Problems in Greek history Part 9

But in the first place let me repeat that they were one and all slave-holding democracies, and that for each freeman with a vote there were at least three or four slaves. Hence a Greek democracy can in no wise be compared with the modern democracies of artisans and labourers who have to do all their own drudgery, and have hardly any servants.

Even very poor Athenians kept a slave or two; they were saved the worry of much troublesome or degrading manual labour; and so the Athenian or the Tarentine, even when poor and over-worked, was in a serious sense an aristocrat as well as a democrat: he belonged to a small minority ruling a far greater population. Still more eminently was this the case, when the democracy was, like Athens or Rhodes, an Imperial one, ruling over subjects, or allied with smaller polities which were little better than subjects. Holm argues that under Pericles the poorest citizen was paid by public money for doing public duties, and was thus above all care concerning his daily bread[89:1]. But when he adds that by this means Pericles succeeded in making the Athenians in one respect (materially) equal to the Spartans, in that they could be (if they performed public duties) n.o.blemen and gentlemen like the latter, he surely overstates the case. The traditions of a landed aristocracy are wholly different from those of salaried paupers, however great may be the power wielded by these latter, or the privileges that they enjoy.

[Sidenote: Athenian leisure.]

Still it is quite possible that all the modern aids which our poor can use are not as efficient in helping them to attain culture as the leisure granted to the Greek democrat by slave-labour at home. Nor have we as yet any instance of a society becoming really refined without the aid of some inferior cla.s.s, some Gibeonites, to hew wood and draw water.

[Sidenote: The a.s.sembly an absolute sovran.]

But if from this point of view the ancient artisan was far freer than his modern counterpart, in another he was not so. As against his brother-citizen, the laws secured him equality and justice; but against the demands of the State he had no redress. The Greek theory required that all citizens should be regarded simply as the property of the State; and such a thing as an appeal to a High Court of Judicature against the decree of the a.s.sembly would have been regarded as absurd[90:1]. The Demos was indeed 'the sovran people,' but sovran in the sense of a tyrant, or irresponsible ruler, as Aristophanes tells the Athenians.

These are the general features of Greek democracy, which are not always understood by foreign, and not urged with sufficient clearness by English, historians.

FOOTNOTES:

[77:1] The reader who desires fuller details may consult the chapter on the 'Lyric Age' in my _Social Life in Greece_, and the chapters on the lyric poets in my _History of Greek Literature_.

[78:1] Herodotus, vi. 58.

[78:2] The theorists were always framing policies after Spartan ideas.

[78:3] The two accounts of early Sparta which are cited with general approval are those of Duncker in his history, and Busolt's monograph, _Die Lakedaimonier_ (Leipzig, 1878). But there is a host of additional literature, cf. Busolt, G. G. i. 95.

[79:1] Above, -- 8.

[80:1] It is likely enough that at no time were they really extinct in the Peloponnesus or in the lesser towns of northern Greece.

[80:2] There is a good note upon this word in the Greek argument to the _dipus Tyrannus_.

[81:1] Cf. above, -- 8.

[82:1] Mitford, who wrote in the days when tirades against tyrants were in high fashion, brought down a torrent of censure upon his head by saying his word for absolute government against democracy.

[82:2] Cf. my _Greek Life and Thought_, p. 416.

[86:1] I shall return to this subject of tyrants in connection with their later and h.e.l.lenistic features. Cf. below, -- 71.

[87:1] Three remarkable laws, all intended to save the Athenian democracy, whose ministers had no standing-army at their control, from sudden overthrow, seem to me never to have been clearly correlated by the historians. Solon's law (1) ordained that where an actual [Greek: stasis] had arisen, every citizen must take some side, calculating that all quiet and orderly people, if compelled to join in the conflict, would side with the established Government. Cleisthenes saw that this appeal to the body of the citizens came too late, and indeed had failed when the usurpation of Peisistratus took place. He (2) established _Ostracism_, which interfered before the [Greek: stasis], but when the rivalry of two leaders showed that the danger was at hand. So far Grote expounds the development. But this expedient also failed when the rivals combined, and turned the vote against Hyperbolus. It is from that date only--about 416 B.C.--that I can find cases (3) of the [Greek: graphe paranomon], or prosecution for making illegal _proposals_, thus interfering at a still earlier stage. This last form of the safeguard replaced Ostracism, and lasted to the end of Athenian history. It was a democratic engine often abused, but always safe to be applied in good time.

[87:2] These have been increased for us by the text of the Aristotelian [Greek: Athenaion Politeia], from which Plutarch cited, but not fully, his quotations in the _Life of Solon_.

[88:1] _Hist. of Greece_, vol. ii. chap. xix. -- 2. He claims in his interesting preface to the last edition to have attained Grote's conclusions independently thirty years ago, when they were regarded in France as dangerous paradoxes.

[89:1] G. G. ii. 391. There is a very curious summary of the various cla.s.ses of public employments on which the Attic citizen lived in the Aristotelian [Greek: Athenaion Politeia], -- 24. The author estimates the total number of civil servants or pensioners at over 20,000.

[90:1] This has for the first time been clearly put by Duruy in his _History of Rome_. Our irresponsible and final Houses of Parliament, whose acts may annul any law, are a very dangerous modern a.n.a.logy.

CHAPTER V.

THE GREAT HISTORIANS.

-- 39. I now pa.s.s on to the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, and their treatment by ancient and modern critics.

[Sidenote: Herodotus and Thucydides.]

[Sidenote: Herodotus superior in subject.]

It is our peculiar good fortune to have these two wars narrated respectively by the two greatest historians that Greece produced,--Herodotus and Thucydides. Unfortunately, perhaps, after the manner of most historians, they have made wars their chief subject; but this criticism applies less to Herodotus, who in leading up to his great climax has given us so many delightful digressions on foreign lands and their earlier history, that his book is rather a general account of the civilized world in the sixth century, with pa.s.sages from older history, than a mere chronicle of the great war. Nor does he disdain to tell us piquant anecdotes and unauthorized gossip,--all giving us pictures of his own mind and time, if not an accurate record of older history.

Making, therefore, every allowance for the often uncritical, though always honest[92:1], view he took of men and affairs, there can be no doubt that the very greatness of his subject puts him far above Thucydides, whose mighty genius was unfortunately confined to a tedious and generally uninteresting conflict, consisting of yearly raids, military promenades, very small battles, and only one large and tragic expedition, throughout the whole course of its five-and-twenty years.

[Sidenote: Narrow scope of Thucydides.]

[Sidenote: His deliberate omissions,]

Still sadder is that this great man, having undertaken to narrate a very small, though a very long, war, so magnifies its importance as to make it out the greatest crisis that ever happened, and therefore excludes from his history almost everything which would be of real interest to the permanent study of Greek life. He pa.s.ses briefly over the deeply interesting but now quite obscure period of the rise of the Athenian power. A detailed history of the fifty years preceding his war would indeed have been an inestimable boon to posterity. He pa.s.ses in contemptuous silence over all the artistic development of Athens. The origin of the drama, aeschylus, Susarion, Cratinus; the growth of sculpture, Pheidias, Ictinus, the building of the Parthenon, of the temple of Theseus,--all this is a blank in his narrative. And yet he does not think it inconsistent with his plan to give us a sketch of the famous _fifty years_ that elapsed between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. He proposes to correct the inaccuracies of h.e.l.lanicus, his only predecessor in this field, and there can be no doubt that what he has condescended to give us is both accurate and valuable. But so scanty are his details, so frequent his silence on really important public events, that we are fain to turn to any inferior author to fill the gap.

[Sidenote: supplied by inferior historians.]

[Sidenote: Diodorus.]

[Sidenote: Date of the destruction of Mycenae.]

Of these there are (apart from the poets) two extant, Diodorus and Plutarch. Both these men lived long after the events, and were beholden to literary sources for their information. The whole tone and the arrangement of Diodorus' eleventh book show that he used Ephorus as his chief authority. The citations from Ephorus by other authors make this conclusion unavoidable. The value of Diodorus' account, when it adds to what Thucydides has said, is therefore to be estimated by the value of Ephorus as an independent historian. On this I have already declared my opinion (-- 30), to which I need only add that I fully agree with Busolt when he says that for the early years of the period Ephorus had no other authority than Thucydides of any value. The only new fact that Diodorus preserves for us is the alleged destruction of Mycenae by the Argives (_circ._ 464 B.C.), at a moment, he infers, when Sparta was in the crisis of the Helot insurrection, and unable to interfere.

[Sidenote: Silence of aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.]

I have long since explained (in Schliemann's _Mycenae_) why I discredit the whole story. Holm is the only writer who seems to feel with me the difficulty of supposing such an event to have been pa.s.sed over with indifference by the patriotic Greek States, whom the Mycenaeans and Tirynthians had joined in the great Persian crisis. And when Holm urges political expediency to account for Sparta's non-interference, he surely forgets that the literary men of Athens were restrained by no such considerations. Thucydides (i. 102) mentions Argos at this moment: is it likely that even he would pa.s.s over this territorial aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of Argos without a syllable of notice? But apart from this ma.s.s of reticences, what of aeschylus, the comrade of the Mycenaeans on the field of battle, what of Sophocles, what of Euripides, all of whom ought to have celebrated Mycenae, and who celebrate Argos instead? They seem to have absolutely forgotten Mycenae! What of the absolute reticence of the remains found by Schliemann, not one of which belongs to the fifth or sixth century B.C., but all to a long anterior period? The whole affair is, therefore, placed two centuries too late, and, for all we know, may not be derived from Ephorus at all, but from some inferior source, or from Diodorus' own combination. Even if Ephorus was the source, I refuse to accept his authority.

[Sidenote: Value of Plutarch's _Lives_.]

When we turn to Plutarch, whose object was indeed rather artistic and moral than historical, we are in a far better plight. For although his _Lives_ of Themistocles and Cimon do not give us much material of a trustworthy kind beyond what we know from Thucydides, this is not the case with the _Life of Pericles_, in which he has collected much valuable information from sources now lost to us, which all the researches of the Germans have not even succeeded in specifying by name.

Our whole picture of the splendour of Athens in her greatest moment is derived not so much from the vague phrases of the speeches in Thucydides as from the deeply interesting facts preserved by Plutarch. His brilliant sketch and the narrative of Thucydides have been ill.u.s.trated, since the days of Curtius and of Grote, by the recovery of a large number of inscriptions, chiefly from the Acropolis at Athens, recording the quotas paid from the tribute of the several allied cities to Athena and to the other G.o.ds. These lists, together with several fragments of treaties with the various cities, and the lists of offerings recently found at Delos, have afforded Holm the materials for his fascinating chapters upon Imperial Athens[96:1].

[Sidenote: The newly-found tract _On the Const.i.tution of Athens_.]

But even since the appearance of his book (1889) a new and important review of the obscure moments of Athenian growth has been recovered in the work of Aristotle on _The Polity of the Athenians_[96:2]. He does not indeed concern himself either with the foreign policy or with the artistic grandeur of the city. But as regards her internal development he brings us several new and curious facts. He ascribes the creation of the sovran Demos living at Athens on salaries for public duties, not to Pericles, but to Aristides. The whole democratic reform is in fact completed before the former arrives at power. The political activity of Themistocles is also prolonged for several years later than we had suspected, and it is even at his instigation that Ephialtes attacks the Areopagus. The political _role_ of Pericles is in fact so reduced, that we almost suspect an _animus_ against him in the author, who elsewhere shows his preference for the conservative side in politics. We should indeed rejoice could we confront this Aristotle with Thucydides, and see what truth there is in his departure from our received histories.

Plutarch, who uses the work constantly in the _Life_ of Solon, evidently disregards it when he comes to treat of Themistocles and Pericles. Had Thucydides been a little fuller, had he given himself the trouble to preserve a few more details, we should be in a better position to face this new historical problem, and estimate the really great period of the history of Athens.

[Sidenote: Effects of his literary genius.]

[Sidenote: The Peloponnesian war of no world-wide consequence.]

And yet such was his literary genius, such his rhetorical force, that, crabbed and sour as he may have been, he has so impressed his own and his subject's importance upon the learned world as to bring the Peloponnesian war into much greater prominence than the greater events of Greek history. Thus in a well-known selection of fifteen decisive battles from the world's history, the defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse figures as a world event; whereas it only settled the question whether one kind of Greek or another should dominate in Sicily, and perhaps in Greece. The domestic quarrels within the limits of a single nationality are not of this transcendent import. If the Carthaginians had crushed Rome, or the northern hordes of Asia destroyed the civilization of Persia when it was growing under Cyrus, there indeed a great battle might be called a decisive event. But even had the Athenians conquered Syracuse, it is quite certain that their domination of the Greek world would have broken down from within, from the inherent weaknesses in all Greek democracies, which Plato and Aristotle have long ago a.n.a.lyzed and explained.