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 Greek leaders. 
 
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GREEK LEADERS 
 
 BY 
 
 LESLIE WHITE HOPKINSON 
 
 UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OP 
 
 WILLIAM SCOTT FERGUSON 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT HISTORY 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
 BOSTON .NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (attic ffiibetffte fxw Cambribge 
 
sky 
 
 s. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY LESLIE WHITE HOPKINSON 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 A. 4.5 &•?£--!- 
 
 Cfie &toerei toe £rcg£ 
 
 CAMBRIDGB . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction v 
 
 Solon 1 
 
 Themistocles 19 
 
 Pericles 37 
 
 Alcibiades 59 
 
 Socrates 79 
 
 Agesilaus 103 
 
 dlontsius the elder 125 
 
 Epamnondas 147 
 
 Demosthenes 171 
 
 Alexander the Great 197 
 
 Abatus 223 
 
 Summary of Greek History 245 
 
 Index 249 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 In trying to present in one short and readable volume 
 the results of the best scholarship applied to eleven differ- 
 ent subjects, I have of course had to consult a great num- 
 ber and variety of authorities, more than it is practicable 
 to enumerate here. My obligations, however, to the various 
 translators upon whom I have so freely drawn must be 
 acknowledged in more detail. 
 
 The version of Plutarch is "that commonly known as 
 Dryden's," revised and edited by Arthur Hugh Clough. 
 Those of Thucydides and Plato (the Banquet) are Jowett's, 
 while the passages from Plato's Apology and Phcedo are 
 taken from an anonymous translation published in 1879 
 under the title of "Socrates," with an introduction by Pro- 
 fessor W. W. Goodwin. For the extracts from the orations 
 of Demosthenes I am greatly indebted to Mr. Pickard- 
 Cambridge's Demosthenes and the Last Days of Greek Freedom 
 (G. P. Putman's Sons). As for the metrical versions of So- 
 lon's poems, those in rhymed hexameters and in blank verse 
 are taken from Mr. F. G. Kenyon's translation of Aristotle's 
 Constitution of Athens (G. Bell & Sons, Ltd.) ; the passage 
 beginning, "Solon surely was a dreamer," occurs in Clough's 
 Plutarch (Life of Solon) ; while the elegiacs are an experiment 
 of my own. In quoting the Clouds of Aristophanes I have 
 taken the great liberty of combining the standard trans- 
 lation of Mr. B. B. Rogers (G. Bell & Sons, Ltd.) with 
 that introduced by Mr. A. D. Godley in his Socrates and 
 Athenian Society. For all these I wish to express my thanks. 
 
 L. W. H. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 This book is especially designed for use, in conjunction 
 with a textbook, in high-school classes in ancient history. 
 It bases its claim for consideration in this connection pri- 
 marily on the fact that it consists of biographies of man- 
 ageable length which combine attractive literary form with 
 real merit as history. 
 
 It is hoped that Greek Leaders may find a place in that se- 
 lect group of books which, being complementary to the text- 
 book used by the class, are as indispensable to the schools 
 as is the textbook itself. Ideally such books should be 
 in the hands of every pupil; but since this is not always 
 practicable, it is now generally recognized that there should 
 be at least one copy of them in the school library for every 
 five pupils in the class. The teacher must have available 
 such a number of copies of these books that pupils may be 
 able to do the reading assigned by him without jostling 
 one another. Nothing dampens the ardor for reading of 
 students of history so quickly as inability or time-consum- 
 ing difficulty in "getting the books." 
 
 The reasons for the existence of "collateral reading" in 
 connection with history instruction in high schools and 
 academies are generally recognized. One of them, however, 
 has, I venture to think, been insufficiently emphasized. 
 Perhaps it applies peculiarly in the field of ancient history. 
 There circumstances have brought it about that writers of 
 textbooks, forced not only to include in one volume of 
 fixed dimensions the history of Greece and Rome and the 
 history of the Near East and the early Middle Ages, but 
 also to enrich their narrative of events by taking account 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 of social, economic, and cultural developments, have been 
 unable to furnish more than well-proportioned summaries. 
 Such manuels afford an excellent basis for classroom work, 
 and they have been found indispensable in the teaching of 
 history both in America and Europe. But they are com- 
 monly not good samples of history writing. They do not 
 dwell long enough on situations and actors, or on societies 
 and forces, to give the imagination a fair chance to con- 
 struct plots or visualize communities. In them there is no 
 room for eloquence, no opportunity to linger Herodotus- 
 wise on pleasant bypaths, no space to register the ups and 
 downs of affairs. All is inexorable quick-march. They are, 
 therefore, condemned in advance to be rarely or never 
 interesting. They are too compact for that. In the schools 
 of France they are taken as the point of departure, not so 
 much for analyses by the question-and-answer method, as 
 for oral narratives developed with the literary and dramatic 
 skill for which French teachers are distinguished. There- 
 by the French pupil is introduced to real history. In Amer- 
 ica this introduction must be, and commonly is, made 
 through collateral reading. 
 
 It is, therefore, important in the highest degree that the 
 books by which the textbook is supplemented should be 
 chosen, both as regards type and individual volume, with 
 the utmost care. Yet of one kind of work the choice is in- 
 evitable, as is shown by the accord in this particular, so 
 seldom secured in other matters, of school teachers and 
 college examiners: biography must form an essential part 
 of the collateral reading of pupils taking up the study of 
 ancient history in their secondary-school course. It is not 
 biography of the child's story order, where the persons and 
 not the times, the epochless, nationless, timeless heroes and 
 heroines are the objects of interest, that is demanded. Nor 
 is it biography, like Plutarch's, where incidents and policies 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 are indifferent in themselves so long as they betray char- 
 acter. The biography that is sought has this in common 
 with all biography that it subordinates tendencies, move- 
 ments, enterprises, collaborators to a dominant personality 
 in a way that makes them intelligible and interesting, 
 especially to boys and girls ; but it differs from the varie- 
 ties of biography already described in that it gives serious- 
 ness and significance to its subjects by exhibiting them at 
 work on the most momentous problems of their own people, 
 state, and age. 
 
 How well the eleven Greek biographies included in this 
 particular volume meet justified demands may be left to 
 the reader to decide. They have the advantage over bio- 
 graphical passages from extended histories that a whole 
 has over a fragment, over biographical sketches from en- 
 cyclopaedias that an essay has over a rSsumi. They will 
 probably be found much more serviceable in school use 
 than one detailed biography of equal length. They are 
 written by an accomplished teacher, and for that very rea- 
 son, perhaps, are not written down to the assumed level 
 of children. "One reason," writes Professor Henry John- 
 son in his authoritative work on the Teaching of History, 
 "why American estimates of the ability of children to cope 
 with history are lower than similar European estimates is 
 the American habit of translating history so largely into 
 the reading vocabulary of children." 
 
 William Scott Febguson. 
 
GKEEK LEADEKS 
 
 SOLON 
 
 (Died 559? b.c.) 
 
 They say that Solon, coming to Croesus at his request, was in 
 the same condition as an inland man when first he goes to see the 
 sea; for as he fancies every river he meets with to be the ocean, so 
 Solon, as he passed through the court, and saw a great many 
 nobfes richly dressed, and proudly attended with a multitude of 
 guards and footboys, thought every one had been the king, till 
 he was brought to Croesus, who was decked with every possible 
 rarity and curiosity, in ornaments of jewels, purple and gold, that 
 could make a grand and gorgeous spectacle of him. Now when 
 Solon came before him and seemed not at all surprised, ... he 
 commanded them to open all his treasure-houses and carry him 
 to see his sumptuous furniture and luxuries, though he did not 
 wish it; . . . and when he returned from viewing all, Croesus asked 
 him if ever he had known a happier man than he. And when 
 Solon answered that he had known one Tellus, a fellow-citizen of 
 his own, and told him that this Tellus had been an honest man, had 
 had good children, a competent estate, and died bravely in battle 
 for his country, Croesus took him for an ill-bred fellow and a fool. 
 ... He asked him, however, again, if besides Tellus, he knew any 
 other man more happy. And Solon replying, Yes, Cleobis and 
 Biton, who were loving brothers and extremely dutiful sons to 
 their mother, and when the oxen delayed her, harnessed them- 
 selves to the wagon and drew her to Hera's temple, her neighbors 
 all calling her happy, and she herself rejoicing; then, after sacri- 
 ficing and feasting, they went to rest, and never rose again, but 
 died in the midst of their honor a painless and tranquil death. 
 "What," said Croesus, angrily, "and dost thou not reckon us 
 amongst the happy men at all?" Solon, unwilling either to flatter 
 or exasperate him more, replied, "The gods, O King, have given 
 the Greeks all other gifts in moderate degree, and so our wisdom, 
 
2 GEEEK LEADERS 
 
 too, is a cheerful and homely, not a noble and kingly wisdom, . . . 
 and him only to whom the divinity has continued happiness unto 
 the end, we call happy." ... So at this time Croesus despised 
 Solon, but when he was overcome by Cyrus, had lost his city, was 
 taken alive, condemned to be burnt, and laid bound upon the pile 
 ... he cried out as loud as he possibly could three times, "O Solon! " 
 and Cyrus being surprised . . . Croesus told him the whole story. 
 . . . When this was told Cyrus ... he not only freed Croesus from 
 punishment but honored him as long as he lived, and Solon had 
 the glory, by the same saying, to save one king and instruct 
 another. 
 
 That the visit of Solon to Croesus never happened — since 
 Solon died, a very old man, in Athens, just as Croesus 
 was coming to the throne of Lydia — Plutarch, who relates 
 it, knew as well as we do; "but," says he, "I cannot reject 
 so famous and well-attested a narrative, and, what is more, 
 so agreeable to Solon's temper and so worthy his wisdom 
 and greatness of mind, because, forsooth, it does not agree 
 with some chronological laws." For the same reasons it 
 should be included in any modern life of Solon, and for an- 
 other also : it is so characteristic, not only of Solon himself, 
 but of his time and race. 1 For in the seventh and even in 
 the early sixth century, the average European Greek was 
 still a frugal, rustic, homely sort of fellow. His idea of war- 
 fare was to put on as much armor as he could conveniently 
 carry, march out a few miles to the nearest piece of good 
 flat ground, whack away all day at some hundreds of simi- 
 larly equipped neighbors from across the ridge, and go com- 
 fortably home at night. His idea of wealth was a good farm, 
 a fruitful olive orchard, or a range of upland pastures dotted 
 with flocks. His towns were small and poor, his clothes were 
 homespun, his meals were few and spare. But if, through 
 outlawry or adventurous spirit, he took to the sea and the 
 
 1 The idea that the gods are jealous of extreme prosperity, apart from wrong-doing, 
 belongs rather to the Umeof Herodotus (fifth century) whose story Plutarch condenses. 
 
SOLON 3 
 
 chances of the new trade with Asia, he might, traveling 
 inland from the already sophisticated Ionian cities, come 
 in contact with an unheard-of luxury and splendor, an un- 
 imagined softness of living, a dazzling profusion of gold and 
 silver ornaments, of rich and dainty dishes, and, strangest 
 of all, with the elaborate military and political organization 
 of a great Oriental state. Solon, the first citizen of Ath- 
 ens, member of her wealthiest and most aristocratic class, 
 merchant and traveler moreover, could be at Sardis but a 
 country cousin come to town, a sight-seer, condescendingly 
 expected to gape and exclaim at the wonders spread before 
 his eyes. 
 
 But Solon does not gape; the country cousin keeps his 
 head. The characteristic attitude of the thoughtful Greek 
 before all this overwhelming wealth and power is cool, 
 grave, independent. His sense of proportion — by which 
 the surpassing beauties of his art and literature are to be 
 shaped — is somehow shocked and displeased by this over- 
 weening prosperity; he feels that the gods love it not, and, 
 in no fanatical or puritanical spirit, he turns away in search 
 of that middle road which leads to simple comfort of body 
 and a cheerful, healthy spirit. "Nothing too much," "Mod- 
 eration in all things" — these are the characteristic say- 
 ings of the famous Seven Sages of Hellas, of whom Solon 
 has left by far the greatest mark. 
 
 Solon, son of Execestides, was born in the latter half of 
 the seventh century, during the rule of the feudal aristocracy 
 which had held uninterrupted sway over Attica ever since 
 the abolition of the original monarchy. To this aristocracy 
 of mingled birth and wealth — for the latter, being counted 
 almost entirely in land and its products, was practically 
 limited to the nobles — Solon himself belonged, being, in- 
 deed, a member of the most ancient and famous house of 
 
4 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the Medontids, descendants of Codrus. It seems therefore 
 at first sight rather surprising that the first thing we know 
 about his life should be that he was a merchant. Plutarch, 
 writing some seven hundred years later, has to apologize 
 for his hero's being "in trade," explaining that in his time 
 "merchandise was a noble calling, which brought home the 
 good things which the barbarous nations enjoyed, was the 
 occasion of friendships with their kings, and a great source 
 of experience." Why it held this honored position, Plu- 
 tarch does not inquire, but the fact is that when the luxuries 
 of the East first began to tempt the Greeks they had noth- 
 ing to exchange for them but the products of their soil — 
 especially olive oil; and, as the nobles were the only large 
 landholders, they alone had any surplus to exploit and so 
 became the only merchants on a large scale. Most of them, 
 of course, remained country squires, but the more enterpris- 
 ing were attracted not only by the "good things," but by 
 the "great source of experience," and of these was Solon. 
 
 Among the results of his trading voyages was a thorough 
 acquaintance with the literary culture of the Ionian cities, 
 then so much in advance of European Greece, and a mas- 
 tery of the prevailing form of verse, the elegy. Written 
 prose was not yet developed; what a man wished to say 
 in lasting form or to a larger audience than his voice would 
 reach, he put into elegiac verse. So the first appearance 
 of Solon in Athenian history is as the author of a stirring 
 poem, urging his fellow-citizens to " re-take " Salamis. When 
 and how Salamis had been lost, history does not tell us, but 
 the position of the island made it inevitably a bone of con- 
 tention between Athens and Megara, and the latter state 
 under her able tyrant, Theagenes, may well have been 
 strong enough to wrest away the prize. To Athens, how- 
 ever, the possession of the island was a matter not only of 
 pride, but of necessity if she were to become a commercial 
 
SOLON" 5 
 
 state; a rival seated right athwart her very harbor mouth 
 could block her indefinitely. Athens was then, of course, 
 unconscious enough of her destiny, but it is possible that 
 Solon, who knew the conditions of trade and navigation at 
 first hand, and who was later to do so much to foster Athe- 
 nian commerce, may have foreseen its needs. At all events, 
 he put great fire into his elegy, of which only brief fragments 
 have come down to us: — 
 
 I come as a herald, self-sent, from Salamis, beautiful island, 
 And the message I bring to your ears, I have turned it into a song. 
 
 Country and name would I change, be known as a man of Sicine, 
 Nay, Pholegandrian even, rather than all men should say, 
 Pointing in scorn, "There goes one of the cowardly, lazy Athenians, 
 Who let Salamis slip through their fingers, when it was theirs for 
 a blow." 
 
 On then to Salamis, brothers! Let us fight for the beautiful island, 
 Flinging afar from us, ever, the weight of unbearable shame! 
 
 That this poem, recited, according to tradition, by its 
 author in the market-place, succeeded in its object seems 
 probable from the great prestige it brought to Solon, who 
 is also, rather more doubtfully, credited with having been 
 the actual leader of the resulting expedition. His reputa- 
 tion was yet heightened by the poems — pamphlets, as 
 they would be in our day — in which, turning now to in- 
 ternal affairs, he set forth the evils which threatened the 
 community and the spirit in which they must be met. 
 
 I see, and my heajJf is woe, as my eyes behold the afflictions 
 That weigh on the ancient home of the sacred Ionian race. 
 Not in the mind of Zeus and the rest of the blessed Immortals, 
 Not in their will can it be, that our city should perish away, 
 While over it spreadeth her hands, protecting, the guardian- 
 goddess, ^**" 
 Pallas AthenS, Zeus-bom, and wardeth all ill from its gates. 
 
6 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Ay, but within are the foes — the nobles who spoil and destroy it; 
 Greedy for gold are they all, and cruel and false the officials 
 Over whose guilty heads punishment waiteth to fall. 
 Bridle and measure they know not; never enough have they feasted, 
 Still by their unjust deeds piling up wealth for themselves; 
 Pickers and stealers they are, nor spare they the Gods or the 
 
 People; 
 Holy the temple of Justice, — they care for it never a whit. 
 Ay, but she sits in her shrine, patient and silently waiting, 
 Knowing all things that are done, waiting to strike, in good time. 
 Such is the festering wound that eateth the strength of the city; 
 Slavery is it, no less, that holdeth her fast in its grip. 
 But ever on slavery's heels come strife, and the worst of all warfare, 
 Laying full low in her streets many a beautiful youth. 
 So in the city — but lo! far in the land of the stranger, 
 There toil her poorest, bearing the chains and the brand of the 
 
 slave. 
 Thus spreads the evil afar — chamber nor court can conceal it; , 
 Would one be blind to its presence, vainly at home will he hide. 
 
 These are the words that my soul bids me say to the people of 
 
 Athens: 
 Evil the fate of the city wheresoever Misgovernment reigns. 
 Only Good Rule bringeth peace; she layeth in chains the ill-doer, 
 Tameth the fierce, putteth bound to the hunger of ravening greed; 
 Under her touch fall withered the blood-red blossoms of Ate; 
 She maketh the crooked ways straight and stayeth the clamor of 
 
 strife. 
 
 Well might a patriotic Athenian be distressed as he looked 
 around him. What was actually happening, as we can now 
 see, was that Greece was passing out of her "Middle Ages" 
 — answering in many ways to those of Europe 2000 years 
 later — into her "modern" period, and that the transition 
 was, like all such, a time of disturbance, suffering, and be- 
 wilderment. In some states the process was being hastened 
 and smoothed by the temporary expedient of a "tyranny," 
 whereby a brilliant and masterful despot like Periander of 
 Corinth could arbitrarily enforce order, suppress civil strife, 
 
SOLON 7 
 
 curb the pride of the nobility, relieve the poor, and en- 
 courage trade. Athens, however, came late in the proces- 
 sion. Her nobles had been faithfully supported, not op- 
 posed or betrayed, by their vassals, in crushing Cylon's 
 attempt to seize the government, and though they had 
 yielded something to the spirit of the time in permitting 
 Draco to draw up a written code of laws, they were still 
 practically undisturbed in their position as the owners of 
 the soil, the controllers of traffic, the fountain of justice, 
 and the governors of the state. 
 
 A few generations back, all this had been accepted as in 
 the natural order of things, nor had it been, in practice, 
 very hard to bear. The small husbandman might be but a 
 tenant paying his "sixth-part" in kind, but just because 
 his payment was of that sort his landlord had no tempta- 
 tion to press for arrears when a bad harvest had made pay- 
 ment impossible. What would be the use of arrears of per- 
 ishable stuff, grown only to be eaten? A bad season was a 
 visitation of the gods, to be borne philosophically by land- 
 lord and tenant alike. And even if the seigneur were heart- 
 less enough to wish to evict a man with whom he had grown 
 up and who stood to him much as a Highland clansman to 
 his chief, why should he do so? Where would he get an- 
 other husbandman to till the vacated farm? And if the 
 Eupatrid was content to take his luck as he found it, so, 
 on the whole, was the farmer. His chief might bully him, 
 but without the protection of that chief he would be help- 
 less and alone, at the mercy of every stray marauder. 
 
 During the seventh century, however, and especially 
 toward its end, conditions were changing. As the state 
 grew stronger, and with it the idea of public law, 1 feudal 
 
 1 Under a feudal system, landlords and tenants are directly responsible to each other 
 only. Tenants owe service to their landlords and landlords owe protection and justice to their 
 tenants. If a tenant is wronged, he brings his case before the landlord's court. Under a 
 system of jniblic law, both landlords and tenants are responsible to the state and their cases 
 are tried alike in the state courts. 
 
8 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 protection became less necessary and feudal loyalty a men- 
 ace instead of a help to public order. At the same time the 
 growth of commerce brought new tastes and needs. Articles 
 of luxury were in demand and must be bought. The old 
 system of barter was no longer sufficient — for the first 
 time, money was introduced into Greece. That meant the 
 end^of the patriarchal age. Henceforward, the tenant was 
 not primarily a humble friend and dependent; he was an 
 instrument of wealth. By his means the noble must raise 
 crops not only for his own use but for exchange with these 
 new stuffs and jewels and furnishings that the ships were 
 bringing in from the East. If he failed, he must pay the 
 penalty, pay with his own person or those of his children, 
 for as a slave he became a marketable commodity. His 
 place in the field might be taken by some one from that 
 increased population which commerce was bringing in its 
 wake, or by some luckless man of the middle class who had 
 been led away by the craze for a higher scale of living, had 
 borrowed at the ruinous rate of interest which the scarcity 
 of money made inevitable, and found himself a hopeless 
 debtor, thankful for a means of livelihood on any terms. 
 
 It is now easy to see how all these causes together — the 
 exaction of feudal dues when there was no longer need of 
 feudal protection, the dying out of the old personal rela- 
 tion between landlord and tenant, the rise in the scale of 
 living, the use of money, and the resultant degradation 
 of free farmers into "villeins" and "villeins" into slaves- 
 had brought about a condition of great misery among the 
 bulk of the population. And when we remember that an- 
 other result of commerce was the creation of a class, still 
 small, but becoming noticeable, of free and prosperous 
 tradesmen and craftsmen, whose condition presented a sharp 
 contrast to that of the agricultural laborers, and, finally, that 
 this was an age of great intellectual awakening throughout 
 
SOLON 9 
 
 Hellas, we do not wonder that this misery found voice in 
 a most threatening discontent. 
 
 Alarmed at the blackness of the gathering storm, the 
 Eupatrids turned to Solon. He was a popular hero, the 
 winner of Salamis; he was a poet, at a time when the halo 
 of divine inspiration still hovered about that title; he was 
 a modern sort of man, who had traveled, and seen how 
 other cities managed their affairs; he was a reformer who 
 had expressed in the strongest terms the exasperation of 
 the poor: — 
 
 But ye who have store of good, who are sated and overflow, 
 Restrain your swelling soul, and still it and keep it low: 
 Let the heart that is great within you be trained in a lowlier way; 
 Ye shall not have all at your will, and we will not forever obey. — 
 
 And yet he was, after all, one of themselves, an aristo- 
 crat pur sang, who could be trusted not to betray his own 
 order into the hands of the hungry mob. So they elected 
 him not only archon, but "lawgiver," with extraordinary 
 powers for a year (b.c. 594-93 or 592-91). 
 
 The laws of Solon are set forth in every textbook and 
 need not be detailed here. The most crying need, of course, 
 was the social one, and it was met by the first and most 
 drastic reform. At one stroke, all outstanding debts were 
 canceled, all slaves for debt were set free, and even, by 
 what means we know not, those who had been sold away 
 into foreign parts were ransomed and brought home. No 
 wonder that the memory of this great deliverance was 
 preserved in Athens by a festival the very name of which, 
 Seisachtheia — the Casting-off of Burdens — is a cry of 
 joy. Moreover, the dark load, once lifted, was never again 
 to be imposed. A law, never repealed, forbade henceforth 
 an Athenian to pledge himself, his children, or his women- 
 folk as security for debt. To appreciate this reform we 
 
10 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 must realize that the legal right of the rich to enslave the 
 poor lasted for centuries longer in other Greek cities, and 
 in some forms survived into modern times. 
 
 The other laws attributed to Solon which come under 
 the general head of "social" are for the most part such as 
 are found in most codes of the period. Some, such as those 
 limiting the size of landed estates and granting a man with- 
 out sons the right to dispose of his property by will, tended 
 to check the great clan and family holdings and encourage 
 an independent peasantry; some, such as the bounties on 
 wolves' heads, recall the rustic, pastoral character which 
 still dominated Attica; while that, on the contrary, forbid- 
 ding a woman to go out unattended at night, shows the 
 creeping in of that Oriental feeling about women which was 
 to become one of the most unfortunate features of Athe- 
 nian life. 
 
 Solon's principal commercial reform, the substitution of 
 the Euboic for the ^Eginetan coinage, was of the greatest 
 future consequence, because it tied up Athens with the 
 Ionian cities and the wealth of Asia behind them instead 
 of with her rivals and neighbors of the Peloponnesus. It 
 thus prepared the way for that rich Ionic culture which 
 made Athens "the eye of Hellas," and at the same time, 
 by fostering a much livelier and more profitable commerce 
 than could prevail under the old provincial system, pro- 
 vided careers for men who did not like to live, even in 
 personal freedom, under the overshadowing dominance of 
 the landed gentry; henceforth commerce and democracy 
 went hand in hand. 
 
 As to the political reforms of Solon, there is much dif- 
 ference of opinion among scholars. It seems pretty clear 
 that he did not create the classification of citizens accord- 
 ing to property, but he may have been the first to use it as 
 a political, not merely military, rating. By his social and 
 
SOLON 11 
 
 economic reforms, moreover, he not only made it much 
 easier for a man to rise, by acquiring wealth and (probably) 
 putting it into land, into the higher classes, but increased 
 enormously the numbers of the lowest, the free laborers. 
 Thus whether he was the first to admit these, the Thetes, 
 into the Assembly, or whether, as a small and weak class, 
 they already possessed a nominal but almost useless right 
 to attend it, he unquestionably made them a power in the 
 state. It is true that they proposed no laws, but they 
 voted on measures laid before them by the Council of Four 
 Hundred, and they almost certainly shared in the election 
 of the magistrates. Moreover, by the establishment of the 
 Helisea, the great popular jury courts to which all citizens 
 were eligible by lot, and by which judicial decisions of 
 magistrates were scrutinized when exception was taken to 
 them, Solon completed the control of the people over its 
 officers and took the first steps toward Athenian democracy. 
 Yet he was obviously no democrat. His task, as he con- 
 ceived it, had been to free the commons from intolerable 
 oppression and to give them sufficient power to protect 
 themselves from any repetition of it. To put the actual 
 direction of the state into their hands was as far from his 
 plan as to redistribute the lands of Attica equally among 
 the citizens. Such confiscation and redivision was no un- 
 heard-of thing in Greece, and many among the people clam- 
 ored for it and were bitterly disappointed to find themselves 
 left, both politically and economically, in a distinctly in- 
 ferior and subordinate position. The noble creditors and 
 seigneurs, on the other hand, were far from pleased at the 
 curtailment of their incomes and of their personal control 
 over their tenants. In short, nobody was satisfied, and 
 that, in Solon's opinion, was the best proof that he had fol- 
 lowed the path of justice and moderation, the true "mid- 
 dle way." 
 
12 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 The truth of this view of Solon's policy [says Aristotle] is estab- 
 lished alike by the common consent of all [centuries later] and by 
 the mention which he has himself made of it in his poems. Thus : — 
 
 "I gave to the mass of the people such rank as befitted their need, 
 I took not away their honour, and I granted naught to their greed; 
 But those who were rich in power, who in wealth were glorious 
 
 and great, 
 I bethought me that naught should befall them unworthy their 
 
 splendor and state; 
 And I stood with my shield outstretched, and both were safe in 
 
 its sight, 
 And I would not that either should triumph, when the triumph was 
 
 not with right." 
 
 Again he declares how the mass of the people ought to be 
 treated: — 
 
 "But thus will the people best the voice of their leaders obey, 
 When neither too slack is the rein, nor violence holdeth sway; 
 For satiety breedeth a child, the presumption that spurns control, 
 When riches too great are poured upon men of unbalanced soul." 
 
 And again elsewhere he speaks about the persons who wished to 
 redistribute the land: — 
 
 "So they came in search of plunder, and their cravings knew no 
 
 bound, 
 Every one among them deeming endless wealth would here be 
 
 found, 
 And that I with glozing smoothness hid a cruel mind within. 
 Fondly then and vainly dreamt they; now they raise an angry din, 
 And they glare askance in anger, and the light within their eyes 
 Burns with hostile flames upon me, yet therein no justice lies. 
 All I promised, fully wrought I with the gods at hand to cheer, 
 Naught beyond of folly ventured. Never to my soul was dear 
 With a tyrant's force to govern, nor to see the good and base 
 Side by side in equal portion share the rich home of our race." 
 
 Once more he speaks of the destitution of the poorer classes and 
 of those who before were in servitude, but were released owing to 
 the Seisachtheia: — 
 
 "Wherefore I freed the racked and tortured crowd 
 From all the evils that beset their lot, 
 
SOLON 13 
 
 Thou, when slow time brings justice in its train, 
 
 mighty mother of the Olympian gods, 
 
 Dark Earth, thou best canst witness, from whose breast 
 
 1 swept the pillars broad-cast planted there, 
 And made thee free who hadst been slave of yore. 
 And many a man whom fraud or law had sold 
 Far from his God-built land, an outcast slave, 
 
 I brought again to Athens; yea, and some, 
 Exiles from home through debt's oppressive load, 
 Speaking no more the dear Athenian tongue, 
 But wandering far and wide, I brought again; 
 And those that here in vilest slavery 
 Crouched 'neath a master's frown, I set them free. 
 Thus might and right were yoked in harmony, 
 Since by the force of law I won my ends 
 And kept my promise. Equal laws I gave 
 To evil and to good, with even hand 
 Drawing straight justice for the lot of each. 
 But had another held the goad as I, 
 One in whose heart was guile and greediness, 
 He had not kept the people back from strife. 
 For had I granted, now what pleased the one, 
 Then what their foes devised within their hearts, 
 Of many a man this state had been bereft. 
 Therefore I took me strength from every side, 
 And turned at bay, like wolf among the hounds." 
 
 Satisfied, then, that he had done what he could and given 
 the Athenians, as he said, "the best laws they could take," 
 Solon now decided that what his new machinery most 
 needed was to be let alone, and that so long as he was in 
 Athens there would be no end to the demands for additions 
 and amendments. Having therefore seen to the publica- 
 tion of his laws on wooden cylinders, framed and set in pub- 
 lic places, and having secured an oath from the Council 
 and the magistrates to observe them, he bought a trading 
 vessel and betook himself once more to his travels. A pleas- 
 ant time he must have had of it, slipping along in his little 
 ship, half "tramp," half yacht, from port to port, as far 
 
14 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 east and south as the mouths of the Nile and thence, on 
 the return voyage, to Cyprus, and north again to the Ionian 
 cities, with an inland trip, for aught we know, to Sardis and 
 its splendors, although no Croesus, alas! was there as yet to 
 receive him. Everywhere the genial sage was welcomed and 
 honored, everywhere he studied and observed, and left be- 
 hind some tradition of his wise sayings and tactful manners. 
 "For, always roaming with a hungry heart," he might 
 have said with Tennyson's Ulysses, — 
 
 Much have I seen and known; cities of men, 
 And manners, climates, councils, governments; 
 Myself not least, but honored of them all. 
 
 After some ten years of this agreeable vacation, Solon 
 returned, to find that his hope of having made a perma- 
 nent settlement of the troubles of his native city had 
 proved vain. His social and monetary reforms, indeed, 
 stood firm; the emancipated peasants remained free, and 
 the new coinage circulated, but politically all was in con- 
 fusion. Not only did district once more lift up its hand 
 against district and class against class; but new parties 
 had arisen. The crime-shadowed Alcmaxmida?, recalled from 
 exile by Solon's act of amnesty, but forever set apart, by 
 the curse upon them, from their social equals, provided 
 a captain, Megacles, for the solid middle class, the "men 
 of the Shore," who backed the Solonian compromise. The 
 country squires, the "die-hards" of the Tory party, gath- 
 ered their forces under one Lycurgus, and determined to 
 win back their lost privileges. And finally a third party 
 appeared, that of the hillmen, the poor shepherds, the un- 
 satisfied "sixth-parters," the unsuccessful and the radicals 
 who had dreamed of a new heaven and a new earth and 
 found themselves bound to the same old routine of hard 
 work and hard fare in the same old world, after all. They 
 lacked but a leader, and found him at about the time, it 
 
SOLON IS 
 
 would seem, of Solon's return, in a brilliant young kinsman 
 and friend of his, Pisistratus, who had just won great ac- 
 claim by the taking of Nissea in a new war with Megara. 
 
 Solon, according to Plutarch, was one of the first to sus- 
 pect the designs of the popular hero, and tried first to dis- 
 suade him from them, and then, in opposing in the Assem- 
 bly the proposal to grant him a bodyguard, to warn the 
 citizens against the coming coup d'Stat. "But observing," 
 says Plutarch, " the poor men bent to gratify Pisistratus, 
 and tumultuous, and the rich fearful and getting out of 
 harm's way, he departed, saying he was wiser than some and 
 stouter than others; wiser than those that did not under- 
 stand the design, stouter than those that, though they under- 
 stood it, were afraid to oppose the tyranny." When Pisis- 
 tratus did seize the Acropolis, the city was all in an uproar 
 and Megacles with all his family took to flight, "but Solon, 
 though he was now very old, and had none to back him, 
 yet came into the market-place and made a speech to the 
 citizens, partly blaming their inadvertency and meanness 
 of spirit, and in part urging and exhorting them not thus 
 tamely to lose their liberty; and likewise then spoke that 
 memorable saying, that, before, it was an easier task to 
 stop the rising tyranny, but now the greater and more 
 glorious action to destroy it. . . . But all being afraid to 
 side with him, he returned home, and, taking his arms, he 
 brought them out and laid them in the porch before his 
 door, with these words: 'I have done my part to maintain 
 my country and my laws,' and then he busied himself no 
 more." Living in retirement, he continued to express his 
 mind in poems, telling his countrymen, — 
 
 If now you suffer, do not blame the Powers, 
 For they are good, and all the fault was ours. 
 All the strongholds you put into his hands, 
 And now his slaves must do what he commands, — 
 
16 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 and replying to those who asked in what he trusted for pro- 
 tection, that he dared speak so boldly, "To my old age." 
 Indeed, however, Pisistratus seems to have had only respect 
 and good will for the brave old man, and even to have paid 
 him court and sought his counsel during the year or two that 
 remained of Solon's life. 
 
 Thus the revolution and consequent tyranny that Solon 
 had made it his chief work to avert came to pass even within 
 his lifetime. He had only postponed for a few years a period 
 which Athens, like so many other Greek states, had to pass 
 through before her people were ready to assume the man- 
 agement of their own affairs. Was his work then, after all, 
 so very valuable? Would he not have deserved better his 
 title of Wise Man if he had taken the advice of his friends, 
 assumed, as he was generally expected to do, the supreme 
 power, and himself seen to the execution of his own reforms? 
 To some critics the answer is obvious. He was, they say, 
 a man of high character and valuable ideas, a man deserving 
 all respect for his modesty and disinterestedness, but, after 
 all, essentially a theorist, a "scholar in politics," not a man 
 of action. Pisistratus is the man for them, with his fearless, 
 unscrupulous resourcefulness, his wide-sweeping, imagina- 
 tive plans, his firm, yet not unkindly hand upon the reins 
 of government. Yet, while granting that much of Solon's 
 work was quickly undone, and much else would doubtless 
 have been done before long anyway, one may hold that 
 perhaps his greatest legacy to Athens was this very refusal 
 to rule over her. Solon was a pleasant, social man, of what 
 Plutarch, with the Stoic ideal in mind, calls "soft" morals; 
 he believed in compromises, he was always ready to learn 
 from experience, he "got on" with everybody. But certain 
 beliefs he held absolutely, and he lived up to them. He 
 believed in divine justice, in the certain retribution over- 
 hanging all "violence" — whether usurpation of power or 
 
SOLON 17 
 
 proud and insolent use of the wealth and power that one 
 has. To break the fundamental law of his state, to make 
 himself her despot, was to him such a crime of violence, one 
 which neither men nor gods would forgive. He felt the 
 criticism of "practical" men. "Solon was a dreamer," he 
 makes them say — 
 
 Solon surely was a dreamer, and a man of simple mind; 
 
 When the gods would give him fortune, lie of his own will declined. 
 
 When the net was full of fishes, over-heavy thinking it, 
 
 He declined to haul it up, through want of heart and want of wit. 
 
 Had I but that chance of riches and of kingship for one day, 
 
 I would give my skin for flaying and my house to die away — 
 
 but he was unshaken: — 
 
 . . . that I spared my land 
 And withheld from usurpation and from violence my hand, 
 And forbore to fix a stain and a disgrace on my good name, 
 I regret not; I believe that it will be my chief est fame. 
 
 Who shall say that this is not, indeed, his chiefest fame, 
 and that the example he thus set of respect for law, of per- 
 sonal disinterestedness, of absolute reliance upon funda- 
 mental principles, was not, in its influence upon the eager, 
 aspiring youth of Athens, who learned his verses in their 
 schools and saw his figure receding, age after age, through 
 an ever more magnifying haze of tradition and veneration, 
 the most precious legacy he could leave to his dear city? 
 
THEMISTOCLES 
 
 (Died 460? B.C.) 
 
 You have never considered what manner of men are these 
 Athenians. . . . They are revolutionary, equally quick in the con- 
 ception and in the execution of every new plan, while you are 
 conservative. . . . They are bold beyond their strength, they run 
 risks which prudence would condemn; and in the midst of misfor- 
 tune they are full of hope. . . . They are impetuous, and you are 
 dilatory; they are always abroad, and you are always at home. . . . 
 When conquerors, they pursue their victory to the utmost; when 
 defeated, they fall back the least. . . . With them alone to hope is 
 to have, for they lose not a moment in the execution of an idea. . . . 
 None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking 
 for more. 
 
 Speech of the Corinthian envoys at Sparta. 
 
 And in the matter of education, whereas they [the Spartans] 
 from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises to 
 make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to 
 face the perils which they face. ... If then we prefer to meet 
 danger with a light heart and without laborious training, and with 
 a courage which is gained by habit and not enforced by law, are 
 we not greatly the gainers? . . . For we have a peculiar power of 
 thinking before we act and of acting too, whereas other men are 
 courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection. ... To 
 sum up: I say that Athens is the School of Hellas, and that the 
 individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of 
 adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the 
 utmost versatility and grace. 
 
 Funeral Speech of Pericles. 
 
 For Themistocles was a man whose natural force was unmis- 
 takable; this was the quality for which he was distinguished 
 above all other men; from his own native acuteness, and without 
 any study either before or at the time, he was the ablest judge of 
 the course to be pursued in a sudden emergency, and could best 
 
20 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 divine what was likely to happen in the remotest future. Whatever 
 he had in hand he had the power of explaining to others, and even 
 where he had no experience he was quite competent to form a 
 sufficient judgment; no one could foresee with equal clearness the 
 good or evil intent which was hidden in the future. In a word, 
 Themistocles, by natural power of mind and with the least prepa- 
 ration, was of all men the best able to extemporize the right thing 
 to be done. 
 
 No one can read these extracts from Thucydides without 
 realizing that whatever else he was or was not, Themistocles 
 was a typical Athenian. The same thing strikes us the mo- 
 ment we compare him with his most famous contemporaries. 
 Aristides, so far as we know him, might as well have been a 
 Roman, or an Englishman. Personally, he belongs with 
 Washington. Leonidas takes his place among national 
 heroes like William Wallace and Arnold von Winkelried — 
 men who "made way for liberty and died." But for Themis- 
 tocles, as for Pericles, there was but one parent-state pos- 
 sible. And as Pericles represents, on the whole, the ideal 
 Athenian at the brief, ever-glorious moment when Athens 
 poised herself on the pinnacle of her fame, so Themistocles 
 typifies the generation that toiled and dared to place her 
 there. 
 
 Themistocles was born of obscure parents. The typical 
 quality of his Athenianism is all the more marked if the 
 story is true that his mother was an "outlander," for the 
 cosmopolitanism of Athens, the favor she then extended to 
 the strangers within her gates, was one of the most striking, 
 unusual, and successful features of her policy. At any rate, 
 the certain fact is that Themistocles was a self-made man, 
 obliged all through his political life to fight for his own hand, 
 helped by none of the social prestige or even party backing 
 which counted so much for his rivals. 
 
THEMISTOCLES 21 
 
 About his youth, therefore, naturally nothing is recorded 
 except the usual anecdotes that grow up around the mem- 
 ory of a great man — the schoolmaster who prophesied his 
 future eminence, for good or for ill; the precocious taste for 
 oratory, etc., etc. The general impression one gets is of 
 an eager, ambitious boy, careless of the elegant accomplish- 
 ments on which the social Greek set such store, but hungry 
 for all knowledge and training which would fit him for 
 public life. 
 
 Into this he must have plunged at the earliest opportunity 
 and quickly forced his way to the front, for as he was "still 
 young," as Plutarch says, at the battle of Marathon, where 
 he fought in his tribal regiment, he must have held the office 
 of archon (b.c. 493-92) at not much over the minimum age 
 of thirty. At once he initiated the policy which was to 
 be his life-work, the creation and upbuilding of the naval 
 supremacy of Athens. The first step was to provide a suit- 
 able port in place of the wide unprotected strand of Phale- 
 rum. The assembly passed his measure for the fortification 
 of the whole peninsula of the Piraeus, and work was begun 
 upon the wall, but interrupted by the first Persian invasion 
 and not completed until after the second. During the inter- 
 val, however, the windfall of the newly discovered silver- 
 deposits at Laurium gave Themistocles an opportunity to 
 take the next step forward — and a long one. Instead of 
 dividing the profits among the citizens, after the good old 
 childlike, hand to mouth fashion, the Assembly was per- 
 suaded to spend them on new ships, and two years later 
 Athens had a navy surpassed by no Hellenic state except 
 Syracuse and possibly Corcyra. In each case the Assembly's 
 motive was jealousy of neighboring JSgina, but that of its 
 leader, we may well believe, was much more comprehensive. 
 Even before Datis and Artaphernes crossed the JSgean, 
 bis far-sighted eyes caught sight of Persian sails on the 
 
22 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 eastern horizon; after Marathon, Persian vengeance was 
 only a matter of time. 
 
 So marked a change in policy could not, of course, be 
 brought about without a hard struggle. "And hencefor- 
 ward," says Plutarch, "little by little, turning and drawing 
 the city down towards the sea, in the belief that, whereas 
 by land they were not a fit match for their next neighbors, 
 with their ships they might be able to repel the Persians 
 and command Greece, thus, as Plato says, from steady sol- 
 diers he turned them into mariners and seamen tossed about 
 the sea, and gave occasion for the reproach against him, 
 that he took away from the Athenians the spear and the 
 shield, and bound them to the bench and the oar." Not only 
 must the statesman who would do that meet the solid oppo- 
 sition of the army, led as at Marathon by Miltiades, but 
 there was a social and economic question deeply involved 
 as well. "Whether or no," Plutarch goes on, "he hereby 
 injured the purity and true balance of government may be a 
 question for philosophers " — in view of the fact that his 
 policy actually did win Salamis and save Greece. At the 
 time, however, Salamis was in the future, and the question 
 was not academic but very actual. All that was best as 
 well as what was worst in the conservative temper, all that 
 held by the old pieties, the honorable past, the solid virtues 
 of the farmer, the reliable vote of the citizen "with a stake 
 in the country," shrank with instinctive foresight from the 
 vision, however dimly perceived, of a new Athens, commer- 
 cial, cosmopolitan, democratic, mobile as its own new ele- 
 ment. 
 
 It was inevitable that Aristides, no reactionary, no 
 hankerer after oligarchy, but a convinced and loyal con- 
 stitutional democrat, should yet, just because of his own 
 character and temperament, be the soul of this conservative 
 opposition. All through their lives the two men were neces- 
 
THEMISTOCLES 23 
 
 sarily coming into collision, for each was strong where the 
 other was weak and each instinctively distrusted his rival. 
 To Aristides, Themistocles was not only a dangerous inno- 
 vator and a rash counselor, but a man of uncertain character 
 and principles, a politician who played the game with sus- 
 piciously sticky fingers. To Themistocles, on the other 
 hand, Aristides must have been, for all his virtues, or all 
 the more because of them, an exasperating embodiment of 
 just that impervious, gentlemanly conservatism which stood 
 like a wall between him and every reform on which he had 
 set his heart. There is not only something so admirable 
 in the unflinching honor and perfect disinterestedness of 
 Aristides, but something so lovable in the generosity with 
 which he supported his rival in Greece's critical moment and, 
 with a long list of personal injuries to avenge, refrained from 
 word or deed which might embitter that rival's ultimate fall, 1 
 that we are in some danger of forgetting that it was, after 
 all, the brain of Themistocles and not the heart of Aristides 
 which in those fateful years was indispensable to Athens, 
 to Greece, and to civilization. 
 
 During those dozen years Themistocles pursued one 
 great policy, made up of two distinct but closely interwoven 
 strands: the whole summed up in the words, sea power. To 
 transform Athens from a military state of average impor- 
 tance to the greatest naval power in Hellas, to commit her 
 absolutely to the great adventure of such a transformation, 
 equally to commit the Hellenic Alliance, against all their 
 tradition and what seemed their immediate interests, to the 
 policy of meeting and defeating Persia by sea, and to hold 
 them, once so committed, to their agreement — these were 
 the component parts of one great scheme, failure in which 
 would have meant the blotting out of Athens and of Greece 
 from history, while success in it placed Themistocles 
 
 J It is not certain, however, that Aristides was still living at that time. 
 
24 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 deservedly in the position of the savior of his race. For 
 with magnificent self-confidence he carried the whole thing 
 through, practically single-handed. To the fulfillment of his 
 purpose everything was subordinated. When it was neces- 
 sary to have a free hand in committing Athens to a great 
 navy, he gently but firmly removed his chief opponents, 
 Xanthippus and Aristides, by ostracism, from his path; 
 when the time came for Athens, once so committed, to face 
 the consequences with a united front, he was the first to 
 propose their recall. His much-abused "trickiness" was all 
 at the service of the cause: he "worked" the oracles to 
 encourage faint hearts; he scraped together from the most 
 secret hoards every last obol to maintain the fleet; he spread 
 broadcast on the rocky coast, like a modern advertising 
 agent, the appeals that might compromise, if they did not 
 win over, the Ionian contingents of the Persian armada; 
 and he ran the whole gamut of inducements, from patriotic 
 exhortation to naked bribery, which might persuade the 
 suspicious, anxious Peloponnesian admirals, fighting always 
 with one eye over the left shoulder on the harbors of home, 
 to stick together and save Greece. 
 
 Ambitious, sensitive, and irritable as he seems to have 
 been by nature, he fairly sank himself in this cause, yielding, 
 generously and promptly, his position as chief admiral of 
 the Allied fleet to the Spartan Eurybiades, and by tact and 
 patient pressure gaining a lasting influence over that me- 
 diocre but honest sailor. "Strike if you will, but listen!" 
 are the famous words with which he met the upraised staff 
 of the irritated commander-in-chief, and the anecdote typ- 
 ifies the selflessness of this whole period of his career. 
 
 The events themselves of the great year 480 are writ so 
 
 large in the history of Greece that they need no detailed 
 
 mention here, though Themistocles bore his part in all of 
 
 • them. As strategus (and now Athens reaped the benefit of 
 
THEMISTOCLES 25 
 
 that constitutional change which had recently reversed the 
 relative importance of strategus and polemarch) he com- 
 manded the Athenian forces in the futile allied expedition to 
 Tempe as well as the Athenian fleet during the combined 
 operations at Thermopylae and Artemisium which ended 
 in the withdrawal to Salamis. He superintended the aban- 
 donment of Athens by her citizens. Finally, he exhausted 
 every means, legitimate and illegitimate, of bringing about 
 the decisive battle in the narrow seas. 
 
 The story of these last efforts is too characteristic as well 
 as famous to be omitted from any account of Themistocles. 
 When Xerxes had occupied Attica the sentiment of the 
 Allies became so overwhelmingly in favor of a retreat to the 
 Isthmus that some of the captains did not even wait for the 
 decision of the Council of War before hoisting sail, and only 
 nightfall held the ships at their moorings. To Themistocles 
 retreat meant a double tragedy — the certain abandonment 
 of Athens to her fate, and the great probability of a crushing 
 defeat for the whole fleet. It was with the latter argument 
 that he resolved to make one last effort. Going by night to 
 the admiral's flagship, he so wrought upon Eurybiades that 
 that sorely perplexed patriot reconvened the Council, and 
 Themistocles, without waiting for the formal putting of the 
 question, plunged at once into his plea. "At the games," 
 scoffed the Corinthian admiral, "those who stand up 
 too soon are whipped for their pains." "Ay," flung back 
 Themistocles, "but those who start late win no crowns." 
 He was not going to waste time, however, in personal 
 squabbles; the one thing to do was to state the issue so 
 clearly that the dullest and most fearful could not fail to 
 see it. "Hear both ways," he said, "and set them in com- 
 parison. If thou engage battle at the Isthmus, thou wilt 
 fight in an open sea, into which it is no means convenient 
 for us that we fight, seeing that we have ships which are 
 
26 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 heavier and fewer in number than those of the enemy. Then, 
 secondly; thou wilt give up to destruction Salamis and 
 Megara and ^Egina, even if we have success in all else; for 
 with the fleet will come also the land army, and thus thou 
 wilt thyself lead them to the Peloponnesus." He then set 
 forth with the same precision the corresponding advan- 
 tages of the opposite course, and ended by pointing out that 
 God helped those who helped themselves. Hitherto he had 
 wholly controlled his temper, but when the same Corinthian, 
 Adeimantos, dared to protest his vote, sneering at him as a 
 man without a country, his anger flamed as he declared that 
 Athens was on her ships, and, if deserted by her allies, would 
 sail away and seek new hearths and homes in the free West. 
 The threat accomplished more than the argument, the 
 decision was recalled, and Themistocles breathed again. 
 
 But not for long. A few days later the actual sight of the 
 enemy drawn up along the shore of Phalerum revived the 
 uneasiness of the Peloponnesians; their land force at the 
 Isthmus drew them like a magnet; and when Xerxes, dis- 
 posing his ships so as to block the straits on either side of 
 the islet of Psyttaleia, showed a purpose to prevent their 
 withdrawal, Eurybiades called yet another Council, and 
 Themistocles saw all his work to be done over again. 
 
 Never was he so typically himself as now, when with 
 absolute self-reliance he staked his all and his country's all 
 on a desperate throw which, had the outcome been other 
 than it was, would have handed his name down to all suc- 
 ceeding ages as that of the supreme traitor. Leaving the 
 Council, he dispatched a trusted slave to Xerxes himself, 
 with the message that the Greeks, weakened by divided 
 counsels, were on the point of breaking up in disorder, and 
 that by forcing them to an immediate battle he might win 
 an easy and complete victory. This done, Themistocles 
 slipped back into his place. 
 
THEMISTOCLES 27 
 
 One can imagine the tense nerves with which he waited 
 hour after hour while the night went by and the discussion 
 
 — sound and fury, signifying nothing — raged around him. 
 Suddenly he was called out into the darkness. Aristides, his 
 old rival, sailing across from iEgina, had found his passage 
 blocked by hostile ships, and, slipping through the cordon, 
 had hastened with the tremendous news that the fleet was 
 surrounded. Very significant is the relationship between 
 these old enemies — in face of the supreme need every shred 
 of rivalry and distrust has vanished. Aristides, never 
 dreaming that his news is anything but calamitous, chooses 
 to break it first to Themistocles; Themistocles, with abso- 
 lute confidence not only in his rival, but in that rival's 
 confidence in him, tells him the whole truth, and then, 
 shrewdly guessing that his own assertion would be sus- 
 pected, sends him in to the Council to announce his tidings. 
 Even the testimony of Aristides the Just, however, could 
 not convince the unwilling Peloponnesians that they were 
 cornered at last, until a Tenian ship deserting from the 
 enemy confirmed the news. 
 
 In the ever-memorable fight that followed, Themistocles, 
 commanding the Athenian fleet, fought well and wisely, 
 but the relative values of all concerned are best summed up 
 by Simonides when he speaks of " that noble and famous 
 victory, than which neither amongst the Greeks nor bar- 
 barians was ever known more glorious exploit on the seas, 
 obtained by the joint valour indeed and zeal of all, but by 
 the wisdom and sagacity of Themistocles." 
 
 Such, at the time, seems to have been the almost universal 
 verdict of his contemporaries. Failing of due honor through 
 the almost incredible childishness of his colleagues, who, as 
 the story goes, voted each the first prize for valor to himself 
 and the second to Themistocles, he was received at Sparta 
 
 — a state certainly none too prone to recognize foreign 
 
28 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 merit — with such honors as she had never paid before. 
 The olive wreath for valor she did indeed reserve for her 
 own Eurybiades, but another "for ability and skill" was 
 presented to the Athenian, together with the best chariot in 
 Lacedsemon, and "having much commended him, they 
 escorted him on his departure with three hundred picked 
 men of the Spartans ... as far as the boundaries of Tegea, 
 and he is the only man of all we know to whom the Spartans 
 gave escort on his way." And at the next Olympic games 
 the spectators, Herodotus tells us, fairly turned their backs 
 upon the contestants to gaze after Themistocles, to point 
 him out one to another and to clap his every appearance. 
 
 Doubtless Themistocles enjoyed these compliments, 
 though he might have preferred a free hand in following up 
 the Persian fleet. That was his policy — to seize the mo- 
 ment of the enemy's demoralization, pursue him to the 
 Hellespont, and by another crushing defeat at once cut off 
 the retreat of the land army and give the signal for revolt 
 to the Ionian cities. The scheme was too greatly daring for 
 the stay-at-home Peloponnesians, and Themistocles himself 
 realized that it would be foolhardy for the Athenians alone, 
 who, in their elation over their recent achievement, were 
 ready to undertake anything. So, for once, he held them 
 back, and according to the legend — a pretty doubtful one 
 — seized the opportunity to lay up for himself favor with 
 Xerxes by sending him word of the threatened pursuit and 
 of his own good service in discouraging it. 
 * After the whole Persian army, however, had retired to 
 Thessaly, apparently in full retreat homeward, the Confed- 
 erates returned to the Themistoclean plan of rousing Ionia. 
 But no sooner had Athens made ready for her share in an 
 Asiatic campaign than the southward march of Mardonius, 
 in the spring of 479, made her realize that a purely naval 
 policy meant a second abandonment of Attica. Themistocles 
 
THEMISTOCLES 29 
 
 was ready for that, but Athens was not; in a sudden revulsion 
 of reeling, she turned against the man who asked her to be 
 more than human, and set Xanlhippus inMiis place. 
 
 So it came about that Themistoeles took no part — or 
 none now visible — in the campaign of either Platrea or 
 Mycale. In the creation and organization, moreover, of 
 the Confederacy of Delos, which was to develop into the 
 Athenian empire, Aristides was given full responsibility 
 and credit. Nevertheless, when we realize that the marvel- 
 ous expansion in power and wealth and all the arts of 
 civilization which make the next fifty years of Athenian life 
 unique in history would have been impossible, not only 
 without that preponderance of naval force which Themis- 
 toclcs had insisted on, but without that conception of 
 Athenian policy, adventurous, daring, ambitious, "far- 
 flung," in which lie had educated his fellow-countrymen, 
 we feel that to him more truly than to any other statesman 
 or commander the Athenian empire was due. 
 
 Moreover, though out of office, Themistocles was far from 
 inactive or uninfhiential during these next, years. The com- 
 parative insignificance of the archonship after it was filled 
 by lot instead of choice left the field open to the unofficial 
 popular leader, the "man of the town-meeting," and as 
 such the ex-strategus swayed decisively the policy of his 
 city. Once more there were two strands to that policy — 
 a tactful but vigilant resistance to the tendency of Sparta 
 to transmute her acknowledged leadership of continental 
 Hellas into a supremacy . and the picking up again and work- 
 ing out of all those plans for the maritime, mercantile, and 
 democratic development of Athens which had been perforce 
 interrupted by the Persian war. And again the two strands 
 weiv interwoven, for upon such development Sparta, looked 
 with jealous eyes. Kven the fortification of the rebuilding 
 city was hateful to her, and she sent envoys to remonstrate 
 
30 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 against it. The well-known story of how Themistocles, as 
 one of the embassy sent in return, kept the Spartans in play 
 while men, women, and children raised the wall to a defensi- 
 ble height, and then boldly announced that Athens could 
 take care of herself and must henceforth be dealt with as an 
 equal, shows at once the quick assumption of such equality 
 ! on the part of Athens and the association of the challenge 
 i to Spartan supremacy with the name of Themistocles. A 
 second and more resented check — for Sparta could hardly 
 have really expected Athens to consent to her own helpless- 
 ness — was the successful resistance made by the same 
 Athenian, at the Council of the Delphic Amphictyony, to the 
 insidious proposal to expel from the League, in the name 
 of patriotism, those states — Thessaly, Thebes, even pas- 
 sive Argos — who had not joined in the resistance to Persia. 
 After this we hear of no more pleasant hospitalities extended 
 to Themistocles at Sparta. 
 
 The other half of his policy demanded equally the comple- 
 tion of his plan for the Pirseus. The political effect of the 
 development and walling-in of this harbor is clearly brought 
 out by Plutarch, who says of Themistocles, that "he did 
 not only knead up, as Aristophanes says, the port and the 
 city into one, but made the city absolutely the dependant 
 and the adjunct of the port, and the land of the sea, which 
 increased the power and confidence of the people against 
 the nobility, the authority coming into the hands of boat- 
 swains and pilots." 
 
 * One truth of which Themistocles had a firm grasp was the 
 close relation between naval power and naval commerce. 
 The new harbor was not a mere navy yard; it was built for 
 the merchant ships of Athens and all the world. But if 
 Athens was to be a world market she must have exports to 
 pay for her imports; therefore she must greatly increase her 
 industries; and, again therefore, she must encourage in 
 
THEMISTOCLES 31 
 
 every way the settlement within her borders of foreign 
 tradesmen and mechanics. It is in his relation to all these 
 policies and their effects that we see Themistocles most 
 plainly as the link between Cleisthenes and Pericles, the 
 middle term of the three great founders of Athenian 
 democracy. 
 
 The next stage in the life of Themistocles — his increasing 
 unpopularity, culminating in ostracism — is tantalizingly 
 obscure. Contributing causes we can dimly see — the van- 
 ity which led him to build beside his own house a shrine to 
 Artemis, Wisest in Counsel; the mysteriously increasing for- 
 tune (he is said to have gone out of public life a hundred 
 times as rich as when he entered it), which must have led to 
 many a comparison with the austere integrity of Aristides; 
 the sharp tongue which he could not restrain from stinging 
 replies to undeserved reproaches, and which seemed yet 
 more unpleasant compared with the delightful geniality of 
 his rapidly rising young rival, Cimon; above all, perhaps, 
 . his advocacy of peace with Persia. Wise or not, it was con- 
 sistent with his whole far-sighted, thoroughly thought-out 
 scheme of commercial expansion, east and west. Persia was 
 no longer dangerous to Athens; trade with the Orient, im- 
 possible while war lasted, was highly desirable for her. But 
 Athens was too proud of the laurels Themistocles himself 
 had won for her, of savior and protectress of the Asiatic 
 Greeks, to check herself in full career while the Carian cities 
 still felt the Persian yoke and Xerxes was free to gather 
 new fleets in southern waters. Nor was the high-spirited 
 Cimon, with the crowning victory of the Eurymedon yet to 
 be won, likely to let himself be easily thwarted of the great 
 prize of his career. 
 
 The test came in 472, and a potsherd bearing the name of 
 Themistocles still exists to bear witness to the decision. The 
 exiled statesman retired to Argos, and in the natural course 
 
S2 GREEK LEADEKS 
 
 of things might expect to return before many years, like 
 Aristides before him, to the active and honorable service of 
 his country. A far different fate was reserved for him. 
 
 Pausanias, the victor of Plataea, had conspired not only 
 to overthrow the constitution of his native city, but to sell 
 her into the hands of the Great King. Seeing his old friend 
 Themistocles fretting bitterly in undeserved banishment, 
 he conceived the idea of gaining the assistance of the shrewd- 
 est brain in Greece. There is no evidence, there is no prob- 
 ability, that Themistocles took any part in this wretched 
 plot against Hellas, but his persistent policy of opposition 
 to Sparta may have involved him in the scheme to under- 
 mine her government. The undisputed fact that he had 
 been in correspondence with the traitor gave Sparta the 
 long-desired chance to get even with the man who had 
 blocked her ambition; she denounced him to Athens, his 
 enemies there took up the cry, and the Assembly voted 
 his arrest and summons before a general Council of the 
 Greeks. 
 
 His courage failed him. Perhaps he knew the jury would 
 be packed against him. At all events, he fled to Corcyra 
 and thence, pursued by both Spartan and Athenian officers, 
 to the wild country of Epirus, where, like a suppliant in old 
 heroic days, he flung himself down upon the hearth of a 
 personal enemy, King Admetus of the Molossians, and, 
 holding in his arms the King's infant son, made such a 
 claim upon Highland hospitality as could not be denied. 
 Thus he escaped his indignant fellow-citizens, who in his 
 absence condemned him as an outlaw and confiscated his 
 property, much of which, however, his friends managed to 
 smuggle out of the country and convey to him at Susa. For 
 thither, after many a thrilling adventure by land and sea, 
 the new Ulysses, as homeless, as resourceful, as "much- 
 enduring" as his prototype, finally betook himself — mak- 
 
THEMISTOCLES 33 
 
 ing the last stage of his journey in a closed litter as an 
 Ionian beauty on her way to a courtier's harem ! 
 
 A more dramatic meeting than that between the son and 
 successor of Xerxes and the Athenian who had foiled that 
 mighty monarch can hardly be imagined. That Persia knew 
 who had been her worst enemy is plain from the fact that 
 there was a price of two hundred talents on his head. But 
 with the same sure and daring calculation which had enabled 
 him to play and win the desperate game at Salamis, Themis- 
 tocles resolved to place himself in the hands of no one less 
 than his greatest foe. Concealing his identity, of course, 
 from the King's officers, he sought an audience with 
 Artaxerxes, and an interesting light is thrown upon the 
 sense of personal dignity associated with the very name of 
 Greek, by the apologetic manner in which the chamberlain 
 explained to the Hellenic stranger that he could not be 
 admitted to the Great King's presence unless he were willing 
 to prostrate himself before him. 
 
 "When he was introduced to the King," says Plutarch, 
 'and had paid his reverence to him, he stood silent, till the 
 King commanding the interpreter to ask him who he was, 
 he replied: 'O King, I am Themistocles the Athenian, 
 driven into banishment by the Greeks. The evils that I 
 have done to the Persians are numerous; but my benefits to 
 them yet greater, in withholding the Greeks from pursuit, 
 so soon as the deliverance of my own country allowed me 
 to show kindness also to you. I come with a mind suited to 
 my present calamities; prepared alike for favors and for 
 anger; ... If you save me, you will save your suppliant; 
 if otherwise, you will destroy an enemy of the Greeks.' " 
 
 Great was the delight of the King at this unexpected 
 good luck. In his very sleep, they say, he would cry out for 
 joy, "I have Themistocles the Athenian!" In the court 
 there was ill-will enough for the "subtle Greek serpent," 
 
34 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 but the royal favor was more than sufficient to protect him. 
 
 * Mastering the Persian language, he became the chief coun- 
 selor as well as the boon companion of Artaxerxes and even 
 received that highest mark of Oriental confidence, admission 
 to the women's quarters and conversation with the Queen- 
 mother. The revenues of three cities were granted him for 
 maintenance, and the story goes that, looking around at his 
 splendidly served table, he remarked to his family, "Chil- 
 dren, we had been undone if we had not been undone." 
 
 That the Athenian in him was not so dead, however, as 
 he would believe, appears in the curious and rather touch- 
 ing little incident of the brazen statuette of a girl carrying 
 water which he saw in the temple of Cybele at Sardis and 
 recognized as one which he himself had set up at Athens in 
 the days before Persia was more, even to him, than a vague 
 cloud on the, eastern horizon, the far-off days when he was 
 serving his city in the domestic office of water commissioner 
 and had this little image made out of the fines of citizens 
 convicted of tapping the town-pipes for their own use. One 
 feels the tightening around his heart as his youth rushed 
 back upon him, and the vision of Athens, the little homely 
 Athens of the days "before the war," swam before his eyes. 
 He would have bought the statue and sent it home, a mute 
 message to his estranged countrymen, but the Persian 
 governor scented treason, and he dropped the scheme. 
 "• So far, he had paid no price for all the honors that the 
 Great King showered upon him, for Asiatic affairs were 
 absorbing the sovereign's energies. At last, however, the 
 time came when Artaxerxes summoned him to aid in an 
 expedition against Greece. From this lowest depth of in- 
 famy, however, he was saved. Whether his own act or, as 
 
 i the better version has it, a merciful illness rescued him from 
 the horrible dilemma into which fate and character had 
 
 \ driven him, will never be known, but he died suddenly at 
 
THEMJSTOCLES 35 
 
 Magnesia, and Greece had no more to fear than to hope from 
 her greatest statesman. 
 
 Of the sixty-five years of Themistocles's life, most, as 
 Plutarch says, had been spent "in politics and in the wars, in 
 i government and in command." Them iglor -1pj» tin* statesman 
 looms so large that it is not easy, out of the few scattered an- 
 ecdotes preserved by ancient writers, to build up an image 
 of Themistocles jthe, man. -At least, nothing that is told of 
 his "private life is inconsistent with what we know of his 
 public one. Most of the tales turn on the keenness of his 
 wit, of a dry, sardonic sort that must have made him more 
 feared than loved, even when the retort was as well deserved 
 as that with which he crushed the Seriphian who pointed 
 out that the honors showered upon him were really meant 
 for his city. "Doubtless," he replied, " I should have been 
 no more famous if I had been of Seriphus than you, had you 
 been of Athens." A sense of injustice seems to have embit- 
 tered his most successful days. The Athenians, he said, "did 
 not honor him or admire him, but made, as it were, a sort 
 of plane-tree of him, sheltered themselves under him in bad 
 weather and, as soon as it was fine, plucked his leaves and 
 cut his branches." Such things he could not forgive or for- 
 get; when one who had snubbed tried to court him, he turned 
 frigidly away with "Time, young man, has taught us both 
 a lesson." 
 
 Yet, if not loved, he seems, before party strife reached 
 its height, to have been respected by his fellow-citizens 
 and in demand among them as an arbitrator in private suits, 
 while as a magistrate he was inflexibly just. "Simonides," 
 he said to his friend the poet, who was importuning him, 
 "you would be no good poet if you wrote false measure, 
 nor should I be a good magistrate if for favor I made false 
 law." An attractive side to his nature is the domestic. The 
 father of ten children, we catch a glimpse of him still sur- 
 
36 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 rounded by them in his exile, while at the height of his glory 
 he chaffs his little boy as the most powerful person in 
 Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, 
 I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and 
 you command your mother." 
 
 Altogether, he gradually shapes himself for us as a not 
 unfamiliar, not unmodern type — a man of kindly instincts 
 and cold manners, sensitive, irritable temper, a sincere 
 desire to serve his country and an equally sincere wish to 
 have that service duly acknowledged. If he was unscrupu- 
 lous in his methods, he seems to have wronged no man, and 
 his "graft" has probably been considerably exaggerated by 
 hostile tradition. Yet there was a fatal flaw in the man. 
 His character was not equal to his intellect. He could rise 
 to a supreme occasion, his every faculty fused in the con- 
 suming flame of his patriotism, could dedicate himself to 
 his country's service in the lofty spirit of that speech he 
 made to the Athenians in the last moments before the battle 
 at Salamis, bidding them remember that in all things there 
 is a higher and a lower way, and it was for them to choose 
 the higher. But the disinterestedness, the fortitude, the 
 patience, the self-control which bore the test of Greece's 
 "Annus Mirabilis," broke down under the continued strain 
 of petty injustices and defeats and of the final undeserved 
 charge. An embittered, disappointed man, he lost all faith 
 in his country, all courage to plead his case before her. He 
 turned his back upon his past, and the savior of Greece 
 • died a renegade; if not a traitor. His own time could not be 
 expected to forgive him, but we who know what his work 
 means for us can afford to pass merciful judgment on the 
 man but for whom the Athens of Pericles, Phidias, and 
 Sophocles could never have existed, and Greece itself would 
 have been wiped out of the world's history. 
 
PERICLES 
 
 (Died 429 b.c.) 
 
 Pericles, the most famous if not the greatest statesman 
 of Athens, was born under circumstances highly favorable 
 to his career. The impressionable years of his boyhood were 
 the years during which Athens became the savior of Hellas. 
 The heroes of Marathon were those of his earliest childhood; 
 as a lad he must have shared the family flight from home 
 at the oncoming of the Persian host, have witnessed from 
 the shores of Salamis, crowded with praying, trembling, 
 exulting refugees, the Great Deliverance, and have returned 
 to an Athens desolate to the outward view but more pre- 
 cious and glorious than ever in the eyes of her triumphant 
 sons. And in the next year, at Mycale, his own father, 
 Xanthippus, led the Athenian fleet in the victorious battle 
 which freed Ionia from the Persian yoke. The passionate 
 love of Athens, the unquenchable pride and faith in her as 
 the rightful leader of Hellas, which beat in the pulses of his 
 great Funeral Oration, spoken fifty years later when the 
 shadows were gathering around his dear city and himself, 
 became a part of his very life-blood during the great days of 
 his youth. 
 
 In another sense, the birth of Pericles was very significant. 
 His father was not only a general, but a prominent politician, 
 who shared with Aristides the leadership of what, in distinc- 
 tion from the radicalism of Themistocles, may be called the 
 liberal-conservative party — the old party of the " Coast." 
 And his mother, Agariste, was the grand-niece of CJeisthenes, 
 the second founder of Athenian democracy. Through her 
 Pericles became the political heir, the "rising hope," of the 
 
38 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 most brilliant, the most ambitious, and the most democratic 
 of the noble families of Athens. Leadership was in the 
 blood of the Alcmseonidse; leadership by means of the democ- 
 racy had become their settled family policy; from genera- 
 tion to generation — Cleisthenes, Pericles, Alcibiades — we 
 see it taken up by men of differing degrees of wisdom and 
 virtue but all bearing in some form the hall-mark of genius. 
 It is very interesting, in following the career of Pericles, 
 to see how the ambition, the daring, the radicalism, and 
 the willingness to stoop to conquer which characterize his 
 mother's family are obvious during the period of his youth 
 and rise to power, while as an assured leader of mature 
 years he becomes increasingly cautious and conservative, 
 till like his father he finds his chief support among the steady 
 business men of the middle class. 
 
 In yet a third way the circumstances of his youth influ- 
 enced Pericles. While Athens was still — and was long to 
 remain — one of the most religious communities in Hellas, 
 devoted to the worship of the old gods, her liberal commer- 
 cial policy and her increasing intercourse with the Ionian 
 cities were bringing in the "new thought" which had already 
 developed across the ^Egean. "Philosophers," who combined 
 the teaching of argumentation with that of the beginnings 
 of natural science, found eager hearers among the more 
 thoughtful youth of the city. Pericles, in particular, re- 
 ceived a lasting impression from his teachers, Damon (him- 
 self, to be sure, an Athenian), Zeno, and, above all, the 
 serene and lofty thinker, Anaxagoras of Clazomense, whose 
 central belief that the universe is the creation of one EternaL 
 Mind, became his pupil's innermost conviction, at once 
 "elevating his thoughts and freeing him from the hosfof 
 childish superstitions which, before and after him, played 
 such a disastrous part in Greek history. Two instances are 
 enough to show the gulf which separated such men as 
 
PERICLES 39 
 
 Pericles, intellectually, from the majority of their fellows: 
 in 413 Nicias, the richest and most respected citizen of 
 Athens, rejected the last chance of saving his army and him- 
 self rather than march on the morrow of an eclipse of the 
 moon; eleven years earlier, Pericles, observing that the 
 steersman of his ship was greatly perturbed by the oncoming 
 of an eclipse of the sun, held up his cloak before the man's 
 face so that he could not see and asked him if he saw any 
 harm in that, "and he answering No, 'why,' said he, 'and 
 what does that differ from this, only that what has caused 
 that darkness there, is something greater than a cloak? ' " 
 
 The public career of Pericles covers about forty years and 
 falls Into two roughly equal parts. During the first, Jrom 
 about 470 to about 450, he is preeminently the party leader; 
 from the latter date until ..hjgjf all in 430-29, he is the states- 
 man, standing above parties, the uncrowned king of Athens. 
 Again, the first or partisan period falls naturally into, two 
 pretty equal divisions — that of his apprenticeship to poli- 
 tics as the eager and able lieutenant of Ephialtes, followed, 
 after the assassination of that victorious and deeply hated 
 enthusiast, by that of his own unquestioned leadership of 
 the democratic party. 
 
 The fall of Themistocles (472) had been brought about 
 by a coalition of the conservative, or Cimonian, party and 
 the Alcmaeonidse. Its end accomplished, however, the coali- 
 tion, like most such, soon dissolved, the Alcmseonids re- 
 sumed their democratic policy, and we see Pericles from the 
 beginning to the end of his career following in the footsteps 
 and carrying out the long-sighted plans of the man his house 
 had helped to overthrow. 
 
 The time was ripe for a democratic advance. The Consti- 
 tution of Cleisthenes, now forty years old, was in some re- 
 spects like the English Reform Bill of 1832; it had accom- 
 plished a great change by transferring control from the 
 
40 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 aristocratic to the middle class, and the Athenian, like the 
 English, middle class were inclined to think the reform an 
 ideal one. Every Athenian citizen had the right to attend 
 the Assembly and to vote on the measures prepared for its 
 consideration by the Council; what more could he ask? 
 To turn over the executive offices and the actual govern- 
 ment of the state to artisans, peasants, and day-laborers, 
 simply because they formed the majority of the population, 
 would surely be the height of folly. Unluckily for per- 
 sons of this way of thinking, Themistocles, by committing 
 Athens to a maritime career, had made inevitable not only 
 a steady increase in the numbers of the artisan class, — 
 those engaged both in the shipbuilding trades and in the 
 manufacture of articles for export, — but, as the ships were 
 manned almost entirely from the two lower classes, had 
 made those classes responsible for Athenian victories and 
 Athenian empire. No wonder the men whose toil at the oar 
 carried out the policies of their city were now clamoring 
 for more voice in the decision of those policies. 
 
 Right athwart any movement in sympathy with this 
 demand lay the solid bulk of the Areopagus, the bulwark 
 of conservatism. Composed entirely of ex-archons, them- 
 selves necessarily belonging to the two upper classes (chiefly 
 landed nobility and wealthy merchants), and armed with 
 the right to veto any law on the ground of unconstitution- 
 ality, it presented, like the English House of Lords, which 
 it in many ways resembles, a solid front of opposition to 
 every constitutional reform. And just as in England there 
 arose among exasperated Liberals the cry of "Mend it or 
 end it!" so the Athenian radical leaders, Ephialtes and the 
 young Pericles, realizing that none of their plans could be 
 put through till this obstacle was out of their way, waged 
 their first fierce campaign against the Areopagus. 
 
 The three-years absence of Cimon in Thrace gave them 
 
PERICLES 41 
 
 an opportunity to make so much headway in rousing popu- 
 lar distrust, both of individual Areopagites, whom they 
 prosecuted for fraud and abuse of office, and of the body as 
 a whole, which they charged with conspiracy against the 
 democracy, that the hero of the Eurymedon returned to a 
 much altered community and was actually suspended from 
 office and put on trial for having taken bribes not to attack 
 Perdiccas. Pericles was one of the prosecuting attorneys, 
 and the scandal went — for in Athens it was held scandalous 
 for a woman to interfere in public affairs — that Elpinice, 
 Cimon's clever elder sister who was supposed to supply 
 what that gallant gentleman lacked in political intelligence, 
 persuaded him to drop the case. The charge itself was so 
 preposterous, however, that Pericles may well have pre- 
 ferred, for his own credit's and conscience's sake, not to 
 press it; at all events, Cimon came off clear, was reelected 
 General, and for the moment was once more the most 
 popular man in Athens. 
 
 Thus he was able, when Sparta in dire need sent for the 
 help of Athens against her revolted Helots, to persuade 
 the people "not to suffer Greece to be lamed, nor their own 
 city to be deprived of her yoke-fellow." This generous and 
 even magnanimous policy — for Sparta was not only a jeal- 
 ous rival, but under strong suspicion of being a treacherous 
 ally — was warmly opposed by Ephialtes and Pericles, who 
 maintained always the Themistoclean tradition of unsleep- 
 ing hostility to the "natural enemy" of Athens. They must 
 have got considerable consolation, however, from the 
 departure not only of Cimon, but of his three thousand 
 hoplites — for the heavy-armed troops, drawn from the 
 solid yeomen of Attica, were the backbone of the conserva- 
 tive party. In their absence the city radicals had full swing, 
 and this time they succeeded in bringing about a really 
 great constitutional change, the transference of nearly all 
 
42 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the functions of the Areopagus to the Council and the jury 
 courts, so that from being the final arbiter on all questions 
 of government and civic morals it sank to the position of 
 a court for murder trials. By this success, moreover, the 
 radicals pulled down their great opponent, for when the 
 news of it reached Sparta, that city, realizing that her ene- 
 mies were now in control of Athenian policy, began to mis- 
 trust Cimon's army, and sought a pretext for sending them 
 home. The insult to so high-spirited a people was unbear- 
 able, and their wrath fell heavily upon the leader whose 
 counsel had brought it upon them. Cimon was ostracized, 
 and the reforms went merrily on. 
 
 The most important of these were the complete organi- 
 zation of the jury courts which Solon had instituted, and the 
 payment of jurors, members of the Council, and almost all 
 officials. At about the same time the archonship was opened 
 to the third class — the artisans and small farmers. It was 
 while these measures were being put through that Ephialjtfis, 
 was murdered, so that for good or for ill the responsibility 
 for them has always been placed on Pericles. Both the merits 
 and the motives of these decrees have been hotly debated 
 by historians ancient and modern. It was freely charged 
 that Pericles bought his popularity and power, outbidding 
 the public-spirited generosity of the wealthy and free- 
 handed Cimon by this expenditure of the city's money, 
 enabling and encouraging the unfit to enter politics and law 
 for a living. On the other hand, it is obvious that the 
 throwing open of offices to the poorer citizens amounted to 
 nothing unless they could afford to hold them, and that the 
 whole elaborate system of jury courts, which required many 
 hundreds of citizens to sit daily, would become a farce or an 
 engine of oppression in the hands of the wealthy, unless the 
 jurors were compensated for the loss of their earning-time. 
 As the allowance was barely enough for a day's food, it 
 
PERICLES 43 
 
 seems absurd to call it a bribe. The real importance of the 
 measure was its effect in completing and confirming the 
 rule of the people, — a degree of self-government never 
 before attained by any state, — and it is by the results of 
 that rule that it should be judged. 
 
 So complete was the victory that the conservatives gave 
 up the fight. Moreover, Sparta had so estranged them by 
 her insult that they were willing to fall in with the Periclean 
 policy of alliance with Argos and Thessaly and open enmity 
 with Lacedsemon. All they asked as the price of their full 
 support was that the war with Persia should also be kept up 
 and Cyprus freed. To this the democrats made no objection, 
 — the extension of naval power and of the trade that "fol- 
 lowed the flag" was always welcome to the city laborers, — 
 and so was launched the policy of radical imperialism, the 
 effort of the Athenian people to win the leadership of con- 
 tinental Greece while fulfilling its task of clearing all Hel- 
 lenic seas and coasts of the barbarians. 
 
 It was a vast and thrilling program — too vast, as 
 events were to prove. Athens, in the pride of her prime, 
 overestimated her own powers, and Pericles, whether or 
 not against his better judgment, rode on the crest of the 
 wave to temporary and dazzling victories, followed by in- 
 evitable loss. It is unnecessary to trace here the thick- 
 crowding events of the next ten years. The crushing victory 
 over the nearest rival, ^Egina, the daring and romantic 
 Egyptian expedition with its false dawn of success, the 
 momentary check at Tanagra, lighted by its chivalrous 
 episode of the sacrifice of Cimon's friends and his recall 
 at the suggestion of Pericles, the conquest of Boeotians, 
 Phocians, Locrians, the completion of the Long Walls, all 
 placed Athens at a height of power which she was never to 
 reach again. The price was too heavy. Athens had not the 
 "man-power" to go on winning victories at such cost, and 
 
44 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Pericles was the first to realize the fact. The tide was turn- 
 ing: the Egyptian adventure ended in catastrophe; Cyprus 
 was lost; in Greece all sides were war weary. In 450 Cimon, 
 sent to Sparta to negotiate a peace, secured at least a five- 
 year truce. To him that meant the concentration of Athens 
 upon her historic task of fighting Persia, and Pericles con- 
 sented to one more expedition. It was Cimon's last; he died 
 in Cyprus, and the peace party, of which Pericles was now 
 the recognized head, gained control of Athenian policy. 
 
 The "Peace of Callias" (448?) marked the end of the 
 great fifty years' war between Greece and the Barbarians 
 and left Athens practically mistress of the JSgean and the 
 Propontis. The people, nourished on the tradition of undy- 
 ing pursuit of the national foe, were not over pleased, but 
 Pericles knew when Athens had reached her limit, even in 
 sea power. On land, he had to learn that she had passed it. 
 A series of losses and revolts, emphasized by the disastrous 
 defeat at Coronea, put her back almost to where she had 
 been in 461. An actual attack on the city by a Spartan 
 army was barely staved off, and in 446-45 a general peace 
 for thirty years was concluded between Athens on the one 
 side and the Peloponnesian League on the other. Athens 
 kept iEgina and saved the indispensable Eubcea, but she 
 lost Megara and all her land empire except the ever-faithful 
 little friend, Platsea. Henceforthutwo facts^ were firmly 
 established: that Greece could be united under no single 
 power, but must remain divided into two more and more 
 opposing factions, and that Athens must seek her greatness 
 wholly upon the sea. ~"" v 
 
 These two facts were the foundation stones of all the. 
 future foreign policy of Pericles. For fourteen years of peace 
 and two of war he built upon them with a master hand. No 
 more aggression, no more far-flung, alluring adventures. 
 The task of Athens was to consolidate her island empire 
 
PERICLES 45 
 
 and hold it firmly, even sternly, yet on the whole benevo- 
 lently; in Greece to maintain a front of dignified neutrality, 
 behind which she might gather all the resources necessary 
 for the universal conflict, the shattering of the Greek world, 
 which he saw as inevitable. Yet, while his strong sense of 
 reality made him keep this "dualism," this fundamental 
 conflict of Athenian and Spartan interests and civilizations 
 always in mind, there was another side of his nature, a lofty 
 idealism, which is perhaps his most attractive feature, and 
 which kept him hoping against hope for the possibility of a 
 nobler unity than the victory of either side could bring 
 about. Pan-Hellenism was the dream which once and again 
 he invited his fellow Greeks to share with him. After the 
 Peace of Callias, he sent word to all the Hellenic states 
 (except those of Sicily and Magna Grsecia) that the great 
 Hellenic task had been completed and that it remained for 
 them to unite, through a Congress to which Athens invited 
 them, in restoring the temples of the gods, giving thanks by 
 votive offerings for the common deliverance, and keeping 
 the rescued seas free for all comers. It was a broad-minded 
 and high-minded suggestion, but it came from an Athens 
 at the height of her power and it fell upon ears deafened 
 by suspicion. Years later, Pericles thought he had found 
 another chance for the expression of this ideal in the great 
 scheme of a Pan-Hellenic re-founding of the destroyed city 
 of Sybaris. This time there was a brief response: Pelopon- 
 nesians, Ionians, Athenians went forth rejoicing to found 
 the new city of brotherly love, but soon they fell a-quarrel- 
 ing, and Thurii became like any other faction-ridden town. 
 "The great deed was too great." 
 
 Another great dream, the fulfillment of which might have 
 saved Athens and in the end all Greece, seems never to have 
 occurred to Pericles. This was the widening of Athenian 
 citizenship so as to include the resident aliens who formed 
 
46 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 so large and important a part of the city population, and, in 
 some form or other, to take in on a basis of equal partner- 
 ship the members of the Empire. So far from moving in this 
 direction, the policy of Athens became increasingly narrow. 
 It was one of the vices of the democracy that the more 
 powerful and prosperous it became, the more jealously it 
 guarded its privileges. Marriages with non-citizens, if not 
 strictly legal, had been common and openly recognized, 
 especially among the nobility, and some of Athens' most 
 illustrious men — for instance, Miltiades and probably 
 Themistocles — were children of such unions. Now, how- 
 ever (451), a law (perhaps an old one revived) was put in 
 force, penalizing such marriages by declaring their children 
 illegitimate. The motive — as well as the extent to which 
 mixed marriages had been winked at — becomes clear when 
 we see that on the occasion of a great gift of corn from 
 Psammetichus of Egypt, to be divided equally among the 
 citizens, the lists were purged of some five thousand names! 
 The decree of 451, attributed to Pericles, was so short- 
 sighted and so patently selfish that it is hard to believe that 
 he did more than assent to its passage as one of the sops 
 that even he must throw from time to time to the Demos. 
 If so, he was justly punished. 
 
 As to the subject allies, the difference in status between 
 them and the imperial city was even emphasized by one of 
 Pericles's favorite measures, the planting of cleruchies, or 
 colonies of Athenian citizens, in different parts of the empire. 
 These served the double purpose of relieving the pressure of 
 population at home and providing what were practically 
 garrisons abroad, but they were as bitterly resented by th§ 
 allies as they were popular at Athens. 
 
 Pericles was frankly imperialistic. He had no idea of lift- 
 ing the allies to an equality with Athens; what he would do 
 for them was to give them a mistress so surpassing in beauty, 
 
PERICLES 47 
 
 in civilization, in private justice and individual liberty, as 
 well as in power and glory, that obedience to her should be 
 more profitable and delightful than freedom itself. Athens, 
 as he proudly declared in his greatest oration, was "the 
 school of Hellas," copying none but setting an example to 
 all. She had achieved, as he saw her, the reconciliation of 
 what no one state had ever combined, the greatest amount 
 of individual liberty, the greatest hospitality aud liberality 
 of spirit, with the most perfect obedience to law; the great- 
 est ease and pleasantness of living with the highest degree 
 of military valor; the fullest control of the luxuries of all 
 the trading world with the most marked simplicity of taste 
 and manners. Therefore, he could say with quiet pride: 
 "No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the 
 reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city; no 
 subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him." 
 
 The key to his imperial policy is in those words. Nor was 
 the appeal of Athenian civilization without effect. However 
 restive the subject cities may have been, there was in each 
 a strong party which looked to Athens as its head and ex- 
 emplar, while individual "colonials," like Herodotus the 
 historian, left their native towns to merge themselves whole- 
 heartedly in the glory of Athens. Upon the finest minds in 
 the city itself the ideal of Pericles worked with compelling 
 force. Sophocles, not only the supreme tragic poet of the 
 time, but the very type of the moderate conservative, the 
 Greek ideal of serene piety and harmonious virtue, came 
 over completely to his side, and served as one of the Treas- 
 urers of the Delian League at the moment when that 
 League was definitely and openly converted into an Empire. 
 Andocides, Callias (the richest man in Athens), Phormio, 
 and among the younger men the ill-fated Nicias and 
 Lamachus were others among the conservatives who, seeing 
 that Pericles held a consistent policy and was the ruler, not 
 
48 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the puppet, of the mob, forgave his constitutional changes 
 for the sake of his glorification of Athens. One of his closest 
 friends and fellow-workers was Phidias, and together they 
 planned the most beautiful buildings and statues which the 
 world has ever known. After 2350 years the world is still 
 feeling about the mutilated remains of these works what 
 Plutarch felt when they were already 500 years old: "For 
 every particular piece of his work was immediately even at 
 that time, for its beauty and elegance, antique; and yet in 
 its vigor and freshness looks to this day as if it were just 
 executed. There is a sort of bloom of newness upon these 
 works of his, preserving them from the touch of time, as if 
 they had some perennial spirit and undying vitality mingled 
 in the composition of them." Well might Pericles say, "We 
 shall not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments 
 of our power which will make us the wonder of succeeding 
 ages." Well might his final appeal to his fellow-countrymen 
 be " to fix their eyes upon the greatness of Athens until they 
 became filled with the love of her." 
 
 Over such an Athens, so beautiful, so proud, so busy, 
 prosperous, and joyous, Pericles now held undisputed sway. 
 As Thucydides says, her government, nominally the rule of 
 the people, was practically that of her first citizen. All the 
 threads of domestic and foreign policy were in his hands; 
 all important measures were prepared for the Assembly in 
 his closet. Year after year he was reelected strategus and 
 put upon the principal building commissions. But his chief 
 power was unofficial — that of the leader of the Assembly. 
 Greatest of all demagogues, in the Greek sense of the word, 
 he was as far as possible from the type which the word sug- 
 gests to us. Economical, reserved, austere, he employed 
 neither the liberality nor the jovial manners of Cimon to 
 win popularity; if he ever yielded to the people it was with 
 the air of commanding them, and for the most part he did 
 
PERICLES 49 
 
 command them. He was not often seen in public; his 
 speeches were rare, carefully prepared, and irresistibly per- 
 suasive. The adjective "Olympian" he may have won by 
 his lofty eloquence, but it is equally appropriate to his im- 
 perturbable serenity, the impersonal indifference with which 
 he lightly put aside the shafts of his enemies. Plutarch tells 
 how once, being followed to his home at nightfall by a 
 loud-mouthed fellow who had been reviling him all day 
 in the market-place, he merely told one of his servants, 
 as he stepped inside, to take a light and see the man safe 
 home. 
 
 Another quality, which impressed his contemporaries 
 even more than it would ourselves, was his disinterested- 
 ness. "Graft" was the typical vice of Greek statesmen, 
 even some of the greatest. Themistocles was said to have in- 
 creased his fortune a hundredfold during his political career; 
 Pericles died without having added one drachma to his 
 patrimony. He did not even engage in legitimate business, 
 but gave his entire time to the state, leaving his private 
 affairs in the hands of one trusted slave-steward, who man- 
 aged them with the most exact economy. 
 
 There is something so unusually harmonious about the 
 character of Pericles, such a balance of qualities, interests, 
 and accomplishments, that his personality is harden to 
 realize than one of more irregular outline. It is like his 
 portrait bust, so serenely classic as to be almost unbeliev- 
 able. Just as in regard to his looks it is quite a relief to 
 know that there was an irregularity, — the unusually high 
 head (concealed by the helmet) which was the favorite 
 object of jesters of the day, — so we turn gladly to that 
 trait which was indeed no defect, but an exception, in one 
 who was otherwise normal almost to a fault. This was his 
 devoted affection for Aspasia. 
 
 In early life Pericles had married a cousin, by whom he 
 
SO GREEK LEADERS 
 
 had two sons. The, marriage proved uncongenial. and_ was 
 dissolved by mutual consent, Pericles, according to ap- 
 proved Athenian "custom, providing another husband for 
 his divorced wife. Shortly after, he established as mistress 
 of his^ house a brilliant and accomplished woman whom, 
 a few years before, he might have married legally. But 
 Aspasia was from Miletus, and the unwise law of 451 made 
 it impossible to give her more than the standing of what in 
 European courts to-day is known as a "morganatic" wife. 
 No union that we know of in Greek history, however, comes 
 so near our modern ideal of domestic happiness as that of 
 Pericles and Aspasia. As long as he lived she was not only 
 his dearest friend and most trusted counselor, but she shared 
 his intimacies with the most distinguished thinkers and 
 artists of the day and gave to his hospitality the grace and 
 charm of an accomplished hostess. Not only did the ablest 
 men of Athens frequent her "salon" and profess them- 
 selves her pupils in eloquence and philosophy, but some 
 even dared to bring their wives — an unheard-of innova- 
 tion in Athenian social life. It is no wonder, perhaps, that 
 conservative feeling, always particularly sensitive in what 
 concerns the family, took alarm at these mixed gatherings 
 and at the unsettling ideas about marriage and women's 
 education which were said to be discussed at them; the 
 "foreign woman" was more and more regarded as a danger 
 to the good old ways of Athens, and when the enemies of 
 Pericles finally gathered courage to attack him they chose 
 his connection with her as the weakest spot in his armor. 
 
 The real animus of this attack was the exasperation of 
 those who desired a more spirited foreign policy. For ten 
 years the Peace of 446 had been strictly kept. The revolt of 
 Samos, to be sure, had been put down promptly and sternly, 
 but the Carians had been allowed to fall away, the Empire, 
 so far from increasing in extent, had actually shrunk a lit- 
 
PERICLES 51 
 
 tie, and all dreams of western adventure had been absolutely 
 frowned upon. In Greece the opposing forces of Empire 
 and League were watching each other narrowly, but so far 
 the balance of power had been kept, and as long as the 
 "elder statesmen" of Athens, Sparta, and Corinth held the 
 helm peace was likely to continue. This did not at all suit 
 the restless spirits of the radical democracy, nor the cap- 
 italist merchants and manufacturers who desired extension 
 of their trade. Joining forces with the remnant of the old 
 aristocratic party, they tried to gain their object by a flank 
 attack — to discredit Pericles through his friends. So strong 
 a prejudice had been excited among the people — who, for 
 all their radicalism in politics, were in religion and morals 
 among the most conservative in Greece — by the free- 
 thinking of the circle who met at Pericles' house, that all 
 his influence was unable to save the blameless Anaxagoras 
 from a death sentence which he escaped only by flight, or 
 the supreme artist, Phidias, from an imprisonment during 
 which he died. But when the blow fell upon Aspasia her- 
 self, Pericles, contrary to all his habits, appeared in court 
 to plead for her, and the citizen jurors were amazed and 
 abashed by the sight of their Olympian premier, whom no 
 accusation had ever perturbed, no insult ruffled, bursting 
 into a passion of tears when he faced the loss of the woman 
 he loved more than life. 
 
 This turned the tide. The great middle party closed in 
 solidly behind Pericles, and all immediate danger to his 
 ascendancy was passed. But the days of peace were num- 
 bered. The quarrel between the two great naval states of 
 Corinth and Corcyra put squarely up to Athens the decision 
 as to which side she would take, and a decision either way, 
 so delicate was the balance of power, was sure to bring on a 
 general war. Pericles, who had kept the peace so long and 
 well, was convinced that the hour had struck. Already he 
 
52 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 was taking in sail for the storm he saw coming from the 
 Peloponnesus; a decree was passed to borrow no more 
 money from the treasury of Athena for the adornment of 
 her city. As decided as he was cautious, he would have had 
 Athens take her stand once for all by making a complete 
 alliance with Corcyra, but the people, not quite ready for 
 war with Corinth, compromised on a defensive one. 
 
 The next three years were ones of great tension. Athenian 
 marines fought Corinthians off the headlands of Corcyra 
 and Athenian hoplites defeated Peloponnesians outside the 
 walls of Potidsea, yet still the Thirty Years' Truce was 
 technically unbroken; Sparta shrank from giving the word 
 for a general conflagration, and hoped that if only Athens 
 were sufficiently impressed by the forces massing against 
 her, she might yield without fighting, as in 446. To any 
 such backward step Pericles was unalterably opposed. For 
 fourteen years Athens had kept her oaths and offered no 
 provocation to the Peloponnesians, but sooner than make 
 the smallest concession to their threat she would put all to 
 the hazard. To concede anything would be to concede all, 
 for it would put her in the attitude of a subject, not an 
 equal, of the Peloponnesian League, and the news that she 
 had stepped down from her high estate would be the death- 
 knell of her empire. So convinced was he that the time had 
 come for Athens to take a high hand and to speak with her 
 enemies in the gate, that he seized the occasion of a petty 
 border quarrel with Megara to hurl at her the famous 
 Decrees, shutting her out from the Athenian ports and 
 markets upon which her farmers absolutely depended. The 
 measure was so harsh, so aggressive, so out of all pro- 
 portion to the provocation, that there were many protests 
 not only from the opposing party as such, but from con- 
 scientious Athenians who feared he was putting their city 
 in the wrong. Objection took shape in the absurd legend 
 
PERICLES 53 
 
 which we see Aristophanes reviving years afterward in his 
 "Peace": — 
 
 O most worthy sapient farmers, listen now and understand, 
 
 If you fain would learn the reason why it was she [Peace] left the 
 
 land. 
 Phidias began the mischief, having come to grief and shame; 
 Pericles was next in order, fearing he might bear the blame, 
 Dreading much your hasty temper and your savage bull-dog 
 
 ways; 
 So before misfortune reached him, he contrived a flame to raise, 
 By his Megara enactment setting all the world ablaze. 
 
 Against both scruple and slander, however, Pericles stood 
 firm. Athens had thrown down the gauntlet; let come what 
 would! 
 
 What came, the world knows to its cost. Pericles lived 
 through only two years of the great war which was to end in 
 the downfall of his city. During the first he maintained his 
 leadership under one of the severest tests to which it could 
 be put. As Themistocles had persuaded the Athenians to 
 give up their city to the Persians and seek safety and vic- 
 tory behind the "wooden walls" of their fleet, so Pericles 
 called upon them to sacrifice their farms and orchards, their 
 cottages and villas, and, thronging within the impregnable 
 Long Walls which secured their access to the sea, defy the 
 enemy to deal them any real injury. "Let us give up lands 
 and houses," he said, "but keep a watch over the city and 
 the sea. We should not under any irritation at the loss of 
 our property give battle to the Peloponnesians, who far out- 
 number us. Mourn not for houses or lands, but for men; 
 men may give these, but these will not give men. If I 
 thought you would listen to me, I would say to you: Go 
 yourselves and destroy them, and thereby prove to the 
 Peloponnesians that none of these things will move you. . . . 
 Such is the power which the empire of the sea gives." 
 
54 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Bitter as was the experience, the Attic farmers stood it, 
 getting some consolation from the naval raids which Pericles 
 permitted upon the exposed coasts of their enemies. The 
 defensive policy for which he stood was thoroughly sound 
 and must in time have worn out the foe, but it put a tremen- 
 dous strain upon his popularity, and an utterly unexpected 
 calamity made the strain too great to bear. The awful 
 disaster of the plague descended upon the overcrowded 
 city, and when the black cloud lifted, Athens was changed 
 forever. Not only was her population, cut down by one 
 third, never again to reach its mark in 431, but the demoral- 
 ization of those awful years had gone deep. It was a different 
 Demos, more nervous, more fickle, more suspicious, and 
 more cruel, which howled assent to the vengeful proposals 
 of Cleon, from that which had felt itself at once convinced 
 and ennobled by the eloquence of Pericles. 
 
 And in the catastrophe Pericles himself had gone down. 
 In vain he pointed out that even in her agony Athens was - 
 winning the war; the people were frantic for peace and 
 would have accepted any decent terms. Sparta's, however, 
 were impossible, and Athens had to pluck up such spirit as 
 she could and continue the war. But not under her great 
 leader. The jackals gathered around the old lion, and a 
 charge of embezzlement, — as absurd as that which he him- 
 self in his youth had furthered against Cimon, — was 
 brought against him. He was suspended from office and 
 ordered to produce his accounts for the whole fourteen years 
 of his rule. At his trial he showed the high spirit which 
 marked his whole career, and though he was fined, his 
 bearing left a deep impression, so that after a few months 
 the people called him back to office. But it was too late. 
 Misfortunes had come thick upon him — his sister, his two 
 legitimate sons, nearly all his nearest friends had been car- 
 ried off by the plague, and he himself was sick to death. 
 
PERICLES 55 
 
 As a first and last favor, he asked the people to legitimatize 
 his only remaining son, Aspasia's, and the request was 
 granted. He died in 429, telling his friends with his last 
 breath that his chief satisfaction was that he had caused 
 no Athenian to wear mourning. 
 
 Pericles was not a statesman of the first rank, but he 
 stands high in the second. He was not the creator of 
 Athenian democracy or Athenian empire; he was rather the 
 artist who molded them to their consummate form. Under 
 him each attained its height; after him each fell into con- 
 fusion and decay. By these facts he must be judged. 
 
 What he thought of the Athenian democracy of his time 
 we have already seen, and posterity has, on the whole, 
 agreed with him. Severe criticism, both ancient and mod*- 
 ern, has been made of his measures by which the whole body 
 of citizens, without distinction of rank or wealth or fitness, 
 became the supreme, irresponsible ruler of the state. Espe- 
 cially blamed has been his system of widespread public em- 
 ployment. At its height, this meant that a changing body 
 of many thousand citizens were in the direct pay of the 
 state, besides the multitude which prospered on steady 
 wages from the contractors for great public works. In short, 
 his policy was not only to enable the poorest man to take 
 his part in the management of the state, but to associate 
 the glory and power of Athens, in the minds of her citizens, 
 immediately with their own prosperity. This association 
 certainly had its bad side, encouraging a very ugly sort of 
 corporate selfishness and a desire for gainful adventure, but 
 during Pericles' life the evils were not very apparent, while 
 the result of the whole system was brilliantly attractive. 
 Nowhere before or since, in all the world, has there been 
 a free, self-governing community at once so intelligent, so 
 cultivated, so hospitable, tolerant, and humane. Never, 
 
56 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 probably, has so delightful a life been possible as that of 
 an Athenian citizen in the age of Pericles. 
 
 The weak point, politically, in this democracy was just 
 that which made it so charming socially and that of which 
 Pericles boasted, — it was made up of irresponsible ama- 
 teurs. Where every office was refilled annually and nearly 
 every one by lot, where there was no continuing body any- 
 where in the state, no group of responsible statesmen, and 
 no real limit — though there existed certain checks — to 
 the power of the Assembly, there could be no steadfast, far- 
 seeing policy, and the state must be at the mercy of sudden 
 gusts of passion, sudden discouragements, and the flattering 
 tongues of self-seeking demagogues. This weakness, which 
 became so tragically evident after the death of Pericles, was 
 hardly noticeable during his life, so steady was his hand on 
 the helm, so complete the confidence reposed in him. Yet 
 in a sense we must own that Pericles was responsible for 
 Cleon and for Cleophon. 
 
 As to the relation between Athens and her subjects, he 
 had no doubt whatever. He was an imperialist, convinced 
 and convincing. The Athenian Empire was no artificial 
 creation, no prize of deliberate conquest. It had developed 
 naturally, inevitably, out of the services of Athens, the 
 needs and weaknesses of the Ionian cities, a voluntary 
 accession here, a punitive expedition there. It was like the 
 Indian Empire of Great Britain, a vast, complex, unques- 
 tionable fact. You might have twinges of conscience as to 
 how it had been obtained, but there it was; what could you 
 do about it? Thucydides, son of Melesias, "and his little 
 group of high-minded anti-imperialists certainly scored a 
 point when they said that Athens, in employing for her 
 own adornment the treasury of the Delian League, was be- 
 having like a vain woman rigged out in borrowed jewels, 
 and that the spectacle was an insult to the most deep-seated 
 
PERICLES 57 
 
 instinct of every Greek, his love of independence. But what 
 policy had they to offer? To break up the Empire and 
 restore to every city its original status? Nobody dared sug- 
 gest such a thing, and indeed to do so would have been 
 simply to invite Persia to devour them one by one. The 
 lame conclusion of the opposition was that the treasury 
 should be returned to Delos and the tribute money stored 
 up there for possible future war with Persia. Over against 
 such half-way measures the policy of Pericles stood out 
 consistent, definite, and unashamed. He did not condescend 
 to palliate it. "What you hold," he told the Athenians, "is, 
 to speak plainly, a tyranny; to take it perhaps was wrong, 
 but to let it go is unsafe." 
 
 A third criticism of Pericles sometimes made is that he 
 "steered Athens straight for the Peloponnesian War." It 
 might be truer to say that, seeing the storm coming and 
 mindful of the dangers of a lee shore, he steered his ship 
 straight for the open sea. Unquestionably he never shared 
 the generous faith of Cimon in the possibility of a real friend- 
 ship between the leading states of Greece. He inherited the 
 Themistoclean suspicion of Sparta; he was always preparing 
 Athens for what he believed to be the inevitable conflict. 
 But up to the last moment he did nothing to bring that con- 
 flict on. His policy was strictly defensive, studiously cor- 
 rect, until the line-up had become so evident that no choice 
 was left to Athens but that between war and giving up her 
 empire. Then he struck, and struck hard. Moreover, 
 although the war turned out so fatally for Athens, there is 
 every indication that the military policy of Pericles, if per- 
 sisted in, would have brought her through safe, if not vic- 
 torious. 
 
 When all is said, however, we realize that it is not as 
 democrat, or empire builder, or general, that Pericles holds 
 his place in world history. His glory is that when we call 
 
58 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 up a picture of the Acropolis in its perfect prime, when we 
 look at what time has left us of the marbles of Phidias, 
 when we read the "Antigone" of Sophocles or the " Alcestis " 
 of Euripides, — in one word, when we think of Athens, we 
 think of it as it was in the Age of Pericles. 
 
ALCIBIADES 
 
 (Died 404 b.c.) 
 
 "They love, they hate, they cannot do without him." 
 
 Aristophanes: The Frogs. 
 
 Every now and then in the world's history is born an 
 individual of the class that Carlyle calls "Heroes," and 
 Emerson, "Representative Men," — one who gathers up in 
 himself the best qualities of his age, who most completely 
 fulfills its needs and gives it a lift forward. In the history of 
 Athens such rank we should all assign to Pericles. But be- 
 sides these there appear from time to time men and women 
 even more strongly individualized, men and women whose 
 personalities are so intensely vital, made up of elements 
 so rarely combined, that they fascinate not only their con- 
 temporaries but succeeding ages, to a degree out of all pro- 
 portion to their actual worth or achievement. Such, for 
 instance, was Mary, Queen of Scots, in whose most doubtful 
 cause serious scholars and learned historians have down to 
 our own day shed their ink as obstinately and enthusi- 
 astically as gallant gentlemen of the sixteenth century 
 poured out their blood. Of such was Alcibiades. Nor is the 
 comparison with Mary Stuart so far-fetched as it looks at 
 first, for there is a great deal in common between the bril- 
 liant, beautiful, accomplished, and utterly unscrupulous 
 Athenian of the fifth century before Christ and the typical 
 characters of the Renaissance. Try to imagine Alcibiades 
 in the heavy, formal, luxurious atmosphere of the Roman 
 Empire, in the spiritualized barbarism of the Middle Ages, 
 or the tremendous fanaticisms and loyalties of the Wars of 
 Religion; — one feels him at once to be utterly out of place. 
 
60 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 But Alcibiades discussing statecraft with Macchiavelli, 
 matching his conscienceless ingenuity against Caesar Borgia, 
 dazzling the court of the superb Francis I, flattering and 
 fascinating Elizabeth Tudor — who cannot see him in his 
 element? For in Alcibiades as in the typical men of the 
 Renaissance the central fact seems to have been the same, 
 an enormously vital, all-demanding, all-devouring individu- 
 ality, to which the world is its oyster, and an immense, 
 inexhaustible power of enjoying life. 
 
 Alcibiades was well born. His father, Clinias, won fame 
 as a gallant and generous officer at Artemisium; his mother 
 belonged to the ancient race of the Alcmseonidse. He was 
 thus a relative of Pericles, who became one of his guardians 
 when his father, unluckily for the boy, was slain at the 
 battle of Coronea (447). From the first, therefore, all 
 the doors of the social aristocracy, of that inner circle of • 
 clubs and family groups which, as in so many a modern 
 community, underlay the political democracy, were open to 
 him as of right. From earliest boyhood, moreover, he was 
 marked out by an extraordinary beauty, which "bloomed 
 with him in all the ages of his life, in his infancy, in his 
 youth, and in his manhood; and in the peculiar character 
 becoming to each of these periods gave him, in every one 
 of them, a grace and a charm." 1 This charm attached itself 
 to his very defects, and even his lisp and his youthful affec- 
 tations of gait and manner were admired. One gets a 
 glimpse of the young dandy in the lines in which, later, a 
 poet 2 ridiculed his son: — 
 
 That people may believe him like his father, 
 He walks like one dissolved in luxury, 
 Lets his robe trail behind him on the ground, 
 Carelessly leans his head, and in his talk 
 Affects to lisp. 
 
 1 Plutarch. z Archippus, quoted by Plutarch. 
 
ALCIBIADES 61 
 
 Earlier than this, however, the insatiable ambition, the 
 craving for dominance which was to govern his life, had 
 shown itself in many childish episodes, of which we may 
 quote one from Plutarch: "As he played at dice in the 
 street, being then but a child, a loaded cart came that way 
 when it was his turn to throw; at first he called to the driver 
 to stop, because he was to throw in the way over which the 
 cart was to pass; but the man giving him no attention and 
 driving on, when the rest of the boys divided and gave way, 
 Alcibiades threw himself on his face before the cart, and, 
 stretching himself out, bade the carter pass on now if he 
 would; which so startled the man that he put back his 
 horses, while all that saw it were terrified and, crying out, 
 ran to assist Alcibiades." That he won the leadership 
 among his "set" which he so craved is shown by the anec- 
 dote of his actually putting flute-playing out of fashion 
 because, as a schoolboy, he absolutely refused to distort his 
 face with it and ridiculed it as below the dignity of a free 
 Athenian. 
 
 Rich, handsome, reckless, fascinating, it was no wonder 
 that Alcibiades grew up the center of a swarm of flatterers, 
 who applauded his most foolish and reckless acts and egged 
 him on to yet greater extravagance. In the midst of even 
 his most outrageous follies we catch gleams of that lovable 
 grace which melted the hearts of his sternest critics. Thus, 
 having really shocked all decent folk by boxing the ears, 
 quite unprovoked and for fun, of a highly respectable citi- 
 zen, he went to the gentleman's house early the next morn- 
 ing, threw off his mantle, and offered himself to be scourged 
 for his offense. Whereupon the outraged citizen not only 
 forgave him on the spot but soon after made him his son- 
 in-law! The same mixture of charm and impudence seems 
 to have succeeded equally with the daughter, for when, at 
 last wearied out by the open disrespect with which her 
 
62 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 husband treated her, she returned to her family and sought 
 a divorce, Alcibiades suddenly appeared in court, snatched 
 her up, and carried her in his arms straight home through 
 the crowded market-place — a Petruchio-like treatment 
 which apparently won back her affection, for she remained 
 with him till her death. 
 
 There was one friend of Alcibiades' youth who did not 
 flatter him or urge him on to silly "stunts," one whose influ- 
 ence was so strong, so excellent, so earnestly exerted, so 
 cemented by mutual affection and mutual benefits, that its 
 failure to make any permanent change in his character is 
 the strongest proof that there was something fundamentally 
 rotten, something past saving, at the heart of that tempting 
 fruit. This friend was Socrates, and history affords few 
 more picturesque contrasts than that between the homely, 
 sturdy, shabby, middle-aged philosopher and the exquisite, 
 dandified boy who persistently sought his company and 
 followed him on his conversational rounds. That the quick- 
 flashing intellect and sense of humor of Alcibiades should 
 have been delighted by the well-laid pitfalls and dialectic 
 triumphs of the Socratic method, as practiced on unwary 
 citizens, is no wonder, but it must have been real regard 
 which made the spoiled darling of Athens submit to be run 
 after, "as if he had been a fugitive slave," pulled back from 
 unwholesome pleasures, scolded and humbled by the un- 
 compromising moralist of the streets. At Potidsea the elder 
 soldier stood beside the young one, rescued him, wounded, 
 at his own risk, and, eager to encourage his more honorable 
 ambitions, pressed his claims to the prize of valor. One may 
 guess that Alcibiades' pride as well as his affection was 
 gratified when, years after, in the rout at Delium, he was 
 able to return the favor by saving the life of his old friend. 
 
 Not only in his home city was the young Alcibiades 
 known. As the only competitor, be he private person or 
 
ALCIBIADES 63 
 
 king, to put so many as seven chariots into the Olympian 
 games, and as the winner, in one fell swoop, of the first, 
 second, and fourth (or, according to Euripides, third) 
 prizes, he was famous throughout Hellas, and received spe- 
 cial honors and compliments from the Ephesians, the 
 Chians, and the Lesbians. 
 
 A more exciting game, however, than chariot-racing, even 
 at Olympia, was always going on in a Greek democracy, 
 and to a man of ambition and self-confidence its fascination 
 was irresistible. At an earlier age than was common in his 
 world, Alcibiades began to make politics his chief interest. 
 This was during the so-called Peace of Nicias, the very name 
 of which was a constant irritant to his vanity. Everything, 
 good and bad, about Alcibiades, his penetrating intellect, 
 his power of quick decision, his instinct for what the Ger- 
 mans call Realpolitik, as well as his impatient contempt of 
 the limitations of popular morality and religion, marked 
 him out as the destined rival of Nicias, — Nicias the respect- 
 able, solid citizen, the pious, the conservative, the peace- 
 loving, the man who could cast away the last remaining 
 chance of salvation for his army and himself rather than 
 disregard the omen of an eclipse of the moon; Nicias, whose 
 qualities so completely satisfied the popular ideal of moral- 
 ity that after his incompetence and vacillation had wrecked 
 the greatest enterprize on which Athens ever embarked, had 
 brought a miserable death upon himself and thousands of 
 his fellow-citizens, and opened the way to the downfall of 
 his country, the general verdict seems to have been that of 
 the critical, unsentimental Thucydides: "No one of the 
 Hellenes in my time was less deserving of so miserable an 
 end, for he lived in the practice of every virtue." 
 
 Characteristically, the first fruit of Alcibiades' ambition 
 was a practical joke, played at the expense not merely of 
 an individual but of one of the time-honored institutions of 
 
64 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the state. For when the factions of Nicias, Alcibiades, and 
 another young aristocrat, Phseax, were becoming a bit 
 troublesome to the public peace, a certain Hyperbolus, an 
 unimportant fellow generally laughed at for his impudence, 
 proposed the ostracism of one of the rivals, and Alcibiades, 
 by a neatly planned coalition of forces, turned the ostracism 
 upon Hyperbolus himself — the first time this punishment, 
 which had been worn like a badge of honor by such men as 
 Aristides, was ever inflicted on a mean or obscure person. 
 
 One distinction of Nicias' particularly irritated Alcibiades, 
 — that of being the special representative at Athens of 
 Spartan interests, for the position of proxenus (something 
 like our consul) of the Lacedaemonians was hereditary in his 
 own family; he had lived up to its obligations by paying 
 special attentions to the prisoners taken at Pylos, and, 
 but for his youth, would have been the natural person for 
 Sparta to employ in negotiating the peace, which should in 
 his opinion have borne his name instead of that of Nicias. 
 
 Thus personal grievance against Sparta and personal 
 jealousy of the head of the peace party combined with 
 Alcibiades' own political judgment to make him more and 
 more the leader of the opposing faction — that which, if 
 not yet exactly a war party, yet looked with the greatest 
 suspicion upon Sparta's behavior as a nominal ally, foresaw 
 a fresh outbreak of the great duel as sooner or later inevi- 
 table, and urged the fostering of anti-Spartan alliances in 
 the Peloponnesus which should at the same time increase 
 the resources of Athens and remove the first shock of war as 
 far as possible from her own borders. However sound his 
 instinct in this matter — and the comparative harmlessness 
 to Athens of the Spartan victory at Mantinea went far to 
 prove it so — the means he employed to commit Athens to 
 his policy were characteristically unscrupulous. For Sparta, 
 alarmed by the rumors that Athens was contemplating an 
 
ALCIBIADES 65 
 
 Argive alliance, hastened to send envoys fully empowered 
 to settle all differences and head off a move so dangerous to 
 her interests. These envoys had already come before the 
 Council and made an excellent impression, when Alcibiades 
 privately assured them, as an hereditary friend of Sparta, 
 that it would be the greatest possible mistake for them to 
 tell the Assembly, before which they must go on the mor- 
 row, that they came with full powers, as the people would 
 then impose upon them to any extent. The dull-witted 
 Lacedaemonians fell promptly into the trap and stolidly 
 denied before the Assembly what they had affirmed to the 
 Council; all Nicias' fair hopes of a settlement were undone; 
 the people were furious at having been played with and, 
 after a little more fruitless negotiation at Sparta, formally 
 entered into a defensive alliance with Argos as a counter- 
 poise to Sparta's with Boeotia. Alcibiades, now elected a 
 general, devoted himself for the next few years to cementing 
 in every possible way the new Peloponnesian league, moving 
 about with a small force from city to city, strengthening the 
 democratic factions, everywhere favorable to Athens, and 
 matching his wits against the pro-Spartan oligarchical ones. 
 When the long-delayed hostilities between Sparta and 
 Argos finally broke out, and culminated in the great battle 
 of Mantinea (b.c. 418), Athens, though providing a con- 
 tingent, was not seriously involved in the Argive defeat, 
 and even Sparta's success in forcing an alliance upon Argos 
 and setting up an oligarchy there was quickly undermined, 
 since no sooner was her back turned than the Demos rose 
 and, instigated and guided by Alcibiades, overturned the 
 new government, began in feverish haste to build long walls 
 to the sea, and once more courted the friendship of Athens. 
 The next important occasion on which Alcibiades and 
 Nicias came into direct conflict was the fateful decision 
 whether or not to make the Sicilian expedition. Everything 
 
66 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 about the undertaking — its vastness, its novelty, its ele- 
 ments of huge risk and equally enormous profit — was of 
 the sort to appeal to Alcibiades. Grandiose visions of a 
 Mediterranean empire, in which Sicily should be a mere 
 storehouse and port of call, are said to have possessed his 
 mind and those of his followers, so that "You might see 
 great numbers sitting in the wrestling grounds and public 
 places, drawing on the ground the figure of the island and 
 the situation of Libya and Carthage." In vain did Nicias 
 exert all his influence in favor of caution, moderation, and 
 attention to internal affairs; in vain, even after the fatal 
 vote had been taken, and he himself had been assigned, with 
 Alcibiades and Lamachus, to the command of the expadi- 
 tion, did he make one last effort to induce his countrymen 
 to reconsider their decision. His pointed, not overtactful 
 allusions to his colleague as a showy, extravagant young man 
 who should not be given an opportunity of "indulging his 
 own magnificent tastes at the expense of the state," and his 
 accusation against him of packing the Assembly with the 
 younger citizens only brought Alcibiades to his feet with an 
 assurance so superb that it is no wonder it dominated his 
 audience. Accepting, instead of deprecating, the personal 
 charges of Nicias, he declared his very profusion a patriotic 
 service and his haughtiness a proof of superiority: — 
 
 Apart from the conventional honor paid to such successes [as 
 his at the Olympian games], the energy which is shown by them 
 creates an impression of power. At home, again, whenever I gain 
 distinction by providing choruses ... to strangers these acts of 
 munificence are a new argument of our strength. There is some use 
 in the folly of a man who at his own cost benefits not only himself, 
 but the state. And where is the injustice if I, or anyone who feels 
 his own superiority to another, refuse to be on a level with him? 
 The unfortunate keep their misfortunes to themselves. We do 
 not expect to be recognized by our acquaintance when we are down 
 in the world, and on the same principle why should anyone com- 
 plain when treated with disdain by the more fortunate? He who 
 
ALCIBIADES 67 
 
 would have proper respect shown to him should himself show it 
 toward others. I know that men of this lofty spirit, and all who 
 have been in any way illustrious, are hated while they are alive . . . 
 but that they leave behind them to after-ages a reputation which 
 leads even those who are not of their family to claim kindred with 
 them, and that they are the glory of their country, which regards 
 them, not as aliens or as evil-doers, but as her own children, of 
 whose character she is proud. 1 
 
 Then, rapidly summing up his own services to the state 
 in the matter of the Argive alliance, and running over the 
 weaknesses of the Sicilian cities, he swept on to one of the 
 clearest, most forcible, and most uncompromising state- 
 ments of imperialist policy ever made: — 
 
 Like all other imperial powers, we have acquired our dominion 
 by our readiness to assist anyone, whether Barbarian or Hellene, 
 who may have invoked our aid. If we are all to sit still and do 
 nothing ... we shall add little to our empire and run a great risk 
 of losing it altogether. For mankind do not await the attack of a 
 superior power; they anticipate it. We cannot cut down an empire 
 as we might a household; but having once gained our present 
 position, we must, while keeping a firm hold on some, contrive occa- 
 sion against others; for if we are not rulers we shall be subjects. 1 
 
 The die was cast. Nicias' only remaining hope, that of 
 discouraging the people by piling up the estimate of the 
 necessary equipment, was met by a vote of confidence em- 
 powering the generals to raise as large a fleet and army as 
 they thought best, and immediately the whole city was 
 alive with preparation. All was excitement, confidence, and 
 hope, when one morning the town awoke to find the Hermae, 
 the square stone posts with carved heads that stood guard 
 at the door of every temple and almost every dwelling, 
 mutilated, every one. To get some faint idea of the shock 
 caused by this mysterious outrage, one should call up a 
 memory or a picture of some Roman Catholic city in 
 southern Europe and imagine the sudden discovery that 
 
 1 Thucydides. 
 
68 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 every crucifix or every little wayside shrine of the Madonna 
 had been wantonly defaced. Even so, there would hardly 
 be the sense of evil omen, the panic and universal suspicion 
 which descended upon Athens. In the effort to discover 
 the criminals, some evidence was extracted concerning the 
 mutilation of other statues by young men in a drunken 
 frolic, and also in regard to profane parodies, carried on in 
 private houses, of the sacred Eleusinian Mysteries. Alci- 
 biades was implicated in these charges, his enemies seized 
 the occasion, and the fickle public, exasperated by fear and 
 bewilderment, turned violently against their favorite. The 
 soldiers and sailors of the expedition, however, stood by him 
 manfully, while the Argive and Mantinean auxiliaries flatly 
 declared that they were going to Sicily on his account only 
 and if he were ill-used would all go home instead. His 
 enemies thereupon changed their tactics and put up certain 
 speakers to urge that the expedition must not be delayed 
 on account of one man, but that the trial should be post- 
 poned until his return. In vain Alcibiades saw through the 
 ruse and demanded immediate opportunity to clear himself; 
 he was commanded to sail at once, with the accusation 
 hanging over his head. 
 
 After seeing off the fleet, the Athenians became more than 
 ever absorbed in the mystery of the mutilations and prof- 
 anations, which they became increasingly convinced had 
 some secret, treasonable meaning, and finally decided to 
 recall Alcibiades. The Salaminian galley, bearing the re- 
 quest " in the mildest terms" — for an arrest in the midst 
 of his army would have merely meant a mutiny — that he 
 would come back and stand trial, caught up with the fleet at 
 Catane, before anything important had been accomplished. 
 Whatever strand of genuine patriotism, whatever fiber of 
 honorable ambition may have been woven into the complex 
 web of Alcibiades' character, this treatment by his country- 
 
ALCIBIADES 69 
 
 men cut short off. Under greater, but not wholly unlike 
 provocation, he made the decision of Benedict Arnold. Up 
 to this moment of his career, selfish, reckless, unscrupulous 
 as he was, he had been an Athenian; henceforth^for many 
 a year, he was to be Alcibiades against the world. 
 
 "I will make them feel that I am alive." This, his sole 
 comment on hearing that the Assembly had convicted him 
 of sacrilege, condemned him to death, confiscated his prop- 
 erty, and decreed a solemn curse upon his name, — that he 
 was, in short, legally dead, — may be said to have been his 
 motto for the next period of his life. Already, almost on the 
 instant of receiving his summons, he had automatically, 
 as it were, begun his revenge by betraying to Syracuse the 
 pro-Athenian party which he had fostered in Messina. 
 Starting back as if to obey the call to Athens, he slipped 
 ashore at Thurii and made his way to faithful Argos. The 
 atmosphere of that city, however, friendly alike to him and 
 to Athens, was much too neutral to be interesting; revenge 
 and dramatic effect both called him to Lacedsemon. Frankly, 
 without minimizing the injuries he had done the Spartan 
 cause, he offered to pay for them by services as great; as 
 frankly Sparta accepted his offer, and well was the pledge 
 redeemed. The two measures which more than any other 
 acts of Sparta caused her final victory and the ruin of 
 Athens were the timely aid sent to Syracuse and the per- 
 manent occupation of Decelea; both were undertaken by 
 the advice of Alcibiades. 
 
 At Sparta he amused himself and delighted his hosts by 
 showing how completely he could conform his habits to 
 theirs. "People who saw him wearing his hair close-eut, 
 bathing in cold water, eating coarse meal, and dining on 
 black broth, doubted, or rather could not believe, that he 
 ever had a cook in his house, or had ever seen a perfumer, 
 
70 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 or had worn a mantle of Milesian purple. For he had, as it 
 was observed, this peculiar talent and artifice for gaining 
 men's affections, that he could at once comply with and 
 really embrace and enter into their habits and ways of life, 
 and change faster than the chameleon. ... At Sparta, he 
 was devoted to athletic exercises, was frugal and reserved; 
 in Ionia, luxurious, gay, and indolent; in Thrace, always 
 drinking; in Thessaly, ever on horseback; and when he lived 
 with Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, he exceeded the Per- 
 sians themselves in magnificence and pomp." 1 
 
 The opportunity to be Ionian — welcome enough, one 
 may guess — soon presented itself. News of the terrible 
 disaster at Syracuse was filtering through to the Athenian 
 Allies in Ionia, and Chios, Lesbos, Cyzicus were growing 
 restless, ready, if they could get a promise of Spartan aid, 
 to desert a falling cause. Alcibiades threw his influence in 
 favor of Chios, started off with a few ships, and, suppressing 
 the news of a check which the Peloponnesian fleet had just 
 received near Corinth, arrived in time to bring off the revolt 
 in both Chios and the neighboring Erythrse and Clazomense. 
 The whole Ionian empire of Athens hung in the balance. 
 The blow, coming so close on the terrible failure in Sicily, 
 was indeed staggering, but never had her ancient spirit risen 
 more splendidly to an emergency. By incredible efforts she 
 renewed her fleets; Samos, faithful to the bitter end, pro- 
 vided a rallying-point, and the last long phase of the war, 
 the struggle, year in, year out, for the mastery of the Mgean 
 Sea and the coast of Asia Minor, began in earnest. No need 
 to follow its details. In the foreground, slipping to and fro 
 like a weaver's shuttle from city to city, fleet to fleet, here 
 stirring up an oligarchical revolution, there lending a hint 
 or a push to some slow Spartan admiral, above all linking 
 up the Peloponnesian cause with the vast resources and 
 
 > {autarch. 
 
 
ALCIBIADES 71 
 
 awful prestige of Persia, flits the brilliant, restless figure of 
 Alcibiades. And in the background looms ever the sinister 
 shadow of that great barbarian power for the sake of whose 
 aid all the free Greeks, first the Spartans and at last even 
 the victors of Marathon and Salamis, are to come begging, 
 cap in hand. 
 
 One Spartan admiral there was, the manly and honorable 
 Lichas, who revolted in angry disgust from the disgraceful 
 terms to which he found his country had consented and 
 refused flatly to be a party to such a treaty. While h*S com- 
 manded, the relations between Spartans and Persians be- 
 came somewhat strained, and Alcibiades, as prime mover of 
 the alliance, found himself looked upon askance in the 
 Spartan camp. He therefore withdrew into the interior and 
 proceeded to make himself indispensable to Tissaphernes. 
 "For this barbarian, not being himself sincere, but a lover 
 of guile and wickedness, admired his address and wonderful 
 ability. And, indeed, the charm of daily intercourse with 
 him was more than any character could resist or any dispo- 
 sition escape. Even those who feared and envied him could 
 not but take delight, and have a sort of kindness for him, 
 when they saw him and were in his company. So that 
 Tissaphernes, otherwise a cruel character and, above all 
 other Persians, a hater of the Greeks, was yet so won by 
 the flatteries of Alcibiades, that he set himself even to exceed 
 him in responding to them. The most beautiful of his parks, 
 containing salubrious streams and meadows, where he had 
 built pavihons and places of retirement royally and ex- 
 quisitely adorned, received by his direction the name of 
 Alcibiades, and was always so called and so spoken of." l 
 
 Henceforth Alcibiades, having no more to hope from 
 Sparta, ceased to consider her interest, but urged steadily 
 upon Tissaphernes the advantages of a waiting game, keep- 
 
 » Plutarch. 
 
72 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 :ng the Spartans in play with promises and moderate ad- 
 vances of funds, but cutting down the pay of the fleet by 
 me half, refusing aid to the revolted cities, and always post- 
 poning the arrival of that long-looked-for Phoenician armada 
 which was to turn the scale of naval superiority. In short, 
 his advice to the wily satrap was to play off Sparta against 
 Athens at the least possible expense and trouble to himself 
 — a counsel most congenial to the Oriental mind. 
 
 And now, in the midst of the "barbaric pearl and gold" 
 of the Asiatic court where he trailed his robes in perfumed 
 luxury, the mind of the Athenian exile began to turn towards 
 home. Might he not make double use of this advice which 
 Tissaphernes found so good, and begin to build upon it 
 some credit with his countrymen? The one dread of the 
 generals at Samos was that Phoenician fleet; if he could 
 promise that it should never round the capes into the 
 Mge&n, might he not be held to have deserved well? His 
 first tampering was with certain officers of his own class, to 
 whom he appealed as a fellow-aristocrat, suggesting that 
 .they by an oligarchical revolution and he by his influence 
 ' with the Persian should combine to save the city from im- 
 \ pending ruin. At first all went well with the plot, in spite of 
 the opposition of Phrynichus, one of the generals, who saw 
 through it but, in his effort to discredit it, involved himself 
 in such a maze of lies, betrayals, charges and countercharges, 
 that the army might be excused for not understanding what 
 it was all about. Pisander, going to Athens, started there 
 the idea of a change in the constitution, the recall of Alci- 
 1 biades, and a Persian alliance; so desperate Was the situa- 
 tion that considerable support was found for the proposal, 
 and Pisander himself was commissioned to see what terms 
 could actually be got from Tissaphernes. But this was push- 
 ing the wily Oriental too far; now that Athens was ready to 
 court him, he began to smile upon Sparta, and the negotia- 
 
ALCIBIADES 73 
 
 tions fell through. Whatever part Alcibiades played in the 
 matter, — and it is a very obscure one, — he lost his useful- 
 ness to the conspirators, who decided to go ahead without 
 him. The result was the famous revolution which upset 
 in a day the hundred-year-old constitution of Athens, and 
 seated the Four Hundred, representing an imaginary Five 
 Thousand, in absolute authority over that proud democracy. 
 The real democracy, however, was not within the walls; it 
 was at Samos, manning the fleet, and it rose as one man 
 when the evil news was brought. Renewing oaths to the 
 ancient constitution, the soldiers and sailors declared them- 
 selves independent of the new government and, as their 
 first political act, recalled Alcibiades. 
 
 A new phase, the most honorable of his checkered life, 
 now opened for Alcibiades. At no time did his many-sided 
 character appear to better advantage. His revenge had been 
 accomplished, his treason, forgiven, was put behind him; 
 independent, clear-sighted as ever, he 
 
 . . . bent his keen, untroubled gaze 
 Home to the instant heart of things. 
 
 The soldiers clamored to be led home to put down the 
 tyrants; he had but to yield to this insistence to return in 
 triumph, at the head of a furious avenging army, to the 
 city which had cast him out. Even the injuries he had 
 inflicted upon Athens were hardly greater than the service 
 he did her now, when, by the exercise of all his persuasive 
 powers in public and in private, he prevailed upon the men 
 to relinquish so mad a step, one which would have left all 
 Ionia, the islands, and the Hellespont to fall without oppo- 
 sition into the enemy's hands. Pride, moreover, as well as 
 patriotism, restrained him from going home, even after 
 Athens herself, having overthrown the Four Hundred, not 
 only desired but commanded him to return. Not as a grate- 
 
74 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 ful, forgiven prodigal, but as a benefactor and savior of bis 
 country, would Alcibiades see again bis native city. 
 
 And as such did he at last revisit her, after a most suc- 
 cessful campaign in the region of the Hellespont, whither 
 the Spartans, weary of the deceits of Tissaphernes and hop- 
 ing better things from Pharnabazus, satrap of Pbrygia, 
 had moved the seat of war. For a moment, indeed, Alci- 
 biades was near falling a victim to his own vanity, for, 
 visiting Tissaphernes, to boast of the victory he had helped 
 Athens to win at Cynossema, be found his old friend de- 
 cidedly cool and himself under arrest. Tissaphernes, in 
 fact, was in bad odor just then with the Great King, and 
 inclined to make the Athenian his scapegoat, but Alci- 
 biades escaped bis clutches and, rejoining the fleet, led it in 
 a sudden descent upon the Peloponnesians in the harbor of 
 Cyzicus, winning a smashing victory. Mindarus, the Spar- 
 tan admiral, was slain, and Pharnabazus fled inland, whither 
 Alcibiades pursued him and routed him once more, then 
 forced the Bithynians into an alliance, laid siege to Chalce- 
 don, and took Selymbria, almost literally single-handed. 
 For, entering the city, at a premature signal, with only fifty 
 men, he found himself at the mercy of the entire garrison, 
 — whereupon he coolly ordered his trumpet sounded and 
 proclamation made that the Selymbrians should not take 
 arms against the Athenians. So magnificent was the 
 audacity that it succeeded, and Selymbria surrendered 
 without a blow. Greatly to Alcibiades' honor, he, with a 
 true Greek shrinking from the barbarities sure to accom- 
 pany a sack by his Thracian auxiliaries, granted excellent 
 terms to this city and shortly afterward to Byzantium, not 
 a man of whom, after the capitulation, was slain or even 
 exiled. Indeed, except that he is said to have been one of 
 the majority who voted for the extermination of the Melians, 
 Alcibiades seems to have been exceptionally free not only 
 
ALCIBIADES 75 
 
 from bloodthirstiness, but from that callousness to human 
 suffering which long years of warfare was inducing in a 
 race that formerly prided itself upon its sensitiveness and 
 humanity. 
 
 Covered thus with laurels did Alcibiades at last sail into 
 the harbor of Piraeus, and all Athens came out, cheering, 
 crowding, laughing, and weeping, to welcome him home. 
 "Those who could press near him crowned him with gar- 
 lands, and they who could not come up so close yet stayed 
 to behold him afar off, and the old men pointed him out and 
 showed him to the young ones." 1 Nothing could be more 
 tactful than the way in which Alcibiades met his repent- 
 ant countrymen. Addressing them in full Assembly, with 
 neither reproach nor vainglory, he invited them to put, 
 with him, the past behind them and look forward with hope 
 and courage to the future. Restored to his full rights, his 
 property returned, the curse upon him solemnly revoked, 
 he resolved to wipe out the last remaining taint of impiety 
 by restoring the ancient splendor of the Eleusinian rites 
 which in his reckless youth he had mocked, and which ever 
 since the Spartan occupation of Decelea had been shorn 
 of their proper solemnities. "With great order and pro- 
 found silence" the priests and celebrants, encompassed on 
 all sides by the victorious army of Alcibiades, made under 
 the very eyes of Agis and his garrison the long omitted 
 march to Eleusis, — "an august and venerable procession," 
 "wherein all who did not envy him said he performed at 
 once the office of a high priest and of a general." 1 
 
 Thus was Alcibiades restored to the very pinnacle of favor 
 with gods and men. Athens worshiped the ground he trod 
 on. His cup was full — too full. His reputation for success 
 was such as no mortal commander could live up to. When, 
 on his return to the coast of Asia Minor, every city did not 
 
76 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 fall into his hands at the first summons, the fault must 
 needs lie in his will, not in his power. When, in his absence 
 and against his orders, his lieutenant engaged the Spartans 
 and lost the battle, all the old tales of his frivolity, his self- 
 indulgence, his wanton neglect of duty ran like wildfire 
 again among the disappointed populace, who showed their 
 displeasure by removing him from his command. 
 
 Stung to the quick, Alcibiades would neither go home to 
 defend his integrity nor remain a subordinate in the army 
 he had led so often to victory. In the rocky uplands of the 
 Thracian Chersonese — which the Great War has made 
 familiar to all as Gallipoli — he owned a castle, or fortified 
 country-seat. Thither he retired, shaking the dust of Greece 
 and Grecian affairs from his feet, to live like a Highland 
 chief among his Thracian archers, with whom he hunted 
 now the wild game and now the scarce less wild tribes of the 
 interior. Once, for the last time, Athens gripped his heart. 
 Looking down from his eyrie, his soldier's glance could see 
 the Athenian fleet lying disorderly and unguarded in the 
 wretchedly chosen harbor of iEgospotami, while the men, 
 slack and undisciplined, wandered at pleasure up and down 
 the shore. Swallowing his pride, the deposed general 
 mounted his horse and rode down to warn his incompetent 
 successors, but his advice to remove to Sestos and his warn- 
 ing against a sleepless enemy were alike rejected with 
 insult. A few days later, Lysander fell upon the fleet and 
 destroyed it utterly. The political greatness of Athens was 
 gone forever. 
 
 With Sparta all-powerful in Hellas, by sea and land, 
 there was now no safe place within its bounds for Alcibiades. 
 Guided, it would seem, by the example of Themistocles, 
 nursing great dreams of enlisting Artaxerxes himself in his 
 cause and that of Athens, the indefatigable adventurer bent 
 his steps toward Persia. Before he could gain the ear of the 
 
ALCIBIADES 77 
 
 Great King, he must win the safe-conduct and recommen- 
 dation of Pharnabazus, and to that end he addressed him- 
 self to a long course of patient flatteries, while living quietly 
 as a private gentleman in Phrygia. But even as an obscure 
 exile, Alcibiades alive was unendurable to the victors of 
 Greece. To friends and foes alike, to Athens crushed to 
 earth, yet ever whispering of former glories, to Sparta 
 nursing undying sullen resentment over unexpected betray- 
 als and defeats, the name of Alcibiades was too closely 
 associated with miraculous changes and upheavals; while 
 he lived, anything might happen. A word from Lysander 
 to Pharnabazus, and the matter was settled. What hap- 
 pened may best be told in the words of Plutarch: — 
 
 Those who were sent to assassinate him had not coin-age enough 
 to enter the house, but surrounded it first, and set it on fire. 
 Alcibiades, as soon as he perceived it, getting together great quan- 
 tities of clothes and furniture, threw them upon the fire to choke 
 it, and, having wrapped his cloak about his left arm, and holding 
 his naked sword in his right, he cast himself into the middle of the 
 fire and escaped securely through it before his clothes were burnt. 
 The barbarians, as soon as they saw him, retreated, and none of 
 them durst stay to expect him, or to engage with him, but, stand- 
 ing at a distance, they slew him with their darts and arrows. 
 
 So he died, in a corner, obscurely, almost pettily assassi- 
 nated at his own door in a small Phrygian village, yet with 
 a gallant gesture to the last. One sees the lithe Greek figure 
 outlined against the lurid background which lights up with 
 its ever-mounting flames the ring of skulking barbarians 
 and the flashing sword that holds them all at bay. He died 
 a Greek. 
 
SOCRATES 
 
 (Died 399 b.c.) 
 
 One day in March, 423 b.c, there was performed in 
 Athens a comedy by the poet Aristophanes, in which, as 
 usual, he made great fun of well-known citizens and satir- 
 ized the manners and morals of the time. The play opens 
 with a dispute between Strepsiades, a crabbed old farmer, 
 and his fashionable spendthrift son, Pheidippides, who has 
 brought him heavily into debt. As a last resort, the father, 
 pointing out a certain wicket gate, says to his son: — 
 
 That is the thinking-house of sapient souls. 
 
 There dwell the men who teach — aye, who persuade us, 
 
 That Heaven is one vast fire-extinguisher 
 
 Placed round about us, and that we're the cinders. 
 
 Aye, and they'll teach (only they'll want some money) 
 
 How one may speak and conquer, right or wrong. 
 
 Pheidippides. Come, tell their names. 
 
 Strepsiades. Well, I can't quite remember, 
 
 But they're deep thinkers and true gentlemen. 
 
 P. Out on the rogues! I know them. Those rank pedants, 
 Those pale-faced, barefoot vagabonds you mean: 
 That Socrates, poor wretch, and Chserephon. 
 
 S. Oh! oh! hush! hush! don't use those foolish words; 
 But if the sorrows of my barley touch you, 
 Enter their schools and cut the Turf for ever. 
 
 P. I would n't go, so help me Dionysus; 
 For all Leogaras's breed of Fhasians! 
 
 S. Go, I beseech you, dearest, dearest son. 
 Go and be taught! 
 
 P. And what would you have me learn? 
 
 S. I'm told they have two Reasons — one the better 
 (Whatever that may mean), and one the worse; 
 The worse of these two Reasons, so they say 
 Puts forward unjust pleas, and always wins. 
 
80 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Now, if you were to learn this unjust reasoning, 
 Of all the debts that I've incurred for you 
 I would not pay one creditor a penny. 
 
 Pheidippides, however, is too much afraid of losing his 
 complexion to adopt a student's life, so old Strepsiades has 
 to go himself. The door is opened by a pale and sickly stu- 
 dent who complains of being interrupted in the midst of 
 an important discussion: — 
 
 'T was asked by Socrates of Chserephon 
 How many of its own feet a flea could jump; 
 For one bit Chserephon upon the eyebrow 
 And hopped from thence on to the Master's head. 
 
 On entering, Strepsiades finds a group of pupils groveling 
 on their faces, while Socrates swings above them on a sort 
 of perch — "I walk on air," he explains, "and contemplate 
 the sun." When the old farmer, desiring to join the class, 
 offers, in the usual form, to swear "by the gods" that he 
 will pay the dues, he learns to his surprise that there are 
 no gods, and that their plans are taken by "divine spheres" 
 and clouds. Summoned by a prayer from Socrates, a chorus 
 of women, representing clouds, appear upon the stage, 
 chanting a very beautiful song, and Socrates explains: — 
 
 It is these whom alone we as deities own : all else is mere fables and 
 lying. 
 Str. Great Earth! that is odd — and is Zeus not a god? Sure his 
 
 deity's past the denying. 
 Soc. Nay, from prating desist — your Zeus does n't exist! 
 Str. No Zeus? I can hardly believe it: 
 
 Then perhaps you'll explain what occasions the rain, if it isn't 
 from him we receive it. 
 Soc. Why, my answer is pat — 't is the Clouds give us that, for 
 it comes when they loom and they gather: 
 Were it sent us by Zeus, they'd be no sort of use: he would rain 
 in the clearest of weather. 
 
 The old man, half pleased and half frightened, enters the 
 school, but proves so dull-witted that he is ignominiously 
 
SOCRATES 81 
 
 turned out by Socrates, who offers, however, to accept his 
 son in his place. Pheidippides therefore is obliged after all 
 to become a pupil, but before he begins his lessons, the 
 Worse and Better Reasons have a great dispute as to which 
 shall be his tutor, and this gives Aristophanes a chance to 
 air his views about the education of boys, which, he believes, 
 has departed sadly from the good old ways. Says the Better 
 Reason, 
 
 Now first you must know, in the days long ago, how we brought 
 up our youngsters and schooled them; 
 
 When to argument just 't was the fashion to trust, and when 
 virtue and modesty ruled them. 
 
 Little boys, 't was averred, must be seen and not heard, and to 
 school they must all go together, 
 
 Unprotected by coats, or by wraps for the throats, in the coldest 
 and snowiest weather. 
 
 Where they learned to repeat, in a posture discreet, all the ancient 
 respectable ditties, 
 
 Such as "Sound of the war that is borne from afar," or "Pallas 
 the sacker of cities"; 
 
 And to render with care the traditional air without any new- 
 fangled vagary: 
 
 If you played the buffoon, or the simple old tune if you tried to 
 embellish or vary, 
 
 And to show off your skill in a shake or a trill, or in modern fan- 
 tastical ruses, 
 
 All you got by your trick was a touch of the stick, for the outrage 
 you did to the Muses. 
 
 The Worse Reason is very scornful of this old-fashioned 
 stuff, but the Better insists that 
 
 . . . these are the precepts which taught 
 The heroes of old to be hardy and bold, and the men who at 
 Marathon fought. 
 
 She goes on, — 
 
 You, therefore, young man, choose me while you can, cast in with 
 my method your lot, 
 
82 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 And rise from your chair if an elder be there, and respectfully give 
 
 him your place, 
 And with love and with fear your parents revere, and shrink from 
 
 the brand of disgrace. 
 
 "He'll be known as a 'mother's boy,'" throws in the 
 Worse Reason, but the Better goes on: — 
 
 But then you'll excel in the games you love well, all blooming, 
 
 athletic, and fair. 
 Not learning to prate as your idlers debate with marvellous 
 
 prickly dispute, 
 Nor dragged into court day by day to make sport in some small 
 
 disagreeable suit: 
 But you will below to the Academe go, and under the olives contend 
 With your chaplet of reed, in a contest of speed with some excellent 
 
 rival and friend: 
 All fragrant with woodbine and peaceful content, and the leaf 
 
 which the lime-blossoms fling 
 When the plane whispers love to the elm in the grove in the 
 
 beautiful season of spring. 
 
 But the Worse Reason wins the day, and Pheidippides 
 when he reappears is fully instructed how to baffle all the 
 creditors. Unluckily, he is quite willing to turn his new 
 weapons against his father as well, and poor Strepsiades, 
 very woebegone, has to relate how, when he asked the boy 
 to sing at supper some good old favorite from Simonides, 
 he got for an answer, "You're quite behind the times! 
 It's not the thing to sing at meals, like maids grinding corn." 
 Moreover, he had turned up his nose not only at Simonides 
 but at the great ^Eschylus himself, calling him "A mere 
 bombastic blusterer replete with sound and fury," and when 
 asked to give something in the new fashion, had reeled off 
 a story from Euripides which so shocked his father that 
 the old man could not contain himself, and the wrangle 
 ended in the son giving the father a thrashing. Pheidippides, 
 not a bit ashamed of himself, now undertakes to prove by 
 
SOCRATES 83 
 
 the new logic that father-beating is perfectly reasonable and 
 correct: — 
 
 "When I was young did you to me administer correction?" 
 "Of course I did — it showed my care and natural affection." 
 "Well, 't is in just the self -same way that I by you am dealing — 
 I beat you just to show my love and proper filial feeling! 
 I'm sure it can't be just or right your floggings should be fewer 
 Than those that I received from you: I'm quite as free as you were. 
 Then, if you say to beat a child is merely human nature — 
 An aged man's a child again, of rather larger stature: 
 And all the more he needs the rod, for when you catch bim trip- 
 ping, 
 He has not the excuse of youth to save him from a whipping." 
 "But everywhere 't is held a crime — by no tradition backed 
 
 'tis!" 
 "Well, 't was a man in days of old who penalized the practice, 
 Just a mere man like you or me, his fellows who persuaded, 
 And if I make another law, I simply do what they did. 
 If they passed bills for beating sons, then surely I should gather 
 That I've a right to pass a bill for sons to beat their father." 
 
 He goes on, moreover, to prove that he is equally entitled 
 to beat his mother, and this is the last straw. Strepsiades, 
 desperate with rage at the new teaching which has created 
 such a monster, leads an attack upon the "Thinking- 
 house" and burns it to the ground. At the close of the play 
 we hear the outcries of Socrates and his favorite pupil: — 
 
 Soc. O, I shall suffocate! O dear! O dear! 
 
 Choerephon. And I, poor devil, shall be burnt to death! 
 
 Str. For with what aim did ye insult the gods 
 And pry around the dwellings of the moon? 
 Strike, smite them, spare them not, for many reasons, 
 But most, because they have blasphemed the gods! 
 
 Popular as Aristophanes was, The Clouds fell rather flat, 
 coming out third in the competition. Socrates, at whom it 
 was chiefly aimed, was then a well-known middle-aged citi- 
 zen of good repute, eccentric, doubtless, but a great favorite 
 with many men of wealth and high standing. The Sophists 
 
84 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 (traveling professors of rhetoric, ethics, and science), with 
 whom he is in this play confused, were also at the height of 
 their popularity, sought by all the young men of fashion 
 and making large fortunes from their fees. It was just this 
 fad, of course, that Aristophanes was attacking, but the 
 time was not yet ripe for his satire to raise more than a 
 passing laugh from the crowd and a sympathetic wag of the 
 head from the old fogies. The play, however, was not dead; 
 its author, indeed, was particularly fond of it and later 
 published a revised version. Twenty-four years after, Soc- 
 rates, on trial for his life, spoke of it as really underlying 
 the complaint against him: "'Socrates is guilty of crime in 
 that he busies himself with prying into things under the 
 earth and in the heavens, and making the worse appear the 
 better reason, and teaching the same to others.' This is the 
 kind of charge, and this is what you yourselves have seen 
 in the comedy of Aristophanes, where a certain Socrates 
 appears wandering around, asserting that he walks the air, 
 and babbling many other follies, about which I confess that 
 I understand absolutely nothing at all." "Nor is the report 
 true," he goes on to say, "which you may have heard, that 
 I undertake to teach men and charge fees for my instruc- 
 tion; there is not a word of truth in it." 
 
 What, then, was the truth about Socrates? The facts of 
 his life are very few and simple. He was born in 469, the 
 son of Sophroniscus, a statuary, or artisan-sculptor, and 
 nominally followed his father's calling, but apparently paid 
 very little attention to it, for his habits were so extremely 
 frugal and hardy that he needed only the bare necessities of 
 life, and his whole delight was in social conversation and in 
 friendships, to which in democratic Athens poverty was no 
 bar. He did not marry, moreover, until late in life, when his 
 unbusinesslike habits were quite fixed, and his friends are 
 said to have come to the rescue of his family. Originally, 
 
SOCRATES 85 
 
 he seems to have possessed a little property and a house in 
 Athens — though his deme was a suburban one — and be- 
 longed therefore to the middle class, or Zeugitse, who 
 served as hoplites in the militia. 
 
 His youth was passed in the great days of the Periclean 
 Age, but we hear of no special interest on his part in politics, 
 art, or literature. What did attract him from the first were 
 the new subjects which were just beginning to be taught and 
 discussed. For, with all her rapid progress in democracy, 
 art, and commerce, Athens had remained in other ways one 
 of the most conservative cities in all Hellas, holding fast 
 to the old unquestioning faith in the gods and in the sacred- 
 ness of the state itself. Now, however, the advance of nat- 
 ural science could no longer be checked; "wise men," mostly 
 from Ionia, brought in their revolutionary theories as to 
 what the universe really was. Anaxagoras, the close friend 
 of Pericles, even taught that the sun was no god but a ball 
 of molten, red-hot stone, revolving around the earth. To 
 the multitude, of course, such ideas were rank blasphemy; 
 Anaxagoras was driven from Athens. But the result of such 
 teaching was a new division, running right across the old 
 ones of birth and wealth: alongside of the ignorant, believ- 
 ing many stood the skeptical, enlightened few. These latter 
 were in just the frame of mind to receive with joy the next 
 set of newcomers, the "Sophists," who professed to teach 
 the art of persuasion and included in that a whole phi- 
 losophy of life. Some of these were men of high character 
 and much learning; the bad meaning which clings to our 
 word "sophistry" comes from the fact that their teaching 
 might become so dangerous. "Man is the measure of all 
 things," was their typical saying: that is, "there's nothing 
 good or bad but thinking makes it so." There is no absolute 
 truth or duty, for constitutions, laws, and moral customs 
 have all been created by men at one time or another and 
 
86 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 may therefore be made over by them. There is something 
 to be said on both sides of every question; one of these 
 arguments may be weaker, to begin with, than the other, 
 but a clever student of rhetoric will know how to turn a 
 situation to his advantage by making it prevail. (This is, 
 of course, the ground for the common charge against the 
 Sophists of "making the worse appear the better reason.") 
 For a clever, "enlightened" young man who had already 
 lost his belief that his city government, just as it stood, was 
 under the special favor and protection of the gods, this new 
 teaching opened up wonderful opportunities for advance- 
 ment. Crowds of pupils flocked to these teachers, whose 
 fees only the rich could pay, and many of them later used 
 the skill they learned in attempts to overturn the democ- 
 racies in their states and seat themselves in power. 
 
 That the learning of the "wise men" early attracted 
 Socrates we have plenty of evidence. He himself became 
 well versed in mathematics, physiology and other branches, 
 but he found them all unsatisfying. What was the use, he 
 felt, of knowing that the world was or was not made thus 
 or so, unless one knew why it was made and what was the 
 meaning of it all? He turned then to the Sophists — accord- 
 ing to one report, a friend paid his fees for a course of lec- 
 tures by Prodicus — but was repelled by their shallowness. 
 They took money for their teaching, and yet they had no 
 truth to teach, — indeed, confessed that they had none. 
 Where, then, was real truth, real wisdom, to be found? It 
 was apparently at about this stage of his thought that 
 a very curious incident took place. His intimate friend 
 Cheerephon — the same whom Aristophanes included in 
 his satire — visiting Delphi, inquired of the oracle who was 
 wiser than Socrates, and received the answer that there was 
 no one. Now, Socrates, with all his scientific education, 
 kept all his life his inherited respect for oracles; at the same 
 
SOCRATES 87 
 
 time, he had far too much humor and common sense to 
 take himself solemnly as the wisest of men. The interpre- 
 tation that he came to put upon the saying was that the 
 world was full of sham knowledge and self deception, and 
 that his own sole claim to wisdom lay in his frank acknowl- 
 edgment of his own ignorance. To prove Apollo right, as 
 he quaintly put it, was henceforth the main business of his 
 life; in other words, he became wholly absorbed in investi- 
 gating and testing the common opinions and judgments of 
 men, and showing where they were confused or unfounded. 
 The method he used, which has been called "Socratic" 
 after him, he had doubtless learned from his own early 
 teacher, the philosopher Zeno. It consisted of a sort of 
 quiz, or series of questions calling for brief, direct answers, 
 almost as in a game of "Yes or No." Armed with this 
 weapon, Socrates passed his whole time in the streets, the 
 market-place, the gymnasiums, — wherever there were men 
 to be met and questioned. No figure in all Athens can have 
 been more familiar than this sturdy, middle-aged citizen, 
 already developing a large stomach (which he tried to keep 
 down, to the great jnirth of his friends, by-taking dancing- 
 lessons), dressed always in a single rough woollen garment, 
 striding along, barefoot, in all weathers, and gazing rapidly 
 in every direction with large eyes set prominently in a 
 broad, flat-nosed, satyr-like face of quite peculiar ugliness. 
 Socrates is a man impossible to describe without contra- 
 dictions. Among the beauty-loving Greeks his ugliness was 
 proverbial, yet it seemed to exert a positive fascination over 
 the young men who swarmed about him. Nothing more ir- 
 ritating than the process of being proved a fool, before an 
 applauding audience, by his cross-questioning, can be im- 
 agined, but statesmen, poets, craftsmen alike submitted to 
 it for a whole generation. The secret must have lain in his 
 geniality. No wise man has ever been more human, more 
 
88 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 sympathetic, more eager for companionship and affection. 
 He could live as sparely as a hermit and yet make one at 
 an all-night supper with the zest and jollity of a boon- 
 companion. Much of his recorded teaching is as hard- 
 headed and practical as Benjamin Franklin's; on the other 
 hand, he was subject to odd spiritual experiences, such as his 
 famous "voice" or "daemon" — a presentiment which all 
 his life warned him what not to do — and the fits of absorp- 
 tion, if not positive trances, which were so common with him 
 that his friends would give up waiting for him when one came 
 on, and simply leave him standing in the street till he woke up 
 and followed them. The most remarkable of these instances 
 is told by Alcibiades in Plato's story of The Banquet, very 
 probably as Plato himself heard it from the speaker: — 
 
 One morning [during the siege of Potidsea] he was thinking about 
 something which he could not resolve; he would not give up, but 
 continued thinking from early dawn until noon — there he stood 
 fixed in thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him, and the 
 rumor ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been 
 standing and thinking about something ever since the break of day. 
 At last, in the evening after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity 
 (I should explain that this was not in winter but in summer) 
 brought out their mats and slept in the open air that they might 
 watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he 
 stood all night as well as all day and the following morning, and 
 with the return of light he offered up a prayer to the sun and went 
 his way. 
 
 Socrates, it will be noticed, is here described as a soldier. 
 He himself speaks of three campaigns in which he served, 
 those of Potidsea, Amphipolis, and Delium, and of his en- 
 durance and his contempt of danger in two of these cam- 
 paigns Alcibiades also gives examples. 
 
 At Potidsea [he says] we messed together, and I had the oppor- 
 tunity of observing his extraordinary power of sustaining fatigue 
 and going without food when our supplies were interrupted at any 
 place. . . . His endurance of cold was also surprising. There was a 
 
SOCRATES 89 
 
 severe frost, for the winter in that region was really tremendous, 
 and everybody else either remained indoors, or if they went out, 
 had on no end of clothing and were well shod and had their feet 
 swathed in felts and fleeces; in the midst of this, Socrates, with his 
 bare feet on the ice, and in his ordinary dress, marched better than 
 any of the other soldiers who had their shoes on, and they looked 
 daggers at him because he seemed to despise them. 
 
 And during the disastrous retreat from Delium: — 
 
 You might see him, Aristophanes, as you describe, just as he is 
 in the streets of Athens, stalking like a pelican and rolling his 
 eyes, calmly contemplating enemies as well as friends, and making 
 very intelligible to anybody, even from a distance, that whoever 
 attacks him will be likely to meet a stout resistance. 
 
 It is from the same speaker that we get the most eloquent 
 account of that personal charm which gathered so many 
 followers about this poor, homely, unflattering and un- 
 compromising man. These were, of course, of many sorts 
 and affected by many motives. There were lifelong friends 
 of about his own age, like Crito and Chserephon; youthful, 
 devoted pupils, like Plato and Xenophon, who sat at his 
 feet during his latest years and became his interpreters to 
 future ages; clever, self-seeking young men such as Critias 
 and Alcibiades, who hung around the group to amuse them- 
 selves with the clever fooling and pick up arguments and 
 methods that might prove useful to themselves. These 
 latter usually dropped off after a while, but over Alcibiades 
 himself, though the most reckless and unprincipled of them 
 all, the master exercised a positive fascination, a hold upon 
 all that was best in that complex nature, which the young 
 man could describe only by declaring himself in love with 
 him. Taking up the praise of Socrates at this same banquet, 
 he compares him to the masks of Silenus, the old satyr, 
 "which may be seen sitting in the statuaries' shops, having 
 pipes and flutes in their mouths, and they are made to open 
 in the middle, and there are images of gods inside them." 
 
90 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 This, he says, is an allegory not only of the man but of his 
 words, which "are ridiculous when you first hear them; he 
 clothes himself in language that is as the skin of the wanton 
 satyr — for his talk is of pack-asses and smiths and cobblers 
 and curriers, and he is always repeating the same things in 
 the same words, so that an ignorant man who did not know 
 him might feel disposed to laugh at him; but he who pierces 
 the mask and sees what is within will find that they are the 
 only words which have a meaning in them, and also the 
 most divine, abounding in fair examples of virtue and of the 
 largest discourse, or rather extending to the whole duty of 
 a good and honorable man." But most of all is he like the 
 satyr Marsyas, who charmed the souls of men with his flute- 
 playing, "but you, Socrates, produce the same effect with 
 the voice only. . . . When we hear any other speaker, even 
 a very good one, his words produce absolutely no effect 
 upon us in comparison, whereas the very fragments of you 
 and your words, even at second hand and however imper- 
 fectly repeated, amaze and possess the souls of every man, 
 woman, and child who comes within hearing of them. . . . 
 For my heart leaps within me more than that of any Cory- 
 bantian reveler, and my eyes rain tears when I hear them. 
 ... I have heard Pericles and other great orators, but 
 though I thought that they spoke well, I never had any 
 similar feeling; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I 
 angry at the thought of my own slavish state. But this 
 Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass that I have 
 felt as if I could hardly endure the life which I am leading 
 . . . and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against 
 him and fly from the voice of the siren, he would detain me 
 until I grew old sitting at his feet. For he makes me confess 
 that I ought not to live as I do. . . . And he is the only per- 
 son who ever made me ashamed, which you might think 
 not to be in my nature." 
 
SOCRATES 91 
 
 Such was the man whom the conservative poet already, 
 during the prosperous and confident period known as that 
 of the Peace of Nicias, picked out for attack as the chief 
 underminer of the old order in Athens. During the next 
 twenty years events moved fast and tragically. The Sicilian 
 disaster, the treachery of Alcibiades, the enemy's occupation 
 of Decelea, the short-lived oligarchic revolution of the Four 
 Hundred, the crushing defeat at iEgospotami, the heart- 
 breaking surrender to Sparta, the deep mortification of the 
 pulling down of the Long Walls, the hateful tyranny of the 
 Thirty, the restoration at last of the democracy — at the 
 end of such an experience a city impoverished, humiliated, 
 betrayed by its "best" citizens, shorn of its empire and 
 almost of its independence, might well, looking back to the 
 days of its splendor and its pride, seek for the underlying 
 reasons of its downfall and cast about for victims on whom 
 to wreak its bitterness. No wonder that with guides like 
 Aristophanes to point the way men began to put the blame 
 on the new education which had borne such poisonous fruit. 
 In the good old days, they said, men had learned enough 
 when they knew how to worship the gods, obey the laws, 
 and serve the state; then Athens was invincible; she it was 
 who beat back the Persian and saved Hellas, who built up 
 a vast and mighty empire, and withstood the shock of the 
 whole Peloponnesus leagued against her; her misfortunes 
 began when mockers and reprobates like Alcibiades insulted 
 the gods and went over to the national enemy, when cruel 
 and selfish aristocrats like Critias conspired to overthrow 
 the Constitution and to tyrannize over the free people of 
 Athens. And who had been the teacher of these men but 
 that same old vagabond stone-cutter whom Aristophanes 
 had shown up so deservedly, long ago? The other Sophists 1 
 
 1 The persistent confusion of Socrates with the Sophists whom he particularly criticized 
 is very like that of Socialists and Anarchists now — although their views are diametrically 
 opposed. 
 
92 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 had come and gone like evil birds of passage, but lie at least 
 was still within reach, still tramping the streets in his silly 
 old cloak and badgering better men than himself. True, 
 his talk was ever of such things as wisdom and virtue, tem- 
 perance and justice, but when had he ever shown willing- 
 ness to serve the state as an active citizen should? Once, 
 just once, in his long life, had he offered himself for the lot 
 and served his term in the Council — and what use had he 
 made of the position? On the day when it was his turn to 
 preside over the Assembly he had deliberately thwarted the 
 will of the sovereign people by refusing, on a mere point of 
 order, to put to the vote a proposal to execute those admi- 
 rals who had abandoned their drowning sailors at Arginusa?. 
 When, indeed, had he ever spoken with respect of the people 
 or the constitution? Was he not forever holding up to ridi- 
 cule that safeguard of pure democracy, election by lot, and 
 pointing out that no one would venture to choose his cook 
 or his tailor as he chose his senators and magistrates? True, 
 he did refuse to obey the Thirty when they ordered him to 
 help arrest an innocent citizen — let that stand to his credit 
 — but did he leave Athens with the real, unquestioned dem- 
 ocrats, with even his own bosom friend, Chserephon? Not 
 he! He stayed on, evidently under the protection of his 
 former pupil, the unspeakable Critias, until better patriots 
 than he drove out the tyrants. And now that our afflicted, 
 beloved city is herself again, though sad and poor, now that 
 she must set herself to the long task of rebuilding her 
 ancient state, must we let this bad citizen, this corrupter of 
 youth, continue to ply his old trade in our streets and teach 
 still another generation to despise the religion and the laws 
 which were good enough for Aristides and the men of 
 Marathon? 
 
 Such, roughly enough, were the ideas of many perfectly 
 well-meaning, if not very intelligent men in the year 399, 
 
SOCRATES 93 
 
 and of these a very fair example was a certain Anytus, a 
 well-to-do, highly respectable citizen, devoted to the cause 
 of the restored democracy, who, together with two less 
 prominent persons, a third-rate tragic poet named Meletus, 
 and Lycon, a minor politician, brought against Socrates a 
 formal charge of corrupting the youth by his teaching and 
 professing disbelief in the national gods. The trial, since it 
 concerned a religious offense, took place in the court of the 
 "king-archon," and the case was argued before five hun- 
 dred and one citizen jurors, chosen, of course, by lot, as 
 well as in the presence of a crowd of interested spectators. 
 Socrates, appearing in court for the first time, whether as 
 plaintiff or defendant, in all his seventy years, pleaded his 
 own case, as coolly and cheerfully as if he were carrying 
 on one of his favorite conversations in the market-place. 
 The account of this famous trial which Plato gives in his 
 "Apology" and which doubtless reports faithfully the spirit 
 and manner if not the actual words of his beloved master, 
 should be read in full by every one who wants to know 
 Socrates. A few extracts can only suggest the shrewd humor, 
 the entire composure, and the deep underlying seriousness 
 of the fearless old philosopher. 
 
 Almost his first words show that he realizes the central 
 difficulty of the situation, the fact that what he actually has 
 to meet is not the formal accusation, which is so absurd as 
 to be hardly worth refuting, but the mass of prejudice which 
 has been gradually built up against him in the course of 
 many years and by many and nameless accusers — "unless 
 some one among them happens to be a comic poet." 
 
 Declaring, then, as we have already seen, the picture of 
 himself in The Clouds absolutely untrue, he goes on to 
 sketch his life as it has really been, telling of the strange 
 oracle and of his efforts to find out its meaning by examin- 
 ing all classes of men. Next, taking up the immediate 
 
94 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 charge against him, he proceeds to cross-examine Meletus, 
 in whose name the indictment was brought — a hawk-nosed 
 young man, we are elsewhere told, with long, straggling hair. 
 
 Come hither, Meletus, and tell me this. Have you not very 
 much at heart that the young should be as good as possible? 
 
 Mel. Certainly I have. 
 
 Soc. Well, then, tell the court who it is that makes them better. 
 This of course you must know; it is your business, for it is you who 
 have discovered me, you say, to be their corrupter, and have 
 brought me here, and accused me before this tribunal. Speak up, 
 then, and tell us who it is that improves them. Do you not see, 
 Meletus, that you are silent, and have nothing to say? And yet 
 is not this silence shameful, and a sufficient proof, moreover, of 
 just what I say, that you have never given a thought to these 
 things? But tell us, my good friend, who does improve the young? 
 
 Mel. The laws. 
 
 Soc. But, my excellent sir, what I asked was not this, but who 
 the man is; and he of course, to begin with, must know these very 
 laws of which you speak. 
 
 Mel. These judges here, Socrates. 
 
 Soc. What do you mean, Meletus? Are they able to train up 
 the young, and do they improve them? 
 
 Mel. Certainly. 
 
 Soc. All of them, or only some and not others? 
 
 Mel. All. 
 
 Soc. You bring us welcome news, by Hera, of a great harvest 
 of benefactors. And who besides? Do these bystanders improve 
 them, or not? 
 
 Mel. Yes, they also. 
 
 Soc. And the senators? 
 
 Mel. The senators as well. 
 
 Soc. But is it possible, Meletus, that those who sit in the public 
 assembly corrupt the young, or do not they all too improve them? 
 
 Mel. They too improve them. 
 
 Soc. It seems, then, that all Athenians, except myself, make the 
 young good and virtuous, and that I alone corrupt them. Is this 
 what you assert? 
 
 Mel. I assert it most emphatically. 
 
 Soc. You are laying a great misfortune at my door! 
 
SOCRATES 95 
 
 But really, Athenian citizens, as I said before, it is clear enough 
 that Meletus has never cared either much or little about these 
 matters. Tell us, however, Meletus, in what way do you say that 
 I corrupt the young? Is it ... by teaching them not to believe in 
 the gods in whom the city believes, but in other new divinities? 
 Is this the teaching by which you say I corrupt them? 
 
 Mel. Most emphatically I say it is this. 
 
 Soc. Then, Meletus, in the name of these very gods of whom we 
 are now speaking, tell me and these others here still more plainly 
 what you mean. For I cannot make out whether it is that I teach 
 men to believe in certain gods — in which case I myself also must 
 believe, and so do not offend by being an utter atheist ... or 
 whether you charge me with not believing in any gods at all, and 
 teaching the same to others. 
 
 Mel. That is what I say, that you do not believe in any gods 
 at all. 
 
 Soc. To what end, O wonderful Meletus, do you say this? Do 
 I not then hold, with the rest of mankind, that the sun and moon 
 are gods? 
 
 Mel. No, by Zeus, judges, he does not, for he says that the sun is 
 stone, and the moon earth. 
 
 Soc. Do you forget, friend Meletus, and imagine that it is 
 Anaxagoras you are accusing; or do you hold these persons here 
 present to be so stupid and unversed in letters as not to know that 
 the doctrines which you ascribe to me belong to Anaxagoras of 
 Clazomense, whose books are loaded with them? And the young 
 men learn them from me, forsooth, when they can often hear 
 them at the theatre, for the sum of a drachma at most, and can 
 then laugh Socrates to scorn if he pretends that they are his own, 
 — such singular doctrines too as these are! But tell me, in the 
 name of Zeus, do you really think that I believe there is no God? 
 
 Mel. By Zeus I swear that you believe there is no God at all. 
 
 Soc. Nobody will believe that, Meletus, and I doubt whether 
 you do yourself. 
 
 After a little more badgering of the unlucky Meletus, 
 whom one can imagine stepping down very red and per- 
 spiring, Socrates becomes more serious as he meets the real 
 charge, his unpopularity: — 
 
 "But," some one perhaps may say, "are you not ashamed, 
 Socrates, of having followed a pursuit on account of which you are 
 
96 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 now in danger of being put to death?" To such an one'I x might 
 with good reason reply: "You say not well, my friend, if you think 
 that a man who is good for anything at all ought vto take into 
 account the chances of living or dying, and not rather, when under- 
 taking anything, to consider only whether it be right or wrong, 
 and whether the work of a good or of a bad man. Why, according 
 to your opinion, all the heroes who fell at Troy would be but sorry 
 fellows. . . ." It would be a strange act indeed on my part, men 
 of Athens, after my remaining in whatever post I was stationed by 
 the leaders whom you had appointed over me, at Pqjtidaa/Amphip- 
 olis, and Delium, and facing death like any other man, if, now 
 that I am, as I think and believe, under orders of the God to pass 
 my life in the pursuit of wisdom and in examining myself and 
 others, — if now, I say, through fear of death or any other evil, 
 I were to desert my post! That would be strange conduct indeed, 
 and then might I in truth be justly arraigned in court for not 
 believing in the existence of gods; for then I should be disobeying 
 the oracle, and fearing death, and thinking myself wise when I 
 was not. For to fear death, citizens, is nothing at all but to think 
 you are wise when you are not wise, — to think you know what 
 you do not know. For no one knows what death is, or whether it 
 may not be the greatest of all goods to men; yet do they fear it, 
 as if they knew it to be the greatest of evils; and what is this but 
 the same old ignorance? ... So that, if you were now to acquit 
 me, in despite of Anytus, who has urged that ... I ought not by 
 any possibility to escape death, and who has moreover, assured 
 you that, if I am let off now, your sons will all be utterly ruined . . . 
 and if, in acquitting me, you should say: "We will not put faith 
 this time, O Socrates, in Anytus, but will let you go, on the condi- 
 tion, however, that you no longer spend your time in this search 
 nor in the pursuit of wisdom, ..." I should say to you, "Athenians, 
 I love and cherish you, but I shall obey the God rather than you; 
 and as long as I draw breath and have the strength, I shall never 
 cease to follow philosophy, and to exhort and persuade any one of 
 you whom I happen to meet, saying as is my wont: 'How is it, 
 friend, that you, an Athenian, of the city greatest and of most 
 repute for wisdom and power, are not ashamed to be taking thought 
 for glory and honor, and for your possessions that they may be- 
 come as great as possible, while you take neither thought nor heed 
 for wisdom and truth, and for your soul that it may become as 
 good as possible?'" . . . Do not interrupt, Athenians, but keep 
 
SOCRATES 97 
 
 that promise which I asked of you, — not to interrupt, no matter 
 what I say, but to listen; for I think that you will gain by listening. 
 I am now going to tell you other things at which you will very likely 
 raise a clamor; but do not do so, I beg of you. You may be very 
 sure that if you put to death such an one as I have just said I am, 
 you will not injure me more than your own selves. Neither Meletus 
 nor Anytus could injure me in the least: they have not the power; 
 for it is not, I think, in the nature of things that a bad man should 
 injure one better than himself. . . . Wherefore, O men of Athens, 
 I am far from defending myself for my own sake, as might be 
 expected; but for your sake I do it, lest in condemning me you err, 
 by rejecting the gift which God offers you. For if you kill me, you 
 will not readily find another man who will be (if I may make so 
 ridiculous a comparison) fastened upon the state as I am by God. 
 For the state is exactly like a powerful high-bred steed, which is 
 sluggish by reason of its very size, and so needs a gadfly to wake 
 him up. And as such a gadfly does God seem to have fastened me 
 upon the state; wherefore, besetting you everywhere the whole 
 day long, I arouse and stir up and reproach each one of you. Such 
 a man, citizens, you will not easily find again, and if you take my 
 advice you will spare me. 
 
 Finally, after telling why he has, obeying his "voice," 
 kept aloof from politics, arguing that if he had really in- 
 jured the morals of his pupils, their relatives would be pres- 
 ent to testify against him, and explaining that he does not 
 consider it manly or dignified to bring into court, as was 
 customary, his own family to appeal by their grief to the 
 mercy of the judges, he leaves his case to their consciences. 
 After a brief interval the jury, having retired to vote, return 
 with a verdict against Socrates by a rather small majority. 
 The penalty of death is then proposed by Meletus, and it is 
 the turn of Socrates, according to custom, to suggest a 
 counter-penalty. Already he had had a good chance of 
 escaping (indeed, Meletus, who probably would have pre- 
 ferred not to bear the responsibility of his death, seems to 
 have been quite irritated with him for staying to stand trial) ; 
 the close vote of the jury showed that he had many friends 
 
98 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 upon it, and a proposal of exile or even a considerable fine 
 would almost certainly have been accepted. Socrates, how- 
 ever, had no mind to be let off. At first, indeed, be provoked 
 his judges by what must have struck them as a supreme 
 piece of insolence, declaring that if they really wanted to 
 give him his deserts, they would vote him a pension for life 
 as a public benefactor. After this piece of mischief he con- 
 descended to explain why he would not offer or even accept 
 exile, since no other city would be even so likely as Athens 
 to put up with his manner of life, and nothing would induce 
 him to change that, and he ended by proposing a tiny fine 
 — all he could afford — which the entreaties of Plato and 
 other friends who were only too eager to pay for him finally 
 induced him to raise to a more reasonable sum. It is not 
 strange that after all this defiance the jury voted, much 
 more heavily than before, against the defendant. Socrates 
 bade them farewell in words so grave and beautiful that it is 
 hard to cut them short. Death, he says, must be one of two 
 things, either a dreamless sleep, such as all men find sweet, 
 or a transition to another world where live the souls of all 
 the departed heroes: 
 
 I, at least, would gladly die many times, if this be true; for to 
 my thinking that state of being would be wonderful indeed, if in 
 it I might have the chance of meeting with Palamedes and Ajax, 
 the son of Telamon, and other heroes of the olden time who died 
 through unrighteous judgment. To compare my own suffering 
 with theirs were, methinks, no unpleasing task; but best of all 
 would it be to examine and question there, as I have done here, 
 and discover who is really wise, and who thinks himself so but is 
 not. What, O judges, would a man not give to question him who 
 led the great army against Troy, or Ulysses or Sisyphus or the 
 thousand others, both men and women, whom one might mention? 
 To dwell and converse with them and to question them would 
 indeed be happiness unspeakable! . . . But you too, O judges, it 
 behooves to be of good hope about death, and to believe that this 
 at least is true, — there can no evil befall a good man, whether he 
 
SOCRATES 99 
 
 be alive or dead, nor are his affairs uncared for by the gods. . . . 
 But now it is time for us to go away, I to die, you to live. Which 
 of us is going to the better fate, is unknown to all save God. 
 
 As it happened, the sentence of death which Socrates was 
 so ready to meet was not carried out for a month, since the 
 sacred ship, bearing the fourteen youths and maidens in 
 annual commemoration of Theseus' victory over the Min- 
 otaur, had but just sailed for Delos, and until its return 
 no person could be put to death in Athens. This month the 
 old man spent in prison, comfortably enough and very cheer- 
 fully, conversing every day with his disciples, who were 
 allowed free access to him. Again he had a chance to save 
 his life, for his friends would have been only too thankful to 
 arrange for his escape by bribing his guards and smuggling 
 him over the frontier. Socrates, however, very gently and 
 affectionately, but firmly, pointed out that whatever they 
 had found to be true and right in happier days was no less 
 so now; that the one great misfortune, as they had long 
 agreed, was to do wrong, and that the greatest wrong a man 
 could do to his state was to break its laws. Since in Athens 
 he was born and in Athens, with all its faults, he had freely 
 chosen to spend all his life, the decision of Athens, when it 
 went against him, he was bound to accept. And to this 
 decision his friends sadly submitted. 
 
 At last came a morning when the little group of faithful 
 disciples stood outside the prison, waiting for the last sight 
 of their beloved master — for the ship had come in. When 
 the doors were opened, they found him with Xanthippe — 
 who has come down to tradition as a shrew, but who seems 
 rather to have been a fussy but devoted mother and an 
 affectionate wife — sitting beside him with her youngest 
 child in her arms. Already overwrought, she burst into 
 tears at sight of the visitors, and Socrates asked Crito, the 
 old family friend, to send one of his servants home with her. 
 
100 . GREEK LEADERS 
 
 He then turned composedly to his guests and began talking 
 with them, gravely but not uncheerfully, on death and im- 
 mortality. How far his arguments in the Phcedo represent 
 his own ideas and how far those of his great follower, Plato, 
 who gives them to us, we can never know, but the little 
 details of the scene — such as the interruption of the jailer, 
 who warns his prisoner that if he overheats himself with 
 talking he may have to take two or three doses of the 
 poison, and the picture of Socrates sitting on his couch and 
 gently stroking the fair locks of the youthful Phsedo, who 
 sits on a low stool beside him — are evidently true to life. 
 After a while he and Crito went into an inner room where he 
 spent a long time with his family, giving his last instructions 
 to them all. It was nearly sunset when he came back and 
 sat down again with his friends, "but he did not speak 
 much after this." The jailer, coming to bid him farewell, 
 burst into tears, and Socrates, gently refusing Crito's plea 
 to wait till the sun had actually dropped behind the hills, 
 sent for the hemlock and "took it right cheerfully, without 
 tremor, or change of color or countenance, and, looking at the 
 man from under his brows with that intent gaze peculiar to 
 himself, said, 'What say you to pouring a libation from this 
 cup to one of the gods? Is it allowed or not?' 'We prepare, 
 Socrates,' answered he, 'only just so much as we think is 
 the right quantity to drink.' 'I understand,' said he, 'but 
 prayer to the gods is surely allowed, and must be made, 
 that it may fare well with me on my journey yonder. For 
 this then I pray, and so be it!' Thus speaking, he put the 
 cup to his lips and right easily and blithely drank it off. 
 Now most of us had until then been able to keep back our 
 tears, but when we saw him drinking ... we could do so 
 no longer." 
 
 On the master's asking them, however, to let him die in 
 stillness, they forced back their sobs, and after walking 
 
SOCRATES 101 
 
 about the room a little, Socrates lay down upon the couch, 
 while a gradual numbness crept over him. Just before it 
 reached his heart, he uncovered his face and said to his old- 
 est friend of all, "Crito, we owe a cock to JSsculapius. Pay 
 the debt and do not neglect it." " It shall be done, Socrates," 
 said he, "but think if you have nothing more to say." 
 "There was no answer to this question. . . . Such was the 
 end of our friend, a man whom we may well call, of all men 
 known to us of our day, the best, and besides the wisest and 
 the most just." 
 
AGESILAUS 
 
 (Died 860 b.c.) 
 
 Sparta was not, and did not wish to be, a nursery of 
 great men. Her ideals were utter subordination of the indi- 
 vidual to the state, and absolute equality of condition and 
 uniformity of education among citizens; even for the kings 
 the exceptions were trifling. Striking individualities were 
 so thoroughly discouraged rather than fostered that it is 
 no wonder we find few in her history. Of those few one or 
 two, like Brasidas and Callicratidas, stand out as men of an 
 un-Spartan humanity and breadth of vision, while others, 
 such as Pausanias I and Lysander, surpass the average 
 Lacedaemonian in genius and resourcefulness as much as 
 they do in cruelty, deceit, and overweening ambition. There 
 is one prominent figure, however, who may fairly be called 
 the normal Spartan — abler than the mass, of course, but 
 just about the person "whom every [Spartan] man-at-arms 
 would wish to be." This is Agesilaus, who in 398 b.c. became 
 king under unusual circumstances. 
 
 For some six years Sparta had held, unresisted, a dominion 
 unique in history. A privileged caste supplying fewer than 
 two thousand men of fighting age was holding down not only 
 a great mass of inferiors at home but three or four millions 
 abroad. Athens at her height, with seventeen times as many 
 citizens, had controlled only half as much of the Greek 
 world. And the control was absolute, as is shown by the 
 degrading awe in which even a private member of this terri- 
 ble ruling caste was held, especially among the Ionian 
 Greeks. "All the cities," says Xenophon, "then obeyed 
 whatever order they might receive from a Lacedaemonian 
 
104 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 citizen." Nothing, of course, could have been worse for the 
 citizen so obeyed, or more fatal to the old Spartan ideals 
 of frugality, simplicity, and subordination. The Spartan 
 who went out as harmost, or as mere traveler, returned 
 laden with ill-gotten wealth and flattered with an outrageous 
 pride. It was impossible to keep up the old law against gold 
 and silver. An exception was legally made on behalf of the 
 state itself; illegally, the rule was constantly evaded by 
 individuals. Gross inequalities became evident; while some 
 families grew rich, others sank below the threshold of ability 
 to pay their scot to the common tables, and lost their citizen 
 rights. Thus a constantly shrinking caste, itself demoralized 
 by new vices, was dominating an ever-increasing mass of 
 misery and discontent. Outwardly and inwardly, Sparta 
 was attempting the impossible; new wine was pouring into 
 her old bottles, and the result, however delayed, was in- 
 evitable. 
 
 There was a group of high-minded statesmen, of whom 
 King Pausanias II was one, who hoped to meet the diffi- 
 culty by strengthening the bottles. In imperial affairs, they 
 opposed Lysander's brutal and perfidious policies, refused 
 to restore the iniquitous Thirty in Athens, allowed many 
 cities to throw over their decarchies — though not their 
 harmosts — and generally stood for conciliation rather than 
 oppression. At home, they would restore the pure Lycurgan 
 discipline, put a stern check on the influx of foreign luxuries 
 and manners, re-divide all property equally among full 
 Spartiates, and strengthen the authority of the Kings and 
 the Senate, as over against the Assembly and its annually 
 elected representatives, the Ephors. 
 
 Lysander's policy was just the opposite and, while much 
 less honorable in motive, showed probably a truer grasp of 
 the situation. Realizing, on the one hand, that a world- 
 dominion so unnatural as that of Sparta could be main- 
 
AGESILAUS 105 
 
 tained only by a policy of "f rightfulness," he saw at the 
 same time that the system of checks and balances by which 
 the executive power of the state was divided between one 
 set of officials (the Kings), ruling by accident of birth, and 
 another (the Ephors), by will of the people, was unequal to 
 the greater tasks set by Sparta's new r61e, and therefore, 
 on his recall from Athens, plotted a change in the consti- 
 tution, by which the kingship should be made elective — 
 for life — from the whole body of Spartiates. As the great 
 admiral, the winner of Sparta's crowning victories, he might 
 well hope to be the first king thus chosen; resting on the 
 choice of the citizens, he need fear no check from the Ephors 
 who represented the same electorate and who would, rather, 
 become his ministers; thus concentrating in himself all the 
 power of the state, confident of his own genius and un- 
 Spartan adaptability to new conditions and new methods, 
 he might well look forward to a dazzling career as tyrant 
 of the Hellenes. 
 
 To bring about such a change, however, required an 
 appeal to the superstition, rather than the reason, of the 
 intensely conservative Spartans. Twice his plans were well 
 laid to "work" the oracles, and twice they fell through at 
 the last moment; — his confederates dared not. Giving up 
 the whole plan, he turned quickly to another, which cir- 
 cumstances had just made feasible. King Agis died, leaving 
 a young son, Leotychides, as to whose legitimacy there was 
 some question, and a brother, Agesilaus, a man of about 
 forty, of excellent reputation, especially for the hearty 
 good will with which from childhood he had always met 
 the severest requirements of the Lycurgan discipline. 
 Lysander, who had known him well when they were boys, 
 thought Agesilaus exactly the person he wanted for his 
 tool, — a proof, says Grote, of how the Spartan education 
 repressed all evidence of individual character, — and threw 
 
106 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 all his influence in favor of the rejection of Leotychides and 
 choice of Agesilaus. This time he had to controvert, instead 
 of inspiring, an oracle, for his candidate was lame of one 
 leg, and an ancient prophecy bade Sparta beware of a lame 
 reign. He was equal to the occasion, however, and explained 
 that it would be Leotychides, as not a true descendant of 
 Heracles, who, if he ruled, would make Sparta halt on one 
 foot. Agesilaus was therefore chosen. 
 
 The outstanding fact about the new King was his pleas- 
 antness. Small, insignificant, and lame, in a community 
 which set especial store by physical perfection, he had from 
 childhood taken away all the sting of his deformity by being 
 the first to make a joke of it and (like Walter Scott) refus- 
 ing to let it keep him out of any exploit whether in sport 
 or war. Moreover, as Plutarch says, "the goodness of his 
 humor and his constant cheerfulness and playfulness of 
 temper, always free from anything of moroseness or haughti- 
 ness, made him more attractive even to his old age than the 
 most beautiful and youthful men of the nation." 
 
 His personal popularity was increased by the generosity 
 with which, on succeeding to his father's estate — poor 
 Leotychides being wholly thrown out of the family — he at 
 once handed over half of it to his mother's kindred, who 
 were among those whom the changing conditions had re- 
 duced to extreme poverty. But what sealed it was his com- 
 plete departure from the usual attitude of lofty social 
 superiority and jealous suspicion maintained by the Kings 
 toward the Ephors. He went, indeed, to the other extreme, 
 in regard to both them and the senate: "Instead of contend- 
 ing with them he courted them; in all proceedings he com- 
 menced by taking their advice, was always ready to go, nay 
 almost run, when they called him; if he were upon his royal 
 seat, hearing causes, and the Ephors came in, he rose to 
 them; whenever any man was elected into the Council of 
 
AGESILAUS 107 
 
 Elders, he presented him with a gown and an ox." In all 
 this he was, of course, in entire harmony with the policy of 
 Lysander, which aimed at government by a popular strong 
 man, and it is very possible that he was acting by the king- 
 maker's advice. 
 
 In the first event of the new reign, the discovery and 
 prompt suppression of the ominous conspiracy of Cinadon, 
 Agesilaus seems to have taken no prominent part. His 
 opportunity came in the threatening attitude taken up by 
 Persia. The real danger to Spartan empire lay in the great 
 fleet which Persia was assembling in alliance with Evagoras 
 of Cyprus, under the leadership of Sparta's ablest and bit- 
 terest foe, the exiled Conon of Athens. Dercyllidas, the 
 Spartan general in Asia Minor, with an army stiffened by 
 a large remnant of the Ten Thousand, was quite competent 
 to deal with the feeble and cowardly Persian commanders, 
 and Sparta should have put all her fresh energies into the 
 defense of her sea power. But she miscalculated. The sea 
 was never her element, and a land campaign in Asia offered 
 great temptations. Lysander was anxious to restore and 
 strengthen his own creatures, the tottering decarchies in the 
 Ionian cities, but, more than this, the campaign of the 
 Ten Thousand had left on all Greece such an impression of 
 the hollowness of the Persian empire and the imbecility of 
 its officials that the idea of an actual invasion and conquest 
 of the East began, sixty years before Alexander made it a 
 fact, to dance before the eyes of ambitious Greeks as a 
 dazzling possibility. 
 
 Agesilaus, for all the unassuming simplicity of his man- 
 ners, was a man of strong ambitions, and he became fasci- 
 nated by this vision. It even turned his head for a moment, 
 and we see the man all the rest of whose career was marked 
 by hard-headed common sense and absolute lack of display 
 making himself ridiculous by attempting, in the guise of a 
 
108 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 new Agamemnon setting out for a new Troy, to sacrifice 
 at Aulis before the departure of the fleet — and being 
 ignominiously ordered out of the temple precincts by the 
 local magistrates. 
 
 By Lysander's influence, he had received a year's appoint- 
 ment in command of the forces in Asia, to reinforce which 
 he took with him two thousand freed Helots, six thousand 
 allied troops, and a war council of thirty Spartans, including 
 Lysander himself. On his arrival the wily satrap, Tissa- 
 phernes, played his old familiar game of asking for a truce. 
 This gave Agesilaus time to get his army into shape and 
 also to find out how the land lay, politically. A very unwel- 
 come fact soon forced itself upon his notice: among the 
 Asiatic Greeks Lysander was "the whole thing." The mil- 
 itary prowess which he had so lately shown, the thorough- 
 ness with which he had rewarded his friends and punished 
 his enemies, the terror of his rule, and — not least in that 
 orientalized environment — his haughty and high-tempered 
 bearing caused him to be received in every city like a con- 
 quering king, while his quiet, courteous little commander 
 was practically ignored. Grateful as Agesilaus had cause 
 to be to the man who had got him both his kingship and his 
 immediate command, and thoroughly in accord as he seems 
 always to have been with his policies, he had not the least 
 intention of playing the part of his puppet. Instead of pro- 
 testing or entering into any sort of rivalry, he at once 
 adopted the very effective course of ignoring not only his 
 advice, but, what was more vital, his personal influence. 
 Applications for any sort of favor made through Lysander 
 or backed by him were sure to be rejected: thus he struck 
 at the very root of Lysander's position among the Ioni- 
 ans, and so humiliated him that he was reduced to asking 
 an appointment for himself and was promptly sent to 
 the Hellespont. Henceforth Agesilaus need fear no rival. 
 
AGESILAUS 109 
 
 Thanks to Lysander's teachings and his own shrewdness 
 and decision, he had attained at the very beginning of his 
 reign a power greater than any Spartan king had held for 
 a hundred years. 
 
 Meanwhile, Tissaphernes had found it convenient to 
 break the truce, and Agesilaus received the news with cheer- 
 fulness, sending word to the satrap that "he was under great 
 obligations to him, as he had, by perjuring himself, rendered 
 the gods his enemies and . . . favorable to the Greeks." The 
 strategy of his campaigns against Tissaphernes seems to 
 have consisted chiefly in surprising that cunning trickster, 
 but cowardly and incapable general, by always appearing 
 where he was least expected and then quickly withdrawing 
 before the huge but unwieldy Persian forces could overtake 
 him. Thus, when the satrap made ready for him in his 
 home province of Caria, Agesilaus suddenly moved north, 
 invading the satrapy of Pharnabazus, reduced town after 
 town, gathered in a vast amount of booty, and returned to 
 the coast, having received no worse check than one un- 
 favorable cavalry skirmish which taught him the necessity 
 of raising an efficient mounted force. This he did by means 
 of requisitions upon the rich men of all the Greek cities, and 
 in the spring of the next year assembled his whole army — 
 now about twenty thousand — at Ephesus and brought it 
 to a high degree of efficiency by constant drills stimulated 
 by competitions and prizes. Xenophon, who was one of his 
 officers, has left us a vivid picture of the scene. "In conse- 
 quence, a person might have seen all the gymnasia full of 
 men at their exercises, the horse-courses full of riders, and 
 the javelin-men and archers improving themselves in their 
 duties. He indeed made the whole city in which he was 
 quartered worthy of being seen, for the market-place was 
 crowded with horses and arms of all kinds for sale; and the 
 braziers, carpenters, smiths, curriers, and decorators were 
 
110 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 all engaged in preparing equipments for the field; so that a 
 person might really have thought the city to be a workshop 
 of war. Every spectator, too, would have felt encouraged 
 at seeing Agesilaus walking in front, and his men following 
 him with chaplets on their heads, as they went away from 
 the places of exercise, and proceeded to offer their chaplets 
 to Diana; for where men reverence the gods, cultivate mar- 
 tial exercises, and are careful to obey their superiors, how 
 can everything be otherwise than full of the best hopes?" 
 
 Renewed in his command for another year, and supported 
 by a fresh group of Spartan councilors, Agesilaus now 
 threatened to invade Lydia and attack Sardis itself. 
 Tissaphernes, however, persuaded that this open announce- 
 ment was only a blind, determined once more to await him 
 in his own country, so that the Greeks, marching straight 
 upon Sardis, got three days' start of any opposition at all. 
 Moreover, when attacked by the Persian cavalry, Agesilaus 
 reaped the fruit of his winter's preparation and after a 
 sharp battle completely defeated the enemy and took his 
 camp with more than seventy talents' worth of booty — 
 including camels, which, Xenophon takes pains to tell us, 
 the army took back to Greece. 
 
 The imbecility of Tissaphernes had now got beyond the 
 patience of even the not much more warlike Artaxerxes, 
 and Tithraustes was sent to succeed, and, incidentally, 
 behead him. The new commander, however, showed him- 
 self no whit more anxious to come to close grips with 
 Agesilaus, and actually paid him thirty talents to evacuate 
 Lydia and invade instead the territory of his brother sa- 
 trap, Pharnabazus. Nothing loath, the Greeks set forth on 
 another lucrative campaign in the rich fields of Phrygia. 
 At the suggestion, moreover, of Spithridates, a Persian 
 sub-satrap whom Lysander had induced to revolt against 
 his government, Agesilaus made an alliance with the King 
 
AGESILAUS 111 
 
 of Paphlagonia, who gave him a considerable force of cav- 
 alry and peltasts. A quarrel over spoils, however, following 
 an attack on the camp of Fharnabazus, lost the Greeks both 
 their new allies, much to the mortification of Agesilaus. 
 
 An extremely picturesque incident of this campaign was 
 the personal meeting between the Greek and Persian com- 
 manders, which was brought about by a mutual guest- 
 friend. The satrap, arriving in state and about to seat 
 himself upon one of the rich carpets spread out by his at- 
 tendants, caught sight of the plain little Spartan lying un- 
 der a tree and immediately flung himself down "without 
 regard for his delicate and richly dyed clothing" upon the 
 grass beside him. Pharnabazus was a man of very different 
 metal from his fellow-satraps, and the talk between him 
 and Agesilaus has a right manly ring. The Persian began 
 by recalling the faithful assistance which he, unlike Tissa- 
 phernes, had always given to Sparta during the Pelopon- 
 nesian War. "In recompense," he went on, "I receive such 
 treatment from you that I cannot get even a meal in my 
 own province, unless I gather up, like the beasts, a portion 
 of what you may have left; while I see the beautiful houses, 
 and the parks stocked with timber and cattle, which my 
 father left me, and in which I delighted, cut down and burnt." 
 He left it to the Spartans present, he concluded, to say 
 whether such behavior was just. The officers hung their 
 heads, and Agesilaus himself was nonplussed for some min- 
 utes. Gathering his wits together, he replied, reasonably 
 enough, that so long as the Spartans were at war with 
 Persia and Pharnabazus was an officer of the Great King, 
 they were obliged to treat him and his property as belong- 
 ing to the enemy, but that nothing would delight them 
 more than to have him renounce his allegiance to an un- 
 worthy master and make alliance with them. The proposal 
 may have been je mpting to P hamabagas, who knew how 
 
112 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 slippery a seat was a satrap's throne, but he answered like 
 an honest man that so long as his king trusted him he 
 would be faithful to his trust. In case, however, Artaxerxes 
 threw him over as he had Tissaphernes, he was ready, 
 rather than share that governor's fate, to come over to the 
 Spartans. With that they shook hands and parted, Agesi- 
 laus saying as he rose, "How much rather had I have so 
 brave a man my friend than my enemy!" A pretty se- 
 quel to this interview was the r unnin g back of the son of 
 Pharnabazus, a handsome lad, to present Agesilaus with 
 a beautiful lance, saying, with a smile, "I make you my 
 guest-friend." The King, much pleased, gave him some fine 
 horse-trappings in return, and years later, when the young 
 man, driven out of his own country, took refuge in Sparta, 
 remembered him and showed him every kindness. 
 
 Besides such dramatic incidents, Xenophon, who took 
 part in all these campaigns of Agesilaus, leaves us many 
 details which throw valuable light upon the customs of 
 ancient warfare as well as on the humanity of his hero — 
 for Xenophon adored his general. The plunder of private 
 property was then as generally recognized a part of war on 
 land as it still is of war at sea, and frightful must have been 
 the sufferings of the harmless populations through whom 
 an invading army made its way, not only "living upon the 
 country," but gathering up every article of value, and mul- 
 titudes of wretched human beings as well, to be sold at auc- 
 tion for the benefit of the host. Even besides all this there 
 was often sheer wanton destruction, burning of towns, and 
 severe oppression of conquered populations. Against these 
 excesses Agesilaus took a firm stand, and won the pitiful 
 gratitude of the cities which he spared. Organized plunder 
 he authorized as a matter of course, and did not scruple, 
 indeed, to throw particularly tempting lots in the way of 
 his personal friends, but he gave strict orders that the 
 
AGESILAUS US 
 
 herds of captives kept for the slave-market should be 
 treated like human beings, that the aged and decrepit 
 whom even the raiders had left behind as worthless should 
 be gathered up and placed in safety "from wolves and dogs" 
 — a ghastly, detail — and that in their charge should be put 
 the even more pitiful flotsam left in the wake of the tide 
 of invasion, the little children who, sold to slave-traders by 
 their starving parents, had been left to die on the roads as 
 not worth the expense of feeding and transporting. One 
 act of cruelty Agesilaus did commit, doubtless quite uncon- 
 sciously. In his first campaign, to inspire his soldiers with 
 contempt for the vastly more numerous enemy they were 
 to meet and to steel them against the temptations of eastern 
 luxury, he exhibited a band of prisoners at the slave-auction 
 naked, that the Greeks might compare their white skins, 
 plump figures, and flabby muscles with their own lean 
 brown bodies, tough as wire with daily exercise. To strip 
 for the public games was for a Greek, even of the highest 
 rank, a matter of course, and the Spartan could never have 
 dreamed of the agony of humiliation he was causing his 
 Persian captives, who were as unaccustomed as we are to 
 being seen unclothed. 
 
 Agesilaus was now at the very height of power and suc- 
 cess. Every campaign had been victorious and profitable, 
 his fame redounded throughout the Persian empire, and his 
 adherence, under circumstances which had turned the heads 
 of other Spartan generals, to the strict rules of his upbring- 
 ing delighted the Greeks, who "were much pleased to see 
 the great lords and governors of Persia, with all the pride, 
 cruelty, and luxury in which they lived, trembling and 
 bowing before a man in a poor threadbare cloak, and at one 
 laconic word out of his mouth, obsequiously deferring and 
 changing their wishes and purposes." Sparta, moreover, 
 had honored hi m above anv former gen eral by granting him 
 
114 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 command of the fleet as well as the army, and he had taken 
 measures to increase the number of ships gathered to check 
 the rapidly increasing menace of Conon's fleet at Rhodes. 
 Unluckily, yielding to his chief weakness, he had appointed 
 to the command for reasons of personal friendship his 
 brother-in-law, Pisander, although there were abler and 
 more experienced admirals at hand. The disastrous result, 
 however, was not yet evident, and Agesilaus, in the full 
 flush of his success, was dreaming great dreams of an inva- 
 sion of Persia proper and the overthrow of Artaxerxes from 
 his very throne, when a message from Sparta brought all his 
 castles tumbling about his ears. 
 
 While Agesilaus was carrying all before him in Asia, war 
 had broken out in Greece. Argos and Corinth, Thebes and 
 Athens, bitterly restless under the hateful Spartan domina- 
 tion, and encouraged by money and promises sent by 
 Tithraustes, had formed a league against the oppressor. 
 Lysander, invading Bceotia from the north, had been de- 
 feated and slain outside the walls of Haliartus, and Pausa- 
 nias, coming up from the south a day too late, had found it 
 wisest to beg a burial truce and withdraw without a fight. 
 Thus at one blow Sparta lost both her generals, for her 
 wrath against Pausanias was so great that he dared not 
 for his life return within her bounds. Faced by a strong 
 coalition, with her ablest commanders gone and her prestige 
 seriously shaken, there was nothing for it but to recall 
 Agesilaus. With a heavy heart he obeyed the summons, 
 leaving four thousand men to guard the Greek cities, and 
 assuring them that he would come back as soon as he could. 
 With the flower of his army, including of course Xenophon's 
 comrades of the Ten Thousand, he repaired in all haste to 
 Greece, following the route which no general since Xerxes 
 had taken, through Thrace and Macedonia. 
 
 Meanwhile the Allies had assembled at Corinth, in such 
 
AGESILAUS 115 
 
 high hopes that it was even proposed to attack Sparta itself 
 and "burn out the wasps in their nest." When it came to 
 battle, however, the Lacedaemonians were victorious, and 
 the good news reached Agesilaus at Amphipolis, who imme- 
 diately dispatched the bringer of it to spread it among the 
 cities of Asia. It is to his honor, and shows, perhaps, the 
 broadening effect of foreign service, that while taking due 
 advantage of the victory, he was grief -stricken at the losses 
 it involved, seeming to realize, in a passing flash of insight, 
 the suicidal policy upon which all Hellas had entered. 
 "O Greece!" he sighed, "how many brave men hast thou 
 destroyed, who if they had been preserved to so good a use, 
 had sufficed to conquer all Persia!" He then advanced 
 through Thessaly, beating off attacks of hostile cavalry as 
 he went, but in a few days a partial eclipse of the sun gave 
 omen of bad news indeed. 
 
 Pharnabazus, true to his determination to supnort 
 Persia's cause with all his energy, had joined Conon at 
 Rhodes. The combined fleets, far outnumbering that of 
 Pisander, had inflicted upon it a crushing defeat at Cnidus, 
 and the rash but valiant admiral, deserted by his allies, 
 had fought his own ship to his death. Realizing the impor- 
 tance of this disaster, Agesilaus saw that the first necessity 
 was to conceal it from his army and to hurry on a battle 
 before it became known. Pretending, therefore, to have re- 
 ceived good tidings, he pushed forward, picking up troops 
 as he went, to where the army of the Confederates awaited 
 him on the field of Coronea. 
 
 Of the battle which followed Xenophon, who says it was 
 the hardest fought he ever saw, has left us a vivid account. 
 Agesilaus himself commanded on the right wing, opposite 
 the Argives; the Asiatic troops, stiffened by Xenophon's, 
 held the center, while the recently joined Orchomenians on 
 the left faced the Thehans. Slowlv and in dead silence the 
 
116 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 armies advanced until they were within an eighth of a mile 
 of each other, when the Thebans raised the war-cry and the 
 whole Confederate army went forward at a run. The troops 
 of Agesilaus rushed forward to meet them, his right and 
 center carrying all before them. Just as some enthusiastic 
 officers were offering the victor's crown to their general, 
 came word that the Thebans, on the other hand, had equal- 
 ly overwhelmed their opponents. Thereupon, Agesilaus 
 wheeled round to meet them, and the real battle began with 
 such a crash as Greek warfare had never known. Shield to 
 shield, body to body, the hoplites struggled and slew and 
 died, without a shout — only the low, furious murmur of 
 the melee. Agesilaus himself, fighting in the front rank, 
 fell, covered with wounds, and was only saved from being 
 trodden to death by the devoted courage of his Spartan 
 bodyguard. At last the remnant of the Thebans pushed 
 through and joined their fugitive allies on the slopes of 
 Mt. Helicon. The wounded king, carried about the field by 
 his soldiers to give the final orders, provided for the safety 
 and honorable escort of eighty Thebans who had taken 
 sanctuary in a neighboring temple, and detailed men to 
 gather up and separate the Spartan and Theban dead, whose 
 bodies, in one wild welter of friends and foes, pierced buck- 
 lers, and shattered spears, covered the bloody field. The 
 next morning he erected a trophy and, after granting the 
 burial truce asked for by the enemy, had himself taken to 
 Delphi, to have his wounds treated and to offer to Apollo 
 the tenth — amounting to one hundred talents — of the 
 booty acquired in his two years in Asia. The army, after 
 some desultory fighting, was dismissed to its several cities, 
 and Agesilaus, as soon as he was well enough to travel, went 
 home by sea. 
 
 During the miserable wars of the next thirty years, in 
 which a whole generation of Greeks killed each other off for 
 
AGESILAUS 117 
 
 the future benefit of Macedonia and Rome, Agesilaus sel- 
 dom appears as a military commander. Distressed by his 
 wounds and by a long illness which followed them, he re- 
 mained for the most part in Sparta, honored by all, includ- 
 ing his young and modest colleague Agesipolis, son of the 
 exiled Pausanias, over whom he soon established a strong 
 and lasting influence. Occasionally, however, he found it 
 necessary to take the field. Thus while the war centered 
 about Corinth in 393-90, he twice led an army to the Isth- 
 mus. On the first occasion he succeeded in storming the 
 "long walls" which connected Corinth with the sea and in 
 capturing her port, Lechseum. As he was assisted in this by 
 his extremely popular brother, Teleutias, with a small fleet, 
 their mother was hailed as a happy woman, whose sons had 
 won victories by sea and land on the same day. The second 
 time he went forth was during the Isthmian games. Agesi- 
 laus broke up the celebration and proceeded to hold it him- 
 self, but as soon as he was gone the Corinthians came back 
 and celebrated the festival over again, some athletes win- 
 ning the same events twice! The Spartan, however, had 
 not gone very far. He was busy taking the Peirseon, the 
 port by which Corinth communicated with her Boeotian 
 allies, and a little detail of the business which Xenophon 
 has preserved shows why he was so beloved a commander. 
 Bethinking him that a battalion he had sent to occupy some 
 heights must have been chilled by a passing hailstorm, he 
 sent ten men with pots of burning charcoal who, scrambling 
 up the hillside, found the soldiers, in their light summer gar- 
 ments, shivering in the darkness, too cold to enjoy their 
 rations; soon large fires were kindled, "and they all anointed 
 themselves and many took supper a second time." 
 
 Soon after this homely scene Xenophon paints us a highly 
 dramatic one. We see Agesilaus, after taking a Corinthian 
 fortress, seated by the harborside, overlooking the distribu- 
 
118 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 tion of prisoners and spoil and refusing with "a very lofty 
 air" even to recognize the existence of a group of Theban 
 envoys who have come to discuss terms of peace. Suddenly 
 a horseman gallops through the crowd, flings himself from 
 his foaming steed before Agesilaus, and "with a very sad 
 countenance" gives him such news that the king jumps 
 from his seat, snatches up his spear, and, calling upon his 
 officers to follow, hastens off at such a pace that his heavy- 
 armed troops can scarcely keep up with him. Dire indeed 
 was the need, for a full regiment of Spartan hoplites, return- 
 ing from escort duty, had been set upon, as they passed 
 with careless confidence under the walls of Corinth, by a 
 swarm of peltasts, light-armed mercenaries commanded by 
 the celebrated free lance, Iphicrates, and so harassed, driven, 
 and demoralized by these inaccessible enemies that they 
 had at last fairly taken to flight, leaving half their number 
 dead upon the ground. The blow to Sparta's prestige was 
 the heaviest since the disaster at Sphacteria, thirty-five 
 years before, and Agesilaus, gathering up his deeply morti- 
 fied army, took it home by night marches to avoid the open 
 exultation of the Arcadians, allies though they were. 
 
 The only other campaigns of Agesilaus at this period were 
 two incursions into Acarnania, of no great importance, 
 though successful enough. After this, thoroughly broken in 
 health, he remained for many years at home, exercising a 
 predominant and not very good influence over Spartan 
 policy. For Agesilaus, a true Spartan in his virtues, was 
 equally one in his limitations. He had no power of growth 
 or of adaptability to changing conditions; gentle and plac- 
 able in his personal affairs, as a Spartan dealing with other 
 — and therefore, to him, immeasurably inferior — Greeks, 
 he would never admit the possibility of concession. 
 
 It was no time for so stiff-necked a policy. Sparta's rela- 
 tive position was changing rapidly for the worse. The 
 
AGESILAUS 119 
 
 crushing victory of Pharnabazus and Conon had deprived 
 her at a stroke of her Asiatic empire, and, followed up as it 
 was by the immediate dispatch of the Persian fleet to 
 Athens, had made it possible for her old rival to raise her 
 head once more and work her way back into a position of 
 something like equality. The alliance against her had re- 
 sulted in confining her domination to the Peloponnesus, and 
 the spirit in which it was borne there is sufficiently shown 
 by those night marches of Agesilaus. True, she was still 
 the strongest single state in Greece, and still looked on as a 
 sure victor in a pitched battle — but pitched battles were 
 becoming few and far between. All Greece was worn out; 
 the war had degenerated into petty banditry and was getting 
 nowhere. I Without the financial help of Persia, Sparta be- 
 lieved that her opponents would be unable to keep the field 
 at all, and twice she sent her ablest diplomat, Antalcidas, 
 to persuade the Great King that Sparta, not Athens, would 
 be his best friend in Greece. The second time he succeeded, 
 and, backed by the two great despotisms of Persia in the 
 east and Syracuse in the west, Sparta was able to force upon 
 an exhausted but mortified Greece a peace by which she 
 definitely abandoned the Greek cities of the Asiatic main- 
 land to Persia on condition that the autonomy of every 
 other Greek state should be guaranteed. 
 
 This "autonomy" one might almost call Sparta's obses- 
 sion. It appealed sentimentally to the deepest instinct, the 
 oldest tradition, of the freedom-loving Hellene, — and at 
 the same time left all the states helpless before the superior 
 military power of Sparta, who, without technically inter- 
 fering with their self-government, could frighten them into 
 the position of subservient allies. Therefore the fact that 
 the time had gone by when small powers could long exist 
 without federation never penetrated her mind, and the 
 attempts at such federation which, like the union of Corinth 
 
120 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 and Argos, were made in several quarters at this period, 
 were instantly recognized as a danger to her own suprem- 
 acy and sternly suppressed. Even — or, rather, especially 
 — the ancient Boeotian confederacy, which Thebes would 
 have reestablished by swearing to the King's Peace in the 
 name of all Bceotia, was forbidden to exist, Agesilaus sum- 
 marily informing the Theban envoys that they might sign 
 for their city alone or be left out. 
 
 His especial dislike for Thebes appears again and again 
 and may have influenced his condonation of the treacherous 
 seizure of her citadel by Phcebidas, in full peace. This 
 atrocious act shocked all Greece and called forth strong pro- 
 tests at Sparta itself, but Agesilaus coolly declared that the 
 only thing to be considered was whether the result inured 
 to the benefit of the state; Phcebidas therefore was merely 
 fined for looks' sake, while the Cadmea was kept as a Spartan 
 outpost in the face of all law. One can hardly doubt that 
 the equally outrageous attempt of Sphodrias upon the 
 Piraeus would have received the same backing had it been 
 successful. Since the crime turned out to be also a blunder, 
 however, Spartan justice was relentless, and the unlucky 
 tool of her policy escaped the death-penalty only through 
 the accident that his son was a bosom friend of a son of 
 Agesilaus, one of whose amiable weaknesses — from the 
 Spartan point of view — was an excessive fondness for his 
 children. 1 
 
 The same mingling of private with public considerations 
 he had shown in the cases of Mantinea and Phlius, two of the 
 Arcadian allies whom Sparta taught their place. Having 
 an hereditary friendship with the Mantineans, he held back 
 personally from the expedition which was to reduce their 
 flourishing city to its primitive condition of five villages, 
 
 1 This is prettily attested by the story of his being caught by a friend riding hobby-horse 
 with them when they were little, and telling him not to mention it till he was himself a 
 father. 
 
AGESILAUS 121 
 
 sending the none too well-pleased Agesipolis to do his dirty 
 work. But in the case of Phlius, on the other hand, being 
 personally attached to certain aristocrats whom the Phlia- 
 sians had banished and who, on being restored under pres- 
 sure from Sparta, complained that their property was not 
 given back to them, he took active and zealous part in 
 besieging and severely punishing the city, old and faithful 
 ally though it had been to Sparta. 
 
 When Thebes, by the daring stratagem of Pelopidas, 
 threw off the Spartan yoke, and Athens made common 
 cause with her, Agesilaus, though nearing sixty, was called 
 upon by the Ephors to lead the army into Boeotia. He did so 
 twice, with much skill and prudence, but was obliged each 
 time to return with little accomplished except a first-rate 
 training of his Theban foes, for it was in these campaigns 
 that they learned the tactics which were in a few years to 
 make them invincible. For the punishment of the tyrant 
 city was drawing on apace, and the state she had most foully 
 injured was to be the instrument of her overthrow. On the 
 fatal field of Leuctra, in 371, Sparta received her death- 
 blow. Four hundred full-blooded Spartans died with their 
 young King Cleombrotus — a loss which could never be 
 made good. The news was borne with superb stoicism; no 
 lamentation was allowed for the heroic dead, and the only 
 sad faces were of those whose relatives had survived defeat. 
 Not till seven years later, when the army, returning from a 
 complete but minor victory in Arcadia, was received by the 
 whole population streaming out, headed by old Agesilaus 
 and the Ephors, with tears of joy and hands uplifted in 
 thankfulness to the gods, was it seen how cruelly the iron 
 of defeat had entered into their souls. 
 
 Henceforth the parts of Thebes and Sparta are reversed. 
 Again and again Epaminondas invades the Peloponnesus, 
 till Lacedaemon is fighting for her life at her own gates. And 
 
122 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 meanwhile the news of Leuctra had been greeted as the long- 
 awaited signal for the freedom of Arcadia. In vain Agesilaus 
 tried both diplomacy and arms; the restoration of Mantinea, 
 the revolt of Tegea, the founding of Megalopolis were 
 accomplished facts. Worse yet, the Helots of the western 
 peninsula rose at the call of the invaders and became men 
 and Messenians once more. In 370 Epaminondas broke 
 through into Laconia, the first invader for six hundred 
 years, and plundered down the banks of Eurotas till Spar- 
 tan women for the first time in history saw the smoke of 
 the enemy's fires. In the midst of their cries and lamenta- 
 tions, of taunts and reproaches, of plots and desertions, and 
 of his own bitter reflections, Agesilaus kept a cool head and 
 with iron discipline held his desperate troops at bay within 
 the strongest quarters of the city, where they looked so 
 formidable that the Theban dared not attack them and 
 turned north again. 
 
 Year after year, with varying fortunes and shifting alli- 
 ances, the wretched war dragged on. Sparta would have 
 accepted almost any terms, but those offered her included 
 the recognition of Messenian independence, and to that 
 she would rather die than consent. One great need was 
 money, and Agesilaus, tireless in his country's service, set 
 sail in search of it. The Persian empire was breaking up, 
 and in the scramble there might be a chance to pick up a 
 bit of profit. Sparta could of course lend no soldiers to the 
 revolting satraps, but the old man went alone to see what 
 his name and experience were worth to them and, succeeding 
 in bringing about a negotiation, came home with pay from 
 both sides. 
 
 His days of military service, however, were not over. Once 
 more Epaminondas came down on Lacedsemon, and once 
 more the aged king — now past eighty — took up the des- 
 perate defense. This time he threw over his cautious tactics 
 
AGESILAUS 123 
 
 and with all the fire of youth led out his Spartans, strength- 
 ened by mercenaries hired with his Asiatic gold. Epaminon- 
 das slipped by him and all but took the city, but a Cretan 
 "under some divine influence," as Xenophon says, brought 
 word to Agesilaus just in time. Back he hurried to call the 
 little city guard to arms, and the Theban found the un- 
 walled city bristling with desperate men ready to die in 
 their narrow streets while the old and the women hurled 
 down missiles from the housetops. Before such a costly 
 storm he hesitated, and Archidamus, the king's gallant son, 
 rushing out with a bare hundred Spartans, fairly put the 
 enemy to flight. 
 
 Before the year was out, Epaminondas had fallen at 
 Mantinca, and with him the danger from Thebes was over. 
 But Sparta was left in sorry plight. Decimated, impover- 
 ished, robbed of a great part of her property and her ser- 
 vants, she must yet take the field against the Messenians, 
 who raided her borders day and night. For, though reduced 
 to her last gasp, she still refused to acknowledge her former 
 serfs, and Greece made peace without her. In such straits, 
 there was no help for it but to hire soldiers, and again there 
 was only Agesilaus to get the money. This time, too, he 
 must work for it. The best chance seemed to be to hire him- 
 self out, as captain of a band of mercenaries, to the Egyptian 
 Tachos, and this action, which brought upon him the sneer- 
 ing criticism of his fellow Greeks, was perhaps the noblest 
 and most unselfish of his life. For Agesilaus, says Plutarch, 
 "valued not other men's discourses; he thought no public 
 employment dishonorable; the ignoblest thing in his esteem 
 was for a man to sit idle and useless at home, waiting for his 
 death to come and take him." To Egypt he went, therefore, 
 where the great officers, and all the people crowded to see the 
 famous Spartan king, " but when they found, instead of the 
 splendid prince whom they looked for, a little old man of 
 
124 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 contemptible appearance, without all ceremony lying down 
 upon the grass in coarse and threadbare clothes, they fell 
 into laughter and scorn of him." What yet more astonished 
 the oriental mind was that when all sorts of provisions were 
 brought him, he took only the meat and meal, turning over 
 the sweetmeats and perfumes to his servants. 
 
 Finding himself less trusted and honored by Tachos than 
 he had expected, and besought by Nectanabis, who was 
 making rebellion against the rebel, to go over to him, 
 Agesilaus felt no scruples — what was it to him which bar- 
 barian he served, so long as he got the money for Sparta? — 
 but changed sides, won his new employer a good victory, 
 and sailed for home with the tidy sum of two hundred and 
 thirty talents (about a quarter of a million dollars). But 
 the old man was not to see again the green fields of his be- 
 loved Lacedsemon. Just as his ship put in from a storm at 
 an empty harbor on the African coast, he died, worn out at 
 last. 
 
 To few men is given such absolute identification of their 
 lives with their country's as was the lot of Agesilaus. Within 
 the space of his four and eighty years was comprised Sparta's 
 rise to the height of her power and fall to her lowest ebb. 
 His youth saw the whole course of the Peloponnesian war; 
 in his full manhood, at the head of a great and victorious 
 army, he stood on the threshold of the conquest of the Per- 
 sian Empire; for twenty-five years of Sparta's supremacy in 
 Greece he was the guiding spirit of her counsels — and at 
 eighty-three, a grizzled veteran, he went out in search of 
 the money needed to preserve her from annihilation. When 
 we realize, in addition, that in his own person he shared the 
 faults and furthered the policies which brought about his 
 country's downfall, we must feel that though Agesilaus 
 was not a great man, there is true epic greatness in the 
 tragedy of his career. 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 
 
 (Died 367 b.c.) 
 
 Few men have made a deeper impression upon the minds 
 of men of their own time than did Dionysius of Syracuse. 
 The sight of this obscure, middle-class citizen raising him- 
 self so suddenly, without the aid of wealth or family, party- 
 standing or even striking personal gifts, to the absolute 
 leadership, first of his own city, and then of the whole of 
 western Hellas, maintaining his despotic empire for nearly 
 forty years, and handing it on, an unquestioned heritage, 
 to his eldest son, filled every Greek with a painful mixture 
 of astonishment and anger, fear and reluctant admiration. 
 In order to understand how such a career was possible, one 
 must first see clearly the main features of the Sicilian situa- 
 tion just before this spectacular rise took place. The two 
 outstanding facts are the Carthaginian peril and the failure 
 of Syracusan democracy. 
 
 It will be remembered that just when the hosts of Persia 
 seemed about to overrun old Greece, another great bar- 
 barian invasion had swept down upon the Greek cities of 
 Sicily, and that on the very same day, as tradition fondly 
 had it, of the year 480, the Persians were defeated at 
 Salamio and the Carthaginians at Himera. For more than 
 seventy years the one deliverance had seemed as final as 
 the other. There were still Phoenician cities in Sicily, to be 
 sure, but they were the old ones in the western corner — 
 Panormus, Solus, Motya — and no attempt was made to 
 extend their sway. Now, for the first time within most 
 living memories, Carthage loomed up as an invader and a 
 
126 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 conqueror, bent at once on vengeance for the past and 
 empire for the future. In 409, Hannibal, 1 with over one 
 hundred thousand men, swooped down upon Selinus and 
 on Himera; Selinus and Himera were no more. In 406, he 
 and Himilco led another mighty host against Acragas, the 
 sumptuous queen of the southern coast, wealthiest, most 
 luxurious, and most beautiful of Sicilian towns, "fairest of 
 the cities of men." Syracuse sent help against the common 
 foe, and had her forces been led by the able and energetic 
 commander who not long before had foiled the great 
 Athenian siege, her help might have availed. But the ris- 
 ing tide of democracy in Syracuse had wrecked the career 
 of her best citizen. Suspected of tyrannical ambitions, 
 Hermocrates had tried in vain to earn his recall from exile 
 by patriotic exploits, and finally had met his death in a 
 desperate attempt to win back by force of arms. The 
 extreme democrats now held full sway, but the generals 
 they chose proved incompetent or treacherous, or both, and 
 as soon as the defense of Acragas became difficult, they de- 
 serted the sinking ship. The Agrigentines, left alone, were 
 not the stuff that goes down fighting; their lines had been 
 too long cast in pleasant places. In one night, without a 
 blow, they marched away forever, men, women, and chil- 
 dren; "they were compelled to leave for the barbarians to 
 pillage, those things which made their lives happy." The 
 ruined temples of Girgenti, looking across in the mute 
 reproach of their desolate beauty to the African coast, bear 
 witness to-day of the sacking of Acragas. 
 
 For Syracuse the situation was now extremely serious, 
 and thoughtful men could not but realize how ill-prepared 
 she was to meet it. One of these was Philistos, known to 
 future scholars as the historian of his period, and one of 
 those unusual men who, with a profound and lasting interest 
 
 1 Not . of course, the Hannibal of Roman history. 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 127 
 
 in public affairs, yet prefer always to keep in the background 
 and work through others. He and a few like-minded thinkers 
 picked out, to represent their views in action, a young man 
 whom few in the city can have known by sight. This was 
 Dionysius, by profession a government clerk, in politics a 
 follower of Hermocrates, whose daughter he afterward mar- 
 ried. Taking part in his leader's ill-advised attack upon the 
 city, he had been left for dead in the agora — and so obscure 
 was he that no one had challenged his reappearance. Serv- 
 ing in the levy of Syracuse at Acragas, he had, however, 
 borne himself noticeably well, and now he was chosen to 
 express in the public assembly the indignation of those 
 whose valor had been brought to nought by worthless gen- 
 erals. Again and again, in his fiery attack, he overpassed 
 the limits of permitted speech, but each time Philistos 
 stepped forward to pay the fine incurred, and the orator 
 went on. Of course he did not lay the blame for the fiasco on 
 the democracy; on the contrary, he charged the generals, 
 aristocrats by birth, with being no true representatives of 
 the people, who should be led by men of their own stock. His 
 success was complete; the generals were deposed, and a new 
 board chosen, of whom Dionysius himself was one. 
 
 The first step in the "despot's progress" had been taken; 
 the next followed rapidly. On his return one day from the 
 neighboring city of Gela, where he had helped to carry 
 through a democratic revolution, Dionysius met his own 
 townsfolk streaming out of the theater at the close of one of 
 the great open-air performances, and seized the chance of 
 making them a fiery speech. His fellow-generals, he said, 
 were taking bribes from the enemy; he himself had been 
 approached by secret Carthaginian envoys; he could not 
 bear to hold for another day an office which laid him open 
 to such suspicion. The people, much excited, met next day 
 in regular assembly and made him "general with full 
 
128 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 powers" — dictator, in short — as they had made Gelon 
 some eighty-five years before. 
 
 Only one thing more was needful — an armed force, all 
 his own. The citizen army was at his orders, but just be- 
 cause it was a citizen army it might take it into its head 
 to be patriotically disobedient. Remembering, doubtless, 
 the famous stratagem of Pisistratus, Dionysius employed 
 a similar one; having gone out with the Syracusan levy to 
 Leontini, then full of fugitives from all the ravaged towns, 
 on whose friendship he could count, he suddenly divulged a 
 perfectly imaginary attempt upon his life, and asked for a 
 bodyguard. A mixed multitude of soldiers, citizens, and 
 exiles, calling themselves an Assembly, voted him at once 
 six hundred men, a number , which Dionysius took the 
 liberty of increasing to one thousand. With this body, 
 which, chosen for individual merit, highly paid, and splen- 
 didly equipped, formed henceforth not merely his personal 
 guard but the core of his army, Dionysius returned to 
 Syracuse and took up his residence in the Castle, a full- 
 fledged tyrant. 
 
 However influenced the Syracusans may have been by 
 fear of the armed forces of Dionysius, — and he quickly 
 filled the city with mercenaries of every race and speech, — 
 their main reason for giving him extraordinary powers was 
 to enable him to put up an energetic defense against the 
 national foe, and it was high time that he should justify his 
 election, for Himilco, after a comfortable winter in deserted 
 Acragas, was bearing down upon Gela. With fifty ironclad 
 ships and a great mixed army — the Syracusan levy of foot 
 and horse, an auxiliary force of Italian Greeks volunteered 
 in the common cause, and many thousands of mercenaries 
 — Dionysius advanced to meet him. His plan was well laid: 
 the Italiots, marching by the coast road and supported by 
 the ships, and the Sicilians, going around north of the city 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 129 
 
 by the inland road, were at the same moment to attack the 
 Carthaginian camp to the west of Gela, while he himself 
 with his mercenaries, going straight through the city, would 
 engage the main army which was battering at its west- 
 ern gates. Unluckily, the combination did not work out. 
 The Italiots, though they had the longest march, were 
 first at the rendezvous and performed their task well, but 
 the Syracusans were late, and the mercenaries, apparently 
 caught in the narrow congested streets, never got into the 
 fight at all, so that the Carthaginian main force, not being 
 held at the city, was able to turn back and rout the invaders 
 from their camp. To complete the discouragement and 
 mounting distrust of the army, Dionysius now decided that 
 it was hopeless to defend Gela at all. In the darkness of the 
 night the whole population forsook their homes and, escorted 
 by the troops, set forth on the unhappy march to Syracuse, 
 gathering up into the stream of fugitives the men, women, 
 and children of Camarina, through which they passed. The 
 tragic sight burned itself into the memory of every Greek 
 who witnessed it — the roads choked with the aged, the 
 sick, delicate ladies, young maidens — all torn at a mo- 
 ment's notice from their comfortable, happy, sheltered 
 homes and fleeing for their lives from a barbarous pursuer 
 whose tortures, culminating in impalement and crucifixion, 
 were the certain fate of any who dropped behind. 1 
 
 It is no wonder that in the minds of many the grief and 
 horror roused by such a spectacle swelled to burning indig- 
 nation against the leader to whose strange tardiness and 
 timidity it seemed due. The Italiots, who, of the army, had 
 done and suffered most, deserted in a body and went home. 
 The Syracusan horsemen, young nobles, whose dislike of 
 the upstart dictator had been intensified to hatred by their 
 
 1 To realize the situation, read the published accounts of the sufferings of the Armenians 
 at the hands of the Turks during the (present) Great War. 
 
130 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 bitter mortification, galloped off to Syracuse, hoping to raise 
 a revolt and meet him on his return with a restored republic. 
 They showed, however, no political ability, only a frenzied 
 personal hate, which wreaked itself not merely upon the 
 tyrant's house and personal belongings, but on his newly 
 married wife, whom they cruelly did to death. When 
 Dionysius, coming up in all haste with a chosen troop, 
 burned down the Achradina gate and burst into the city, 
 there was no popular uprising to resist him; only the cava- 
 liers rode forth and fell, cut down like grain by his avenging 
 mercenaries. A few escaped to Mtna,; the fugitives from 
 Gela and Camarina went to join their fellow-exiles from 
 Acragas at Leontini; with the rest of his great mixed multi- 
 tude, Dionysius established himself once more in Syracuse. 
 
 His first business was to come to terms with the invader 
 whom he had been unable to drive out, and Himilco, his 
 army weakened by disease, was satisfied at present with 
 what he had accomplished. The conditions agreed upon 
 are not unlike those of the King's Peace arranged by 
 Antalcidas a few years later. As Persia, by that pact, was 
 acknowledged mistress of the Greek cities of Asia, so was 
 Carthage of all those on the north and south coasts of Sicily, 
 some of them becoming her out and out possessions and 
 others her tributaries. The Sicels were declared independ- 
 ent, and so were the new settlers of Leontini. But between 
 that city on the one side and Camarina on the other the 
 rule of Dionysius was guaranteed, even as the predominance 
 of Sparta had been by Persia. 
 
 The motives of Dionysius in consenting after scarcely 
 any resistance to such a humiliating peace have been sharply 
 debated in modern as in his own times. Was he a traitor? 
 Did he deliberately, from the first, sacrifice Gela and 
 Camarina as the price of Carthaginian recognition? The 
 suspicion of his contemporaries is absolutely natural, yet 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 131 
 
 when we remember that his rule was founded on the expec- 
 tation of his becoming the deliverer of Sicily, and that 
 nothing would have done so much to establish and popu- 
 larize it as a brilliant victory over the national foe, it is 
 hard to believe that he intentionally rejected such a glorious 
 means and preferred the position of a hated and suspected 
 tyrant dependent on foreign support. It is more probable, 
 then, that he honestly failed at Gela and afterwards ac- 
 cepted the best terms he could get, but the people who had 
 raised him to power had hoped so much from him that the 
 disappointment cast a dark shadow over his whole reign. 
 
 In his own mind, however, these hopes had never died. 
 Carthage might regard the peace as final, but for Dionysius 
 it was a truce to be used in unceasing preparation for the 
 day when he might once more take up the great task of his 
 life. But since he had not been able to accomplish that 
 task in the character of a popular hero, he must first of all 
 rivet his hold upon a now unwilling people. Taking up his 
 residence in Ortygia, the original island-city, he proceeded 
 not only to build for himself a new castle of extraordinary 
 strength, through whose five gates any visitor coming 
 across the causeway from Achradina must be successively 
 admitted, but to turn the whole island into his personal 
 stronghold, in which only his soldiers and his most trusted 
 adherents were permitted to live. The need of such a fortress 
 was soon shown, for a most formidable revolt of the citizen 
 army led to an actual siege of the tyrant within the city. 
 Between the new Syracusan government — for such it pro- 
 claimed itself — on the heights of Epipolse, and the ships 
 gladly sent by Messana and Rhegium to revenge his appar- 
 ent betrayal of their troops at Gela by blockading his har- 
 bor, Dionysius really thought his hour had come, and his 
 best friend could only bid him die like a king. Another 
 encouraged him at least to clins JtoJbis dominion till he was 
 
132 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 "dragged out by the leg," and the tyrant, gathering cour- 
 age, set his wits to work. Pretending to yield, he asked only 
 to be allowed to sail away with his own property. The be- 
 siegers, confident and deceived, relaxed all vigilance, and 
 were utterly taken by surprise when twelve hundred Cam- 
 panian mercenaries from the Carthaginian service, sum- 
 moned by secret messengers, burst upon them from the 
 north and forced a way through to the city. With these and 
 some other reinforcements Dionysius sallied forth upon his 
 disorderly besiegers and put them utterly to rout. The vic- 
 tory won by his arms was sealed by his mercy; the previous 
 revolt of the cavalry had been followed by severest punish- 
 ment, not to be wondered at considering the cruel personal 
 wrong they had done him, but now he recalled his pursu- 
 ing soldiery, gave quarter freely, and buried the slain with 
 due funeral rites. On the strength of this generosity he 
 invited back those of his enemies who had made their escape 
 to Mtna, but most of these preferred to keep at a safe dis- 
 tance, and to his boast of having buried the dead replied 
 that they should be glad to do the same by him and only 
 hoped the gods would soon give them the chance. 
 
 It is at this point that we first catch a glimpse of the re- 
 lations between Dionysius and Old Greece, particularly 
 Sparta, which were so interwoven with the story of his life. 
 The account is confused, but it appears that the rebellious 
 Syracusans had sent to the mother city, Corinth, for a 
 "mediator" to help them set up a new government, and 
 that a Spartan envoy managed to betray this Corinthian 
 and his plans into the hands of the tyrant and to lend the 
 latter the full countenance of his city. It was the beginning 
 of that long and sinister alliance against which patriotic 
 Hellenic orators were to thunder in vain. 
 
 Now that he was firmly seated in Syracuse, Dionysius' 
 next undertaking was to get control of all eastern Sicily. 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 133 
 
 There were two populations to be considered, the native 
 Sicels of the interior and the Greeks of the coast cities. The 
 former he managed chiefly by means of a close friendship 
 with the vigorous Sicel tyrant of Agyrium; the Greeks of 
 Catane, Naxos and Leontini he bribed and frightened into 
 complete submission. Leontini he left in the possession of 
 its own inhabitants, while turning it, politically, into a kind 
 of distant suburb of Syracuse, but Catane he handed over 
 to a band of Campanians to live in, while Naxos, sacred 
 in Greek eyes as the oldest Greek settlement in the whole 
 island, he simply wiped off the face of the earth forever. 
 Messana in her corner, now the only free Greek city, made 
 a half-hearted attempt, spurred on by Rhegium, to resist 
 the onward sweep of his power, but hesitated and turned 
 back in time to win his politic pardon. Rhegium, too, he 
 forgave, and would have wooed as an ally, seeking a wife 
 from among her daughters, but the Italiot city, feeling safe 
 on the further side of the straits, allowed herself the luxury 
 of expressing her feelings, and so rejected his overtures with 
 a scorn which she was bitterly to rue. 
 
 Dionysius had won his object, but his progress had been 
 a sinister one; as Freeman says, "His power had advanced 
 without victories, and there is something especially terror- 
 striking in the course of the man who achieves great results 
 without proportionate means." Moreover, he had done a 
 supremely hateful thing; he, a Hellene, had destroyed the 
 oldest monuments of Hellenic occupation and had handed 
 over an Hellenic city to barbarians for permanent settle- 
 ment. Treason to his race could hardly go further, — yet, 
 on the other hand, if his chief duty was to organize resist- 
 ance to the national foe, he might plead that he was using 
 the only practicable means. Independent cities had shown 
 that they could not, even when allied, resist the invader; 
 only by uniting all Sicily as the single state of Syracuse, 
 
134 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 could he forge a mighty weapon to be wielded victoriously 
 by one master-hand. 
 
 At least, this greater purpose was never out of his mind. 
 The proof of it is the elaborate fortification of Syracuse 
 which he now undertook. With almost incredible speed he 
 carried out "the greatest work of military engineering that 
 the Greek world had yet seen. ... At a single stroke he 
 made Syracuse the vastest fortified city in Europe" — more 
 than three times as large as Athens and the Piraeus together, 
 half again as large as imperial Rome. The long plateau of 
 Epipolse, to the west of Achradina, f rom which the Athenians 
 had so seriously threatened the city, was now wholly envel- 
 oped by a great wall connecting with the existing fortifica- 
 tions, and at the steep and narrow western tip of the heights 
 was erected the mighty fortress of Euryalus, of which five 
 towers and a whole system of underground works remain 
 to this day. These buildings were evidently not, like the 
 castle and gates of Ortygia, mere strongholds of personal 
 power; they inured to the safety and glory of Syracuse itself, 
 and were enthusiastically supported by the citizens, who 
 turned out to the number of sixty thousand to work with 
 their own hands at the new wall. Every part of the work 
 was done in the very best way that the state of military 
 science made possible: the masonry was of the finest, six 
 thousand yoke of oxen drew the well-cut blocks of stone to 
 the places where they were needed, engineers and master- 
 builders at fixed intervals directed evenly divided bands of 
 workmen, and Dionysius himself, throwing off the suspicious 
 aloofness in which he ordinarily hid himself, was continually 
 on the spot, observing, directing, praising, and rewarding. 
 Under such spur the whole north wall, nearly four miles 
 long, was built in twenty days. 
 
 It was not to be expected, of course, that the population 
 of the city would soon, if ever, occupy the huge area now 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 135 
 
 enclosed, yet it was itself greatly enlarged as well as, in some 
 ways, immensely democratized, by the measures of Diony- 
 sius. In orthodox Hellenic eyes it had indeed ceased to be a 
 city at all, for there was no longer any body of pure-blooded 
 original citizens privileged to make laws alike for themselves 
 and for non-citizens. What with the multitudes of freedmen 
 and aliens to whom he had given land and citizen rights, the 
 slaves he had emancipated, the adventurous soldiers from 
 all over the world who swarmed to his capital seeking serv- 
 ice, Syracuse was more like a great modern city than an 
 ancient Greek one. And upon his popularity with this mixed 
 multitude Dionysius knew he could, on the whole, rely, 
 especially as republican forms were in a shadowy way still 
 observed, assemblies met, if only to register the will of the 
 actual ruler, and he still bore no title, within the city, but 
 his original one of commander-in-chief. 
 
 It was against private assassination, not popular upris- 
 ings, that his extreme precautions were taken, and even 
 that was the less probable as, unlike most tyrants, he gave 
 little excuse for personal vengeance. His own habits were 
 decent and domestic; as he pointed out in his famous rebuke 
 to his son, he made trouble in no man's home. His marriage, 
 to be sure, was somewhat extraordinary, since he now took to 
 himself two wives at the same time, one from the Italiot 
 city of Locri and the other from Syracuse itself. The double 
 wedding was celebrated with great solemnity, and, incred- 
 ible as it sounds, Dionysius appears to have lived in perfect 
 amity with both consorts, taking the greatest pains to show 
 absolutely equal attention and regard to each. 
 
 About seven years of peace had now passed, and Diony- 
 sius began to feel strong enough to resume his great national 
 task. First, however, complete military and naval prepara- 
 tions must be made, on a vaster and more scientific scale than 
 had ever been attempted. As in the fortification of the city, 
 
136 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 his great energy and unusual talent for organization came 
 into full play. From all Hellas and even from Carthaginian 
 provinces the best artisans were called in to supervise the 
 constant manufacture of weapons of every sort, appropriate 
 to the use of soldiers of every nation. Every technical im- 
 provement was eagerly welcomed and applied. In a large 
 "artillery park " outside the city a new invention was 
 tried out which was to revolutionize ancient warfare — the 
 catapult, which could hurl either darts or great stones with 
 a force far beyond human strength. At the same time and 
 largely, like the walls, by citizen labor, a fleet was built, 
 huge not only in numbers but in the unprecedented size of 
 the ships, many of them having four and even five banks of 
 rowers instead of the conventional three. 
 
 There must have been something wonderfully exhilarat- 
 ing about all this activity, an excitement in taking one's 
 part, with all one's might, in such big work, so well organ- 
 ized, so evidently planned for a great national purpose. 
 Men were even willing to face the tremendous expense which 
 all this "preparedness" meant and which had to be met 
 by every sort of means, regular and irregular. Dionysius 
 stopped at nothing — taxes of every kind, forced loans, 
 confiscation of private property, debasement of the cur- 
 rency, even barefaced seizure of the temple treasures. 
 Athens, it is true, had in time of need borrowed freely from 
 the treasury of Athena, honestly holding that the goddess 
 would be glad to contribute to the defense of her chosen 
 city, but Dionysius followed the example without the excuse, 
 — for he was a notorious freethinker, — and without even 
 the pretence of a loan. Perhaps the coolest of all his per- 
 formances was to sell a lot of his own belongings at auction, 
 and then take them back from the unlucky purchasers-. Yet 
 there was apparently no general discontent. By hook or by 
 crook, the money had to be raised, and it was raised. 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 1S7 
 
 Finally, in the spring of 397, with all preparations com- 
 plete and soldiers enlisted from every part of the world, 
 Dionysius called upon Syracuse to declare war. The dec- 
 laration was voted with enthusiasm and sent at once to 
 Carthage with the alternative of giving up all the Greek 
 cities in Sicily. 
 
 Naturally, the activities of Syracuse had not been unob- 
 served, but Carthage, enfeebled by a plague, had failed to 
 arm herself in time, and until Himilco with a hastily gath- 
 ered army could reach Sicily, Dionysius was free to carry 
 all before him. As he marched westward, every Greek com- 
 munity rose to hail him as a deliverer, Carthaginian resi- 
 dents were set upon with plunder and outrage, contingents 
 joined the army as it advanced, the Elymian towns came 
 over, and at last, with more than eighty thousand men, sup- 
 ported by two hundred warships and five hundred trans- 
 ports, he passed the border of the original Carthaginian 
 possessions and laid siege to the island fortress of Motya. 
 
 This siege, although unusually interesting on account of 
 the novel and ingenious methods of attack and the desper- 
 ate valor of the defense, can be only briefly outlined here. 
 The first task of Dionysius was to rebuild in broader, 
 stronger form the artificial causeway, connecting the city 
 with the mainland, which the Motyans had destroyed. 
 While the crews of his ships, which were drawn up on the 
 inner shore of the deeply curved harbor, were engaged in 
 this work, the relieving fleet of Himilco bore down upon 
 them, closing the narrow mouth of the port. Dionysius had 
 no mind to engage his vessels where their numbers would 
 have no advantage. Leaving them ashore, he set his 
 slingers, his archers, and, above all, the engineers of his 
 catapults, now used for the first time, to repulse the attack- 
 ing Carthaginians, while the marines, withdrawn from their 
 labor on the causeway, were set to laying wooden runways 
 
138 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 across the low and marshy neck of land which separated the 
 harbor from the open sea. Two miles and a half, the ships 
 were dragged across, and, putting to sea, made round to 
 look for Himilco, who, knowing himself outnumbered, 
 sailed away without a battle, leaving Motya to its fate. 
 
 That fate was certain, but the population of the old 
 Semitic town held out with a stern and terrible determina- 
 tion such as only their race, when pushed to the last extrem- 
 ity, has shown itself capable of. In vain Dionysius, having 
 finished his mole, brought across it his catapults, battering- 
 rams, and lofty movable towers; from tall masts set on the 
 high housetops the Motyans hurled back flaming tow upon 
 the wooden engines, and even when the rams had actually 
 breached the walls the fight seemed only begun, for every 
 house was a fortress, every street a trench to be carried by 
 assault. Only by a surprise attack at night was the city 
 taken at last, and handed over to a destruction as terrible 
 and complete as those deeds of Carthage which it avenged. 
 
 In this first year of the war Dionysius had changed the 
 whole face of affairs in Sicily. Carthage, instead of being the 
 attacking power, was now on the defensive, even as to her 
 most ancient possessions. The second year, however, was 
 much less fruitful. Himilco, with a new and huge armament, 
 sailed round the west of Sicily, keeping well out to sea, 
 landed at Panormus, and proceeded to take back city after 
 city along the coast, while Dionysius remained strangely 
 absorbed in the siege of inland Segesta. As a matter of fact, 
 though urged by his Greeks to meet the enemy in a pitched 
 battle, he believed it unsafe to do so; the difficulties of 
 maintaining his army were growing very great, the Sican 
 natives were unfriendly, and the consequence of defeat 
 would have been utter destruction. Giving up all his recent 
 conquests, therefore, and even part of his own domain, he 
 retreated to Syracuse, Himilco following along the north 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 139 
 
 coast as far as Messana, which he took by assault and razed 
 to the ground. Thence advancing southward, the Cartha- 
 ginian ingratiated himself with the Sicels by founding for 
 them a hill stronghold, which still, as Taormina, is far-famed 
 as the loveliest site in Sicily. Further he could not advance 
 directly, because a recent lava flow from Mount Mtna, 
 barred the shore road; he had to make a long detour around 
 the mountain. Dionysius came out as far as Catane to meet 
 him, but the defeat of his fleet by the Punic admiral, Mago, 
 forced him to hasten back to Syracuse and prepare to stand 
 a siege. Bitter were the critics, many the faint-spirited and 
 the traitorous, but the tyrant kept good heart and sent out 
 a call to all Hellas to come to the rescue of the last free 
 Hellenic city in Sicily. Soldiers came in from Italy and the 
 Peloponnesus, and Sparta, faithful to her old ally, sent 
 thirty triremes under an admiral, who arrived in time to 
 throw all his weight in support of the despot against a pop- 
 ular movement to overthrow him. 
 
 Both sides seemed well prepared for a long and desperate 
 siege, but as the midsummer heats advanced, a frightful 
 epidemic broke out in the invading army, encamped in the 
 marshy valley of the Anapus, and Dionysius took advantage 
 of its weak and demoralized condition to make a surprise- 
 attack upon camp and fleet at once, with such success that 
 Himilco asked only for leave to withdraw his forces. This 
 Dionysius granted as far as the Carthaginian troops were 
 concerned, and held back his own while the defeated com- 
 mander sailed away with forty triremes, leaving as his ran- 
 som his mercenaries and his Sicilian allies. So disgraceful 
 was held this escape that Himilco preferred suicide to the 
 reproaches of his countrymen, and Carthage, her prestige 
 sorely diminished, had to spend the next three years in put- 
 ting down a great insurrection of the native Africans. 
 
 These vears crave Dinnvaino q emnA opportunity to con- 
 
140 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 solidate his victory by winning, rather as allies than as sub- 
 jects, the Sicels of the interior, and resettling the coast 
 towns, Messana and Leontini, with mercenaries and exiles. 
 A picturesque incident of this time is his attempted storm 
 of the snow-covered heights of Tauromenium, from which 
 he himself came tumbling down with his men, the only one 
 to arrive at the bottom with his breastplate still on. 
 
 In the spring of 393 Carthage was ready to try again, and 
 her new commander, Mago, advanced well into the interior 
 of the island, winning over by humane measures some of the 
 native towns. The stalwart despot of Agyrium, however, 
 remained faithful to Dionysius, who joined him with twenty 
 thousand men and, without giving battle, made Mago's 
 position so difficult that negotiations were soon under way 
 and Carthage finally agreed to a very satisfactory peace. 
 She gave up all her conquests, retaining only her old domin- 
 ion, with the Elymian towns which had always preferred 
 her rule. In five sixths of Sicily Dionysius was left practi- 
 cally supreme, his rule over the Sicels being expressly recog- 
 nized. The long war, therefore, in spite of its moments of 
 defeat and disappointment, had, on the whole, ended with 
 considerable glory and a very fair approach to the attain- 
 ment of its original object. That object, in its fullness, 
 Dionysius never abandoned, but it was to be nine years 
 before he again put it in the forefront of his policy. 
 
 Those years were to be, for the most part, years of peace, 
 but before they could take that form Dionysius had one 
 long reckoning to pay, one pestilent enemy to clear out of his 
 path for ever. From the time when Rhegium had scorned 
 his proffered friendship and refused him one of her daugh- 
 ters, she had been a persistent thorn in his flesh. Just before 
 Mago's invasion her jealous attacks upon the rebuilding 
 Messana had brought him down to punish her, but the ap- 
 proach of the Carthaginian had forced him to patch up a 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDEE 141 
 
 half-truce. Now he resolved to run the chance of no more 
 back-fires. 
 
 To attack Rhegium, however, was no simple matter, for 
 she had recently joined a strong league of Italian-Greek 
 cities. To meet this situation, Dionysius allied himself with 
 the Lucanians (native Italians), who inflicted on the Italiots 
 a crushing defeat which would have ended in complete anni- 
 hilation had not Leptines, Dionysius's brother and admiral, 
 been unable, as a Greek, to bear the sight of such a barbarian 
 triumph and stood between his victorious allies and his 
 suppliant enemies. It was an act which highly displeased 
 his royal brother, not for its humanity, for Dionysius him- 
 self, as he was shortly to prove, could be merciful on occa- 
 sion, but for its independence and interference with his own 
 plans, and Leptines was promptly displaced in favor of 
 another brother. The good impression, however, which his 
 behavior had made upon the Italiot cities was not lost upon 
 the politic commander, who seized the opportunity of a 
 sweeping victory next year, at the river Elleporus, to outdo 
 him by first requiring an absolute surrender at discretion 
 and then almost stunning the great host of captives, who 
 could not hope, from even Hellenic custom, for a lighter fate 
 than slavery, by letting them all go free, unransomed, every 
 man to his own city. 
 
 This act of unparalleled mercy completed his conquest 
 of the Italiots, and Rhegium was left unsupported to meet 
 a very different doom. For her there was no forgiveness^ 
 even when she would have made terms. After a desperate 
 resistance of eleven months, during which the rage of 
 Dionysius was yet further exasperated by severe wounds, 
 the city fell. Her population were sold or held to ransom, 
 but her brave commander, whom he had vainly tried to 
 bribe, was subjected to insult and torture and finally 
 drowned with all his kin. The town itself was destroyed and 
 
142 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 a pleasure garden made upon its ruins. Henceforth the 
 ruler of Sicily held firmly both sides of the strait; the "toe" 
 of Italy was his, and the Italiot cities as well as the Lucani- 
 ans were his firm allies. 
 
 It is from this point in his career that one may fairly 
 begin to speak of the empire of Dionysius. By politic alli- 
 ances, even with such barbarous strangers as the Gauls 
 who had recently sacked young Rome and who henceforth 
 provided some of his most valiant mercenaries, by vigorous 
 and useful operations against the Etruscan pirates who 
 infested the western Mediterranean, and especially by the 
 Greek colonies he founded and supported around the Adri- 
 atic, he extended that empire until it filled a truly imposing 
 place on the world map. As an Adriatic power, moreover, 
 he was in a position to play an important part in the affairs 
 of Old Greece, and this he was well pleased to do. Already, 
 even while busy with the siege of Rhegium, he had sent a 
 gorgeous embassy to the Olympian Games, whereat the 
 popular feeling of the Greek world against the tyrant had 
 burst into flame at the eloquence of the Athenian Lysias and 
 wreaked itself upon the Syracusan tents. If anything was 
 needed to confirm the friendship between Dionysius and 
 Sparta, this Athenian indictment of them both as the be- 
 trayers and tyrants of Hellas must have done so, and accord- 
 ingly we find the Syracusan warships and Dionysian mer- 
 cenaries, including Gauls and Spaniards, appearing again 
 and again to assist the Lacedaemonians in their wars. For 
 some time Athens maintained her attitude of holy horror; 
 at another Olympian festival, in 380, we find Isocrates 
 painting in eloquent words the melancholy picture of a 
 devastated Italy and an enslaved Sicily. After a while, 
 however, her virtue yielded to the temptation to win this 
 tremendous force in the Greek world over to her own side. 
 It is a shabby sight — the city of Pericles and Socrates load- 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 143 
 
 ing with flatteries and honors the tyrant of Syracuse, grant- 
 ing her citizenship to him and his family, and capping the 
 climax by awarding first prize, after a long succession of 
 failures, to his tragedy, The Ransom of Hector. This bait 
 proved irresistible, and a defensive alliance between Athens 
 and Syracuse was signed in March, 867 — too late. 
 
 Meanwhile, what had become of the old ambition of 
 Dionysius, to drive the barbarian out of Sicily? It was still 
 the guiding principle of his life and, on the whole, the one 
 thing which gives it consistency and dignity. Twice more he 
 struggled with the huge task. Of the war waged between 
 him and Carthage during the years from 383 to 378 we have 
 very little account. About all we know is that it was fought 
 in both Sicily and Italy, that Dionysius won a great victory 
 followed by a yet greater defeat, and that in consequence the 
 Carthaginian limits on the south coast of Sicily were actu- 
 ally moved forward to the river Halycus. Ten years later, 
 Dionysius, an old man now, made one more effort to com- 
 plete his life-work. With army and fleet, as in the great war 
 of thirty years before, he burst into the enemy's territory, 
 took Selinus, Entella, and Eryx, and sat down before 
 Lilybseum, the fortified fort which Carthage had created 
 alongside of deserted Motya. The arrival of Hauno forced 
 birri to raise the siege, but neither commander seemed eager 
 for a decisive battle, and before the truce they made was 
 out, Dionysius had died of a brief illness, brought on, tradi- 
 tion said, by a joyous carouse at the news of his success as 
 a tragic poet. 
 
 He was sixty-three years old, and for thirty-eight of those 
 years he had been an absolute monarch, the most powerful 
 and significant single figure of his time. When we try to 
 sum up his accomplishment, we see it against the back- 
 ground of one great undeniable fact: the city states of the 
 fourth century, whether in Greece or Asia, Italy or Sicily, 
 
144 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 were unable either to maintain their independence or to 
 form permanent and effective unions. As a result, it was 
 simply a question of time as to when some barbarian power 
 would swallow them up. Persia did gather in the Asiatic 
 Greeks, and only because she was herself falling to pieces 
 left those of the old country to become the prey of Mace- 
 donia. The great Semitic empire of Carthage — not, like the 
 Persian, tottering to its end, but with two hundred years of 
 power yet before it — had overrun most of Sicily and would 
 undoubtedly, if unchecked, have established itself in Italy, 
 probably to such effect that Rome would have been choked 
 in its cradle. When we see, then, that Dionysius, by creat- 
 ing, single-handed, one great, unified, powerful Hellenic 
 state, prevented this alien civilization from spreading beyond 
 one small corner of the Hellenic world, all of us who believe 
 that Greece and Rome have been more precious and indis- 
 pensable to the life we know than any Asiatic-African em- 
 pire could ever have been, must realize the debt we owe to 
 the tyrant of Syracuse. 
 
 Yet it is hard to feel any enthusiasm for the man or even 
 for his deed. For one thing, the price paid was appalling. 
 Unlike Rome, he invented no way of preserving local self- 
 government along with a strong central authority; every 
 community that passed under his sway lost its liberty. 
 Likewise his own great capital, though decrees and treaties 
 ran in its name, and the beautiful golden coins which delight 
 the sight-seer to-day bear "Syracusa," not "Dionysius," 
 upon their face, was made up of subjects, not citizens. And 
 just because his rule rested upon no principle of willing 
 loyalty, because 
 
 The same arts that did gain 
 
 A power, must it maintain, — ■ 
 
 the despot had to fill Sicily with hired soldiers of every race 
 and tongue, men without a fatherland or a tradition, upon 
 
DIONYSIUS THE ELDER 145 
 
 whose purely selfish support he could alone rely, and whose 
 fidelity must be rewarded by lavish gifts of land. Thus the 
 arch-defender of Hellas against the barbarian was himself 
 the greatest introducer of barbarian stocks in an Hellenic 
 land. 
 
 Moreover, he exhausted his empire by a really terrible 
 taxation. The tremendous growth of Syracuse was at the 
 expense of the absolute ruin of many cities and their com- 
 merce, while the Syracusans themselves finally had to pay 
 him twenty per cent of their capital. It is true that the 
 wealth thus forced into his coffers was all spent on political 
 and military objects, not on himself. Never was a tyrant 
 less luxurious or less given to personal excesses of any sort. 
 Untiring in industry, he boasted that he did not know what 
 a leisure hour meant. His was no splendid and delightful 
 court like that of Pisistratus, the favorite haunt of poets 
 and philosophers. Although his one weakness was a craving 
 for literary fame, he could not get on with literary men, and 
 the plain speaking of Plato, the only genius of the first rank 
 who visited his capital, brought a quick and dangerous dis- 
 missal. 
 
 On the other hand, if he was no genial and gorgeous 
 despot, neither was he one of the ogreish variety. In only 
 one or two cases do we hear of unusual severity to individ- 
 uals, and for the most part his treatment of vanquished 
 enemies was one of rather unusual clemency, though calcu- 
 lation of effect and need of ransom-money may have played 
 more part than humanity. Above all, the price he paid for 
 his dazzling success and power was an utter loneliness, 
 bred of never-dying suspicion. Even his brothers and long- 
 tried friends fell sooner or later under the ban; Philistus 
 himself, who had "made" him and been for half a lifetime 
 his most trusted counselor, ended his days in honorable 
 banishment. Cold, shrewd, and intensely practical, without 
 
146 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 a scruple or an illusion, valiant on occasion but by nature 
 more the schemer than the warrior, Dionysius seems in tem- 
 perament much like Louis XI of France, who also had the 
 task, more useful to future ages than popular at the time, 
 of erecting a centralized power on the ruins of local inde- 
 pendence. 
 
EPAMINONDAS 
 
 (Died 362 B.C.) 
 
 Epaminondas was born in Thebes, at least as early as 
 415 B.C., of a very old family — so ancient, indeed, as to be 
 one of those fabled to have sprung from the dragon's teeth 
 sown by Cadmus. He was nevertheless poor and remained 
 so, with serene satisfaction, all his life, dying, the greatest 
 general and statesman in Greece, without enough money to 
 pay his funeral expenses. Wealth, indeed, meant nothing to 
 him; he was unmarried, had no dependents, devoted the 
 first forty years or so of his life to the pleasures of a student 
 and the remaining fifteen to unremitting public service. In 
 almost every respect, except personal valor, he was what 
 the biologists call a "sport" from the Boeotian stock; in- 
 deed, with the exception of the poet Pindar, he was the 
 only man of genius that stock ever produced. Strong bodies 
 and thick heads, rude manners and narrow, selfish views, — 
 such were the characteristics which the word "Bceotian" 
 implied throughout Hellas. Epaminondas branched off, 
 however, even in the gymnasium, where he practiced wrest- 
 ling and running, rather than the pugilism and feats of 
 sheer strength in which his fellows delighted; in music he 
 was as adept with the Athenian lyre as with the much 
 ridiculed Theban flute; but what did more than anything^ 
 to raise and train his mind for the great tasks awaiting him 
 was his study under Lysis, a Pythagorean from Croton, 
 "to whom he was so devoted that, young as he was, he 
 preferred that grave and rigid old gentleman before those 
 of the same age as himself, in his familiarity." By nature, 
 indeed, he seems to have been much more interested in 
 
148 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 scholarly pursuits than in politics, and to have led, under 
 the Spartan domination of his native land, the same sort of 
 detached, meditative, and undisturbed life which satisfied 
 Germans like Goethe in the days of Napoleon. He had a 
 dear friend, however, younger than he and much more 
 active and impulsive, through whom he was eventually 
 drawn into the melee. Pelopidas was, indeed, an irresistibly 
 attractive character. Valiant, impulsive, generous, and af- 
 fectionate, as disinterested as Epaminondas if less scru- 
 pulous, he seemed born, first to prepare the way for his 
 adored elder, and then to act as his most trusted lieutenant. 
 When, in 382, the state of subordination to Sparta which 
 Thebes had reluctantly shared for twenty years with the 
 rest of Greece was exchanged, through the dastardly seizure 
 of the Cadmea by Phcebidas, for one of actual slavery to 
 her garrison, her harmosts, and her partisans (a small gang 
 of Theban oligarchs), Pelopidas, though but a young man, 
 was sufficiently prominent, through his wealth, his activity, 
 and his pronounced anti-Spartan sentiments, to be driven 
 into exile along with other democratic leaders, all of whom 
 found asylum at Athens. Epaminondas, evidently consid- 
 ered a poor student not worth persecuting, stayed at home 
 unmolested, though it was his habit to speak freely of public 
 affairs and to stir up the youths he knew to rivalry, at the 
 games, with their Spartan governors. After three or four 
 years the more fiery spirits among the patriots resolved to 
 put an end to the tyranny or die in the attempt. The dra- 
 matic story of the successful plot of which Pelopidas was 
 the life and soul is told in every history of Greece. That 
 it involved the assassination of the drunken oppressors did 
 not at all shock the Greek conscience, brought up as it was 
 on the praises, in song and story and statue, of similar deeds 
 in the past. Rather was it unusual that Epaminondas, then 
 as always averse to civil violence, did scruple to take part 
 
EPAMINONDAS 149 
 
 in any attempt which would stain his hands with the blood 
 of fellow-citizens. He was quite willing, however, to accept 
 and applaud the result, and, presenting Pelopidas and his 
 band to the assembled people, exhorted them to fight for 
 their country and their gods. 
 
 During the next seven or eight years Thebes was absorbed 
 in two tasks: resistance to the, Spartan armies which tried to 
 punish and reduce her, and the consolidation of Boeotia. 
 From very early days the Boeotian cities had been united 
 in a league, of which Thebes was the president, providing 
 two, and later four, of the eleven Boeotarchs, or federal mag- 
 istrates, who were also generals of the federal army. It was 
 the ideal of the democratic leaders who now controlled 
 Thebes, not merely to revive this league, which Sparta had 
 dissolved, but to convert it into a real state. In local matters 
 the cities were to retain self-government, but the affairs of 
 Boeotia as a whole were to be voted on by general councils and 
 carried out by Boeotarchs, reduced to seven in number and 
 elected no longer from separate towns, but at large. At the 
 same time, the franchise was to be extended from the hoplite- 
 class — about three sevenths of the whole — to all adult 
 citizens. Thebes was to be the capital, but, as an individual 
 city, was to have no more rights than the others. This 
 scheme was agreed to by most of the cities, though Orcho- 
 menus held aloof and Platsea was first forcibly enrolled and 
 then, on suspicion of treason, seized and depopulated. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Spartan invasions had been successfully 
 checked, and the rather desultory fighting had been of good 
 service in training the Theban soldiery. During these cam- 
 paigns, particularly, was developed the famous Sacred 
 Band of three hundred chosen warriors, fighting every man 
 beside his best friend. With this company and a handful of 
 horsemen Pelopidas won the most significant and decisive 
 engagement of the war. On the road between Orchomenus 
 
150 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 and Tegyra lie came suddenly upon two Spartan regiments, 
 advancing through the pass. " We are fallen into our ene- 
 my's hands!" cried one of his men. "And why not they into 
 ours?" he cheerfully replied, and, after sending out his horse 
 to clear the way, charged headlong with the full impact of 
 his band, in close formation. The Spartans, who had never 
 met anything like it, first divided, like water before the 
 prow of a ship, then fairly broke and fled. It was but a small 
 affair, a passing skirmish, so far as numbers went, but its 
 effect was great in encouraging the Thebans and shaking 
 the prestige of the terrible Spartan infantry which had 
 never before, in a set battle, been defeated by an equal, 
 much less by an inferior, force; in its tactics it foreshadowed 
 Leuctra. 
 
 Just what part Epaminondas took in all these affairs we 
 do not know. Plutarch tells of a battle — which cannot 
 possibly have been where and when he places it — in which 
 the friendship between him and Pelopidas was cemented 
 by his heroic rescue of the latter, covered with wounds on 
 a heap of slain. All we can be sure of is that both in war and 
 in politics the former student and philosopher was winning 
 the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens, for in the 
 year 371 he suddenly emerges into full view as Bceotarch. 
 
 Representing his people, he attended the congress at 
 Sparta, at which that city and Athens, both thoroughly 
 tired of a long and meaningless war, agreed to a peace, 
 known as that of Callias, on the same basis as that of the 
 famous King's Peace of 387 — namely, that every Hellenic 
 city should be independent and all confederacies, so far as 
 in any way compulsory, should be dissolved. Sparta was 
 to withdraw her harmosts and garrisons, all the states were 
 to call back any troops they had in the field, and the punish- 
 ment of any state which broke the peace was to be left to 
 purely voluntary enterprise. To these terms all the envoys 
 
EPAMINONDAS 151 
 
 agreed, but after the signatures had been affixed, it appeared 
 that those of Epaminondas and his colleagues were set down 
 as for Thebes only, implying that Boeotia) like the Pelopon- 
 nesus, was not a state but a league, now automatically dis- 
 solved. To admit this would have been to forego the whole 
 work of the last eight years, and Epaminondas was not the 
 man to submit to such defeat. Maintaining, alone among 
 the delegates, an attitude of dignified equality with the* 
 famous old Spartan king who presided over the respectful 
 assembly, he made a ringing speech, setting forth before all 
 Greece the overbearing nature of Spartan policy and de- 
 manding not a nominal autonomy but a real equality as the 
 only basis of a lasting peace. With a sneer Agesilaus asked 
 him whether he did not think that in the name of this 
 precious equality the Boeotian towns should enjoy their 
 independence. The instant reply was a question the daring 
 of which must have sent a shiver through all present, for it 
 challenged the unquestioned dominion of seven hundred 
 years: " Do you not think equality demands the freedom of 
 Laconia?" The old king started from his chair. "Will you," 
 he shouted, "leave each of the Boeotian towns independ- 
 ent?" "Will you," retorted the imperturbable Theban, 
 "leave each of the Laconian towns independent?" Agesilaus 
 struck out the name of Thebes from the treaty, the envoys 
 went home, and Greece was proclaimed at peace. 
 
 The feelings of Boeotia when her envoys returned must 
 have been a strange mixture of pride and anxiety. She had 
 proclaimed her nationality, held up her head with the best, 
 but she was an outlaw. Athens had thrown her over. Every 
 Greek state, at peace with every other, was her potential 
 enemy. It remained possible, however, that none of them 
 would actually undertake the task of forcing her into the 
 general agreement. Sparta alone, in war-weary Greece, 
 had any interest in such police-work, and under the terms 
 
152 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 of the peace just signed she was bound to withdraw the 
 Peloponnesian army, which was at the time, under King 
 Cleombrotus, stationed in Phocis, send home the contin- 
 gents to their various cities, and only then, if she chose, 
 invite voluntary assistance for a campaign against Thebes. 
 This was the line of action which one honorable citizen, 
 named Prothous, urged upon the Spartan assembly, but in 
 vain, for it seemed, says Xenophon in the light of the result, 
 as if an evil spirit were leading them on. The spirit, we can 
 hardly doubt, spoke through the mouth of Agesilaus, whose 
 lifelong hatred of Thebes had been fanned to flame by 
 the unheard-of insolence of her envoy. Word was sent to 
 Cleombrotus not to disband, but to demand once more the 
 autonomy of the Boeotian cities and, if it were refused, to 
 march at once across the border. With a heavy heart — for 
 he was a conscientious man and a leader of the anti-imperial- 
 ist party — Cleombrotus perforce obeyed. As he marched 
 toward Thebes he found himself blocked at Coronea, but 
 going around the enemy by a difficult mountain road, he 
 seized the port of Creusis with twelve Theban ships and, 
 having thus secured his rear, started again, this time in a 
 northerly direction, for the offending city. I 
 
 On a range of low hills overlooking the plain of Leuctra, 
 which was crossed by the road to Thebes, the Boeotian army 
 awaited the invader. There on the little intervale, some 
 half a mile broad, the fate of Thebes must be decided. As to 
 what it would be, there could be little doubt. Not only was 
 the Peloponnesian army nearly twice as large as the Boeotian 
 (roughly, eleven thousand to six thousand), but Sparta's 
 reputation as a conqueror was such that all Greece looked 
 for her overwhelming victory and the wiping out of Thebes 
 from the map. For that city it was indeed a battle for sheer 
 existence, even more than that of Marathon had been for 
 Athens, and, as at Marathon, there were divided counsels 
 
EPAMENONDAS 153 
 
 among the generals. Three Bceotarchs were for withdrawing 
 behind the city walls and taking the chances of a siege. But 
 now the weight of Epaminondas's personality and the con- 
 tagious effect of his courage and confidence made them- 
 selves felt. Heartily seconded, no doubt, by the valiant 
 Pelopidas, he succeeded in winning a decision for a battle 
 where they stood, and was granted the disposition of it. 
 
 That the fight was to be a desperate one he did not at- 
 tempt to disguise; indeed, he boldly declared that none but 
 desperate men were wanted to wage it. Almost in the words 
 of Gideon, "He that is fearful and faint-hearted among you, 
 let him go back," he made proclamation, and the men of 
 Thespise took him at his word. With the remaining thou- 
 sands who that day devoted themselves to victory or death, 
 he formed his line of battle. 
 
 Leuctra (August 5, 371) is one of the decisive battles in 
 Greek history, not only for its immediate political effect, 
 but also because it marks a revolution in military method. 
 For centuries Sparta had set the fashion in tactics, accord- 
 ing to which each army, drawn up in a long shallow line 
 with its best troops on the right wing, pressed forward with 
 a strong tendency to the right, seeking to get round the 
 enemy's left and roll up his fine. The frequent result, of 
 course, was that both right wings were victorious, leaving 
 the battle practically indecisive, unless, as happened at 
 Coronea (394), x they advanced so far as to meet each other 
 and begin all over again. For several years, however, such 
 pitched battles had been rare, as the increased use of hired 
 javelin-men led to a new system of warfare, in which the 
 object was to avoid serious conflict and by clever manoeuvres 
 harass and wear out the enemy. Epaminondas now returned 
 to the pitched battle, but absolutely reversed its tactics. 
 While retaining a strong right wing, he put his main reli- 
 
 ' See pp. 115-116. 
 
154 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 ance on his left, ranged in a column forty shields deep and 
 headed by the Sacred Band under Pelopidas. The excellent 
 Boeotian cavalry was to open battle and clear the field; the 
 right wing, from which the enemy expected the attack, was 
 to hold back, while the left struck with all its force at the 
 enemy's advancing right. The advancing line, therefore, 
 was a slanting one, the attacking end getting far ahead of - 
 the other; so this order came to be known as the oblique. 
 
 Cleombrotus, posted on the opposite hills, had of course 
 no idea of what was coming. With his own line drawn out 
 as usual in a long shallow array, the four Lacedaemonian 
 regiments (twelve men deep and one hundred and ninety- 
 two front) massed at the right, he could have no doubt of 
 success in outflanking and surrounding the Theban army, 
 which presented a front of only half his width. But before 
 his offensive was fairly started came the terrific shock of 
 the Theban phalanx, led by the irresistible fury of the 
 Sacred Band. This time there was no break or flight; the 
 Spartan troops resisted desperately till Cleombrotus himself 
 — the first king to die in battle since Leonidas — fell mor- 
 tally wounded among a thousand Lacedaemonians, of whom 
 four hundred, more than half of all such engaged, were full- 
 blooded Spartans. The left wing, puzzled by the delay of 
 the Boeotian right, had hesitated, then advanced, and been 
 carried down in the defeat. Truly, it was Sparta's Flodden: 
 
 Then might their loss the foemen know, — 
 Their king, their lords, their mightiest, low, 
 They melted from the field. 
 
 The remnants of the beaten army, withdrawn to their 
 trench-guarded camp, debated stormily whether to renew 
 the battle. The Spartans, desperate with the shame of de- 
 feat, would have returned to die upon the field, but the 
 allies could not be trusted, and the bitter resolution to ask 
 
EPAMINONDAS 155 
 
 the burial truce had to be taken. Not venturing to storm 
 the camp, the Boeotians granted the request and erected a 
 stone trophy, the ruins of which mark to this day the grave 
 of Spartan power. 
 
 Thus Bceotia, in just three weeks from the day when she 
 was turned out with contumely from the Greek family, 
 raised herself to the headship of it. It was a sufficiently 
 dizzying experience. Tremendous as the reversal was, how- 
 ever, it would be a mistake to suppose that it made Thebes 
 the altogether dominant power that Sparta had once been. 
 She never ruled over all continental Greece, much less the 
 islands, but for the next eight years she was recognized as 
 the strongest single power and a dominant influence in all 
 Greek affairs. To establish and extend this influence was 
 the absorbing interest of Epaminondas for the rest of his 
 days. 
 
 He began at home. Within the next eighteen months 
 Thebes became, without serious opposition, supreme in 
 Central Greece, with the exception, of course, of Athens, 
 who looked on with growing suspicion and unfriendliness. 
 The only real danger, which loomed from Thessaly, was 
 suddenly removed by the assassination, at the hands of his 
 own subjects, of Jason, the overshadowing despot of Pherse, 
 and Thebes was free to reap the fruits of her victory. As 
 for Bceotia, the pro-Spartans were turned out of Thespise, 
 and Orchomenus, the proud and obstinate old rival of 
 Thebes, was forced into alliance, but not — by the advice 
 of Epaminondas — into the unified state. This alliance 
 spread until it included the Phocians, Malians, both sets of 
 Locrians, and even several cities of Eubcea and Acarnania. 
 Nominally it was, like that which Athens had been forming, 
 a defensive agreement only, but practically each association 
 tended to become a hard and fast league, swung by its 
 leading state. 
 
156 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 The ambition of Epaminondas for his city, however, was 
 by no means bounded by the limits of Central Greece, and 
 indeed the effects of his victory had been even more com- 
 plete and startling in the Peloponnesus. The news of Spar- 
 tan defeat ran like wildfire through the long-subject states, 
 and was the signal for revolt upon revolt and revolution 
 after revolution. For a while the removal of the strong hand 
 seemed to mean simple anarchy. Out of the chaos, however, 
 began to emerge a new Arcadia. The two principal towns of 
 that backward but sturdy and valiant race, Mantinea and 
 Tegea, united for the first time in all their history and formed 
 a Pan-Arcadian union, a federal state with a new capital, 
 built for the purpose and dubbed Megalopolis, the Great 
 City. This new Arcadia was supported by its eastern and 
 western neighbors, Argos and Elis, but the cities in the 
 north of the Peloponnesus still held to Sparta, which of 
 course was bitterly hostile, and it seemed advisable to seek 
 a stronger ally. As Athens held aloof, the invitation went to 
 Thebes, and was welcomed with alacrity by Epaminondas, 
 as offering just the opportunity he was looking for. 
 
 In the early winter of 370-69, Epaminondas and Pelopi- 
 das, at the head of a great allied army, came down into 
 Arcadia, gathering reinforcements at every step. The 
 Spartan forces had been already withdrawn, and a winter 
 campaign was contrary to all custom, but the Arcadians 
 could not bear to lose such a chance of dealing a death blow 
 to their enemy. Epaminondas, in no awe either of precedent 
 or of the prestige of a country never invaded since the Spar- 
 tans themselves took possession of it, led his army across 
 the mountains in four divisions, reunited them, and poured 
 down the valley of the Eurotas. The border outposts were 
 overpowered, the villages of the Perioeci fell off from their 
 allegiance, the Helots rose — it seemed all over with Sparta. 
 Agesilaus, however, put up so bold a front in the unwalled 
 
EPAMINONDAS 157 
 
 city that Epaminondas did not venture to cross the river 
 under the eyes of the garrison, but forded it a little farther 
 down and began to lay waste the country. On the third or 
 fourth day, his scouting parties suffered a defeat which 
 greatly encouraged the defense. His real weakness then 
 became apparent : most of his army, made up from a dozen 
 different states, was undisciplined and intent only on 
 looting. Meanwhile, reinforcements from the north were 
 reaching Sparta by sea and a mountain road over Parnon, 
 and the Theban general, no longer sure of the result of a 
 battle fought under such desperate conditions, turned back, 
 after ravaging southern Laconia, to Arcadia. 
 
 His campaign, though not complete, had been fruitful 
 enough, in all conscience. In two months and a half he had 
 accomplished more than any other general in weary years. 
 For what Leuctra had done for Spartan leadership, the inva- 
 sion of Laconia did for Sparta herself. Not only were all 
 the Pericecan border towns permanently lost to her, but the 
 Helots of the Messenian plain rose, as at the earthquake of 
 464, and this time not to be put down. Amid what wild re- 
 joicings, what prayers and tears, can be imagined, the de- 
 spised and abused serfs of three hundred years were pro- 
 claimed once more citizens of a free state; a city, bearing the 
 long-proscribed name of Messene, was founded by Epami- 
 nondas on the slopes of that Mount Ithome which had seen 
 the last heroic struggle, and word went out to the exiles of the 
 race throughout all Hellas, to return to their liberated home. 
 No deed of Epaminondas so gratified Greek idealism as the 
 restoration of Messenia, for the sight of a purely Greek 
 population held in virtual slavery had long been an anomaly 
 and an offense to the most deep-seated of Hellenic feelings. 
 To Sparta the loss, material as well as moral, was irrepara- 
 ble. One of the two fertile plains upon the produce of which, 
 raised by servile labor, the Spartan families and the Spartan 
 
158 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 communal discipline were supported, was gone forever, and 
 the other was henceforth perpetually subject to raids by 
 day and by night from the bitterest of all enemies. 1 
 
 In February, 369, Epaminondas returned to Thebes, none 
 too soon, for his allies were breaking up and he himself had 
 long overstayed the period of his command. In his absence, 
 however, he had been reelected Bceotarch, and the next 
 summer saw him again in the Peloponnesus. For Sparta 
 was gathering allies against this new power that threatened 
 to step into her shoes. Athens, whose recent friendship 
 with Thebes was but a thin crust over an age-long enmity, 
 now entered into a definite alliance with her no longer 
 dreaded Peloponnesian rival, and lent her not only troops 
 but Chabrias, the best authority on fortifications of his day; 
 thanks to him, an elaborate system of palisades and trenches, 
 backed by an allied army of twenty thousand, barred the 
 Isthmus. Epaminondas, with a much smaller force, got 
 through by a surprise attack, but was able to accomplish 
 little and, after leaving a thousand men to guard the build- 
 ers of Megalopolis, returned without coming to grips with 
 the twenty shiploads of Celtic and Iberian mercenaries 
 whom Sparta's old ally, Dionysius of Syracuse, had sent to 
 her aid, and who, having no awe of the victors of Leuctra, 
 were likely to prove ugly customers. 
 
 Naturally his return from so futile a campaign met with 
 a cool welcome at Thebes. Besides the popular disappoint- 
 ment, there were real differences of purpose between him 
 and the leaders of the democratic majority. For one thing, 
 Epaminondas, however modest and disinterested as an 
 individual, had his mind set, as a Theban, on the same ever- 
 vanishing goal which had tempted on the Athenian Alci- 
 biades and the Spartan Lysander — domination over the 
 
 1 The situation may be partly suggested by supposing that Germany should have succeeded 
 in detaching Ireland from Great Britain and setting her up as a separate nation, armed and 
 financed by the Teutonic Allies and reinforced by large numbers of returning Irish emigrants. 
 
EPAMESTONDAS 159 
 
 Greek world. Before that could be won, Sparta must be 
 not only checked, as she had been, but completely elimi- 
 nated as a power. All his policies, therefore, were shaped to 
 this end. Thebans, on the other hand, were accustomed to 
 take near views: world-power was a new idea to them; 
 Sparta, shut up in the Peloponnesus, seemed no longer 
 worth bothering about; but Athens, the old hostile neighbor 
 just across the line, must always be narrowly watched, and 
 her efforts to hem in Bceotia by extending her possessions 
 in Eubcea and on the Macedonian coast nipped in the bud. 
 For this purpose Pelopidas had been sent north during 
 Epaminondas' second Peloponnesian campaign, to estab- 
 lish Theban influence in Thessary and Macedonia. With 
 the exception, however, of this hostility to Athens, the 
 Theban democracy was pacific. War, which to the Athe- 
 nian sailors and artisans was always attractive, as likely to 
 increase their profits and influence, meant to the Boeotian 
 farmers heavy burdens and small rewards; prosperity at 
 home was much more attractive to them than the em- 
 pire abroad for which their great Bceotarch was scheming. 
 Again, between them and what was left of the old oligarchi- 
 cal party in every city of Bceotia there ran a bitter feud, 
 breaking out more than once in ruthless executions of such 
 aristocratic leaders as they were able to lay hands on. 
 Against such treatment Epaminondas, not only personally 
 humane, but in his innermost nature far more sympathetic 
 with his political opponents than with his political associ- 
 ates, always protested, and he sometimes succeeded in balk- 
 ing Demos of bis prey, as when he admitted to ransom as 
 prisoners of war, instead of holding for trial as traitors, a 
 whole band of Theban exiles taken in one of the Pelopon- 
 nesian battles. 
 
 All these smoldering causes of discontent burst out 
 after his inglorious return, and the demagogue Menekleidas 
 
160 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 even brought the two great captains to trial, — for Pelopi- 
 das, though much more characteristically Theban and per- 
 sonally popular than his friend, was far too loyal not to 
 share his bad as well as his good fortunes. The conduct of 
 the trial is obscure, but the result, of course, as far as 
 punishment was concerned, was certain — whether or not 
 Epaminondas actually made the court break up in laughter, 
 as Nepos asserts, by asking to have written on his tomb that 
 he was put to death by the Thebans for having forced them 
 to beat the Spartans at Leuctra. Although acquitted, how- 
 ever, he and Pelopidas both failed of reelection as Bceo- 
 tarchs, and in 368 there was no Theban invasion of the 
 Peloponnesus. 
 
 Instead, Pelopidas was sent north again to try what diplo- 
 macy could do to check the alarming increase of Athenian 
 influence at the disreputable court of Macedon. On his 
 return from making a satisfactory arrangement with the 
 regent, Ptolemy, he and his colleague Ismenias were seized, 
 in defiance of the most sacred of all international laws, by 
 the raging tyrant, Alexander of Pherse. Even the pacifists 
 of Thebes realized that such a man must be dealt with by 
 force, and an army was sent into Thessaly. But the new 
 democratic generals were not up to their work, and the 
 whole force, outmanceuvered, would have been lost had not 
 the troops mutinied and unanimously elected Epaminondas, 
 who was serving as a private in the ranks, to the command. 
 His skill extricated them from a very dangerous position 
 and brought them safely home. Thebes had learned her 
 lesson; she fined the incompetent generals and promptly 
 reelected Epaminondas as Bceotarch. With a new levy he 
 hurried to the rescue of Pelopidas, which had to be effected 
 with great dexterity, since Alexander, who seems to have 
 been a regular story-book ogre, would, if driven to despera- 
 tion, have wreaked his wrath on his prisoners. Thebes got 
 
EPAMINONDAS 161 
 
 back her unlucky diplomats and freed the city of Pharsalus 
 from the tyrant, but otherwise left him to go on massacring 
 his countrymen at pleasure. A strong and united Thessaly 
 without need of Theban aid was no part of her policy. 
 
 Of the general war, meanwhile, every one was getting 
 tired, and after an abortive congress had been held at 
 Delphi, the chief states took the step of sending represent- 
 atives all the way to Susa, to ask each the authority of the 
 Great King for such settlement as she desired. Pelopidas, 
 as envoy for Thebes, made much the best impression; his 
 own attractive and manly bearing, the prestige of his coun- 
 try's recent victories, and the anything but glorious fact 
 that Thebes had never in her history fought against Persia, 
 all combined to win just the decision he was sent to seek: 
 Sparta must recognize the independence of Messenia, but 
 Thebes need not dissolve the federal state of Boeotia; 
 Athens should recall her fleet, relinquishing her attempt to 
 regain Amphipolis; even on a matter regarding which Persia 
 could have no interest or knowledge, a border quarrel be- 
 tween Elis and Arcadia, Thebes got a decision for the side 
 she favored, which, significantly, was not the Arcadian. 
 
 For Arcadia was "feeling her oats." The largest, most 
 vigorous state in southern Greece, proud alike of her de- 
 scent, alone among the Peloponnesians, from the original 
 inhabitants, and of her recent achievements, she felt quite 
 confident of her power to take care of herself even against 
 Sparta, of whose armies in the past, she was well aware, she 
 had herself supplied the best troops next to the Lacedae- 
 monians themselves. Thebes had been a kind friend and 
 would always be a welcome ally, but Arcadia saw no reason 
 why she should exchange one domination for another and 
 take orders, even from the victors of Leuctra. One cannot 
 help sympathizing with this attitude and feeling that 
 Epaminondas an d the war nartv in Th ebes made a great 
 
162 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 mistake in following the same old road which Sparta had 
 trodden to her destruction. 
 
 There was no excuse as yet for actual conflict with Arcadia, 
 but in 367 Epaminondas invaded the Peloponnesus for the 
 third time, to secure the adhesion of the Achaean cities along 
 the northern coast, on which he suspected the Arcadian 
 League of having its eye. This object was easily obtained, 
 but, contrary to the policy of Epaminondas, the democratic 
 party at Thebes insisted on setting up democratic constitu- 
 tions in these cities and expelling the ruling oligarchies on 
 the charge of being pro-Spartan. The result was to make 
 them so; the exiles, banded together, won back the cities, 
 drove out the Theban harmosts, and attached Achaia 
 firmly to the Spartan side. Thus, though by no fault of his 
 own, this campaign of Epaminondas was without result, 
 except that of straining yet further the relations between 
 Thebes and Arcadia. 
 
 For the next four years Thebes let the Peloponnesus alone, 
 realizing more and more that her essential rivalry was with 
 Athens. As a part of this rivalry it was important to secure 
 supremacy in Thessaly, and Pelopidas, burning with desire 
 to avenge his mistreatment, was so eager to lead an army, 
 at the request of Thessalian exiles, against the tyrant of 
 Pherse, that when an eclipse led to the disbanding of the 
 national levy, he started off with three hundred volunteers 
 and a band of mercenaries. In a fierce battle at Cynos- 
 cephalse, he was the life and soul of his little army, turned 
 defeat into victory, but, carried away by a passion of rage 
 at sight of his hated adversary, rushed blindly after him, 
 shouting out challenges to single combat, and fell, pierced 
 by a hundred darts. Profound as was the grief of the army, 
 which passed the night in fasting and darkness as if the 
 victory had been a defeat, it was outdone, at least in clamor, 
 by that of the Thessalian cities, who felt that they had lost 
 
EPAMINONDAS 163 
 
 their only friend and protector against the wild beast of 
 Pherse. The next year, however, a Theban army avenged 
 the hero and reduced Alexander to the government of his 
 own city. At the same time, a conspiracy against the democ- 
 racy, engineered by Theban exiles living in Orchomenus, 
 led to a bloody revenge on Thebes' old Boeotian rival. The 
 ancient town was razed to the ground, its men were slain 
 for resisting the decree, and the rest of the population sold 
 into slavery. This cruel deed, which horrified all Greece, 
 showed what the Theban democracy really was, when not 
 held in check by its one great man. 
 
 For Epaminondas was far away at the time. The rapid 
 spread of the new maritime empire of Athens had alarmed 
 him for the supremacy and even the safety of Thebes, since, 
 if Athens were allowed to recover Eubcea, Boeotia would be 
 completely shut in on the northeast and constantly threat- 
 ened. Characteristically, he had not contented himself 
 with a defensive policy, but had conceived the ambitious 
 idea of meeting and outdoing Athens on her own element 
 and making Thebes what Athens had been a century before, 
 the mistress of the sea. In his own rather showy phrase, he 
 would "transplant the Propylaea from the Acropolis and 
 set it up on the Cadmea." It may be seriously questioned 
 whether this policy of Epaminondas's was not a grave 
 error of judgment. Some resistance to the threat of encircle- 
 ment was doubtless called for, but there was nothing in the 
 character and circumstances of the Boeotians, a thoroughly 
 agricultural people with hardly any commerce, to fit them 
 for sea power. The assembly, however, was persuaded to 
 try the new venture, a Locrian port was annexed for the- 
 purpose, and Epaminondas, with a hundred triremes has- 
 tily built and manned, sailed for the Propontis in 364. 
 
 The first naval campaign of Thebes — and she was never 
 to undertake another — was successful enough. Epaminon- 
 
164 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 das and the Athenian admiral, Timocrates, kept carefully 
 out of each other's way, and there was no fighting to speak 
 of, but many discontented members of the new Athenian 
 league seized the opportunity to revolt, the Eubcean cities 
 made definite alliance with Thebes, and Epaminondas was 
 able, unopposed, to visit the Bosphorus and make a treaty 
 with Byzantium, thus threatening Athens in her most vital 
 nerve, the grain supply from the Black Sea. 
 
 On his return, he found that Peloponnesian affairs were 
 once more in the foreground. The Arcadian League, left to 
 itself and no longer held together by pressing danger, was 
 showing a natural tendency to fall apart. War with Elis 
 had led to the scandal of a battle among the very temples 
 of Olympia, in the midst of the festival itself, and need of 
 money to pay the federal army, to the yet greater scandal 
 of laying hands on the sacred treasury. Mantinea, already 
 disaffected, had taken the opportunity to withdraw on high 
 moral grounds from the League and was sure sooner or later 
 to drift into the Spartan alliance. Thebes felt it time to 
 take a hand, and, by what seems to have been a plan ap- 
 proved at headquarters, the commander of her garrison at 
 Tegea seized the moment when peace with Elis was being 
 celebrated with general rejoicings to imprison the leaders 
 of the anti-Theban party from the various cities. He missed 
 the Mantineans, however, who were his chief object, and 
 was easily frightened into giving up the rest. It shows the 
 difference between public and private morality that Epami- 
 nondas, when complaint was made at Thebes, approved the 
 arrest and condemned the release. Arcadia, moreover, he 
 declared, having asked the help of Thebes against Elis, had 
 had no right to make peace without her consent. In short, 
 Thebes, under the leadership of her great Bceotarch, had 
 determined to be obeyed in the Peloponnesus or know the 
 reason why. In the summer of 362, Epaminondas, at the 
 
EPAMINONDAS 165 
 
 head of a great army, representing nearly all the states of 
 Central Greece, marched southward for the fourth and last 
 time. 
 
 The Peloponnesian allies of the Thebans were Argos, 
 Messenia, and the democratic members — Tegea, Megalop- 
 olis, and many smaller towns — of the disrupted Arcadian 
 League. The others, who, led by Mantinea, also claimed to 
 be "the League," were assisted by Elis, Achaia, and, above 
 all, Sparta, and expected help from Athens. Megara and 
 Corinth remained neutral. Thus not only were nearly all 
 the states of Greece involved, but they were arranged in 
 layers, so to speak. Sparta was separated by an almost con- 
 tinuous line of Messenians, southern Arcadians, and Argives 
 from her north-Peloponnesian allies, and they again from 
 Athens by the neutral cities of the Isthmus. Likewise, 
 Epaminondas, in order to make connections, through the 
 Isthmus and Argos, with his southern friends, must pass a 
 hostile Athens on his flank and leave a row of enemies 
 behind. 
 
 His first decision was to settle with the Athenians by 
 themselves, if possible, by holding Nemea, which blocked 
 the only road from Athens to Mantinea. The Athenians 
 balked him, however, by deciding to go by sea to Laconia, 
 and he therefore went on to Tegea, the citadel of the whole 
 Peloponnesus and meeting-place of all its chief roads, by 
 which supplies of men and provisions poured in from all sides, 
 while he, firmly planted on the direct, though not the only, 
 road from Sparta to Mantinea, waited for the much-desired 
 decisive battle. 
 
 One detachment of Spartans had already gone north dur- 
 ing the Theban halt at Nemea. A second, under old Agesi- 
 laus himself, started out to join it and the Arcadians at 
 Mantinea, avoiding Tegea by taking the circuitous route. 
 Epaminondas, well served by his spies, heard by noon of 
 
166 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the movement and resolved on a surprise. His army, con- 
 trary to precedent, was encamped inside the town and could 
 be quickly and secretly mobilized. After an afternoon spent 
 in apparent preparations for an attack on the Arcadian 
 position, he marched at twilight in the opposite direction, 
 hoping to fall on a Sparta as helpless as "a nest of young 
 birds." This was no mere mischievous raid; Sparta's con- 
 stitution was such that the fall of the city would mean the 
 fall of her whole government — the keystone would be 
 knocked out of the arch of the hostile alliance. The plan 
 failed, however. Agesilaus, getting word of the direction 
 of the Theban march, turned back on his steps, sending a 
 runner ahead to call the city guard to arms. He and 
 Epaminondas had a race for it — thirty-five miles, up and 
 down hill, in the clear cool summer night — and, not having 
 to cross the Eurotas, he got into the city first. It was about 
 eight in the morning when the Theban attacked, but one 
 assault convinced him that his plan had failed; without the 
 loss of a moment he formed another. Drawing back his 
 weary troops across the river, he gave them an afternoon's 
 rest and at nightfall started north again, leaving his watch- 
 fires burning and a few cavalry to make familiar sounds. 
 The main army from Mantinea, he knew, would be by this 
 time well on its way to the support of Agesilaus; if he could 
 reach that city the next morning, he would find it unde- 
 fended. Immediately, therefore, on reaching Tegea, he sent 
 forward the cavalry, without a moment's rest, to fall upon 
 the unsuspecting town, whose laborers were gathering in 
 the harvest in the open fields around. This raid, too, was 
 dictated by high policy, for Mantinea was the chief strong- 
 hold of the enemy and, taken, would complete the girdle 
 around Sparta. This time it did seem that nothing short of 
 a miracle could thwart his plan — but the miracle was to 
 happen. The Athenians, having once more changed their 
 
EPAMINONDAS 167 
 
 minds, had started south by land, and an advance-detach- 
 ment of cavalry had just that moment reached Mantinea 
 and were taking up quarters in the city. When the alarm 
 was sounded the gallant six hundred threw themselves on 
 their tired horses and without a moment's hesitation charged 
 the more numerous but equally weary and utterly surprised 
 Boeotians and drove them headlong back. 
 
 It is an extraordinary proof of the influence of Epaminon- 
 das that such fatigues and disappointments do not seem to 
 have shaken the morale of his army in the least. After a 
 few days' rest, during which the enemy troops which had 
 gone to Sparta returned to their position at Mantinea, he 
 made ready for the pitched battle which had now become 
 inevitable. In order to understand this battle, which in 
 tactics and in the number of men and cities involved was the 
 greatest so far fought in Greece, it is necessary to have a 
 clear picture of the country in which it was fought. 
 
 The plain of Mantinea, in which the city of that name 
 stood at the northern end and that of Tegea at the southern, 
 is about eighteen miles long and averages about five miles 
 wide, but near the middle two precipitous mountains jut- 
 ting out, Kapnistra on the east and Mytika on the west, 
 from the ranges that enclose the whole valley, narrow it to 
 a pass of hardly more than a mile in width; the whole, 
 therefore, has something the shape of an hourglass. In this 
 pass the shrewd old campaigner, Agesilaus, placed his 
 twenty thousand men to great advantage. His chief danger, 
 that of being outflanked by the superior numbers of the 
 enemy, was obviated by the cliffs on either hand, for his 
 line, drawn up at ordinary depth, just sufficed to hold the 
 pass from side to side. Behind him two roads ran back 
 to his base at Mantinea through a thick wood which pro- 
 vided a shady camp, much needed in the broiling mid- 
 summer days. From the heights above, moreover, his 
 
168 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 watchmen could observe every movement in the southern 
 plain. 
 
 The task of Epaminondas was thus very difficult, for it 
 was not merely to defeat the enemy and drive him back 
 upon his base; what was wanted was a decision, which could 
 only be obtained by capturing that base and destroying or 
 breaking up the army. The eyes of the born general saw 
 his only chance; if he could get possession of the road which 
 ran through the right wing of the enemy, close under 
 Mytika, he might from there break through that right wing, 
 get between it and Mantinea, and drive the whole army 
 into the roadless mountains to the northeast. To do this, the 
 "oblique" tactics of Leuctra, the division of his army into 
 an attacking wing in which all its energies were collected, 
 and a defensive one, to be kept back, if possible, until it 
 could be used to defeat a broken enemy, were obviously 
 necessary, and geographical reasons determined that again 
 the attack should be made from the left. For its full effect, 
 however, this attack must be a surprise, and here the genius 
 of Epaminondas shows most clearly. 
 
 On July 5, 362, lining up, about five miles from the enemy, 
 at the customary depth of fourteen files, he made as if to 
 advance directly upon him, but soon began to wheel to the 
 left and approach a low, gently sloping hill a little south of 
 Mytika. The enemy, fully expecting an attack, was in his 
 best order: the Mantineans, being on the home grounds, 
 held the right wing, the post of honor, with the Spartans 
 next to them; the Athenians were on the left, and the lesser 
 contingents of the other allies filled up the center. Watching 
 with surprise the side-stepping of the Theban troops, and 
 seeing them make for the hill, they concluded that the con- 
 fused looking movements on the easy slope were those of 
 encampment and that there would be no fight that day; 
 relaxing discipline, therefore, they broke ranks, and many 
 
EPAMINONDAS 169 
 
 fell back into the grateful shelter of the wood. Meanwhile 
 Epaminondas by these misunderstood movements was 
 massing his six thousand Bceotian hoplites into one phalanx, 
 led by a front line composed entirely of officers, with whom 
 he took his own place. Yet farther to the left, a similar deep 
 column of cavalry was to charge the enemy's horse. There 
 was no need to tell his right wing to keep back, since from 
 the nature of the ground and direction of the march it was 
 about a mile farther from the foe. Against the only possible 
 danger, a flank attack by the unopposed Athenians on his 
 advancing left, he provided by sending a detachment across 
 the plain to hold a spur of Kapnistra which threatened their 
 own flank. Thus by the simple means of the oblique march 
 Epaminondas had attained all his objects at once — posi- 
 tion, deception of the enemy, and time to rest and reform. 
 Every single movement had had its purpose and its effect. 
 
 Then came the charge. In feverish haste the astonished 
 foemen leaped to their horses and their arms. Even under 
 such a shock Agesilaus did not lose his head, but, as his right 
 hastily formed to meet the attack, pushed his Spartans in 
 front of the Mantineans, to thicken the resistance and bear 
 the first brunt. The strife was tremendous and heroic; in 
 the melie Epaminondas himself went down. Carried from 
 the field with a spear-head in his breast, he faintly asked for 
 his two best captains, and when told that they too were 
 slain, he murmured, "Then make peace," and drawing out 
 the spear, fell back dead. 
 
 Never was news so literally paralyzing. All had gone 
 well, the enemy's horse were in full retreat, the hard-fighting 
 right was shattered, the left had been held in check, nothing 
 remained but to close in and complete the victory. Instead, 
 the hoplites stood as if turned to stone, and the pursu- 
 ing cavalry actually halted and fled back as if themselves 
 pursued. Only a few peltasts, perhaps out of reach of the 
 
170 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 tidings, pushed their way across to the Athenians and were 
 slain. Each side erected a trophy, each side removed its 
 own dead; what was within a moment of being one of the 
 greatest victories in history stands as a drawn battle. And 
 with Epaminondas fell at the same time the hopes and pre- 
 tensions of Thebes in the Greek world; peace was made on 
 the basis of the status quo ante, and the great army went 
 home. 
 
 It has seemed worth while to give so much space to the 
 military operations of Epaminondas because it is upon them 
 that his greatness really rests. As a statesman he was com- 
 monplace and built nothing permanent, but as a commander 
 he is the direct teacher of Philip and Alexander, the fore- 
 runner of Caesar and Frederick the Great and Napoleon. 
 The secret of all these was concentration, striking with one's 
 whole force at a chosen spot in the enemy's position, and, 
 with them all, the means to this end was superior mobility 
 — extraordinarily rapid and unexpected marches. To put 
 it in another way, Epaminondas was the first to treat an 
 army as an organism. Before him it had been an aggregate 
 of thousands of warriors, acting as a unit in delivering the 
 attack but fighting thereafter thousands of little individual 
 battles; under him, every division had its own specific task, 
 acted as a member of the whole body. The great lesson of 
 specialization, which has revolutionized our mechanical and 
 business life, was first applied by Epaminondas to the art 
 of war. 
 
DEMOSTHENES 
 
 (Died 322 b.c.) 
 
 In the middle of the fourth century before Christ, Athens, 
 although in reality no longer a great power, was still the 
 chief city of Greece and incomparably the most delightful. 
 The glorious works of the Periclean age no longer stood out, 
 as they had done a century before, against a background of 
 low and huddled houses, among which no stranger could 
 have picked out by its size or ornament the residence of a 
 Themistocles, a Cimon, or a Nicias, but private luxury was 
 catching up with public magnificence, and stately mansions 
 and beautiful gardens proclaimed the right of the rich to 
 enjoy their own. Business was extremely good; in both 
 trade and manufactures Athens easily maintained her lead. 
 The boast which Pericles had made when he called her the 
 school of Hellas was now literally fulfilled, for strangers 
 from every corner of the world flocked to her, as we should 
 to a combination of Rome, Paris, and the German universi- 
 ties, for their artistic and scholarly education. The year- 
 round succession of stately and elaborate festivals, on which 
 the wealth of the state and of individuals was ungrudgingly 
 spent, and, above all, the superb representation of the great- 
 est tragedies were of themselves a rare attraction and disci- 
 pline to all seekers after culture, as well as an endless enter- 
 tainment to the Athenian populace, whose theater money 
 was provided from the Theoric Fund. Equally dramatic in 
 a cheaper, but still, by our standards, an amazingly artistic 
 fashion were the debates at the weekly meetings of the 
 Assembly and the ingenious and often highly rhetorical 
 arguments made before the great citizen juries. Serious 
 
172 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 students, meanwhile, came for the unrivaled opportunity 
 of listening to Plato's lectures on philosophy in the grounds 
 of the Academy or working under Isocrates, the world- 
 famous professor of rhetoric, who, like Jowett of Balliol, 
 exerted a lasting influence over not only the style but the 
 thought of the ablest young men of his day. 
 
 One of the marked features of Athenian life of this time 
 is that it was essentially peaceful. Technically, to be sure, 
 Athens was at war most of the time, but the hostilities, 
 brought on chiefly by her "far-flung" commercial and im- 
 perial interests, were waged for the most part at a distance 
 and by hired troops. In nearly two generations the militia, 
 which, indeed, had shrunk to less than half its former 
 numbers, had been hardly ever called out, the required 
 military drill had fallen into disuse, and party-leaders were 
 no longer generals but pure civilians. This division of func- 
 tions had the advantage that successful politicians were no 
 longer feared and ostracized as possible tyrants, but the 
 great practical disadvantage that measures involving serious 
 military operations might be urged and carried by men who 
 had no experience in such matters and no responsibility for 
 putting them into effect. It is very significant that the single 
 exception to this rule, Phocion, being a practical and efficient 
 soldier, was the chief "pacifist" of Athens, since he knew 
 better than any one else how little his countrymen could be 
 relied on to follow up their words with deeds. For Athens, 
 the ancient champion of Hellas, had undeniably grown 
 "soft." There was a marked tendency, as in our own day, 
 among the finer spirits, to withdraw from politics altogether, 
 as from a confused and dirty game, and give themselves up 
 to the satisfactions of a retired and cultivated life. The 
 well-to-do, dreading the burdens of war-taxation and look- 
 ing with a cynical eye upon the volatile and pleasure-loving 
 multitude, preferred a moderate, defensive policy that 
 
DEMOSTHENES 173 
 
 should be good for business, and the multitude itself, while 
 rejoicing in a good deal of national swagger and always 
 pleased to hear of themselves as the true sons of the heroes 
 of Marathon, were not at all anxious, when it came to the 
 point, to exchange their agreeable and easy life for the hard- 
 ships of daily drill and campaign fare. 
 
 The statesman who represented most accurately the 
 ideas of the wealthy, conservative class, while keeping, by 
 his splendid expenditure of the Theoric (Festival) Fund, the 
 good will of the people, was Eubulus, a thoroughly able and 
 respectable man and an excellent financier, who for several 
 years directed the policy of Athens on a strictly realistic 
 basis. In this he was strongly supported by the unflattering 
 but absolutely trusted Phocion, and by a group of younger 
 men, of whom JSschines is the best known, "practical poli- 
 ticians" in a much lower sense. Such was the Athens and 
 such the easy-going, disillusioned society in which there 
 came to the front a new statesman, one to whom dreams were 
 the only realities and the city of Themistocles and Aristides 
 was the only true Athens, worth living and dying for. 
 
 This was Demosthenes, son of a well-to-do manufacturer 
 of the same name, who died leaving two young children to 
 the care of guardians whom he had taken all pains to attach 
 to their interests. The boy grew up sickly and unattractive, 
 and the over-anxiety of his mother, holding him back from 
 the athletic sports which meant so much to Greek youth, 
 intensified the unsociable temper which kept him through 
 life a man apart; he never learned to be a "good fellow." 
 Otherwise, his education was the usual one, and we know of 
 his boyhood only his early and absorbing interest in oratory. 
 He would beg his tutor to take him to hear the famous 
 speakers of the day, and hang fascinated on their words, 
 dreaming of the time when he too should sway great audi- 
 ences and move themJtoJears andJaufihter. 
 
174 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 The first rude shock to his dreams was the discovery 
 when, at sixteen, he should have received his estate, that 
 his trustees had made away with most of it. With the help 
 of Isseus, the best lawyer of the day, Demosthenes made a 
 long and spirited fight in the courts, but, though he won his 
 cases, he succeeded in recovering hardly more than one 
 twelfth of the property and found it advisable to increase 
 his income by his own exertions. The profession most con- 
 genial to his tastes was that of advocate, to which he de- 
 voted himself for several years. Theoretically, an Athenian 
 was still expected to plead his own case, and professional 
 lawyers were in somewhat the same anomalous position as 
 college "coaches" to-day. But in practice most men found 
 them quite necessary, and the business flourished, the 
 "logograph" (advocate) either supplying the speech for his 
 client to read, or himself appearing in court after a few words 
 of introduction by the latter. As a writer of speeches the 
 young Demosthenes soon excelled, his "private orations" 
 showing not only effective rhetoric but considerable dra- 
 matic imagination, shaping his style to fit the various char- 
 acters and circumstances of his clients. 
 
 When it came to pleading in court, however, he found 
 himself at a mortifying disadvantage. In his solitary and 
 sedentary youth he had grown up awkward and short- 
 breathed, his enunciation was extremely poor, and he was 
 even subject to fits of nervous stammering. The real char- 
 acter of the man first appears in the extraordinary energy 
 and persistency with which he applied himself to overcome 
 these defects. He gave himself a thorough gymnastic train- 
 ing, he studied gesture and pose with an actor friend, he 
 conquered his faults of breathing and enunciation by vari- 
 ous quaint expedients, such as declaiming while r unnin g or 
 climbing, and with his mouth full of pebbles, — most of all 
 by incessant practice in recitation as well as in phrasing, 
 
DEMOSTHENES 175 
 
 making not only every speech he heard, but every casual 
 conversation, a text for criticism and re-wording. It was 
 doubtless due to the recollection of his early failures and 
 the stories that got about regarding his peculiar efforts that 
 he whom posterity has held the greatest of all orators was 
 considered by his contemporaries a most excellent speaker, 
 indeed, but one whose orations "smelt of the lamp" in com- 
 parison with the spontaneous outbursts of more naturally 
 gifted men. 
 
 While oratory had thus fascinated Demosthenes from 
 his childhood, it had been by no means his only study. He 
 was a great reader of history, especially that of Thucydides, 
 and from his reading he imbibed that idea of the glorious 
 mission and responsibility of Athens which became the 
 guide, for good or ill, of his political career. It appears even 
 in the semi-political speeches, otherwise not remarkable, 
 which he delivered before the law courts in 354: — 
 
 "Never to this day," he breaks out, "has this People 
 been eager for the acquisition of money; but for honor it has 
 been eager as for nothing else in the world. It is a sign of 
 this that when Athens had money in greater abundance than 
 any other Hellenic people, she spent it all in the cause of 
 honor; her citizens contributed from their private resources, 
 and she never shrank from danger when glory was to be 
 won. Therefore she has those eternal and abiding posses- 
 sions — the memory of her actions, and the beauty of the 
 offerings dedicated in honor of them — the Porticoes which 
 you see, the Parthenon, the Colonnades, the Dockyards." 
 
 With such views Demosthenes, now thirty years old, first 
 addressed the Assembly. The situation of Athens at the 
 moment must be briefly summarized. The so-called Social 
 War, caused by the revolt of her maritime allies, had recently 
 ended (355 B.C.) with the permanent secession of Byzantium 
 and the principal islands and the loss by death or disgrace 
 
176 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 of all her best commanders. The financial strain had been 
 great, and it was about this time that Eubulus, who believed 
 a peace policy absolutely necessary for recuperation, seems 
 to have procured, as a safeguard against any rash enterprise, 
 the passage of a law applying all surpluses to the Theoric 
 Fund. Only after the specific repeal of this law by the special 
 court created for such business, would it be possible to vote 
 any unusual sum for war purposes. 
 
 Eubulus was not without reason for his anxiety. Great 
 preparations in Persia, really directed against Egypt, aroused 
 alarm in Greece and led some hot-heads to propose attack- 
 ing the huge Asiatic empire. A year later, the cities Epami- 
 nondas had founded in the Peloponnesus, Megalopolis and 
 Messene, fearing aggression from Sparta, asked the aid of 
 Athens as well as Thebes, and again, in 351, there was a 
 call to assist the exiled democrats of Rhodes against the 
 Queen of Caria. On each of these occasions Demosthenes 
 spoke, and these orations, though by no means equal to his 
 later efforts, are interesting as witnesses to his early grasp 
 of the principles by which he was to guide his whole political 
 life. Although in the first he opposed, and in the other two 
 advocated, active intervention, his appeal in all was to the 
 sense of national and individual obligation — the duty of 
 Athens to live up to the generous ideals of her past as the 
 champion abroad, as well as at home, of liberty and democ- 
 racy, and the corresponding duty — much less palatable — 
 of every citizen to make the personal sacrifices necessary 
 to the carrying out of such a policy. It is this insistence, 
 from the beginning to the end of his career, upon the full 
 realization by the people that the price of glory is hard work 
 and sacrifice, which lifts Demosthenes, even at his most 
 unreasonable and inflammatory moments, far above the 
 ordinary "jingo" agitator. 
 
 That he could be very unreasonable is evident when we 
 
DEMOSTHENES 177 
 
 observe that the speeches for the Megalopolitans and the 
 Rhodians, in which he urged Athens to scatter her forces 
 by expeditions into the Peloponnesus and oversea, were 
 made at the very time when all Greece, and Athens, through 
 her indispensable grain route, more than any other state, 
 was threatened by the miraculously sudden rise of an over- 
 whelming power on the north. Within eight years a great 
 military and political genius had transformed Macedonia 
 from a negligible inland state of wild highlanders and primi- 
 tive peasants into a great kingdom, possessing a coast line 
 stretching, interrupted only by the towns of the Olynthian 
 Confederacy, from the Propontis to Thermopylae, a treasure 
 in the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus, greater than any 
 other state west of Persia could command, and, alone among 
 Hellenic powers, a national standing army, completely organ- 
 ized in all branches of the service, and ready for use at all 
 seasons and under all conditions. This army, moreover, 
 had two rare advantages: it was recruited from a fresh, war- 
 like race, which, like our Teutonic ancestors, lived by hunt- 
 ing, fighting, and drinking, — a man was not held fit to take 
 his place among his fellows at the feast till he had slain an 
 enemy and a wild boar, — and it was wielded by one su- 
 preme command, responsible to no interfering politicians 
 or shifting popular will. When it is added that Philip was as 
 crafty as he was valiant, and past master of all the arts of 
 bribery, intrigue, and secret service, it will be seen that 
 before such a foe the Greece of the fourth century, divided, 
 individualist, sophisticated, and essentially civilian, was ab- 
 solutely fated to go down. 
 
 Yet it could hardly be expected to realize that fact, and 
 Demosthenes never realized it. The rise of Philip had been 
 simply too rapid to keep up with. As, one after another, the 
 allies of Athens along the north coast of the Mgean had 
 fallen into his hands, she had waked to the danger always 
 
178 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 just too late. Only in 352, when Philip, now master of the 
 Thessalians, who had rashly invited him to their aid against 
 the Phocians in the wretched "Sacred War," was actually 
 advancing upon Thermopylae, had the allies of Phocis — ■ 
 Athens, Sparta, and Achaias — suddenly roused themselves, 
 and Eubulus in particular, for all his pacifism, had shown 
 himself most patriotically active in sending out a force of 
 citizen volunteers to hold the pass in such strength that 
 Philip had prudently retired. It was only, however, to strike 
 in another place and one alarmingly near the exposed nerve 
 of Athens. His siege of a Thracian fortress close to the 
 precious Chersonese aroused great excitement, and the con- 
 stant depredations of his fleet upon Athenian commerce 
 became too much to be borne with any patience. In 351, 
 Demosthenes, finding no older man ready to propose a 
 definite measure to the exasperated but vague Assembly, 
 came forward with the first of his really great orations, 
 known as the First Philippic. Never, perhaps, does he show 
 to more real advantage than in this early speech, in which 
 he not only appeals generally, as before, to the patriotism 
 and sense of responsibility of his fellow-citizens, but pre- 
 sents to them a well thought-out and practicable plan. This 
 was, briefly, to maintain two permanent forces — one, 
 wholly of citizens, for home service, ready to repel instantly 
 any attack upon Greece itself; the other, of which at least 
 one fourth should also be of citizens, to be quartered, sum- 
 mer and winter, among the islands of the north JSgean and 
 thence conduct an aggressive warfare upon Philip's own 
 coast. With such a force, wielded by a steady, consistent 
 policy, capable of taking the initiative against the enemy 
 instead of, as the orator described it, running up and down 
 after him like an unskillful boxer swinging his arms to guard 
 whatever spot has been already struck, Athens might, con- 
 sidering the command she still had of the sea, have seri- 
 
DEMOSTHENES 179 
 
 ously interfered with Philip's plans; at all events, the policy 
 of Demosthenes was the only sensible alternative to peace 
 with Macedon. For neither alternative, however, was the 
 people ready. It could not bring itself to make the effort 
 necessary for the one; it was not willing to yield its long 
 claim to Amphipolis, now in the hands of Philip, by adopt- 
 ing the other. So the war dragged ineffectually on. 
 
 By 349, Philip was ready to perfect his coast line by 
 absorbing Olynthus and the lesser cities of the Chalcidian 
 peninsula. The appeals of Olynthus for aid, seconded by 
 three mighty speeches from Demosthenes, did bring some 
 action on the part of Athens, but it was inadequate and 
 delayed, so that the whole of Chalcidice fell into the hands 
 of the Macedonian, who sold as slaves the inhabitants 
 of Olynthus, including many Athenian citizens, and wiped 
 out of existence thirty-two towns. Athens had moved too 
 late, but she was beginning to wake up and to pay some 
 attention to the grave and stirring admonitions of the 
 young orator who never ceased from warning her of the 
 peril from the north and of the effort necessary to save her 
 from it. For the first time, in one of these "Olynthiacs," 
 Demosthenes ventured to point out the step which must be 
 taken before Athens could really exert her full force — the 
 repeal of the law concerning the Theoric Fund; and though 
 the suggestion was not followed at the time, the seed of the 
 idea had been sown. For the rest, the most notable points 
 in these speeches are the dangerous kind of idealism which 
 led the speaker to underestimate the ability and character 
 of Philip in his confidence that power won by such evil 
 means must be doomed to defeat, and the moral courage 
 and frankness with which he insisted on the necessity of 
 universal service in one form or another and the refusal of 
 public funds to those who shirked: "It has been no part 
 of my proposal," he said, "that we sbnnlrl assign the due of 
 
180 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 those who act to those who do nothing; that we should be 
 idle ourselves and enjoy our leisure helplessly, listening to 
 tales of victories won by somebody else's mercenaries." 
 
 One reason why Athens had been unable to do more for 
 Olynthus was her unwise interference in local quarrels in 
 Eubcea, stirred up for that very purpose by Philip's agents. 
 We note that Demosthenes, though opposed to this cam- 
 paign, served in it as a hoplite, but returned soon — sol- 
 diering was never his forte — to act as choregus (patron 
 or producer of a tragedy) at the Dionysiac festival and, 
 incidentally, to be assaulted thereat by a bitter personal 
 enemy. The Eubcean affair turned out an expensive failure, 
 and it became more and more evident, however unpalat- 
 able, that a general peace must be made. 
 
 For this Philip was quite ready. Now, as always, he had 
 much rather have Athens as a friend — though, of course, 
 a closely bound and practically subordinate friend — than 
 as a foe. Ambitions and dreams apart, there was no real 
 conflict between their interests. Moreover, Philip had a 
 great admiration, almost touching in its way, for Greek 
 culture and for Athens as its chief representative. He had 
 set his heart on being acknowledged, not as a barbarian 
 conqueror of Greece, but as the commander-in-chief of 
 Greece against all barbarians, and there were high-minded 
 men, like the aged Isocrates, who saw in that dream the 
 best hope for the future of Hellas. But it would be a future 
 in which the old ideal of Hellenic freedom — the right of 
 every state to the absolute control of its own affairs, foreign 
 and domestic — must be lost forever, and patriots like 
 Demosthenes, their eyes fixed upon the glories of a bygone 
 age, had rather Greece should go down fighting than sur- 
 render those ancient and precious rights. 
 
 For the moment, however, even Demosthenes saw that 
 some arrangement must be made and the "Sacred War" 
 
DEMOSTHENES 181 
 
 brought to an end before the Amphictyonic Council again 
 called Philip down to Greece. He made one, indeed, and 
 the youngest, of the ten ambassadors sent to treat with the 
 King, a colleague being JSschines, an able orator-politician 
 of the opposite party. As it happens, we have detailed 
 accounts of all that took place during the negotiations of 
 this and the following year, from the pens of these notable 
 participants, — but unluckily, they contradict each other 
 at almost every point! As far as can be gathered, however, 
 the two lifelong opponents were by no means so far apart 
 in policy at the time as they later said and very likely 
 thought they had been. Neither seems to have shone partic- 
 ularly at the interview with Philip; in the presence of the 
 man of deeds, the men of words were reduced, ^Eschines to 
 windy rhetoric and Demosthenes to positive stage fright. 
 Philip, very agreeable, hospitable, and condescending, im- 
 bued most of the envoys with the idea that he had none 
 but the most merciful intentions toward the Phocians — to 
 punish whose sacrilege the war had been nominally waged — 
 and the friendliest sentiments for Athens herself. So the 
 embassy went home very cheerful and were soon followed 
 by Philip's representatives offering peace and alliance. 
 After some scruples about the abandonment of Phocis, the 
 Assembly compromised on an agreement by which that 
 inconvenient and discreditable ally was tacitly but not ex- 
 plicitly excluded from the new combination, and the same 
 ten started northward again to get the King's signature. 
 
 On the second return of the embassy, Philip and his army 
 followed close behind, and the sight of them at Thermop- 
 ylae again aroused the qualms of the people, by no means 
 easy in their conscience. Soothed, however, by the glowing 
 assurances of JSschines, and in spite of solemn warnings by 
 Demosthenes, they finally accepted the treaty, yet held 
 back from the mark of friendship Philip called for, the send- 
 
182 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 ing of a contingent to join his army. In a moment he was 
 through the pass, dictating terms to Central Greece. The 
 Phocians, abandoned by all, gave up their cities, became 
 defenseless villagers and yielded to Philip their votes in the 
 Amphictyonic Council, which he henceforth dominated. 
 Thebes, their bitterest enemy, had gained her point but 
 lost her relative position; Athens, though soon relieved, by 
 friendly overtures from Philip, of the panic which had 
 seized her at his approach, was left humiliated, sore, and 
 considerably ashamed of the inglorious part she had played. 
 In later days iEschines and Demosthenes bandied back and 
 forth the reproach of having betrayed the Phocians, but in 
 reality they were past saving, and Demosthenes had already 
 set his mind on a future alliance with Thebes as the only 
 possible bulwark against Macedon. For the present, how- 
 ever grudgingly, Athens must acknowledge Philip's po- 
 sition as an Amphictyonic — that is, a truly Greek — 
 power, but she consoled herself by turning the pro-Mace- 
 donian party out of office, and from this time on the influ- 
 ence of Demosthenes became predominant. 
 
 The peace which goes by the name of Philocrates lasted 
 nominally for six years (346-40), but to Demosthenes it 
 was never anything but a truce, to be used in awakening 
 Athens and, if possible, the rest of Greece to the dangers 
 which beset them, as well as, after the first year or two, in 
 provoking Philip to throw off what the Athenian persisted 
 in believing the hypocritical mask of friendship and appear 
 in his true light as a hungry tyrant bent on world power. 
 The patience of Philip under this treatment was really 
 remarkable. He was busy consolidating his home-kingdom, 
 establishing his position in Thessaly, creeping eastward 
 in Thrace and westward in Epirus; Greece could wait — 
 not but that, as Demosthenes was always pointing out, 
 his secret service was ever busy there, favoring the 
 
DEMOSTHENES 183 
 
 pro-Macedonian party which developed in almost every state, 
 for everywhere the "oligarchical," or property-holding class 
 was turning to him, as it had formerly turned to Sparta, 
 for support. It was this underlying, permanent opposition 
 between Philip and democracy which Demosthenes grasped 
 early and firmly and used as the lever of his strongest 
 appeals to Athenian pride: as the champion not only of 
 autonomy, but of democracy was Athens bound to stand 
 forth against the arch-enemy of both. 
 
 Gradually, year by year, his insistent eloquence got com- 
 plete control over the minds of his fellow-citizens. His 
 charge against JSschines, of corrupt betrayal of his duties 
 as ambassador, though urged with brilliant sophistry, failed 
 of its object; yet, in spite of ^Eschines' acquittal, Demos- 
 thenes maintained his influence and kept Athens in an atti- 
 tude of suspicion that refused to be propitiated by the most 
 flattering advances or concessions on the part of Philip. 
 To tell the truth, Demosthenes, firmly convinced that the 
 conquest of his city was the Macedonian's ultimate object, 
 was anxious to bring on war before he should grow yet 
 stronger, but in face of the inconvenient fact that neither 
 Philip nor the Athenian people wanted to begin hostilities, 
 this was rather difficult. The advance of Philip toward the 
 Chersonesus, however, made the situation more acute, and 
 Demosthenes was able to defend the really piratical behavior 
 of the Athenian commander there against the strong pro- 
 tests of Philip, on the ground that he was maintaining, how- 
 ever illegally, the interests of his country. As to the argu- 
 ment that refusal to hand over the offender would bring on 
 war, he declared that, if Athens could only see it, Philip 
 was already making war on her. His greatest speech yet, 
 however, the Third Philippic, was delivered two or three 
 months later, when war, though more imminent than ever, 
 was still not declared. In this he put his finger on one of the 
 
184 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 causes of the disunion and indifference among the Greeks — 
 the prevalence of political corruption and the cynical amuse- 
 ment with which it was taken for granted: — 
 
 What is the cause of these things? For as it was not without 
 reason . . . that the Hellenes in old days were so prompt for free- 
 dom, so it is not without reason or cause that they are now so 
 prompt to be slaves. There was a spirit, men of Athens, a spirit 
 in the minds of the People in those days which is absent to-day 
 — the spirit which vanquished the wealth of Persia, which led 
 Hellas in the path of freedom, and never gave way in face of battle 
 by sea or land; a spirit whose extinction to-day has brought uni- 
 versal ruin and turned Hellas upside down. What was this spirit? 
 It was nothing subtle or clever. It meant that those who took 
 money from those who aimed at dominion or at the ruin of Hellas 
 were execrated by all. . . . Where are such sentiments now? They 
 have been sold in the market and are gone. 
 
 By such burning words Demosthenes had at last attained 
 his object: Athens was ready not only to cheer his policy 
 but to adopt it, with all that it implied. Given carte blanche 
 as an ambassador, he exerted all his diplomatic powers and 
 in a few months raised Athens from a position of all but 
 isolation to that of the center of a fairly formidable alli- 
 ance, including, above all, Byzantium, a success which, as 
 he later very pardonably boasted, secured a completely ade- 
 quate supply of food throughout the war. Another great 
 achievement was the reform of the trierarchy, which he car- 
 ried over the strongest resistance of the wealthy men, who 
 under the old law had been able to shirk their responsibility 
 for outfitting the fleet. In future every citizen rich enough 
 to be assessed for this service at all was assessed in propor- 
 tion to his property, and this system proved not only fair to 
 all but highly profitable to the state. 
 
 By this time the patience even of Philip had been ex- 
 hausted — he had seized the Athenian merchant fleet at the 
 Bosphorus, and Athens had replied by a declaration of war. 
 
DEMOSTHENES 185 
 
 She had also assisted Byzantium, which he had now reached 
 the point of besieging, so effectively that he dropped the 
 undertaking for the time and disappeared inland to refresh 
 his Macedonians with a little old-fashioned fighting and 
 cattle-driving in the highlands of what is now Bulgaria. 
 
 Athens, highly elated at this auspicious beginning of the 
 war, had no idea of the terrible danger she had actually in- 
 curred in provoking to war, without a single first-class ally 
 or first-class general, the greatest military genius, backed 
 by the greatest resources, of the Greek world. Demosthenes, 
 to be sure, had still a card to play. The best army south of 
 Macedonia was decidedly the Theban, and an alliance be- 
 tween Thebes and Athens might check the invasion of even 
 a Philip. The long-standing and bitter feud between the 
 two cities made such an alliance most difficult to bring 
 about; every approach to it must be carefully veiled, on 
 account of the extreme unpopularity of the idea. But it 
 must never be forgotten that this was the cardinal point of 
 Demosthenes' policy, to which almost anything else must 
 be sacrificed — quite rightly, if Athens was to resist Philip 
 at all; it was her only chance. 
 
 This explains the otherwise incomprehensible attitude he 
 took in the Amphictyonic quarrel which just then suddenly 
 flared up. Though the place of Athens would naturally 
 have been at the head of the forces called out to punish 
 Amphissa for a sacrilege which the Athenian JSschines had 
 been the one to denounce, she as well as Thebes, the friend 
 of the Amphissan Locrians, held back and thus gave occa- 
 sion for the calling in of Philip to do their work. Demos- 
 thenes, who was responsible for this refusal and its conse- 
 quences, has been severely blamed; his idea, of course, was 
 that, the conflict with Macedon being inevitable, to post- 
 pone it would be to lose the best chance of a Theban alliance. 
 
 Philip seized his opportunity, pushed through the moun- 
 
186 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 tains, and planted himself at Elatea, commanding the high- 
 road to Thebes and Athens. The latter he now openly- 
 proclaimed as his object, while from the former he asked 
 assistance or, at the very least, benevolent neutrality. De- 
 mosthenes himself has left us a vivid account of the excite- 
 ment in Athens when the men arrived — the rushing out of 
 the Prytanes from their supper to bid the generals summon 
 an Assembly, the clearing of the market-place and burning 
 of the booths, the crowded town-meeting at early dawn, the 
 long wait for the Senate and the formal opening exercises, the 
 call of the herald, "Who wishes to speak?" repeated again 
 and yet again. After a long silence Demosthenes himself 
 arose and exhorted the people, forgetting all old grudges and 
 suspicions, to throw themselves unreservedly into the arms of 
 Thebes. There was nothing else to do, and by a unanimous 
 vote he was sent with nine others to the rival city to seek the 
 new alliance. It was indeed an undertaking, by his mere elo- 
 quence to overcome at once the arguments of the Mace- 
 donian envoys backed by a great army a few miles off, and 
 the long-standing enmity of Thebes for Athens, but he 
 accomplished it, though naturally at a high price, and 
 nothing could be juster than the indignation with which he 
 later met the reproach of having made a bad bargain. Did 
 not Athens, he said, in the great days of old, provide two 
 hundred out of the three hundred ships at Artemisium, and 
 did she think herself abused? "No! men saw her rendering 
 thanks to Heaven, because when a common peril beset the 
 Hellenes, she had provided double as much as all the rest to 
 secure the deliverance of all." 
 
 It was indeed with old-time self-abnegation that Athens 
 entered into the alliance, not only meeting two thirds of the 
 expenses but granting Thebes the command on land, an 
 equal share of that at sea, and undisputed sway in Boeotia. 
 At the same time she threw herself at last, with all her might, 
 
DEMOSTHENES 187 
 
 into the military task before her, calling out, for the first 
 time in twenty-five years, her entire citizen levy, stopping 
 all needless expenditures, and devoting, as Demosthenes 
 had so long vainly urged, the Theoric surplus to the national 
 defense. A number of the lesser Peloponnesian states — un- 
 luckily, none of the larger — sent troops to join the new 
 allies, and even Philip hesitated to attack so strong a com- 
 bination; he offered terms, and there were many in both 
 cities, including the experienced and pessimistic Phocion, 
 who would have accepted them, but Demosthenes, knowing 
 well that so favorable a combination was very unlikely to 
 develop again, resisted furiously and successfully, threaten- 
 ing to drag to prison by the hair of his head any one who 
 talked of peace. 
 
 For some months the campaign dragged; early minor 
 engagements were even favorable to the allies; at last, in 
 August, 338, the two armies faced each other in the nar- 
 row plain of Chaeronea. In numbers the opponents were 
 about equal — some thirty-odd thousand apiece; in valor 
 the Thebans, at least, were unsurpassed; the superiority of 
 Philip lay in his vastly superior generalship. Using the tac- 
 tics he had learned from Epaminondas, with a more serious 
 use of his heavy cavalry, he launched his left wing, horse and 
 foot, commanded by the boy Alexander, upon the stubborn 
 Theban phalanx, while, holding back his right, he lured the 
 Athenians, rushing forward "On to Macedon!" into a dis- 
 advantageous position and then fell on them from all sides. 
 Leaving a thousand slain and another thousand prisoner, 
 the remainder, including Demosthenes, broke and ran, 
 together with the allies of the center; only the Sacred Band 
 of Thebes died where they stood, friend beside friend, to 
 the last man. 
 
 Terrible as was the blow, the Athenian leaders did not 
 lose their heads — or their inflnonra. Prnnnsals were made 
 
188 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 to call in all the rural population, set the old men to guard 
 the walls, and offer citizenship to metics and freedom to 
 slaves who would join in the defense. Charidemos, Philip's 
 bitterest personal foe, was put in command, and Demos- 
 thenes, with the office of corn-commissioner, set sail for 
 food and money. 
 
 When he got back it was to a situation totally changed. 
 Philip, after one wild outburst of barbaric, drunken triumph, 
 had become again the patient, politic statesman and pan- 
 Hellene. To Thebes, which had proved a faithless ally, he 
 was severe, but not savage, while to Athens he was positively 
 conciliatory. This frightful despot who had been held up 
 to them by Demosthenes as devoting all his energies, year 
 in and year out, to their destruction, the amazed Athenians 
 now saw offering the friendliest alliance with every outward 
 token of respect, — the bones of the slain restored with hon- 
 ors and the prisoners set free, — and no material loss except 
 the Chersonese. That loss, of course, left her permanently 
 in Philip's power, and there could be no question that hence- 
 forth her position, however prettily disguised, would be that 
 of a subject rather than an equal, but the terms were so 
 beyond all hope that they were accepted with enthusiasm. 
 
 The surprising thing is not that in this revulsion of feeling 
 the pro-Macedonians — ^Eschines, Demades, and the rest — 
 gained much influence, but that Demosthenes retained any. 
 Yet he seems to have done so; though constantly brought to 
 trial on frivolous indictments, he was as regularly acquitted; 
 as commissioner of fortifications, he oversaw and generously 
 aided from his own pocket the systematic strengthening of 
 the city defenses; and to him was assigned the solemn duty 
 of pronouncing the funeral oration over those fallen in the 
 war. It was at this very time, moreover, that his friend 
 Ctesiphon proposed, and the Council voted, that a golden 
 crown should be awarded him before the multitude assem- 
 
DEMOSTHENES 189 
 
 bled from all Greece at the Dionysiac festival, in recognition 
 of his patriotic services. But when the measure came before 
 the Assembly, JSschines blocked it by indicting Ctesiphon 
 for a technical violation of law. 
 
 In the same year an event occurred which seemed likely 
 to change the whole situation. Philip, in a position at last 
 to carry out his great dream of a pan-Hellenic invasion of 
 Persia, had called for contingents from all the Greek cities, 
 and all but Sparta had agreed to send them. At the height 
 of his triumph, as he was celebrating the wedding of his 
 daughter, he fell dead by the dagger of one of his own body- 
 guard. 
 
 That Demosthenes should have felt an immense relief 
 and even elation at the news was only natural, though his 
 open exultation was in the worst of taste. Neither he nor 
 any Greek could have reasonably expected that a greater 
 than Philip was to succeed him. Within three months the 
 youthful Alexander had seized the reins of government, 
 executed all rival claimants to the throne, and marched with 
 lightning-like rapidity upon Greece. In Athens, as in every 
 state where the stirrings of revolt had shown themselves, 
 there was haste to apologize and submit. Demosthenes, 
 even, was very untactfully put on the delegation sent out 
 to meet and propitiate the terrible young man, but wisely 
 thought better of it and came back. Having graciously 
 visited Athens and called a congress at Corinth to recognize 
 him, in succession to his father, as general of the Hellenic 
 forces, Alexander departed northward and soon plunged 
 into barbaric regions, whence reports of his death aroused 
 new hopes among the restless Greeks. 
 
 It is at this point that Persia begins to take a hand in the 
 game. Seriously threatened by the Macedonian, she natu- 
 rally attempted to hamper him by raising revolts in his 
 rear. Only by Sparta, however, were her envoys openly 
 
190 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 received, and the best they could do at Athens was to leave 
 three hundred talents with Demosthenes, to be used "for 
 the good of the service." The part which he, whose words 
 and thoughts were perpetually exalting the glorious achieve- 
 ments of Athens in the war against Persia, henceforth 
 played as the confidential agent of that very power, receiv- 
 ing and handling vast sums from her treasury and scrupling 
 not to invoke her aid against what was nominally, at least, 
 a pan-Hellenic union, can certainly be made to bear an 
 ugly aspect, and the shadow of it falls across all his later 
 career. Yet there is no reason to suppose that he was not 
 sincerely patriotic in his belief that Persia, as the less dan- 
 gerous and more distant foe, could be safely played off 
 against the immediate and overpowering and, to his mind, 
 no less foreign one, and that, if she could be so played, she 
 ought to be. 
 
 Some of this Persian money Demosthenes seems to have 
 sent to Thebes in default of the martial aid which he could 
 not persuade his countrymen to give to her ill-starred revolt 
 in 335. Well for Athens that she held back! Before Alex- 
 ander was known to be alive again, he had crossed the moun- 
 tains and fallen like a thunderbolt on the offending city. 
 Only one house, traditionally that of the poet Pindar, stood 
 intact among the ruins of what was Thebes. A paroxysm 
 of horror shook all Greece. It was, as a contemporary said, 
 as if Zeus had torn the moon out of the sky; the sun (Athens) 
 still shone — but for how long? No wonder she was terrified 
 and sent Demades to placate — even to congratulate — the 
 conqueror. It is almost more surprising that she kept cour- 
 age enough to receive the Theban fugitives and refuse Alex- 
 ander's demand for their surrender. He asked nothing else 
 except the persons of the anti-Macedonian leaders. It was 
 a dangerous moment for Demosthenes, and he and his com- 
 rades showed no such spirit as that with which the burghers 
 
DEMOSTHENES 191 
 
 of Calais went out to meet the vengeance of Edward III. 
 Rather did he beg the Athenians not to surrender their 
 sheep dogs to the wolf. Phocion, on the other hand, de- 
 clared that it Was madness to refuse the demand and that 
 any true patriot would be willing to sacrifice himself for 
 his country. The people compromised by sending Demades 
 again, to pacify the victor, with such success that he asked, 
 and obtained, no more than the banishment of the merce- 
 nary general, Charidemos. 
 
 The next twelve years, during which Alexander was pur- 
 suing his marvelous career of conquest in Asia, were for 
 Athens a longer period of complete peace than she had 
 known for many generations, and for Demosthenes, inevi- 
 tably, a period of comparative eclipse. From time to time, 
 at the various crises in the victor's progress, he would lift 
 his head in hope of some news that would give a chance for 
 revolt against the Macedonian overlordship. But without 
 such news even his optimism could not see any chance of 
 success, and he even held back the more eager spirits, whom 
 he himself had trained, from a suicidal alliance with Sparta, 
 which under the heroic Agis was making one last desperate 
 stand for freedom. 
 
 It was at this time, when the anti-Macedonian party 
 seemed at its lowest ebb, that JSschines revived his accusa- 
 tion against Ctesiphon and so brought on one of the most 
 famous trials of antiquity. Spectators flocked from all 
 Hellas to witness the oratorical duel — for every one knew 
 that Ctesiphon, after a formal opening of his defense, would 
 make way for his advocate, the real object of the indictment. 
 The orations "On the Crown" of ^Eschines and Demos- 
 thenes are the masterpieces, respectively, of a great talent 
 and a great genius. Technically, JSschines had an excellent 
 case and argued it convincingly. Ctesiphon had illegally 
 proposed conferring the crown upon Demosthenes while 
 
192 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the latter was in the public service, before his accounts had 
 been passed upon by the proper authorities; he had pro- 
 posed, moreover, to have it proclaimed in the Theater, be- 
 fore the great concourse of strangers, instead of, according 
 to the proper procedure, in the Assembly. Having proved 
 these charges, iEschines launched into his third, that the 
 services of Demosthenes had not deserved reward, but quite 
 the contrary. Here, of course, was the accused patriot's 
 great opportunity, and on the defense of his record he 
 poured out all his consummate powers. The best answer he 
 could make — and it did not amount to much — to the 
 legal charges, he tucked away in the middle of his oration, 
 where it not only escaped special attention but made a 
 needed break in what might have seemed too long and con- 
 tinuous a history of his political life. It was on that history, 
 marred, to be sure, by some outbursts of unworthy personal 
 abuse, but set forth, for the most part, with a grave, noble, 
 and touching eloquence, that he relied, and rightly, for his 
 acquittal. The verdict was so overwhelming that iEschines, 
 unable to pay the fine he had incurred by his failure to win 
 even one sixth of the votes, went into exile, passing the rest 
 of his days as a teacher of oratory and using as a text the 
 very speech that had undone him. "Ah!" he would say to 
 his scholars when they admired it, " you should have heard 
 the beast himself!" 
 
 Happy would it have been for Demosthenes if this great 
 triumph had at once crowned and closed his life. But there 
 was to be yet another episode in his long career, and one 
 which turned against him at last the followers whose fidelity 
 no fear or failure had shaken. When Harpalos, the abscond- 
 ing governor of Babylon, fleeing from the wrath of his 
 master, Alexander, appeared at Athens with his stolen 
 treasure and troops, the younger and rasher members of 
 the patriotic party would have welcomed the chance for 
 
DEMOSTHENES 193 
 
 revolt, but Demosthenes, who had learned prudence, joined 
 Phocion in refusing admission to the soldiers. Harpalos 
 himself came in as a suppliant, and his surrender was sternly 
 demanded by the Macedonian general, Philoxenus. Athens 
 was in a delicate position, but, by Demosthenes' advice, 
 saved her dignity by offering to arrest Harpalos herself and 
 hold him and his treasure in safe-keeping for Alexander. The 
 money was given in charge to a commission including 
 Demosthenes and by them deposited the next day in the 
 Acropolis. Soon strange rumors arose of the sum being 
 much smaller than what Harpalos had handed over. He 
 had escaped, but his account book was found, and it 
 appeared that he had given up seven hundred talents, of 
 which only three hundred were in the treasury. In face of 
 the scandal, Demosthenes demanded an inquiry, but pro- 
 ceedings were delayed by the excitement over Alexander's 
 demands that the Greek cities should recognize his divinity 
 and recall all their political exiles. In spite of deep resent- 
 ment, all finally submitted, even Demosthenes bending so 
 far as to say, "Let him be son of Zeus if he prefers it, or son 
 of Poseidon for all I care." Unluckily, his hard-learned 
 prudence had lost him the support of those radical enthusi- 
 asts whom no experience could teach and who in their dis- 
 appointment began to suspect his loyalty and to join his 
 old enemies in the accusation of having embezzled the 
 Harpalos treasure. It was impossible for Demosthenes to 
 clear himself of having taken some of the money; indeed, 
 he practically admitted the fact, but said he took it for the 
 Theoric Fund. Naturally, there was no record of it in the 
 Theoric accounts, but it is probably true that he did put it 
 by for a reserve fund, and that if war had broken out the 
 state would have used it without question. Some such 
 consciousness seems to have been in the minds of his judges, 
 for though the crime was very serious — since Athens must 
 
194 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 account to Alexander for the missing funds — the penalty 
 inflicted was comparatively light. Since the fine was, how- 
 ever, more than he could pay, he had to go to prison, 
 whence, finding confinement insupportable, he escaped, 
 evidently by the connivance of his jailers. He could not 
 bear to go beyond sight of Athens, so spent his exile in 
 iEgina and Trcezen, "with tears in his eyes, looking across 
 to the country of Attica." 
 
 One happy day was yet in store for him. In 323 came the 
 news of Alexander's death, and all Athens rose to its feet 
 and breathed again. In vain did Phocion remind them: 
 "If Alexander is dead to-day, he will be dead to-morrow 
 and next day — plenty of time to make plans," and meet 
 the impatient question of Hyperides, "When will you ever 
 advise the Athenians to fight?" with the cool reply: "When 
 I see the young men ready to do their duty, and the rich 
 to pay taxes, and the politicians to abstain from stealing 
 public money." The Assembly was in no mood to listen 
 to such croakers; it resolved to equip two hundred and forty 
 ships, put all citizens under forty in the field, and try for a 
 general rising throughout Greece. Now was Demosthenes 
 not only summoned home, but met at the Piraeus by the 
 whole population, which escorted him in triumph while he 
 raised his hands to heaven, blessing the day. 
 
 Within a year all these bright hopes had withered: the 
 allied Greeks had failed and fallen apart before the advance 
 of the Macedonian Antipater, and Athens, obliged to sur- 
 render at discretion, had been condemned to revise her 
 constitution, receive a garrison, and deliver up the chiefs 
 of the patriot party. Once more Demosthenes fled, tak- 
 ing sanctuary in the temple of Poseidon on the island of 
 Calauria. Here he was pursued by Archias, an ex-actor, 
 now an officer of Antipater's, who tried to lure the old man 
 out by fair words. But he "sate still in the same position 
 
DEMOSTHENES 195 
 
 and, looking up steadfastly upon him, 'O Archias,' said he, 
 'I am as little affected by your promises now as I used for- 
 merly to be by your acting.' Archias at this beginning to 
 grow angry and to threaten him, 'Now,' said Demosthenes, 
 •you speak like the genuine Macedonian oracle; before, 
 you were but acting a part. Therefore forbear only a little, 
 while I write a word or two home to my family.' Having 
 thus spoken, he withdrew into the temple and taking a 
 scroll as if he meant to write, he put the reed into his mouth, 
 and biting it, as he was wont to do when he was thoughtful 
 or writing, he held it there for some time." When the poison 
 he had thus absorbed began to take effect, he staggered 
 to the door, not to pollute the sacred place, and fell down 
 dead. 
 
 It is by his public career, entirely, that Demosthenes 
 must be judged. Private life he seems to have had prac- 
 tically none, nor are his personal characteristics such as to 
 impress or attract us. Lacking in geniality, a bitter enemy, 
 below rather than above the average in physical courage, 
 and unscrupulous, though not corrupt, in money matters, 
 he was not a man to win love or veneration. As an orator, 
 he has always ranked as one of the greatest, perhaps the 
 very greatest that ever lived, but the ordinary reader, 
 especially if limited to translations, can never begin to 
 appreciate the subtleties of style, the musical combinations 
 of words, the triumphs of art, in short, which delighted the 
 critical ears of the Athenians. But even oratory became to 
 him but a secondary consideration, a means to the great 
 end to which his whole life was devoted. By his choice 
 of that end and his refusal ever to be turned from it or to 
 despair of reaching it, his reputation stands or falls. To 
 those critics who, from Phocion to Professors Beloch and 
 Bury, have maintained that he misunderstood the mean- 
 ing of his time and waster? tkp f™-™ -* Athens in futile 
 
196 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 opposition to the inevitable, the best answer is in his own 
 imperishable words: — 
 
 Even if what was to come had been plain to all beforehand . . . 
 even then, I say, it would not have been right for the city to aban- 
 don her course. ... As it is, she is thought, no doubt, to have 
 failed to secure her object, — as happens to all alike, whenever 
 God wills it; but then, by abandoning her claim to take the lead of 
 others, she must have incurred the blame of having betrayed them 
 all. . . . But this was not, it appears, the tradition of the Atheni- 
 ans; it was not tolerable; it was not in their nature. From the be- 
 ginning of time no one had ever yet succeeded in persuading the 
 city to throw in her lot with those who were strong but unrighteous 
 in their dealings, and to enjoy the security of servitude. Through- 
 out all time she has maintained her perilous struggle for preemi- 
 nence, power, and glory. . . . 
 
 ... It cannot, it cannot be that you were wrong, men of Athens, 
 when you took upon you the struggle for freedom and deliverance. 
 No! by those who at Marathon bore the brunt of the peril — our 
 forefathers. No! by those who at Platsea drew up their battle line, 
 by those at Salamis, by those who off Artemisium fought the fight 
 at sea, by the many who lie in the sepulchers where the People laid 
 them — brave men, all alike deemed worthy by their country of 
 the same honor and the same obsequies — not the successful or 
 the victorious alone! 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
 
 (Died 823 b.o.) 
 
 One day in the year 356 B.C. Philip of Macedon, then 
 in only the fourth year of his reign, received three pieces of 
 good news: his general, Parmenio, had beaten the Illyrians, 
 his race horse had won at Olympia, and a son had been 
 born to him. The boy's mother was Olympias, an Albanian 
 princess whose wild young beauty Philip had fallen in love 
 with as he saw her dancing in the religious rites of her own 
 country. Years of marriage and queenship in an at least 
 half -civilized realm never succeeded in taming Olympias; 
 — passionate, vindictive, enthusiastic, darkly supersti- 
 tious, whether we see her as a Bacchante, leading the mystic 
 dance she loved, with great tame serpents coiled about her 
 upraised staff and ivy-chaplet, or a Medea, brooding in 
 vengeful jealousy the murder of false husband and hated 
 rival, she is always the barbarian, always a tremendous ele- 
 mental force. From her Alexander inherited his passionate, 
 frank nature, equally prone to vehement, generous attach- 
 ments, savage anger, and heart-broken repentance; from 
 her, too, came the strain of religious mysticism which ran 
 through his character. Though he had plenty of occasion 
 to regret and to restrain her actions, and though after he 
 started for Asia they never saw each other again, the strong 
 bond between mother and son was never loosened; he wrote 
 to her constantly, sent her the finest of the spoil, and could 
 not bear to cross her as she deserved : "One tear of a mother," 
 he would say when his regent in Macedon, the sorely-tried 
 Antipater, wrote complaining of the Queen's perpetual med- 
 dling, "outweighs a thousand such letters as these." 
 
198 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 If by temperament Alexander was his mother's son, by 
 intellect he was no less his father's, rightfully inheriting 
 the remarkable talent for organization, the versatility and 
 resourcefulness, as well as the steadfast, tireless energy 
 and ambition which in so few years raised Philip from a 
 Highland chief to the greatest power in Hellas. On neither 
 side, it is well to remember, was he Greek, in the sense that 
 the word had come to stand for in his time. The Mace- 
 donians, it is true, claimed to be Hellenes, and the royal 
 family, at all events, had long been acknowledged and 
 admitted to the great festivals as such, but the character- 
 istics of their civilization were those of the Greeks of nearly 
 a thousand years before — the Greeks of Homer. When 
 an Athenian boy of the fourth century studied the Iliad, 
 the characters, the manners, the forms of speech were to 
 him what those of the Bible are to us, but when Alexander 
 took it with him as a bedside companion on his Asiatic 
 campaigns, its details were to him, as an Americanized 
 Syrian has recently said of the Scriptures, "like a letter 
 from home." Although Homer was an important part of 
 his education, as of that of every Greek lad, it was no 
 excellence of teaching that made the story of the Trojan 
 war take such a lasting hold on his imagination, no mere 
 fancy that led him to identify himself with the valiant, 
 glory-loving, passionate, open-hearted Achilles. 
 
 Though the busy Philip had little time to be with his 
 son, he early saw that the child was worth the best educa- 
 tion he could give him, and he spared no pains. After six 
 years with a nurse whom he loved next to his mother, he 
 was put under the charge of no ordinary slave-pedagogue, 
 but a tutor of good family and very strict ideas of disci- 
 pline, who brought him up with truly Spartan frugality 
 and put him through a course of physical training which 
 enabled him to perform and endure, as his later exploits 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 199 
 
 showed, almost superhuman feats of agility and endurance, 
 while — another sign of his un-Greek point of view — he 
 grew up with little interest in athletics for their own sake 
 and considered it trivial and undignified to take part in 
 the public games. At twelve years old he was a well-grown 
 boy, mature and thoughtful for his age, as he showed by 
 the practical questions with which he surprised the Persian 
 ambassadors he received in his father's absence; courageous, 
 high-spirited, and willful, as appears in the famous taming 
 of Bucephalus, the horse which none but he could mount. 
 His father, proud and anxious, saw that the lad had out- 
 grown his teachers and must be henceforth less controlled 
 than guided, through the development of his highest facul- 
 ties; for this he summoned Aristotle of Stagira, the greatest 
 intellect in Greece, and set him up in a school for high-born 
 youths — a school where his chair and the paved walks 
 among the trees where he paced with his pupils were pointed 
 out to sight-seers five hundred years later. There Alexander 
 spent the next four years, studying literature, philosophy, 
 and natural science. He never was strong on the aesthetic 
 side — again, un-Greek — and as an imperial art-critic 
 lived to be severely snubbed by the painter Apelles, nor did 
 the study of oratory attract him, but religion, ethics, and 
 science, especially medicine, were subjects that always inter- 
 ested him; he had a great fancy for doctoring his friends, 
 and in the depths of Asia he ordered zoological and botan- 
 ical collections made at great expense and sent to Aristotle, 
 with whom he long kept up a correspondence. 
 
 At sixteen, when his father, going to Byzantium, left him, 
 well seconded by the able Antipater, in charge of the king- 
 dom, Alexander's formal education was over, and his re- 
 sponsible life began. His first military task was to put down 
 the revolt of a hill-tribe up in the northeast, and a year or 
 so later he commanded the right wing of the army, to 
 
200 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Philip's great satisfaction, in the latter's crowning victory 
 at Chaeronea. The relations between father and son, how- 
 ever, hitherto so satisfactory, now underwent a strain which 
 almost severed them. Philip, already estranged from his 
 moody and jealous wife, repudiated her to marry Cleo- 
 patra, a Macedonian maiden of high rank, much to the sat- 
 isfaction of his nobles, who hated the "foreign woman." It 
 is a strange glimpse we have of the old, primitive, hard- 
 drinking Macedon — that riotous wedding-feast where the 
 bride's uncle drank to the prospect of a lawful — i.e., a 
 purely Macedonian — heir to the throne, and the naturally 
 infuriated Alexander hurled a cup at his head; where Philip, 
 staggering with drawn sword to strike his son, slipped and 
 fell headlong, and the young man laughed aloud at the 
 king who was moving heaven and earth to march from 
 Europe into Asia, yet could not walk from one seat to 
 another. Proud and sore, the insulted prince took his in- 
 jured mother back to her Albanian home, to brood in deadly 
 rage till she should be revenged. His own anger, never last- 
 ing, was mollified by his father's advances, and he was 
 coaxed back to court, but an uncomfortable doubt hung 
 about the succession, and Philip, to pacify and unite all 
 parties, arranged a marriage between his daughter and the 
 princely brother of his divorced wife. In the midst of the 
 festivities he fell dead by the dagger of one of his guards, 
 and while the immediate motive was revenge for a private 
 injury, there is little doubt that the baleful figure of 
 Olympias stood behind the assassin's hand. 
 
 Thus, at twenty, Alexander succeeded to a kingdom 
 which seemed absolutely fated to collapse. On all sides 
 were pretenders to the throne — cousins, one of an elder 
 branch than his own, and his baby half-brother, backed 
 by Attalus and the Old Macedonian Party; Greece was 
 ready to revolt, and Persia stirring. Without paying the 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 201 
 
 least attention to the advice of his friends to concentrate on 
 rebuilding the home government, he suddenly appeared at 
 the head of his army in a Greece quite unprepared to do 
 anything but hasten to recognize him. It was, doubtless, 
 this proud independence, always characteristic of Alex- 
 ander, which made him salute a kindred spirit in the philos- 
 opher Diogenes, who, alone among the cringing Greeks at 
 Corinth, had nothing to ask of him but that he would stand 
 out of the sunlight in which he was basking. "If I were not 
 myself," he told his sneering courtiers, "this is the man 
 whom I would choose to be." At Corinth he was elected to 
 his father's place at the head of the Pan-Hellenic crusade 
 which he was burning to lead against Asia, but before he 
 could start there was some business to attend to. Of his 
 adult rivals he had made a "clean sweep," in traditional 
 Macedonian fashion, by ordering their summary execution, 
 and Olympias, much to his displeasure, had completed the 
 job by murdering the poor baby prince and his mother. 
 But there were still rude warlike tribes on the north and 
 west who must be made to know their master before he could 
 safely turn his back upon them, and so five months out of 
 his first year the new king spent in the depths of the 
 mountains, climbing, fording, trapping, fighting, with all the 
 zest of a huntsman and the skill of a born soldier. Of a 
 hundred incidents none is more picturesque or more char- 
 acteristic of Alexander's "gumption" than his taking of 
 that defile of the Balkans famous in modern warfare as the 
 Shipka Pass. The "independent Thracians" — poor fel- 
 lows! — had blockaded the pass with their wagons, which 
 they prepared to roll down upon the advancing phalanx as 
 it climbed the narrow way, but the ingenious Macedonian 
 bade his men, when they could not separate to let the wagons 
 through, he down and lock their shields together, forming a 
 roof over which the massive wheels rolled harmlessly. Thus, 
 
202 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 with all his father's resourcefulness, he made his victorious 
 way, and was deep in Epirus, one hundred and fifty miles 
 from his capital and three hundred from Thebes, when news 
 reached him that that city, believing him dead, had thrown 
 off the Macedonian yoke, and all Greece was on the point 
 of doing the same. Down through the mountain wilder- 
 nesses he came, headlong, unheralded; in thirteen days he 
 was encamped before the walls of Thebes; in two more, the 
 city of Cadmus was razed to the ground, six thousand of its 
 inhabitants were slain, and the thirty thousand survivors 
 in the slave-market. This act of calculated "f rightfulness" 
 had the desired effect, yet not on Greece only did the utter 
 destruction of so famous and ancient a city leave a painful 
 impression; Alexander himself found it a distressing mem- 
 ory, and with the curious mysticism of his nature laid more 
 than one tragedy of his later career to the vengeance of 
 Dionysius, the guardian god of Thebes. 
 
 At any rate, there was no more to fear from Greece, and 
 in the early spring of 334 he was ready to set forth on the 
 great adventure, the dream of his father's life and of his 
 own, the conquest, with no fleet to speak of and an army of 
 thirty-five thousand, of an empire fifty times as large, 
 twenty-five times as populous, and incalculably many times 
 as wealthy as his own. That army, however, was for the 
 times a practically perfect instrument, complete in all arms 
 of the service, from the compact phalanx with its wall of 
 protruding spears, and the resistless "Companion" cavalry 
 with which Alexander himself was wont to charge at the 
 head of his peers, to all the varieties of light-armed auxili- 
 aries and the latest devices in siege-artillery. Composed 
 partly of Macedonians, partly of detachments from the 
 most warlike regions of Greece, thoroughly disciplined, and 
 wielded by the greatest military genius in the world, it was 
 an army which was never to know defeat, but to march to 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 203 
 
 the uttermost confines of the known world, toppling over 
 kingdoms and recasting nations "like gallant boys at play." 
 Its adored leader was now twenty-two, in the full glory of 
 his young manhood, like David "ruddy and of a fair coun- 
 tenance," with a lion's mane of tawny hair tossing about 
 the prominent brow which overhung his large and deep- 
 set eyes. A northern type, unquestionably, and one cannot 
 read of Alexander in those early years without thinking of 
 the northern heroes of legend and history. Time, even the 
 short time vouchsafed to him, and the inevitable influence 
 of the vast and ancient East were to work changes in him, 
 but the romantic youth who visited the site of Troy to gar- 
 land the tomb of Achilles and offer sacrifice to the offended 
 shade of Priam, the generous sovereign who before starting 
 on his wild enterprise portioned out all the royal property 
 among his friends, keeping, as he said, only his hopes for 
 himself, the chivalrous victor who would not even intrude 
 upon the grief of the royal ladies who fell into his hands 
 after the battle of Issus, but maintained them in all privacy, 
 dignity, and honor — this was no kinsman of Pericles or 
 Themistocles, or even Leonidas, but rather a blood-brother 
 of Siegfried and Cceur de Lion. 
 
 From the day that Alexander left the Europe he was never 
 to see again to that of his death at Babylon was a period of 
 less than twelve years, so crowded not only with dramatic 
 and soul-stirring events but with epoch-making conquests 
 and readjustments of the world that its main features are 
 fully impressed upon every student of ancient history. All 
 that can be undertaken in this sketch is to follow the man, 
 Alexander, through the successive phases of his marvelous 
 career, and trace the development of his character and aims 
 as from the knightly leader of a holy war against impious 
 barbarians he grows to the far-sighted ruler, planning and 
 organizing such an amalgamated, cosmopolitan empire as 
 
204 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the world had never seen nor was to see till Rome took up 
 the scepter dropped from his dying hand. 
 
 The events of the first year in Asia, opened and closed 
 by the two famous battles of the Granicus and Issus, show 
 that his most outstanding characteristics were still his dar- 
 ing, his self-reliance, and the personal quality of his leader- 
 ship. With what looks like pure recklessness and pride but 
 is really a recognition at first glance of the enemy's weak 
 line-up, we see him rejecting the advice of the experienced 
 Parmenio and dashing at the head of his crack cavalry 
 regiment, the white plumes of his helmet waving, like those 
 of Henry of Navarre, an oriflamme in the forefront of 
 battle, through the Granicus stream and up the slippery, 
 clayey bank where men and horses, friend and foe, scramble 
 and tumble, fight and fall, till the Persian cavalry are put 
 to rout, and the hired Greek infantry, stupidly posted in the 
 rear, are left bewildered and defenseless to the simultaneous 
 attack of Macedonian foot and horse. 
 
 Equally unhesitating was his decision, on finding himself 
 unassisted by the maritime states of Greece, to give up his 
 fleet altogether and throw himself, like Cortez — though he 
 disbanded, not burned, his ships — entirely upon the result 
 of his land victories. And his personal popularity with his 
 army, already immense, was sealed by the tactful dismissal 
 to their Macedonian homes, for the winter, of the newly 
 married among his officers and men. When they rejoined 
 him with fresh recruits in the spring, he had added the south 
 coast of Asia Minor to the western fringe of Hellenic cities 
 which had already come, without much enthusiasm, under his 
 "liberating" command, and at Gordium, the trysting-place, 
 he symbolized his intention in regard to the Persian empire 
 by the famous sword-stroke which cleft the knot whose 
 unraveler was fated to be ruler of Asia. Meantime, a 
 plunge, when heated with exercise, in the icy waters of the 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 205 
 
 Cydnus had all but cut short the conqueror's career, and 
 there is no more charming anecdote of Alexander than that 
 which tells how, warned that his physician, a certain Philip, 
 was about to poison him, he smilingly handed him the accus- 
 ing letter while he drank the medicine. Another story, 
 enough by itself to show why his men worshiped him, is 
 that of the mountain expedition when, falling behind to 
 encourage the lagging steps of his old tutor, Lysimachus, 
 who had insisted on going with him, he found himself 
 caught for the night with a handful of men in a rocky gully 
 and, casting about how to keep the old man warm, fell 
 single-handed upon a small outpost of hostile mountaineers, 
 slew two with his dagger and returned in triumph with a 
 blazing brand from their watch-fire. 
 
 This adventure, however, happened a little later than the 
 battle of Issus, which really closes the first, and opens the 
 second and far more momentous, chapter of his Asiatic 
 career. Thus far his conquests had been chiefly of the 
 already Hellenized outskirts of the Persian empire, nor had 
 he yet tested his enemy's powers of resistance. The famous 
 battle of the Granicus was essentially a skirmish on a grand 
 scale and would not have been fought at all, had not the 
 proud confidence of the Persian nobles overruled the pru- 
 dent advice of the Greek Memnon, Darius' only able gen- 
 eral. While Memnon lived, moreover, and controlled the 
 movements of the Persian fleet, Alexander was never safe 
 from an uprising in Greece and the Mge&n which, cleverly 
 led, and maintained by Persian gold, might have cut his 
 communications and left him in a most dangerous situation. 
 The death of this general now put an end to all such schemes, 
 so that henceforth Alexander could leave Greece quite out 
 of his calculations, and threw Darius back upon the policy 
 more natural to a flattered despot in command of countless 
 hosts, the policy of meeting the audacious invader face to 
 face and crushing him by sheer numbers. 
 
206 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 That it was with such an overpowering host that the 
 Great King, too impatient to wait in the lowlands for his 
 enemy, sought him in the narrow plain of Issus between the 
 mountains and the sea, is so in keeping with Oriental cus- 
 tom and so overwhelmingly attested by all the early his- 
 tories, themselves founded on the accounts of Alexander's 
 own generals, that it is impossible to accept the conclusions 
 of a recent German critic, who is sure that the Persian army 
 was little, if at all, larger than the Macedonian. That the 
 really effective troops of Darius, however, did not exceed 
 ninety thousand, the outside number that the three-mile 
 battlefield could hold in the front line, and that the masses 
 behind, intended to overawe rather than fight, were useless 
 in battle and much worse than useless in retreat, may well 
 be acknowledged. We must admit, too, that the position 
 of Darius, so much criticized for its unfitness to the size 
 and character of his army, had one great advantage: he was 
 to the north of Alexander, between him and his base. 
 Beaten, the invader could have fallen back only into a hos- 
 tile country and to certain destruction. 
 
 It was all or nothing, therefore, with the thirty thousand 
 Macedonians and Greeks and their young general, and there 
 may well have been sinking hearts among the officers whom 
 he called to a council of war. But when, after he had pointed 
 out to them that the gods had delivered the enemy into their 
 hands by inspiring him to take up such a position, and had 
 inflamed their pride as warriors and free Hellenes by com- 
 paring them with the enslaved and effeminate Persians, he 
 ended by reminding them of the exploits of Xenophon and 
 his Ten Thousand and calling upon them to beat that record, 
 they rushed up to him from all sides, grasping his hand and 
 calling upon him to lead them that very moment against 
 the foe. 
 
 This time, however, there was to be no impulsive rush 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 207 
 
 into battle. Alexander, with his whole fate hanging in the 
 balance, summoned all his faculties and for the first time 
 showed himself not only a clever and daring leader, but a 
 great tactician. Only after arranging and rearranging his 
 various troops to face the different points" of the carefully 
 observed hostile line, did he, leaving the left, or defensive, 
 wing in charge of the reliable Parmenio, take personal com- 
 mand of the right and, leading his horse-guards, charge in 
 the famous oblique order that his father had learned from 
 Epaminondas. That charge could not, as at the Granicus, 
 settle the business; the Persian cavalry in their turn crossed 
 the stream to attack Parmenio's Thessalians, and the hired 
 Greek infantry, seasoned old campaigners, held the center 
 desperately against the Macedonian phalanx; but when 
 Alexander, wheeling to the left, drove straight for the royal 
 chariot, Darius turned and fled, and his whole army, dis- 
 couraged and demoralized, followed him in headlong rout. 
 Only the disciplined Greeks, sticking close together, fought 
 their way slowly back to their ships and sailed away. Alex- 
 ander, left master of the field, held in his hands the very 
 shield and mantle left behind by his terrified enemy, as well 
 as his family and his gorgeous camp. "So, this is royalty!" 
 laughed the hardy victor, as he refreshed himself after the 
 soil of battle in the sumptuous bathtub of Darius. 
 
 The victory of Issus opens a new era in Alexander's life. 
 Hitherto he had been nominally, and at first, undoubtedly, 
 in his own mind, the generalissimo of the Greeks, going 
 forth to avenge Hellas upon the empire of Xerxes and the 
 first Darius, and to deliver the Greek cities of Asia Minor 
 from the alien yoke. How it would have been if Greece had 
 really put her heart into the enterprise and if the Ionian 
 cities had leaped to meet him, we can but guess; as it was, 
 the venture showed itself more and more plainly as a per- 
 sonal one, and the crusader became the conqueror. With 
 
208 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the deliverance of Asia Minor and the crushing defeat of 
 Darius, the task on which he had set out was really accom- 
 plished, but it never occurred to him to stop. That over- 
 whelming defeat, proving the fact to which Xenophon had 
 borne witness, the essential helplessness of the Persian em- 
 pire, had opened a new field, and there was to be no rest 
 for Alexander until he had explored and conquered it all. 
 
 Of course this change of aim could not fail to bring about 
 some change in character. In some respects the alteration 
 was for the better. At Issus, Alexander could still speak in 
 the traditional Greek vein of utter contempt for the "bar- 
 barian" and all his ways; as he went on, he learned to ap- 
 prove and even to adopt many of those ways, to ally himself 
 by the closest personal ties with men and women of alien 
 race, and to make his great object as a ruler a mutual tol- 
 erance, understanding, and cooperation between East and 
 West. On the other hand, he unquestionably became both 
 harsher and haughtier, soiling his fame by indulgence in 
 barbarian cruelties, and alienating his free-born brothers-in- 
 arms by his demand for that prostrate, unquestioning obedi- 
 ence which is the mark of Oriental sovereignty. 
 
 The hardening of his character shows in his southward 
 progress through Phoenicia and Syria, where at Tyre and 
 still more markedly at Gaza he met for the first time that 
 power of desperate resistance, that willingness to die to the 
 last man rather than surrender which is fundamental in the 
 Semitic race. The gallant resistance of a band of Greek 
 mercenaries at Miletus, a year before, had won from him — 
 traitors to the common cause of Hellas though in his eyes 
 they were — admiration and mercy, but the heroic deter- 
 mination of the Phoenicians and Syrians to defend their free- 
 dom and their homes to the last gasp called forth not only 
 his fullest resources of ingenuity, persistency, and skill, but 
 his uttermost vengeance when those marvelous sieges were 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 209 
 
 at last successful. Then indeed — though not, as the pro- 
 phet expected, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar — was the 
 word of Ezekiel fulfilled against "the renowned city which 
 wast strong in the sea"-: "And they shall destroy the walls 
 of Tyre and break down her towers: I will also scrape her 
 dust from her and make her like the top of a rock. It shall 
 be a place for the spreading of nets in the middle of the sea 
 . . . and it shall become a spoil to the nations." A more un- 
 pardonable act of personal cruelty was the dragging by the 
 heels of the yet living body of Batis, the brave defender of 
 Gaza, at the wheels of the conqueror's chariot, in unworthy 
 imitation of the worst deed of Achilles. Stern and abrupt, 
 too, though in no way base, was the reply he sent at this 
 time to Darius' second request for the ransoming of his 
 family, offering him the half of his kingdom and the hand 
 of his daughter. The price dazzled Parmenio, who could 
 not help saying, "I should accept, if I were you." "So 
 should I," curtly remarked Alexander, "if I were you"; 
 and he sent word almost as briefly to Darius that he intended 
 to take the whole of his kingdom and to marry his daughter 
 if he wanted to, whether or no. 
 
 Darius, indeed, was no longer a factor in his calculations. 
 Having once tested his metal, he knew he could safely leave 
 him to collect another army, while by securing Syria and 
 Egypt he took the Persian fleet without a battle, as each 
 squadron, hastening back to its threatened home port, went 
 over, perforce, to the conqueror. In Egypt he had no occa- 
 sion to be harsh, since the natives, who had always found Per- 
 sian rule peculiarly unsympathetic, welcomed him at once. It 
 was the other form of his increasing self-assertion which 
 displayed itself in the famous and fantastic visit to the 
 temple of Zeus Amnion, across two hundred miles of path- 
 less desert. When the priest there saluted him as "Son of 
 Amnion," he gave him the conventional homage due to 
 
210 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 every Pharaoh, and to an Egyptian the words meant no 
 more, but among Greeks the reported recognition of his 
 divine origin by an oracle the prestige of which had come to 
 eclipse that of Delphi was sure to make a profound impres- 
 sion. Just what it meant to himself, or what passed between 
 him and the priest in a private interview of which he speaks 
 in a letter to his mother, we cannot know; there was a strong 
 vein of mysticism in his character, which, mingling with his 
 pride, tempted him to believe himself a man apart, akin to 
 those demigods and heroes who in old days had been the 
 founders of the Greek race; on the other hand, he had a 
 saving sense of humor, as when once, being wounded, he 
 pointed out to his friends with a rueful smile that what he 
 was losing was real blood and not ichor "such as immortal 
 gods are wont to shed." 
 
 Having settled the affairs of Egypt, and marked out with 
 white flour on the black soil — for all the world like a 
 tennis court — the plan of a new city, which on its well- 
 chosen site grew to be the greatest and most famous of all 
 the scores of "Alexandrias" he founded, he was ready, in 
 331, to go and try conclusions with Darius in his own coun- 
 try. It is a valuable experience to follow the route of Alex- 
 ander on a map which includes Greece and to see that ragged 
 little peninsula, so long the crowded center of historical 
 interest, slip aside, as it were, almost out of one's sight, and 
 become a mere speck in the northwestern corner, while the 
 vast spaces of the East roll out before the resistless advance 
 of the invader. It is then that one understands Alexander's 
 remark, when news reached him of the battle of Mega- 
 lopolis, in which Agis, the hero-king of Sparta, had fallen 
 at the head of the Lacedaemonians, Arcadians, Eleans, and 
 Achaeans, in hopeless revolt against the Macedonian regent: 
 "It seems that while we have been conquering Asia there 
 has been a battle of mice back there in Greece." 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 211 
 
 At Gaugamela, near the crumbling mound which had 
 once been Nineveh, the Persian empire followed the Assyr- 
 ian down to final destruction. In this battle, the climax 
 of his military career, we see Alexander more completely 
 the general, less the personal champion, than in any other. 
 A thousand miles from home and fronting with fewer than 
 fifty thousand men, unshielded on either side by mountain 
 or sea, a host made up from all the tribes of the empire and 
 variously estimated at from half a million to a million, he 
 took no chances — except the one great chance of battle. 
 Even under the familiar swagger of his refusal to make a 
 night-attack, because he would not stoop to "steal a vic- 
 tory," may be easily seen the sound judgment which rejected 
 anything likely to bring but a confused and indecisive result. 
 The care with which he rested his troops and surveyed the 
 ground, and the sober and manly exhortations, very differ- 
 ent from his "Hurrah, boys!" speech at Issus, with which 
 he impressed upon his officers the extreme importance of the 
 occasion and the need of absolute discipline, all show his full 
 realization of the enormous risk he ran, as well as the sound 
 night's sleep which he enjoyed after all the preparations 
 had been made does the perfectly healthy state of his nerves 
 and the quiet confidence in which he awaited the event. 
 
 In a general way and allowing for the difference of situa- 
 tion, which enabled the long Persian line to outflank Alex- 
 ander's on either side, his tactics were similar to those at 
 Issus — the oblique offensive with his own right wing while 
 Parmenio held back the left. This time the victory was 
 more hardly won; gaps in the fine were penetrated from 
 either side, and not till Alexander had once more directed 
 his charge full on Darius' chariot and the royal coward had 
 for the second time turned and fled, was the enemy's center 
 routed, while even there the result was not so sure but that 
 the victor, reached by a message from the hard-pressed 
 
212 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Parmenio, — whom he never quite forgave, — had to check 
 his headlong pursuit and gallop back to succor his left 
 wing. Thus, to his deep disgust, Darius escaped, but only 
 as a beaten fugitive, and Alexander, resuming his pursuit 
 on the morrow, found at Arbela his chariot, shield, and bow. 
 It was not till several months later, after taking full posses- 
 sion of Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, with their almost in- 
 credible treasures, and destroying, by a marvelous feat of 
 strength and daring, the army with which the satrap 
 Ariobarzanes held against him the apparently impregnable 
 pass of the "Persian Gate," that he found time to follow 
 up the unhappy king in the mountains of his ancestral 
 Media. Still the Persian fled before the oncoming Mace- 
 donian, first as commander, then as prisoner, of his few 
 remaining troops and the Bactrian Satrap, Bessus, and when 
 at last, by mad riding, day and night, over rocky deserts, 
 Alexander caught up with his rival, it was to find his mur- 
 dered body left behind on the roadside. That Bessus, when 
 he finally fell into the victor's hands, was put to death with 
 Oriental tortures can hardly excite our compassion for him 
 personally, though the manner of his execution was one of 
 the incidents which more and more often shocked and dis- 
 turbed the Greeks and Macedonians in Alexander's train. 
 
 For from the day of Gaugamela that change of attitude 
 and outlook of which, as we noted, the victory of Issus 
 marked the beginning, became obvious and even deliber- 
 ately emphasized. Whether or not we regard the burning 
 of the palace of Xerxes at Persepolis, when "the King seized 
 a flambeau with zeal to destroy," as a symbolic act intended 
 to mark the consummation of the vengeance exacted for the 
 Persian destruction of Athens one hundred and fifty years 
 before, we can hardly miss the significance of the discharge 
 at Ecbatana of the Greek troops who, in the name of the 
 Congress of Corinth, had followed him as General of the 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 213 
 
 Pan-Hellenic League. Henceforth, any who chose to re- 
 enlist would do so with their eyes open, for a new and dis- 
 tinct enterprise, the creation of a world empire. In the prose- 
 cution of this, so far as it meant "glory and gunpowder, 
 plunder and blood," — aye, and danger and heroic effort, 
 too, — Greeks and Macedonians were willing enough to 
 follow Alexander, but it was another matter to see him 
 taking Persian nobles and governors into his favor, confirm- 
 ing some in their commands and giving others positions 
 about his very person, — barbarians, born to be slaves, 
 placed on an equality with free Hellenes! It was with dis- 
 gust that his hardy warriors saw him adopt even a modified 
 form of that eastern costume which they had always scorned 
 as the very embodiment of effeminate luxury, and with pro- 
 found anxiety and anger that they realized that the cere- 
 mony of prostration, that humiliation which free Greeks, 
 even as solitary individuals in most pressing need of the 
 Great King's favor, had made every sacrifice to avoid, was 
 being not only performed as a matter of course by the Per- 
 sians but welcomed and evidently soon to be exacted from 
 the old comrades in arms who had been used to grasp his 
 hand and call him by his name. 
 
 The view which Alexander had reached was undoubtedly 
 the wiser and wider one: he was learning to understand, to 
 use, and to respect races and customs which he had been 
 taught, even by the great Aristotle, ignorantly to despise. 
 It was certain, too, that the world empire of which he was 
 now dreaming could be built only on a foundation of univer- 
 sal tolerant intercourse and swayed only by a sovereign 
 who should identify himself with neither West nor East, 
 but rule impartially, like a god, over both alike. Yet it is 
 impossible not to sympathize with the feelings of the griz- 
 zled warriors in their bewilderment and pain, or to recognize 
 that the change in their leader was not wholly a matter of 
 
214 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 policy or of mental growth, but partly also the intoxicating 
 effect of absolute power upon a proud, imaginative nature, 
 very impressionable for ill as well as for good. Philotas, 
 who had been his right hand in every campaign and led the 
 horse-guards at the Granicus and Gaugamela, may possibly 
 have been guilty of more than carelessness in failing to 
 notify his commander, to whom his rank gave him instant 
 access, of a conspiracy against his life, but his haughty 
 demeanor and unwise boasts of the share he had in Alex- 
 ander's victories must have gone far to harden the king's 
 heart before he could stand by and sneer at the outcries 
 wrung by torture from his old companion in arms, and the 
 once generous and trusting Alexander seems utterly lost in 
 the cold and calculating despot who sends messengers to 
 execute, without so much as a trial or even an accusation, 
 Philotas's father, the faithful, tiresome old Parmenio. 
 
 It is not the orientalized monarch, however, but the true 
 son of the hard-drinking Philip and the passionate Olympias 
 whom we see in the tragic climax of this alienation between 
 Alexander and his old friends. We seem again at the wild 
 banquet in Pella where Philip so nearly slew his son, as we 
 watch the drinking grow fast and furious; the comic songs 
 in ridicule of the Macedonian veterans; the anger of these 
 finding voice through the outspoken Clitus; the bandying of 
 words between him and Alexander, more and more exasper- 
 ated as the rude warrior, too far gone for any prudence, 
 boasts of having saved his life at the Granicus and loudly 
 asks him why he bids free men to sup with him if he is n't 
 willing to hear them speak their minds; the fury of the king, 
 casting vainly about for the sword his attendants have pru- 
 dently concealed and shouting in the Macedonian patois 
 of his boyhood for the trumpeter to sound the onset; the 
 crazy Clitus, once safely dragged out of the hall, rushing in 
 again at another door, derisively singing; the fatal blow at 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 215 
 
 last, when Alexander, snatching a spear from one of the 
 guards, runs it through the body of his oldest friend, 
 brother of the beloved nurse who had herself lost all her 
 sons in his service — and then the dead silence, the mad 
 attempt at self-destruction, and the outburst of inconsol- 
 able weeping that racked him all that night and all the 
 following day. 
 
 It was far away in Bokhara that this wretched scene took 
 place, for Alexander's pursuit of Darius had lengthened 
 itself, first into the hunting down of Bessus in his own 
 Bactria, and then into a thorough exploration and conquest 
 of the northeast provinces of the Persian empire — a region 
 quite unknown to the Greek charts, crossed by the mighty 
 mountain chain of the Hindu Kush and the broad streams 
 of the Oxus and Jaxartes, and inhabited by warlike, inde- 
 pendent tribes of pure old Aryan stock. Some of these 
 proved friendly and were allowed to retain their own at the 
 price of a nominal submission; others fought to the death 
 for freedom, and it was in his forced marches and hair- 
 breadth adventures in the pursuit and slaughter of these 
 gallant hillfolk that Alexander showed how little his adop- 
 tion of Persian manners had affected his extraordinary 
 hardihood and willingness to take the greatest personal 
 risks. Here, too, he found a bride, falling in love, for the 
 first time in his life, with Roxana, the fair young daughter 
 of a Bactrian chief whom he had scaled the very skies to 
 conquer. This marriage was another thorn in the flesh to his 
 Macedonians, but he knew how to deal with them. In one 
 of his own letters, which Plutarch quotes "almost word for 
 word," he tells how he met the grumblings of even the 
 picked corps of twenty thousand foot and three thousand 
 horse with whom, after sorting out and placing in colonies 
 the war-weary, he planned to advance yet farther. They 
 were all free to leave him if they liked, he told them; "he 
 
216 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 should merely enter his protest that when on his way to 
 make the Macedonians the masters of the world he was left 
 alone with a few friends and volunteers." This was entirely 
 too much for the troops, who shouted that they would go 
 with him anywhere he pleased. 
 
 It was now the spring of 327. For three years Alexander 
 had been campaigning in the northern hills, while the vast 
 plain behind him lay in perfect tranquillity and order, 
 ruled, so far as possible, by its former laws and governors, 
 under the supervision of a few trusted Macedonians and 
 Greeks. He had reached the extreme northern limit of the 
 Persian empire, the river JaXartes, and he resolved to make 
 it his limit also, though, dared by the jeering Tartar shep- 
 herds on the opposite bank, he had crossed the stream on 
 stuffed sheepskins and driven the nomads in terror before 
 him. To the southeast, however, beyond the great wall of 
 the Hindu Kush, lay a country which also had been a 
 nominal part of the empire and which by its very remote- 
 ness and strangeness fascinated the explorer and adventurer 
 in him. He could not rest till he had seen with his own eyes 
 that land of the spices and the elephants and made his own 
 name feared wherever those of Cyrus and of Xerxes had 
 been heard. 
 
 With a great army, swelled as his forces now were by a 
 constant stream of adventurers from Europe as well as by 
 chosen bands of native horse, he crossed the mountains and 
 began the conquest of the unknown Punjaub. Dividing his 
 forces into two main lines of advance, he swept along, 
 storming, sacking, and scattering, till he had fought his 
 way through into the Indus valley and across the five rivers. 
 The first great rajah whom he met prudently accepted his 
 overlordship and was established as head of what the Brit- 
 ish in India call a Native Protectorate; the next, Poms, 
 gave him perhaps the hardest battle of his life. Darius had 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 217 
 
 used a few elephants at Gaugamela, but this was the first 
 time that Alexander had had to face the problem of attack- 
 ing, with horses that reared and screamed at sight and smell 
 of the monsters, a line of two hundred living towers, drawn 
 up at intervals of a hundred feet through which the enemy's 
 infantry could be seen, a solid wall, behind. But his record 
 was not to be broken; once more he seized the offensive, and 
 by a furious flank attack upon the Indian cavalry forced 
 Porus to come to the rescue by turning his elephants to the 
 right and thus exposing their sides to the spears of the Mace- 
 donian light infantry. Porus himself, a superb figure of a 
 man, fought his elephant to the last, and when taken cap- 
 tive asked only, with grave eastern dignity, to be treated 
 "like a king." Like a king both policy and magnanimity 
 dictated that he should be treated, for Alexander had no 
 idea of establishing a direct rule over these distant regions; 
 he was close upon the world's end, as he thought, and planned 
 only to guard his eastern frontier by a row of semi-independ- 
 ent friendly provinces. At this point, however, a new vision 
 dawned upon him, — beyond the Indus, he heard, were 
 rich and fertile lands surpassing anything he had yet seen, 
 and a great river (the Ganges) flowing eastward, surely into 
 that "Ocean" which encompassed the earth and of which 
 the Caspian Sea was but a gulf stretching southward. To 
 explore that river and then sail around the north of Asia 
 with one half of his fleet, while the other descended the 
 Indus and circumnavigated Africa — that would be an 
 achievement indeed. But now the world conqueror was to 
 meet the disappointment of his life: his soldiers struck. 
 Utterly worn and weary as they were, a great wave of home- 
 sickness suddenly broke over them; they clamored for the 
 wives and children they had not seen for so many years, 
 and utterly refused to go a step farther. In vain Alexander 
 tried the reproach which had brousht them round before; 
 
218 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the veterans hung their heads before his scorn, but they 
 would not budge. Sick with grief and humiliation, he flung 
 himself upon his couch and for two days spoke to no one; 
 then he yielded, and his army pressed around him, weeping 
 for joy that he who had conquered all the world had let 
 himself be conquered by his adoring Macedonians. 
 
 In September, 326, began with pomp and circumstance 
 the descent of the Hydaspes and the Indus in a great flotilla, 
 a journey uneventful for the most part, save for the oppo- 
 sition of the MaUians, which gave Alexander a chance to 
 show that the years were making no change in his dare- 
 devil courage. Scaling a lofty wall in advance of all his men, 
 he leaped down into the hostile fortress and fought single- 
 handed till two devoted followers saved him, severely 
 wounded, from almost certain death. But perhaps the finest 
 single picture we have of him is in the midst of the terrible 
 return journey which he took with twenty-five thousand of 
 his best troops across the burning desert of southern 
 Beluchistan, where, exactly like David in similar straits, 
 he "poured out unto the Lord" the helmet-full of precious 
 water which his young men had risked their lives to fetch 
 him. With barely half this host, after incredible toils, he 
 reached the western limit of a land which no European 
 after him was to penetrate for more than two thousand 
 years, and, joined by the army which he had sent ahead by 
 a more northern route and by the fleet which had followed 
 along the coast, he was ready at last to revisit Susa, which 
 he had left five years before. 
 
 As soldier, explorer, conqueror, Alexander's work was 
 done. For the fifteen months of life that remained to him, 
 he was the statesman and administrator, correcting, with 
 prompt and stern justice, the misgovernment of many of 
 the deputies he had left in charge, and perfecting his great 
 scheme of the amalgamation of races and civilizations. Even 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT gig 
 
 on the warpath and in the remotest parts of the earth, this 
 idea had always been present with him; wherever he went, 
 "cities" had sprung up in his footsteps, serving at once as 
 asylums for disabled soldiers, garrisons of his rule, and 
 centers of Greek civilization. 1 Following out the same policy, 
 he would have transplanted bodily large groups of settlers 
 from Asia into Europe and vice-versa, while to encourage 
 intermarriage among his subjects he himself, adopting 
 polygamy, espoused a daughter of Darius and bestowed 
 some eighty or ninety other maidens, "the choicest daugh- 
 ters of the Persians and Medes," each with a dowry out of 
 the royal treasury, upon his chief nobles and counselors, 
 signalizing the occasion by a gorgeous spectacular banquet 
 whereat all the brides appeared and seated themselves be- 
 side their respective husbands, who took them by the right 
 hand and kissed them, Alexander leading the way. This 
 great wedding, we are told, was th6 most popular thing he 
 ever did, but another step in the amalgamating process 
 caused a terrible commotion. For years he had maintained 
 military schools at which Oriental youths were taught Greek 
 tactics; now the time had come to take the graduates of 
 these schools into his army, not as separate detachments, 
 but mixed in, man by man, with the existing regiments. 
 That was bad enough, but when he capped the climax by 
 proposing to discharge and send home, with generous pen- 
 sions, ten thousand Macedonians who had grown old in his 
 service, the whole army broke out in open mutiny. "Send 
 us all home!" they shouted; "you don't want us! Go and 
 get your father Ammon to conquer for you!" It was the 
 third time that Alexander had had to face his veterans; this 
 time he had no idea of yielding. Leaping down from the 
 
 ' One of the remotest of these was named Bucephala, in honor of the beloved horse he had 
 tamed in his boyhood, which had carried him so often to victory and had finally died on the 
 banks of the Hydaspes. 
 
220 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 platform from which he had personally made them the 
 offer of release, he pointed out with his own hand a dozen 
 ringleaders and ordered them led away to execution; then, 
 remounting, he addressed the rest in scathing terms, telling 
 them flatly that it was thanks to Philip and to him that they 
 were rulers of the world, wealthy and powerful, instead of 
 wandering mountain shepherds clad in skins, reminding 
 them that there was no peril or toil of theirs which he had 
 not shared, no wound of which he could not show the fellow, 
 and finally bidding them all go if they pleased, and tell the 
 people at home that they had left him to the protection of 
 barbarians. With that he shut himself up in his palace, and 
 for two days the army, dazed and sullen, heard no word 
 from him. On the third, it was announced that all the high 
 commands were to be given to Persians and that new regi- 
 ments of horse- and foot-guards, bearing the grand old 
 Macedonian name of "Companions," were being formed 
 of Oriental soldiers. It was too much. The men fairly 
 stormed the palace doors, throwing down their weapons 
 and themselves, weeping and praying to be taken back. 
 When Alexander at last came out to them, he too broke 
 down, and the whole episode ended in a grand love-feast of 
 forgiveness and reconciliation. J 
 
 It was perhaps the last really happy day of his life, for the 
 next event was one which nearly broke his heart, the death 
 of his dearest friend, Hephaestion, his Patroclus, as he loved 
 to call him and as he mourned him, with all the passionate 
 abandonment which characterized him to the end. That 
 end was very near. At Babylon, whither he had gone in the 
 early summer of 323 to preside over the final funeral cere- 
 monies as well as to start out Nearchus and the fleet on a 
 voyage around Arabia, he caught a fever in the swamps 
 where he had been superintending an improved drainage- 
 system, aggravated it by two late suppers with hard drink- 
 
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 221 
 
 ing, and found himself seriously ill. For several days he 
 lingered, still able to offer the morning sacrifice and do a 
 little business from his bed. On the twelfth of June the 
 horror-struck army realized that he was dying — even 
 heard that he was dead. Heart-broken, they clamored to 
 see him once more, and a long line of weeping veterans passed 
 silently through the room where their beloved commander 
 lay, feebly waving his hand to them in a last farewell. The 
 next day he died. 
 
 Into less than thirty-three years of existence and not 
 quite thirteen of rule, Alexander had packed more life and 
 accomplishment than stand to the credit of all the warrior- 
 statesmen of the past. It is useless to wonder what more he 
 might or could have done in another thirty years, or whether 
 he ever really entertained those dreams which have been 
 attributed to him, of adding the western world to his 
 dominions. Early and sudden though his death was, it does 
 not seem, somehow, inappropriate or wholly tragic, for an 
 old Alexander is inconceivable; the phrase is like a contra- 
 diction in terms. His glorious strength and beauty, his 
 generosity, his reckless valor, his vast, imaginative plans, 
 his very faults of savage anger and overweening pride, are 
 all qualities of a young man, and young he remains forever 
 in the eyes of a wondering world. 
 
 That world has never forgotten him or ceased to feel the 
 impress of his genius. The organization, it is true, which he 
 had so newly created, failed to stand alone; the empire fell 
 apart and was devoured, piece by piece, by oncoming Rome, 
 but the seeds of Greek civilization which he scattered broad- 
 cast from the Mediterranean to the Indus sprang up a 
 hundredfold and made possible the development of Chris- 
 tianity, the Eastern Empire, the Renaissance, and the mod- 
 ern world. All through the Middle Ages, the name and deeds 
 of Alexander, in queerest mediaeval transformation, were 
 
GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the familiar stuff of European minstrel and romancer, and 
 far up in the mountains of Turkestan there lingers to this 
 day the personal tradition of the fair-haired hero whom no 
 precipice or raging torrent could hinder and no human 
 valor could resist. 
 
ARATUS 
 
 (Died 213 B.C.) 
 
 In the year 264 B.C., the prosperous manufacturing town 
 of Sicyon, not far from Corinth, went through one of the 
 periodical convulsions to which at that time her political 
 life was subject. Some years before, she had thrown off a 
 "tyranny" and elected two prominent citizens to manage 
 her affairs. Now the survivor of these, Clinias, was mur- 
 dered, with as many of his kinsfolk as could be reached, by 
 a certain Abantidas, who proceeded to make himself tyrant 
 until the usual fate should overtake him in his turn. During 
 the confusion the seven-year-old son of Clinias managed to 
 hide in the house of an aunt who was also related to the 
 victor, and who succeeded in smuggling him away to his 
 father's friends at Argos. There the youthful Aratus grew 
 up like any other vigorous, healthy lad, well educated but 
 fonder of athletics than of study, yet always nursing in his 
 heart an undying hatred of not merely the individual tyrant 
 who had orphaned him, but the whole system of tyranny 
 which was crushing out the ancient liberties of Greece. 
 
 This Greece in which Aratus passed his youth was so 
 different from the Fifth or even the Fourth Century Greece 
 with which we are all so much more familiar, that it is well 
 to take a good look at it before going on with our narrative. 
 Two generations had passed since Alexander's death, and 
 his vast empire, after furious wars among his successors, had 
 settled into the three main kingdoms of 'Syria, Egypt, and 
 Macedonia, the latter including the control of Greece. 
 Monarchy, in short, was now the rule in the Hellenistic 
 world, and was for the most part surrounded with all the 
 
224 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 elaborate, splendid ceremonial, the sickening flattery and 
 deifying worship which marked the Oriental type of sover- 
 eignty. The Macedonians, however, still preserved a cer- 
 tain rough freedom of manners along with the pride of 
 having been the conquerors of the world, and their present 
 King, Antigonus Gonatas, was no despot by nature, but a 
 moderate, sensible man, with a taste for literature and phi- 
 losophy and a strong sense of responsibility. He had no 
 desire to lord it over Greece as a matter of pride or to make 
 his rule oppressive, but his rivalry with Egypt forced him 
 to keep a firm hand on the peninsula, lest the rich and crafty 
 Ptolemy, who loved to fight with moneybags, stir up trouble 
 for him there. Just such had been the policy of Egypt a 
 few years before, in financing the "Chremonidean" war, 
 in which Sparta and Athens had joined hands in one last 
 effort to shake off the Macedonian yoke. Now Athens, as 
 an independent power, was no more; henceforth the "eye 
 of Hellas" was, politically, a provincial Macedonian town. 
 Old men yet lived who had listened to the burning words of 
 Demosthenes when he foresaw and would have averted the 
 doom of the imperial city; for the future those words were 
 to be studied by schoolboys as models of pure rhetoric with 
 no bearing upon any action that could ever be. 
 
 Sparta.'on the other hand, still clung to her independence, 
 but with her territory shrunk to Laconia, her citizenship 
 limited to a few hundreds, and her ancient discipline long 
 cast aside, she was but the ghost of her former self. Even 
 so, however, it was the policy of Macedonia to keep an eye 
 on her, and the two most trustworthy watchdogs were held 
 to be her natural enemies — Argos, her rival from earliest 
 days, and Megalopolis, which Epaminondas had founded in 
 her despite. It was not necessary for Macedonia tojjarrison 
 these towns; she found it cheaper and more convenient to 
 control them through native tyrants who were sure of her 
 
AEATUS 225 
 
 backing so long as they governed in her interest. Equally 
 convenient, though less important, was a similar state of 
 things in the other cities, and accordingly we find the whole 
 Peloponnesus dotted with small local tyrannies, on the best 
 of terms with the great neighbor to the north. 1 Only three 
 strongholds, significantly called the "shackles of Greece" — 
 Piraeus, Chalcis, and Acrocorinth — did Antigonus think 
 it necessary to hold absolutely in his own hands. 
 
 To realize what this state of things meant to Greeks we 
 have only to remember their peculiar horror of tyranny — 
 that is, of arbitrary, irresponsible, unconstitutional govern- 
 ment, apart from the crimes or merits of the individual 
 tyrant. Enormously and in a hundred ways Greece had 
 changed since the days of Harmodius and Aristogiton, but 
 in this one respect her mind was the same: in her code the 
 tyrant, having put himself above the law, was become an 
 outlaw, and to kill him was the most virtuous act a patriot 
 could perform. The lives of tyrants, therefore, were decid- 
 edly precarious; yet when one fell, it was usually to be suc- 
 ceeded by another, equally subservient to the dominant 
 kingdom, for in the far larger and more complicated world 
 which had taken the place of the clear-cut little Hellas of 
 old, the small city republics, which so long had been the 
 normal type of Greek life, were no longer capable of main- 
 taining their independence. Yet republicanism was not 
 dead; on the contrary, at this very time it was taking on 
 fresh life and trying a new and very hopeful form. North of 
 the Corinthian Gulf the rugged villagers of iEtolia, south 
 of it the staid and provincial townsfolk of Achaia, were 
 drawing together in federations which, each in turn, but 
 seldom, unfortunately, in cooperation, were to lift once 
 more the banner of a free" Greece. 
 
 i The situation has been suggestively compared with that in Italy during the Austrian 
 domination, before 1859. 
 
226 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Not since Homeric days had the Achaians played a promi- 
 nent part. Their cities were small and had produced no 
 geniuses in the arts of either war or peace. The general 
 character of the people seems to have been conservative, 
 peace-loving, mildly democratic, and eminently respectable. 
 In old days there had existed among them some sort of a 
 league, and now, almost unnoticed, the cities began to draw 
 together again, until, by the time Aratus appears upon the 
 political scene, all ten were united in a most interesting and 
 promising federation, bearing much resemblance to our 
 own and even more to our first attempt under the Articles 
 of Confederation (1781-89). The city-states, that is, while 
 preserving complete local independence, formed one nation 
 in regard to the outside world, all questions of war, peace, 
 treaties, and alliances being reserved to the national gov- 
 ernment. Coinage, weights, and measures were also uni- 
 form throughout the federation, and citizens of any state 
 enjoyed full rights, including those of marriage, in every 
 other. One point in which the Achaian League was much 
 stronger than our Confederation was the provision for an 
 elective executive, with great power. Where, on the other 
 hand, it showed a similar weakness was in the system of 
 requisitions, whereby the troops and the taxes were raised 
 by the states separately on the demand of the central gov- 
 ernment instead of directly by that government, as well as 
 in the equality of its members — one state, one vote, regard- 
 less of relative size or population. Of course there was 
 nothing like the modern system of representative govern- 
 ment; the national assembly, answering to our Congress, 
 was but a town-meeting on a large scale, and, as attendance 
 was unpaid, only the well-to-do were able or willing, except 
 at times of rare popular excitement, to leave their homes and 
 travel up to the sessions. This tended to keep the national 
 government in conservative hands, while, on the other hand, 
 
ARATUS ' 227 
 
 the widespread opportunity to take part in local affairs 
 made the general atmosphere healthily democratic. It is 
 interesting to notice that our Constitution, in providing 
 that the United States guarantee to every state a republican 
 form of government, follows that of the Achaian League. 1 
 
 Such, then, was the Greece of the Third Century: a col- 
 lection of weak city-states, each separately helpless among 
 the surrounding monarchies, many ruled by local despots in 
 the interest of the nearest of those monarchies, a few cher- 
 ishing their old self-government and drawing together in 
 defense of it. For the rest, it was a time vastly more modern 
 in tone than the great age of Greece, — softer in manners, 
 more cosmopolitan in culture. Though wars were frequent, 
 they were waged chiefly by professional soldiers in the pay 
 of rival monarchs; neighboring cities no longer, as a matter 
 of course and almost of sport, turned out their well-drilled 
 youth for summer campaigns against each other. Conse- 
 quently perhaps, when a city was taken, it was no longer 
 usual to execute or enslave its inhabitants; in many ways, 
 warfare was being modified in accordance with the scruples 
 of a humaner time. In the world of thought, science had 
 come to the fore; writings and speeches were less poetical, 
 more realistic and everyday; a still more modern feature 
 was the increasing prominence of women in social and pub- 
 lic life. In other words, Alexander, by the enormous shaking- 
 up and shaking together that he gave to East and West, 
 had begun the modern world. 
 
 In this new world a great part was to be played by the 
 boy-exile from Sicyon who had now, in the safe shelter of 
 Argos, reached his twentieth year. It is an important and 
 very significant fact that the intense hatred of tyrants, as 
 such, which was the ruling principle of Aratus' life, did 
 
 > Madison, in preparation for the Constitutional Convention, made a careful study of the 
 Achaian experiment. 
 
228 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 not extend itself to legitimate kings, ruling over countries 
 where monarchy was the native form of government. He 
 does not seem, indeed, to have felt as much instinctive sus- 
 picion of such monarchs as would seem natural, but rather 
 to have turned to them from the first, as possible helpers. 
 His family was on terms of hereditary friendship with both 
 Antigonus and Ptolemy, and his first idea was to get aid 
 from one or other of them in freeing his native town. That 
 failing, he went to the other extreme and concocted with a 
 group of fellow-exiles a plot the success of which depended 
 absolutely on individual quickness and daring. There is no 
 more entertaining story in Plutarch than that of the night- 
 raid on Sicyon. We seem present at every stage of the pro- 
 ceedings — the discovery that a section of the city wall was 
 almost level with a rocky ledge on the inside; the purchase 
 of folding ladders; the collection of a little band of desper- 
 adoes; the moonlight march; the vain attempt to shut up 
 the "uncommonly savage and noisy" little dogs of a gar- 
 dener just outside the point of attack; the breathless mo- 
 ment when the first climbers, clinging close to the shaky 
 ladders, waited while the watchman went by above them 
 ringing his bell, and a large hound within, wakened by the 
 noise, began a tremendous baying; the final rush up and over 
 the wall, just as the cocks were crowing and the first market- 
 women coming in from the country; the overpowering, 
 without a blow, of the tyrant's guard; and the triumphant 
 announcement to the bewildered populace who gathered 
 with the dawn, that " Aratus, the son of Clinias, invited the 
 citizens to recover their liberty." 
 
 Never was such a successful or such an unstained revolu- 
 tion. The house, indeed, of Nicocles — the tyrant of the 
 hour — was plundered and burnt, but not a life was taken, 
 either during the attempt or after the victory. The citizens 
 simply shook themselves free, chose their deliverer as chief 
 
ABATUS 229 
 
 magistrate, and recalled their exiles. Those exiles, however, 
 presented a problem: some of them had been banished as 
 much as fifty years before; their houses and lands had been 
 confiscated, sold, passed from hand to hand; to restore them 
 would be to raise up a fresh group of malcontents. What 
 was needed was money, and Aratus resolved to seek it from 
 the wealthy Ptolemy, who had already shown his approval 
 of the exploit he had been too prudent to finance, by a gift 
 of twenty-five talents, every obol of which the young leader 
 had spent on the ransom and restoration of Sicyonian pris- 
 oners. Now he set forth on a voyage which proved extra- 
 hazardous, and after many adventures reached Alexandria, 
 where he proceeded to win the good graces of the luxurious 
 old dilettante who ruled Egypt by talking art and promis- 
 ing to collect for him good examples of the Sicyonian school 
 of painting, then the most admired in Greece. With forty 
 talents in hand and a definite contract for over a hundred 
 more, Aratus returned, and applied the money so skillfully 
 and honestly that Sicyon had no more to fear from internal 
 troubles. 
 
 Against external dangers — that is, the certain ill-will of 
 the neighboring tyrants and the very probable hostility of 
 Macedon — the young statesman had already persuaded his 
 fellow-citizens to take the fateful, unheard-of step of join- 
 ing the Achaian League, not as an ally, but as a full mem- 
 ber. This union is extremely important, for nothing like it 
 had ever happened in Greece before. Such federations as 
 had been tried had been strictly limited to peoples of kin- 
 dred stock; now Sicyon, a Dorian city, voluntarily sub- 
 merged herself in an Achaian nation. Again, though not a 
 state of the first class, she ranked well in the second, and in 
 population alone probably equaled at least five of the ten 
 League cities; yet she consented to count as no more than 
 one. On the other hand, the League itself took a great step 
 
230 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 outside of immemorial Greek custom and prejudice in 
 admitting to its innermost circle a people of different 
 ancestors, pieties, and guardian-gods, on terms of absolute 
 equality. During the next twenty-three years it was to 
 continue along this fortunate course, until it embraced so 
 many states that Polybius could speak of the Peloponnesus 
 as enjoying such absolute community of interests, laws, and 
 standards as to be just like one city except for not being 
 inside one wall. And the reason, he goes on to say, why the 
 Achaians succeeded where all others had failed, was that 
 they were unfalteringly true to "the two most unfailing 
 expedients of equality and fraternity." Not all the Pelopon- 
 nesian cities came in voluntarily; some had to be persuaded, 
 a few forced; but each, no matter how acquired, was put 
 immediately on an equal footing with all the rest; the great 
 principle laid down by Burke, that the surest way for a 
 nation to win the loyalty of its dependents is to share its 
 rights with them, seems to have been first put into practice 
 by the Achaian League. 
 
 For the greater part of these glorious years, Aratus was 
 the very soul of the League. At first he was too young to lead 
 the whole nation, though already recognized as chief citizen 
 of his own Sicyon. At twenty-six, however, in 245 B.C., we 
 find him chosen as President — or, as they called it, Gene- 
 ral (Strategus) — of the League, and from that time till 
 his death, thirty-two years later, excepting once when he 
 declined the office, he was elected every other year, the in- 
 tervening terms which the constitution required being nearly 
 always filled by his friends and nominees. This extraor- 
 dinarily continuous influence and popularity, which only 
 the severest shocks and failures were able to interrupt for 
 very short periods, bears the strongest testimony both to 
 his persuasiveness and to his personal character. Though 
 he handled huge subsidies, no faintest shadow of suspicion 
 
ARATUS 231 
 
 ever clung to him; his reputation was as clean as that of 
 Nicias or Phocion. Likewise, no amount of power ever went 
 to his head or tempted him for a moment to aim at a tyr- 
 anny; like Washington, he was genuinely content to remain 
 all his life "the first citizen of a free commonwealth." 
 
 If the success of the Achaian League was largely due to 
 the wise and broad statesmanship, diplomatic skill, and 
 high character of Aratus, its ultimate failure was also to 
 be brought about, in great measure, by his characteristic 
 weaknesses — his tendency to lean on foreign aid, his mili- 
 tary incapacity, and his bitter jealousy. The first of these 
 we have already seen foreshadowed; the second was bound 
 to appear after he became President, for it was a funda- 
 mental, fatal fault of the Achaian constitution that it re- 
 quired its chief officer to be not only, like our own President, 
 commander-in-chief of the army, but its actual leader in the 
 field. Now Aratus' warlike skill was limited to surprises 
 such as the taking of Sicyon; all his life he delighted in these 
 and certainly showed plenty of personal daring in carrying 
 them out; yet in field warfare he was cautious and hesitat- 
 ing to the point of positive timidity. Like McClellan, he 
 seems to have habitually overestimated his enemy, and 
 again and again, to the exasperation and despair of his 
 gallant officers, he threw away victory rather than attack. 
 Among historical commanders, he has the remarkable record 
 of never having won a battle. 
 
 Fortunately for the establishment of his influence, he 
 was not called upon for several years to betray this weak- 
 ness. In his first term, to be sure, there was war among the 
 leagues, but the iEtolians, now rapidly expanding into a 
 first-class power, put down the Boeotians before the Acha- 
 ians had fairly got going. Antigonus had paid little attention 
 to the growth of the League; his enemies were Egypt and 
 his own nephew Alexander, who had made himself master 
 
232 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 of Corinth and held it in defiance of his suzerain. In 248, 
 however, Alexander had died, and Antigonus, playing a 
 trick on his widow, had seized Corinth with its invaluable 
 citadel; in 244 he beat Egypt and divided with her the con- 
 trol of the iEgean. The "Old Man," as he was commonly 
 called, was now in a very satisfactory position, at peace 
 with the world and in possession of all he wanted. He had 
 reckoned with every possible danger except one, — Aratus, 
 with his burning ambition to liberate Greece. To him, as to 
 Antigonus, Acrocorinth was the key to the whole situation; 
 without it, further progress was impossible, In full peace, 
 and in defiance of all international law, he plotted an attack 
 upon that fortress as outrageous from a legal point of view 
 as those of Phoebidas upon the Cadmea or Sphodrias upon 
 the Piraeus. The only difference — and to Aratus it made 
 all the difference — was that those seizures had been made 
 to enslave, while his was to set free. The exploit, told in 
 full and exciting detail by Plutarch, who admires and ap- 
 proves to the highest degree, was of the same sort as that of 
 Sicyon and an absolutely personal venture on the part of 
 Aratus, who paid for it out of his own pocket and risked his 
 own life in the attack — for this time success was not to be 
 won without fighting and some bloodshed. When the high 
 rock fortress was scaled and won, he came down to the 
 theater and faced the assembled Corinthians, leaning, 
 utterly wearied with his night's work, upon his spear and 
 listening in grave silence to the shouts and acclamations of 
 the waiting crowd. Then, straightening up, he addressed 
 them, not in his own name but in that of the League, which 
 he invited them to join, and ended by handing over to the 
 Corinthians the keys of their own gates, "which had never 
 been in their power since the days of King Philip." 
 
 Small wonder that Corinth enthusiastically entered the 
 League and was rapidly followed by Megara, Trcezen, and 
 
ARATUS 233 
 
 Epidaurus. The federation, now including fifteen cities, 
 stretched from sea to sea and controlled the Isthmus; the 
 "shackles of Greece" were broken. It was equally natural 
 that Antigonus, who saw his whole "system" shattered by 
 this blow, should be furious and enter into formal alliance 
 with iEtolia, with which Achaia was still in a state of war. 
 Aratus, in his turn, looked for help, and got money from 
 Egypt and men from Sparta, led by the young and romantic 
 Agis, so soon to meet a martyr's death. No two men, both 
 patriotic and disinterested, could have been more unlike or 
 less able to work together than Agis and Aratus; to one a 
 pitched battle with the enemy was the first, to the other the 
 last, resort. Aratus had his way; the JStolians entered the 
 Peloponnesus unopposed and ravaged the fields whence, 
 as the canny commander of the Achaians had observed, the 
 harvest was already almost all gathered in; Agis went home 
 in disgust, and Aratus retrieved his reputation by a success- 
 ful surprise attack on the enemy, driving them from the 
 town of Pellene which he had allowed them to capture. 
 Soon after, the fighting came to a standstill, and on the 
 death of the old king in 239 the two leagues not only made 
 peace with each other but entered into an alliance against 
 his successor, Demetrius II. It was in this next war, the 
 details of which are confused and unimportant, that Aratus 
 lost his first pitched battle. 
 
 Meanwhile, the extension of the League over southern 
 Greece was going merrily on. Arcadian towns came in one 
 after another, though some preferred to enter the jEtolian 
 confederacy, and Mantinea joined only to secede. Aratus' 
 own heart was set upon Argos and Athens, one ruled by a 
 tyrant, the other in fact if not in name by Macedon, and 
 over and over again, openly and secretly, by plot and strata- 
 gem and actual war, he tried to free them. The populations 
 themselves, however, of the two cities were too supine to 
 
234 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 seize the opportunities he offered, and it was not until the 
 death of Demetrius and the accession of his nine-year old 
 son reduced the influence of Macedonia to a minimum that 
 Aristomachus, the tyrant of Argos, was persuaded to abdi- 
 cate and bring in his city, and that Athens allowed herself 
 to be freed at the expense of Aratus and other friends of 
 liberty, who bought off the Macedonian commander of the 
 Piraeus. Even then, she who had once been the city of 
 Pericles could not bring herself to become a part of an 
 Achaian nation; she graciously consented to an alliance, i 
 
 The greatest conquest of the republican spirit, however, 
 had been over the mind and heart of one of the noblest men 
 of the time, Lydiadas, the young tyrant of his native Mega- 
 lopolis, who, unforced and unbribed, laid down his power 
 and persuaded his great city — by far the most important 
 acquisition since Corinth — to join the League. His mag- 
 nanimity was gladly recognized, and for several years he 
 alternated with Aratus in the presidency. 
 
 Thus, by the year 228, all Greece was free. South of 
 Thessaly there was neither a Macedonian garrison nor a 
 local tyrant. From the Pindus range to Mount Taygetus, 
 every city-state was once more a republic and protected, 
 through membership or alliance, by one or other of the two 
 great democratic leagues. Who could have dreamed that 
 in seven short years the whole work would be undone and 
 Greece once more lying at the feet of a conqueror? 
 
 What deepens the tragedy is that it came about through 
 what was in itself a glorious achievement, the reawakening 
 of Sparta to one last, brief period of national greatness. 
 Alone among Greek states, she stood wholly outside both 
 leagues; alone, she had never, at her weakest and most 
 helpless, bent the knee to Macedon, opened her gates to a 
 conqueror, or submitted to a tyrant; proudly and silently, 
 in her distant corner, she was withering away under the old 
 
AEATDS 235 
 
 constitution which had been her glory and was now her 
 bane. Yet all around her lay reservoirs of strength, — the 
 Helots, the Perioeci, the poverty-stricken, disinherited Spar- 
 tans themselves, whom a fatal narrowness had shut out 
 from citizenship. The man who could break down the walls 
 of age-long caste prejudice and let in these floods of new 
 life might make unconquered Sparta once more herself a 
 conqueror. This Agis had tried to do, and had died a vic- 
 tim to the old regime. His widow, forced to marry his boy- 
 ish successor, had taken the noblest of revenges: acquiring 
 soon, by her beauty and her strength of character, a life- 
 long influence over the youthful Cleomenes, she imbued his 
 mind with the ideas of the martyred reformer, ideas which 
 with greater ability and fewer scruples he was for a brief 
 period to carry into effect. 
 
 The outline of his plan may be briefly stated: to get rid, 
 by violence if necessary, — and it proved necessary, — of the 
 Ephors, whose constitutional control paralyzed every effort 
 at reform; to restore the disinherited Spartan families to 
 their original rights by a re-division of the land, all wealth 
 being first put into a common stock; to increase the number 
 of citizens by admitting four thousand selected Perioeci; 
 to revive the ancient discipline, including the common 
 tables; thus, finally, to take his place as a real king of a 
 vigorous and united nation instead of the puppet of a small 
 and decaying aristocracy. But inextricably, and probably 
 inevitably, bound up with this ideal was another; such a 
 reinvigorated Sparta would never be contented with the 
 minor and passive position which the dying Sparta had held 
 perforce; the new Lacedamion must be once more the chief 
 power in Greece. Thus we see how the wills of Aratus and 
 Cleomenes were bound to clash; each saw the Pelopon- 
 nesus as a whole, but one was determined to unite it as a 
 federation of equal republics, the other as an alliance under 
 
236 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the recognized leadership of Sparta. As Freeman sums it 
 up, " Sparta and Achaia, Cleomenes and Aratus, were shut 
 up within one peninsula, and that was enough." 
 
 Of course the war had to have immediate causes, and one 
 of them was the jealousy of the ^Etolian League, which, to 
 check its rival, handed over to Spartan alliance three im- 
 portant Arcadian towns which formed a wedge running 
 right up into Achaian territory and specially threatening 
 Sparta's old enemies, Megalopolis and Argos. The ex- 
 tyrants of these cities, therefore, Lydiadas and Aristoma- 
 chus, now influential statesmen of the League, took the 
 alarm at once and were for hurrying on war with Sparta and 
 forcing her into the League before it was too late. Cleo- 
 menes also, who had not yet taken his revolutionary step, 
 was eager for a chance to win the military prestige which 
 would help him to put through his scheme. Aratus, on the 
 other hand, as well as the Spartan Ephors, was for caution 
 and delay, but the seizure of a post actually within Megalo- 
 politan territory made peace impossible. 
 
 Unluckily, not Lydiadas, a dashing soldier and the logical 
 candidate under the circumstances, but Aristomachus, who 
 was much more under the personal influence of Aratus, 
 was chosen President by the same assembly that declared 
 war. The result was that, under strong pressure from his 
 political chief, he declined battle when it might have been 
 joined at great advantage. There was much indignation, 
 and at the next election Aratus had to meet, for the first 
 time, a strong opposition, led by Lydiadas as a rival candi- 
 date; long habit prevailed, however, and the trusted states- 
 man was elected for a twelfth term. A bad defeat at Mount 
 Lykaion was partly atoned for by the successful surprise of 
 Mantinea, which, although a seceder, was treated with much 
 kindness and taken back into the League with full rights. 
 The next defeat, however, shook Aratus's popularity more 
 
ARATUS 237 
 
 than any event had yet done, for it Involved the death of 
 the valiant Lydiadas, who, disregarding the signal to halt 
 after a first repulse of the Spartans, pursued the enemy to 
 their trenches and there, unsupported by the main body, 
 was cut down with his men. Sparta gave royal honors to 
 her bravest foe, sending his body, robed and crowned, to 
 the city over which he had refused to rule, and all Achaia 
 was painfully stirred by the charges that the cowardice, if 
 not the deliberate treachery, of Aratus had sacrificed his only 
 serious rival. 
 
 So high ran the f eeling that the Assembly in extraordinary 
 session passed the strange resolution that Aratus might go 
 on with the war if he pleased, at his own expense, — the 
 League would throw away no more men or money under 
 his leadership. Neither this pettishness, however, nor the 
 mortification of Aratus, who threatened to "lay down his 
 seal" and let the government run itself, lasted very long, 
 and we soon see him again at the head of the army and able 
 to dictate the choice of the next election. But a still greater 
 blow was in store. Cleomenes, in the flush of his victory at 
 Ladokia and his subsequent recapture of Mantinea, had 
 carried through his resolution, executed the Ephors, and 
 made himself King in fact as well as in name. With greatly 
 increased power and prestige he once more invaded Achaian 
 territory and at Hecatombeon inflicted on the League a 
 really crushing defeat. 
 
 It was a dark moment for Aratus. Not only was his per- 
 sonal popularity under a heavy cloud, but the dream of his 
 life now began to seem to him, for the first time, impossible 
 of fulfillment. On all sides rose the cry for peace. Sparta's 
 terms were moderate, from her point of view even generous. 
 She asked no territory, no garrisons, nothing but the en- 
 trance of the Achaian cities into an alliance of which she 
 should be head. But to grant these terms meant, of course, 
 
238 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 the disappearance forever of the higher, freer type of union, 
 the end of the federation. Citizens of Corinth, of Argos, of 
 Megalopolis might lose nothing, might even gain, in local 
 freedom and authority, but they would never again be citi- 
 zens of a great Hellenic nation. On the other hand, it was 
 quite obvious that the League could not, unassisted, main- 
 tain itself against Sparta; ^Etolia, its fellow-federation, was 
 aloof and hostile; there remained only Macedon. At first 
 sight it seems almost incredible that Aratus, whose life- 
 work had been the rescue of the Peloponnesus from Mace- 
 donian domination, should have voluntarily proposed its 
 return to that control. That he did make this proposal, that 
 he planned and plotted for its success, and finally bought the 
 aid of Macedon at the price of that invaluable fortress of 
 Acrocorinth which it had been his proudest personal achieve- 
 ment to snatch from her hands, is the great indelible blot 
 upon his fame; the man who had done more than any one 
 who ever lived to unite Greece made her union impossible. 
 Yet it is unfair to judge entirely after the event. Almost 
 always the near danger looks more terrible than the distant 
 one. Cleomenes was close at hand; under his dominating 
 personality the control of Sparta would be felt at every 
 point and every hour. Moreover, to Aratus' essentially 
 conservative mind the revolutionary Spartan was at once a 
 tyrant and a socialist, vastly more dangerous than the 
 steady, respectable, constitutional monarch, Antigonus 
 Doson, who was quietly ruling Macedon for his boy- 
 nephew, Philip. The demand for Acrocorinth, too, was still 
 in the future, and a friendly alliance on equal terms between 
 Kingdom and League was all, no doubt, that Aratus orig- 
 inally had in mind. Remembering how naturally he had 
 turned, in his very boyhood, to the expedient of foreign 
 succor, one begins to see that it was not as a traitor or a 
 weakling, but as a self-deluded patriot, that the great states- 
 man of the League took the fatal step. 
 
ARATUS 239 
 
 Of course, no such proposal could be bluntly made to the 
 Achaians. By a series of ingenious negotiations carried on 
 in the name of the city of Megalopolis, they were gradually 
 familiarized with the idea, even while peace parleys with 
 Cleomenes were also proceeding. The Spartan terms were 
 so attractive that only a most unlucky illness which pre- 
 vented the king's appearance at the crucial moment post- 
 poned their acceptance. Aratus, who had by this time 
 learned, but dared not tell his countrymen, the price 
 Antigonus demanded, gained time by contriving to renew 
 the quarrel with Cleomenes. It was impossible, however, to 
 keep the secret long, and at the news that the cession to 
 Macedon of the key of the Peloponnesus had even been 
 considered, the whole League fell into the wildest confusion. 
 A party favorable to Sparta sprang up everywhere and car- 
 ried city after city into the Lacedaemonian alliance. The 
 Spartans entered Corinth, detached her from the League 
 and besieged the citadel with its federal garrison. In his own 
 Sicyon, Aratus had to execute some "traitors," — the first 
 civil bloodshed committed in the name of the League, — 
 and soon only that city, Megalopolis, a few small Arcadian 
 towns, and the original Achaians remained true to the 
 Federation. In one way, Aratus was the stronger, for he 
 had no rivals, and was now appointed dictator, with an 
 armed guard. Nor was this the prelude to tyranny; at least, 
 the Achaians knew they could trust him to consider their 
 interests, however mistakenly, rather than his own. In vain 
 did Cleomenes, by splendid offers, try to win him over. His 
 decision was taken, and he was now able to impose it upon 
 his people. After sending to JiJtolia and Athens for the aid 
 which there was no hope of their granting, the League for- 
 mally requested the assistance of Macedonia at the price 
 of Acrocorinth. 
 
 Soon the northern legions were in the Peloponnesus, and 
 
240 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 Cleomenes, now the champion of Greek independence, was 
 waging a magnificent but losing fight. Argos went back to 
 her allegiance, Mantinea, which had twice seceded, was 
 recaptured, stripped of her citizens and recolonized as 
 "Antigonia." The final struggle came on the battlefield of 
 Sellasia, in 222, when the hopes of Sparta went down in 
 final defeat, and her king, losing the opportunity of a hero's 
 death, fled from the field to a miserable end in Egypt. For 
 seventy-five years more the Achaian League, now restored 
 to nearly its greatest extent, maintained its existence and in 
 some ways its usefulness, but its independence was over for- 
 ever. As a member of what may be called a League of 
 leagues, which included almost all Greece, it could manage 
 its home affairs without interference and send delegates to 
 a general congress which met under the presidency of the 
 king of Macedon, but it could carry on no foreign policy 
 of its own, and in war its contingents marched under the 
 orders of the northern king. 
 
 Under these circumstances the latest period of Aratus' 
 life is necessarily the least interesting. For eight years more 
 he remained the unquestioned head of the League — his son 
 usually filling his place between terms — as well as the 
 trusted counselor of the youthful Philip V, now ruling for 
 himself and as yet impressionable and unhardened. As 
 President of the League, he had to wage war, as unsuccess- 
 fully as usual, against the predatory JStolians and their 
 allies the Eleans, and put up so poor a defense that at one 
 time the three little old Achaian cities of Dyme, Pharae, and 
 Tritaia, getting no help from "an incompetent executive 
 with a bankrupt treasury," refused to pay Federal taxes, 
 holding the money for their own protection — a proceeding 
 remarkably like that proposed by the New England States 
 in the Hartford Convention of 1814. The extreme impu- 
 dence of the iEtolians, however, had brought the whole 
 
AEATUS 241 
 
 Macedonian Alliance down upon them, and as "minister of 
 Peloponnesian affairs," so to speak, Aratus accompanied 
 Philip on many successful campaigns, using the great influ- 
 ence which his years, experience, and personal charm gave 
 him over the latter's yet unformed character to keep his 
 policy moderate and merciful. His original idea, when he 
 persuaded the Achaians to put themselves under the shield 
 of the Macedonian King, had been that they should become 
 not his subjects but his free allies; the vision with which he 
 comforted himself was of a united Greece willingly following 
 the lead of a powerful friend. It was therefore essential to 
 his own self-respect as well as to the welfare of his country- 
 men that the intercourse between Philip and the Pelopon- 
 nesians should be kept on this open and manly footing, and 
 we see the line he took in the argument with which he dis- 
 suaded Philip from seizing the fortress on Mount Ithome, 
 which dominated the southern part of the Peloponnesus as 
 Acrocorinth did the northern. "Robbers," he said, "nest 
 themselves in rocks and precipices, but the strongest fort 
 a king can have is confidence and affection. These have 
 opened to you the Cretan Sea, these make you master of 
 Peloponnesus, and by the help of these, young as you are, 
 are you become captain of the one and lord of the other." 1 
 But Aratus was not Philip's only counselor. Close to his 
 person and enjoying the right of free and familiar inter- 
 course with their sovereign which was still tenaciously held 
 by the old Macedonian nobility, were a group of men whose 
 viewpoint was still that of the captains who had gone forth 
 to conquer under Philip II and Alexander, who regarded 
 Macedonians as born masters and Greeks as born subjects. 
 To these "junkers" Aratus and his influence were simply 
 insufferable, and they never rested in their efforts to dis- 
 lodge him. At one time they made use of a passing wave of 
 
 i Again, cf- Burke, peroration to Speech on Conciliation with America. 
 
242 GREEK LEADERS 
 
 popular discontent among the Achaians to secure the elec- 
 tion of one of their creatures to the presidency, but his in- 
 competence was such that Aratus came back stronger than 
 ever. At another, they trumped up a charge before Philip 
 which Aratus was luckily enabled to disprove by the mouth 
 of the man he was accused of suborning. The curious fact 
 which proves the immense pride and self-confidence of the 
 old Macedonian stock is that the conspirators after each 
 defeat became not less but more open and outrageous in 
 their attempts, until actual rebellion led them one and all to 
 disgrace and death. 
 
 Nevertheless, Aratus was playing a game in which he was 
 bound to lose. As Philip grew older and more confirmed in 
 power, the seeds of evil in his character came to fruit, and 
 the increasing violence of his passions rebelled more and 
 more against the restraint which his Achaian minister would 
 have put upon them. Particularly, the way in which he 
 had yielded, overawed for the last time by the higher stand- 
 ards and more far-seeing statesmanship of Aratus, in the 
 matter of Mount Ithome, rankled in his proud heart, and 
 from that time the two became more and more estranged. 
 So obvious was the King's ill-will that when Aratus sick- 
 ened and died of an illness the symptoms of which look ex- 
 ceedingly like those of consumption, it was commonly be- 
 lieved that he had been poisoned by royal order, and the 
 dying man himself, looking at the blood he had coughed up, 
 remarked, "That is the reward I have got for my friendship 
 to Philip." 
 
 Aratus died in his seventeenth term as President and in 
 the fifty-ninth year of his age. Whatever fault later critics 
 have found with his career as a patriot statesman, his fellow- 
 countrymen were united in his praise. The only controversy 
 was between iEgium, the capital of the League, where he 
 died, and Sicyon, where he was born, as to which should 
 
AEATUS 243 
 
 have the honor of being his final resting-place. Sicyon pre- 
 vailed, and instituted two solemn sacrifices, performed yearly 
 at his tomb to commemorate the day of his birth and that 
 on which he had delivered her from tyranny. It was not 
 long before Greece exchanged the position of a dependency 
 of Macedon for that of a Roman province, yet "e'en in our 
 ashes live their wonted fires," and three hundred years after 
 the death of Aratus, some remnants of these observances 
 still preserved the memory of the man who had cleared the 
 Peloponnesus of tyrants and had been the guiding spirit of 
 a great free federation. 
 
SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY 
 
 Pbehistokic Period: 2500-1000. 
 
 I. "Cretan Period": 2500-1350. 
 
 The jEgean Sea was the seat of an elaborate and splendid civili- 
 zation, known to us by its monuments, especially those discovered 
 in Crete. The people, a small, dark, skillful, industrious, and docile 
 race, were governed by despotic kings of the Oriental type. They 
 used bronze but no iron. 
 
 II. " Mycenaean Period" : 1500-1000. 
 
 The Greeks, a tall, fair, warlike race, invaded Greece and the 
 islands from the north. Coming in small bands, they conquered 
 different parts of the country and ruled as a superior class, mixing 
 more or less with the original race and partly preserving the "Cre- 
 tan" civilization. 
 
 "Dark Ages": 1000-800. 
 
 I. Dorian Invasion — about 1000. 
 
 The final wave of northern invaders, the peculiarly warlike 
 Dorians, forced its way through Central Greece and settled mainly 
 in the Peloponnesus, destroying the last remains of the older civiliza- 
 tion. The art of writing was now forgotten and the Mediterranean 
 trade was lost to the Phoenicians. 
 
 II. First Era of Colonization: 1000-900. 
 
 The general unsettlement caused by the Dorian invasion caused 
 the migration of many peoples, driving out others in turn. In the 
 midst of the turmoil the Greeks took possession of the western coast 
 of Asia Minor, where they subsequently appeared in the north as 
 iEolians, in the center as Ionians, and in the south as Dorians. 
 
 "Middle Ages": 800-500. 
 
 Civilization gradually rebuilt. Revival of trade. Grouping of 
 tribal villages in "city-states." Government of kings, with aid of 
 council of tribal elders, gives place to that of nobles {oligarchy). 
 Great misery and discontent of commons, often taken advantage of 
 by ambitious adventurer who makes himself tyrant (i.e., ruler con- 
 trary to law). Second generation of tyrants usually overthrown and 
 followed by republics, either aristocratic or democratic. During this 
 period we may also note: 
 
£46 SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY 
 
 1. Second Era of Colonization : 750-550. 
 
 As a result of the increase of population, the expansion of trade, 
 and the political disturbances, a great many cities sent out colonists 
 who established Greek towns on the shores of the Black Sea, Sicily, 
 Southern Italy, etc. These cities often surpassed their founders in 
 wealth and population. 
 
 II. Development of Sparta. 
 
 Of the Dorian tribes which invaded Laconia and Messenia the 
 Spartans proved the strongest. In time they conquered the others, 
 retaining all power and all the best land. The inhabitants of the 
 small Laconian towns (Periaci) kept local rights only. The rest of 
 the population and the Messenians tilled the good land as state- 
 serfs (Helots.) The Spartans themselves remained a small ruling 
 caste, purely military. Their peculiar discipline and form of govern- 
 ment was adopted and attributed to Lycurgus. They were the only 
 Greek state to retain always the original monarchy (but divided 
 between two kings), council of elders, and assembly of warriors who 
 shouted assent or dissent. Later they added a board of five Ephors, 
 annually elected to supervise the kings and the observance of the 
 laws of "Lycurgus." 
 
 III. Development of Athens. 
 
 Small townships of Attica consolidated very early into city-state 
 of Athens. Kings lost power to nobles in pre-historic times. By 682, 
 nine Archons elected annually by and from the nobles (Eupatrids) 
 who held all the power and most of the land. Popular discontent 
 led to reforms by Draco (621) and Solon (594-93). Solon relieved 
 debtors and tenants, re-classified citizens according to property, 
 and established a modified democracy. New disturbances led to 
 establishment of tyranny by Pisistratus, who reigned brilliantly. 
 His younger son Hipparchus was assassinated by Harmodius and 
 Aristogiton, and his elder son Hippias driven out by democratic 
 revolution led by Cleisthenes (510). A new constitution divided all 
 citizens, increased by inclusion of resident aliens (metics), into ten 
 tribes (wards) each consisting of demes (districts), which formed the 
 basis of the Council of Five Hundred and of the voting in the Assem- 
 bly (Ecclesia). 
 
 Persian Invasions: 492-479. 
 
 During the second half of the sixth century Greek cities of Asia 
 Minor, previously subjected by Lydia, passed into power of Persia. 
 In 500, the lonians revolted, aided by Athens, but were put down. 
 492, Darius, resolving to conquer Greece, sent expedition along coast, 
 wrecked off Mount Athos. 490, a second, under Datis and Arta- 
 phernes, crossed the ^Egean and landed at Marathon. The Athenians, 
 aided by Plataeans only, won decisive victory. 480, King Xerxes 
 
SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY 247 
 
 renewed attack with huge army and fleet, following coast route. 
 Most Greek states (Thebes and Argos holding aloof) formed league 
 for defense, under Spartan leadership. A small force under Leonidaa 
 of Sparta was cut to pieces at Thermopyloe, and the Greek fleet after 
 indecisive battle at Artemisiwm withdrew to Sol-amis where, through 
 diplomacy of Athenian Themistocles, a great naval battle was won. 
 Xerxes returned to Asia, leaving best troops in Thessaly under 
 Mardonius, who advanced southward in 479 and was defeated at 
 Plaicea by combined Greek army under Spartan Pausanias. At same 
 time, a Greek fleet and army, chiefly Athenian, won great victory 
 over Persians at Mycale, Asia Minor, 
 
 During Persian invasions, Phoenician city of Carthage nearly over- 
 whelmed Greek cities of Sicily, but was defeated at Himera (480) 
 by Oelon of Syracuse. 
 
 Athenian Supremacy: 479-431. 
 
 Athens chief naval power in Greece. After treachery of Pausanias, 
 allies refused to serve under Spartan admiral, and Sparta and rest 
 of Peloponnesians retired from war, leaving Athens head of Delian 
 League of maritime states, established by Aristides. War with 
 Persia continued until by victory of Cimon, son of Miltiades, at 
 river Eurymedon (466) freedom of jEgean absolutely secured. Mean- 
 while, League developed into Empire, allies becoming subjects. 
 At same time, Athens conquered several neighbor states but was 
 obliged to give up attempt at land-empire. 445, Thirty Years' Truce 
 signed with Sparta. Next fifteen years those of greatest prosperity, 
 power, art, and literature. Time of Phidias, Sophocles. Chief states- 
 man of whole period, Pericles. Athens now complete democracy and 
 champion of democracies everywhere, as Sparta of aristocracies. 
 
 Peloponnesian War: 431-404. 
 
 Peloponnesian League, headed by Sparta, at war with Athenian 
 Empire. (1) Annual Spartan invasions of Attica. Plague at Athens. 
 Death of Pericles. Rise of Cleon. Victories of Demosthenes (Athe- 
 nian). Capture of Spartans at Pylos. (2) Death of Cleon and 
 Brasidas (Spartan) at Amphipolis. "Peace of Nicias." War con- 
 tinued among allies. Disastrous Sicilian Expedition urged by Aid- 
 biades. (3) Sparta renewed direct war and occupied Decelea (in 
 Attica) continuously. Naval war in ^Egean. Sparta betrayed lonians 
 for Persian aid. Brief oligarchical revolution ("Pour Hundred") in 
 Athens. Spartan victory under Lysander at Mgospotami. Athens 
 surrenders, 404. 
 
 Spaetan Supremacy: 404-371. 
 
 Sparta chief military power in Greece. Set up oligarchies, sup- 
 ported by Spartan garrisons and harmosts fffovor norg ) m almost 
 
248 SUMMARY OP GREEK HISTORY 
 
 every city. Renewed war with Persia. [Weakness of Persia proved by 
 march (401) through interior of " Ten Thousand" Greek mercenaries, 
 under Athenian Xenophon, left stranded by death of insurgent 
 prince, Cyrus.] Agesilaus (Spartan King) after victories over Per- 
 sians, recalled to Greece to put down revolting states. 
 
 Theban Stjpeemact: 371-362. 
 
 Thebes, led by Pelopidas, overthrew oligarchy and under Epami- 
 nondas refused to accept Spartan Supremacy as laid down by 
 "King's Peace." At Leuctra (371) Theban infantry won great vic- 
 tory over Spartan. Epaminondas invaded Peloponnesus four times, 
 depriving Sparta of Messenia, which set up as independent state, 
 and helping to found Megalopolis, capital of new Arcadian League. 
 In victorious battle of Mantinea (362), Epaminondas slain. 
 
 [During periods of Spartan and Theban supremacies in Greece, 
 Dionysius of Syracuse rescued most of Sicily from Carthage and 
 created a despotic empire.] 
 
 After a period of general exhaustion in Greece, during which 
 Philip of Macedon was building up a great military state, came 
 
 Macedonian Stjpeemact: 338-146. 
 
 I. Philip. Athens and Thebes, roused by the orator Demosthenes, 
 fought Philip at Chaeronea (338) and were beaten. Philip was chosen 
 by Greek congress at Corinth to lead general expedition against 
 Persia, but was assassinated. 
 II. Alexander: 336-323. Alexander, after putting down revolts in Greece, 
 invaded Persian Empire, winning battles of the Granwus (334), 
 Issus (333), and (after conquest of Syria and Egypt), Gaugamela 
 (Arbela) (331). After pushing his conquests as far as the Indus, and 
 laying the foundations of a great Asiatic-European empire of Hell- 
 enistic culture, he died in 323. 
 
 III. Wars of Succession: 323-280. The empire was divided among his 
 generals and their successors, who fought long wars with each other. 
 Finally, the principal divisions became Syria (about the old Persian 
 Empire), under the Seleucidce, Egypt, under the Ptolemies, and Mace- 
 donia, under the descendants of Antigonus. 
 
 IV. Period of Federations: 280-146. The Greek states, now very weak, 
 were subject to Macedon, but under Aratus the Achaian League 
 united most of the Peloponnesus in a, free federation. The revival of 
 Sparta under Cleomenes led Aratus to put the League under the pro- 
 tection of Macedon (222), which also conquered Sparta. Later, the 
 Mtolian League, in northern Greece, called in Rome against Macedon. 
 Finally, after the battle of Pydna (168) the kingdom of Macedonia 
 was broken up into small states tributary to Rome, and in the battle 
 of Corinth (146) the Achaian League was easily defeated. Thereafter 
 Greece was a dependency of Rome. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Achaian League, characteristics, 
 226; constitution, 226-27; receives 
 non-Achaian members, 230; suc- 
 cess and ultimate failure largely 
 due to Aratus, 231; makes peace- 
 alliance with ^Etolian League, 
 233; extension over southern 
 Greece, 233; at war with Sparta, 
 236; unable to stand alone against 
 Sparta, 238; falls into confusion at 
 news of cession of Acrocorinth to 
 Macedon, 239; requests aid of 
 Macedon, 239; restored in extent, 
 exists 75 years under supremacy of 
 Macedon, 240. 
 
 Acragas, sacked by Carthaginians, 
 126. 
 
 Admetus, King of Molossians, gives 
 refuge to Themistocles, 33. 
 
 jEschines supports Eubulus, 173; 
 goes on embassy to Philip, 181; 
 accused of corruption and disloy- 
 alty by Demosthenes, but ac- 
 quitted, 183; denounces sacrilege 
 of Amphissa, 185; gains influence 
 after Chaeronea, 188; blocks vote 
 of crown to Demosthenes by in- 
 dicting Ctesiphon, 189; oration 
 "On the Crown," 191-92; unable 
 to pay fine, goes into exile, 192; 
 teacher of oratory, 192. 
 
 jEtolian League, formed, 225; ex- 
 pands into first-class power, 231; 
 alliance with Antigonus, 233; 
 peace and alliance with Achaian 
 League, 233; hands over Arcadian 
 towns to Sparta, 236; its preda- 
 tory raids, 240. 
 
 Agariste, grand-niece of Cleisthenes, 
 mother of Pericles, 37. 
 
 Agesilaus, normal Spartan, 103; 
 chosen king by Lysander's influ- 
 ence, 105-06; his pleasantness, 
 106; lameness, 106; generosity, 
 106; courtesy to Ephors and Eld- 
 ers, 106-07; tries to play part of 
 Agamemnon, 108; takes army to 
 Asia, 108, gets rid of Lysander, 
 108; most powerful Spartan king 
 for 100 years, 109; campaign vs. 
 Tissaphernes, 109-10; drills army 
 at Ephesus, 109-10; takes Sardis, 
 110; alliance with King of Paphla- 
 gonia, 111; meeting with Pharna- 
 bazus, 111-12; humanity, 112-13; 
 height of power, 113; appoints 
 Pisander to command fleet, 114; 
 plans invasion of Persia, 114; re- 
 called to Greece, 114; reception 
 of news of Spartan victory, 115; at 
 battle of Coronea, 115-16; goes to 
 Delphi and Sparta, 116; leads two 
 expeditions against Corinth, 117; 
 anecdotes of, 117, 118; influence 
 over Spartan policy, 118; refuses to 
 let Thebes sign for Boeotia, 120, 
 151; defends seizure of Cadmea, 
 120; fondness for his children, 120; 
 mingling of public and private 
 considerations, 120-21 ; leads army 
 twice into Boeotia, 121; receives 
 victorious army, 121; defends 
 Sparta against Epaminondas, 122; 
 goes to Asia to get money for 
 Sparta, 122; takes field against 
 Epaminondas, 123, 165; saves 
 Sparta, 123, 166; general at battle 
 of Mantinea, 167, 169; hires out to 
 Tachos of Egypt, 123; surprises 
 the Egyptians. 123-24; goes over 
 
250 
 
 INDEX 
 
 to Nectanabis, 124; dies on return 
 voyage, 124; identification with 
 Sparta, 124. 
 
 Agesipolis, son of Pausanias II, un- 
 der influence of Agesilaus, 117. 
 
 Agis III of Sparta, news of his death 
 at battle of Megalopolis, 210. 
 
 Agis IV of Sparta, contrasted with 
 Aratus, 233; dies a victim to old 
 regime, 235. 
 
 Alcibiades, type of Renaissance, 59- 
 60; birth and childhood, 60-61; 
 youthful impudence, 61-62; friend- 
 ship with Socrates, 62, 89, 90; 
 winner at Olympia, 63; early in- 
 terest in politics, 63; intrigues for 
 ostracism of Hyperbolus, 64; 
 grievance against Nicias and 
 Sparta, 64; trick on Spartan en- 
 voys, 65; elected general, 65; diplo- 
 matic activity at Argos and in 
 Peloponnesus, 65; urges Sicilian 
 expedition, 65-67; charged with 
 profaning Mysteries, 68; sent and 
 recalled, 68; escape and condem- 
 nation, 69; offers assistance to 
 Sparta, 69; popularity at Sparta, 
 69-70; goes to aid Ionian revolt vs. 
 Athens, 70; indispensable to Tissa- 
 phernes, 71 ; conspires with Athe- 
 nian generals, 72; recalled by army 
 at Samos, refuses to lead it to 
 Athens, 73; successful campaign 
 and humane conduct in north 
 ^Egean, 74; return to Athens and 
 restoration of Eleusinian rites, 75; 
 removed from command, 76; vain 
 attempt to save fleet at iEgos- 
 potami, 76; applies to Pharnaba- 
 zus, 77; assassination, 77; charac- 
 ter in Banquet, 88-89, 89-90. 
 
 Alcma^onidse, recalled from exile by 
 Solon, 14; natural leadership and 
 democratic policy, 38; coalition 
 with Cimonian party formed and 
 dissolved, 39. 
 
 Alexander of Pherse, seizes Pelopi- 
 das, 160; defeated at Cynosceph- 
 alse, 162; reduced to govern- 
 ment of his own city, 163. 
 
 Alexander of Macedon, seizes gov- 
 ernment and puts down first re- 
 volts in Greece, 189, 201; destroys 
 Thebes, 190, £02; pardons Athens, 
 191; birth, 197; traits inherited 
 from his mother, 197; devotion to 
 her, 197; traits inherited from his 
 father, 198; Greek of Homeric 
 type, 198; childhood and educa- 
 tion, 198-99; pupil of Aristotle, 
 199; left in charge of kingdom at 
 sixteen, 199; commands right wing 
 at Chseronea, 200; quarrel with 
 Philip at wedding-feast, 200; suc- 
 ceeds to kingdom, 200; interview 
 with Diogene3, 201; executes ri- 
 vals, 201; campaign in Balkans 
 and incident of Shipka Pass, 201- 
 02; headlong return to Greece, 
 202; remorse for destruction of 
 Thebes, 202; appearance and tem- 
 perament northern and chivalric, 
 203; first year in Asia (battle of the 
 Granicus, abandonment of fleet, 
 Gordian Knot), 204; anecdotes 
 of, 205; battle of Issus, 206-07; 
 change from crusader to conqueror, 
 207; broader but more cruel, 208; 
 sieges of Tyre and Gaza, 208-09; 
 refuses Darius' offer, 209; takes 
 Egypt without battle, 209; visit 
 to temple of Zeus Ammon, 209-10; 
 plans Alexandria, 210; hears of 
 battle of Megalopolis, 210; at bat- 
 tle of Gaugamela, 211-12; takes 
 Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis, 
 defeats Ariobarzanes, pursues Da- 
 rius, executes Bessus, 212; com- 
 mits himself to project of world- 
 empire, burns palace at Persepolis, 
 and discharges Greek troops, 212- 
 13; adopts Oriental customs, 213; 
 
INDEX 
 
 251 
 
 cruel treatment of Philotas and 
 Parmenio, 214; murder of Clitus, 
 214-15; checks mutiny, 215-16; 
 decides to invade India, 216; bat- 
 tle of the Hydaspes, 217; wishes 
 to explore Ganges, 217; yields to 
 his army, 217-18; leads army back 
 across Beluchistan, 218; adminis- 
 trator, 218; his internationalist 
 policy, 219; puts down mutiny, 
 219-20; mourns death of Hephses- 
 tion, 220; death, 221; lasting im- 
 press of his genius, 221-22; began 
 modern world, 227. 
 
 Amphictyonic Council, proposal to 
 expel Thessaly, Thebes, and Argos 
 from, 30; dominated by Philip, 
 182. 
 
 Anaxagoras, teacher of Pericles, 38; 
 condemnation and flight, 51; sci- 
 entific teaching, 85. 
 
 Antalcidas, sent by Sparta to nego- 
 tiate treaty with Persia, 119. 
 
 Antigonas Gonatas, a moderate 
 ruler, 224; rivalry with Egypt, 
 224; seizes Corinth and beats 
 Egypt, 232; alliance with jEtolia, 
 233; death, 233. 
 
 Antigonus Doson, regent for Philip 
 V, 238. 
 
 Anytus, co-accuser of Socrates, 93. 
 
 Antipater, puts down Greek revolt, 
 194. 
 
 Apology (Plato's) quoted, 94-97, 
 98-99. 
 
 Aratus, son of Clinias of Sicyon, 
 brought up at Argos after fa- 
 ther's murder, 223; no objection 
 to legitimate kings, 227-28; frees 
 Sicyon, 228; goes to Egypt to get 
 money from Ptolemy, 229; rees- 
 tablishes returned exiles, 229; per- 
 suades Sicyon to join Achaian 
 League, 229; chosen general of the 
 League, 230; high character, 230- 
 31; weaknesses, 231; seizure of 
 
 Acrocorinth, 232; alliance with 
 Sparta, 233; contrast between him 
 and Agis, 233; loses first pitched 
 battle, 233; Athens freed at his 
 expense, 234; cautious policy with 
 Sparta, 236; election opposed by 
 Lydiadas, 236; popularity shaken, 
 237; intrigue with Macedon, 238- 
 39; dictator, 239; eight years head 
 of League under Macedon, 240; 
 wages war vs. jEtolians, 240; ac- 
 companies Philip V on campaigns, 
 241; dissuades him from seizing 
 Mt. Ithome, 241; opposed by 
 Macedonian nobles, 241-42; loses 
 favor of Philip, 242; death, 242; 
 fame, 242-43. 
 
 Arcadian League, formed, 156; in- 
 dependent attitude, 161; falls 
 apart, 164; its divisions, 165. 
 
 Areopagus, obstructs reform, 40; 
 shorn of nearly all functions, 42. 
 
 Argos, allied with Athens by Alci- 
 biades, 65; too neutral to be in- 
 teresting, 69; supports Arcadia, 
 156; ally of Thebes, 165: con- 
 trolled by Macedonia as watch- 
 dog against Sparta, 224; joins 
 Achaian League, 234. 
 
 Aristides, conservative leader, 22; 
 opposition between him and The- 
 mistocles, 23; banished and re- 
 called, 24; brings news to fleet at 
 Sal amis, 27; responsible for Con- 
 federacy of Delos, 29. 
 
 Aristomachus, tyrant of Argos, ab- 
 dicates and brings Argos into 
 Achaian League, 234; urges war 
 with Sparta, 236; chosen president 
 and under influence of Aratus de- 
 clines battle, 236. 
 
 Aristophanes, criticism of Pericles in 
 The Peace, 53; quotations from 
 his Clouds, 79-83; guide of public 
 opinion after fall of Athens, 91. 
 
 Aristotle, teacher of Alexander, 199. 
 
252 
 
 IINJJJiA 
 
 Artaxerxes, receives Themistocles, 
 33; favors Themistocles, 34; calls 
 him to aid expedition against 
 Greece, 34. 
 
 Aspasia, "morganatic" wife of 
 Pericles, her "salon," 50; her trial, 
 51. 
 
 Athens, late in passing out of feudal- 
 ism, 7; commercially allied with 
 East, 10; naval supremacy built 
 up by Themistocles, 21-22; aban- 
 doned, 25; assumes equality with 
 Sparta, 30; one of most con- 
 servatively religious communities 
 in Hellas, 38, 85; overestimates 
 her powers, 43; loses land-empire 
 and becomes definitely a naval 
 power, 44; "the school of Hellas," 
 47; changed by Plague, 54; typi- 
 fied to us by her Periclean age, 57- 
 58; courage after Sicilian disaster, 
 70; comes out to welcome Alcibia- 
 des, 75; had borrowed from treas- 
 ury of Athena, 136; attitude of 
 holy horror toward Dionysius, 
 142; grants his tragedy a first 
 prize, 143; makes alliance with 
 Syracuse, 143; agrees to Peace of 
 Callias, 150; suspicion of Thebes, 
 153; alliance with Sparta, 158; and 
 with Mantinea, 165; in middle 
 of 4th century B.C., a delightful 
 city, 171; grown soft, 172; sit- 
 uation at close of Social War, 
 175-76; helps check Philip in 352 
 B.C., 178; moves too late but be- 
 gins to wake, 179; interferes in 
 Eubcea, 180; has to acknowledge 
 Philip as Amphictyonic power, 
 182; declares war on Philip, 184; 
 holds back from expedition to 
 punish Amphissa, 185; makes alli- 
 ance with Thebes, 186; gets good 
 terms from Philip after defeat at 
 Chaeronea, 188; submits to Alexan- 
 der, 189; receives Theban fugi- 
 
 tives but again bows to Alexander, 
 190-91; long period of peace, 191; 
 arrests but refuses to surrender 
 Harpalos, 193; rises at news of 
 Alexander's death, but forced to 
 surrender to Antipater, 194; a 
 provincial Macedonian town, 224; 
 freed by Aratus, becomes ally of 
 Achaian League, 234. 
 
 Bessus, Satrap of Bactria, murders 
 Darius, and is taken and executed 
 by Alexander, 212. 
 
 Boeotia, characteristics/ 147; league 
 revived, 149; proclaimed a nation, 
 but outlawed, 151; head of Greek 
 family, 155; enlargement of state, 
 155; unfit for sea power, 163. 
 
 Brasidas, un-Spartan type, 103. 
 
 Callicratidas, un-Spartan type, 103. 
 
 Carthage, resumes conquest of Sicily, 
 125-26; acknowledged mistress of 
 north and south coasts of Sicily, 
 130; on the defensive, 138; ready 
 to try again, 140; makes peace, 
 140; third and fourth war with 
 Dionysius, 143; but for Dionysius 
 would have established herself in 
 Italy, 144. 
 
 Chserephon, satirized in Clouds, 79, 
 80, 83; inquires of oracle for Soc- 
 rates, 86; friend of Socrates, 89; 
 leaves Athens at time of the Thir- 
 ty, 92. 
 
 Charidemos, in command of Athe- 
 nian garrison (338 B.C.), 188. 
 
 Cimon, youthful rival of Themisto- 
 cles, 31; prosecuted by Pericles, 
 41; helps Sparta to put down 
 Helots, 41; ostracized, 42; recalled, 
 43; negotiates five-year truce 
 with Sparta, 44; death, 44. 
 
 Cleombrotus, ordered to march 
 against Thebes, 152; defeated and 
 slain at Leuctra, 121, 154. 
 
INDEX 
 
 258 
 
 Cleomenes, marries widow of Agis, 
 235; under her influence plans re- 
 form of Spartan constitution, 235; 
 bound to clash with Aratus, 235- 
 36; eager for war with Achaian 
 League, 236; carries through 
 revolution, 237; defeats League 
 at Hecatombeon, 237; champion 
 of Greek independence, 240; de- 
 feated at Sellasia, flees to Egypt, 
 240. 
 
 Cleisthenes, fore-runner of Themis- 
 tocles, 31; second founder of 
 Athenian democracy, and great- 
 great-uncle of Pericles, 37; an 
 Alcmaeonid, 38; Constitution of, 
 39-^0. 
 
 Clouds, comedy of Aristophanes, 
 quoted, 76-83; underlying charge 
 against Socrates, 84; revised ver- 
 sion, 84. 
 
 Conon, commands Persian-Cypriot 
 fleet, 107; joined by Pharn&bazus, 
 defeats Spartans at Cnidus, 113. 
 
 Corcyra, her fleet possibly equal to 
 that of Athens, 21; quarrel with 
 Corinth, 51; defensive alliance 
 with Athens, 52. 
 
 Corinth, quarrel with Corcyra, 51 
 federal union with Argos, 119-20 
 sends mediator to Syracuse, 132 
 neutral, as between Thebes and 
 Arcadia, 165; seized by Antigomis 
 Gonatas, 232; freed by Aratus, 
 232; enters Achaian League, 232; 
 detached by Sparta, 239. 
 
 Critias, follower of Socrates, 89; con- 
 spirator and tyrant, 91; protects 
 Socrates, 92. 
 
 Crito, lifelong friend of Socrates, 89; 
 asked to send Xanthippe home, 
 99; with Socrates and his family in 
 private, 100; pleads with Socrates 
 to delay drinking the hemlock, 
 100; receives last request of Soc- 
 rates, 101. 
 
 Croesus, receives legendary visit from 
 Solon, 1-2. 
 
 Ctesiphon, proposes crown for De- 
 mosthenes, 188; indicted by jEs- 
 chines, 189; trial, 191. 
 
 Damon, teacher of Pericles, 38. 
 
 Darius III seeks Alexander at Issus, 
 206; flees, defeated, 207; flees, 
 defeated, at Gaugamela, 211; 
 murdered by Bessus, 212. 
 
 Demades, pro-Macedonian politi- 
 cian, 188; sent to pacify Alexan- 
 der, 191. 
 
 Demetrius II, King of Macedon after 
 Antigomis Gonatas, 233; death, 
 234. 
 
 Demosthenes, birth and childhood, 
 173; fight to recover his estate, 
 174; professional advocate, 174; 
 overcomes physical defects, 174; 
 idea of mission of Athens the 
 guide of his career, 175; first pub- 
 lic speeches, 175-77; lifelong in- 
 sistence on work and sacrifice as 
 price of glory, 176; unwise advice, 
 177; First Philippic, 178; Olyn- 
 thiacs, 179; serves in Eubcean 
 campaign, 180; choregus, 180; 
 goes on embassy to Philip, 181 ; in- 
 fluence predominant, 182; policy 
 of provoking and exposing Philip, 
 182-84; charge against Machines, 
 183; Third Philippic, 183-84; 
 forms alliance with Byzantium, 
 184; reforms trierarchy, 184; The- 
 ban alliance cardinal point of his 
 policy, 185; responsible for refusal 
 of Athens to punish Amphissa, 
 185; brings about Theban Alli- 
 ance, 186; will not hear of Philip's 
 terms, 187; flees at battle of Chae- 
 ronea, 187; as corn-commissioner, 
 sails for food and money, 188; in- 
 fluence continues, 188; voted 
 crown by Council, 188-89; exul- 
 
254 
 
 INDEX 
 
 tation at death of Philip, 189; on 
 delegation to meet Alexander, 191 ; 
 confidential agent of Persia, 190; 
 begs Athens not to surrender him 
 to Alexander, 191; comparative 
 eclipse, 191; oration "On the 
 Crown," 191-92; behavior in Har- 
 palos affair, 193; condemnation 
 and exile, 194; return, 194; flees 
 from Antipater, 194; death, 195; 
 personal character and oratory, 
 195; policy best defended in his 
 own words, 195-96. 
 
 Diogenes, interview with Alexander, 
 201. 
 
 Dionysius, impression made by his 
 career, 125; early career, 127; 
 brought forward by Philistos, to 
 attack the generals, 127; made 
 dictator, 128; voted a bodyguard, 
 128; takes up residence in Castle, 
 128; advances to meet Himilco at 
 Gela, 128; failure and retreat, 129; 
 his wife murdered, 130; peaee with 
 Himilco, 130; his motives, 130-31; 
 besieged by revolted citizens, 131 ; 
 succeeds by stratagem, 132; be- 
 ginning of alliance with Sparta, 
 132; extends rule over eastern 
 Sicily, 123; fortification of Syra- 
 cuse, 134; personal habits and 
 marriage, 135; preparations for 
 war and financial expedients, 136; 
 goes to war with Carthage, 137; 
 siege of Motya, 137-38; inaction, 
 138; besieged in Syracuse, 139; de- 
 feats Himilco, 139; resettles coast- 
 towns, attacks Tauromenium, 140; 
 peace with Carthage, keeping 
 supremacy over five sixths of 
 Sicily, 140; alliance with Luca- 
 nians, 141; victory and clemency at 
 Elleporus, 141; severe treatment 
 of Rhegium, 141-42; empire, 142; 
 takes part in Greek affairs, 142, 
 158; wins tragic prize at Athens, 
 
 143; two more wars with Car- 
 thage, 143; death, 143; summary 
 of character and accomplishment, 
 144Hi5. 
 
 Elpinice, sister of Cimon, supposed 
 to have influenced Pericles, 41. 
 
 Epaminondas, birth and education, 
 147; a " sport " from Boeotian stock, 
 147; inaction during Spartan con- 
 trol of Thebes, 148; rescues Pelo- 
 pidas, 150; Boeotarch, 150; repre- 
 sents Thebes at Sparta, at congress 
 to accept peace of Callias, 150-51 ; 
 controversy with Agesilaus, 151; 
 wins decision for battle at Leuc- 
 tra, 153; tactics, 153-54; aim of 
 policy, 155; accepts invitation of 
 Arcadians, enters Peloponnesus 
 and invades Laconia, 156; with- 
 draws to Arcadia, 157; founds Mes- 
 sene, 157; reelection and second 
 Peloponnesian campaign, 158; 
 contrast between his aims and 
 ordinary Theban ones, 159; trial 
 and acquittal, 160; reelected and 
 sent to rescue Pelopidas, 160; 
 third Peloponnesian campaign, 
 162; naval policy, 163; naval cam- 
 paign, 163-64; approves arrest 
 of anti-Theban Arcadians, 164; 
 fourth Peloponnesian expedition, 
 164-65; establishes himself at 
 Tegea, 165; surprise-attack on 
 Sparta, 166; attempt on Mantinea, 
 166; tactics at battle of Mantinea, 
 167-69; death, 169; genius wholly 
 military, 170. 
 
 Ephialtes, democratic leader, 39; 
 murdered, 42. 
 
 Eubulus, directs Athenian policy, 
 173; procures passage of law ap- 
 plying all surpluses to Theoric 
 Fund, 176; sends force to hold 
 Thermopylae against Philip (352 
 B.C.), 178. 
 
INDEX 
 
 255 
 
 Eurybiades, Spartan admiral at 
 Artemisium, 24; at Salamis, 25, 
 26; voted prize for valor, 28. 
 
 Evagoras, King of Cyprus, allied 
 with Persia against Sparta, 107. 
 
 Hannibal, destroys Selinus and 
 Himera, 126; with Himilco, takes 
 Acragas, 126. 
 
 Harpalos, Governor of Babylon, 
 flees with stolen treasure to 
 Athens, 192. 
 
 Hermocrates, killed trying to win 
 back from exile, 126; daughter 
 marries Dionysius, 127. 
 
 Herodotus, quoted, passim, 25-28; 
 leaves native town to reside at 
 Athens, 47. 
 
 Himilco, with Hannibal, takes Acra- 
 gas, 126, attacks Gela, 128; makes 
 peace with Dionysius, 130; attacks 
 Syracusan fleet at Motya, 137; 
 lands at Panormus and retakes 
 many cities, 138; razes Messana 
 and founds Taormina, 139; forced 
 by plague to give up siege of Syra- 
 cuse, 139; returns to Carthage and 
 commits suicide, 139. 
 
 Isocrates, influence over young men, 
 172; pan-Hellenism, 180. 
 
 Leotychides, half-brother of Agesi- 
 laus, set aside in his favor, 105; 
 the "lame ruler" of the oracle, 
 106; thrown out of the family, 
 106. 
 
 Leptines, brother of Dionysius, pre- 
 serves Italiots from Lucanians, 
 displaced by Dionysius, 141. 
 
 Lichas, Spartan admiral, revolts 
 against Persian alliance, 71. 
 
 Lycon, co-accuser of Socrates, 93. 
 
 Lydiadas, tyrant of Megalopolis, 
 abdicates and brings his city into 
 the Achaian League, 234; alter- 
 
 nates with Aratus in presidency, 
 234; urges war with Sparta, 236; 
 candidate against Aratus, 236; 
 killed in battle and honored by 
 Sparta, 237. 
 Lysander, falls upon Athenian fleet 
 at JSgospotami, 76; surpasses av- 
 erage Spartan ' for good or ill, 
 103; revolutionary policy, 104-05; 
 failure of his plots, 105; puts for- 
 ward Agesilaus, 105-06; anxious 
 to restore decarchies in Ionia, 107; 
 overshadows Agesilaus, but set 
 down by him, 108; sent to Helles- 
 pont, 108; slain at Haliartus, 
 114. 
 
 Macedon, visited by Pelopidas, 160; 
 transformed by Philip into great 
 kingdom, 177; one of three main 
 kingdoms in third century, 223; 
 policy of ruling Greece through 
 local tyrants, 225-26; its aid 
 bought by Aratus, 238. 
 
 Mago, defeats fleet of Dionysius at 
 Catane, 139; advances into in- 
 terior, 140. 
 
 Mantinea, unites with Tegea to form 
 Arcadian League, 156; withdraws, 
 164; at war with Thebes, 165; raid 
 upon by Epaminondas, 166-67; 
 battle of (362 B.C.), 167-70; joins 
 and secedes from Achaian League, 
 233; taken back, 236; recolonized 
 as "Antigonia," 240. 
 
 Megalopolis, founded, 156; builders 
 guarded by Epaminondas, 158; 
 ally of Thebes, 165; controlled by 
 Macedonia as watchdog against 
 Sparta, 224; joins Achaian League, 
 234. 
 
 Megara, may have taken Salamis 
 from Athens, 4; shut out by Peri- 
 cles from Athenian ports and 
 markets, 52. 
 
 Meletus, accuser of Socrates, 93, 94; 
 
256 
 
 INDEX 
 
 cross-examined by Socrates, 94- 
 95; proposes death-penalty, 97. 
 
 Memnon, Greek general of Darius, 
 205. 
 
 Messenia, restored by Epaminondas, 
 157; comparison of, with Ireland, 
 158; Sparta required by Persia to 
 recognize its independence, 161. 
 
 Miltiades, leads opposition of hop- 
 lite-class to policy of Thermis- 
 tocles, 22; child of a mixed mar- 
 riage, 46. 
 
 Motya, besieged by Dionysius, 137; 
 heroic resistance and fall, 138. 
 
 Nicias, his superstition, 39; becomes 
 a follower of Pericles, 48; Athe- 
 nian ideal of respectability, 63; 
 represents Spartan interests at 
 Athens, 64; opposes Sicilian ex- 
 pedition, 66, 67. 
 
 Olympias, seen and married by 
 Philip, 197; character, 197; tie 
 between her and Alexander, 197; 
 repudiated by Philip, 200; prob- 
 ably inspired murder of Philip, 
 200; murders Cleopatra and in- 
 fant prince, 201. 
 
 Parmenio, advice rejected at the 
 Granicus, 204; commands left 
 wing at Issus, 207; advises Alex- 
 ander to accept Darius's offer, 209; 
 executed, 214. 
 
 Pausanias I, conspires against Sparta, 
 involves Themistocles, 32; sur- 
 passes average Spartan, for good 
 and ill, 103. 
 
 Pausanias II, opposed to Lysander's 
 foreign policy, tries to restore Ly- 
 curgan discipline, 104; withdraws 
 without fighting from Haliartus, 
 114; unable to return to Sparta, 
 114. 
 
 Pelopidas, friend of Epaminondas, 
 
 148; exiled, 148, delivers Thebes, 
 148-49; defeats Spartans near 
 Orchomenus, 149-50; rescued in 
 battle by Epaminondas, 150; 
 heads Sacred Band at Leuctra, 
 154; accompanies Epaminondas to 
 Peloponnesus, 158; sent to Thes- 
 saly, Macedonia, 159; again, 160; 
 seized by Alexander of Pherae, 160; 
 envoy to Susa, 161; victory and 
 death at Cynoseephalas, 162. 
 
 Periander, type of brilliant despot, 6. 
 
 Pericles, ideal Athenian, .20, 59; 
 birth and childhood, 37-38; edu- 
 cation and liberal thought, 38-39; 
 political heir of Themistocles, 39; 
 prosecutes Cimon, 41 ; opposes pro- 
 Spartan policy of Cimon, 41; in- 
 troduces democratic measures, 42; 
 policy of "radical imperialism," 
 43; head of peace party, 44; for- 
 eign policy after Peace of Callias, 
 44-45; pan-Hellenism, 45; imperi- 
 alism, 46-47; "first citizen," 48; 
 personality, 48-49; devotion to 
 Aspasia, 50, 51; attacked through 
 his friends, 51 ; favors alliance with 
 Corcyra, 52; opposes concession 
 to Peloponnesians and launches 
 Megarian decrees, 52; defensive 
 policy, 53; trial, 54; death, 55; 
 estimate of, 55-58; compared as 
 'speaker with Socrates, 90. 
 
 Pheedo, youthful disciple of Soc- 
 rates, 100; Pheedo, by Plato, 
 quoted, 100-01. 
 
 Pharnabagus, satrap of Phrygia, 
 routed by Alcibiades, 74; gives 
 refuge to Alcibiades, 77; satrapy 
 invaded by Agesilaus, 109, 110; 
 interview with Agesilaus, 111-12; 
 joins Conon at Rhodes and de- 
 feats Pisander at Cnidus, 115. 
 
 Pheidippides, character in Clouds 
 of Aristophanes, 79, 80, 82, 
 83. 
 
INDEX 
 
 257 
 
 Phidias, beautifies Athens, 48; death 
 in prison, 51. 
 
 Philip II of Macedon, transforms 
 Macedonia into great military 
 kingdom, 177; rapidity of his ad- 
 vance, 177-78: takes Olynthus 
 and all Chalcidice, 179; admira- 
 tion for Athens and pan-Hellenic 
 dream, 180; receives Athenian em- 
 bassy, 181; dictates terms to cen- 
 tral Greece, 182; takes over Pho- 
 cian votes in Amphictyonic Coun- 
 cil, 182; patience under provoca- 
 tive policy of Athens, 182; seizes 
 Athenian merchant-fleet, 184; in- 
 vades Bceotia, to punish Thebes 
 as protector of Amphissa, 183-86 
 generalship at Chseronea, 187 
 offers easy terms to Athens, 188 
 calls for contingents from all 
 Greece for invasion of Persia, 189; 
 assassinated, 189, 200; receives 
 three pieces of good news, 197; 
 falls in love with Olympias, 197; 
 repudiates her to marry Cleo- 
 patra, 200. 
 
 Philip V, young king, counselled by 
 Aratus, 240; dissuaded from seiz- 
 ing Mt. Ithome, 241; grows more 
 violent and tyrannical, estranged 
 from Aratus, 242. 
 
 Philistos, picks out Dionysius to 
 represent his views, 126-27; pays 
 his fines for violent speech, 127; 
 honorable banishment, 145. 
 
 Philotas, right-hand man of Alex- 
 ander, tortured by his order, 
 214. 
 
 Phocion, soldier and pacifist, 172; 
 supports Eubulus, 173; advises 
 acceptance of Philip's terms, 187; 
 urges surrender of anti-Macedon- 
 ian leaders to Alexander, 191; re- 
 fuses admission of soldiers of 
 Harpalos, 192; discourages rising 
 at news of Alexander's death, 193. 
 
 Pisander, Athenian general, con- 
 spires to overthrow constitution, 
 72. 
 
 Pisander (brother-in-law of Agesi- 
 laus), in command of Spartan fleet, 
 114; defeated and slain at Cnidus, 
 115. 
 
 Pisistratus, takes Nisaea, seizes gov- 
 ernment of Athens, 15; compared 
 with Solon, 16; court compared 
 with that of Dionysius, 145. 
 
 Plato, quoted (Banquet), 88, 89, 99; 
 (Apology), 94, 95, 96, 97, 98-99; 
 (Phmdo), 100, 101, youthful pupil 
 of Socrates, 89; entreats Socrates 
 to propose reasonable fine, 98. 
 
 Plutarch, quotations from, 1-2, 4, 
 15, 22, 30, 33, 35, 36, 48, 60, 61, 69- 
 70, 71, 75, 77, 106, 123-24. 
 
 Porus, gives Alexander hardest bat- 
 tle of his life, 216-17; treated "like 
 a king," 217. 
 
 Ptolemy, regent of Macedon, 160. 
 
 Ptolemy II of Egypt, rival of An- 
 tigonus Gonatas, 224; luxurious 
 dilettante, finances Aratus, 229. 
 
 Bhegium, sends ships to blockade 
 harbor of Syracuse, 131; refuses 
 friendship of Dionysius, 133; jeal- 
 ous of Messana, 140; joins Italiot 
 League, 141; taken and destroyed 
 by Dionysius, 141-42. 
 
 Rome, sacked by Gauls, 142; but 
 for Dionysius, would have been 
 choked in its cradle, 144. 
 
 Roxana, Bactrian princess, marries 
 Alexander, 215. 
 
 Salamis, lost and retaken by Athens, 
 
 4-5; battle of, 27. 
 Sicyon, revolution in, 223; freed by 
 
 Aratus, 228; joins Achaian League, 
 
 229; institutes yearly sacrifices at 
 
 tomb of Aratus, 243. 
 Simonides, quoted, 27; friend of 
 
258 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Themistocles, 35; favorite of old- 
 fashioned taste, 82. 
 
 Socrates, friendship for Aleibiades, 
 62; satirized in The Clouds, 79- 
 83, passim; birth and circum- 
 stances, 84-85; studies with " wise 
 men " and Sophists, 86; respect for 
 oracles, 86; interpretation of ora- 
 cle, 87; his method, 87; appear- 
 ance, 87; geniality and many- 
 sidedness, 87-88; trances, 88; for- 
 titude in campaigns, 88, 89; dis- 
 ciples, 89; effect on Aleibiades, 89- 
 90; blamed for evil deeds of Cri- 
 tias and Aleibiades, 91; confused 
 with Sophists, 91; his inactivity 
 in public affairs, 92; refusal to put 
 to vote motion to execute the 
 generals at Arginusse, 92; refusal 
 to arrest citizen at command of the 
 Thirty, 92; trial, 93-99; imprison- 
 ment and refusal to escape, 99; 
 last visit from his friends, 99-101; 
 death, 101. 
 
 Solon, visit to Croesus, 1, 2; signifi- 
 cance of behavior at Croesus' 
 court, 3; birth and youth, 3-4; 
 poem on Salamis, 5; poems on 
 conditions in Athens, 5-6, 9, 12, 
 13, 15, 17; chosen lawgiver, 9; his 
 social and economic reforms, 9, 
 10; political reforms, 10-11; trav- 
 els, 13-14; return, 14; opposes 
 Pisistratus, 15; consulted by 
 Pisistratus, 16; estimate of, 16- 
 17. 
 
 Sophists, at height of popularity, 
 83, 84; attacked by Aristophanes, 
 84; their teaching, 85-86. 
 
 Sparta, complimentary reception 
 of Themistocles, 27-28; remon- 
 strates against rebuilding of walls 
 of Athens, 29-30; denounces The- 
 mistocles to Athens, 32; asks help 
 of Athens against Helots, 41 ; sends 
 Cimon's army home, 42; shrinks 
 
 from beginning general war, 52; 
 her embassy to Athens tricked by 
 Aleibiades, 64-65; accepts advice 
 of Aleibiades, 69-70; all-powerful 
 in Hellas, 76; requires death of 
 Aleibiades, 77; not a nursery of 
 great men, 103; her supremacy, 
 103; inner decay, 104; recalls 
 Agesilaus, 114; " autonomy " her 
 obsession, 119; stoicism after bat- 
 tle of Leuctra, 121; territory in- 
 vaded for first time, 122; desper- 
 ate plight, 123; agrees to Peace 
 of Callias, 150; her tactics, 153; 
 Leuctra her Flodden, 154; perma- 
 nently weakened by loss of Mes- 
 senia, 157; joins Mantinea and 
 others against Thebes and others, 
 165; almost surprised by Epami- 
 nondas, 166; only state to refuse 
 contingent to Philip, 189; the 
 ghost of her former self, 224; her 
 lonely independence, 234; goes to 
 war with Achaian League, 236; 
 offers terms, 237; final defeat at 
 Sellasia, 240. 
 
 Spithridates, revolts against King of 
 Persia, 110. 
 
 Strepsiades, character in Clouds of 
 Aristophanes, 79, 80, 82, 83. 
 
 Syracuse, in serious danger from 
 Carthage, 126; its fortification, 
 134; no " city " in Hellenic sense, 
 135; declares war on Carthage, 
 137; name on coins, 144; growth 
 at expense of other cities, 145. 
 
 Theagenes, tyrant of Megara, 4. 
 
 Thebes, enslaved by Sparta and 
 freed by Pelopidas, 148; presi- 
 dent of new Boeotian League, 149; 
 fate decided at Leuctra, 152; 
 strongest single power in Greece, 
 155; first naval campaign, 162- 
 63; determines to be obeyed in 
 Peloponnesus, 164; hopes and 
 
INDEX 
 
 259 
 
 pretensions fall with Epaminon- 
 das, 170; alliance with Athens 
 against Philip, 186; defeated at 
 Chaeronea, 187; destroyed by 
 Alexander, 190, 202. 
 
 Themistocles, estimate of by Thucy- 
 dides, 19-20; a typical Athenian, 
 20; birth and upbringing, 20-21; 
 early political career, 21, naval 
 policy, 21-22, 23-24; 30-31; self- 
 less devotion to cause, 24-25; at 
 Salamis, 25-27; honors, 27-28; 
 restrains pursuit of Xerxes by 
 Athenians, 28; out of office, 29; 
 "man of the town-meeting," 29; 
 embassy to Sparta, 30; anti-Spar- 
 tan policy, 29-30; link between 
 Cleisthenes and Pericles, 31 ; un- 
 popularity, 31; advocates peace 
 with Persia, 31; ostracism, 31; ac- 
 cused of conspiracy with Pau- 
 sanias, 32; flight, 32-33; at court 
 of Artaxerxes, 33-34; incident of 
 statuette at Sardis, 34; death, 34; 
 as a private citizen, 35, 36; esti- 
 mate of, 36. 
 
 Thucydides, son of Melesias, anti- 
 imperialist, 56. 
 
 Thucydides, the historian, quota- 
 
 tions from, 19-20; 47, 48; 53, 57; 
 63, 66-67. 
 
 Tissaphernes, satrap of Lydia, fas- 
 cinated by Alcibiades, 71 ; plays off 
 Athens and Sparta against each 
 other, 72; asks Agesilaus for truce, 
 108; breaks truce, 109; cowardly 
 and incapable, 109; beheaded, 110. 
 
 Tithraustes, successor of Tissa- 
 . phernes, 110; finances anti-Spar- 
 tan league, 114. 
 
 Tyre, siege and destruction of, 208- 
 09. 
 
 Xanthippe, her real character, 99; 
 
 sent home by Socrates, 99. 
 Xanthippus, banished and recalled, 
 
 24; strategus, 29; victor of My- 
 
 cale, 37; father of Pericles, 37. 
 Xenophon, pupil of Socrates, 89; 
 
 quoted (Hellenica), 103-04; 109- 
 
 10, 113; takes part in campaigns 
 
 of Agesilaus, 112, 115. 
 Xerxes, occupies Attica, 25; receives 
 
 message from Themistocles, 26; 
 
 another, 28. 
 
 Zeno, teacher of Pericles, 38; teacher 
 of Socrates, 87.