Class _JFjiii: Book.__.Ej PEKSIAN EMPIRE AND GREECE. listotg ^vim«rs Edited by J. R. GREEN HISTORY OF GREECE BY O: A. FYFFE, M.A., TiELLO"; AND- I-ATE TUTOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORj: 'V/ITR MAPS NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANV PRIMER SERIES. SCIENCE PRIMERS. HUXLEY'S INTRODUCTORY VOLUME. ROSCOE'S CHEMISTRY. STEWART'S PHYSICS. GEIKIE'S GEOLOGY. LOCKYER'S ASTRONOMY. HOOKER'S BOTANY. FOSTER AND TRACY'S PHYSIOLOGY AND HYGIENE. GEIKIE'S PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. LUPTON'S SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. JEVONSS LOGIC. SPENCER'S INVENTIONAL GEOMETRY. JEVONS'S POLITICAL ECONOMY. TAYLOR'S PIANOFORTE PLAYING. PATTON'S NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES. HISTORY PRIMERS. WENDEL'S HISTORY OF EGYPT. FREEMAN'S HISTORY OF EUROPE. FYFFE'S HISTORY OF GREECE. CREIGHTON'S HISTORY OF ROME. MAHAFFY'S OLD GREEK LIFE. WILKINS'S ROMAN ANTIQUITIES. TIGHE'S ROMAN CONSTITUTION. ADAMS'S MEDIAEVAL CIVILIZATION. YONGE'S HISTORY OF FRANCE. GROVE'S GEOGRAPHY. LITERATURE PRIMERS. BROOKE'S ENGLISH LITERATURE. -W-ATKINS.'? AMERICAN LITER;AT;ijRE. DO W.PEN'S SHIvKSPERE. , ■ ALDEN'S -STUDIES IN BRYANT. : MORRIS'S ENCJLiSH GRAMMAR. MORRIS AND BOWEN'S ENGLISH GRAMMA R^EjXE'^CISES. ' .mCHOL'S ENCL'S-H COMPOSITIOI5. FEILK?S"PmLeLOG.V.. : .^ 'JEBB'S GREEK^ LITERATURE. GLADSTONE'S HOMER. TOZER'S CLASSICAL GEOGRAPHY. ^ % CjO FYFFE- -GREECE w. P. 8 1\, fCro >0 CONTENTS, CHAPTER I. lAGP tRE BEGINNINGS OF THE GREEKS . , , , I CHAPTER II. PELOPONNESUS DOWN TO B.C. 500— COLONIES . . 1 8 CHAPTER III. ATTICA TO B.C. 500 • • • 37 CHAPTER IV. THE IONIC REVOLT AND PERSIAN WARS . • , . 49 CHAPTER V. THE EMPIRE OF ATHENS AND THE PEL0P0NNE3IAN WAR 73 CHAPTER VI, SPARTA, THEBES, MACEDONIA .,...,., I02 CHAPTER VIT. EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER 112 LIST OF MAPS. PAGE r. PERSIAN EMPIRE AND GREECE . . Frontispiece. ^ 2. GREECE AND THE ^G.EAN COASTS lO 3. SOUTHERN GREECE . . . I9 4. THE GREEK COLONIES. • . 34 5. SALAMIS AND COAST OF A'lTICA ...... 63 HISTORY PRIMERS. GREECE. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE GREEKS. I. Greeks and Italians. — Most of the history that we have of Europe before the birth of Ctirist is the history of the Greeks and ItaHans. They .were not the only nations in ancient Europe ; there were other great races, such as the Gauls, and our own forefathers, the Germans. Why is it that ancient history tells us so much about the Greeks and the Italians, and so little about these ? Because, while the Greeks and Italians learnt to live in cities, and made reasonable laws and governments, and grew rich by trade, these other nations remained savage and ignorant. If we knew their history during those times, it would not interest us. We should hear of little but battles and wan- dermgs; and after hundreds of years we should find them living in much the same rough way as at the beginning. But while the northern races were still barbarous, the Greeks and Italians had begun to Uve more like modern nations, and had done great deeds, whose effects last to this day. The Greeks saved Europe from being conquered by Asiatic races, and spread a happier and more interesting life among the nations round them. Not that the Greeks were perfect, any more than other nations, ancient or modern. They had faults in abundance, and a great part of their history is the history of discord and violence. But in the midst of these evils we shall meet with instances of the most striking goodness ; and while the vices of the Greeks belonged to other ancient nations, their good points raised them in many 6 THE GREEKS AND OTHER RACES, [chap respects above all the rest of mankind. No race evei did so many different things well as the Greeks. They were the first people who thought of finding out the truth and the reason in everything. Busy men in our own day take pleasure in what remains of the Greek writers of poetry and history ; and artists know that they can never make anything more beautiful than what is left of Greek sculpture. Men will always be interested in ancient Greece, not only because the Greeks were so bright and so clever themselves, but because so many things which we value most in our own life, such as the desire for knowledge, the power of speaking eloquently, and the arts of music and painting, have come down to us from the Greeks. 2. Connection of Greeks with other Races. Yet the Greeks were not, like the Arabs or Chinese, of a quite difterent race from our forefathers, the northern nations who were then so barbarous. In very ancient times, long before the oldest books were written, there was a people living between the Caspian Sea and the mountains to the west of India, from whom not only the Greeks and Italians but most other European nations, as well as the Hindoos, are descended. The words used by all these nations for certain things are very like one another; and this shows that there was a time when they were a single race, using the same words. Thus the words {qx father in all these languages are merely the same word a little changed : German, vafe?-; Greek, ttutiip (pater) \ Latin, pater; Old Hindoo, pita. In the course of time, as this people grew larger, difterent parts of it went oft" in different directions, and became distinct nations. They grew more and more unlike one another, and made such changes .n the old language which they had all spcken, that, instead of there being one language for all, each nation came to have one of its own. One part of the people went to India, another part to North Europe : Other branches spread over Italy, Greece, and Asia I.J GREECE MANY STATES. 7 Minor. The Italians and Greeks were a single nation long after the Germans and Hindoos had separated from them ; and therefore their languages are much more like one another than either of them is to the language of the German or the Hindoo. Some of the races in the west of Asia Minor seem to have been originally much like the Greeks; and in very early times it is prooable that men crossed from the coast of Asia Minor to Greece, and founded kingdoms on the Greek coast. Afterwards bodies of Greeks settled on the Asiatic coast ; and therefore, though European Greece is called Greece Proper, the west coast of Asia Minor (First Map) was equally called Greece, tor the people who lived there were Greeks, and were mixed up in all that happened in Greek history. The Greeks did not call themselves Greeks but Hellenes ('EXX-rjveQ) : and any district in which Hellenes lived was called Hellas f EXXac), whether it was in Europe, Asia, or Africa. We shall see how adventurous a people the Greeks were, and how they founded colo- nies in distant parts of the Mediterranean, and on the shores of the Black Sea. 3. Greece not one but many States. — There is one great difference between ancient Greece and a modern countr)' like England. All England is under one chief government, namely the Queen acting under the advice of her Parliament ; and the laws made in Parliament are obeyed by the whole nation. Each town is allowed to manage some of its own affairs, such as lighting and paving its streets, but no town is independent of the laws and government of the whole country. We have one army and one navy for the whole country, and no part of England would think of separating itself from the rest. But Greece was not a single country like this. It was broken up into little districts, each with its own government. Any little city might be a complete State in itself, and mdependent of its neighbours. It might possess only A few miles of land and a few hundred inhabitants, 8 GREECE CUT UP BY MOUNTAINS. [CHAP. and yet have its own laws, its own government, and its own army, though the army might not be so large as a single English regiment. In a space smaller than an English county there might be several independent cities, sometimes at war, some- times at peace with one another. Therefore when we say that the west coast of Asia Minor was part of Greece, we do not mean that this coast-land and Euro- pean Greece were under one law and one government, for both were broken up into a number of little inde- pendent States : but we mean that the people who lived on the, west coast of Asia Minor were just as much Greeks as the people who lived in European Greece. They spoke the same language, and had much the same customs, and they called one another Hellenes,, in contrast to all other nations of the world, whom they called barbarians (/3a/3/3apot), that is, " the unintelligible folk," because they could not understand their tongue. 4. Greece cut up by Mountains.— Greece, from the first, was not a single State like England, but divided into many little ones. Homer gives a long list of kings who brought their forces to the siege of Troy (p. 11) ; and all through Greek history we shall be reading about a number of very small States. Why was this ? Because Greece was naturall}- cut up into little pieces by mountains. In the south of Eng- land we can get easily from any one place to any other; and, where there are hills, they are not high or rugged enough to prevent our having roads over them. But in Greece there are so many mountains really difficult to cross, that the fertile spots among them, where people settled, are quite cut off from one another; and in early times, before men made much use of ships, they would hardly ever see any one outside their own valleys. We shall see what a difference this made to Greece if we compare it with Egypt or Baby- lon. Egypt is the rich flat land on both sides of the Nile, You can sail up the Nile with the wind, and I.J GREEKS AND PHCENICIANS, 9 drop down it with the current, so that it was always easy to go from one part of Egypt to another. Hence from the earUest times Egypt has been a single country, under one great king, like the Pharaohs in the Bible. It is the same with the rich flat lands about Babylon on the river Euphrates. There was nothing to separate one part of that country from another; a single king ruled over a large district, and could raise a great army. The power and magnifi- cence of the kings overawed the people, who had no thought of resisting the royal power. Hence the kings of Babylon became absolute masters over their sub- jects, like Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel iii.), and the people were little more than slaves. In Greece the case was the reverse of this. There is no one large flat tract in the whole of Greece. The mountains divide it into a number of very small districts, and in each of these districts the kmg was only like the chief among the heads of the families. He had not wealth enough to live in a splendid palace hke eastern kings, and make the people think he was a kind of god 3 nor could he raise a great army, and overrun neigh- bouring countries, and make the people his slaves. 5. Greeks and Phoenicians. — In the beginning then we find the Greeks, broken up into little groups, covering European Greece and the islands near it (Map, p. 10), and races very like them upon the west coast of Asia Minor. The rich men owned flocks and herds, corn-lands and vineyards ; the poor had httle farms of their own, or worked as labourers for the rich. But upon the coast a new and busier life was beginning. There the Greek first met the Phcenician (Canaanite) merchant from Tyre or Sidon (First Map) (see I Kings ix. 27 ; x. 22), who had begun to trade with distant lands, while the Greeks were still simple farmers. The Phcenicians had an alphabet, and a scale of weights and measures, long before the Greeks. They had made many discoveries, or learnt them from other Eastern nations. They had learnt how to make a lO PIRACY. fCiTAP. purple dye for hangings and for great men's robes from the shell of a little sea-creature, and how to dig mines and to work metals (2 Chronicles lii. 3, 7 ; Esther viii. 15). When the best trees in the forests of Mount Lebanon were cut down, and the Phoenicians had to go m search of wood for their ships, they found abundance of oak, pine, and beech on the shores of the yEg.Tan Sea. They discovered that the root of the Greek evergreen oak could be used for tanning, GREECE AND THE ^G^AN COASTS. and its berries for a dye ; and often in these same forest districts they found copper, iron, and silver. Hence the Phoenicians came more and more to the Greek coasts, freighting their ships with goods made at Tyre or Sidon, and exchanging them with the Greeks for timber or wool, or even for men anc? women, whom they sold as slaves. In time the Greeks on the coast came to know all that the Phoenicians knew : they took their alphabet, their veights, and 1.3 HOMERIC FOEMS. 1 1 their measures ; and they made ships like those which the Phoenicians used, and began to sail along the shores. At first when they took to the sea it was not so much for trade as for piracy. Piracy was not thought wrong. A band of bold men would launch their vessel and sail along the coast to attack the first merchant-ship they might meet, or would land and plunder the villages on the shore. In terror of the pirates the inhabitants of these villages often left their old homes, and established themselves at some distance from the shore. 6. Homeric Poems. — Two long poems have come down to us from the very early times of Greece, which the Greeks believed to have been written by a single poet named Homer. One of these, called the Iliad, tells us of the deeds of the heroes at the siege of Ti'oy, or Jlzon. Paris, son of Priam, king of Ilion, according to the stories, carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta ; and in order to recover her the Greeks united to besiege Troy, and took it after ten years' siege. The greatest hero among the Greeks in the Iliad is Achilles ; among the Trojans, Hector. The other poem, called the Odyssey, is about the wanderings and adventures of Odysseus (Ulysses), king of Ithaca, the wisest of all the Greeks, on his return home after Troy was taken. The Iliad gives us a picture of warfare ; the Odyssey shows us the quiet Ufe of the family of Odysseus at home, and also tells about wonderful places and people, such as the early Greek sailors may have brought home stories about, and such as we now read of in fairy tales. Though the Homeric poems do not relate things that really happened, they give us some idea of the way in which the Greeks must have been living when these poems were composed. Each district was governed by a king ((SuaiXeiic), who was also priest and oftered up the public prayers and sacrifices. By the side of the king there were a number of chiefs, also called /Jao-iAtic, whom the king assembled in 2 12 HOMERIC LIFE, [chap. council (l3ov\ri), to ask their advice upon anything that he intended to do. Each chief had the right to say what he thought : and though the king was not bound to go by their advice, we can see hov\^ the council of the chiefs would in fact diminish the king's power. When the king had made up his mind, he assembled the common people in the market-place (ayopd), and made known to them what he was going to do. The chiefs might speak to the people when they were thus assembled, but no one among the common people was allowed to speak, nor did it signify what the people thought. In the Homeric poems we hear very little about the common people : it was the chiefs, and not the people, who kept the king from being an absolute ruler. When one of the common people, Thersites, says what he thinks, Odysseus beats him severely, and the people side with Odysseus. Like the early ages of all countries, the Homeric age was a time of war and violence. Plundering expeditions both by land and by sea were common : if people could not protect them- selves they were liable to have their property carried off, and to be made into slaves themselves. War was carried on very cruelly, and some of the actions of \chilles described in the Iliad are what we should consider very savage. Deceit was not thought wrong, but was rather admired if cleverly carried out. On :he other hand there are many fine and beauti- ul qualities in the Homeric age. The members of a family love and respect one another. Great reverence is shown to parents. The wife is treated with more honour by her husband than she was in most other countries, or than she was in Greece itself in later times. There are deep and faithful friendships, and sometimes there is true affection even between the master and bis slave. 7. Early Kingdoms — Crete, Troy. — We know very little about the events of these early times. Real history does not go so far back; and we have only I,] EARLY KINGDOMS. l% stones about them which tell us very little truth. One of the great kings in the stones is Minos, king of Crete (map, p. lo). Minos, the Greeks believed, was a just and powerful king, who ruled over all the Greek seas and islands, and put an end to the pirates, establishing peace and safety. They believed that aftei his death he was made a judge over the souls of the dead, because he had ruled so strongly and so justly. Now it is certain that no king in those early times really had such wide power as Minos is said to have had : but it is perhaps tme that in Crete a seafaring life began earlier than elsewhere in Greece, and that the Cretan kings did something towards checking piracy. On the coast of Asia Minor one of the earliest king- doms was the Troas, or land of Troy, at the south end of the Hellespont, the southernmost of the two straits that lead from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. Its castle and town stood a few miles inland at the point where the hills begin to rise. The tales about the siege of Troy are perhaps only beautiful stories ; but there is no doubt that in the earliest times there was a tosvn there. We must not think of these early towns as large places like our modern towns. They were little more than villages with walls round them. 8. Kings in Peloponnesus. — Many stories are told about the great families who reigned in Thebes and in Peloponnesus (map, p. 19), and of their war? and misfortunes. The greatest of all the kings in these stories is Agamemnon, king of Mykenae, whom Homer describes as commanding all the Greeks at the siege of Troy. Now we may be quite sure that in those early times the Greeks never acted all together in the way that Homer describes : still, whatever may be the truth about Agamemnon, there certainly were powerful kings at Mykenae and other places in the district of Argolis, for the walls of their castles remain to this day. These walls are not built in the way in which the later Greeks built their walls, but are made •jf enormous blocks of stone, so huge that the Greeks [4 DORIANS ENTER PELOPONNESUS. Lchap. thought that the builders must have been giants, and called such buildings Cyclopean, that is, the work of a Cyclops, or giant. At Tiryns in Argolis there are Cyclo- pean walls twenty-five feet thick, with a passage inside them : and at Mykenge there are walls more carefully built, with two great hons carved in stone over the gate- way. Not far from these there is a large underground building, the inside of which was once covered with plates of bronze. This was the treasure-house and sepulchre of the kings. 9. Dorians enter Peloponnesus. Colonies in Asia. — Though the kings in ArgoHs built such strong castles, their kingdoms were overthrown. A hardy warlike tribe called Dorians left their homes in North Greece, and moved southward, in search of a fertile country. They came into Peloponnesus, and proved themselves stronger than the tribes who were then living there, who were called Ach(2ans and loiiiaiis. Many of the lonians would not submit to be ruled by Dorians : they joined with other lonians who were living in Attica, the country about Athens (map, p. 19), and sailed away to Asia Minor, where they settled on the central part of the coast, and on the islands opposite to it, and founded Miletus and Ephesus (Acts xix. i ; xx. 15), and other cities called the Ionic Colonies. Athens claimed to be the mother- city of the Ionic colonies, though many of them did not start from Attica. Many Achseans also sailed away from Peloponnesus, and made themselves homes in the island of Lesbos, and on the north part of the western coast of Asia Minor. The cities in this dis- trict were however not called the Achceaii but the at very high interest from the wealthy, giving their farms in pledge for the payment of the debt. At the boundaries of every farm so mortgaged, pillars were set up as a witness, with the amount of the debt and the name of the lender cut upon them. The debt grew greater and greater every year from the heavy interest ; the farmer lost all hope of ever being able to pay, and was now only like a labourer on the farm which had once been really his own. The debtor who had no farm, and who could not pay his debt, was in still worse case, for he became the actual slave of his creditor, and might be sold (comp. 2 Kings iv. i ; Nehemiah v. 3 — 5). Thus the free farmers, the Geomori, were disappearing altogether. Some were sold abroad as slaves, others were working at home as serfs, or struggling in miserable poverty. To save the State, Solon was compelled to take very strong measures. He ordered that the common silver coins, called drac/wicB, should be made of lighter weight, so that 100 new ones should be worth only 73 old ones, and that the new drachmae should be accepted as if they were equal to the old ones, in payment of debts. Thus, a man who owed 100 old drachmae |o SOLON'S CONSTirurWN. [CHAi». would pay it by loo new drachmae, which were worth only 73 old ones, and would really have his debt re- duced by 27. Farmers who owed money to the State were freed from their debt altogether, and made a fresh start. Many persons who had been sold abroad as slaves were brought back and set free ; and Solon ordered that from henceforth no Athenian should be made the slave of another for debt (comp. Nehe- miah v. 6 — 13). These measures did great good to the farmers ; and Solon's poems tell us how the mortgage-pillars disappeared trom the country. 6. Constitution of Solon. Timocracy. — Solon was also given authority to make a nev/ consti- tution and new laws for the State. Till now the noble clans had been everything. It was Solon who first made Athens a State in which a man might take a part as citizen without belonging to one of those clans. The ancient Homeric assembly of all the people (p. 12) had perhaps never died out in Athens, but it had never gained any authority. Solon first made this assembly {iKKXr]aia) a real part of the State. Hesecurcvd to it the election of the archons, the right of passing laws ^ and the right of calling magistrates to account for what they had done while in office. Every free-born native of Attica had a vote in tne assembly, whether he be- longed to one of the clans or not. But Solon did not intend that anyone who chose should get up in the assembly and propose a law : he established a council {(DovX))) of 400 to prepare the business that was to come before the assembly, and nothing was to be proposed in the assembly that had not been agreed to by the council. The councillors {povXtwal) were to be elected yearly by the people. Solon also made a new division of the citizens, distinct from the old clan divisions. He divided all the natives of Attica into four classes, according to the amount of land which they possessed. To the richer classes he gave the greatest share in the government, but he also required them to pay fiL] AREOPAGUS. 41 heavier taxes, and to do more service for the State. Men of the first or richest class alone could hold the archonshiiD ; and thus the rich Eupatridae, who best understood government, would still be at the head of the State. The lowest class could not be members of the council or hold any office ; they had only their votes in the assembly. They paid no taxes ; and, when they were called out as soldiers (p. 15), they had not to find themselves arms, whereas the first three classes had to provide themselves with a full suit of armour, or to serve as cavalry-men on horses of their own. A constitution which, like Solon's, gives power in pro- portion to wealh, is called a Timoa'cay (rifjiOKparla^ Tijjiii, rating, Kpdroc, power). Hitherto birth alone could give a man power in Athens : now, though the greatest part of the first class would no doubt be Eupatridae, any Athenian who possessed a good estate might hold the highest offices ; and the whole people, though they did not actually take part in the government, had some control over it through their electing the archons and calling them to account. 7. Areopagus. — There was a very ancient assem- bly of nobles which met on the hill Areopagus, and was itself called the Areopagus. It had originally judged in cases of murder. Solon gave it more power, and arranged that the archons of every year, if approved by the Areo- pagus, should become members of the Areopagus for the rest of their lives. Thus the Areopagus would be composed of the most experienced men among the nobles. Solon gave it the right to forbid any law to be passed which it should think dangerous to the State, and the right to warn or punish citizens who lived in a manner unbecoming Athenians, or who brought up their children badly. The Areopagus did not take any regular part in the government, but was held in great reverence, and was the pride of the Eupatridce.^ ^ The meeting on the Areopagus before which St. Paul spoke was probably a mere gathering of citizens with no authority (Acts xvii.) 42 SOLON'S LAWS, [chap. 8. Solon's Laws. — Solon was also charged to draw up a new code of laws for Athens in the place of those of Draco. In all countries in very early times the family or the clan had an authority over their members which now belongs only to the Law of the State. The father had great power over his children, and could even put them to death (comp. Deu- teronomy xxi. 1 8) ; and the property of those who had no children went to their clan when they died. iSfow Solon thought that the life and liberty of chil- dren ought not to depend on the will of their fathers, and that the clan ought not to have any claim on a man's property at his death. Therefore he made a law that the father should not sell or pawn his children, and that people without children should have the right to leave their property at their death to whom they chose. The son was obliged to support his father in old age, but not unless his father had given him an education. Solon required all citizens to take an active part in protecting the State from mischief, as there was no army or police to do so (p. 15) ; and therefore he punished any citizen who, when troubles arose, should not resolutely take one side or the other. Solon ended his work by pardon- ing all who had brought themselves into disgrace during the late troubles ; and the Alkmseonidse returned to Athens (b.c. 594). 9. Nomothetae. — The evils which existed in Athens were common in other Greek States j and in many of them, just as in Athens, power was given to a single man to draw up an entirely new set of Laws, which should set the citizens free from their oppres- sion and discontent, and enable them to live together in concord. These men were called No/not/ietcB {vo^o- dtrai), Legislators ; and some of them performed their task with great wisdom and success, and really gave a new life to their States. More is known, however, about the laws of Solon than about the laws of any of the other No/nothelce. riL] FISISTKATUS. 43 10. Factions. Pisistratus Tyrant. — In spite cf Solon's great improvements, troubles continued in Attica. The most powerful of the nobles were at enmity ; and, as Attica was a large district for a single State, the inhabitants of different parts of it were easily stirred up against one another. There were three parties, — the men of the plains, the men of the coast, and the men of the mountains. The last were the poorest and most dissatisfied ; and the cleverest of the nobles, Pisistratus, put himself at their head. The leader of the men of the coast was Megakles, an Alkmasonid, the grandson of the Megakles who had killed Kylon's followers. One market-day, when the town was full of poor country-people, Pisistratus smeared himself with blood, and drove into the market-place, declarmg that he had been almost killed by his enemies on account of his zeal for the people. A friend, with whom Pisistratus had arranged the whole plan, proposed to the people that they should give Pisistratus a guard of fifty men, armed with clubs. Solon in vain warned the people against it ; the guard was given, and gradually increased to 400. Then, when Pisistratus felt sure of his power, he seized the iVcropoHs, and made himself tyrant (b.c. 560), He was twice driven out by the parties of the coast and the plain; but in B.C. 545 he made himself tyrant for tlie third time, and thenceforth reigned in peace till his death (b.c. 527). Though he sur- rounded himself with a foreign guard, he governed very gently, and allowed Solon's constitution to remiain in force, only providing that the highest offices should be held by men of his own family. He estabhshed religious festivals in which all the people could join : he beautified Athens with temples and public buildings : he improved the roads, and laid on water by an aqueduct. He also brought living poets to Athens, and collected copies of the older poetry from all parts of Greece, employing learned men to clear it from mistakes and confusions. 44 HARMODIUS AND ARISTOGITON. [chaj. 11. Hippias and Hipparchus. — After the death of Pisistratus (b.c. 527), his eldest son Hippias suc- ceeded him, and governed mildly: but in b.c. 514 Hipparchus, the brother of Hippias, affronted the sister of a young citizen, named Harmodius, and Har- modius, with his friend Aristogiton, determined to kill both the tyrant and his brother. They succeeded in killing Hipparchus, but Hippias saved himself by presence of mind, and Harmodius and Aristogiton perished. After this Hippias became suspicious and cruel, killing and ill-treating the citizens. 12. End of the Tyranny. — Since the return of Pisistratus in B.c. 545 the Alkmseonidse had been in exile. Being very wealthy, and wishing to clear themselves from their bad name by an act of piety, they undertook for a certain sum to rebuild the temple of Delphi, which had been burnt down, and though the agreement was only for common stone, they faced the temple with fine marble. This gained them the favour of the oracle ; and as thej knew that so long as the family of Pisistratus reigned they would never be allowed to return to Athens, they bribed the priestess of Delphi, whenever the Spartans should send to consult the oracle, to make only this answer, " '\thens must be freed." The Spartans, finding that, whatever they asked, the god would give them no other advice, determined to do as he bade them. They sent an army to turn out Hippias ; and when this was defeated they sent another under Kleo- menes, king of Sparta. The children of Hippias fell into the hands of Kleomenes, and in order to recover them, Hippias agreed to leave Attica. This was the end of the tyranny of the Pisistratidae (b.c. 510). The Athenians remembered the last four cruel year? of Hippias with horror, and paid honours to the me- mory of Harmodius and Aristogiton^ as if it had been they who had freed the city. 13. Constitution of Kleisthenes. Demo- cracy. — Now that Hippias was gone, the struggle oi III.] KLEISTHENES. 45 parties began afresh. ]\Iany of the nobles, undei the lead of Isagoras, wish-^d to restore the old government of the nobles, as it had been before Solon; the Alkmae- onidse, headed by Kleisthenes, the son of Megakles, took the opposite side. This Kleisthenes was named after Kleisthenes, the Tyrant of Sikyon, whose daughter Megakles had married. It was he who had bribed the priestess of Delphi ; and now, whether out of am- bition or real love for Athens, he took up the cause of the common people, and gave them more to do with the government. 14. Tribes and Demes. — There was an ancient division of the people into four tribes, called the Ionic Tribes. Kleisthenes abolished this division, be- cause it made the common people look up to the nobles of their tribe; and instead of having the people divided according to birth, he divided the land into a great number of districts or parishes, called Demss {oFuJioi), and then made ten new tribes by putting into a single tribe the inhabitants of several Demes at a distance from one another. Thus one of the new tribes would not be anything like a clan : the people in it would come from dif ferent parts of Attica, and would not be related to one another by birth ; and the members of a single clan would be in many different tribes. Kleisthenes hoped by this means to prevent the great nobles from raising parties to support them, and also to put an end to the division of the country into districts like those of the plain, the coast, and the mountain. 15. Council. — In Solon's constitution, the council of 400 was composed of 100 from each of the four old Jouic tribes : Kleisthenes had the council to be elected by his ten new tribes, 50 from each, making 500 councillors in all. He did not interfere with Solon's division into classes according to property, or with the privileges of the richer classes ; but when he made his division into Demes, he included among the citizens every man then living in Attica, except slaves, whether ij6 STRATEGI, JURIES, OSTRAKISM. [chap. born of Attic parents or not. Thus a number of traders and settlers, called aliens {fiiroiKoi) received Athenian citizenship ; and the people felt more than before that they had a real share in the State. The members of each clan still kept up their religious ceremonies, and a feeling of pride in their clan ; but for all purposes of government the people acted to- gether in their Demes and new tribes. i6. Assembly. — Kleisthenes wished the public as- sembly ^lKK\r]aia) to take a greater part in the govern- ment than it had under Solon : and since no measure could be introduced in the assembly that had not been drawn up by the council, Kleisthenes had to make the council a more business-like body than it had hitherto been. As it is impossible that 500 people can transact business methodically all together he divided the council into committees (ttpvicivelq) Each committee was composed of the men elected by one of the new tribes, so that no great nobleman could hope to get a committee filled with his clans- men. The council and the assembly now began to take an increasing part in the government. 17. Strategi. — A new and important office was created in connection with the tribes. Each of the ten tribes was to choose a Strategus, or General {arpciT-qyoi), and the Ten Generals were to hold com- mand of the army in turn, each for a day. One of the archons, called the Polemarchus {ttoXeijoq, war, cipxo>r), commanded with them. By degrees the Strategi gained the management of the foreign affairs of the State. 18. Juries, — About the same time the assembly was divided into courts or juries, in order that the chief cases might be tried before a jury of citizens instead of being decided by the archons or the Areo- pagus as before. 19. Ostrakism. — Kleisthenes saw that all over Greece ambitious men had been able to make them selves tyrants because the States had no armies 01 police ready to defend the constitution (p. 15); and riL] LOT, 47 he feared that a tyrant might rise again in Athens. Therefore he established a custom called ostrakism^ by which the citizens might get rid of a man whom they thought likely to make himself tyrant, or to throw the State again into violent struggles. First ol all the council and the assembly had to decide that the State really was in danger; then the citizens were summoned to meet on a certain day, and to write each upon a ticket (6(TTpaKov) the name of any person whom he thought dangerous to the State. If the same name was written on 6,000 tickets, that person had to go into exile for ten years ; but he did not lose his property, and he might return with all his rights as a citizen at the end of the ten years. 20. Lot. — Another device was made either at this time or soon afierwards to prevent ambitious men from raising parties in the State, and to give a better chance to less powerfal men. When the candidates for the archonship had given in their names, instead of the people voting which of those who had given in their names should be archons, they cast lots (i:\r].ooQ). Thus the most that an ambitious man could do would be to put down his name as a candidate : voting being aboHshed, it would be of no use for him to collect a party to support him. The most important officers of all, however, the Strategi, were never chosen by lot; for great mischief might have happened if the lot had fallen on a man unfit to be general. 21. Spartans interfere. — The changes of Kleis- thenes gave the people great Power; and the consti- tution of Athens now began to be a Democracy^ or Government of the People (ErjiioKpaTia, d^j/joc, people^ KpdTog,p07oer). instead of a Timocracy (p. 40). Many of the nobles, headed by Isagoras, opposed Kleis- thenes as strongly as they could ; and when Isagoras found that he could not resist the reforms of Kleis- thenes, he applied to Kleomenes, king of Sparta, for help, saying that Kleisthenes was about to make himself tyrant, and that he would be tlie enemy of the ♦8 KLEOMENES. \cMki Dorians, like his grandfather, Kleisthenes of Sikyon (p. 33). Kieomenes was a very ambitious king, and wished that Sparta should exercise control ovei Athens ; therefore, in order to get rid of Kleisthenes, he summoned the Athenians to expel the Alkmae- onidae, the clan of Kleisthenes, on account of their curse (p. 38). Kleisthenes at once left Athens; and Kieomenes marched into Athens with a small force, and expelled 700 families whom Isagoras pointed out to him as dejjtocraiical. He then tried to dissolve the council of 500. But the whole people rose in arms. The troops of Kieomenes were overpowered and driven into the citadel. The Athenians allowed them to retire unhurt, but put to death the citizens who had joined them. Kieomenes now summoned the Peloponnesian allies of Sparta, and invaded Attica, determining to make Isagoras tyrant, because Isagoras was willing to subject Athens to Sparta. He did not tell the allies what his purpose was ; but when they reached Eleusis in Attica, the allies discovered it, and refused to go any further, so that the army broke up. Kieomenes had also persuaded the Thebans and the citizens of Chalkis, in Euboea, to declare war on Athens. When the Athenians saw the army of Kieo- menes break up, they marched against the Thebans, and found them on the shore of Euripus (map, p. 19) waiting for the Chalkidians. The Athenians attacked and defeated the Theban army, and the moment the battle was over they crossed the Euripus, and won so complete a victory over the Chalkidians on the same day, that the whole state of Chalkis was at their mercy. They took the land of the Chalkidian nobles, and settled 4,000 Athenian farmers upon it. The Spartans were now more jealous then ever of Athens. They discovered that the priestess of Delphi had been bribed to make them expel Hippias, and they deter- mined to humble Athens and restore Hippias. But after what had happened in the last campaign they dared not conceal their object from the allies. There tv.] IONIC COLONIES. 49 fore they summoned deputies from all parts of Pelo- ponnesus, and tried to persuade them to join in restoring Hippias. But the Corinthian deputy Sosikles reproached the Spartans, who had ahvays been the enemies of tyrants, with the change in their conduct, and reminded them of what Corinth had suffered from Periander. The assembly applauded Sosikles : the Spartans saw that they could do nothing, and gave up the business. Thus the Athenians had upheld their liberties and gained two brilliant victories over the Thebans and the Chalkidians who would have helped to restore the tyranny. The spirit of the citizens rose high. The changes of Kleisthenes had abated the rivalries of the rich, and the poor saw that they had a share in the State, and felt no wish to have the tyrants back. Athens was more at one with herself than she had ever been before. In the coming Persian wars the Athenians held together in spite of traitors ; and both rich and poor did their duty when the time came. CHAPTER IV. THE IONIC REVOLT AND PERSIAN WARS. I. The lonicColonies conquered by Lydia. — The Greek colonies in Asia Minor were all coast towns, and did not try to conquer the interior of the country. Nor did the kings of the inland countries, such as Phrygia and Lydia (map, p. 10), at first attack the Greek settlers, but allowed them to keep possession of the coast in peace ; and they grew rich and pros- perous long before the cities of European Greece (p. 33). The most important colonies were the Ionic. They were twelve independent cities ; and though they had a common religious festival, and felt themselves to be a distinct body from the Dorians and yEolians, they did not act together ; nor had any city such a leadership among them as Sparta had in Peloponnesus. So long as no powerful enemy attacked them, the lonians did not feel the evils of their disunion : but b'O LYDIA, [CHAP. about the year b.c. 720 a new line of kings arose in Lydia, who determined to make Lydia a great empire, and to conquer all the coast. These kings made war upon the Ionian cities one after another ; and at last, about B.C. 550, King Croesus made him- self master of them all. But Croesus had no wish to injure or destroy any Greek city. He wished only to make them a part of his empire. The Lydian kings had come to understand and like the ways of the Greeks ; they consulted the Greek oracles and sent presents to the temples, and, even when at war, they respected the holy places of the Greeks. Croesus only required the cities to pay him a moderate tribute, and to acknowledge him as sovereign ; in all other respects he allowed them to manage their own affairs. He was fond of everything Greek; he welcomed Greek artists and travellers to his court \ and if the empire of Lydia had continued, Greek habits would perhaps have soon spread over Asia Minor. But Lydia was about to be overthrown by a real Asiatic monarchy, which hated and despised Greek ways : and in order to understand the events that were now coming, we must turn away from Greece for a moment, and go far back into the history of the Asiatic nations. 2. Nineveh. — Before B.C. 1000 the kings of Nineveh had conquered the neighbouring nations about the Euphrates, and had made Assyria a great empire. In the height of its power i^ssyria ruled as far as Lydia on the west, and on the east perhaps as far as the river Indus (first map). But about B.C. 750 Babylon and Media revolted, and made them- selves independent kingdoms. It was after this, while Nineveh and Babylon were distinct kingdoms, that the Jews were carried into captivity, Israel by the King of Assyria (2 Kings xvii. 6), Judah by the King of Babylon (2 Kings xxv.). 3. Medes. — The Medes, who had revolted from Nineveh, were a brave people living in the highlands iv.j PERSIANS. 51 east of the Euphrates ; and they united the neigh- bouring mountain-tribes under their rule, including the Persians to the south. The fourth king of Media, Kyaxares, allied himself with Nabonassar, king of Babylon, against Nineveh ; and in B.C. 606 they took the great city and utterly destroyed it (Nahum iii.). As the Medes were eager for still further conquests, and did not dare to attack Babylon itself, they had to turn towards Asia Minor, and there they con- quered everything until they met the Lydians. The Lydian and Median armies were drawn up for battle, when a sudden darkness came over the earth through an eclipse of the sun. They took this for a sign, and made peace, agreeing that the river Halys should be the boundary between the Lydian and Median empires (b.c. 585). Croesus, therefore, in B.C. 550, was ruling over the country between the ^Egsean Sea and the Halys. 4. Persians. — Soon after the conquests of the Medes had stopped, the Persian nation under Cyrus rose against the Medes, and put themselves at the head of the great Median empire (b.c. 559). Croesus knew that the Persians would begin to conquer afresh, and therefore he prepared for war. He made alliance with Belshazzar, king of Babylon, and with Amasis, king of Egypt, and sent to the Delphic oracle to ask whether he should declare war on Cyrus. The oracle made an ingenious answer, and bade Croesus ally himself with Sparta. Sparta promised him help : but without waiting for this, Croesus invaded Kappa- dokia, and fought a drawn battle with Cyrus (b.c. 547). Then he retired to Sardis, the capital of Tydia, and sent word to all his allies to have their troops at Sardis at the end of five months. But Cyrus was more ready than Croesus supposed. He marched straight upon Sardis, defeated Croesus, and took the city before help could arrive. All Lydia submitted to the conqueror, and the Ionic coast-cities offered to submit, if Cyrus would continue the privileges which Croesus had 52 IONIA CONQUERED, [chap. granted them. Cyrus refused ; and. the cities had tc decide whether they would submit to the Persian on his own terms or fight for their Uberty. They deter- mined to fight, and sent to Sparta to ask for help. Sparta gave them none. The time for submission was past, and the towns were besieged one after another by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. 5. War in Ionia. — Never had the Greeks seen such a terrible enemy as the Persians, w^ho now at- tacked them. In the Lydian wars they had seen a fine cavalry, but the Persians had new troops and contrivances of every kind. Their archers shot the defenders of the walls. They brought up machines for regular sieges ; they surrounded the towns with trenches, that no one might get in or out ; they built up mounds against the walls, or threw the walls down by undermining them. The Lydians had spared holy places ; but the Persians, like the armies of Mohammed in later times, were believers in one God, and hated all the works of idolaters : and all through their wars they exasperated the Greeks by destroying their temples. The lonians saw that all was lost ; and some of them showed a noble love of liberty by abandoning their homes rather than submit to the conqueror. Many of the citizens of Teos sailed away to Thrace, and founded Abdera : the citizens of Phoksea, having made a day's truce with the army besieging them, employed the time in putting their wives and children on board ship, and then sailed away, leaving an empty city to the Persians. After a time some of them fell home-sick and returned ; the rest, after many adventures, settled at Elea, m the south of Italy (p. 35). The other towns were all reduced by the Persians, and, when once conquered, they were not badly treated. But though their prosperity continued for the moment, their wisest citizen, Bias of Priene. told them that they were now at the mt-rcy of Persia, and that it was the want of union which had cost them their liberty. He tried to persuade them, while they ivj DARIUS. 53 still had their ships, to follow the example of the Phokaeans, — to sail away to Sardinia, and there to found one great city in common. But the other Ionian cities had not the spirit of the Phokseans; they thought that their trade and wealth might be as great as ever, although they were subject to the Per- sians, and they refused to follow the advice of Bias. 6. Persian Empire becomes a Naval Power. The whole coast of Asia Minor was reduced by Harpagus, and the islands of Chios and Lesbos sub- mitted, although the Persians had as yet no fleet to reach them with (about B.C. 540). While Harpagus was conquering the Greeks. Cyrus himself besieged and took Babylon (Isaiah xlv.; Jerem. 11.). It was now that the Jews were allowed to return to Judaea (Ezrai.). When Cyrus was dead (b.c. 525), Phoenicia submitted to his son Kambyses, so that the Persians could now compel two maritime nations, the Phoeni- cians and the lonians, to supply them with a fleet, and could therefore think of making conquests be- yond the seas. Kambyses added Egypt and Cyprus to the Persian empire, and died in B.C. 522. 7. Darius sets the Empire in order. — After Kambyses, an impostor was set up as king of Persia, pretending that he was Smerdis, the younger son of Cyrus, who had really been put to death by Kam- byses. He was discovered at the end of eight months, and killed, and Darius, a kinsman of Cyrus, was made king (b.c. ^21). Darius was a wise ruler. When he came to the throne a great part of the empire was in revolt, and he saw that if it was to be held together there must be a more regular government. There- fore he divided the empire into twenty provinces, called Sah'iipies, and had all the land in the empire measured, that he might fix the tax that each satrapy was to pay yearly. He made Susa in Media the centre of government (Esther L I, 2), and laid out roads from Susa to all parts of the empire, and made arrangements all along these roads for taking people 54 SCYTHIAN EXPEDITION, [chap. engaged on the king's business quickly from one place to another. Coins called Dariks were struck, which passed current everywhere. Thus the countries from the Indus to the ^gsean Sea were now governed on one system, and Darius knew what was going on in the most distant parts of the empire. In the con- quered countries any native government that seemed likely to work well and submissively was maintained under the Satiap or Persian governor of the province. Thus in Judaea Zerubbabel and Joshua governed under the satrap of Syria (Haggai i.) ; and in Ionia Darius saw that the rule of tyrants, which was common there, would be likely to keep the cities in obedience to Persia. Therefore he gave his protection to a tyrant in each of the cities. 8. Scythian Expedition. — When Darius had put the empire in order, he made an expedition against the Scythians in Europe, north of the Danube (b.c. 510); and now it was seen how important the conquest of Ionia had been to Persia ; for Darius had the Ionian tyrants to raise a fleet of 600 ships, and join him in the expedition. His army marched to the shore of the Bosporus, one of the straits that divide Europe from Asia. There a bridge of boats had been made ready by Mandrokles, an engineer of Samos, and the Persian army marched over it into Europe. From the Bosporus, they marched northward, through Thrace, till they came to the river Danube. Mean- time the Ionian fleet, under the command of the tyrants, had sailed from the Bosporus to the mouth of the Danube, and had made a bridge of boats across the river some way inland. Darius crossed over this bridge into Scythia with his army, and com- manded the tyrants to remain at the bridge and keep guard over it for two months. But at the end of two months Darius did not return. Instead of meeting the Persian army and fighting a battle, the Scythians, who were a wandering people without fixed homes, had fallen back before their invaders, so as to IV.] HISTI^EUS. 55 allure them further and further into the country ; and the Greeks heard that Darius and his army had lost their way in the plains, and were now retreating towards the Danube, attacked by Scythian bowmen, and in miserable plight. When this news came, one of the tyrants, Miltiades, ruler of the Thracian Chersonesus, an Athenian by birth, proposed to the other tyrants that they should destroy the bridge, and leave Darius and his army to perish by famine in Scythia. But Histiaeus, the tyrant of Miletus, reminded the tyrants that it was the Persians who kept them on their thrones, and that if the Persian empire were destroyed they would be driven out of the cities by the people. There- fore the tyrants refused to break down the bridge, and the counsel of Histiaeus saved Darius and his army. 9. Persian Empire extended as far as Thes- saly. — Darius returned to Sardis in safety, and left Megabazus, a Persian general, with 80,000 men, to conquer that part of Thrace which had not yet sub- mitted, and to make a regular Satrapy in Europe. Megabazus subdued all Thrace, and sent ambassadors to Amyntas, king of Macedonia, summoning him to acknowledge Darius as his master. Amyntas gave earth and water, which was the Persian token of submission, so that Macedonia was added to the subject states, and the Persian empire now extended, •n Europe from the Danube to Mount Olympus, the boundary between Macedonia and Thessaly. To reward Histiaeus for preserving the bridge, Darius gave him the country of Myrkmus in Thrace on the river Strymon. And now possessing both Miletus and Myrkinus, Histiaeus began to make great plans for conquest. But the satrap Megabazus discovered his intentions, and warned Darius that Histiaeus was preparing to make himself independent : so Darius sent for Histiaeus, and under pretence of friendship took him to Hve at the court at Susa, allowing Aristagoras, the son-in-law of Histi^us, to reign as tyrant at Miletus in his stead. 56 IONIAN REVOLT. [chap. 10. lonians Revolt. — Aristagoras was just as am- bitious as Histiseus, and lie soon saw an opportunit}* for extending his power. The nobles of the island of Naxos had been driven out by the people, and asked Aristagoras for help (b.c. 502). Aristagoras thought that if he restored the nobles he would be master of the island : but as Naxos was too power- ful for him to attack it by himself, he went to Artaphernes, the Satrap of his district, and proposed that the Persians should help him to conquer Naxos, and add not only Naxos but other islands to the Persian empire. Artaphernes agreed, and gave Aris- tagoras a fleet of two hundred ships. But the Persian commander of the fleet quarrelled with Aristagoras, and the enterprize failed. Aristagoras now feared the anger of Artaphernes, and began to think of revoltmg. Just at the same time Histiseus, who wished to be dis- missed from Susa, sent Aristagoras word to revolt, thinking that he himself would be sent by Darius to put down the rebels, and would so regain his liberty. Aristagoras assembled the people, proclaimed that he would be tyrant no longer, and persuaded the people of Miletus and the other cities to revolt from Persia. The tyrants were deposed and liberty proclaimed in all the cities (b.c. 500). The^olian and Dorian colo- nies and the island of Cyprus joined the insurrection. 11. Athenians burn Sardis. — Knowing the great power of the Persians, Aristagoras crossed over to Greece to seek for help. The Spartans refused it, but Athens immediately sent twenty ships, and Eretria in Euboea sent five. Their troops united with the revolted lonians, and marched suddenly on Sardis, where Artaphernes was, and set fire to the town. But the Persian forces gathered : the Greeks could not hold Sardis, and were attacked and defeated as they were retreating to the coast. The Athenians returned home, and the whole force of Persia was collected agamst the revolted cities. I a. Battle of X-ade (B.C. 496). — ^The war was tv.) LADE, 57 long and desperate. The smaller cities were besieged first, and made stubborn resistance. Four years had passed before the Persians collected their forces by land and by sea to blockade Miletus, the greatest of them all. Then all the cities that were still untaken held council together ; and as they could not beat off the besieging army by land, they resolved to embark all their troops on ships, and try to keep the Persians from surrounding Miletus by sea also. Altogether they mustered 353 ships. The fleet was stationed off the island of Lade in front of Miletus (map, p. 10). Then the Persians brought up the navy of Phoenicia, 600 ships : and when the hearts of the Greeks sank at the number of the enemy, a brave Phokgean, named Dionysius, promised them certain victory if they would do what he should tell them. The Ionian^ agreed ; and for seven days Dionysius made them practise for the battle from morning till night. But the lonians were a pleasure-loving race, and were not used to discipline and obedience. On the eighth day they lost all patience, and left the ships, and made themselves comfortable under the shade in the island. In the meantime, by order of the Persian generals, the former tyrants were trying to persuade the leaders of their cities to desert when the battle should be fought, under promise of pardon from Persia ; and the Persians, trusting that the tyrants had succeeded ordered the Phoenician fleet to attack. The Greeks were again on board their ships. And now, when the Greek and the Phoenician navies fronted one another in order of battle, and the last great struggle for the freedom of Ionia was at hand, a shameful sight was seen. Before a blow was struck, forty nine out of the sixty ships of Samos sailed away. The Lesbians fol- lowed, and after them many others. The crews ot Miletus and Chios had to fight the whole Phcenician fleet almost alone ; Dionysius was one of the few who did not desert them. They fought with noble bravery, but in vain. The battle of Lade was the death-blow 58 VENGEANCE OF THE PERSIANS. [chap. to Ionia ; and the disgrace was as great as the ruin. It showed to all the world how incapable the loniana were of making any sacrifice for their common cause, and how destitute of the sense of honour and duty. 13. Vengeance of the Persians.— Soon after the battle of Lade, Miletus was taken by storm (b.c. 495), and the Persians took terrible vengeance for the burning of Sardis. They killed most of the men; the women and children were carried into captivity; the holy places burnt to the ground. After Miletus the Persians took all the cities on the coast, and in the neighbouring islands, and in the Thracian Chersonese. Everywhere they carried fire and the sword : still there cannot have been the wholesale slaughter which the Greeks represent, for the cities were soon again populous and thriving. 14. First Persian Expedition against Greece (B.C. 493). — Darius now intended to punish Athens and Eretria for their share in burning Sardis. A Persian army, commanded by Mardonius, crossed the Hellespont, and marched towards Greece along the coast of Thrace, the fleet accompanying it. But when the fleet was sailing round the promontory of Mount Athos, a hurricane arose and destroyed 300 ships with 20,000 men. At the same time theThracians attacked Mardonius, and he turned back in shame to Asia. 15. Second Expedition (B.C. 490). — Then Darius assembled a new army and anew fleet; but before invading Greece he sent envoys to the islands to demand earth and water, in token of submission. Most of them gave it, including the powerful island of ^gina, which was at war with Athens, and would gladly have seen Athens ruined. In B.C. 490 the fleet of Darius sailed into the ^gsean, Avith an army on board under the command of Datic and Artaphernes, and landed them first at Naxos, which had refused to submit. Naxos had defended itself successfully against the fleet of Artaphernes in B.C. 505 (p. 56); but the bravest men were terrified by the destruction of Ionia, IV.] MARATHON. 59 and the Naxians fleH from their city into the moun tains. The Pers aS utterly destroyed the town with all its sanctuaries. Then they sailed to Euboea, and besieged Eretria. On the sixth day the gates were 'opened by traitors. The Persians razed the city to the ground, and sent most of the citizens into Asia in chains. 16. Marathon (B.C. 490). — From Eretria the Per^ sians crossed the Euripus, and landed on the plain of Marathon, twenty-two miles from Athens. The ruin of the Athenians was certain if they waited for their town to be besieged : nothing but a victory in the field could save them from slaughter and captivity. They marched out, 9,000 heavy armed men (p. 41), under the command of the Polemarch and the ten Strategi (p. 46), and encamped on the .hills over- looking the plain of Marathon. The army of the Persians that had wrought such ruin upon Ionia, the army which no Greeks had ever resisted with success^ lay below them on the plain between the mountains and the sea. Sparta had promised help, but delayed sending it, and the Athenians were alone in their desperate peril. At this moment the little army of the citizens of Platsea, only a thousand in all, who had lately had protection given them by the Athenians, came to share their fate. Such courage and reso- lution filled the Athenians with admiration, and were never forgotten. Still the whole number of the army was only 10,000 ; and five of the generals thought that they ought to wait till help came from Sparta. The leader of the other five was Miltiades, (p. 55), who, after escaping from the Persians, had been elected Strategus in Athens. Miltiades knew that there were traitors among the citizens, and feared that they would break up the army if fighting were delayed Therefore, though the Persians were ten times as numerous, he urged immediate battle : and when the votes of the ten Strategi were equally divided, the Polemarch Kallimachus gave his casting 6o MARATHON, [chap vote for battle. The generals gave up each his own day's command (p. 46) to Miltiades ; and Miltiades, when the right time had come, drew up the army in line for battle. After the generals had addressed their tribesmen the battle signal was given, and the whole army, raising the battle-cry, charged down the hill upon the Persians. In the struggle the centre of the Greek line was driven back ; but the two ends carried everything before them, and turned and attacked the Persians in the centre. The Persians gave way, and fled for refuge to their ships, or were driven into the marshes by the shore. Six thousand Persians, and no more than 192 Athenians, fell in the battle. Either before or immediately after the battle a bright shield was seen raised on a mountain by Athenian traitors, as a signal to the Persians that there were no troops in the city. Miltiades instantly marched back to Athens. Soon after he reached it the Persian fleet approached, expecting to find Athens widiout troops. When they saw the men who had just fought at Marathon drawn up on the beach ready to fight them again, they sailed away, and the whole armament returned to Asia. The battle of Marathon was glorious to Athens and Platsea ; and though the number of Greeks who fought and died in it was small, it is one of the most important battles in all history : for, had it not been won, Athens must have been captured by Persia ; and the rest of Greece would probably have submitted. Greece would have become a Persian province ; and iie history of Europe, instead of being the history of free and progressing nations, might have been like the history of Asia, — a history of oppressors and their slaves. It was an act of splendid courage in the Athenians to face that army which had ovei thrown Lydia, Babylon, and Ionia : and it shows the insight of lUiltiades into the difterences between soldieis, that, after seeing the Ionian Greeks one after another overthrown by Persia, he should yet have IV.] MILTJADES, 61 been convinced that the 10,000 Athenians would be a match for the v/hole Persian army. On the day after the battle 2,000 Spartans reached Athens. They had delayed marching until the full moon, because this was their religious custom. But had Sparta really meant to defend Athens, it would have sent more than 2,000 men, whether they waited tor the full moon or not. Thus Sparta lost the glory of a share in the first victory over Persia. 17. Miltiades. — Greece was saved; but the general who had saved it perished miserably. Miltiades had been twenty years a tyrant, and he now wished to em- ploy the forces of Athens like a tyrant instead of a citizen-general. He persuaded the people to give him command of a fleet, without telling them for what purpose ; and out of private enmity he attacked the island of Paros. But the Parians defended themselves bravely, and Miltiades found that he could do nothing. At last a priestess, who wished to betray the city, sent word to Miltiades to come secretly to her temple. Miltiades tried to climb into the temple by night, but fell and wounded his thigh. And now, after twenty- six days' command, he returned to Athens with nothing done. He v/as accused of deceiving the people, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine. His property was in the hands of the Persians \ he could pay nothing. His wound mortified, and he died in dishonour. 18. Themistokles. — After the batde of Marathon the Persians retreated from Greece, and Athens was left to itself. Its two leading citizens were now Themistokles and Aristides. Themistokles was the cleverest man of his time. He was wonderfully quick and wise in foreseeing what was going to happen ; and when he had determined to have anything done, no difficulty was so great but that he could find some ingenious plan for making things go as he wished. While the other Athenians were satisfied with having beaten the Persians at Marathon, Themistokles felt sure that Persia would attack Greece again. He 62 ATHENIANS BUILD A FLEET. [CHAP. thought with himself how Athens might be made as powerful as possible : and as he looked en the jutting coast of Piraeus, four miles from Athens, with its bays lying as if they had been made for harbours, and thought of the greatness of the Ionic maritime towns before their destruction, and of the multitude of islands and coast towns in Greece which might all be controlled by one strong fleet, he saw that if Athens would take to the sea it would be possible to give her such a power as had never been imagined. He saw that Athens might bring a far greater force against Persia SAIAMIS AND THE COAST OF ATTICA. by sea than she ever could by land ; and that the leader- ship of Greece would pass from inland Sparta and its army to a State which could control the coasts and islands with a fleet. 19. Athenians build a Fleet. — Fortunately for the plans of Themistokles there was constant war between Athens and the island of y95gina (p. 58). The Athenians could not overcome ^.gina without a power- ful navy ; and this made them hsten to the counsel of Tnemistokles, and agree to spend the produce of the public silver mines in building 200 triremes. But Themistokles knew that the fleet could never thrive w.] ARISTIDES. . 61 unless a great maritime business and population arose. He thereTore did everytliing to attract the people to a seafaring life, and to encourage trade by sea. Hitherto the Athenian ships had put in at the east corner of the open bay of Phalerun. Now the safe inclosed bays around Piraeus were made into good harbours, and a busy trading town, called Piraeus, grew up on their shore. In B.C. 490 Athens had hardly any navy ; in B.C. 480 she had a fleet of 200 triremes, the most powerful fleet in Greece. 20. Aristides. — Aristides disapproved of the whole plan of Themistokles. He thought that if Athens had beaten the Persians once by land she might beat them by land again. The soldiers who had fought at Mara- thon were all owners of land (p. 41) : but, if a fleet were formed, it would be chiefly manned by poor people who had no land ; and Aristides knew that whoever had the chief share in fighting on behalf of Athens would also have the chief share in its govern- ment. If the strength of Athens lay in its fleet, the poor people who served in the fleet would get the upper hand in the State. A maritime and trading population would grow up, fond of adventure and change ; and the good old ways, he thought, would be forsaken. In wishing Athens not to have a fleet, Aristides was certainly wrong ; but it was not on account of his opinions that he had such credit, but on account of the nobleness of his character. He was a perfectly honourable man. Whoever else took bribes, or betrayed his cause (pp. dZ, 74), it was known that Aristides would never be anything but true and just ; and this, as we shall see, gave him real power, not only in Athens, but over all Greece, when the need for a just man was felt. At present such was the strife between the parties of Aristides and Themistokles that an ostrakism (p. 46) had to be held. Aristides was ostrakised, and Themistokles was left free to carry out his plans. 21. Xerxes invades Greece (B.C. 480). — King &I • XERXES INVADES GREECE. [char Darius died in bx. 485, and his successor, Xerxes^ collected an enormous force for invading Greece. In every country from Asia Minor to the river Indus troops were levied. Two bridges of boats were made over the Hellespont A fleet of 1,200 war-ships and 3,000 carrying ships assembled on the coast of Ionia and Phoenicia. Stores of food were collected in the towns along the coast of Thrace; and a canal was cut through the promontory of Mount Athos, that the fleet might not again have to make the dangerous passage round it (p. 58). The place of meeting for the land forces was Kritalla in Kappadokia. Ther^, in B.C. 481, the troops of forty-six nations were as- sembled, perhaps a million in number, all dressed and armed in the manner of their native countries. Xerxes put himself at their head, and led them to Sardis for the winter. In the spring of B.C. 480 the whole host marched to the Hellespont, where the fleet was waiting for them. On the heights of Abydos a throne of white marble was erected ; from this throne Xerxes looked over sea and land covered with his troops, and gave the order to cross into Europe. For seven days and nights his hosts were marching over the bridge. Then from the Hellespont the army marched along the coast of Thrace, and met the fleet again at Doriskus. Here the ships were drawn up on shore, and the crews and the land army were numbered together. From Doriskus the army and fleet passed on safely to the gulf of Therma. 22. Congress at Isthmus of Corinth. — In the autumn of B.C. 481, Sparta and Athens had summoned the Greek states to a Congress at the Isthmus of Corinth, to decide upon the best means of defending Greece. Deputies came from all the great Pelopon- nesian States except Argos and Achsea, and from Athens, Thespise, Platgea, and Thessaly. ^gina was reconciled to Athens, and joined the common cause. Argos, out of hatred to Sparta, and Thebes, out of hatred to Athens, favoured the Persians ; Achaea had nr.] TEMPE. 65 never acted with Sparta. The Congress sent envoys to the colonies to ask them to join in the defence of Greece, but in vain. Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, who had a greater army than any Greek State, refused to help unless he were given the chief command : Crete would do nothing : Kerkyra promised to send ships, but did not mean that they should arrive in time. Thus it was but a small part of Greece that had the will and the courage to resist the Persians : and when we speak of the glory which Greece won by this war, we must remember that the greater part of Greece had no share in it w^hatever, but, on the contrary, did nothing for the cause of Greece. The credit of the war belongs to Athens, the Pelopon- nesian league, the Uttle Boeotian towns of Platsea and Thespise, and a very few other States. Athens, though it contributed so large a fleet, honourably ahowed Sparta to command both by land and sea, in order that there might be no division. The aUies took an oath to resist to the last, and, if they should be suc- cessful, to make w^ar upon all Greek States that had willingly submitted to Persia, and to dedicate a tenth of the whole spoil to the Delphic god. 23. Tempe. — The Congress had now to decide how Greece was to be defended. As the Persians had such an immense force, the best plan for the Greeks was, not to fight a pitched battle in the open country, where they w^ould be surrounded, but to meet the Persians in some narrow place, where ten thousand men would be as good as half a miUion. Greece is so mountainous a country that sometimes the only way from one district to another is a single narrow pass ; and the Congress believed that the Persians could only enter Greece through the narrow valley of Tempe m the north of Thessaly. They therefore sent an army of 10,000 men to Tempe. But on reaching it, the generals found that there was another road by which the Persians could get round them, so that it would be useless to post the troops at Tempe. They 66 THERMOPYL/E. [CHAP. returned to the isthmus of Corinth, and the Congress had to fix on another place. 24. Thermopylae. — In all Thessaly there was no narrow pass which the Persians had to go through ; but south of Thessaly, at the head of the Malian Guli (map, p. 19), their road ran between the mountains and a swamp which stretched to the sea ; and at one place the swamp came so near the mountain that there was hardly room for the road to run between. This is the famous pass of Thermopylae, and here it was thought a small army might block the way against any number of the enemy. The Spartans weie just now celebrating a religious festival at which all their citizens had to appear ; therefore only 300 Spartans were sent to Thermopyl^, but with them were 1,000 Helots or more, and about 3,000 heavy-armed men from other Peloponnesian States. The general was Leonidas, king of Sparta. On their way through Boeotia they were joined by the little army of Thespi^, 700 in number, and a body of Phokians and Lokrians met them at Thermopylae ; so that there were in all about 7,000 men. At the same time the fleet was posted at Artemisium, at the north end of the Euboean Straits, to prevent the Persian fleet getting past and landing men behind the Greeks at Thermopylae. The fleet numbered 271 ships, and was commanded by Eury- biades, a Spartan. When Leonidas reached the pass of Thermopylae, he found that there was a way over the mountains by which a body of Persians might cross and attack him from behind. He therefore sent the Phokians to defend the mountain-road, and made ready for battle himself in the pass. The Persians approached ; and for four days they lay before the pass without attacking, and were astonished to see the Spartans quietly practising gymnastics and combing their long hair as they did before a festival. On the fifth day, Xerxes ordered an assault, and during the whole of. that day and the next the battle continued, without the IV.] LEONID AS, 67 Persians being able to drive back the Gieeks. But on the third day after the fighting began, a native of the country told Xerxes of the path over the moun- tain : and at nightfall a strong Persian force was sent CO ascend the path and take the Greeks in the rear. In the early morning the Phokians heard a trampling through the woods. They were unprepared, and abandoned their post, and the Persians marched on to descend behind Leonidas. In the course of the night Leonidas knew what had happened. He sa-.v that if he did not retreat immediately he must be sur- rounded and perish ; but the law of Sparta forbade the soldier to leave his post, and Leonidas had no fear of death. He ordered the other troops to retire while there was yet time, but himself, with his 300 Spartans, reraamed to die at his post. The other troops de- parted, but the 700 Thespians bravely resolved to stay and die with Leonidas. And now, before the Persians could descend behmd him, Leonidas and his 1,000 men ilirew themselves upon the host in front. Leonidas soon fell, but his soldiers fought on until the Persians who had crossed the m.ountain were close at hand. Then, ceasing the attack, they took up their last position on some rising ground, to defend them- selves against the enemy who now surrounded them. Here all died, fighting bravely to the last. Thus Leonidas and his Spar'ans died at their post, and the Thespians died with them. Their heroic and voluntary death was not in vain. At a moment when the hearts even of the braver Greeks were wavering, md men were inclined to forsake the common cause in order to save themselves, Leonidas gave a splendid example of constancy and self-sacrifice, and showed the Greeks how a citizen ought to do his duty. 25. Fleet at Artemisium. — During the three days of the battle of Thermopylae the Greek and Persian fleets were also engaged. The Greek fleet had been posted at Artemisium to prevent the Persian fleet entering the Straits of Euboea, and landing troops 68 ARTEMISIUM. [CHAP behind Leonidas ; but on its approach they were seized with a panic, and sailed down the straits to Chalkis, where the sea is very narrow. At Chalkis they heard that part of the Persian fleet had been destroyed by a storm, and they took courage and sailed back to Artemisiura. Presently the Persian fleet came in sight, and its numbers so terrified the Greeks that they again prepared to forsake the post. Upon this the Euboeans, seeing that their only hope lay in the Persians being kept out of the straits, ofl"ered Themistokles thirty talents (7,000/.) if he could get the fleet to remain. By giving part of the money to Eurybiades and to other commanders, Themistokles persuaded them not to retreat. Thus at this great moment the chiefs of the fleet cared more for bribes than for duty, and were not ashamed to make money out of the danger of Greece. The Persian admiral, when he saw the Greek fleet at Artemisium, sent off 200 of his ships to sail round Euboea and inclose the Greeks from the south. When they had gone, the Greeks made a very skilful attack on the Persians and took thirt)^ vessels. The same night a storm arose and entirely destroyed the 200 ships sailing round Euboea. Next day fifty more Athenian ships joined the fleet, and the Greeks again attacked the Persians and gained some little advan- tage. On the third day the Persians did not wait to be attacked, but assailed the Greeks fiercely, and fought an even battle. On the morrow the Greeks heard of the destruction of the Spartans at Thermopylae. Since the army of Xerxes had passed Thermopylae, it was of no use for the fleet to remain at Artemisium \ they therefore retired southward down the straits, sailed round Cape Sunium, the end of Attica, and took up their position off the island of Salamis (map, p. 62). '26. Athens abandoned and destroyed. — From Thermopylae Xerxes marched upon Athens. The Spartans, instead of sending an army to defend Attica, kept the Peloponnesian forces at the Isthmus fV.] ATHENS ABANDONED, 69 of Corinth ; for they cared little what became of A-thens, so long as the Persians were kept out of Peloponnesus. Forsaken by their allies, the Athenians had no hope of being able to defend Athens, and resolved to abandon the town, and to re- move their wives and children out of Attica to places of safety. The whole population, men, women, and children, sorrowfully left their homes, and streamed down to the sea-shore, carrying what they could with them. The fleet took them over to Salamis, yEgina, and Troezene ; and when Xerxes reached Athens, he found it silent and deserted. A few poor or desperate men alone had refused to depart, and had posted themselves behind a wooden fortification on the top of the Acropolis, the fortress and sanctuary of Athens. And now vengeance was taken for Sardis (p. 56). The Persians fired the fortifications, stormed the Acropolis, slaughtered its defenders, and burnt every holy place to the ground. Athens and its citadel were in the hands of the barbarians : its inhabitants were scattered, its holy places destroyed. One hope alone remained to the Athenians, — the ships which Themistokles had persuaded them to build. 27. Battle of Salamis. — As Xerxes advanced from Thermopylae to Athens, his fleet had sailed along the coast, and was now anchoring off Athens, in the bay of Phalerum. (September, B.C. 480.) The Greek fleet lay a few miles off in the strait between Attica and Salamis (map, p. 62); more ships had joined it, raising the number to 366. Among the Greeks everything was in uncertainty. The Peloponnesian captains wished to retreat to the isthmus, in order to act with the land army. Eurybiades was un- decided. Themistokles knew that if the fleet once left Salamis it would break up altogether, and was resolved, by whatever means, to have the battle fought where they were. He argued with Eury- biades and the Peloponnesian commanders ; he made them hold council after council; he threatened to 70 SALAMIS. [CHAP. deprive them of the 200 Athenian ships if they left Salamis ; and at last, when he saw all against him, he sent word secretly to Xerxes that the Greeks would escape if he did not attack them immediately. Early next morning, while it was still dark, the commanders were again assembled in council, when Themistokles was called out by a stranger. It was the exile Aris- tides, who, in the ruin and distress of Athens, had come to serve those who had banished him, and had made his way through the Persian fleet in the darkness to tell the Greek commanders that they were surrounded. Aristides was brought in to the council and declared it to be true. When day broke, the Greeks saw the enemy's ships facing them all along the narrow strait, and stretching far away on the right and left, cutdng off all escape. Behind the Persian ships the Persian army was drawn up along the shore of Attica, and a throne was set in their midst, from which Xerxes sur- veyed the battle. The Persian fleet advanced, and the Greeks, seized with terror, pushed backwards to- wards the shore. But there was no possibility of re- treat, and they presently gained heart and advanced. The fleets closed. Vessel crashed against vessel. In single encounters the ships and crews of Greece were seen overpowering their antagonists ; and when once the Greeks prevailed, the numbers of the Persian ships were their ruin. They were jammed together in the narrow space. Beaten and disabled ships prevented others from coming into action. Two hundred were destroyed under the eyes of Xerxes, and the rest, to escape ruin, fled out of the straits. By sunset the battle was over, and the Greeks prepared to renew the fight on the morrow. 28. Retreat of Xerxes. — But the heart of Xerxes sank. Though he had still 800 ships he could bear the war no longer. He left 300,000 of his best troops in Greece with Mardonius, and himself, with the rest of the army, returned to Asia the way he had come. Fearing that the Greeks would break down the bridges rv. J EE TREA T OF XERXES. 7 1 over the Hellespont, he sent hiswliole fleetto guard thern till his arrival. On the march back through Thrace, thousands of his army perished of hunger and disease. 29. Victory in Sicily. — On the same day that the battle of Salamis was fought, another great victory was gained by men of Greek race against an invading army. Karthage (p. 35) had united with Persia to de- stroy Greece ; and an immense Karthaginian army laid siege to Himera in the nortli of Sicily. Gelo, the tyrant of Syracuse, marched wdth 50,000 men to the relief of Himera, and dealt the Karthaginians such a blow that Greece was freed from all danger in that quarter. 30. Battle of Plataea (B.p. 479).— Mardonius and his army passed the wmter quietly in Thessaly, for the northern Greeks were still obedient to the Persians. When summer came he marched into Attica. The Athenians had come back to their ruined homes after the battle of Salamis, and the city was partly rebuilt. They expected help from Sparta on the approach of Mardonius, but none came 3 and Athens was a second tmie abandoned and destroyed. Ai length the Spartans put forth all their strength. They summoned the land-forces of all the allies ; and an army of 110,000 men marched against Mardonius, under Pausanias, the guardian of Leonidas' young son. (Sept. B.C. 479.) Mardonius had his head-quarters in. Thebes, and the Thebans, out of hatred to Athens, served zealously in the Persian army, Pausanias marched into Bceotia, and for ten days the armies faced one another near Plataea. On the eleventh day the Greeks could get no more water. The braver cap lains were impatient for battle ; but Pausanias dared not attack the Persians where they stood, and gave orders at nightfall to fall back on a better position. The movement threw the Greek army into disorder, and its three divisions were widely separated from one another. The next morning Mardonius, seeing that the Greeks had retreated, ordered an attack. The Spartans andTegeans (p. 26) fronted the main body of the Persian 7 72 FLAT^A, [chap. army ; the Athenians were at some distance on their left; and the third division of the Greeks had retreated too far to take part in the battle. The Persians advanced to withi.'a bowshot, and, fixing their wooden shields Hke a paUsade in front of them, poured flights of arrows upon the Spartans. It was the custom of the Spartans before beginning a battle to offer sacri- fice, and to wait for an omen, or sign from heaven, in the offering. Even now, as the arrows fell, Pausanias offered sacrifice. The omens were bad, and he dared not advance. The Spartans knelt behind their shields, but the arrows pierced them, and the bravest men died sorrowfully, lamenting not for death but because they died without striking a blow for Sparta. In his distress Pausanias called on the goddess Hera : while he was still praying the Tegeans advanced, and in- stantly the omens changed. Then the Spartans threw themselves upon the enemy. The palisade went down, and the Asiatics, laying aside their bows fought desperately with javelins and daggers. But •they had no metal armour to defend them ; and the Spartans, v/ith their lances fixed and their shields touching one another, bore down everything before them. The Persians turned and fled to their fortified camp. The Spartans assaulted it, but they were unskilful in attacking fortifications, and the Persians kept them at bay till the Athenians came up victorious over the Thebans (p. 7 1). Then the camp was stormed, and the miserable crowds who had been driven into it were cut to pieces. No victory was ever more complete: the Persian army was totally destroyed, and the in- vasion at an end. Out of the immense spoil a tenth was given to the gods. The prize of valour was ad- judged to the PJatseans; they were charged with the duty of preserving the tom.bs of the slain ; and Pausanias, by solemn oaths, declared their territory, in which the battle had been fought, to be sacred ground for ever. 31. Battle of Mykale. — On the same day that the battle of Plataea destroyed the invaders of Greece, v.] MYKALB. 73 a battle on the coast of Asia Minor put an end to the rule of Persia in Ionia. The Greek fleet had crossed to Asia, and met the Persian fleet at Mykale, near Miletus. The Persian admiral would not fight by sea : he landed his crew, and hauled his ships ashore, and united with a Persian army on the land. The Greeks, who were mostly Athenians, were as ready to fight by land as by sea ; they attacked the enemy on the beach, and not only gained a complete victory, but set fire to the Persian ships and destroyed them. The lonians, who had been made to serve with the Persians, went over to the Greeks during the battle j and from that time Ionia was free. 32. What saved Greece. — Thus the Persians, who had conquered so great an empire, were com- pletely beaten by a small part of Greece. We must allow that this was partly owing to the mistakes of the Persian commanders \ and many things in the war did little credit to Greece. Many of the States submitted too easily to Xerxes ; some were on his side from the first : even in those which fought the m.ost resolutely there was generally a party ready to submit to Persia (p. 60). As a rule the Greeks thought too much about themselves and too little about the common cause. Sparta, though she dealt the death-blow at Platsea, had been slow and untrustworthy as the leader of Greece. But a State could hardly display greater courage, enterprise, and resolution, than Athens did from the beginning to the end of the war. It was the energy of Athens, and the habit of the Peloponnesian States to act in imion under Sparta, that made European Greece so much harder to conquer than Ionia. CHAPTER V. THE EMPIRE OF ATHENS AND THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. 1. Walls round Athens and Piraeus. — After the battle of Platsea the inhabitants of Athens returned 74 PAUSANIAS. [CHAP to their ruined homes, and for the second time rebuih the city (p. 71). Instead of rebuilding their old wall, however, Themistokles persuaded them to build one of much greater circuit, so that, in case of war, the country-people might bring their goods and take refuge within it. The neighbouring States, especially ^gina and Corinth, were jealous of the power of Athens ; and when they saw the strong fortification Themis- tokles was making, they stirred up the Spartans to interfere and put a stop to it But by a trick ot Themistokles the Spartans were kept from doing anything until the wail had risen high enough to be defended. It was then too late for the Spartans to mterfere, and they had to conceal their anger. The wall round Athens was finished, and a still stronger one was built round Pirccus (p. d-^. 2. Pausanias. — The battle of Mykale had freed Ionia, but many places on the coast of Asia Minor and Thrace were still held by the Persians. The chief of these was Byzantium, now Constantinople. So long as Byzantium belonged to the Persians, they could send out fleets from its harbour to injure Greek ship- ping, and could easily invade Europe again. The Greeks therefore laid siege to Byzantium, under the command of Pausanias. The city was taken, and some kinsmen of Xerxes fell into the hands of the Greeks. And now Pausanias formed a treacherous plan. In the conquered camp at PlatGea and in By- zantium he had seen the splendour of Persian princes ; and as he found out more about Persia, he saw how (nsignificant Sparta and all the Greek States were in .vealth and size when compared with a great eastern Ijingdom. He grew discontented, and thought that he .TQight make himself a great king like the kings of the east. Therefore, when Byzantium was laken, he re- leased the kinsmen of Xerxes unharmed, and sent Xerxes a letter asking for his daughter in marriage, and offering to bring all Greece under the empire of Persia. He began to behave as if he were already a r.J CONFEDERACY OF DELOS. 75 Satrap, living in Persian luxury, and insulting the Greeks who served under him. A report of his treason reached Sparta, and he was summoned home. Upon this the lonians serving in the fleet, who had been provoked by the insolence of Pausanias, invited the Athenian commanders to put themselves at the head of the Grecian navy in place of Sparta. The xlthenians did so. and when the successor of Pausanias arrived from Sparta, he found that nobody would obey him, and returned home. 3. Confederacy of Delos (B.C. 477). — During the Persian invasion Sparta had been acknowledged as leader of Greece by all the States which fought (p. 65); but henceforward there were two great Leagues, one headed by Sparta, and one by Athens. The Peloponnesian States continued to follow Sparta ; the islands and many towns on the coast of Asia Minor and Thrace joined the new League under Athens. This League was called the Confederacy of Debs, because its deputies met at the temple of Apollo in the island of Delos, and its treasure was kept there. The object of the League was to keep the Persians out of the ^gaean Sea. Each city contributed yearly a certain number of war-ships with their crews, or a certain sum of money j and the man chosen to fix what each should contribute was the upright Aris- tides, w4io then commanded the Athenian fleet (p. (i^: There were from the first two great differences between the Spartan and Athenian Leagues. The States in alliance with Sparta contributed land troops, those in aUiance with Athens contributed ships ; and again, Sparta encouraged oligarchical governments every- where, Athens encouraged democratical governments. Thus in the same city the party of the nobles was often in favour of Sparta, the party of the common people in favour of Athens. The great mistake in the Con- federacy of Delos was that some of the States were allowed to contribute money instead of ships and men. From this it came about that other States, 76 THEMISTOKLES. [chap. which had originally contributed ships, arranged to contribute money instead, in order to avoid the trou- ble and danger of naval service. This made them the subjects instead of the free allies of Athens. So long as they kept up their ships they had the means of de- fending themselves if Athens did them wrong; but when they sent money instead of ships, they lost all control over Athens, and the money became hke a tribute to Athens instead of the common property of the League. In course of time the meetings of the deputies ceased ; the treasure-house was removed from Delos to Athens (B.C. 459), and a great part of the money was spent in paying the Athenians for attending to public affairs, and in making Athens beautiful. This change came about gradually ; at first the smaller States had no reason to complain of Athens. The war was con- tinued against Persia ; the places which Persia still held round the ^^gsean Sea were conquered one after another; and in B.C. 466, Kimon, the Athenian gene- ral, gained a double victory over the Persians by land and by sea, at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, on the south coast of Asia Minor. The first signs of discontent with Athens appeared in this same year: Naxos (p. 58) revolted from the League, and was forced to join it again. 4. Pausanias. — Pausanias,when he reached Sparta (p. 75), was tried for treason, but not condemned. He returned to Asia Minor, and tried to persuade some of the States there to join him in his plans. The Spartans again made him return ; and now he began to plot with the Helots for overthrowing the govern- ment of Sparta. At last the ephors (p. .?3) contrived to overhear him speaking to one of his slaves, and what they heard convinced them of his treason. He took refuge in a temple, and was starved to dealh (b c. 467). 5. Themistokles, — The ephors discovered that Themistokies was mixed up with the treason of Pau- sanias. With all his wonderful powers of mind, The- mistokies had httle feeling of honour. He had nevef r.) PARTIES. 77 cared whether what he did was upright or not, so long as it gained his end ; and when the war was over he had used his great power to extort money for himself from, the weaker States. His injustice and his boast- fulness made him hated at Athens, and in B.C. 471 he was ostrakised, and went to live at Argos. When he found that his share in the treason of Pausanias was discovered, he fled, and made his way through many dangers to Susa, the capital of the Persian empire. Xerxes was just dead, and his son Artaxerxes was king. Themistokles wrote a letter to king Artaxerxes, saying that though he had done more than any man to injure Xerxes, he could do services to Persia that should be equally great. The king gladly received him, and gave him great wealth. It was expected that Themistokles, who never failed in what he under- took, would enable the Persians to conquer Greece : but he died without attempting it. He died an exile and a Persian hireling, because he had set money and power above justice and the love of country : but never was a little State made into a great one more truly by a single man than Athens by Themistokles. 6. Parties at Athens. — When the Athenians abandoned their country (p. 69), all able-bodied citi- zens, rich and poor alike, had served on board the fleet at Salamis. The share which the poor people had in winning that great victory made them consider that they had done as much for Athens as the rich, and that they ought not to be kept out of the offices of the State, as they were by the present constitution (pp. 41, 45). Aristides, the head of the party of the rich and noble, which tried to keep to old ways (p. d-j^^, saw that the constitution would have to be changed, and proposed the change himself, in order to keep more hasty people from taking it into their hands. From this time the poorest citizen might be elected to the archonchips or other offices, and Athens was more a democracy than before (p. 47). After the death of Aristides (b.c 468}, the leader of the party 78 PERIKLES. [chap, of the nobles was Kimon, son of Miltiades, a good general and a very honest man. He and his followers were very friendly to Sparta, and wished that Athens and Sparta, with their leagues, should unite to carry on war against Persia, and do no harm to one another. 7. Perikles. — The leader of the opposite party was Perikles, a noble of the Alkmaeonid clan. Perikles thought that everything in Athens had changed so much since the beginning of the Persian wars, that what was the right government some years back could not be the right government now. Athens was then a litde quiet inland toun. Its citizens were mostly small fanners, who only came into the city occasionally (p. 43), and might well leave State affairs to wealthier men, if they could keep their crops out of the hands of the usurer. Now, Athens was a great commercial city ; a new town had sprung up on the sea (p. d^i)') thronged with enterprising, quick-witted traders; its merchant- ships were in every port of Greece ; its navy had proved itself the strongest power in the world ; it was at the head of a league that covered the ^g^an Sea. Athens had become a ruling city, and Perikles thought that its citizens ought to be a race capable of ruling both themselves and their empire. He thought that the commonest citizen might be made intelligent and sensible by education, by attending to the speeches made in the Assembly, by practice as a juryman in trials, and by sharing in the daily life oi his fellow-citizens, who had almost ever)^ kind of talent among them. He thought, too, that the great mass ot citizens, if guided by wise statesmen, would form a better judgment on what was good for Athens than the small body of the nobles or the rich. He had no confidence that the nobles either wished to keep Athens in its new greatness or understood how to do so. Their love for past times seemed to him rather a drawback than an advantage, and their regard for Sparta dan- ^rous to Athens. He saw clearly that Sparta would always be the jealous enemy of Athens; and thougb v.] CHANGES MADE BY PERIKLES. 79 he had no desire to hurry on a war, he knew that Ki- mon's attempt to keep on good terms with Sparta must fail, and he wished Athens to make itself as strong as possible before the conflict should break out. 8. Changes at Athens. — Kimon and his party had at first the upper hand. About B.C. 462 there was an earthquake in Sparta, and the Helots revolted. Sparta, in great danger, begged help of Athens, and Kimon persuaded the people to send him with a large force to help the Spartans. But after some time the Spartans suspected that the Athenian troops were playing them false, and sent them away. This insult exasperated the Athenians against Sparta. Kimon, the friend of Sparta, lost all his power, and the party of Perikles carried everything before them. They took from the Areopagus, in which the nobles were so powerful (p. 41), the right of forbidding new laws, and of interfering with the citizens ; and they carried a measure giving regular pay to the citizens for attend- ing the Assembly and for serving on juries, in order that poor men might be wilhng to give up their time to it, and the whole business of the State be more than ever conducted by the citizens themselves. The alliance with Sparta was broken off, and an alliance made with Argos, the enemy of Sparta. Kimon himself was ostrakised B.C. 459. 9. Wars. — The Athenians also made alliance v/ith Megara, because in the mountains of Megara it would be easier for them to resist an army coming from Pelo- ponnesus. Upon this Corinth and yf^gina declared war with Athens. The Athenians gamed a naval victory, and blockaded ^gina. At the same time the Athe- nians had a large army in Egypt fighting against the Persians \ and the Corinthians, knowing that all the Athenian troops were occupied, invaded Megara (bc. 458). The "boys and old men," — that is, the citi- zens who were at home because they were too young or too old to be serving in the army, — marched out from Athens and completely defeated the So ATHENIAN WARS. [chap. Corinthians. Part of an inscription still remains which gives the names of the Athenians who were killed in battle in this year. In this one year they were fight- ing, ill Cyprus, in Egypt, in Phoenicia, in Megara, and ofT :^Egina and the coast of Peloponnesus. It was their triumph over the Persians that filled the Athe- nian people with this wonderful spirit and enterprise They felt as if nothing was too difficult for them. 10. Bceotia. — Most of the towns of Boeotia were united in a League of which Thebes was the head. Platsea had always struggled to get free from the League, and had at last succeeded, by allying itself with Athens (p. 59). This, together with other causes, made Thebes the bitterest enemy of Athens. The govern- ment of Thebes was oligarchical, and it could only maintain the League by establishing oligarchical governments in the other towns (p. 75). To assist the Thebans in doing this, a Spartan army was sent into Boeotia (b.c. 457), and the oligarchical party in Athens took the occasion to make a conspiracy with Sparta. The Spartan army was to surprise Athens on its march back from Boeotia, and to give the govern- ment to the nobles. But the Athenians discovered the conspiracy, and sent out an array to meet the Spartans A battle was fought at Tanagra, and though the Athenians were beaten, the Spartans did not dare to enter Athens. Two months afterwards the Athenians marched into Boeotia, defeated the Thebans, and over- threw the ohgarchies in all the Boeotian towns, establish- ing democracies in their place. These democracies were really like subjects of Athens, and in Phokis and Lokris the state of affairs was much the same ; so that the Athenians now in fact governed as far as Ther- mopylae. In B.C. 455 iEgina was taken, and made to pay tribute. 11. Long Walls. — Two great walls were now made, running the whole distance between Athens and Piraeus, — a distance of more than four miles — about t\^o hundred yards apart from one another If.) LONG WALLS, 81 These walls immensely increased the power ol Athens, for they made it impossible for any land army to surround Athens so as to deprive it of food. As long as these walls were not taken, there was a safe passage between Athens and Piraeus ; and the Athenians, unless they lost their command of the sea, could bring food to Piraeus in ships, from which it could be safely carried to Athens between the walls, even if an army surrounded Athens on the land side. In B.C. 452 a truce was made with Sparta for five years, and the power of Athens was now at its height. But in B.C. 447 the nobles of the Boeotian towns, who had been driven out by the Athenians, re- covered their power, and defeated the Athenians at Coronea. The Athenians lost all control over Boeotia, Phokis, and Lokris ; and at the san\e moment Euboea and Megara revolted. The five years' truce was finished, and the Spartans invaded Attica. Athens was in great danger, but was saved by Perikles, who bribed the Spartan leaders to retreat, and subdued Euboea. Peace was made with Sparta for thirty years (B.C. 445), Athens giving up all control over Boeotia and the other States on the mainland, so that its subjects and allies were now entirely maritime (p. 75). About the same time the war with Persia ended. 12. Athens under Perikles. — For the next ten years Perikles, holding the office of Strategus, directed everything at Athens. He did not place himself above the laws, like a tyrant, and make the people obey him by force ; but, remaining a simple citizen, he was able to rule the people through his eloquence and his wisdom, and above all through the perfect nobleness of his character. In making Athens treat her allies like subjects, and in giving the citizens pay for attend- ing to public business, he was no doubt wrong ; and he was mistaken in thinking that the people might be trusted to follow a wise leader in preference to a foolish one. But no man ever devoted his life more high-mindedly, and with less thought of self, 82 ATHENS UNDER PERIKLES. [chap. to the service of his country; and for this, and for the great wisdom and success of his management generally, and still more for the noble idea which he had of raising all Athenian citizens to intelligence and good taste, Perikles is often considered the finest of ail Greek statesmen. One part of the work of Perikles will never be out of date. The best men in England and other free countries in our own day have the same feeling as Perikles had towards the people. Like Perikles, they wish to see the whole people, poor as well as rich, taking their fair share in the government, and interested in what goes on in the State ; and they believe that the happiness of a country will depend more than anything else upon the education and im- provement of the people. The means by which Perikles tried to improve the people were not those which we are used to in England, such as schools and clubs for helping one another, but they were those which seemed most natural to a Greek. More than any man Perikles gave to the Athenians that love of knowledge, of poetry, and of art, which remained to them when their military greatness was gone, and which, more than its military greatness, has made Athens of service to mankind. He did not give the people book-learning, for little book-learning existed in those days ; but he tried to wake up all their facul- ties by making their daily life bright and active instead of dull and hstless, and by givmg as much interest and nobleness as possible to the things in which the whole people joined, such as the worship of the gods and the public amusements. Under his guidance, the temiples and statues of the gods, which helped to give the Greeks their idea of the gods, were made grand, beau- tiful, and calm. Pictures were painted in public places of the actions of the gods on behalf of Athens, and of the greatest events in Athenian history. Plays, written by great poets, were performed at the cost of the State in a large open building before multi- tudes of people : the serious ones, called Tragedies, V.J A THENS UNDER PERIKLES. &3 represented some sorrowful story of the heroes ; the amusing ones, called Comedies, often had to do with present affairs. These plays not only gave the peopl/" pleasure, and helped to make them dislike coarse and stnpid entertainments, but set them thinking, just as reading a book does now. The earUest great tragic poet was yEschylus, who fought at the battle of Mara- thon. His plays are very solemn ; there are very few characters, and they speak in a very stately way. The next, Soph5cles, put more action into his plays, and made his characters act and speak more like real human beings. After him came Euripides, the most tender of all the tragic poets. The greatest comic poet, rather later than this, was Aristophanes, whose plays are still most amusing. He disliked the changes that had been made at Athens, and laughed at the new-fashioned statesmen. The study of nature was also beginning at Athens. It had been going on for some time in Ionia (p. 49), but Athens was fast be- coming the meeting-place for all the cleverest men m Greece. The ordinary Athenians, however, thought it wicked to study nature, because they believed, for instance, that the sun was a god. An Ionian named Anaxagoras, the friend and teacher of Perikles, nar- rowly escaped being put to death because he said that the sun was made of stones, like the earth. Thus the search for knowledge was only now beginning in Athens, and the people were still superstitious ; but the poetry and the art of the time of Perikles have been a model of beauty to mankind ever since. 13. Contrast of Athens and Sparta. — While Perikles was adorning Athens, Sparta remained like a plain village, without pubUc buildings (p. 21) ; and the contrast in the life of the Spartans and of the Athe- nians was as great as the contrast in the appearance of the two cities. The life of the Athenians was full of variety : quickness and enterprise had become part of their nature. The Spartans, on the contrary, kept to their rough military life and their old-fashioned 84 PELOPONNESIAN WAR. [chap. rules. They had Httle education, and thought of little beyond making themselves steady soldiers. ' 14. Peloponnesian War. — In B.C. 431 the wai broke out between Athens and the Peloponnesian League, which, after twenty-seven years, ended in the ruin of the Athenian empire. It began through a quarrel between Corinth and Kerkyra, in which Athens assisted Kerkyra. A congress was held at Sparta ; Corinth and other States complained of the conduct of Athens, and war was decided on. The real cause of the war was that Sparta and its allies were jealous of the great power that Athens had gained. A far greater number of Greek States were engaged in this w^ar than had ever been engaged in a single under- taking before. States that had taken no part in the Persian war were now fighting on one side or the other. Sparta was an oligarchy, and the friend of the nobles everywhere; Athens was a democracy, and the friend of the common people ; so that the war was to some extenj; a struggle between these classes all over Greece, and often within the same city walls the nobles and the people attacked one another, the nobles being for Sparta, and the people for Athens. 15. Powers of Athens and Sparta. — On the side of Sparta, when the war began, there was all Pelo- ponnesus except Argos and Achaea, and also the oligarchical Boeotian League under Thebes (p. 80), besides Phokis, Lokris, and other States west of thera. They were very strong by land, but the Corinthians alone had a good' fleet. Later on we shall see the powerful State of Syracuse (p. 35), with its navy, acting with Sparta. On the side of Athens there were almost all the ^ga^an islands, and a great number of the ^gsean coast towns, as well as Kerkyra and certain States in the west of Greece. The Athenians had also made alliance with Sitalkes, the barbarian king of the interior of Thrace. Athens was far stronger by sea than Sparta, but had not such a strong land army. On the other hand it had a large treasure, and a r.] PLANS OF PERIKLES, 85 system of taxes, while the Spartan League had little or no money. In character the Athenians had the ad- vantage, for they were ready for anything, and made the most of every chance, while the Spartans were slow, and would not change their ways. But Sparta had a great superiority in this, that its allies were acting with a good will, while many of -the so-called allies of the Athenians were really not their allies at all, but their subjects : and in almost every city, though the common people were usually in favour of Athens, the nobles were eager to rise against her. The Spartans gave out that they made war in order to break down the tyranny of Athens and to restore freedom to all Greek States. 16. Plans of Perikles and of Sparta. — As Sparta was much stronger by land, and Athens by sea, Perikles advised the Athenians never to fight a battle by land, but, when the Spartans invaded Attica, to take refuge within Athens and to allow the Spartans to ravage the country. The long walls would enable the Athenians to import their food by sea, so that the destruction of the crops would be of little matter ; and they could do more harm to Sparta than Sparta could do to them, by making sudden descents by sea upon places in Peloponnesus. This was how Perikles wished to carry on the war ; and he advised the Athenians to be content with keeping their empire over the islands, and not to attempt great conquests on the mainland or in distant places. The Spartans, on the other hand, hoped to exhaust the Athe- nians by ravaging their country year after year, and to deprive them of the money which they received in tribute, by persuading their subjects to revolt. 17. Invasions of Attica. Plague. — In the summer of B.C. 431 the Spartans invaded Attica and destroyed** the crops, but no battle was fought. The next year they again invaded it ; and when the people were crowded within the walls of Athens, a plague broke out, which killed great numbers. The strength 86 DEATH OF PERIKLES. [chap. of Athens was only reduced for the moment ; but it is probable that the plague affected the whole future his- tory of Athens by destroying many of the men who bad been trained by Perikles, and who, at his death, would have kept the State in the wise course which Perikles had laid down for it. The Spartans invaded Attica again in three out of the next live yeais. i8. Death of Perikles. — Perikles died in b.c. 429. Some time before his death the Athenians had turned against him and unjustly condemned him to pay a fine ; but they repented, and Perikles was again set at the head of the State. After his death there was no man like him in Athens. Demagogues arose {hr]jjiayii)yc