Mosaics of Grecian History Part 31

--THOMSON.

On the banishment of Themistocles Aristides became the undisputed leader of the aristocratical party at Athens, and on his death, four years subsequently, Cimon succeeded him. The later was already distinguished for his military successes, and was undoubtedly the greatest commander of his time. He continued the successful war against Persia for many years, and among his notable victories was one obtained on both sea and land, in Pamphyl'ia, in Asia Minor, and called

THE BATTLE OF EURYM'EDON.

After dispersing a fleet of two hundred ships Cimon landed his troops, flushed with victory, and completely routed a large Persian army. The poet SIMONIDES praises this double victory in the following verse:

Ne'er since that olden time, when Asia stood First torn from Europe by the ocean flood, Since horrid Mars first poured on either sh.o.r.e The storm of battle and its wild uproar, Hath man by land and sea such glory won As by the mighty deed this day was done.

By land, the Medes in myriads press the ground; By sea, a hundred Tyrian ships are drowned, With all their martial host; while Asia stands Deep groaning by, and wrings her helpless hands.

--Trans. by MERIVALE.

The same poet pays the following tribute to the Greeks who fell in this conflict:

These, by the streams of famed Eurymedon, There, envied youth's short brilliant race have run: In swift-winged ships, and on the embattled field, Alike they forced the Median bows to yield, Breaking their foremost ranks. Now here they lie, Their names inscribed on rolls of victory.

--Trans. by MERIVALE.

On the recall of Pausanias from Asia Minor Sparta lost, and Athens acquired, the command in the war against Persia. Athens was now rapidly approaching the summit of her military renown. The war with Persia did not prevent her from extending her possessions in Greece by force of arms; and island after island of the aegean yielded to her sway, while her colonies peopled the winding sh.o.r.es of Thrace and Macedon. The other states and cities of Greece could not behold her rapid, and apparently permanent, growth in power without great dissatisfaction and anxiety. When the Persian war was at its height, a sense of common danger had caused many of them to seek an alliance with Athens, the result of what is known as the Confederacy of Delos; but, now that the danger was virtually pa.s.sed, long existing jealousies broke out, which led to political dissensions, and, finally, to the civil wars that caused the ruin of the Grecian republics. Sparta, especially, had long viewed with indignation the growing resources of Athens and was preparing to check them by an invasion of Attica, when sudden and complicated disasters forced her to abandon her designs, and turn her attention to her own dominions. In 464 B.C. the city was visited by an earthquake that laid it in ruins and buried not less than twenty thousand of its chosen citizens; and this calamity was immediately followed by a general revolt of the Helots. BULWER'S description of this terrible earthquake, and of the memorable conduct of the Laconian government in opposing, under such trying circ.u.mstances, the dreadful revolt that occurred, has been greatly admired for its eloquence and its strict adherence to facts.

The Earthquake at Sparta and the Revolt of the Helots.

"An earthquake, unprecedented in its violence, occurred in Sparta.

In many places throughout Laconia the rocky soil was rent asunder.

From Mount Ta-yg'e-tus, which overhung the city, and on which the women of Lacedaemon were wont to hold their baccha.n.a.lian orgies, huge fragments rolled into the suburbs. The greater portion of the city was absolutely overthrown; and it is said, probably with exaggeration, that only five houses wholly escaped disaster from the shock. This terrible calamity did not cease suddenly as it came; its concussions were repeated; it buried alike men and treasure: could we credit Diodorus, no less than twenty thousand persons perished in the shock. Thus depopulated, impoverished, and distressed, the enemies whom the cruelty of Sparta nursed within her bosom resolved to seize the moment to execute their vengeance and consummate her destruction. Under Pausanias the Helots were ready for revolt; and the death of that conspirator checked, but did not crush, their designs of freedom. Now was the moment, when Sparta lay in ruins--now was the moment to realize their dreams. From field to field, from village to village, the news of the earthquake became the watchword of revolt. Up rose the Helots--they armed themselves, they poured on--a wild and gathering and relentless mult.i.tude resolved to slay, by the wrath of man, all whom that of nature had yet spared. The earthquake that leveled Sparta rent their chains; nor did the shock create one chasm so dark and wide as that between the master and the slave.

"It is one of the sublimest and most awful spectacles in history --that city in ruins--the earth still trembling, the grim and dauntless soldiery collected amid piles of death and ruin; and in such a time, and such a scene, the mult.i.tude sensible not of danger, but of wrong, and rising not to succor, but to revenge--all that should have disarmed a feebler enmity giving fire to theirs; the dreadest calamity their blessing--dismay their hope. It was as if the Great Mother herself had summoned her children to vindicate the long-abused, the all-inalienable heritage derived from her; and the stir of the angry elements was but the announcement of an armed and solemn union between nature and the oppressed.

"Fortunately for Sparta, the danger was not altogether unforeseen.

After the confusion and the horror of the earthquake, and while the people, dispersed, were seeking to save their effects, Archida'mus, who, four years before, had succeeded to the throne of Lacedaemon, ordered the trumpets to sound as to arms. That wonderful superiority of man over matter which habit and discipline can effect, and which was ever so visible among the Spartans, const.i.tuted their safety at that hour. Forsaking the care of their property, the Spartans seized their arms, flocked around their king, and drew up in disciplined array. In her most imminent crisis Sparta was thus saved. The Helots approached, wild, disorderly, and tumultuous; they came intent only to plunder and to slay; they expected to find scattered and affrighted foes --they found a formidable army; their tyrants were still their lords. They saw, paused, and fled, scattering themselves over the country, exciting all they met to rebellion, and soon joined with the Messenians, kindred to them by blood and ancient reminiscences of heroic struggles; they seized that same Ithome which their hereditary Aristodemus had before occupied with unforgotten valor. This they fortified, and, occupying also the neighboring lands, declared open war upon their lords." [Footnote: "Athens: Its Rise and Fall," pp. 176, 177.]

"The incident here related of the King of Sparta," says ALISON, "amid the yawning of the earthquake and the ruin of his capital, sounding the trumpets to arms, and the Lacedaemonians a.s.sembling in disciplined array around him, is one of the sublimest recorded in history. We need not wonder that a people capable of such conduct in such a moment, and trained by discipline and habit to such docility in danger, should subsequently acquire and maintain supreme dominion in Greece." The general insurrection of the Helots is known in history as the THIRD MESSENIAN WAR. After two or three years had pa.s.sed in vain attempts to capture Ithome, the Spartans were obliged to call for aid on the Athenians, with whom they were still in avowed alliance. The friends of Pericles, the rival of Cimon and the leader of the democratic party at Athens, opposed granting the desired relief; but Cimon, after some difficulty, persuaded his countrymen to a.s.sist the Lacedaemonians, and he himself marched with four thousand men to Ithome. The aid of the Athenians was solicited on account of their acknowledged skill in capturing fortified places; but as Cimon did not succeed in taking Ithome, the Spartans became suspicious of his designs, and summarily sent him back to Athens.

III. THE ACCESSION OF PERICLES TO POWER.

The ill success of the expedition of Cimon gave Pericles the opportunity to place himself and the popular party in power at Athens; for the const.i.tutional reforms that had been gradually weakening the power of the aristocracy were now made available to sweep it almost entirely away. The following extract from BULWER'S Athens briefly yet fully tells what was accomplished in this direction:

"The Const.i.tution previous to Solon was an oligarchy of birth.

Solon rendered it an aristocracy of property. Clisthenes widened its basis from property to population; and it was also Clisthenes, in all probability, who weakened the more illicit and oppressive influences of wealth by establishing the ballot of secret suffrage, instead of the open voting which was common in the time of Solon.

The Areop'agus was designed by Solon as the aristocratic balance to the popular a.s.sembly. This const.i.tutional bulwark of the aristocratic party of Athens became more and more invidious to the people, and when Cimon resisted every innovation on that a.s.sembly he only insured his own destruction, while he expedited the policy he denounced. Ephial'tes, the friend and spokesman of Pericles, directed all the force of the popular opinion against this venerable senate; and at length, though not openly a.s.sisted by Pericles, who took no prominent part in the contention, that influential statesman succeeded in crippling its functions and limiting its authority."

With regard to the nature of the const.i.tutional changes effected, the same writer adds: "It appears to me most probable that the Areopagus retained the right of adjudging cases of homicide, and little besides of its ancient const.i.tutional authority; that it lost altogether its most dangerous power in the indefinite police it had formerly exercised over the habits and morals of the people; that any control of the finances was wisely transferred to the popular senate; that its irresponsible character was abolished, and that it was henceforth rendered accountable to the people."

The struggle between the contending parties was long and bitter, and the fall of Cimon was one of the necessary consequences of the political change. Charged, among other things, with too great friendship for Sparta, he was driven into exile. Pericles now persuaded the Athenians to renounce the alliance with Sparta, and he increased the power of Athens by alliances with Argos and other cities. He also continued the construction of the long walls from Athens to the Piraeus and Phalerum--a project that Themistocles had advised and that Cimon had commenced.

The long existing jealousy of Sparta at last broke out in open hostilities. While the siege of Ithome was in progress, Sparta, still powerful in her alliances, sent her allied forces into Boeotia to counteract the growing influence of the Athenians in that quarter. The indignant Athenians, led by Pericles, marched out to meet them, but were worsted in the battle of Tan'agra.

Before this conflict began, Cimon, the banished commander, appeared in the Athenian camp and begged permission to enter the ranks against the enemy. His request being refused, he left his armor with his friends, of whom there were one hundred among the Athenians, with the charge to refute, by their valor, the accusation that he and they were the friends of Sparta. Everyone of the one hundred fell in the conflict. About two months after, in the early part of the year 456 B.C., the Athenians wiped off the stain of their defeat at Tanagra by a victory over the combined Theban and Boeotian forces, then in alliance with Sparta; whereby the authority and influence of Sparta were again confined to the Peloponnesus.

The Athenians were now masters of Greece, from the Gulf of Corinth to the Pa.s.s of Thermopylae, and in the following year they sent an expedition round the Peloponnesus, which captured, among other cities, Naupactus, on the Corinthian Gulf. The third and last Messenian war had just been concluded by the surrender of Ithome, on terms which permitted the Messenians and their families to retire from the Peloponnesus, and they joined the colony which Athens planted at Naupactus. But the successes of Athens in Greece were counterbalanced, in the same year, by reverses in Egypt, where the Athenians were fighting Persia in aid of In'arus, a Libyan prince. These, with some other minor disasters, and the state of bitter feeling that existed between the two parties at Athens, induced Pericles to recall Cimon from exile and put him in command of an expedition against Cyprus and Egypt. In 449, however, Cimon was taken ill, and he died in the harbor of Ci'tium, to which place he was laying siege.

Before the death of Cimon, and through his intervention, a five years' truce had been concluded with Sparta, and soon after his death peace was made with Persia. From this time the empire of Athens began to decline. In the year 447 B.C. a revolt in Boeotia resulted in the overthrow of Athenian supremacy there, while the expulsion of the Athenians from Pho'cis and Lo'cris, and the revolt of Euboea and Megara, followed soon after. The revolt of Euboea was soon quelled, but this was the only success that Athens achieved. Meanwhile a Spartan army invaded Attica and marched to the neighborhood of Eleusis. Having lost much of her empire, with a fair prospect of losing all of it if hostilities continued, Athens concluded a thirty years' truce with Sparta and her allies, by the terms of which she abandoned her conquests in the Peloponnesus, and Megara became an ally of Sparta (445 B.C.)

THE "AGE OF PERICLES."

With the close of the Persian contest, and the beginning of the Thirty Years' truce, properly begins what has been termed the "Age of Pericles"--the inauguration of a new and important era of Athenian greatness and renown. Having won the highest military honors and political ascendancy, Athens now took the lead in intellectual progress. Themistocles and Cimon had restored to Athens all that of which Xerxes had despoiled it--the former having rebuilt its ruins, and the latter having given to its public buildings a degree of magnificence previously unknown.

But Pericles surpa.s.sed them both:

He was the ruler of the land When Athens was the land of fame; He was the light that led the band When each was like a living flame; The centre of earth's n.o.blest ring, Of more than men the more than king.

Yet not by fetter nor by spear His sovereignty was held or won: Feared--but alone as freemen fear; Loved--but as freemen love alone; He waved the sceptre o'er his kind By nature's first great t.i.tle--mind!

--CROLY.

Orator and philosopher, as well as statesman and general, Pericles had the most lofty views. "Athens," says a modern writer, "was to become not only the capital of Greece, but the center of art and refinement, and, at the same time, of those democratical theories which formed the beau ideal of the Athenian notions of government." Athens became the center and capital of the most polished communities of Greece; she drew into a focus all the Grecian intellect, and she obtained from her dependents the wealth to administer the arts, which universal traffic and intercourse taught her to appreciate. The treasury of the state being placed in the hands of Pericles, he knew no limit to expenditure but the popular will, which, fortunately for the glories of Grecian art, kept pace with the vast conceptions of the master designer.

Most of those famous structures that crowned the Athenian Acropolis, or surrounded its base, were either built or adorned by his direction, under the superintendence of the great sculptor, Phidias. The Parthenon, the Ode'um, the gold and ivory statue of the G.o.ddess Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter--the latter two the work of the great sculptor himself--were alone sufficient to immortalize the "Age of Pericles." Of these miracles of sculpture and of architecture, as well as of the literature of this period, we shall speak farther in a subsequent place.

Of the general condition and appearance of Athens during the fourteen years that the Thirty Years' Truce was observed, HAYGARTH gives us the following poetical description:

All the din of war Was hushed to rest. Within a city's walls, Beneath a marble portico, were seen Statesmen and orators, in robes of peace, Holding discourse. The a.s.sembled mult.i.tude Sat in the crowded theatre, and bent To hear the voice of gorgeous Tragedy Breathing, in solemn verse, or ode sublime, Her n.o.ble precepts. The broad city's gates Poured forth a mingled throng--impatient steeds Champing their bits, and neighing for the course: Merchants slow driving to the busy port Their ponderous wains: Religion's holy priests Leading her red-robed votaries to the steps Of some vast temple: young and old, with hands Crossed on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, hastening to walks and shades Suburban, where some moralist explained The laws of mind and virtue. On a rock A varied group appeared: some dragged along The rough-hewn block; some shaped it into form; Some reared the column, or with chisel traced Forms more than human; while Content sat near, And cheered with songs the toil of Industry.

But, as the poet adds,

Soon pa.s.sed this peaceful pageant: War again Brandished his b.l.o.o.d.y lance--

and then began that dismal period between the "Age of Pericles"

and the interference of the Romans--embracing the three Peloponnesian wars, the rising power of Macedonia under Philip of Macedon, the wars of Alexander and the contentions that followed--known as the period of the civil convulsions of Greece.

CHAPTER XI.

THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS, AND THE FALL OF ATHENS.

CAUSES OF THE FIRST WAR.

The various successful schemes of Pericles for enriching and extending the power of Athens were regarded with fear and jealousy by Sparta and her allies, who were only waiting for a reasonable excuse to renew hostilities. The opportunity came in 435 B.C.

Corinth, the ally of Sparta, had become involved in a war with Corcy'ra, one of her colonies, when the latter applied to Athens for a.s.sistance. Pericles persuaded the Athenians to grant the a.s.sistance, and a small fleet was dispatched to Corcyra. The engagement that ensued, in which the Athenian ships bore a part --the greatest contest, Thucydides observes, that had taken place between Greeks to that day--was favorable to the Corinthians; but the sight of a larger Athenian squadron advancing toward the scene of action caused the Corinthians to retreat. This first breach of the truce was soon followed by another. Potidae'a, a Corinthian colony, but tributary to Athens, revolted, on account of some unjust demands that the Athenians had enforced against it, and claimed and obtained the a.s.sistance of the Corinthians.

Thus, in two instances, were Athens and Corinth, though nominally at peace, brought into conflict as open enemies.

THE CONGRESS AT SPARTA.--THE PERSECUTION OF PERICLES.

The Lacedaemonians meanwhile called a meeting of the Peloponnesian Confederacy at Sparta, at which aegina, Meg'ara, and other states made their complaints against Athens. It was also attended by envoys from Athens, who seriously warned it not to force Athens into a struggle that would be waged for its very existence. But a majority of the Confederacy were of the opinion that Athens had violated her treaties, and the result of the deliberations was a declaration of war against her. Not with any real desire for peace, but in order to gain time for her preparations before the declaration was made public, Sparta opened negotiations with Athens; but her preliminary demands were of course refused, while her ultimatum, that Athens should restore to the latter's allies their independence, was met with a like demand by the Athenians --that no state in Peloponnesus should be forced to accommodate itself to the principles in vogue at Sparta, "Let this be our answer," said Pericles, in closing his speech in the Athenian a.s.sembly: "We have no wish to begin war, but whosoever attacks us, him we mean to repel; for our guiding principle ought to be no other than this: that the power of that state which our fathers made great we will hand down undiminished to our posterity." The advice of Pericles was adopted, all farther negotiations were thereupon concluded, and Athens prepared for war.

Although the political authority of Pericles was now at its height, and his services were receiving unwonted public recognition, he had many enemies among all cla.s.ses of citizens, who made his position for a time extremely hazardous. These at first attacked his friends--Phidias, Anaxagoras, Aspasia, and others--who were prominent representatives of his opinions and designs. The former was falsely accused of theft, in having retained for himself a part of the gold furnished to him for the golden robe of Athene Par'thenos, and of impiety for having reproduced his own features in one of the numerous figures on the shield of the G.o.ddess. He was cast into prison, where he died before his trial was concluded.

Anaxagoras, having exposed himself to the penalties of a decree by which all who abjured the current religious views were to be indicted and tried as state criminals, barely escaped with his life; while Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, charged with impiety and base immorality, was only saved by the eloquence and tears of the great statesman, which flowed freely and successfully in her behalf before the jury. Finally, Pericles was attacked in person. He was accused of a waste of the public moneys, and was commanded to render an exact account of his expenditures.

Although he came forth victorious from this and all other attacks, it is evident, as one historian observes, that "the endeavors of his enemies did not fail to exercise a certain influence upon the ma.s.ses; and this led Pericles, who believed that war was in any case inevitable, to welcome its speedy commencement, as he hoped that the common danger would divert public attention from home affairs, render harmless the power of his adversaries, strengthen patriotic feeling, and make manifest to the Athenians their need of his services."