History Of Ancient Civilization Part 11

=The Hoplites.=--Before them the Greeks marched into battle in disorder; the chiefs, on horseback or in a light chair, rushed ahead, the men following on foot, armed each in his own fashion, helter-skelter, incapable of acting together or of resisting. A battle reduced itself to a series of duels and to a ma.s.sacre. At Sparta all the soldiers had the same arms; for defence, the breastplate covering the chest, the casque which protected the head, the greaves over the legs, the buckler held before the body. For offence the soldier had a short sword and a long lance. The man thus armed was called a hoplite. The Spartan hoplites were drawn up in regiments, battalions, companies, squads, almost like our armies. An officer commanded each of these groups and transmitted to his men the orders of his superior officer, so that the general in chief might have the same movement executed throughout the whole army. This organization which appears so simple to us was to the Greeks an astonishing novelty.

=The Phalanx.=--Come into the presence of the enemy, the soldiers arrange themselves in line, ordinarily eight ranks deep, each man close to his neighbor, forming a compact ma.s.s which we call a Phalanx.

The king, who directs the army, sacrifices a goat to the G.o.ds; if the entrails of the victim are propitious, he raises a chant which all the army takes up in unison. Then they advance. With rapid and measured step, to the sound of the flute, with lance couched and buckler before the body, they meet the enemy in dense array, overwhelm him by their ma.s.s and momentum, throw him into rout, and only check themselves to avoid breaking the phalanx. So long as they remain together each is protected by his neighbor and all form an impenetrable ma.s.s on which the enemy could secure no hold. These were rude tactics, but sufficient to overcome a disorderly troop. Isolated men could not resist such a body. The other Greeks understood this, and all, as far as they were able, imitated the Spartans; everywhere men were armed as hoplites and fought in phalanx.

=Gymnastics.=--To rush in orderly array on the enemy and stand the shock of battle there was need of agile and robust men; every man had to be an athlete. The Spartans therefore organized athletic exercises, and in this the other Greeks imitated them; gymnastics became for all a national art, the highest esteemed of all the arts, the crowning feature of the great festivals.

In the most remote countries, in the midst of the barbarians of Gaul or of the Black Sea, a Greek city was recognized by its gymnasium.

There was a great square surrounded by porticoes or walks, usually near a spring, with baths and halls for exercise. The citizens came hither to walk and chat: it was a place of a.s.sociation. All the young men entered the gymnasium; for two years or less they came here every day; they learned to leap, to run, to throw the disc and the javelin, to wrestle by seizing about the waist. To harden the muscles and strengthen the skin they plunged into cold water, dispensed with oil for the body, and rubbed the flesh with a sc.r.a.per (the strigil).

=Athletes.=--Many continued these exercises all their lives as a point of honor and became Athletes. Some became marvels of skill. Milo of Croton in Italy, it was said, would carry a bull on his shoulders; he stopped a chariot in its course by seizing it from behind. These athletes served sometimes in combats as soldiers, or as generals.

Gymnastics were the school of war.

=Role of the Spartiates.=--The Spartans taught the other Greeks to exercise and to fight. They always remained the most vigorous wrestlers and the best soldiers, and were recognized as such by the rest of Greece. Everywhere they were respected. When the rest of the Greeks had to fight together against the Persians, they unhesitatingly took the Spartans as chiefs--and with justice, said an Athenian orator.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] "h.e.l.lenica," iii., 3, 6.

[63] See Thucydides, iv., 80.

[64] A collection by Plutarch is still preserved.

[65] A phrase of Xenophon.

CHAPTER XII

ATHENS

THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE

=Attica.=--The Athenians boasted of having always lived in the same country; their ancestors, according to their story, originated from the soil itself. The mountaineers who conquered the south land pa.s.sed by the country without invading it; Attica was hardly a temptation to them.

Attica is composed of a ma.s.s of rocks which in the form of a triangle advances into the sea. These rocks, renowned for their blocks of marble and for the honey of their bees,[66] are bare and sterile.

Between them and the sea are left three small plains with meagre soil, meanly watered (the streams are dry in summer) and incapable of supporting a numerous population.

=Athens.=--In the largest of these plains, a league from the sea, rises a ma.s.sive isolated rock: Athens was built at its foot. The old city, called the Acropolis, occupied the summit of the rock.

The inhabitants of Attica commenced, not by forming a single state, but by founding scattered villages, each of which had its own king and its own government. Later all these villages united under one king,[67] the king of Athens, and established a single city. This does not mean that all the people came to dwell in one town. They continued to have their own villages and to cultivate their lands; but all adored one and the same protecting G.o.ddess, Athena, divinity of Athens, and all obeyed the same king.

=Athenian Revolutions.=--Later still the kings were suppressed. In their place Athens had nine chiefs (the archons) who changed every year. This whole history is little known to us for no writing of the time is preserved. They used to say that for centuries the Athenians had lived in discord; the n.o.bles (Eupatrids) who were proprietors of the soil oppressed the peasants on their estates; creditors held their debtors as slaves. To reestablish order the Athenians commissioned Solon, a sage, to draft a code of laws for them (594).

Solon made three reforms:

1. He lessened the value of the money, which allowed the debtors to release themselves more easily.

2. He made the peasants proprietors of the land that they cultivated. From this time there were in Attica more small proprietors than in any other part of Greece.

3. He grouped all the citizens into four cla.s.ses according to their incomes. Each had to pay taxes and to render military service according to his wealth, the poor being exempt from taxation and military service.

After Solon the Athenians were subject to Pisistratus, one of their powerful and clever citizens; but in 510 the dissensions revived.

=Reforms of Cleisthenes.=--Cleisthenes, leader of one of the parties, used the occasion to make a thoroughgoing revolution.

There were many strangers in Athens, especially seamen and traders who lived in Piraeus near the harbor. Cleisthenes gave them the rights of citizenship and made them equal[68] to the older inhabitants. From this time there were two populations side by side--the people of Attica and those of Piraeus. A difference of physical features was apparent for three centuries afterward: the people of Attica resembled the rest of the Greeks; those in Piraeus resembled Asiatics. The Athenian people thus augmented was a new people, the most active in Greece.

THE ATHENIAN PEOPLE

In the fifth century the society of Athens was definitely formed: three cla.s.ses inhabited the district of Attica--slaves, foreigners, and citizens.

=The Slaves.=--The slaves const.i.tuted the great majority of the population; there was no man so poor that he did not have at least one slave; the rich owned a mult.i.tude of them, some as many as five hundred. The larger part of the slaves lived in the house occupied with grinding grain, kneading bread, spinning and weaving cloth, performing the service of the kitchens, and in attendance on their masters. Others labored in the shops as blacksmiths, as dyers, or in stone quarries or silver mines. Their master fed them but sold at a profit everything which they produced, giving them in return nothing but their living. All the domestic servants, all the miners, and the greater part of the artisans were slaves. These men lived in society but without any part in it; they had not even the disposition of their own bodies, being wholly the property of other men. They were thought of only as objects of property; they were often referred to as "a body" (s?a). There was no other law for them than the will of their master, and he had all power over them--to make them work, to imprison them, to deprive them of their sustenance, to beat them. When a citizen went to law, his adversary had the right to require that the former's slaves should be put to the torture to tell what they knew.

Many Athenian orators commend this usage as an ingenious means for obtaining true testimony. "Torture," says the orator Isaeus, "is the surest means of proof; and so when you wish to clear up a contested question, you do not address yourselves to freemen, but, placing the slaves to the torture, you seek to discover the truth."

=Foreigners.=--The name Metics was applied to people of foreign origin who were established in Athens. To become a citizen of Athens it was not enough, as with us, to be born in the country; one must be the son of a citizen. It might be that some aliens had resided in Attica for several generations and yet their family not become Athenian. The metics could take no part in the government, could not marry a citizen, nor acquire land. But they were personally free, they had the right of commerce by sea, of banking and of trade on condition that they take a patron to represent them in the courts. There were in Athens more than ten thousand families of metics, the majority of them bankers or merchants.

=The Citizens.=--To be a citizen of Athens it was necessary that both parents should be citizens. The young Athenian, come to maturity at about eighteen years of age, appeared before the popular a.s.sembly, received the arms which he was to bear and took the following oath: "I swear never to dishonor these sacred arms, not to quit my post, to obey the magistrates and the laws, to honor the religion of my country." He became simultaneously citizen and soldier. Thereafter he owed military service until he was sixty years of age. With this he had the right to sit in the a.s.sembly and to fulfil the functions of the state.

Once in a while the Athenians consented to receive into the citizenship a man who was not the son of a citizen, but this was rare and a sign of great favor. The a.s.sembly had to vote the stranger into its membership, and then nine days after six thousand citizens had to vote for him on a secret ballot. The Athenian people was like a closed circle; no new members were admitted except those pleasing to the old members, and they admitted few beside their sons.

THE GOVERNMENT OF ATHENS

=The a.s.sembly.=--The Athenians called their government a democracy (a government by the people). But this people was not, as with us, the ma.s.s of inhabitants, but the body of citizens, a true aristocracy of 15,000 to 20,000 men who governed the whole nation as masters. This body had absolute power, and was the true sovereign of Athens. It a.s.sembled at least three times a month to deliberate and to vote. The a.s.sembly was held in the open air on the Pnyx; the citizens sat on stone benches arranged in an amphitheatre; the magistrates before them on a platform opened the session with a religious ceremony and a prayer, then a herald proclaimed in a loud voice the business which was to occupy the a.s.sembly, and said, "Who wishes to speak?" Every citizen had the right to this privilege; the orators mounted the tribune according to age. When all had spoken, the president put the question; the a.s.sembly voted by a show of hands, and then dissolved.

=The Courts.=--The people itself, being sovereign, pa.s.sed judgment in the courts. Every citizen of thirty years of age could partic.i.p.ate in the judicial a.s.sembly (the Heliaea). The heliasts sat in the great halls in sections of five hundred; the tribunal was, then, composed of one thousand to fifteen hundred judges. The Athenians had no prosecuting officer as we have; a citizen took upon himself to make the accusation. The accused and the accuser appeared before the court; each delivered a plea which was not to exceed the time marked off by a water-clock. Then the judges voted by depositing a black or white stone. If the accuser did not obtain a certain number of votes, he himself was condemned.

=The Magistrates.=--The sovereign people needed a council to prepare the business for discussion and magistrates to execute their decisions. The council was composed of five hundred citizens drawn by lot for one year. The magistrates were very numerous: ten generals to command the army, thirty officials for financial administration, sixty police officials to superintend the streets, the markets, weights and measures, etc.[69]

=Character of This Government.=--The power in Athens did not pertain to the rich and the n.o.ble, as in Sparta. In the a.s.sembly everything was decided by a majority of votes and all the votes were equal. All the jurors, all the members of the council, all the magistrates except the generals were chosen by lot. The citizens were equal not only in theory, but also in practice. Socrates said[70] to a well-informed Athenian who did not dare to speak before the people: "Of what are you afraid? Is it of the fullers, the shoe-makers, the masons, the artisans, or the merchants? for the a.s.sembly is composed of all these people."

Many of these people had to ply their trade in order to make a living, and could not serve the state gratuitously; and so a salary was inst.i.tuted: every citizen who sat in the a.s.sembly or in the courts received for every day of session three obols (about eight cents of our money), a sum just sufficient to maintain life at that time. From this day the poor administered the government.

=The Demagogues.=--Since all important affairs whether in the a.s.sembly or in the courts were decided by discussion and discourse, the influential men were those who knew how to speak best. The people accustomed themselves to listen to the orators, to follow their counsels, to charge them with emba.s.sies, and even to appoint them generals. These men were called Demagogues (leaders of the people).

The party of the rich scoffed at them: in a comedy Aristophanes represents the people (Demos) under the form of an old man who has lost his wits: "You are foolishly credulous, you let flatterers and intriguers pull you around by the nose and you are enraptured when they harangue you." And the chorus, addressing a charlatan, says to him, "You are rude, vicious; you have a strong voice, an impudent eloquence, and violent gestures; believe me, you have all that is necessary to govern Athens."

PRIVATE LIFE

The Athenians created so many political functions that a part of the citizens was engaged in fulfilling them. The citizen of Athens, like the functionary or soldier of our days, was absorbed in public affairs. Warring and governing were the whole of his life. He spent his days in the a.s.sembly, in the courts, in the army, at the gymnasium, or at the market. Almost always he had a wife and children, for his religion commanded this, but he did not live at home.

=The Children.=--When a child came into the world, the father had the right to reject it. In this case it was laid outside the house where it died from neglect, unless a pa.s.ser-by took it and brought it up as a slave. In this custom Athens followed all the Greeks. It was especially the girls that were exposed to death. "A son," says a writer of comedy, "is always raised even if the parents are in the last stage of misery; a daughter is exposed even though the parents are rich."

If the father accepted the child, the latter entered the family. He was left at first in the women's apartments with the mother. The girls remained there until the day of their marriage; the boys came out when they were seven years old. The boy was then entrusted to a preceptor (pedagogue), whose business it was to teach him to conduct himself well and to obey. The pedagogue was often a slave, but the father gave him the right to beat his son. This was the general usage in antiquity.