ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS--Before the h.e.l.lenes parted from their Aryan ancestry, they had words for "father," "mother," "brother," "son," and "daughter," as well as for certain connections by marriage. They lived in houses, pastured flocks and herds, possessed dogs and horses. They had for weapons, the sword and the bow. "They knew how to work gold, silver, and copper; they could count up to a hundred; they reckoned time by the lunar month; they spoke of the sky as the "heaven-father."" The differences between the Greek and the Latin languages prove, also, that the Greeks and Italians, after their common progenitors broke off from the primitive Aryan stock, had long dwelt apart. The Greeks, when they first become known to us in historical times, consist of two great branches, the _Dorians_ and _Ionians,_ together with a less distinct branch, the _Aeolians,_ which differs less, perhaps, from the parent _h.e.l.lenes_ than do the two divisions just named.
It is a probable opinion of scholars, that the halting-place of the h.e.l.lenes, whence, in successive waves, they pa.s.sed over into Greece, was _Phrygia,_ in the north-west of Asia Minor. Preceding the Greeks both in northern Greece and in Peloponnesus, and spread over the coasts and islands of the Archipelago, was a people of whom they had an indistinct knowledge, whom they called _Pelasgians._ They were husbandmen or herdsmen. Their national sanctuary was at _Dodona,_ in Epirus. The "Cyclopean" ruins, composed of huge polygonal blocks of stone, which they left behind in various places, are the remnant of their walls and fortifications. The Greeks looked back on these Pelasgian predecessors as different from themselves. Yet no reminiscences existed of any hostility towards them. It is plausibly conjectured that this prehistoric people were emigrants from the region of Phrygia at a more ancient date, and that the h.e.l.lenes, a more energetic and gifted branch of the same stock, followed them, and, without force or conflict, became the founders and leaders of a new historic movement, in which the Pelasgians disappeared from view. In this second migration, the ancestors of the _Ionians_ went down from Phrygia to the coast of Asia Minor, and began the career which made them a maritime and commercial people. The _Dorians_ crossed over to the highlands of northern Greece, where they became hardy mountaineers, not addicted to the sea. The one tribe were to be eventually the founders of _Athens_; the other, of _Sparta_. Besides these two main tribes, the _Aeolians_ occupied Thessaly, Boeotia, Aetolia, and other districts. To them the _Achaeans_, who were supreme in Peloponnesus in the days of Homer, were allied.
FOREIGN INFLUENCES.--Besides Phrygia, the legends of the Greeks bear traces of a foreign influence from _Phoenicia_ and _Egypt_. The Phoenicians were unquestionably early connected with the Greeks, first by commercial visits to Greek ports, to which they brought foreign merchandise. The story of _Cadmus_, who is said to have founded _Thebes_, and to have brought in the Phoenician alphabet, is fabulous. But it is probable, that, as early as the close of the ninth century B.C., the _alphabet_ was introduced by Phoenicians, and diffused over Greece. Another legend is that of _Cecrops_, conceived of later as an Egyptian, who is said to have built a citadel at Athens, and to have imported the seeds of civilization and religion. _Danaus_, another emigrant from Egypt, coming with his fifty daughters, is said to have built the citadel of _Argos_. In the later times, the Greeks were fond of tracing their knowledge of the arts to Egyptian sources. It is remarkable that the agents by whom germs of civilization were said to have been imported from abroad, though foreign, are nevertheless depicted as thoroughly Greek in their character. Whatever the Greeks may have owed to Egypt, it is probable was mainly derived from Ionians who had previously planted themselves in that country.
THE DORIAN EMIGRATION.--It was in the prehistoric time that the Dorians left their homes in northern Greece, and migrated into Peloponnesus, where they proved themselves stronger than the Ionians and the Achaeans dwelling there. They left the Achaeans on the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf, in the district called Achaia. Nor did they conquer Arcadia. But of most of Peloponnesus they became masters. This is the portion of historic truth contained in the myth of the _Return of the Heraclidae_, the descendants of Hercules, to the old kingdom of their ancestor.
MIGRATIONS TO ASIA MINOR.--The Dorian conquest is said to have been the cause of three distinct migrations to Asia Minor. The Achaeans, with their Aeolic kinsmen on the north, established themselves on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, _Lesbos_ and _Cyme_ being their strongholds, and by degrees got control in _Mysia_ and the _Troad_. Ionic emigrants from Attica joined their brethren on the same coast. The Dorians settled on the south-west coast; they also settled _Cos_ and _Rhodes_, and at length subdued _Crete_. The Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, and the migrations just spoken of, were slow in their progress, and possibly stretched over centuries.
CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.--_Originality_ is a distinguishing trait of the Greeks. Whatever they borrowed from others they made their own, and reproduced in a form peculiar to themselves. They were never servile copyists. All the products of the Greek mind, whether in government, art, literature, or in whatever province of human activity, wear a peculiar stamp. When we leave Asiatic ground, and come into contact with the Greeks, we find ourselves in another atmosphere. A spirit of humanity, in the broad sense of the term, pervades their life. A regard for reason, a sense of order, a disposition to keep every thing within measure, is a marked characteristic. Their sense of form--including a perception of beauty, and of harmony and proportion--made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity or of inert matter, and all is power and life." The great variety of the spiritual gifts of this people, the severest formulas of science, the loftiest flights of imagination, the keenest play of wit and humor, were capable of precise and effective expression in this language "as in ductile play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the princ.i.p.al source of modern culture. Their moral traits are not so admirable. As a race they were less truthful, and less marked for their courage and loyalty, than some other peoples below them in intellect.
RELIGION.--In the early days, when Greece was open to foreign influences, the simple religion of the Aryan fathers was enlarged by new elements from abroad. The Tyrian deity, Melkart, appears at Corinth as _Melicertes_. Astarte becomes _Aphrodite_ (Venus), who springs from the sea. The myth of _Dionysus_ and the worship of _Demeter_ (Ceres) may be of foreign origin. _Poseidon_ (Neptune), the G.o.d of the sea, and _Apollo_, the G.o.d of light and of healing, whose worship carried in it cheer and comfort, though they were brought into Greece, were previously known to the lonians. By _Homer_ and _Hesiod_, the great poets of the prehistoric age, the G.o.ds in these successive dynasties, their offices and mutual relations, were depicted. In Hesiod they stand in a connected scheme or theogony.
1. There are the twelve great G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of Olympus, who were named by the Greeks,--Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Ares, Hephaestos, Hermes, Here, Athene, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hestia, Demeter. 2. Numerous other divinities, not included among the Olympic, but some not less important than the twelve. Such are Hades, Helios, Dionysus, the Charites, the Muses, the Nereids, the Nymphs, etc. 3. Deities who perform special service to the greater G.o.ds,--Iris, Hebe, the Horae;, etc. 4. Deities whose personality is less distinct,--Ate, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, etc. 5. Monsters, progeny of the G.o.ds,--the Harpies, the Gorgons, Pegasus, Chimaera, Cerberus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx. Below the G.o.ds are the demiG.o.ds or heroes.
LEGENDS OF HEROES.--The s.p.a.ce which precedes the beginning of authentic records, the Greeks filled up with mythical tales, in which G.o.ds and heroes are the central figures. The heroes are partly of divine parentage. They are in near intercourse with the deities. Their deeds are superhuman, and embody those ideals of character and of achievement which the early Greeks cherished. The production of a lively imagination, before the dawn of the critical faculty or the growth of reflection, these tales may yet include a nucleus of historical incident or vague reminiscences of historical relations and changes. To attempt to extract these from the fict.i.tious form in which they are embodied, is for the most part hopeless.
The exploits of _Heracles_ (Hercules) have a prominent place in the legends. This hero of Argos submitted to serve a cruel tyrant, but, by prodigious labors (twelve in number), delivered men from dangerous beasts,--the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, etc.,--and performed other miraculous services. _Theseus_, the national hero of Attica, cleared the roads of savage robbers, and delivered his country from bondage. _Minos_, the mythical legislator of Crete, cleared the sea of pirates, and founded a maritime state. Of the legendary stories, three of the most famous are _The Seven against Thebes The Argonautic Expedition_, and _The Trojan War_. I. _Laius_, king of Thebes, was told by an oracle that he should be killed by his son. He exposed him, therefore, as soon as he was born, on Mount Cithaeron. Saved by a herdsman, Oedipus was brought up by Polybus, king of Corinth, as his own son. Warned by the oracle that he should kill his father, and marry his mother, the son forsook Corinth, and made his abode at Thebes. Meeting Laius in a narrow pa.s.s, and provoked by his attendants, he slew them and him. At Thebes there was a female monster, the Sphinx, who propounded a riddle, and each day devoured a man until it should be solved. Oedipus won the prize which the Queen _Jocaste_ had offered; namely, the crown and her own hand to whomsoever should free the city. When his two sons and daughters had grown up, a pestilence broke out; and the oracle demanded that the murderer of Laius should be banished. Oedipus, in spite of the warnings of the blind priest, _Tiresias_, finds out the truth. He puts out his eyes, and is driven into exile by his sons, whom he curses. Under the guidance of his daughter _Antigone_, he finds a resting-place at _Colonus_, a suburb of Athens, in a grove of the _Eumenides_, whose function it was to avenge such crimes as his.
He received expiation at the hands of _Theseus_, and died in a calm and peaceful way. This legend was the basis of some of the finest of the Greek dramas, "Oedipus Tyrannus," and the "Oedipus at Colonus"
of _Sophocles_, and "The Seven against Thebes" of _Aeschylus_. The curse of Oedipus still rested on his sons. The story of _Antigone_, defying the tyrant _Creon_, and burying her slain brother, _Polynices_, is the foundation of the drama of _Sophocles_, bearing her name. Finally, the _Epigoni_, descendants of the Seven who had fought Thebes, captured and destroyed that city.
2. _Argonauts_ were described as a band of heroes, who, through perilous and unknown seas, sailed from Iolcos in Thessaly, in the ship "Argo," to Colchis, whence they brought away the golden fleece which had been stolen, and which they found nailed to an oak, and guarded by a sleepless dragon. _Jason_, the leader, was accompanied on his return by the enchantress, _Medea_, who had aided him. She, in order to delay their pursuers, killed her brother _Absyrtus_, and threw his body, piece by piece, into the sea. Her subsequent story involves various other tragic events.
3. The most noted of the legends is the story of the Trojan war. The deeds of the heroes of this war are the subject of the _Iliad_. _Paris_, son of Priam, king of _Ilios_ (Troy), in Asia Minor, carried off _Helen_, the wife of _Menelaus_, king of Sparta. To recover her, the Greeks united in an expedition against Troy, which they took after a siege of ten years. Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses), Ajax son of Telamon, and Ajax son of Oileus, Diomedes, and Nestor were among the chiefs on the Greek side. Troy had its allies. The "Odyssey" relates to the long journey of _Odysseus_ on his return to Ithaca, his home. That there was an ancient city, Troy, is certain. A conflict between the Greeks and a kindred people there, is probable. Not unlikely, there was a military expedition of Grecian tribes. Every thing beyond this is either plainly myth, or incapable of verification.
UNIONS OF TRIBES.--During the period when the Greek population was dispersing itself in the districts which its different fractions occupied in the historic ages, there arose unions among tribes near one another, for religious purposes. They preceded treaties and alliances of the ordinary kind. Such tribes agreed to celebrate, in common, certain solemn festivals. Deputies of these tribes met at stated intervals to look after the temple and the lands pertaining to it. Out of these unions, there grew stipulations relative to the mode of conducting war and other matters of common interest. Treaties of peace and of mutual defense might follow. Thus arose combinations of states, in which one state, the strongest, would have the _hegemony_, or lead. This became an established characteristic of Greek political life. It was a system of federal unions under the headship of the most powerful member of the confederacy. When such a union was formed, it established a common worship or festival.
THE DELPHIC AMPHICTYONY.--In the north of Greece, there was formed, in early times, a great religious union. It was composed of twelve tribes banded together for the worship of _Apollo_ at _Delphi_, and to guard his temple. It was called the Delphic Amphictyony, or "League of Neighbors." The members of this body agreed not to destroy one another"s towns in war, and not to cut off running water from a town which they were besieging.
THE DELPHIC ORACLE.--The sanctuary at Delphi, where the Amphictyonic Council met, became the most famous temple in Greece. Here the oracle of Apollo gave answers to those who came to consult that divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences in distant places. Their answers were often discreet and wholesome, but not unfrequently obscure and ambiguous, and thus misleading. In early times their moral influence in the nation promoted justice and fraternal feeling. In later times they lost their reputation for honesty and impartiality. In civil wars the priests were sometimes bribed to support one of the contending parties.
THE HOMERIC POEMS.--Within the last century, there has been much discussion about the authorship of the two poems, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The place where they were composed, whether among the Ionians in Greece proper or in Asia Minor, is still a matter of debate. It was probably Asia Minor. Seven places contended for the honor of having given birth to the blind bard. But nothing is known of Homer"s birthplace or history. It is doubtful whether the art of writing was much, if at all, in use among the Greeks at the time of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey. We know that the custom existed of repeating poems orally by minstrels or _rhapsodists_ at popular festivals. This may have been the mode in which for a time the Homeric poems were preserved and transmitted. The Odyssey has more unity than the Iliad, and seems to be of a somewhat later date. The nucleus of the Iliad is thought by some scholars to be embedded in the group of poems which, it is supposed, const.i.tute the work at present; but there is no evidence making it possible to identify any portion as the work of Homer. Whatever may be the truth on these questions, the Iliad and Odyssey present an invaluable picture of Greek life in the period when they were composed, which was probably as early as 900 B.C.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE HOMERIC AGE.--(1) _Government._ In the Homeric portraiture of Greek life, there are towns; but the tribe is predominant over the town. The tribe is ruled by a king, who is not like an Eastern despot, but has about him a council of chiefs, and is bound by the _themistes_, the traditional customs. There is, besides, the _agora_, or popular a.s.sembly, where debates take place among the chiefs, and to which their decisions, or rather the decision of the king, on whom it devolves finally to determine every thing, are communicated. Public speaking, it is seen, is practiced in the infancy of Greek society. (2) _Customs._ People live in hill-villages, surrounded by walls. Life is patriarchal, and, as regards the domestic circle, humane. Polygamy, the plague of Oriental society, does not exist. Women are held in high regard. Slavery is everywhere established. Side by side with piracy and constant war, and the supreme honor given to military prowess, there is a fine and bountiful hospitality which is held to be a religious duty. In the Homeric poems, there is often exhibited a n.o.ble refinement of thought and sentiment, and a gentle courtesy. (3) _Arts and Industry_. In war, the chariot is the engine: cavalry are unknown. The useful arts are in a rudimental stage. Spinning and weaving are the constant occupation of women. All garments are made at home: n.o.ble women join with their slaves in washing them in the river. The condition of the common freeman who took one temporary job after another, was miserable. Of the condition of those who pursued special occupations,--as the carpenter, the leather-dresser, the fisherman, etc.,--we have no adequate information. The princ.i.p.al metals were in use, and the art of forging them. There was no coined money: payment was made in oxen. But there is hereditary individual property in land, cultivated vineyards, temples of the G.o.ds, and splendid palaces of the chiefs. (4) _Geographical Knowledge._ In Homer, there is a knowledge of Greece, of the neighboring islands, and western Asia Minor. References to other lands are vague. The earth is a sort of flat oval, with the River Ocea.n.u.s flowing round it. _Hesiod_ is better informed about places: he knows something of the Nile and of the Scythians, and of some places as far west as Syracuse.
RELIGION IN THE HOMERIC AGE.--The Homeric poems give us a full idea of the early religious ideas and practices, (I) _The Nature of the G.o.ds_.--The G.o.ds in Homer are human beings with greatly magnified powers. Their dwelling is in the sky above us: their special abode is Mount Olympus. They experience hunger, but feed on ambrosia and nectar. They travel with miraculous speed. Their prime blessing is exemption from mortality. Among themselves they are often discordant and deceitful. (2) _Relation of the G.o.ds to Men_. They are the rulers and guides of nations. Though they act often from mere caprice or favoritism, their sway is, on the whole, promotive of justice. Zeus is supreme: none can contend with him successfully. The G.o.ds hold communication with men. They also make known their will and intentions by signs and portents,--such as thunder and lightning, or the sudden pa.s.sing of a great bird of prey. They teach men through dreams. (3) _Service of the G.o.ds_. Sacrifice and supplication are the chief forms of devotion. There is no dominant hierarchy. The temple has its priest, but the father is priest in his own household. (4) _Morals and Religion_. Morality is interwoven with religion. Above all, _oaths_ are sacred, and oath-breakers abhorred by G.o.ds as well as by men. In the conduct of the divinities, there are found abundant examples of unbridled anger and savage retaliation. Yet gentle sentiments, counsels to forbearance and mercy, are not wanting. The wrath of the G.o.ds is most provoked by lawless self-a.s.sertion and insolence. (5) _Propitiation: the Dead_. The sense of sin leads to the appeasing of the deities by offerings, attended with prayer. The offerings are gifts to the G.o.d, tokens of the honor due to him. The dead live as flitting shadows in Hades. _Achilles_ is made to say that he would rather be a miserable laborer on earth than to reign over all the dead in the abodes below.
GREEK LITERATURE.--The chief types, both of poetry and of prose, originated with the Greeks. Their writings are the fountainhead of the literature of Europe. They prized simplicity: they always had an intense disrelish for obscurity and bombast. The earliest poetry of the Greeks consisted of _hymns_ to the G.o.ds. It was _lyrical_, an outpouring of personal feeling. The lyrical type was followed by the _epic_, where heroic deeds, or other events of thrilling interest, are the theme of song, and the personal emotion of the bard is out of sight through his absorption in the subject. Description flows on, the narrator himself being in the background. This epic poetry culminates in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ (900-700 B.C.). Their verse is the hexameter. These poems move on in a swift current, yet without abruptness or monotony. They are marked by a simplicity and a n.o.bleness, a refinement and a pathos, which have charmed all subsequent ages. _Homer_, far more than any other author, was the educator of the Greeks. There was a cla.s.s called _Homeridae_, in _Chios_; but whether they were themselves poets, or reciters of Homer, or what else may have been their peculiar work, is not ascertained. There was, however, a cla.s.s of _Cyclic_ poets, who took up the legends of Troy, and carried out farther the Homeric tales. _Hesiod_ was the founder of a more didactic sort of poetry. He is about a century later than the Iliad. Besides the _Theogony_, which treats of the origin of the G.o.ds and of nature, his _Works and Days_ relates to the works which a farmer has to do, and the lucky or unlucky days for doing them. It contains doctrines and precepts relative to agriculture, navigation, civil and family life. Hesiod was the first of a Boeotian school of poets. He lacks the poetic genius of Homer, and the vivacity and cheerfulness which pervade the Iliad and the Odyssey.
CHAPTER II. THE FORMATION OF THE PRINc.i.p.aL STATES.
ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.--The early kings were obeyed as much for their personal qualities, such as valor and strength of body, as for their hereditary t.i.tle. By degrees the n.o.ble families about the king took control, and the kingship thus gave way to the rule of an aristocracy. The priestly office, which required special knowledge, remained in particular families, as the _Eumolpidae_e at Athens,--families to whom was ascribed the gift of the seer, and to whom were known the _Eleusinian mysteries_. The n.o.bles were landholders, with dependent farmers who paid rent. The n.o.bles held sway over tillers of the soil, artisans and seamen, who const.i.tuted the people (the "demos"), and who had no share in political power. This state of things continued until the lower cla.s.s gained more property and more knowledge; and the example of the colonial settlements, where there was greater equality, re-acted on the parent state. The struggle of the lower ranks for freedom was of long continuance. In all Greek cities, there were _Metoeci_, or resident foreigners without political rights, and also slaves from abroad. Free-born Greeks busied themselves with occupations connected with the fine arts, or with trade and commerce on an extended scale. They commonly eschewed all other employments, and especially menial labor.
THE CONSt.i.tUTION OF THE LYCURGUS.--According to the legend, disorders in Sparta following the Dorian conquest, and strife between the victors and the conquered, moved _Lycurgus_, a man of regal descent, to retire to Crete, where the old Dorian customs were still observed. On his return he gave to the citizens a const.i.tution, which was held in reverence by the generations after him. To him, also, laws and customs which were really of later date, came to be ascribed. The Spartan population consisted (1) of the _Spartiatae_, who had full rights, and those of less means,--both comprising the Dorian conquerors. They were divided into three Phylae, or tribes, each composed of ten divisions (Obae); (2) the _Periaeci_, Achaeans who paid tribute on the land which they held, were bound to military service, but had no political rights; (3) the _Helots_, serfs of the State, who were divided among the Spartiatae by lot, and cultivated their lands, paying to them a certain fraction of the harvest. The form of government established by Lycurgus was an aristocratic republic. The Council of Elders, twenty-eight in number, chosen for life by the Phylae, were presided over by two hereditary kings, who had little power in time of peace, but unlimited command of the forces in war. The popular a.s.sembly, composed of all Spartiatae of thirty years of age or upwards, could only decide questions without debate. Five _Ephors_, chosen yearly by the Phylae, acquired more and more authority. Lycurgus is said to have divided the land into nine thousand equal lots for the families of the Spartiatae, and thirty thousand for the Periceci. To keep down the helots required constant vigilance, and often occasioned measures of extreme cruelty. The _Crypteia_ was an organized guard of young Spartans, whose business it was to prevent insurrection.
LAWS AND CUSTOMS.--The Spartan state was thus aristocratic and military. It took into its own hands the education of the young. Weak and deformed children were left to perish in a ravine of Taygetus, or thrust down among the Periceci. Healthy children at the age of seven were taken from their homes, to be reared under the supervision of the State. They had some literary instruction, but their chief training was in gymnastics. They were exercised in hunting and in drills; took their meals together in the _syssitia_ (the public mess), where the fare was rough and scanty; slept in dormitories together; and by every means were disciplined for a soldier"s life. The Spartan men likewise fed at public tables, and slept in barracks, only making occasional visits to their own houses. No money was in circulation except iron: no one was permitted to possess gold or silver. Girls were separately drilled in gymnastic exercises and made to be as hardy as boys. Marriage was regulated by the State. There was more purity, and women had a higher standing, in Sparta than in other parts of Greece. The strength of the Spartan army was in the _hoplites_, or heavy-armed infantry. In battle, messmates stood together. Cowardice was treated with the utmost contempt. The rigorous subordination of the young to their elders was maintained in war as in peace. The legend held, that after this const.i.tution of Lycurgus had been approved by the Delphian oracle, he made the citizens swear to observe it until he should return from a projected journey. He then went to Crete, and stayed there until his death.
HEGEMONY OF SPARTA.--Having thus organized the body politic, Sparta took the steps which gave it the _hegemony_ in Peloponnesus and over all Greece. First, it conquered the neighboring state of _Messenia_ in two great wars, the first ending about 725 B.C., and the second about 650 B.C. In the first of these wars, the Messenians submitted to become tributary to Sparta, after their citadel, _Ithome_, had been captured, and their defeated hero, _Aristodemus_, had slain himself. Many of the vanquished Messenians escaped from their country to Arcadia and Argolis. Some of them fled farther, and founded _Rhegium_ in Lower Italy. In the second war, the Messenians revolted against the tyrannical rule of Sparta, and at first, under _Aristomenes_, were successful, but were afterwards defeated by the Spartans, who were inspirited for the conflict by the war-songs of the Athenian poet, _Tyrtaeus_. _Aristomenes_ fled to Rhodes. Most of his people were made helots. The _Arcadians_, after long resistance, succ.u.mbed, and came under the Spartan hegemony (about 600 B.C.). _Argos_, too, was obliged to renounce its claim to this position in favor of its Spartan antagonist, after its defeat by _Cleomenes_, the Lacedaemonian king, at Thyrea (549 B.C.). The _Argive League_ was dissolved, and Sparta gained the right to command in every war that should be waged in common by the Peloponnesian states, the right, also, to determine the contingent of troops which each should furnish, and to preside in the council of the confederacy. She now began to spread her power beyond Peloponnesus, entered into negotiations with _Lydia_ (555 B.C.), and actually sent an expedition to the coast of Asia (525 B.C.). Moreover as early as 510 B.C., by interfering in the affairs of the states north of the Corinthian isthmus, and with _Attica_ in particular, she sowed among the Athenians the seeds of a lasting enmity.
GOVERNMENT IN ATHENS: DRACO.--According to the legend, _Codrus_, who died about 1068 B.C., was the last of the Athenian kings. The _Eupatrids_, the n.o.ble families, abolished monarchy, and subst.i.tuted for the king an _Archon_, chosen for life by them out of the family of Codrus. The Eupatrids stood in a sort of patriarchal relation to the common people. The inhabitants were divided into four tribes. These were subdivided, first into _Brotherhoods_ and _Clans_, and secondly, into cla.s.ses based on consanguinity, and cla.s.ses arranged for taxation, military service, etc. The entire community comprised the _n.o.bles_,--in whose hands the political power was lodged,--the _Farmers_, and the _Artisans_. The farmers and the artisans might gather in the _Agora_, and express a.s.sent to public measures, or dissent. In process of time the archons came to be chosen not from the family of Codrus exclusively, but from the _Eupatrids_ generally. From 682 B.C. they were nine in number, and they served but for one year. The administration of justice was in the hands of the n.o.bles, who were not restrained by a body of written laws. The archon _Draco_, about 621 B.C., in order to check this evil, framed a code which seemed harsh, though milder than the laws previously enforced. Later it was said of his laws that they were written in blood. This legislation was a concession to which the n.o.bles were driven by an uprising. Their hard treatment of debtors, many of whom were deprived of their liberty, had stirred up a serious conflict between the people and their masters. A rebellion, led by _Cylon_, one of the Eupatrids, was put down, and punished by means involving treachery and sacrilege. The insurgents were slain clinging to the altars of the G.o.ds, where they had taken refuge. Not long after it became necessary to introduce other reforms at the advice of _Solon_, one of "the seven wise men of Greece." He had acquired popularity by recovering _Salamis_ from the Megarians, and in a sacred war against towns which had robbed the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
LEGISLATION OF SOLON--The design of Solon was to subst.i.tute a better system for the tyrannical oligarchy, but, at the same time, to keep power mainly in the hands of the upper cla.s.s. He divided the people into four cla.s.ses, according to the amount of their income. To the richest of these the archonship, and admission into the _Areopagus_, were confined. A new council was established, which had the right to initiate legislation, composed of one hundred from each of the four old tribes, and annually elected by the body of the citizens. The _Ecclesia_, or a.s.sembly of the whole people, having the right to choose the archons and councilors, was revived. _Courts of Appeal_, with jury trials, were inst.i.tuted. The old council of the _Areopagus_ was clothed with high judicial and executive powers. There were laws to relieve a portion of the debtors from their burdens, and to abolish servitude for debt. Every father was required to teach his son a handicraft.
PARTIES IN ATHENS.--The legislation of Solon was a measure of compromise. It satisfied neither party. After journeys abroad, he pa.s.sed his old age in Athens, and was a spectator of the rising contests between the discordant factions, which his const.i.tution was only able for a time to curb. There were three parties,--a re-actionary party under _Lycurgus_, a progressive party led by _Pisistratus_, and a moderate or middle party under _Megacles_.
THE TYRANTS.--At this time, in almost all of the Grecian states, monarchy had given place to aristocracy. The reign of an _oligarchy_, the unbridled sway of a few, was commonly the next step. Against this the people in different states,--the _demos_,--rose in revolt. The popular leader, or "demagogue," was some conspicuous and wealthy n.o.ble, who thus acquired supreme authority. In this way, in the seventh and sixth centuries, most of the states were ruled by "tyrants,"--a term signifying absolute rulers, whether their administration was unjust and cruel, or fair and mild. They endeavored to fortify their rule by collecting poets, artists, and musicians about them, for their own pleasure and for the diversion of the populace. Occasionally they gave the people employment in the erection of costly buildings. They formed alliances with one another and with foreign kings. Not unfrequently they practiced violence and extortion. The _oligarchies_ sought to dethrone them. Their overthrow often had for its result the introduction of popular sovereignty. Among the most noted tyrants were Periander of Corinth (625-585 B.C.), _Pittacus_ in Lesbos (589-579 B.C.), and _Polycrates_ in Samos (535-522 B.C.).
The PISISTRATIDS.--The government of Athens, framed by Solon, was in effect a "timocracy," or rule of the rich. At the head of the popular party stood _Pisistratus_, a rich n.o.bleman of high descent. He succeeded, by means of his armed guard, in making himself master of the citadel. Twice driven out of the city, he at length returned (538 B.C.), and gained permanent control by force of arms. He managed his government with shrewdness and energy. Industry and trade flourished. He decorated Athens with buildings and statues. Religious festivals he caused to be celebrated with splendor. He ruled under the legal forms by having _archons_ chosen to suit him. He died 527 B.C. _Hippias_, his son, governed with mildness until his younger brother and colleague in power, _Hipparchus_, was slain by the two friends, _Harmodius_ and _Aristogiton_. Then he gave the rein to revengeful pa.s.sion, and laid upon the people burdensome taxes. _Hippias_ was driven out of the city by the _Alcmaeonidae_ and other exiled n.o.bles, a.s.sisted by the Spartan king, _Cleomenes_ (510 B.C.). He fled to Asia Minor in order to secure Persian help.
THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.--Clisthenes, a brilliant man, the head of the Alcmaeonid family, connected himself with the popular party, and introduced such changes in the const.i.tution as to render him the founder of the Athenian Democracy. The power of the archons was reduced. All of the free inhabitants of Attica were admitted to citizenship. New tribes, ten in number, each comprising ten _denes_, or hamlets, with their adjacent districts, superseded the old tribes. A _council of five hundred_, fifty from each tribe, supplanted Solon"s council of four hundred. The courts of law were newly organized. The _Ostracism_ was introduced; that is, the prerogative of the popular a.s.sembly to decree by secret ballot, without trial, the banishment of a person who should be deemed to be dangerous to the public weal. Certain officers were designated by lot. Ten _Strategi_, one from each tribe, by turns, took the place of the _archon polemarchus_ in command of the army.
EFFECT OF DEMOCRACY.--Under this system of free government, the energy of the Athenian people was developed with amazing rapidity. The spirit of patriotism, of zeal for the honor and welfare of Athens, rose to a high pitch. The power and resources of the city increased in a proportionate degree. Culture kept pace with prosperity.
LYRICAL POETRY.--In the eighth century, when monarchy was declining, and the tendency to democracy began to manifest itself, a new style of poetry, different from the epic, arose. The narrative poems of minstrels were heard at the great religious festivals. But there was a craving for the expression of individual feeling. Hence, lyrical poetry re-appeared, not in the shape of religious songs, as in the old time, but in a form to touch all the chords of sentiment. Two new types of verse appeared,--the _Elegiac_ and the _Iambic_. At first the elegy was probably a lament for the dead. It was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute. The instruments which the Greeks had used were string-instruments. The early Greek elegies related to a variety of themes,--as war, love, preceptive wisdom. The iambic meter was first used in satire. Its earliest master of distinction was _Arckilochus_ of Paros (670 B.C.). It was employed, however, in fables, and elsewhere when pointed or intense expression was craved. The earliest of the Greek elegists, _Callinus_ and _Tyrtaus_, composed war-songs. _Mimnermus, Solon, Theognis, Simonides_ of _Ceos_, are among the most famous elegists. Music developed in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Terpander made an epoch (660 B.C.) by adding three strings. _Olympus_ and _Thaletas_ made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of _Lesbos_ founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are _Alcaus_, who sang of war and of love, and _Sappho_, who sang of love. "Probably no poet ever surpa.s.sed Sappho as an interpreter of pa.s.sion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound."
_Anacreon_, an Ionian, resembled in his style the Aeolian lyrists. He was most often referred to by the ancients as the poet of sensuous feeling of every sort. The _Dorian_ lyric poetry was mostly choral and historic in its topics. Greek lyric poetry reaches the climax in _Simonides_ and _Pindar_. The latter was a Boeotian, but of Dorian descent. _Simonides_ was tender and polished; _Pindar_, fervid and sublime The extant works of Pindar are the _Epinicia_, or odes of victory.
HISTORICAL WRITING.--This age witnesses the beginnings of historical writing. But the _logographers_, as they were called, only wrote prose epics. They told the story of the foundation of families and cities, reconciling as best they could the myths, so far as they clashed with one another.
PHILOSOPHY: THE IONIAN SCHOOL.--The Greeks were the first to investigate rationally the causes of things, and to try to comprehend the world as a complete system. The earliest phase of this movement was on the side of physics, or natural philosophy. _Homer_ and _Hesiod_ had accounted for the operations of nature by referring them to the direct personal action of different divinities. The earliest philosophers brought in the conception of some kind of matter as the foundation and source of all things. The _Ionian School_ led the way in this direction. _Thales_ of Miletus (about 600 B.C.) made this primary substance to be _water_. _Anaximander_ (611-? B.C.) made all things spring out of a primitive stuff, without definite qualities, and without bounds. He taught that the earth is round, invented the sun-dial, engraved a map on a bra.s.s tablet, and made some astronomical calculations. _Anaximenes_ (first half, 6th C.) derived all things from _air_, which he made to be eternal and infinite.
THE ELEATIC SCHOOL.--The _Eleatic School_ conceived of the world as one in substance, and held that the natural phenomena which we behold, in all their variety and change, are unreal. _Xenophanes_ (who flourished from 572 to 478 B.C.) a.s.serted this. _Parmenides_ (504-460 B.C.) taught that succession, change, the manifold forms of things, are only _relative_; that is, are only our way of regarding the one universal essence. _Zeno_ sought to vindicate this theory logically by disproving the possibility of motion.
OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.--Another set of philosophers attempted definitely to explain the appearances of things, the changing phenomena, which had been called unreal. _Herac.l.i.tus_ made the world to be nothing but these: There is no substratum of things: there is only an endless flux, a cycle. All things begin and end in fire, the symbol of what is real. _Empedocles_ ascribed all things to fire, air, earth, and water, which are wrought into different bodies by "love" and "hate;"
or, as we should say, attraction and repulsion. _Democritus_ was the founder of the _Atomists_, who made all things spring out of the motions and combinations of primitive atoms. _Anaxagoras_ brought in intelligence, or reason, as giving the start to the development of matter,--this principle doing nothing more, however, and being inherent in matter itself.
PYTHAGORAS.--A different spirit in philosophy belonged to _Pythagoras_ (580-500 B.C.), who was born in Samos, traveled extensively, and settled in Croton, in southern Italy. His theory was, that the inner substance of all things is number. Discipline of character was a prime object. Pythagoras was sparing in his diet, promoted an earnest culture, in which music was prominent, and gave rise to a mystical school, in which moral reform and religious fueling were connected with an ascetic method of living.
COLONIES.--It was during the era of the oligarchies and tyrannies that the colonizing spirit was most active among the Greeks. Most of the colonies were established between 800 and 550 B.C. Their names alone would make a very long catalogue. They were of two cla.s.ses: first, _independent communities_, connected, however, with the parent city by close ties of friendship; and secondly, _kleruchies_, which were of the nature of garrisons, where the settlers retained their former rights as citizens, and the mother city its full authority over them. In _Sicily_, on the eastern side, were the Ionian communities,--Naxos, Catana, etc. _Syracuse_ (founded by Corinth 734 B.C.), _Gela_, and _Agrigentum_, which were among the chief Dorian settlements, lay on the south-eastern and south-western coasts. The oldest Greek town in _Italy_ was _c.u.mae_ (not far from Naples), said to have been founded in 1050 B.C. _Tarentum_ (Dorian), _Sybaris_, and _Croton_ (Aeolic) were settled in the latter part of the eighth century. _Locri_ (Aeolic) and _Rhegium_ (Ionic) were on the south. The south-western portion of Italy was termed _Magna Graecia_. _Ma.s.silia_ (Ma.r.s.eilles) was founded by the Phocaean Ionians (about 600 B.C.). In the western Mediterranean the Greeks were hindered from making their settlements as numerous as they would have done, by the fact that Carthage and her colonies stood in the way. _Cyrene_, on the coast of Africa, was a Dorian colony (630 B.C.), planted from _Thera_, an earlier Spartan settlement. _Cyrene_ founded _Barca_. _Corcyra_ was colonized by Corinth (about 700 B.C.). Along the coast of Epirus were other Corinthian and Corcyrasan settlements. Chalcis planted towns in the peninsula of Chalcidice, and from thence to _Selymbria_ (or Byzantium), which was founded by Megara (657 B.C.). The northern sh.o.r.es of the aegean and the Propontis, and the whole coast of the Euxine were strewn with Greek settlements. The Greek towns, especially _Miletus_, on the western coast of Asia Minor, themselves sent out colonies,--as _Cyzicus_ and _Sinope_, south of the Propontis and the Euxine. The foregoing statements give only a general idea of the wide extent of Greek colonization.
An exhaustive statement of the Greek colonies is given in Rawlinson"s _Manual of Ancient History_, p. 148 _seq_. See also Abbott, _A History of Greece_, I. 333 _seq_.
PERIOD II. THE FLOURISHING ERA OF GREECE.
CHAPTER I. THE PERSIAN WARS.
THE IONIAN REVOLT.--Hardly were the Greeks in possession of liberty when they were compelled to measure their strength with the mighty Persian Empire. The cities of Asia Minor groaned under the tyranny of their Persian rulers, and sighed for freedom. At length, under propitious circ.u.mstances, _Miletus_ rose in revolt under the lead of _Aristagoras_. Alone of the Grecian cities, Athens, and Eretria on the island of Euboea, sent help. The insurrection was extinguished in blood: its leaders perished. Miletus was destroyed by the enemy 495 B.C.; and the Ionian towns were again brought under the Persian yoke, which was made heavier than before. The Persian monarch, _Darius_, swore vengeance upon those who had aided the rebellion.