A Smaller History of Greece

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The latter days of literary Athens were chiefly distinguished by
the genius of her ORATORS and PHILOSOPHERS. There were ten Attic
orators, whose works were collected by the Greek grammarians, and
many of whose orations have come down to us. Their names are
Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, AEschines,
Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides and Dinarchus. ANTIPHON, the
earliest of the ten was born B.C. 480. He opened a school of
rhetoric, and numbered among his pupils the historian Thucydides.
Antiphon was put to death in 411 B.C. for the part which he took
in establishing the oligarchy of the Four Hundred.

ANDOCIDES, who was concerned with Alcibiades in the affair of the
Hermae, was born at Athens in B.C. 467, tend died probably about
391.

LYSIAS, also born at Athens in 458, was much superior to
Andocides as an orator, but being a METIC or resident alien, he
was not allowed to speak in the assemblies or courts of justice,
and therefore wrote orations for others to deliver.

ISOCRATES was born in 436. After receiving the instructions of
some of the most celebrated sophists of the day, he became
himself a speech-writer and professor of rhetoric; his weakly
constitution and natural timidity preventing him from taking a
part in public life. He made away with himself in 338, after the
fatal battle of Chaeronea, in despair, it is said, of his
country's fate. He took great pains with his compositions, and
is reported to have spent ten, or, according to others, fifteen
years over his Panegyric oration.

ISAEUS flourished between the end of the Peloponnesian war and
the accession of Philip of Macedon. He opened a school of
rhetoric at Athens, and is said to have numbered Demosthenes
among his pupils. The orations of Isaeus were exclusively
judicial, and the whole of the eleven which have come down to us
turn on the subject of inheritances.

AESCHINES was born in the year 389, and he was at first a violent
anti-Macedonian; but after his embassy along with Demosthenes and
others to Philip's court, he was the constant advocate of peace,
Demosthenes and AEschines now became the leading speakers on
their respective sides, and the heat of political animosity soon
degenerated into personal hatred. In 343 Demosthenes charged
AEschines with having received bribes from Philip during a second
embassy; and the speech in which he brought forward this
accusation was answered in another by AEschines. The result of
this charge is unknown, but it seems to have detracted from the
popularity of AEschines. We have already adverted to his
impeachment of Ctesiphon, and the celebrated reply of Demosthenes
in his speech DE CORONA. After the banishment of AEschines on
this occasion (B.C. 330), he employed himself in teaching
rhetoric at Rhodes. He died in Samos in 314. As an orator he
was second only to Demosthenes.

Of the life of his great rival, DEMOSTHENES, we have already
given some account. The verdict of his contemporaries, ratified
by posterity, has pronounced Demosthenes the greatest; orator
that ever lived. The principal element of his success must be
traced in his purity of purpose, which gave to his arguments all
the force of conscientious conviction. The effect of his
speeches was still further heightened by a wonderful and almost
magic force of diction. The grace and vivacity of his delivery
are attested by the well-known anecdote of AEschines, when he
read at Rhodes his speech against Ctesiphon. His audience having
expressed their surprise that he should have been defeated after
such an oration "You would cease to wonder," he remarked, "if
you had heard Demosthenes."

The remaining three Attic orators, viz. LYCURGUS, HYPERIDES, and
DINARCHUS, were contemporaries of Demosthenes. Lycurgus and
Hyperides both belonged to the anti-Macedonian party, and were
warm supporters of the policy of Demosthenes. Dinarchus, who is
the least important of the Attic orators, survived Demosthenes,
and was a friend of Demetrius Phalereus.

The history of Greek PHILOSOPHY, like that of Greek poetry and
history, began in Asia Minor. The earliest philosopher of
distinction was THALES of Miletus, who was born about B.C. 640,
and died in 554 at the age of 90. He was the founder of the
IONIC school of philosophy, and to him were traced the first
beginnings of geometry and astronomy. The main doctrine of his
philosophical system was, that water, or fluid substance was the
single original element from which everything came and into which
everything returned. ANAXIMANDER, the successor of Thales in the
Ionic school, lived from B.C. 610 to 547. He was distinguished
for his knowledge of astronomy and geography, and is said to have
been the first to introduce the use of the sun-dial into Greece.
ANAXIMENES, the third in the series of the Ionian philosophers,
lived a little later than Anaximander. He endeavoured, like
Thales, to derive the origin of all material things from a single
element; and, according to his theory, air was the source of
life.

A new path was struck out by ANAXAGORAS Of Clazomenae, the most
illustrious of the Ionic philosophers. He came to Athens in 480
B.C., where he continued to teach for thirty years, numbering
among his hearers Pericles, Socrates, and Euripides. He
abandoned the system of his predecessors, and, instead of
regarding some elementary form of matter as the origin of all
things, he conceived a supreme mind or intelligence, distinct
from the visible world, to have imparted form and order to the
chaos of nature. These innovations afforded the Athenians a
pretext for indicting Anaxagoras of impiety, though it is
probable that his connexion with Pericles was the real cause of
that proceeding (see Ch.IX). It was only through the influence
and eloquence of Pericles that he was not put to death; but he
was sentenced to pay a fine of five talents and quit Athens. The
philosopher retired to Lampsacus, where he died at the age of 72.

The second school of Greek philosophy was the ELEATIC which
derived its name from Elea or Velia, a Greek colony on the
western coast of Southern Italy. It was founded by XENOPHANES of
Colophon, who fled to Elea on the conquest of his native land by
the Persians. He conceived the whole of nature to be God.

The third school of philosophy was the PYTHAGOREAN, founded by
PYTHAGORAS. He was a native of Samos and was born about B.C.
580. His father was an opulent merchant, and Pythagoras himself
travelled extensively in the East. He believed in the
transmigration of souls; and later writers relate that Pythagoras
asserted that his own soul had formerly dwelt in the body of the
Trojan Euphorbus, the son of Panthous, who was slain by Menelaus,
and that in proof of his assertion he took down, at first
sight,the shield of Euphorbus from the temple of Hera (Juno) at
Argos, where it had been dedicated by Menelaus. Pythagoras was
distinguished by his knowledge of geometry and arithmetic; and it
was probably from his teaching that the Pythagoreans were led to
regard numbers in some mysterious manner as the basis and essence
of all things. He was however more of the religious teacher than
of the philosopher; and he looked upon himself as a being
destined by the gods to reveal to his disciples a new and a purer
mode of life. He founded at Croton in Italy a kind of religious
brotherhood, the members of which were bound together by peculiar
rites and observances. Everything done and taught in the
fraternity was kept a profound secret from all without its pale.
It appears that the members had some private signs, like
Freemasons, by which they could recognise each other, even if
they had never met before. His doctrines spread rapidly over
Magna Graecia, and clubs of a similar character were established
at Sybaris, Metapontum, Tarentum, and other cities.

At Athens a new direction was given to the study of philosophy by
Socrates, of whom an account has been already given. To his
teaching either directly of indirectly may be traced the origin
of the four principal Grecian schools: the ACADEMICIANS,
established by Plato; the PERIPATETICS, founded by his pupil
Aristotle; the EPICUREANS, so named from their master Epicurus;
and the STOICS, founded by Zeno.

PLATO was born at Athens in 429 B.C., the year in which Pericles
died. His first literary attempts were in poetry; but his
attention was soon turned to philosophy by the teaching of
Socrates, whose lectures he began to frequent at about the age of
twenty. From that time till the death of Socrates he appears to
have lived in the closest intimacy with that philosopher. After
that event Plato withdrew to Megara, and subsequently undertook
some extensive travels, in the course of which he visited Cyrene,
Egypt, Sicily, and Magna Graecia. His intercourse with the elder
and the younger Dionysius at Syracuse has been already related
His absence from Athens lasted about twelve years; on his return,
being then upwards of forty, he began to teach in the gymnasium
of the Academy. His doctrines were too recondite for the popular
ear, and his lectures were not very numerously attended. But he
had a narrower circle of devoted admirers and disciples,
consisting of about twenty-eight persons, who met in his private
house; over the vestibule of which was inscribed--"Let no one
enter who is ignorant of geometry." The most distinguished of
this little band of auditors were Speusippus, his nephew and
successor, and Aristotle. He died in 347, at the age of 81 or
82, and bequeathed his garden to his school.

ARISTOTLE was born in 381 B.C., at Stagira, a seaport town of
Chalcidice, whence he is frequently called THE STAGIRITE. At the
age of 17, Aristotle, who had then lost both father and mother,
repaired to Athens. Plato considered him his best scholar, and
called him "the intellect of his school." Aristotle spent twenty
years at Athens, during the last ten of which he established a
school of his own. In 342 he accepted the invitation of Philip
of Macedon to undertake the instruction of his son Alexander. In
335, after Alexander had ascended the throne, Aristotle quitted
Macedonia, to which he never returned. He again took up his
abode at Athens, where the Athenians assigned him the gymnasium
called the Lyceum; and from his habit of delivering his lectures
whilst walking up and down in the shady walks of this place, his
school was called the PERIPATETIC. In the morning he lectured
only to a select class of pupils, called ESOTERIC. His afternoon
lectures were delivered to a wider circle, and were therefore
called EXOTERIC. It was during the thirteen years in which he
presided over the Lyceum that he composed the greater part of his
works, and prosecuted his researches in natural history, in which
he was most liberally assisted by the munificence of Alexander.
The latter portion of Aristotle's life was unfortunate. He
appears to have lost from some unknown cause the friendship of
Alexander; and, after the death of that monarch, the disturbances
which ensued in Greece proved unfavourable to his peace and
security. Being threatened with a prosecution for impiety, he
escaped from Athens and retired to Chalcis; but he was condemned
to death in his absence, and deprived of all the rights and
honours which he had previously enjoyed. He died at Chalcis in
322, in the 63rd year of his age.

Of all the philosophical systems of antiquity, that of Aristotle
was best adapted to the practical wants of mankind. It was
founded on a close and accurate observation of human nature and
of the external world; but whilst it sought the practical and
useful, it did not neglect the beautiful and noble. His works
consisted of treatises on natural, moral and political
philosophy, history, rhetoric, criticism, &c,; indeed there is
scarcely a branch of knowledge which his vast and comprehensive
genius did not embrace.

EPICURUS was born at Samos in 342, and settled at Athens at about
the age of 35. Here he purchased a garden, where he established
his philosophical school. He taught that pleasure is the highest
good; a tenet, however, which he explained and dignified by
showing that it was mental pleasure that he intended. The ideas
of atheism and sensual degradation with which the name of
Epicurus has been so frequently coupled are founded on ignorance
of his real teaching. But as he denied the immortality of the
soul, and the interference of the gods in human affairs,--though
he held their existence,--his tenets were very liable to be
abused by those who had not sufficient elevation of mind to love
virtue for its own sake.

ZENO was a native of Citium in the island of Cyprus, and settled
at Athens about B.C. 299. Here he opened a school in the Poecile
Stoa, or painted porch, whence the name of his sect. He
inculcated temperance and self-denial, and his practice was in
accordance with his precept.

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