most conspicuous situations; standing beside the outer doors of private houses as well as of temples, near the most frequented porticos, at the intersection of cross ways, in the public agora. … The religious feelings of the Greeks considered the god to be planted or domiciled where his statue stood, so that the companionship, sympathy, and guardianship of Hermês became associated with most of the manifestations of conjunct life at Athens,—political, social, commercial, or gymnastic.' … To all pious minds the city seemed menaced with great misfortunes unless the anger of Heaven should be appeased by a sufficient expiation. {175} While Alkibiades had many partisans, he had also violent enemies. Not long before this time Hyperbolos, a contemptible man, had almost succeeded in obtaining his banishment; and he had escaped this danger only by uniting his party with that of Nikias, and causing the demagogue himself to suffer ostracism. The affair of the hermai appeared to his adversaries a favourable occasion to repeat the attempt made by Hyperbolos, and we have good reason to believe in a political machination, seeing this same populace applaud, a few months later, the impious audacity of Aristophanes in his comedy of The Birds. An inquiry was set on foot, and certain metoikoi and slaves, without making any deposition as to the hermai, recalled to mind that before this time some of these statues had been broken by young men after a night of carousal and intoxication, thus indirectly attacking Alkibiades. Others in set terms accused him of having at a banquet parodied the Eleusinian Mysteries; and men took advantage of the superstitious terrors of the people to awake their political anxieties. It was repeated that the breakers of sacred statues, the profaners of mysteries, would respect the government even less than they had respected the gods, and it was whispered that not one of these crimes had been committed without the participation of Alkibiades; and in proof of this men spoke of the truly aristocratic license of his life. Was he indeed the author of this sacrilegious freak? To believe him capable of it would not be to calumniate him. Or, on the other hand, was it a scheme planned to do him injury? Although proofs are lacking, it is certain that among the rich, upon whom rested the heavy burden of the naval expenses, a plot had been formed to destroy the power of Alkibiades, and perhaps to prevent the sailing of the fleet. The demagogues, who had intoxicated the people with hope, were for the expedition; but the popularity of Alkibiades was obnoxious to them: a compromise was made between the two factions, as is often done in times when public morality is enfeebled, and Alkibiades found himself threatened on all sides. … Urging as a pretext the dangers of delay in sending off the expedition, they obtained a decree that Alkibiades should embark at once; and that the question of his guilt or innocence should be postponed until after his return. It was now the middle of summer. The day appointed for departure, the whole city, citizens and foreigners, went out to Peiraieus at daybreak. … At that moment the view was clearer as to the doubts and dangers, and also the distance of the expedition; but all eyes were drawn to the immense preparations that had been made, and confidence and pride consoled those who were about to part."