A Smaller History of Greece
W >>
William Smith >> A Smaller History of Greece
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22
It remained to bury the dead and divide the booty, and so great
was the task that ten days were consumed in it. The booty was
ample and magnificent. Gold and silver coined, as well as in
plate and trinkets, rich vests and carpets, ornamented arms,
horses, camels--in a word, all the magnificence of Eastern
luxury. The failure of the Persian expedition was completed by
the destruction of their naval armament. Laotychides, the
Spartan admiral, having sailed across the AEgean, found the
Persian fleet at Mycale a promontory of Asia Minor near Miletus.
Their former reverses seem completely to have discouraged the
Persians from hazarding another naval engagement. The ships were
hauled ashore and surrounded with a rampart, whilst an army of
60,000 Persians lined the coast for their defence. The Greeks
landed on the very day on which the battle of Plataea was fought.
A supernatural presentiment of that decisive victory, conveyed by
a herald's staff which floated over the AEgean from the shores of
Greece, is said to have pervaded the Grecian ranks at Mycale as
they marched to the attack. The Persians did not long resist:
they turned their backs and fled to their fortifications, pursued
by the Greeks, who entered them almost simultaneously. A large
number of the Persians perished; and the victory was rendered
still more decisive by the burning of the fleet.
The Grecian fleet now sailed towards the Hellespont with the view
of destroying the bridge; but hearing that it no longer existed,
Leotychides departed homewards with the Peloponnesian vessels.
Xanthippus however, the Athenian commander, seized the
opportunity to recover from the Persians the Thracian Chersonese,
which had long been an Athenian possession; and proceeded to
blockade Sestos, the key of the strait. This city surrendered in
the autumn, after a protracted siege, whereupon the Athenians
returned home, carrying with them the cables of the bridge across
the Hellespont, which were afterwards preserved in the Acropolis
as a trophy.
CHAPTER IX.
FROM THE END OF THE PERSIAN WARS TO THE BEGINNING OF THE
PELOPONNESIAN WAR, B.C. 479-431.
The Athenians, on their return to Attica, after the defeat of the
Persians, found their city ruined and their country desolate.
They began to rebuild their city on a larger scale than before,
and to fortify it with a wall. Those allies to whom the
increasing maritime power of Athens was an object of suspicion,
and especially the AEginetans, to whom it was more particularly
formidable, beheld her rising fortifications with dismay. They
endeavoured to inspire the Lacedaemonians with their fears, and
urged them to arrest the work. But though Sparta shared the
jealousy of the allies, she could not with any decency interfere
by force to prevent a friendly city from exercising a right
inherent in all independent states. She assumed therefore the
hypocritical garb of an adviser and counsellor. Concealing her
jealousy under the pretence of zeal for the common interests of
Greece, she represented to the Athenians that, in the event of
another Persian invasion, fortified towns would serve the enemy
for camps and strongholds, as Thebes had done in the last war;
and proposed that the Athenians should not only desist from
completing their own fortifications, but help to demolish those
which already existed in other towns.
The object of the proposal was too transparent to deceive so
acute a statesman as Themistocles. Athens was not yet, however,
in a condition to incur the danger of openly rejecting it; and he
therefore advised the Athenians to dismiss the Spartan envoys
with the assurance that they would send ambassadors to Sparta to
explain their views. He then caused himself to be appointed one
of these ambassadors; and setting off straightway for Sparta,
directed his colleagues to linger behind as long as possible. At
Sparta, the absence of his colleagues, at which he affected to be
surprised, afforded him an excuse for not demanding an audience
of the ephors. During the interval thus gained, the whole
population of Athens, of both sexes and every age, worked day and
night at the walls, which, when the other ambassadors at length
arrived at Sparta, had attained a height sufficient to afford a
tolerable defence. Meanwhile the suspicions of the Spartans had
been more than once aroused by messages from the AEginetans
respecting the progress of the walls. Themistocles, however,
positively denied their statements; and urged the Spartans to
send messengers of their own to Athens in order to learn the true
state of affairs, at the same time instructing the Athenians to
detain them as hostages for the safety of himself and colleagues.
When there was no longer any motive for concealment, Themistocles
openly avowed the progress of the works, and his intention of
securing the independence of Athens, and enabling her to act for
herself. The walls being now too far advanced to be easily
taken, the Spartans found themselves compelled to acquiesce, and
the works were completed without further hindrance.
Having thus secured the city from all danger of an immediate
attack, Themistocles pursued his favourite project of rendering
Athens the greatest maritime and commercial power of Greece. He
erected a town round the harbour of Piraeus, distant between four
and five miles from Athens, and enclosed it with a wall as large
in extent as the city itself, but of vastly greater height and
thickness. Meanwhile an event occurred which secured more firmly
than ever the maritime supremacy of Athens, by transferring to
her the command of the allied fleet.
In the year after the battle of Plataea a fleet had been fitted
out and placed under the command of the Spartan regent,
Pausanias, in order to carry on the war against the Persians.
After delivering most of the Grecian towns in Cyprus from the
Persians, this armament sailed up the Bosporus and laid siege to
Byzantium, which was garrisoned by a large Persian force. The
town surrendered after a protracted siege; but it was during this
expedition that the conduct of the Spartan commander struck a
fatal blow at the interests of his country.
The immense booty, as well as the renown, which Pausanias had
acquired at Plataea, had filled him with pride and ambition.
After the capture of Byzantium he despatched a letter to Xerxes,
offering to marry the king's daughter, and to bring Sparta and
the rest of Greece under his dominion. Xerxes was highly
delighted with this letter, and sent a reply in which he urged
Pausanias to pursue his project night and day, and promised to
supply him with all the money and troops that might be needful
for its execution. But the childish vanity of Pausanias betrayed
his plot before it was ripe for execution. Elated by the
confidence of Xerxes, and by the money with which he was lavishly
supplied, he acted as if he had already married the Great King's
daughter. He assumed the Persian dress; he made a progress
through Thrace, attended by Persian and Egyptian guards; and
copied, in the luxury of his table and the dissoluteness of his
manners, the example of his adopted country. Above all, he
offended the allies by his haughty reserve and imperiousness.
His designs were now too manifest to escape attention. His
proceedings reached the ears of the Spartans, who sent out Dorcis
to supersede him. Disgusted by the insolence of Pausanias, the
Ionians serving in the combined Grecian fleet addressed
themselves to Aristides, whose manners formed a striking contrast
to those of the Spartan leader, and begged him to assume the
command. This request was made precisely at the time when
Pausanias was recalled; and accordingly, when Dorcis arrived, he
found Aristides in command of the combined fleet (B.C. 478).
This event was not a mere empty question about a point of honour.
It was a real revolution, terminated by a solemn league, of which
Athens was to be the head. Aristides took the lead in the
matter, for which his proverbial justice and probity eminently
qualified him. The league obtained the name of "the Confederacy
of Delos," from its being arranged that deputies of the allies
belonging to it should meet periodically for deliberation in the
temple of Apollo and Artemis (Diana) in that island. Each state
was assessed in a certain contribution, either of money or ships,
as proposed by the Athenians and ratified by the synod. The
assessment was intrusted to Aristides, whose impartiality was
universally applauded. Of the details, however, we only know
that the first assessment amounted to 460 talents (about 106,000L
sterling), that certain officers called Hellenotamiae were
appointed by the Athenians to collect and administer the
contributions, and that Delos was the treasury.
Such was the origin of the Confederacy of Delos. Soon after its
formation Aristides was succeeded in the command of the combined
fleet by Cimon, the son of Miltiades.
Pausanias, on his return to Sparta, seems to have been acquitted
of any definite charges; but he continued his correspondence with
Persia, and an accident at length afforded convincing proofs of
his guilt. A favourite slave, to whom he had intrusted a letter
to the Persian satrap at Sardis, observed with dismay that none
of the messengers employed in this service had ever returned.
Moved by these fears, he broke the seal and read the letter, and
finding his suspicions of the fate that awaited him confirmed, he
carried the document to the ephors. But in ancient states the
testimony of a slave was always regarded with suspicion. The
ephors refused to believe the evidence offered to them unless
confirmed by their own ears. For this purpose they directed him
to plant himself as a suppliant in a sacred grove near Cape
Taenarus, in a hut behind which two of their body might conceal
themselves. Pausanias, as they had expected, anxious at the step
taken by his slave, hastened to the spot to question him about
it. The conversation which ensued, and which was overheard by
the ephors, rendered the guilt of Pausanias no longer doubtful.
They now determined to arrest him on his return to Sparta. They
met him in the street near the temple of Athena Chalcioecus (of
the Brazen House), when Pausanias, either alarmed by his guilty
conscience, or put on his guard by a secret signal from one of
the ephors, turned and fled to the temple, where he took refuge
in a small chamber belonging to the building. From this
sanctuary it was unlawful to drag him; but the ephors caused the
doors to be built up and the roof to be removed, and his own
mother is said to have placed the first stone at the doors. When
at the point of death from starvation, he was carried from the
sanctuary before he polluted it with his corpse. Such was the
end of the victor of Plataea. After his death proofs were
discovered among his papers that Themistocles was implicated in
his guilt. But in order to follow the fortunes of the Athenian
statesman, it is necessary to take a glance at the internal
history of Athens.
The ancient rivalry between Themistocles and Aristides had been
in a good degree extinguished by the danger which threatened
their common country during the Persian wars. Aristides had
since abandoned his former prejudices, and was willing to conform
to many of the democratical innovations of his rival. The effect
of this was to produce, soon after their return to Attica, a
still further modification of the constitution of Clisthenes.
The Thetes the lowest of the four classes of Athenian citizens,
were declared eligible for the magistracy, from which they had
been excluded by the laws of Solon. Thus not only the
archonship, but consequently the Council of Areopagus, was thrown
open to them; and, strange to say, this reform was proposed by
Aristides himself.
Nevertheless party spirit still ran high at Athens. Cimon and
Alcmaeon were violent opponents of Themistocles, and of their
party Aristides was still the head. The popularity of Aristides
was never greater than at the present time, owing not only to the
more liberal spirit which he exhibited, but also to his great
services in establishing the Confederacy of Delos. Themistocles
had offended the Athenians by his ostentation and vanity. He was
continually boasting of his services to the state; but worse than
all this, his conduct was stained with positive guilt. Whilst,
at the head of an Athenian squadron, he was sailing among the
Greek islands for the ostensible purpose of executing justice,
there is little room to doubt that he corrupted its very source
by accepting large sums of money from the cities which he
visited. Party spirit at length reached such a height that it
was found necessary to resort to ostracism, and Themistocles was
condemned to a temporary banishment (B.C. 471). He retired to
Argos, where he was residing when the Spartans called upon the
Athenians to prosecute their great statesman before a synod of
the allies assembled at Sparta, on the ground of treasonable
correspondence with Persia. Accordingly joint envoys were sent
from Athens and Sparta to arrest him (B.C. 466). Themistocles
avoided the impending danger by flying from Argos to Corcyra.
The Corcyraeans, however, not daring to shelter him, he passed
over to the continent; where, being still pursued, he was forced
to seek refuge at the court of Admetus, king of the Molossians,
though the latter was his personal enemy. Fortunately, Admetus
happened to be from home. The forlorn condition of Themistocles
excited the compassion of the wife of the Molossian king, who
placed her child in his arms, and bade him seat himself on the
hearth as a suppliant. As soon as the king arrived, Themistocles
explained his peril, and adjured him by the sacred laws of
hospitality not to take vengeance upon a fallen foe. Admetus
accepted his appeal, and raised him from the hearth; he refused
to deliver him up to his pursuers, and at last only dismissed him
on his own expressed desire to proceed to Persia. After many
perils, Themistocles succeeded in reaching in safety the coast of
Asia. Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, was now upon the throne of
Persia, and to him Themistocles hastened to announce himself.
The king was delighted at his arrival, and treated him with the
greatest distinction. In a year's time, Themistocles, having
acquired a sufficient knowledge of the Persian language to be
able to converse in it, entertained Artaxerxes with magnificent
schemes for the subjugation of Greece. Artaxerxes loaded him
with presents, gave him a Persian wife, and appointed Magnesia, a
town not far from the Ionian coast, as his place of residence.
after living there some time he was carried off by disease at the
age of sixty-five, without having realised, or apparently
attempted, any of those plans with which he had dazzled the
Persian monarch. Rumour ascribed his death to poison, which he
took of his own accord, from a consciousness of his inability to
perform his promises; but this report, which was current in the
time of Thucydides, is rejected by that historian.
Aristides died about four years after the banishment of
Themistocles. The common accounts of his poverty are probably
exaggerated, and seem to have been founded on the circumstances
of a public funeral, and of handsome donations made to his three
children by the state. But whatever his property may have been,
it is at least certain that he did not acquire or increase it by
unlawful means; and not even calumny has ventured to assail his
well-earned title of THE JUST.
On the death of Aristides, Cimon became the undisputed leader of
the conservative party at Athens. Cimon was generous, affable,
magnificent; and, notwithstanding his political views, of
exceedingly popular manners. He had inherited the military
genius of his father, and was undoubtedly the greatest commander
of his time. He employed the vast wealth acquired in his
expeditions in adorning Athens and gratifying his fellow-
citizens. It has been already mentioned that he succeeded
Aristides in the command of the allied fleet. His first exploits
were the capture of Eion on the Strymon, and the reduction of the
island of Scyros (B.C. 476). A few years afterwards we find the
first symptoms of discontent among the members of the Confederacy
of Delos. Naxos, one of the confederate islands, and the largest
of the Cyclades, revolted in B.C. 466, probably from a feeling of
the growing oppressiveness of the Athenian headship. It was
immediately invested by the confederate fleet, reduced, and made
tributary to Athens. This was another step towards dominion
gained by the Athenians, whose pretensions were assisted by the
imprudence of the allies. Many of the smaller states belonging
to the confederacy, wearied with perpetual hostilities, commuted
for a money payment the ships which they were bound to supply;
and thus, by depriving themselves of a navy, lost the only means
by which they could assert their independence.
The same year was marked by a memorable action against the
Persians. Cimon at the head of 200 Athenian triremes, and 100
furnished by the allies, proceeded to the coast of Asia Minor.
The Persians had assembled a large fleet and army at the mouth of
the river Eurymedon in Pamphylia. After speedily defeating the
fleet, Cimon landed his men and marched against the Persian army
which was drawn up on the shore to protect the fleet. The land-
force fought with bravery, but was at length put to the rout.
The island of Thasos was the next member of the confederacy
against which the Athenians directed their arms. After a siege
of more than two years that island surrendered, when its
fortifications were razed, and it was condemned to pay tribute
(B.C. 463).
The expedition to Thasos was attended with a circumstance which
first gives token of the coming hostilities between Sparta and
Athens. At an early period of the blockade the Thasians secretly
applied to the Lacedaemonians to make a diversion in their favour
by invading Attica: and though the Lacedaemonians were still
ostensibly allied with Athens, they were base enough to comply
with this request. Their treachery, however, was prevented by a
terrible calamity which befel themselves. In the year B.C. 461
their capital was visited by an earthquake which laid it in ruins
and killed 20,000 of the citizens. But this was only part of the
calamity. The earthquake was immediately followed by a revolt of
the Helots, who were always ready to avail themselves of the
weakness of their tyrants. Being joined by the Messenians, they
fortified themselves in Mount Ithome in Messenia. Hence this
revolt is sometimes called the Third Messenian War (B.C. 464).
after two or three years spent in a vain attempt to dislodge them
from this position, the Lacedaemonians found themselves obliged
to call in the assistance of their allies, and, among the rest,
of the Athenians. It was with great difficulty that Cimon
persuaded the Athenians to comply with this request; but he was
at length despatched to Laconia with a force of 4000 hoplites.
The aid of the Athenians had been requested by the Lacedaemonians
on account of their acknowledged superiority in the art of
attacking fortified places. As, however, Cimon did not succeed
in dislodging the Helots from Ithome the Lacedaemonians, probably
from a consciousness of their own treachery in the affair of
Thasos, suspected that the Athenians were playing them false, and
abruptly dismissed them, saying that they had no longer any
occasion for their services. This rude dismissal gave great
offence at Athens, and annihilated for a time the political
influence of Cimon. The democratical party had from the first
opposed the expedition; and it afforded them a great triumph to
be able to point to Cimon returning not only unsuccessful but
insulted. That party was now led by Pericles. A sort of
hereditary feud existed between Pericles and Cimon; for it was
Xanthippus, the father of Pericles, who had impeached Miltiades,
the father of Cimon. The character of Pericles was almost the
reverse of Cimon's. Although the leader of the popular party,
his manners were reserved. He appeared but little in society,
and only in public upon great occasions. His mind had received
the highest polish which that period was capable of giving. He
constantly conversed with Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Zeno, and other
eminent philosophers. To oratory in particular he had devoted
much attention, as an indispensable instrument for swaying the
public assemblies of Athens.
Pericles seized the occasion presented by the ill success of
Cimon, both to ruin that leader and to strike a fatal blow at the
aristocratical party. He deprived the Areopagus of its chief
functions, and left it a mere shadow of its former influence and
power. He rendered the election to magistracies dependent simply
upon lot, so that every citizen however poor, had an equal chance
of obtaining the honours of the state. Other changes which
accompanied this revolution--for such it must be called--were
the institution of paid DICASTERIES or jury-courts, and the
almost entire abrogation of the judicial power of the Senate of
Five Hundred. It cannot be supposed that such fundamental
changes were effected without violent party strife. The poet
AEschylus, in the tragedy of the EUMENIDIES, in vain exerted all
the powers of his genius in support of the aristocratical party
and of the tottering Areopagus; his exertions on this occasion
resulted only in his own flight from Athens. The same fate
attended Cimon himself; and he was condemned by ostracism (B.C.
461) to a ten years' banishment. Nay, party violence even went
the length of assassination. Ephialtes, who had taken the lead
in the attacks upon the Areopagus, fell beneath the dagger of a
Boeotian, hired by the conservative party to dispatch him.
It was from this period (B.C. 461) that the long administration
of Pericles may be said to have commenced. The effects of his
accession to power soon became visible in the foreign relations
of Athens. Pericles had succeeded to the political principles of
Themistocles, and his aim was to render Athens the leading power
of Greece. The Confederacy of Delos had already secured her
maritime ascendency; Pericles directed his policy to the
extension of her influence in continental Greece. She formed an
alliance with the Thessalians, Argos, and Megara. The possession
of Megara was of great importance, as it enabled the Athenians to
arrest the progress of an invading army from Peloponnesus,
AEgina, so long the maritime rival of Athens, was subdued and
made tributary. The Athenians marched with rapid steps to the
dominion of Greece. Shortly afterwards the battle of OEnophyta
(B.C. 456), in which the Athenians defeated the Boeotians, gave
Athens the command of Thebes, and of all the other Boeotian
towns. From the gulf of Corinth to the straits of Thermopylae
Athenian influence was now predominant. During these events the
Athenians had continued to prosecute the war against Persia. In
the year B.C. 460 they sent a powerful fleet to Egypt to assist
Inarus, who had revolted against Persia; but this expedition
proved a complete failure, for at the end of six years the revolt
was put down by the Persians, and the Athenian fleet destroyed
(B.C. 455). At a later period (B.C. 449) Cimon, who had been
recalled from exile, sailed to Cyprus with a fleet of 200 ships.
He undertook the siege of Citium in that island; but died during
the progress of it, either from disease or from the effects of a
wound. Shortly afterwards a pacification was concluded with
Persia, which is sometimes, but erroneously, called "the peace of
Cimon." It is stated that by this compact the Persian monarch
agreed not to tax or molest the Greek colonies on the coast of
Asia Minor, nor to send any vessels of war westward of Phaselis
in Lycia, or within the Cyanean rocks at the junction of the
Euxine with the Thracian Bosporus; the Athenians on their side
undertaking to leave the Persians in undisturbed possession of
Cyprus and Egypt. During the progress of these events, the
states which formed the Confederacy of Delos, with the exception
of Chios, Lesbos, and Samos, had gradually become, instead of the
active allies of Athens, her disarmed and passive tributaries.
Even the custody of the fund had been transferred from Delos to
Athens. The purpose for which the confederacy had been
originally organised disappeared with the Persian peace; yet what
may now be called Imperial Athens continued, for her own ends, to
exercise her prerogatives as head of the league. Her alliances,
as we have seen, had likewise been extended in continental
Greece, where they embraced Megara, Boeotia, Phocis, Locris,
together with Troezen and Achaia in Peloponnesus. Such was the
position of Athens in the year 448 B.C., the period of her
greatest power and prosperity. From this time her empire began
to decline; whilst Sparta, and other watchful and jealous
enemies, stood ever ready to strike a blow.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 | 7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18 |
19 |
20 |
21 |
22