Athens: Its Rise and Fall Part 12

So perished the hopes of the unfortunate Hippias; obscure and inglorious in his last hour, the exiled prince fell confounded amid the general slaughter. [288]

IX. Despite the capture of some vessels, and the conflagration of others, the Persians still retained a considerable fleet, and, succeeding in boarding their Eretrian plunder (which they had left on the Euboean Isle), they pa.s.sed thence the promontory of Sunium, with the intention of circ.u.mventing the Athenians, and arriving at Athens before them--a design which it was supposed they were induced to form by the treachery of some one suspected, without sufficient proof, to belong to the house of the Alcmaeonids, who held up a shield as a signal to the Persians while they were under sail [289]. But the Athenians were under a prompt and vigilant commander, and while the barbarian fleet doubled the Cape of Sunium, they reached their city, and effectually prevented the designs of the foe. Aristides, with the tribe under his command, was left on the field to guard the prisoners and the booty, and his scrupulous honesty was evinced by his jealous care over the scattered and uncounted treasure [290]. The painter of the n.o.bler schools might find perhaps few subjects worthier of his art than Aristides watching at night amid the torches of his men over the plains of Marathon, in sight of the blue Aegean, no longer crowded with the barbarian masts;--and the white columns of the temple of Hercules, beside which the Athenians had pitched their camp.

The Persian fleet anch.o.r.ed off Phalerum, the Athenian harbour, and remaining there, menacing but inactive, a short time, sailed back to Asia.

X. The moon had pa.s.sed her full, when two thousand Spartans arrived at Athens: the battle was over and the victory won; but so great was their desire to see the bodies of the formidable Medes, that they proceeded to Marathon, and, returning to Athens, swelled the triumph of her citizens by their applause and congratulations.

XI. The marble which the Persians had brought with them, in order to erect as a trophy of the victory they antic.i.p.ated, was, at a subsequent period, wrought by Phidias into a statue of Nemesis. A picture of the battle, representing Miltiades in the foremost place, and solemnly preserved in public, was deemed no inadequate reward to that great captain; and yet, conspicuous above the level plain of Marathon, rises a long barrow, fifteen feet in height, the supposed sepulchre of the Athenian heroes. Still does a romantic legend, not unfamiliar with our traditions of the north, give a supernatural terror to the spot. Nightly along the plain are yet heard by superst.i.tion the neighings of chargers and the rushing shadows of spectral war [291]. And still, throughout the civilized world (civilized how much by the arts and lore of Athens!) men of every clime, of every political persuasion, feel as Greeks at the name of Marathon. Later fields have presented the spectacle of an equal valour, and almost the same disparities of slaughter; but never, in the annals of earth, were united so closely in our applause, admiration for the heroism of the victors, and sympathy for the holiness of their cause. It was the first great victory of OPINION!

and its fruits were reaped, not by Athens only, but by all Greece then, as by all time thereafter, in a mighty and imperishable harvest,--the invisible not less than the actual force of despotism was broken. Nor was it only that the dread which had hung upon the Median name was dispelled--nor that free states were taught their pre-eminence over the unwieldy empires which the Persian conquerors had destroyed,--a greater lesson was taught to Greece, when she discovered that the monarch of Asia could not force upon a petty state the fashion of its government, or the selection of its rulers. The defeat of Hippias was of no less value than that of Darius; and the same blow which struck down the foreign invader smote also the hopes of domestic tyrants.

One successful battle for liberty quickens and exalts that proud and emulous spirit from which are called forth the civilization and the arts that liberty should produce, more rapidly than centuries of repose. To Athens the victory of Marathon was a second Solon.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] In their pa.s.sage through the press I have, however, had many opportunities to consult and refer to Mr. Thirlwall's able and careful work.

[2] The pa.s.sage in Aristotle (Meteorol., l. I, c. 14), in which, speaking of the ancient h.e.l.las (the country about Dodona and the river Achelous), the author says it was inhabited by a people (along with the h.e.l.li, or Selli) then called Graeci, now h.e.l.lenes (tote men Graikoi, nun de h.e.l.laenes) is well known. The Greek chronicle on the Arundel marbles a.s.serts, that the Greeks were called Graeci before they were called h.e.l.lenes; in fact, Graeci was most probably once a name for the Pelasgi, or for a powerful, perhaps predominant, tribe of the Pelasgi widely extended along the western coast--by them the name was borne into Italy, and (used indiscriminately with that of Pelasgi) gave the Latin appellation to the h.e.l.lenic or Grecian people.

[3] Modern travellers, in their eloquent lamentations over the now n.i.g.g.ard waters of these immortal streams, appear to forget that Strabo expressly informs us that the Cephisus flowed in the manner of a torrent, and failed altogether in the summer. "Much the same," he adds, "was the Ilissus." A deficiency of water was always a princ.i.p.al grievance in Attica, as we may learn from the laws of Solon relative to wells.

[4] Platon. Timaeus. Clinton's Fasti h.e.l.lenici, vol. i., p. 5.

[5] According to some they were from India, to others from Egypt, to others again from Phoenicia. They have been systematized into Bactrians, and Scythians, and Philistines--into Goths, and into Celts; and tracked by investigations as ingenious as they are futile, beyond the banks of the Danube to their settlements in the Peloponnese. No erudition and no speculation can, however, succeed in proving their existence in any part of the world prior to their appearance in Greece.

[6] Sophoc. Ajax, 1251.

[7] All those words (in the Latin) which make the foundation of a language, expressive of the wants or simple relations of life, are almost literally Greek--such as pater, frater, aratrum, bos, ager, etc. For the derivation of the Latin from the Aeolic dialect of Greece, see "Scheid's Prolegomena to Lennep's Etymologicon Linguae Grecae."

[8] The Leleges, Dryopes, and most of the other hordes prevalent in Greece, with the Pelasgi, I consider, with Mr. Clinton, but as tribes belonging to the great Pelasgic family. One tribe would evidently become more civilized than the rest, in proportion to the social state of the lands through which it migrated--its reception of strangers from the more advanced East--or according as the circ.u.mstances of the soil in which it fixed its abode stimulated it to industry, or forced it to invention. The tradition relative to Pelasgus, that while it a.s.serts him to have been the first that dwelt in Arcadia, declares also that he first taught men to build huts, wear garments of skins, and exchange the yet less nutritious food of herbs and roots for the sweet and palatable acorns of the "f.a.gus," justly puzzled Pausanias.

Such traditions, if they prove any thing, which I more than doubt, tend to prove that the tribe personified by the word "Pelasgus,"

migrated into that very Arcadia alleged to have been their aboriginal home, and taught their own rude arts to the yet less cultivated population they found there.

[9] See Isaiah xxiii.

[10] The received account of the agricultural skill of the Pelasgi is tolerably well supported. Dionysius tells us that the Aboriginals having a.s.signed to those Pelasgi, whom the oracle sent from Dodona into Italy, the marshy and unprofitable land called Velia, they soon drained the fen:--their love of husbandry contributed, no doubt, to form the peculiar character of their civilization and religion.

[11] Solinus and Pliny state that the Pelasgi first brought letters into Italy. Long the leading race of Italy, their power declined, according to Dionysius, two generations before the Trojan war.

[12] Paus. Arcad., c. x.x.xviii. In a previous chapter (II.) that accomplished antiquary observes, that it appeared to him that Cecrops and Lycaon (son of Pelasgus and founder of Lycosura) were contemporaries. By the strong and exaggerating expression of Pausanias quoted in the text, we must suppose, not that he considered Lycosura the first town of the earth, but the first walled and fortified city. The sons of Lycaon were great builders of cities, and in their time rapid strides in civilization appear by tradition to have been made in the Peloponnesus. The Pelasgic architecture is often confounded with the Cyclopean. The Pelasgic masonry is polygonal, each stone fitting into the other without cement; that called the Cyclopean, and described by Pausanias, is utterly different, being composed by immense blocks of stone, with small pebbles inserted in the interstices. (See Gell's Topography of Rome and its Vicinity.) By some antiquaries, who have not made the mistake of confounding these distinct orders of architecture, the Cyclopean has been deemed more ancient than the Pelasgic,--but this also is an error. Lycosura was walled by the Pelasgians between four and five centuries prior to the introduction of the Cyclopean masonry--in the building of the city of Tiryns. Sir William Gell maintains the possibility of tracing the walls of Lycosura near the place now called Surias To Kastro.

[13] The expulsion of the Hyksos, which was not accomplished by one sudden, but by repeated revolutions, caused many migrations; among others, according to the Egyptians, that of Danaus.

[14] The Egyptian monarchs, in a later age, employed the Phoenicians in long and adventurous maritime undertakings. At a comparatively recent date, Neco, king of Egypt, despatched certain Phoenicians on no less an enterprise than that of the circ.u.mnavigation of Africa.

[Herod., iv., 12. Rennell., Geog. of Herod.] That monarch was indeed fitted for great designs. The Mediterranean and the Red Sea already received his fleets, and he had attempted to unite them by a ca.n.a.l which would have rendered Africa an island. [Herod., ii., 158, 159.

Heeren., Phoenicians, c. iii. See also Diodorus.]

[15] The general habits of a people can in no age preclude exceptions in individuals. Indian rajahs do not usually travel, but we had an Indian rajah for some years in the Regent's Park; the Chinese are not in the habit of visiting England, but a short time ago some Chinese were in London. Grant that Phoenicians had intercourse with Egypt and with Greece, and nothing can be less improbable than that a Phoenician vessel may have contained some Egyptian adventurers. They might certainly be men of low rank and desperate fortunes--they might be fugitives from the law--but they might not the less have seemed princes and sages to a horde of Pelasgic savages.

[16] The authorities in favour of the Egyptian origin of Cecrops are.--Diod., lib. i.; Theopomp.; Schol. Aristoph.; Plot.; Suidas.

Plato speaks of the ancient connexion between Sais and Athens. Solon finds the names of Erechtheus and Cecrops in Egypt, according to the same authority, I grant a doubtful one (Plat. Critias.) The best positive authority of which I am aware in favour of the contrary supposition that Cecrops was indigenous, is Apollodorus.

[17] To enter into all the arguments that have been urged on either side relative to Cecrops would occupy about two hundred pages of this work, and still leave the question in dispute. Perhaps two hundred pages might be devoted to subjects more generally instructive.

[18] So, in the Peruvian traditions, the apparition of two persons of majestic form and graceful garments, appearing alone and unarmed on the margin of the Lake t.i.tiaca, sufficed to reclaim a naked and wretched horde from their savage life, to inculcate the elements of the social union, and to collect a people in establishing a throne.

[19] "Like the Greeks," says Herodotus (book ii., c. 112), "the Egyptians confine themselves to one wife." Latterly, this among the Greeks, though a common, was not an invariable, restraint; but more on this hereafter.

[20] Hobhouse's Travels, Letter 23.

[21] It is by no means probable that this city, despite its fortress, was walled like Lycosura.

[22] At least Strabo a.s.signs Boeotia to the government of Cecrops.

But I confess, that so far from his incorporating Boeotia with Attica, I think that traditions relative to his immediate successors appear to indicate that Attica itself continued to retain independent tribes-- soon ripening, if not already advanced, to independent states.

[23] Herod., ii., c. i.

[24] Ibid., ii., c. liii.

[25] That all the Pelasgi--scattered throughout Greece, divided among themselves--frequently at war with each other, and certainly in no habits of peaceful communication--each tribe of different modes of life, and different degrees of civilization, should have concurred in giving no names to their G.o.ds, and then have equally concurred in receiving names from Egypt, is an a.s.sertion so preposterous, that it carries with it its own contradiction. Many of the mistakes relative to the Pelasgi appear to have arisen from supposing the common name implied a common and united tribe, and not a vast and dispersed people, subdivided into innumerable families, and diversified by innumerable influences.

[26] The connexion of Ceres with Isis was a subsequent innovation.

[27] Orcos was the personification of an oath, or the sanct.i.ty of an oath.

[28] Naith in the Doric dialect.

[29] If Onca, or Onga, was the name of the Phoenician G.o.ddess!--In the "Seven against Thebes," the chorus invoke Minerva under the name of Onca--and there can be no doubt that the Grecian Minerva is sometimes called Onca; but it is not clear to me that the Phoenicians had a deity of that name--nor can I agree with those who insist upon reading Onca for Siga in Pausanias (lib. ix., chap. 12), where he says Siga was the name of the Phoenician Minerva. The Phoenicians evidently had a deity correspondent with the Greek Minerva; but that it was named Onca, or Onga, is by no means satisfactorily proved; and the Scholiast, on Pindar, derives the epithet as applies to Minerva from a Boeotian village.

[30] De Mundo, c. 7.

[31] The Egyptians supposed three principles: 1st. One benevolent and universal Spirit. 2d. Matter coeval with eternity. 3d. Nature opposing the good of the universal Spirit. We find these principles in a variety of shapes typified through their deities. Besides their types of nature, as the Egyptians adopted hero G.o.ds, typical fables were invented to conceal their humanity, to excuse their errors, or to dignify their achievements.

[32] See Heeren's Political History of Greece, in which this point is luminously argued.

[33] Besides, it is not the character of emigrants from a people accustomed to castes, to propagate those castes superior to then own, of which they have exported no representatives. Suppose none of that privileged and n.o.ble order, called the priests, to have accompanied the Egyptian migrators, those migrators would never have dreamed of inst.i.tuting that order in their new settlement any more than a colony of the warrior caste in India would establish out of their own order a spurious and fict.i.tious caste of Bramins.

[34] When, in a later age, Karmath, the impostor of the East, sough to undermine Mahometanism, his most successful policy was in declaring its commands to be allegories.

[35] Herodotus (b. ii, c. 53) observes, that it is to Hesiod and Homer the Greeks owe their theogony; that they gave the G.o.ds their t.i.tles, fixed their ranks, and described their shapes. And although this cannot be believed literally, in some respects it may metaphorically. Doubtless the poets took their descriptions from popular traditions; but they made those traditions immortal. Jupiter could never become symbolical to a people who had once pictured to themselves the nod and curls of the Jupiter of Homer.

[36] Cicero de Natura Deorum, b. ii.--Most of the philosophical interpretations of the Greek mythology were the offspring of the Alexandrine schools. It is to the honour of Aristarchus that he combated a theory that very much resembles the philosophy that would convert the youthful readers of Mother Bunch into the inventors of allegorical morality.

[37] But the worship can be traced to a much earlier date than that the most plausibly ascribed to the Persian Zoroaster.