Volume I—A To Elba (continued 13)

V. Duruy, History of the Greek People, chapter 25, section 2 (volume 3).

ALSO IN: Thucydides, History, book 6, section 27-28.

G. W. Cox, The Athenian Empire, chapter 5.

G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 58 (volume 7).

ATHENS: B. C. 415-413. Fatal end of the expedition against Syracuse.

"Alkibiades was called back to Athens, to take his trial on a charge of impiety. … He did not go back to Athens for his trial, but escaped to Peloponnesos, where we shall hear from him again. Meanwhile the command of the Athenian force in Sicily was left practically in the hands of Nikias. Now Nikias could always act well when he did act; but it was very hard to make him act; above all on an errand which he hated. One might say that Syracuse was saved through the delays of Nikias. He now went off to petty expeditions in the west of Sicily, under cover of settling matters at Segesta. … The Syracusans by this time quite despised the invaders. Their horsemen rode up to the camp of the Athenians at Katanê, and asked them if they had come into Sicily merely to sit down there as colonists. … The winter (B. C. 415-414) was chiefly spent on both sides in sending embassies to and fro to gain allies. Nikias also sent home to Athens, asking for horsemen and money, and the people, without a word of rebuke, voted him all that he asked. … But the most important embassy of all was that which the Syracusans sent to Corinth and Sparta. Corinth zealously took up the cause of her colony and pleaded for Syracuse at Sparta. And at Sparta Corinth and Syracuse found a helper in the banished Athenian Alkibiadês, who was now doing all that he could against Athens. … He told the Spartans to occupy a fortress in Attica, which they soon afterwards did, and a great deal came of it. But he also told them to give vigorous help to Syracuse, and above all things to send a Spartan commander. The mere name of Sparta went for a great deal in those days; but no man could have been better chosen than the Spartan who was sent. He was Gylippos, the deliverer of Syracuse. He was more like an Athenian than a Spartan, quick and ready of resource, which few Spartans were. … And now at last, when the spring came (414) Nikias was driven to do something. … The Athenians … occupied all that part of the hill which lay outside the walls of Syracuse. They were joined by their horsemen, Greek and Sikel, and after nearly a year, the siege of Syracuse really began. The object of the Athenians now was to build a wall across the hill and to carry it down to the sea on both sides. Syracuse would thus be hemmed in. The object of the Syracusans was to build a cross-wall of their own, which should hinder the Athenian wall from reaching the two points it aimed at; This they tried more than once; but in vain. There were several fights on the hill, and at last there was a fight of more importance on the lower ground by the Great Harbour. … The Syracusans were defeated, as far as fighting went; but they gained far more than they lost. For Lamachos was killed, and with him all vigour passed away from the Athenian camp. At the same moment the Athenian fleet sailed into the Great Harbour, and a Syracusan attack on the Athenian works on the hill was defeated. Nikias remained in command of the invaders; but he was grievously sick, and for once in his life his head seems to have been turned by success. He finished the wall on the south side; but he neglected to finish it on the north side also, so that Syracuse was not really hemmed in. But the hearts of the Syracusans sank. … It was at this darkest moment of all that deliverance came. … A Corinthian ship, under its captain Gongylos, sailed into the Little Harbour. He brought the news that other ships were on their way from Peloponnesos to the help of Syracuse, and, yet more, that a Spartan general was actually in Sicily, getting together a land force for the same end. As soon as the good news was heard, there was no more talk of surrender. … And one day the Athenian camp was startled by the appearance of a Lacedæmonian herald, offering them a truce of five days, that they might get them out of Sicily with bag and baggage. {176} Gylippos was now on the hill. He of course did not expect that the Athenian army would really go away in five days. But it was a great thing to show both to the besiegers and to the Syracusans that the deliverer had come, and that deliverance was beginning. Nikias had kept such bad watch that Gylippos and his troops had come up the hill and the Syracusans had come out and met them, without his knowledge. The Spartan, as a matter of course, took the command of the whole force; he offered battle to the Athenians, which they refused; he then entered the city. The very next day he began to carry out his scheme. This was to build a group of forts near the western end of the hill, and to join them to the city by a wall running east and west, which would hinder the Athenians from ever finishing their wall to the north. Each side went on building, and some small actions took place. … Another winter (B. C. 414-413) now came on, and with it much sending of envoys. Gylippos went about Sicily collecting fresh troops. … Meanwhile Nikias wrote a letter to the Athenian people. … This letter came at a time when the Lacedæmonian alliance had determined to renew the war with Athens, and when they were making everything ready for an invasion of Attica. To send out a new force to Sicily was simple madness. We hear nothing of the debates in the Athenian assembly, whether anyone argued against going on with the Sicilian war, and whether any demagogue laid any blame on Nikias. But the assembly voted that a new force equal to the first should be sent out under Dêmosthenês, the best soldier in Athens, and Eurymedon. … Meanwhile the Syracusans were strengthened by help both in Sicily and from Peloponnesos. Their main object now was to strike a blow at the fleet of Nikias before the new force came. … It had been just when the Syracusans were most downcast that they were cheered by the coming of the Corinthians and of Gylippos. And just now that their spirits were highest, they were dashed again by the coming of Dêmosthenês and Eurymedon. A fleet as great as the first, seventy-five ships, carrying 5,000 heavy-armed and a crowd of light troops of every kind, sailed into the Great Harbour with all warlike pomp. The Peloponnesians were already in Attica; they had planted a Peloponnesian garrison there, which brought Athens to great straits; but the fleet was sent out to Syracuse all the same. Dêmosthenês knew what to do as well as Lamachos had known. He saw that there was nothing to be done but to try one great blow, and, if that failed, to take the fleet home again. … The attack was at first successful, and the Athenians took two of the Syracusan forts. But the Thespian allies of Syracuse stood their ground, and drove the assailants back. Utter confusion followed. … The last chance was now lost, and Dêmosthenês was eager to go home. But Nikias would stay on. … When sickness grew in the camp, when fresh help from Sicily and the great body of the allies from Peloponnesos came into Syracuse, he at last agreed to go. Just at that moment the moon was eclipsed. … Nikias consulted his soothsayers, and he gave out that they must stay twenty-nine days, another full revolution of the moon. This resolve was the destruction of the besieging army. … It was felt on both sides that all would turn on one more fight by sea, the Athenians striving to get out of the harbour, and the Syracusans striving to keep them in it. The Syracusans now blocked up the mouth of the harbour by mooring vessels across it. The Athenians left their position on the hill, a sign that the siege was over, and brought their whole force down to the shore. It was no time now for any skillful manoeuvres; the chief thing was to make the sea-fight as much as might be like a land-fight, a strange need for Athenians. … The last fight now began, 110 Athenian ships against 80 of the Syracusans and their allies. Never before did so many ships meet in so small a space. … The fight was long and confused; at last the Athenians gave way and fled to the shore. The battle and the invasion were over. Syracuse was not only saved; she had begun to take vengeance on her enemies. … The Athenians waited one day, and then set out, hoping to make their way to some safe place among the friendly Sikels in the inland country. The sick had to be left behind. … On the sixth day, after frightful toil, they determined to change their course. … They set out in two divisions, that of Nikias going first. Much better order was kept in the front division and by the time Nikias reached the river, Dêmosthenês was six miles behind. … In the morning a Syracusan force came up with the frightful news that the whole division of Dêmosthenês were prisoners. … The Athenians tried in vain to escape in the night. The next morning they set out, harassed as before, and driven wild by intolerable thirst. They at last reached the river Assinaros, which runs by the present town of Noto. There was the end. … The Athenians were so maddened by thirst that, though men were falling under darts and the water was getting muddy and bloody, they thought of nothing but drinking. … No further terms were made; most of the horsemen contrived to cut their way out; the rest were made prisoners. Most of them were embezzled by Syracusans as their private slaves; but about 7,000 men out of the two divisions were led prisoners into Syracuse. They were shut up in the stone-quarries, with no further heed than to give each man daily half a slave's allowance of food and drink. Many died; many were sold; some escaped, or were set free; the rest were after a while taken out of the quarries and set to work. The generals had made no terms for themselves. Hermokratês wished to keep them as hostages against future Athenian attempts against Sicily. Gylippos wished to take them in triumph to Sparta. The Corinthians were for putting them to death; and so it was done. … So ended the Athenian invasion of Sicily, the greatest attempt ever made by Greeks against Greeks, and that which came to the most utter failure."

E. A. Freeman, The Story of Sicily, pages 117-137.

ALSO IN: Thucydides, History; translated by B. Jowett, books 6-7 (volume 1).

See, also, SYRACUSE: B. C. 415-413.

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ATHENS: B. C. 413-412. Consequences of the Sicilian Expedition. Spartan alliance with the Persians. Plotting of Alcibiades. The Decelian War.

"At Athens, where, even before this, everyone had been in the most anxious suspense, the news of the loss of the expedition produced a consternation, which was certainly greater than that at Rome after the battle of Cannae, or that in our own days, after the battle of Jena. … 'At least 40,000 citizens, allies and slaves, had perished; and among them there may easily have been 10,000 Athenian citizens, most of whom belonged to the wealthier and higher classes. The flower of the Athenian people was destroyed, as at the time of the plague. It is impossible to say what amount of public property may have been lost; the whole fleet was gone.' The consequences of the disaster soon shewed themselves. It was to be foreseen that Chios, which had long been wavering, and whose disposition could not be trusted, would avail itself of this moment to revolt; and the cities in Asia, from which Athens derived her large revenues, were expected to do the same. It was, in fact, to be foreseen, that the four islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes, would instantly revolt. The Spartans were established at Decelea, in Attica itself, and thence ravaged the country far and wide: so that it was impossible to venture to go to the coast without a strong escort. Although there were many districts in which no Spartan was seen from one year's end to the other, yet there was no safety anywhere, except in fortified places, 'and the Athenians were constantly obliged to guard the walls of their city; and this state of things had already been going on for the last twelve months.' In this fearful situation, the Athenian people showed the same firmness as the Romans after the battle of Cannae. Had they but had one great man among them, to whom the state could have been entrusted, even more might perhaps have been done; but it is astonishing that, although there was no such man, and although the leading men were only second or third-rate persons, yet so many useful arrangements were made to meet the necessities of the case. … The most unfortunate circumstance for the Athenians was, that Alcibiades, now an enemy of his country, was living among the Spartans; for he introduced into the undertakings of the Spartans the very element which before they had been altogether deficient in, namely energy and elasticity: he urged them on to undertakings, and induced them now to send a fleet to Ionia. … Erythrae, Teos, and Miletus, one after another, revolted to the Peloponnesians, who now concluded treaties with Tissaphernes in the name of the king of Persia—Darius was then king—and in his own name as satrap; and in this manner they sacrificed to him the Asiatic Greeks. … The Athenians were an object of antipathy and implacable hatred to the Persians; they had never doubted that the Athenians were their real opponents in Greece, and were afraid of them; but they did not fear the Spartans. They knew that the Athenians would take from them not only the islands, but the towns on the main land, and were in great fear of their maritime power. Hence they joined the Spartans; and the latter were not ashamed of negotiating a treaty of subsidies with the Persians, in which Tissaphernes, in the king's name, promised the assistance of the Phoenician fleet; and large subsidies, as pay for the army. … In return for this, they renounced, in the name of the Greeks, all claims to independence for the Greek cities in Asia."

E. C. Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, volume 2, lectures 53 and 54.

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 413-412.

ALSO IN: G. Grote, History of Greece, chapter 61 (volume 7).

ATHENS: B. C. 413-412. Revolt of Chios, Miletus, Lesbos and Rhodes from Athens. Revolution of Samos.

See GREECE: B. C. 413.

ATHENS: B. C. 413-411.- The Probuli. Intrigues of Alcibiades. Conspiracy against the Constitution. The Four Hundred and the Five Thousand.

Immediately after the dreadful calamity at Syracuse became known, "extraordinary measures were adopted by the people; a number of citizens of advanced age were formed into a deliberative and executive body under the name of Probuli, and empowered to fit out a fleet. Whether this laid the foundation for oligarchical machinations or not, those aged men were unable to bring back men's minds to their former course; the prosecution of the Hermocopidæ had been most mischievous in its results; various secret associations had sprung up and conspired to reap advantage to themselves from the distress and embarrassment of the state; the indignation caused by the infuriated excesses of the people during that trial, possibly here, as frequently happened in other Grecian states, determined the more respectable members of the community to guard against the recurrence of similar scenes in future, by the establishment of an aristocracy. Lastly, the watchful malice of Alcibiades, who was the implacable enemy of that populace, to whose blind fury he had been sacrificed, baffled all attempts to restore confidence and tranquillity, and there is no doubt that, whilst he kept up a correspondence with his partisans at home, he did everything in his power to increase the perplexity and distress of his native city from without, in order that he might be recalled to provide for its safety and defence. A favourable opportunity for the execution of his plans presented itself in the fifth year of his exile, Ol. 92. 1; 411. B. C.; as he had incurred the suspicion of the Spartans, and stood high in the favour of Tissaphernes, the Athenians thought that his intercession might enable them to obtain assistance from the Persian king. The people in Athens were headed by one of his most inveterate enemies, Androcles; and he well knew that all attempts to effect his return would be fruitless, until this man and the other demagogues were removed. Hence Alcibiades entered into negotiations with the commanders of the Athenian fleet at Samos, respecting the establishment of an oligarchical constitution, not from any attachment to that form of government in itself, but solely with the view of promoting his own ends. Phrynichus and Pisander were equally insincere in their co-operation with Alcibiades. … Their plan was that the latter should reconcile the people to the change in the constitution which he wished to effect, by promising to obtain them the assistance of the great king; but they alone resolved to reap the benefit of his exertions. Pisander took upon himself to manage the Athenian populace. It was in truth no slight undertaking to attempt to overthrow a democracy of a hundred and twenty years' standing, and of intense development; but most of the able bodied citizens were absent with the fleet, whilst such as were still in the city were confounded by the imminence of the danger from without; on the other hand, the prospect of succour from the Persian king doubtless had some weight with them, and they possibly felt some symptoms of returning affection for their former favourite Alcibiades. Nevertheless, Pisander and his accomplices employed craft and perfidy to accomplish their designs; the people were not persuaded or convinced, but entrapped into compliance with their measures. Pisander gained over to his purpose the above named clubs, and induced the people to send him with ten plenipotentiaries to the navy at Samos. In the mean time the rest of the conspirators prosecuted the work of remodelling the constitution."

W. Wachsmuth, History Antiquities of the Greeks, volume 2, pages 252-255.

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The people, or an assembly cleverly made up and manipulated to represent the people, were induced to vote all the powers of government into the hands of a council of Four Hundred, of which council the citizens appointed only five members. Those five chose ninety-five more, to make one hundred, and each of that hundred then chose three colleagues. The conspirators thus easily made up the Four Hundred to their liking, from their own ranks. This council was to convene an assembly of Five Thousand citizens, whenever it saw fit to do so. But when news of this constitutional change reached the army at Samos, where the Athenian headquarters for the Ionian war were fixed, the citizen soldiers refused to submit to it—repudiated it altogether—and organized themselves as an independent state. The ruling spirit among them was Thrasybulus, and his influence brought about a reconciliation with Alcibiades, then an exile sheltered at the Persian court. Alcibiades was recalled by the army and placed at its head. Presently a reaction at Athens ensued, after the oligarchical party had given signs of treasonable communication with Sparta, and in June the people assembled in the Pnyx and reasserted their sovereignty. "The Council was deposed, and the supreme sovereignty of the state restored to the people—not, however, to the entire multitude; for the principle was retained of reserving full civic rights to a committee of men of a certain amount of property; and, as the lists of the Five Thousand had never been drawn up, it was decreed, in order that the desired end might be speedily reached, to follow the precedent of similar institutions in other states and to constitute all Athenians able to furnish themselves with a complete military equipment from their own resources, full citizens, with the rights of voting and participating in the government. Thus the name of the Five Thousand had now become a very inaccurate designation; but it was retained, because men had in the last few months become habituated to it. At the same time, the abolition of pay for civic offices and functions was decreed, not merely as a temporary measure, but as a fundamental principle of the new commonwealth, which the citizens were bound by a solemn oath to maintain. This reform was, upon the whole, a wise combination of aristocracy and democracy; and, according to the opinion of Thucydides, the best constitution which the Athenians had hitherto possessed. On the motion of Critias, the recall, of Alcibiades was decreed about the same time; and a deputation was despatched to Samos, to accomplish the union between army and city."

E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 5.

Most of the leaders of the Four Hundred fled to the Spartan camp at Decelia. Two were taken, tried and executed.

Thucydides, History, book 8, section 48-97.

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 413-412.

ALSO IN: V. Duruy, History of Greece, chapter 26 (volume 3).

ATHENS: B. C. 411-407. Victories at Cynossema and Abydos. Exploits of Alcibiades. His triumphal return. His appointment to command. His second deposition and exile.

See GREECE: B. C. 411-407.

ATHENS: B. C. 406. The Peloponnesian War: Battle and victory of Arginusae. Condemnation and execution of the Generals.

See GREECE: B. C. 406; and above: B. C. 424-406.

ATHENS: B. C. 405. The Peloponnesian War: Decisive defeat at Aigospotamoi.

See GREECE: B. C. 405.

ATHENS: B. C. 404. The Surrender to Lysander.

After the battle of Ægospotami (August, B. C. 405), which destroyed their navy, and cut off nearly all supplies to the city by sea, as the Spartans at Decelea had long cut off supplies upon the land side, the Athenians had no hope. They waited in terror and despair for their enemies to close in upon them. The latter were in no haste, for they were sure of their prey. Lysander, the victor at Ægospotami, came leisurely from the Hellespont, receiving on his way the surrender of the cities subject or allied to Athens, and placing Spartan harmosts and garrisons in them, with the local oligarchs established uniformly in power. About November he reached the Saronic gulf and blockaded the Athenian harbor of Piræus, while an overwhelming Peloponnesian land force, under the Lacedæmonian king Pausanias, arrived simultaneously in Attica and encamped at the gates of the city. The Athenians had no longer any power except the power to endure, and that they exercised for more than three months, mainly resisting the demand that their Long Walls—the walls which protected the connection of the city with its harbors—should be thrown down. But when famine had thinned the ranks of the citizens and broken the spirit of the survivors, they gave up. "There was still a high-spirited minority who entered their protest and preferred death by famine to such insupportable disgrace. The large majority, however, accepted them [the terms] and the acceptance was made known to Lysander. It was on the 16th day of the Attic month Munychion,—about the middle or end of March,—that this victorious commander sailed into the Peiræus, twenty-seven years, almost exactly, after the surprise of Platæa by the Thebans, which opened the Peloponnesian War. Along with him came the Athenian exiles, several of whom appear to have been serving with his army and assisting him with their counsel."

G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 65 (volume 8).

The Long Walls and the fortifications of Piræus were demolished, and then followed the organization of an oligarchical government at Athens, resulting in the reign of terror under "The Thirty."

E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 5.

ALSO IN: Xenophon, Hellenics, book 2, chapter 2.

Plutarch, Lysander.

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ATHENS: B. C. 404-403. The tyranny of the Thirty. The Year of Anarchy.

In the summer of B. C. 404, following the siege and surrender of Athens, and the humiliating close of the long Peloponnesian War, the returned leaders of the oligarchical party, who had been in exile, succeeded with the help of their Spartan friends, in overthrowing the democratic constitution of the city and establishing themselves in power. The revolution was accomplished at a public assembly of citizens, in the presence of Lysander, the victorious Lacedæmonian admiral, whose fleet in the Piraeus lay ready to support his demands. "In this assembly, Dracontidas, a scoundrel upon whom repeated sentences had been passed, brought forward a motion, proposing the transfer of the government into the hands of Thirty persons; and Theramenes supported this proposal which he declared to express the wishes of Sparta. Even now, these speeches produced a storm of indignation; after all the acts of violence which Athens had undergone, she yet contained men outspoken enough to venture to defend the constitution, and to appeal to the fact that the capitulation sanctioned by both parties contained no provision as to the internal affairs of Athens. But, hereupon, Lysander himself came forward and spoke to the citizens without reserve, like one who was their absolute master. … By such means the motion of Dracontidas was passed; but only a small number of unpatriotic and cowardly citizens raised their hands in token of assent. All better patriots contrived to avoid participation in this vote. Next, ten members of the government were chosen by Critias and his colleagues [the Critias of Plato's Dialogues, pupil of Socrates, and now the violent and blood-thirsty leader of the anti-democratic revolution], ten by Theramenes, the confidential friend of Lysander, and finally ten out of the assembled multitude, probably by a free vote; and this board of Thirty was hereupon established as the supreme government authority by a resolution of the assembly present. Most of the members of the new government had formerly been among the Four Hundred, and had therefore long pursued a common course of action." The Thirty Tyrants so placed in power were masters of Athens for eight months, and executed their will without conscience or mercy, having a garrison of Spartan soldiers in the Acropolis to support them. They were also sustained by a picked body of citizens, "the Three Thousand," who bore arms while other citizens were stripped of every weapon. Large numbers of the more patriotic and high-spirited Athenians had escaped from their unfortunate city and had taken refuge, chiefly at Thebes, the old enemy of Athens, but now sympathetic in her distress. At Thebes these exiles organized themselves under Thrasybulus and Anytus, and determined to expel the tyrants and to recover their homes. They first seized a strong post at Phyle, in Attica, where they gained in numbers rapidly, and from which point they were able in a few weeks to advance and occupy the Piræus. When the troops of The Thirty came out to attack them, they drew back to the adjacent height of Munychia and there fought a battle which delivered their city from the Tyrants. Critias, the master-spirit of the usurpation, was slain; the more violent of his colleagues took refuge at Eleusis, and Athens, for a time, remained under the government of a new oligarchical Board of Ten; while Thrasybulus and the democratic liberators maintained their headquarters at Munychia. All parties waited the action of Sparta. Lysander, the Spartan general, marched an army into Attica to restore the tyranny which was of his own creating; but one of the two Spartan kings, Pausanias, intervened, assumed the command in his own person, and applied his efforts to the arranging of peace between the Athenian parties. The result was a restoration of the democratic constitution of the Attic state, with some important reforms. Several of The Thirty were put to death,—treacherously, it was said,—but an amnesty was extended to all their partisans. The year in which they and The Ten controlled affairs was termed in the official annals of the city the Year of Anarchy, and its magistrates were not recognized.

E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 4, chapter 5, and book 5, chapter 1.

ALSO IN: Xenophon, Hellenics, book 2, chapters 3-4.

C. Sankey, The Spartan and Theban Supremacies. chapters 2-3.

ATHENS: B. C. 395-387. Confederacy against Sparta. Alliance with Persia. The Corinthian War. Conon's rebuilding of the Long Walls. Athenian independence restored. The Peace of Antalcidas.

See GREECE: B. C. 399-387.

ATHENS: B. C. 378-371. Brief alliance with Thebes against Sparta.

See GREECE: B. C. 379-371.

ATHENS: B. C. 378-357. The New Confederacy and the Social War.

Upon the Liberation of Thebes and the signs that began to appear of the decline of Spartan power—during the year of the archonship of Nausinicus, B. C. 378-7, which was made memorable at Athens by various movements of political regeneration,—the organization of a new Confederacy was undertaken, analogous to the Confederacy of Delos, formed a century before. Athens was to be, "not the ruling capital, but only the directing city in possession of the primacy, the seat of the federal council. … Callistratus was in a sense the Aristides of the new confederation and doubtless did much to bring about an agreement; it was likewise his work that, in place of the 'tributes' of odious memory, the payments necessary to the existence of the confederation were introduced under the gentler name of 'contributions.' … Amicable relations were resumed with the Cyclades, Rhodes and Perinthus; in other words, the ancient union of navies was at once renewed upon a large scale and in a wide extent. Even such states joined it as had hitherto never stood in confederate relations with Athens, above all Thebes."

E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 6, chapter 1.

This second confederacy renewed much of the prosperity and influence of Athens for a brief period of about twenty years. But in 357 B. C., four important members of the Confederacy, namely, Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium leagued themselves in revolt, with the aid of Mausolus, prince of Caria, and an inglorious war ensued, known as the Social War, which lasted three years. Athens was forced at last to assent to the secession of the four revolted cities and to recognize their independence, which greatly impaired her prestige and power, just at the time when she was called upon to resist the encroachments of Philip of Macedonia.

C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 42.

ATHENS: B. C. 370-362. Alliance with Sparta against Thebes. Battle of Mantinea.

See GREECE: B. C. 371-362.

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ATHENS: B. C. 359-338. The collision with Philip of Macedon. The Policy of Demosthenes and Policy of Phocion.

"A new period opens with the growth of the Macedonian power under Philip (359-336 B. C.) We are here chiefly concerned to notice the effect on the City-State [of Athens], not only of the strength and policy of this new power, but also of the efforts of the Greeks themselves to counteract it. At the time of Philip's accession the so-called Theban supremacy had just practically ended with the death of Epaminondias. There was now a kind of balance of power between the three leading States, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, no one of which was greatly stronger than the others; and such a balance could easily be worked upon by any great power from without. Thus when Macedon came into the range of Greek politics, under a man of great diplomatic as well as military capacity, who, like a Czar of to-day, wished to secure a firm footing on the sea-board of the Ægean [see GREECE: B. C. 359-358], she found her work comparatively easy. The strong imperial policy of Philip found no real antagonist except at Athens. Weak as she was, and straitened by the break-up of her new confederacy, Athens could still produce men of great talent and energy; but she was hampered by divided counsels. Two Athenians of this period seem to represent the currents of Greek political thought, now running in two different directions. Demosthenes represents the cause of the City-State in this age, of a union, that is, of perfectly free Hellenic cities against the common enemy. Phocion represents the feeling, which seems to have been long growing up among thinking men at Athens, that the City-State was no longer what it had been, and could no longer stand by itself; that what was needed was a general Hellenic peace, and possibly even an arbiter from without, an arbiter not wholly un-Hellenic like the Persian, yet one who might succeed in stilling the fatal jealousies of the leading States. … The efforts of Demosthenes to check Philip fall into two periods divided by the peace of Philocrates in 346 B. C. In the first of these he is acting chiefly with Athens alone; Philip is to him not so much the common enemy of Greece as the dangerous rival of Athens in the north. His whole mind was given to the internal reform of Athens so as to strengthen her against Philip. In her relation to other Greek States he perhaps hardly saw beyond a balance of power. … After 346 his Athenian feeling seems to become more distinctly Hellenic. But what could even such a man as Demosthenes do with the Hellas of that day? He could not force on the Greeks a real and permanent union; he could but urge new alliances. His strength was spent in embassies with this object, embassies too often futile. No alliance could save Greece from the Macedonian power, as subsequent events plainly showed. What was needed was a real federal union between the leading States, with a strong central controlling force; and Demosthenes' policy was hopeless just because Athens could never be the centre of such a union, nor could any other city. Demosthenes is thus the last, and in some respects the most heroic champion of the old Greek instinct for autonomy. He is the true child of the City-State, but the child of its old age and decrepitude. He still believes in Athens, and it is on Athens that all his hopes are based. He looks on Philip as one who must inevitably be the foe alike of Athens and of Greece. He seems to think that he can be beaten off as Xerxes was, and to forget that even Xerxes almost triumphed over the divisions of the Greek States, and that Philip is a nearer, a more prominent, and a far less barbarian foe. … Phocion was the somewhat odd exponent of the practical side of a school of thought which had been gaining strength in Greece for some time past. This school was now brought into prominence by the rise of Macedon, and came to have a marked influence on the history of the City-State. It began with the philosophers, and with the idea that the philosopher may belong to the world as well as to a particular city. … Athens was far more open to criticism now than in the days of Pericles; and a cynical dislike betrays itself in the Republic for the politicians of the day and their tricks, and a longing for a strong government of reason. … Aristotle took the facts of city life as they were and showed how they might be made the most of. … To him Macedon was assuredly not wholly barbarian; and war to the death with her kings could not have been to him as natural or desirable as it seemed to Demosthenes. And though he has nothing to tell us of Macedon, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that his desire was for peace and internal reform, even if it were under the guarantee of the northern power. … Of this philosophical view of Greek politics Phocion was in a manner the political exponent. But his policy was too much a negative one; it might almost be called one of indifferentism, like the feeling of Lessing and Goethe in Germany's most momentous period. So far as we know, Phocion never proposed an alliance of a durable kind, either Athenian or Hellenic, with Macedon; he was content to be a purely restraining influence. Athens had been constantly at war since 432; her own resources were of the weakest; there was little military skill to be found in her, no reserve force, much talk, but little solid courage. Athens was vulnerable at various points, and could not possibly defend more than one at a time, therefore Phocion despaired of war, and the event proved him right. The faithfulness of the Athenians towards him is a proof that they also instinctively felt that he was right. But he was wanting on the practical and creative side, and never really dominated either Athens, Greece, or Philip. … A policy of resistance found the City-State too weak to defend itself; a policy of inaction would land it in a Macedonian empire which would still further weaken its remaining vitality. The first policy, that of Demosthenes, did actually result in disaster and the presence of Macedonian garrisons in Greek cities. The second policy then took its place, and initiated a new era for Greece. After the fatal battle of Chæronea (338 B. C.) Philip assumed the position of leader of the Greek cities."

W. W. Fowler, The City-State of the Greeks and Romans, chapter 10.

See, also, GREECE: 357-336.

ATHENS: B. C. 340. Alliance with Byzantium against Philip of Macedon.

See GREECE: B. C. 340.

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ATHENS: B. C. 336-322. End of the Struggle with the Macedonians. Fall of Democracy. Death of Demosthenes. Athenian decline.

"An unexpected incident changes the whole aspect of things. Philip falls the victim of assassination; and a youth, who as yet is but little known, is his successor. Immediately Demosthenes institutes a second alliance of the Greeks; but Alexander suddenly appears before Thebes; the terrible vengeance which he here takes, instantly destroys the league; Demosthenes, Lycurgus, and several of their supporters, are required to be delivered up: but Demades is at that time able to settle the difficulty and to appease the king. His strength was therefore enfeebled as Alexander departed for Asia; he begins to raise his head once more when Sparta attempts to throw off the yoke: but under Antipater he is overpowered. Yet it was about this very time that by the most celebrated of his discourses he gained the victory over the most eloquent of his adversaries; and Æschines was forced to depart from Athens. But this seems only to have the more embittered his enemies, the leaders of the Macedonian party; and they soon found an opportunity of preparing his downfall. When Harpalus, a fugitive from the army of Alexander, came with his treasures to Athens, and the question arose, whether he could be permitted to remain there, Demosthenes was accused of having been corrupted by his money, at least to be silent. This was sufficient to procure the imposition of a fine; and as this was not paid, he was thrown into prison. From thence he succeeded in escaping; but to the man who lived only for his country, exile was no less an evil than imprisonment. He resided for the most part in Ægina and at Trœzen, from whence he looked with moist eyes toward the neighbouring Attica. Suddenly and unexpectedly a new ray of light broke through the clouds. Tidings were brought, that Alexander was dead. The moment of deliverance seemed at hand; the excitement pervaded every Grecian state; the ambassadors of the Athenians passed through the cities; Demosthenes joined himself to the number and exerted all his eloquence and power to unite them against Macedonia. In requital for such services, the people decreed his return; and years of sufferings were at last followed by a day of exalted compensation. A galley was sent to Ægina to bring back the advocate of liberty. … It was a momentary glimpse of the sun, which still darker clouds were soon to conceal. Antipater and Craterus were victorious; and with them the Macedonian party in Athens: Demosthenes and his friends were numbered among the accused, and at the instigation of Demades were condemned to die. … Demosthenes had escaped to the island Calauria in the vicinity of Trœzen; and took refuge in the temple of Neptune. It was to no purpose that Archias, the satellite of Antipater, urged him to surrender himself under promise of pardon. He pretended he wished to write something; bit the quill, and swallowed the poison contained in it."

A. H. L. Heeren, Reflections on the Politics of Ancient Greece, translated by G. Bancroft, pages 278-280.

See, also, on the "Lamian War," the suppression of Democracy at Athens, and the expulsion of poor citizens, GREECE: B. C. 323-322.

"With the decline of political independence, … the mental powers of the nation received a fatal blow. No longer knit together by a powerful esprit de corps, the Greeks lost the habit of working for the common weal; and, for the most part, gave themselves up to the petty interests of home life and their own personal troubles. Even the better disposed were too much occupied in opposing the low tone and corruption of the times, to be able to devote themselves, in their moments of relaxation, to a free and speculative consideration of things. What could be expected in such an age, but that philosophy would take a decidedly practical turn, if indeed it were studied at all? And yet such were the political antecedents of the Stoic and Epicurean systems of philosophy. … Stoic apathy, Epicurean self-satisfaction, and Sceptic imperturbability, were the doctrines which responded to the political helplessness of the age. They were the doctrines, too, which met with the most general acceptance. The same political helplessness produced the sinking of national distinctions in the feeling of a common humanity, and the separation of morals from politics which characterise the philosophy of the Alexandrian and Roman period. The barriers between nations, together with national independence, had been swept away. East and West, Greeks and barbarians, were united in large empires, being thus thrown together, and brought into close contact on every possible point. Philosophy might teach that all men were of one blood, that all were equally citizens of one empire, that morality rested on the relation of man to his fellow men, independently of nationalities and of social ranks; but in so doing she was only explicitly stating truths which had been already realised in part, and which were in part corollaries from the existing state of society."

E. Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics, pages 16-18.

"What we have said concerning the evidence of comedy about the age of the first Diadochi amounts to this: Menander and his successors—they lasted barely two generations—printed in a few stereotypes a small and very worthless society at Athens. There was no doubt a similar set of people at Corinth, at Thebes, possibly even in the city of Lycurgus. These people, idle, for the most part rich, and in good society, spent their earlier years in debauchery, and their later in sentimental reflections and regrets. They had no serious object in life, and regarded the complications of a love affair as more interesting than the rise and fall of kingdoms or the gain and loss of a nation's liberty. They were like the people of our day who spend all their time reading novels from the libraries, and who can tolerate these eternal variations in twaddle not only without disgust but with interest. They were surrounded with slaves, on the whole more intelligent and interesting, for in the first place slaves were bound to exercise their brains, and in the second they had a great object—liberty—to give them a keen pursuit in life. The relations of the sexes in this set or portion of society were bad, owing to the want of education in the women, and the want of earnestness in the men. As a natural consequence a class was found, apart from household slaves, who took advantage of these defects, and, bringing culture to fascinate unprincipled men, established those relations which brought estragements, if not ruin, into the home life of the day."

J. P. Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, pages 123-124.

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"The amount of Persian wealth poured into Greece by the accidents of the conquest, not by its own industries, must have produced a revolution in prices not since equalled except by the influx of the gold of the Aztecs and Incas into Spain. I have already pointed out how this change must have pressed upon poor people in Greece who did not share in the plunder. The price of even necessary and simple things must have often risen beyond their means. For the adventurers brought home large fortunes, and the traders and purveyors of the armies made them; and with these Eastern fortunes must have come in the taste for all the superior comforts and luxuries which they found among the Persian grandees. Not only the appointments of the table, in the way of plate and pottery, but the very tastes and flavours of Greek cookery must have profited by comparison with the knowledge of the East. So also the furniture, especially in carpets and hangings, must have copied Persian fashion, just as we still affect oriental stuffs and designs. It was not to be expected that the example of so many regal courts and so much royal ceremony should not affect those in contact with them. These influences were not only shown in the vulgar 'braggart captain,' who came to show off his sudden wealth in impudent extravagance among his old townspeople, but in the ordinary life of rich young men. So I imagine the personal appointments of Alcibiades, which were the talk of Greece in his day, would have appeared poor and mean beside those of Aratus, or of the generation which preceded him. Pictures and statues began to adorn private houses, and not temples and public buildings only—a change beginning to show itself in Demosthenes's day, but coming in like a torrent with the opening of Greece to the Eastern world. It was noticed that Phocion's house at Athens was modest in size and furniture, but even this was relieved from shabbiness by the quaint wall decoration of shining plates of bronze—a fashion dating from prehistoric times, but still admired for its very antiquity."

J. P. Mahaffy, Greek Life and Thought, pages 105-106.

"The modern historians of Greece are much divided on the question where a history of Hellas ought to end. Curtius stops with the battle of Chaeroncia and the prostration of Athens before the advancing power of Macedon. Grote narrates the campaigns of Alexander, but stops short at the conclusion of the Lamian War, when Greece had in vain tried to shake off the supremacy of his generals. Thirlwall brings his narrative down to the time of Mummius, the melancholy sack of Corinth and the constitution of Achaia as a Roman province. Of these divergent views we regard that of the German historian as the most correct. … The historic sense of Grote did not exclude prejudices, and in this case he was probably led astray by political bias. At the close of his ninety-sixth chapter, after mentioning the embassies sent by the degenerate Athenians to King Ptolemy, King Lysimachus, and Antipater, he throws down his pen in disgust, 'and with sadness and humiliation brings his narrative to a close.' Athens was no longer free and no longer dignified, and so Mr. Grote will have done with Greece at the very moment when the new Comedy was at its height, when the Museum was founded at Alexandria, when the plays of Euripides were acted at Babylon and Cabul, and every Greek soldier of fortune carried a diadem in his baggage. Surely the historian of Greece ought either to have stopped when the iron hand of Philip of Macedon put an end to the liberties and the political wranglings of Hellas, or else persevered to the time when Rome and Parthia crushed Greek power between them, like a ship between two icebergs. No doubt his reply would be, that he declined to regard the triumph abroad of Macedonian arms as a continuation of the history of Hellas. … The truth is, that the history of Greece consists of two parts, in every respect contrasted one with the other. The first recounts the stories of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, and ends with the destruction of Thebes and the subjugation of Athens and Sparta. The Hellas of which it speaks is a cluster of autonomous cities in the Peloponnesus, the Islands, and Northern Greece, together with their colonies scattered over the coasts of Italy, Sicily, Thrace, the Black Sea, Asia Minor, and Africa. These cities care only to be independent, or at most to lord it over one another. Their political institutions, their religious ceremonies, their customs, are civic and local. Language, commerce, a common Pantheon, and a common art and poetry are the ties that bind them together. In its second phase, Greek history begins with the expedition of Alexander. It reveals to us the Greek as everywhere lord of the barbarian, as foundling kingdoms and federal systems, as the instructor of all mankind in art and science, and the spreader of civil and civilized life over the known world. In the first period of her history Greece is forming herself, in her second she is educating the world. We will venture to borrow from the Germans a convenient expression, and call the history of independent Greece the history of Hellas, that of imperial Greece the history of Hellenism. … The Athens of Pericles was dictator among the cities which had joined her alliance. Corinth, Sparta, Thebes, were each the political head of a group of towns, but none of the three admitted these latter to an equal share in their councils, or adopted their political views. Even in the Olynthian League, the city of Olynthus occupied a position quite superior to that of the other cities. But the Greek cities had not tried the experiment of an alliance on equal terms. This was now attempted by some of the leading cities of the Peloponnese, and the result was the Achaean League, whose history sheds a lustre on the last days of independent Greece, and whose generals will bear comparison with the statesmen of any Greek Republic [sec GREECE: B. C. 280-146]. … On the field of Sellasia the glorious hopes of Cleomenes were wrecked, and the recently reformed Sparta was handed over to a succession of bloodthirsty tyrants, never again to emerge from obscurity. But to the Achaeans themselves the interference of Macedon was little less fatal. Henceforth a Macedonian garrison occupied Corinth, which had been one of the chief cities of the League; and King Antigonus Doson was the recognized arbiter in all disputes of the Peloponnesian Greeks. … In Northern Greece a strange contrast presented itself. The historic races of the Athenians and Boeotians languished in peace, obscurity, and luxury. With them every day saw something added to the enjoyments and elegancies of life, and every day politics drifted more and more into the background. On the other hand, the rude semi-Greeks of the West, Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Epirotes, to whose manhood the repulse of the Gauls was mainly due, came to the front and showed the bold spirit of Greeks divorced from the finer faculties of the race. The Acarnanians formed a league somewhat on the plan of the Achaean. {183} But they were overshadowed by their neighbors the Aetolians, whose union was of a different character. It was the first time that there had been formed in Hellas a state framed in order to prey upon its neighbours. … In the course of the Peloponnesian War Greek religion began to lose its hold on the Greeks. This was partly the work of the sophists and philosophers, who sought more lofty and moral views of Deity than were furnished by the tales of popular mythology. Still more it resulted from growing materialism among the people, who saw more and more of their immediate and physical needs, and less and less of the underlying spiritual elements in life. But though philosophy and materialism had made the religion of Hellas paler and feebler, they had not altered its nature or expanded it. It still remained essentially national, almost tribal. When, therefore, Greeks and Macedonians suddenly found themselves masters of the nations of the East, and in close contact with a hundred forms of religion, an extraordinary and rapid change took place in their religions ideas. In religion, as in other matters, Egypt set to the world the example of prompt fusion of the ideas of Greeks and natives. … Into Greece proper, in return for her population which flowed out, there flowed in a crowd of foreign deities. Isis was especially welcomed at Athens, where she found many votaries. In every cult the more mysterious elements were made more of, and the brighter and more materialistic side passed by. Old statues which had fallen somewhat into contempt in the days of Pheidias and Praxiteles were restored to their places and received extreme veneration, not as beautiful, but as old and strange. On the coins of the previous period the representations of deities had been always the best that the die-cutter could frame, taking as his models the finest contemporary sculpture; but henceforth we often find them strange, uncouth figures, remnants of a period of struggling early art, like the Apollo at Amyclae, or the Hera of Samos. … In the intellectual life of Athens there was still left vitality enough to formulate the two most complete expressions of the ethical ideas of the times, the doctrines of the Stoics and the Epicureans, towards one or the other of which all educated minds from that day to this have been drawn. No doubt our knowledge of these doctrines, being largely drawn from the Latin writers and their Greek contemporaries, is somewhat coloured and unjust. With the Romans a system of philosophy was considered mainly in its bearing upon conduct, whence the ethical elements in Stoicism and Epicureanism have been by their Roman adherents so thrust into the foreground, that we have almost lost sight of the intellectual elements, which can have had little less importance in the eyes of the Greeks. Notwithstanding, the rise of the two philosophies must be held to mark a new era in the history of thought, an era when the importance of conduct was for the first time recognized by the Greeks. It is often observed that the ancient Greeks were more modern than our own ancestors of the Middle Ages. But it is less generally recognized how far more modern than the Greeks of Pericles were the Greeks of Aratus. In very many respects the age of Hellenism and our own age present remarkable similarity. In both there appears a sudden increase in the power over material nature, arising alike from the greater accessibility of all parts of the world and from the rapid development of the sciences which act upon the physical forces of the world. In both this spread of science and power acts upon religion with a dissolving and, if we may so speak, centrifugal force, driving some men to take refuge in the most conservative forms of faith, some to fly to new creeds and superstitions, some to drift into unmeasured scepticism. In both the facility of moving from place to place, and finding a distant home, tends to dissolve the closeness of civic and family life, and to make the individual rather than the family or the city the unit of social life. And in the family relations, in the character of individuals, in the state of morality, in the condition of art, we find at both periods similar results from the similar causes we have mentioned."

P. Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, chapter 15.

ATHENS: B. C. 317-316. Siege by Polysperchon. Democracy restored. Execution of Phocion. Demetrius of Phaleron at the head of the government.

See GREECE: B. C. 321-312.

ATHENS: B.C. 307-197. Under Demetrius Poliorcetes and the Antigonids.

See GREECE: B. C.307-197.

ATHENS: B. C. 288-263. Twenty years of Independence. Siege and subjugation by Antigonus Gonatas.

When Demetrius Poliorcetes lost the Macedonian throne, B. C. 288, his fickle Athenian subjects and late worshippers rose against his authority, drove his garrisons from the Museum and the Piræus and abolished the priesthood they had consecrated to him. Demetrius gathered an army from some quarter and laid siege to the city, but without success. The Athenians went so far as to invite Pyrrhus, the warrior king of Epirus, to assist them against him. Pyrrhus came and Demetrius retired. The dangerous ally contented himself with a visit to the Acropolis as a worshipper, and left Athens in possession, undisturbed, of her freshly gained freedom. It was enjoyed after a fashion for twenty years, at the end of which period, B. C. 268, Antigonus Gonatas, the son of Demetrius, having regained the Macedonian crown, reasserted his claim on Athens, and the city was once more besieged. The Lacedæmonians and Ptolemy of Egypt both gave some ineffectual aid to the Athenians, and the siege, interrupted on several occasions, was prolonged until B. C. 263, when Antigonus took possession of the Acropolis, the fortified Museum and the Piræus as a master (see MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 277-244). This was sometimes called the Chremonidean War, from the name of a patriotic Athenian who took the most prominent part in the long defence of his city.

C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 61.

ATHENS: B. C. 229. Liberation by the Achaian League.

See GREECE: B. C. 280-146.

ATHENS: B. C. 200. Vandalism of the second Macedonian Philip.

In the year B. C. 200 the Macedonian king, Philip, made an attempt to surprise Athens and failed. "He then encamped in the outskirts, and proceeded to wreak his vengeance on the Athenians, as he had indulged it at Thermus and Pergamus. He destroyed or defaced all the monuments of religion and of art, all the sacred and pleasant places which adorned the suburbs. The Academy, the Lycenm, and Cynosarges, with their temples, schools, groves and gardens, were all wasted with fire. Not even the sepulchres were spared."

C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapter 64.

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ATHENS: B. C. 197-A. D. 138. Under Roman rule.

"Athens … affords the disheartening picture of a commonwealth pampered by the supreme power, and financially as well us morally ruined. By rights it ought to have found itself in a flourishing condition. … No city of antiquity elsewhere possessed a domain of its own, such as was Attica, of about 700 square miles. … But even beyond Attica they retained what they possessed, as well after the Mithridatic War, by favour of Sulla, as after the Pharsalian battle, in which they had taken the side of Pompeius, by the favour of Cæsar;—he asked them only how often they would still ruin themselves and trust to be saved by the renown of their ancestors. To the city there still belonged not merely the territory, formerly possessed by Haliartus, in Boeotia, but also on their own coast Salamis, the old starting-point of their dominion of the sea, and in the Thracian Sea the lucrative islands Scyros, Lemnos, and Imbros, as well as Delos in the Aegean. … Of the further grants, which they had the skill to draw by flattery from Antoninus, Augustus, against whom they had taken part, took from them certainly Aegina and Eretria in Euboea, but they were allowed to retain the smaller islands of the Thracian Sea. … Hadrian, moreover, gave to them the best part of the great island of Cephallenia in the Ionian Sea. It was only by the Emperor Severus, who bore them no good will, that a portion of these extraneous possessions was withdrawn from them. Hadrian further granted to the Athenians the delivery of a certain quantity of grain at the expense of the empire, and by the extension of this privilege, hitherto reserved for the capital, acknowledged Athens, as it were, as another metropolis. Not less was the blissful institute of alimentary endowments, which Italy had enjoyed since Trajan's time, extended by Hadrian to Athens, and the capital requisite for this purpose certainly presented to the Athenians from his purse. … Yet the community was in constant distress."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 8, chapter 7.

ALSO IN: J. P. Mahaffy, The Greek World under Roman Sway.

See, also, GREECE: B. C. 146-A. D. 180.

ATHENS: B. C. 87-86. Siege and capture by Sulla. Massacre of citizens. Pillage and depopulation. Lasting injuries.

The early successes of Mithridates of Pontus, in his savage war with the Romans, included a general rising in his favor among the Greeks [see MITHRIDATIC WARS], supported by the fleets of the Pontic king and by a strong invading army. Athens and the Piræus were the strongholds of the Greek revolt, and at Athens an adventurer named Aristion, bringing from Mithridates a body-guard of 2,000 soldiers, made himself tyrant of the city. A year passed before Rome, distracted by the beginnings of civil war, could effectively interfere. Then Sulla came (B. C. 87) and laid siege to the Piræus, where the principal Pontic force was lodged, while he shut up Athens by blockade. In the following March, Athens was starved to such weakness that the Romans entered almost unopposed and killed and plundered with no mercy; but the buildings of the city suffered little harm at their hands. The siege of the Piræus was carried on for some weeks longer, until Sulla had driven the Pontic forces from every part except Munychia, and that they evacuated in no long time.

W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 7, chapter 17.

"Athens was … taken by assault. … The majority of the citizens was slain; the carnage was so fearfully great as to become memorable even in that age of bloodshed; the private movable property was seized by the soldiery, and Sylla assumed some merit to himself for not committing the rifled houses to the flames. … The fate of the Piræus, which he utterly destroyed, was more severe than that of Athens. From Sylla's campaign in Greece the commencement of the ruin and depopulation of the country is to be dated. The destruction of property caused by his ravages in Attica was so great that Athens from that time lost its commercial as well as its political importance. The race of Athenian citizens was almost extirpated, and a new population, composed of a heterogeneous mass of settlers, received the right of citizenship."

G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chapter 1.

ATHENS: A. D. 54 (?). The Visit of St. Paul. Planting of Christianity.

"When the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was proclaimed of Paul at Berea also, they came thither likewise, stirring up and troubling the multitude. And then immediately the brethren sent forth Paul to go as far as to the sea: and Silas and Timotheus abode there still. But they that conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens; and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus that they should come to him with all speed, they departed. Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him, as he beheld the city full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews, and the devout persons, and in the market place every day with them that met with him. And certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, what would this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached Jesus and the resurrection. And they took hold of him, and brought him unto the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new teaching is, which is spoken by thee? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.) And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an Unknown God.' What therefore ye worship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you. … Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, We will hear thee concerning this yet again. Thus Paul went out from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them."

Acts of the Apostles, Revised Version, chapter 17.

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"Consider the difficulties which must have beset the planting of the Church in Athens. If the burning zeal of the great Apostle ever permitted him to feel diffidence in addressing an assembly, he may well have felt it when he addressed on Mars' Hill for the first time an Athenian crowd. No doubt the Athens of his time was in her decay, inferior in opulence and grandeur to many younger cities. Yet even to a Jew, provided he had received some educational impressions beyond the fanatical shibboleths of Pharisaism, there was much in that wonderful centre of intelligence to shake his most inveterate prejudices and inspire him with unwilling respect. Shorn indeed of her political greatness, deprived even of her philosophical supremacy, she still shone with a brilliant afterglow of æsthetic and intellectual prestige. Her monuments flashed on the visitor memories recent enough to dazzle his imagination. Her schools claimed and obtained even from Emperors the homage due to her unique past. Recognising her as the true nurse of Hellenism and the chief missionary of human refinement, the best spirits of the age held her worthy of admiring love not unmixed with awe. As the seat of the most brilliant and popular university, young men of talent and position flocked to her from every quarter, studied for a time within her colonnades, and carried thence the recollection of a culture which was not always deep, not always erudite, but was always and genuinely Attic. To subject to the criticism of this people a doctrine professing to come direct from God, a religion and not a philosophy, depending not on argument but on revelation, was a task of which the difficulties might seem insuperable. When we consider what the Athenian character was, this language will not seem exaggerated. Keen, subtle, capricious, satirical, sated with ideas, eager for novelty, yet with the eagerness of amused frivolity, not of the truth-seeker: critical by instinct, exquisitely sensitive to the ridiculous or the absurd, disputatious, ready to listen, yet impatient of all that was not wit, satisfied with everything in life except its shortness, and therefore hiding all references to this unwelcome fact under a veil of complacent euphemism—where could a more uncongenial soil be found for the seed of the Gospel? … To an Athenian the Jew was not so much an object of hatred (as to the Roman), nor even of contempt (as to the rest of mankind), as of absolute indifference. He was simply ignored. To the eclectic philosophy which now dominated the schools of Athens, Judaism alone among all human opinions was as if non-existent. That Athenians should be convinced by the philosophy of a Jew would be a proposition expressible in words but wholly destitute of meaning. On the other hand, the Jew was not altogether uninfluenced by Greek thought. Wide apart as the two minds were, the Hebraic proved not insensible to the charm of the Hellenic; witness the Epistle to the Hebrews, witness Philo, witness the intrusion of Greek methods of interpretation even into the text-books of Rabbinism. And it was Athens, as the quintessence of Hellas, Athens as represented by Socrates, and still more by Plato, which had gained this subtle power. And just as Judæa alone among all the Jewish communities retained its exclusiveness wholly unimpaired by Hellenism, so Athens, more than any Pagan capital, was likely to ignore or repel a faith coming in the garb of Judaism. And yet within less than a century we find this faith so well established there as to yield to the Church the good fruits of martyrdom in the person of its bishop, and of able defences in the person of three of its teachers. The early and the later fortunes of the Athenian Church are buried in oblivion; it comes but for a brief period before the scene of history. But the undying interest of that one dramatic moment when Paul proclaimed a bodily resurrection to the authors of the conception of a spiritual immortality, will always cause us to linger with a strange sympathy over every relic of the Christianity of Athens."

C. T. Cruttwell, A Literary History of Early Christianity, volume 1, book 3, chapter 4.

ALSO IN: W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson, Life and Letters of St. Paul, volume 1, chapter 10.

F. C. Baur, Paul, part 1, chapter 7 (volume 1).

On the inscription,

See E. de Pressensé, The Early Years of Christianity: The Apostolic Era, book 2, chapter 1.

ATHENS: A. D. 125-134. The works of Hadrian.

The Emperor Hadrian interested himself greatly in the venerable decaying capital of the Greeks, which he visited, or resided in, for considerable periods, several times, between A. D. 125 and 134. These visits were made important to the city by the great works of rebuilding which he undertook and supervised. Large parts of the city are thought to have been reconstructed by him, "in the open and luxurious style of Antioch and Ephesus." One quarter came to be called "Hadrianapolis," as though he had created it. Several new temples were erected at his command; but the greatest of the works of Hadrian at Athens was the completing of the vast national temple, the Olympieum, the beginning of which dated back to the age of Pisistratus, and which Augustus had put his hand to without finishing.

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 66.

ATHENS: A. D. 267. Capture of, by the Goths.

See GOTHS: A. D. 258-267.

ATHENS: A. D. 395. Surrender to Alaric and the Goths.

When the Goths under Alaric invaded and ravaged Greece, A. D. 395, Athens was surrendered to them, on terms which saved the city from being plundered. "The fact that the depredations of Alaric hardly exceeded the ordinary license of a rebellious general, is … perfectly established. The public buildings and monuments of ancient splendour suffered no wanton destruction from his visit; but there can be no doubt that Alaric and his troops levied heavy contributions on the city and its inhabitants."

G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans, chapter 2, section 8.

See, also, GOTHS: A. D. 395, ALARIC'S INVASION OF GREECE.

ATHENS: A. D. 529. Suppression of the Schools by Justinian.

"The Attic schools of rhetoric and philosophy maintained their superior reputation from the Peloponnesian War to the reign of Justinian. Athens, though situate in a barren soil, possessed a pure air, a free navigation, and the monuments of ancient art. That sacred retirement was seldom disturbed by the business of trade or government; and the last of the Athenians were distinguished by their lively wit, the purity of their taste and language, their social manners, and some traces, at least in discourse, of the magnanimity of their fathers. In the suburbs of the city, the Academy of the Platonists, the Lycæum of the Peripatetics, the Portico of the Stoics and the Garden of the Epicureans were planted with trees and decorated with statues; and the philosophers, instead of being immured in a cloister, delivered their instructions in spacious and pleasant walks, which, at different hours, were consecrated to the exercises of the mind and body. The genius of the founders still lived in those venerable seats. … {186} The schools of Athens were protected by the wisest and most virtuous of the Roman princes. … Some vestige of royal bounty may be found under the successors of Constantine. … The golden chain, as it was fondly styled, of the Platonic succession, continued … to the edict of Justinian [A. D. 529] which imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens, and excited the grief and indignation of the few remaining votaries of Greek science and superstition."

ATHENS: A. D. 1205. The founding of the Latin Dukedom.

"The portion of Greece lying to the south of the kingdom of Saloniki was divided by the Crusaders [after their conquest of Constantinople, A. D. 1204—see BYZANTINE EMPIRE: A. D. 1203-1204] among several great feudatories of the Empire of Romania. … The lords of Boudonitza, Salona, Negropont, and Athens are alone mentioned as existing to the north of the isthmus of Corinth, and the history of the petty sovereigns of Athens can alone be traced in any detail. … Otho de la Roche, a Burgundian nobleman, who had distinguished himself during the siege of Constantinople, marched southward with the army of Boniface the king-marquis, and gained possession of Athens in 1205. Thebes and Athens had probably fallen to his share in the partition of the Empire, but it is possible that the king of Saloniki may have found means to increase his portion, in order to induce him to do homage to the crown of Saloniki for this addition. At all events, it appears that Otho de la Roche did homage to Boniface, either as his immediate superior, or as viceroy for the Emperor of Romania. … Though the Byzantine aristocracy and dignified clergy were severe sufferers by the transference of the government into the hands of the Franks, the middle classes long enjoyed peace and security. … The social civilization of the inhabitants, and their ample command of the necessaries and many of the luxuries of life, were in those days as much superior to the condition of the citizens of Paris and London as they are now inferior. … The city was large and wealthy, the country thickly covered with villages, of which the ruins may still be traced in spots affording no indications of Hellenic sites. … The trade of Athens was considerable, and the luxury of the Athenian ducal court was celebrated in all the regions of the West where chivalry flourished."

G. Finlay, History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusaders, chapter 7.

ALSO IN: C. C. Felton, Greece, Ancient and Modern: 4th Course. lecture 5.

ATHENS: A. D. 1311-1456. Under the Catalans and the Florentines.

See CATALAN GRAND COMPANY.

ATHENS: A. D. 1456. The Turks in possession.

Athens was not occupied by the Turks until three years after the conquest of Constantinople (see CONSTANTINOPLE: A. D. 1453). In the meantime the reign of the Florentine dukes of the house of Acciaioli came to a tragical close. The last of the dukes, Maurice Acciaioli died, leaving a young son and a young widow, the latter renowned for her beauty and her talents. The duchess, whom the will of her husband had made regent, married a comely Venetian named Palmerio, who was said to have poisoned his wife in order to be free to accept her hand. Thereupon a nephew of the late duke, named Franco, stirred up insurrections at Athens and fled to Constantinople to complain to the sultan, Mahomet II. "The sultan, glad of all pretexts that coloured his armed intervention in the affairs of these principalities, ordered Omar, son of Tourakhan, chief of the permanent army of the Peloponnesus, to take possession of Athens, to dethrone the duchess and to confine her sons in his prisons of the citadel of Megara." This was done; but Palmerio, the duchess's husband, made his way to the sultan and interceded in her behalf. "Mahomet, by the advice of his viziers, feigned to listen equally to the complaints of Palmerio, and to march to reestablish the legitimate sovereignty. But already Franco, entering Megara under the auspices of the Ottomans, had strangled both the duchess and her son. Mahomet, advancing in turn to punish him for his vengeance, expelled Franco from Athens on entering it, and gave him, in compensation, the inferior and dependent principality of Thebes, in Boeotia. The sultan, as lettered as he was warlike, evinced no less pride and admiration than Sylla at the sight of the monuments of Athens. 'What gratitude,' exclaimed he before the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus, 'do not religion and the Empire owe to the son of Tourakhan, who has made them a present of these spoils of the genius of the Greeks.'"

A. Lamartine, History of Turkey, book 13, sections 10-12.

ATHENS: A. D. 1466. Capture and plundering by the Venetians.

See GREECE: A. D. 1454-1479.

ATHENS: A. D. 1687. Siege, bombardment and capture by the Venetians. Destructive explosion in the Parthenon.

See TURKS: A. D. 1684-1696.

ATHENS: A. D. 1821-1829. The Greek revolution and war of independence. Capture by the Turks.

See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829.

—————ATHENS: End———————

ATHERTON GAG, The.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836.

ATHLONE, Siege of (A. D. 1691).

See IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691.

ATHRAVAS.

See MAGIANS.

ATIMIA. The penalty of Atimia, under ancient Athenian law, was the loss of civic rights.

G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, part 3, chapter 3.

ATIMUCA, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: TIMUCUA.

ATLANTA: A. D. 1864 (May-September). Sherman's advance to the city. Its siege and capture.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (MAY: GEORGIA); and (MAY-SEPTEMBER: GEORGIA).

ATLANTA: A. D. 1864 (September). Exclusive military occupation of the city. Removal of inhabitants.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER: GEORGIA).

ATLANTA: A. D. 1864 (November). Destruction of the city.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1864 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER: GEORGIA).

—————ATLANTA: End—————

ATLANTIC OCEAN: The name.

The Atlantic Ocean is mentioned by that name in a single passage of Herodotus; "but it is clear, from the incidental way in which it [the name] is here introduced, that it was one well known in his day."

E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, chapter 7, section 1, note.

For a sketch of the history of the modern use of the name,

See PACIFIC OCEAN.

{187}

ATREBATES, The. This name was borne by a tribe in ancient Belgic Gaul, which occupied modern Artois and part of French Flanders, and, also, by a tribe or group of tribes in Britain, which dwelt in a region between the Thames and the Severn. The latter was probably a colony from the former.

See BELGÆ; also BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

ATROPATENE. MEDIA ATROPATENE.

"Atropatene, as a name for the Alpine land in the northwest of Iran (now Aderbeijan), came into use in the time of the Greek Empire [Alexander's]; at any rate we cannot trace it earlier. 'Athrapaiti' means 'lord of fire;' 'Athrapata,' 'one protected by fire;' in the remote mountains of this district the old fire worship was preserved with peculiar zeal under the Seleucids."

M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 7, chapter 4.

Atropatene "comprises the entire basin of Lake Urumiyeh, together with the country intervening between that basin and the high mountain chain which curves round the southwestern corner of the Caspian."

G. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies: Media, chapter 1.

Atropatene was "named in honour of the satrap Atropates, who had declared himself king after Alexander's death."

J. P. Mahaffy, Story of Alexander's Empire, chapter 13.

ATSINAS.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: BLACKFEET.

ATTABEGS.

See ATABEGS.

ATTACAPAN FAMILY, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ATTACAPAN FAMILY.

ATTAMAN, or HETMAN.

See COSSACKS.

ATTECOTTI, The.

See OTADENI; also, BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES.

ATTIC SALT.

Thyme was a favorite condiment among the ancient Greeks, "which throve nowhere else so well as in Attica. Even salt was seasoned with thyme. Attic salt, however, is famed rather in the figurative than in the literal sense, and did not form an article of trade."

G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, part 3, chapter 3.

ATTIC TALENT.

See TALENT.

ATTIC WAR, The.

See TEN YEARS' WAR.

ATTICA.

"It forms a rocky peninsula, separated from the mainland by trackless mountains, and jutting so far out into the Eastern Sea that it lay out of the path of the tribes moving from north to south. Hence the migratory passages which agitated the whole of Hellas left Attica untouched, and for this reason Attic history is not divided into such marked epochs as that of Peloponnesus; it possesses a superior unity, and presents an uninterrupted development of coalitions of life native in their origin to the land. … On the other hand Attica was perfectly adapted by nature for receiving immigrants from the sea. For the whole country, as its name indicates, consists of coast-land; and the coast abounds in harbours, and on account of the depth of water in the roads is everywhere accessible; while the best of its plains open towards the coast and invite the mariner to land. The first landings by which the monotonous conditions of the age of the Pelasgians were interrupted where those of the Phoenicians, who domesticated the worship of Aphrodite, as well as that of the Tyrian Melcar on the coasts. Afterwards the tribes of the shores of Asia Minor came across; in the first place the Carians, who introduced the worship of the Carian Zeus and Posidon, and were followed by Cretans, Lycians, Dardanians and Old Ionians. The population became mixed. … This first epoch of the national history the ancients connected with the name of Cecrops. It forms the transition from the life of rural districts and villages to that of a state. Attica has become a land with twelve citadels, in each of which dwells a chieftain or king, who has his domains, his suite, and his subjects. Every twelfth is a state by itself, with its separate public hall and common hearth. If under these circumstances a common national history was to be attained to, one of the twelve towns, distinguished by special advantages of situation, would have to become the capital. And to such a position undeniable advantages entitled the city whose seat was in the plain of the Cephisus. … Into the centre of the entire plain advances from the direction of Hymettus a group of rocky heights, among them an entirely separate and mighty block which, with the exception of a narrow access from the west, offers on all sides vertically precipitous walls, surmounted by a broad level sufficiently roomy to afford space for the sanctuaries of the national gods and the habitations of the national rulers. It seems as if nature had designedly placed this rock in this position as the ruling castle and the centre of the national history. This is the Acropolis of Athens, among the twelve castles of the land that which was preëminently named after the national king Cecrops. … So far from being sufficiently luxuriant to allow even the idle to find easy means of sustenance, the Attic soil was stony, devoid of a sufficient supply of water, and for the most part only adapted to the cultivation of barley; everywhere … labour and a regulated industry were needed. But this labour was not unremunerative. Whatever orchard and garden fruits prospered were peculiarly delicate and agreeable to the taste; the mountain-herbs were nowhere more odourous than on Hymettus; and the sea abounded with fish. The mountains, not only by the beauty of their form invest the whole scenery with a certain nobility, but in their depths lay an abundance of the most excellent building-stone and silver ore; in the lowlands was to be found the best kind of clay for purposes of manufacture. The materials existed for all arts and handicrafts; and finally Attica rejoiced in what the ancients were wise enough to recognize as a special favour of Heaven, a dry and transparent atmosphere, by its peculiar clearness productive of bodily freshness, health and elasticity, while it sharpened the senses, disposed the soul to cheerfulness and aroused and animated the powers of the mind. Such were the institutions of the land which was developing the germs of its peculiar history at the time when the [Dorian] migrations were agitating the whole mainland. Though Attica was not herself overrun by hostile multitudes, yet about the same time she admitted manifold accessions of foreign population in smaller groups. By this means she enjoyed all the advantages of an invigorating impulse without exposing herself to the evils of a violent revolution. … The immigrants who domesticated themselves in Attica were … chiefly families of superior eminence, so that Attica gained not only in numbers of population, but also in materials of culture of every description."

E. Curtius, History of Greece, book 2, chapter 2.

ALSO IN: J. I. Lockhart, Attica and Athens.

See also, ATHENS: THE BEGINNING.

{188}

ATTILA'S CONQUESTS AND EMPIRE.

See HUNS.

ATTIOUANDARONK, The.

See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: HURONS. &c.

ATTYADÆ, The.

The first dynasty of the kings of Lydia, claimed to be sprung from Attys, son of the god Manes.

M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 4, chapter 17.

AUBAINE, The right of.

"A prerogative by which the Kings of France claimed the property of foreigners who died in their kingdom without being naturalized." It was suppressed by Colbert, in the reign of Louis XIV.

J. A. Blanqui, History of Political Economy in Europe, page 285.

AUCH: Origin of the name.

See AQUITAINE: THE ANCIENT TRIBES.

AUCKLAND, Lord, The Indian Administration of.

See INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845.

AUDENARDE.

See OUDINARDE.

AUDIENCIAS.

"For more than two centuries and a half the whole of South America, except Brazil, settled down under the colonial government of Spain, and during the greater part of that time this vast territory was under the rule of the Viceroys of Peru residing at Lima. The impossibility of conducting an efficient administration from such a centre … at once became apparent. Courts of justice called Audiencias were, therefore, established in the distant provinces, and their presidents, sometimes with the title of captains-general, had charge of the executive under the orders of the Viceroys. The Audiencia of Charcas (the modern Bolivia) was established in 1559. Chile was ruled by captains-general, and an Audiencia was established at Santiago in 1568. In New Grenada the president of the Audiencia, created in 1564, was also captain-general. The Audiencia of Quito, also with its president as captain-general, dated from 1542; and Venezuela was under a captain-general."

C. R. Markham, Colonial History of South America. (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 8, page 295).

AUERSTADT, Battle of.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (OCTOBER).

AUGEREAU, Marshal, Campaigns of.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1797 (SEPTEMBER); GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (OCTOBER); SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JUNE); and RUSSIA: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER); 1813 (AUGUST), (OCTOBER), (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).

AUGHRIM, OR AGHRIM, Battle of (A. D. 1691).

See IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691.

AUGSBURG: Origin.

See AUGUSTA VINDELICORUM.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 955. Great defeat of the Hungarians.

See HUNGARIANS: A. D. 934-955.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1530. Sitting of the Diet. Signing and reading of the Protestant Confession of Faith. The Imperial Decree condemning the Protestants.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1530-1531.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1555. The Religious Peace concluded.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1552-1561.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1646. Unsuccessful siege by Swedes and French.

See GERMANY; A. D. 1646-1648.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1686-1697. The League and the War of the League.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1686; and FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690, and after.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1703. Taken by the French.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1703.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1801-1803.

One of six free cities which survived the Peace of Luneville.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803.

AUGSBURG: A. D. 1806. Loss of municipal freedom. Absorption in the kingdom of Bavaria.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1805-1806.

—————AUGSBURG: End—————

AUGURS. PONTIFICES. FETIALES.

"There was … enough of priesthood and of priests in Rome. Those, however, who had business with a god resorted to the god, and not to the priest. Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself directly to the divinity; … no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal or to obscure this original and simple relation. But it was no easy matter to hold converse with a god. The god had his own way of speaking, which was intelligible only to those acquainted with it; but one who did rightly understand it knew not only how to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even in case of need to overreach or to constrain him. It was natural, therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far more important influence on political development than the individual priests or priesthoods. These colleges have been often, but erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods. The priesthoods were charged with the worship of a specific divinity. … Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in general there were originally but two such colleges: that of the augurs and that of the pontifices. The six augurs were skilled in interpreting the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art which was prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific system. The five 'bridge builders' (pontifices) derived their name from their function, as sacred as it was politically important, of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the Tiber. They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the duties of managing the calendar of the state, of proclaiming to the people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place on the right day. … Thus they acquired (although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of whatever was connected with it. [The president of their college was called the Pontifex Maximus.] … They themselves described the sum of their knowledge as 'the science of things divine and human.' … By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corporations of men versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college of the twenty state-heralds (fetiales, of uncertain derivation) destined as a living repository to preserve traditionally the remembrance of the treaties concluded with neighboring communities, to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of treaty rights, and in case of need to demand satisfaction and declare war."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 12.

ALSO IN: E. Guhl and W. Koner, Life of the Greeks and Romans, section 103.

See, also, AUSPICES, and FETIALES.

{189}

AUGUSTA TREVIRORUM.

See TUÈVES, ORIGIN OF.

AUGUSTA VEROMANDUORUM. Modern St. Quentin.

See BELGÆ.

AUGUSTA VINDELICORUM.

"Augusta Vindelicorum is the modern Augsburg, founded, it may be supposed, about the year 740 [B. C. 14] after the conquest of Rhætia by Drusus. … The Itineraries represent it as the centre of the roads from Verona, Sirmium, and Treviri."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 36, note.

AUGUSTODUNUM.

The Emperor Augustus changed the name of Bibracte in Gaul to Augustodunum, which time has corrupted, since to Autun.

AUGUSTONEMETUM.

See GERGOVIA OF THE ARVERNI.

AUGUSTUS. AUGUSTA: The Title.

"Octavius [see ROME: B. C. 31-14] had warily declined any of the recognized designations of sovereign rule. Antonius had abolished the dictatorship; his successor respected the acclamations with which the people had greeted this decree. The voices which had saluted Cæsar with the title of king were peremptorily commanded to be dumb. Yet Octavius was fully aware of the influence which attached to distinctive titles of honour. While he scrupulously renounced the names upon which the breath of human jealousy had blown, he conceived the subtler policy of creating another for himself, which borrowing its original splendour from his own character, should reflect upon him an untarnished lustre. … The epithet Augustus … had never been borne by any man before. … But the adjunct, though never given to a man, had been applied to things most noble, most venerable and most divine. The rites of the gods were called august, the temples were august; the word itself was derived from the holy auguries by which the divine will was revealed; it was connected with the favour and authority of Jove himself. … The illustrious title was bestowed upon the heir of the Cæsarian Empire in the middle of the month of January, 727 [B. C. 27], and thenceforth it is by the name of Augustus that he is recognized in Roman history."

C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 30.

"When Octavianus had firmly established his power and was now left without a rival, the Senate, being desirous of distinguishing him by some peculiar and emphatic title, decreed, in B. C. 27, that he should be styled Augustus, an epithet properly applicable to some object demanding respect and veneration beyond what is bestowed upon human things. … This being an honorary appellation … it would, as a matter of course, have been transmitted by inheritance to his immediate descendants. … Claudius, although he could not be regarded as a descendant of Octavianus, assumed on his accession the title of Augustus, and his example was followed by all succeeding rulers … who communicated the title of Augusta to their consorts."

W. Ramsay, Manual of Roman Antiquity, chapter 5.

See, also, ROME: B. C. 31-A. D. 14.

AULA REGIA, The.

See CURIA REGIS OF THE NORMAN KINGS.

AULDEARN, Battle of (A. D. 1645).

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1644-1645.

AULERCI, The.

The Aulerci were an extensive nation in ancient Gaul which occupied the country from the lower course of the Seine to the Mayenne. It was subdivided into three great tribes—the Aulerci Cenomanni, Aulerci Diablintes and Aulerci Eburovices.

Napoleon III., History of Cæsar, book 3, chapter 2.

AULIC COUNCIL, The.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

AUMALE, Battle of (1592).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1591-1593.

AUNEAU, Battle of (1587).

See FRANCE: A. D. 1584-1589.

AURANGZEB, Moghul Emperor, or Padischah of India, A. D. 1658-1707.

AURAY, Battle of (1365).

See BRITTANY: A. D. 1341-1365.

AURELIAN, Roman Emperor. A. D.270-275.

AURELIAN ROAD, The.

One of the great Roman roads of antiquity, which ran from Rome to Pisa and Luna.

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 4, chapter 11.

AURELIO, King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo, A. D. 768-774.

AURUNCANS, The.

See AUSONIANS; also OSCANS.

AUSCI, The.

See AQUITAINE, THE ANCIENT TRIBES.

AUSGLEICH, The.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1867.

AUSONIANS, OR AURUNCANS, The.

A tribe of the ancient Volscians, who dwelt in the lower valley of the Liris, and who are said to have been exterminated by the Romans, B. C. 314.