Mosaics of Grecian History Part 23

Thence the loud thunders roar, and lightnings glare Along the darkness of the troubled air.

Unmoved by storms, old Ocean peaceful sleeps Till the loud tempest swells the angry deeps.

And thus the State, in full distraction toss'd, Oft by its n.o.blest citizen is lost; And oft a people once secure and free, Their own imprudence dooms to tyranny.

My laws have armed the crowd with useful might, Have banished honors and unequal right, Have taught the proud in wealth, and high in place, To reverence justice and abhor disgrace; And given to both a shield, their guardian tower, Against ambition's aims and lawless power."

III. THE USURPATION OF PISIS'TRATUS.

The legislation of Solon was not followed by the total extinction of party-spirit, and, while he was absent from Athens on a visit to Egypt and other Eastern countries, the three prominent factions in the state renewed their ancient feuds. Pisistratus, a wealthy kinsman of Solon, who had supported the measures of the latter by his eloquence and military talents, had the art to gain the favor of the ma.s.s of the people and const.i.tute himself their leader. AKENSIDE thus happily describes him as--

The great Pisistratus! that chief renowned, Whom Hermes and the Ida'lian queen had trained, Even from his birth, to every powerful art Of pleasing and persuading; from whose lips Flowed eloquence which, like the vows of love, Could steal away suspicion from the hearts Of all who listened. Thus, from day to day He won the general suffrage, and beheld Each rival overshadowed and depressed Beneath his ampler state; yet oft complained As one less kindly treated, who had hoped To merit favor, but submits perforce To find another's services preferred, Nor yet relaxeth aught of faith or zeal.

Then tales were scattered of his envious foes, Of snares that watched his fame, of daggers aimed Against his life.

When his schemes were ripe for execution, Pisistratus one day drove into the public square of Athens, his mules and himself disfigured with recent wounds inflicted by his own hands, but which he induced the mult.i.tude to believe had been received from a band of a.s.sa.s.sins, whom his enemies, the n.o.bility, had hired to murder "the friend of the people." Of this scene the same poet says:

At last, with trembling limbs, His hair diffused and wild, his garments loose, And stained with blood from self-inflicted wounds, He burst into the public place, as there, There only were his refuge; and declared In broken words, with sighs of deep regret, The mortal danger he had scarce repelled.

The ruse was successful. An a.s.sembly was at once convoked by his partisans, and the indignant crowd immediately voted him a guard of fifty citizens to protect his person, although Solon, who had returned to Athens and was present, warned them of the pernicious consequences of such a measure.

Pisistratus soon took advantage of the favor he had gained, and, arming a large body of his adherents, he threw off the mask and seized the Acropolis. Solon alone, firm and undaunted, publicly presented himself in the market-place, and called upon the people to resist the usurpation.

Solon, with swift indignant strides The a.s.sembled people seeks; proclaims aloud It was no time for counsel; in their spears Lay all their prudence now: the tyrant yet Was not so firmly seated on his throne, But that one shock of their united force Would dash him from the summit of his pride Headlong and grovelling in the dust.

But his appeal was in vain, and Pisistratus, without opposition, made himself master of Athens. The usurper made no change in the Const.i.tution, and suffered the laws to take their course.

He left Solon undisturbed; and it is said that the aged patriot, rejecting all offers of favor, went into voluntary exile, and soon after died at Salamis. Twice was Pisistratus driven from Athens by a coalition of the opposing factions, but he regained the sovereignty and succeeded in holding it until his death (527 B.C.). Although he tightened the reins of government, he ruled with equity and mildness, and adorned Athens with many magnificent and useful works, among them the Lyceum, that subsequently became the famous resort of philosophers and poets.

He is also said to have been the first person in Greece who collected a library, which he threw open to the public; and to him posterity is indebted for the collection of Homer's poems.

THIRLWALL says: "On the whole, though we cannot approve of the steps by which Pisistratus mounted to power, we must own that he made a princely use of it; and may believe that, though under his dynasty Athens could never have risen to the greatness she afterward attained, she was indebted to his rule for a season of repose, during which she gained much of that strength which she finally unfolded."

THE TYRANNY AND THE DEATH OF HIP'PIAS.

On the death of Pisistratus his sons Hippias, Hippar'chus, and Thes'salus succeeded to his power, and for some years trod in his steps and carried out his plans, only taking care to fill the most important offices with their friends, and keeping a standing force of foreign mercenaries to secure themselves from hostile factions and popular outbreaks. After a joint reign of fourteen years, a conspiracy was formed to free Attica from their rule, at the head of which were two young Athenians, Harmo'dius and Aristogi'ton, whose personal resentment had been provoked by an atrocious insult to the family of the former. One of the brothers was killed, but the two young Athenians also lost their lives in the struggle. Hippias, the elder of the rulers, now became a cruel tyrant, and soon alienated the affections of the people, who obtained the aid of the Spartans, and the family of the Pisistratids was driven from Athens, never to regain its former ascendancy (510 B.C.). Hippias fled to the court of Artapher'nes, governor of Lydia, then a part of the Persian dominion of Dari'us, where his intrigues largely contributed to the opening of a war between Persia and Greece.

The names of Harmodius and Aristogiton have been immortalized by what some writers term "the ignorant or prejudiced grat.i.tude of the Athenians." DR. ANTHON considers them cowardly conspirators, ent.i.tled to no heroic honors. But, as he says, statues were erected to them at the public expense; and when an orator wished to suggest the idea of the highest merit and of the n.o.blest services to the cause of liberty, he never failed to remind his hearers of Harmodius and Aristogiton. Their names never ceased to be repeated with affectionate admiration in the convivial songs of Athens, which a.s.signed them a place in the islands of the "blessed," by the side of Achilles and Tydi'des. From one of the most famous and popular of these songs, by CALLIS'TRATUS, we give the following verses:

Harmodius, hail! Though 'reft of breath, Thou ne'er shalt feel the stroke of death; The heroes' happy isles shall be The bright abode allotted thee.

While freedom's name is understood You shall delight the wise and good; You dared to set your country free, And gave her laws equality.

IV. THE BIRTH OF DEMOCRACY.

On the expulsion of Hippias, Clis'thenes, to whom Athens was mainly indebted for its liberation from the Pisistratids, aspired to the political leadership of the state. But he was opposed by Isag'oras, who was supported by the n.o.bility. In order to make his cause popular, Clisthenes planned, and succeeded in executing, a change in the Const.i.tution of Solon, which gave to the people a greater share in the government. He divided the people into ten tribes, instead of the old Ionic four tribes, and these in turn were subdivided into districts or townships called de'mes. He increased the powers and duties of the Senate, giving to it five hundred members, with fifty from each tribe; and he placed the administration of the military service in the hands of ten generals, one being taken from each tribe. The reforms of Clisthenes gave birth to the Athenian democracy. As THIRLWALL observes, "They had the effect of transforming the commonalty into a new body, furnished with new organs, and breathing a new spirit, which was no longer subject to the slightest control from any influence, save that of wealth and personal qualities, in the old n.o.bility. The whole frame of the state was reorganized to correspond with the new division of the country."

On the application of Isagoras and his party, Sparta, jealous of the growing strength of Athens, made three unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the Athenian democracy, and reinstate Hippias in supreme command. She finally abandoned the project, as she could find no allies to a.s.sist in the enterprise. "Athens had now entered upon her glorious career. The inst.i.tutions of Clisthenes had given her citizens a personal interest in the welfare and the grandeur of their country, and a spirit of the warmest patriotism rapidly sprung up among them. The Persian wars, which followed almost immediately, exhibit a striking proof of the heroic sacrifices which they were prepared to make for the liberty and the independence of their state."

CHAPTER VII.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREEK COLONIES.

An important part of the history of Greece is that which embraces the age of Grecian colonization, and the extension of the commerce of the Greeks to nearly all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Of the various circ.u.mstances that led to the planting of the Greek colonies, and especially of the Ionic, aeolian, and Dorian colonies on the coast of Asia Minor and the islands of the aegean Sea, we have already spoken. These latter were ever intimately connected with Greece proper, in whose general history theirs is embraced; but the cities of Italy, Sicily, and Cyrena'ica were too far removed from the drama that was enacted around the sh.o.r.es of the aegean to be more than occasionally and temporarily affected by the changing fortunes of the parent states. A brief notice, therefore, of some of those distant settlements, that eventually rivaled even Athens and Sparta in power and resources, cannot be uninteresting, while it will serve to give more accurate views of the extent and importance of the field of Grecian history.

At an early period the sh.o.r.es of Southern Italy and Sicily were peopled by Greeks; and so numerous and powerful did the Grecian cities become that the whole were comprised by Strabo and others under the appellation Magna Graecia, or Great Greece. The earliest of these distant settlements appear to have been made at Cu'mae and Neap'olis, on the western coast of Italy, about the middle of the eleventh century. c.u.mae was built on a rocky hill washed by the sea; and the same name is still applied to the ruins that lie scattered around its base. Some of the most splendid fictions of Virgil's aeneid relate to the c.u.maean Sibyl, whose supposed cave, hewn out of the solid rock, actually existed under the city:

A s.p.a.cious cave, within its farmost part, Was hewed and fashioned by laborious art, Through the hill's hollow sides; before the place A hundred doors a hundred entries grace; As many voices issue, and the sound Of Sibyl's words as many times rebound.

--aeneid B. VI.

GROTE says: "The myth of the Sibyl pa.s.sed from the Cymae'ans in ae'olis, along with the other circ.u.mstances of the tale of aene'as, to their brethren, the inhabitants of c.u.mae in Italy. In the hollow rock under the very walls of the town was situated the cavern of the Sibyl; and in the immediate neighborhood stood the wild woods and dark lake of Avernus, consecrated to the subterranean G.o.ds, and offering an establishment of priests, with ceremonies evoking the dead, for purposes of prophecy or for solving doubts and mysteries. It was here that Grecian imagination localized the Cimme'rians and the fable of O-dys'seus."[Footnote: The voyage of Ulysses (Odysseus) to the infernal regions. Odyssey, B. XI.]

The extraordinary fertility of Sicily was a great attraction to the Greek colonists. Naxos, on the eastern coast of the island, was founded about the year 735 B.C.; and in the following year some Corinthians laid the foundations of Syracuse. Ge'la, on the western coast of the island, and Messa'na, now Mess'na, on the strait between Italy and Sicily, were founded soon after.

Agrigen'tum, on the south-western coast, was founded about a century later, and became celebrated for the magnificence of its public buildings. Pindar called it "the fairest of mortal cities,"

and to The'ron, its ruler from 488 to 472, the poet thus refers in the second Olympic ode:

Come, now, my soul! now draw the string; Bend at the mark the bow: To whom shall now the glorious arrow wing The praise of mild benignity?

To Agrigentum fly, Arrow of song, and there thy praise bestow; For I shall swear an oath: a hundred years are flown, But the city ne'er has known A hand more liberal, a more loving heart, Than, Theron, thine! for such thou art.

Yet wrong hath risen to blast his praise; Breath of injustice, breathed from men insane, Who seek in brawling strain The echo of his virtues mild to drown, And with their violent deeds eclipse the days Of his serene renown.

Unnumbered are the sands of th' ocean sh.o.r.e; And who shall number o'er Those joys in others' b.r.e.a.s.t.s which Theron's hand hath sown?

--Trans. by ELTON.

In the mean time the Greek cities Syb'aris, Croto'na, and Taren'tum had been planted on the south-eastern coast of Italy, and had rapidly grown to power and opulence. The territorial dominions of Sybaris and Crotona extended across the peninsula from sea to sea. The former possessed twenty-five dependent towns, and ruled over four distinct tribes or nations. The territories of Crotona were still more extensive. These two Grecian states were at the maximum of their power about the year 560 B.C.--the time of the accession of Pisistratus at Athens--but they quarreled with each other, and the result of the contest was the ruin of Sybaris, in 510 B.C. Tarentum was settled by a colony of Spartans about the year 707 B.C., soon after the first Messenian war. No details of its history during the first two hundred and thirty years of its existence are known to us; but in the fourth century B.C. the Tar'entines stood foremost among the Italian Greeks, and they maintained their power down to the time of Roman supremacy.

During the first two centuries after the founding of Naxos, in Sicily, Grecian settlements were extended over the eastern, southern, and western sides of the island, while Him'era was the only Grecian town on the northern coast. These two hundred years were a period of prosperity among the Sicilian Greeks, who dwelt chiefly in fortified towns, and exercised authority over the surrounding native population, which gradually became a.s.similated in manners, language, and religion to the higher civilization of the Greeks. "It cannot be doubted," says GROTE, "that these first two centuries were periods of steady increase among the Sicilian Greeks, undisturbed by those distractions and calamities which supervened afterward, and which led indeed to the extraordinary aggrandizement of some of their communities, but also to the ruin of several others; moreover, it seems that the Carthaginians in Sicily gave them no trouble until the time of Ge'lon. Their position will seem singularly advantageous, if we consider the extraordinary fertility of the soil in this fine island, especially near the sea; its capacity for corn, wine, and oil, the species of cultivation to which the Greek husbandman had been accustomed under less favorable circ.u.mstances; its abundant fisheries on the coast, so important in Grecian diet, and continuing undiminished even at the present day--together with sheep, cattle, hides, wool, and timber from the native population in the interior."[Footnote: "History of Greece," vol. iii., p. 367.]

During the sixth century before the Christian era the Greek cities in Sicily and Southern Italy were among the most powerful and flourishing that bore the h.e.l.lenic name. Ge'la and Agrigentum, on the south side of Sicily, had then become the most prominent of the Sicilian governments; and at the beginning of the fifth century we find Gelon, a despot of the former city, subjecting other towns to his authority. Finally obtaining possession of Syracuse, he made it the seat of his empire (485 B.C.), leaving Gela to be governed by his brother Hi'ero, the first Sicilian ruler of that name.

Gelon strengthened the fortifications and greatly enlarged the limits of Syracuse, while to occupy the enlarged s.p.a.ce he dismantled many of the surrounding towns and transported their inhabitants to his new capital, which now became not only the first city in Sicily, but, according to Herodotus, superior to any other h.e.l.lenic power. When, in 480 B.C., a formidable Carthaginian force under Hamil'-car invaded Sicily at the instigation of Xerxes, King of Persia, who had overrun Greece proper and captured Athens, Gelon, at the head of fifty-five thousand men, engaged the Carthaginians in battle at Himera, and defeated them with terrible slaughter, Hamilcar himself being numbered among the slain. The victory at Himera procured for Sicily immunity from foreign war, while the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis, on the very same day, dispelled the terrific cloud that overhung the Greeks in that quarter.

Syracuse continued a flourishing city for several centuries later; but the subsequent events of interest in her history will be related in a later chapter. Another Greek colony of importance was that of Cyre'ne, on the northern coast of Africa, between the territories of Egypt and Carthage. It was founded about 630 B.C., and, having the advantages of a fertile soil and fine climate, it rapidly grew in wealth and power. For eight generations it was governed by kings; but about 460 B.C. royalty was abolished and a democratic government was established: Cyrene finally fell under the power of the Carthaginians, and thus remained until Carthage was destroyed by the Romans. We have mentioned only the most important of the Grecian colonies, and even the history that we have of these, the best known, is unconnected and fragmentary.

CHAPTER VIII.

PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.

I. THE POEMS OF HE'SIOD.

The rapid development of literature and the arts is one of the most pleasing and striking features of Grecian history. As one writer has well said, "There was an uninterrupted progress in the development of the Grecian mind from the earliest dawn of the history of the people to the downfall of their political independence; and each succeeding age saw the production of some of those master-works of genius which have been the models and the admiration of all subsequent time." The first period of Grecian literature, ending about 776 B.C., may be termed the period of epic poetry. Its chief monuments are the epics of Homer and of Hesiod.

The former are essentially heroic, concerning the deeds of warriors and demi-G.o.ds; while the latter present to us the different phases of domestic life, and are more of an ethical and religious character. Homer represents the poetry, or school of poetry, belonging chiefly to Ionia, in Asia Minor. Of his poems we have already given some account, and, pa.s.sing over the minor intervening poets, called Cyclic, of whose works we have scarcely any knowledge, we will here give a brief sketch of the poems ascribed to Hesiod.

Hesiod is the representative of a school of bards which first developed in Boeotia, and then spread over Phocis and Euboea.

The works purporting to be his, that have come down to us, are three in number--the Works and Days, the Theogony, and the Shield of Hercules. The latter, however, is now generally considered the production of some other poet. From DR. FELTON we have the following general characterization of these poems: "Aside from their intrinsic merit as poetical compositions, these poems are of high value for the light they throw on the mythological conceptions of those early times, and for the vivid pictures presented, by the "Works and Days", of the hardships and pleasures of daily life, the superst.i.tious observances, the homely wisdom of common experience, and the proverbial philosophy into which that experience had been wrought. For the truthfulness of the delineation generally all antiquity vouched; and there is in the style of expression and tone of thought a racy freshness redolent of the native soil." Of the poet himself we learn, from his writings, that he was a native of As'cra, a village at the foot of Mount Hel'icon, in Boeotia. Of the time of his birth we have no account, but it is probable that he flourished from half a century to a century later than Homer. But few incidents of his life are related, and these he gives us in his works, from which we learn that be was engaged in pastoral pursuits, and that he was deprived of the greater part of his inheritance by the decision of judges whom his brother Per'ses had bribed. This brother subsequently became much reduced in circ.u.mstances, and applied to Hesiod for relief. The poet a.s.sisted him, and then addressed to him the "Works and Days", in which he lays down certain rules for the regulation and conduct of his life.