The Greeks: Glory of the Ancient World
The interest of the great story of ancient Greece is inexhaustible. Of all histories of which we know so much, this is the most abounding in consequences to us who now live. The Greeks are the most remarkable people who have yet existed. This high claim is justly made on the grounds of the power and efforts that were required for them to achieve what they did for themselves and for mankind. With the exception of Christianity, they were the originators of most of the great things of which the modern world can boast. The period from the permanent settlements in Greece until its final reduction to a Roman province covers about two thousand years.
The name Greece was almost unknown by the people whom we call Greeks, and was never used by them for their own country. It has come to us from the Romans, being really the name of a tribe in Epirus, northwest of Greece, the part of the country first known to them.
The Land of Hellas and the Hellenes
The Greek writers and people called their land Hellas, the term meaning all territory in which their own people, the Hellenes, were settled. Hellas included not only the Greek peninsula, but many of the islands of the Ægean Sea, and the coast settlements and colonies above referred to. The peninsula, much indented by bays, was broken up into many small divisions, connected by the sea. There were numerous mountains in ridges, offshoots, and groups; there were plains, valleys and small rivers. All was diversified. The position and conformation of the country undoubtedly helped to render the Greeks the earliest civilized people in Europe, both by developing, in a life of struggle with nature on land and sea, their special and innate character, and by bringing them into contact with the older civilizations, in Egypt and Phœnicia, on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. The mountains that divided the country into small isolated districts had a great political importance in giving rise to many separate and independent states, the rivalries and conflicts of which favored the working-out of political problems and the growth of political freedom.
Great Divisions of Greece
Greece naturally divides itself into Northern, Central and Southern. Northern Greece contained two principal countries, Thessalia and Epirus, though the Greeks themselves did not regard the inhabitants of Epirus (the Epirots) as being of real Hellenic race. It was only in later times that Macedonia, north of Thessalia, was considered a part of Hellas.
Central Greece had nine separate states, the most important of which was Attica, the peninsula jutting out southeastward, and renowned forever through its possession of the city of Athens.
Southern Greece, or the Peloponnesus (meaning “island of Pelops,” a mythical king), contained seven principal states, Laconia being the most important, and sharing the fame of Attica because it contained the city of Sparta.
The Famous Grecian Islands
The largest of the islands on the coast was Eubœa, about ninety miles in length, noted for good pasturage and corn. On the west coast was the group known to modern geography as the “Ionian Isles.” To the south lay Crete, one hundred and sixty miles in length, noted for the skill of its archers. In the Ægean Sea were the two groups called the Cyclades and Sporades. The Cyclades (or “circling isles,” the chief being Delos) are clearly shown upon the map. The Sporades (or “scattered isles”) lay to the east off the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Northward in the Ægean, in mid-sea, or on the Asiatic coast, were Lemnos, Scyros, Lesbos, Chios and Samos.
The Effect of Greek Colonization
The establishment of so many colonies in countries pre-eminently favored by nature in productions and climate, and so situated as to prompt the inhabitants to navigation and commerce, gave a great impulse to the civilization of the Hellenic race, and may be regarded as the main cause of its rapid progress.
History of the Greeks
I. The Pre-Historic Period
I. THE PRE-HISTORIC PERIOD.—This period includes the mythical accounts of the origin of the Greeks, the Trojan war, the more certain story of the excavations, and the establishment of the peculiar Greek institutions under the so-called rule of the half-mythical kings. Down to the time of the Trojan war very considerable progress had already been made, and civilization among the Greeks had received its first important impulse. The oracles at Delphi and Dodona had been established; the mysteries at Eleusis; the four sacred games; the court of Areopagus at Athens; and the celebrated Amphictyonic Council. The arts and sciences likewise received considerable attention. Letters had been introduced by Cadmus. The accounts of the siege of Thebes and that of Troy show that progress had been made in the various arts pertaining to war, but the history of the period as a whole exhibits that singular mixture of barbarism with cultivation, of savage customs with chivalrous adventures, which marks what is called an heroic age.
According to the Greek historians, the earliest inhabitants of Hellas were the so-called Pelasgians, but the information afforded by the ancients on the subject is scant and vague.[3] For our knowledge of the inhabitants and civilization of prehistoric Greece, we are therefore dependent on the more certain witness of the excavations, which, in recent years, have yielded very important results.
[3] Many of the early myths and legends, as narrated by Homer and preserved by Hesiod (in his Theogony), were gathered into somewhat systematic form to explain the genealogy of the Hellenic tribes, their subdivisions, and the origin of the Greek cities. The foundation of Athens, for example, was ascribed to Cecrops, regarded by some as a native of Egypt; he is said to have introduced into Attica the arts of civilized life, and from him the Acropolis was first called Cecropia. Argos was believed to have been founded by another Egyptian, named Danaus, who fled to Greece with his fifty daughters, and who was elected by the people as their king, and from whom some of the Greeks received the name of Danaï. Thebes, in Bœotia, looked to Cadmus, a Phœnician, as its founder; he was believed to have brought into Greece the art of writing, and from him the citadel of Thebes received the name of Cadmea. The Peloponnesus was said to have been settled by, and to have received its name from Pelops, a man from Phrygia in Asia; he became the king of Mycenæ, and was the father of Atreus, and the grandfather of Agamemnon and Menelaus; chieftains in the Trojan war. Such traditions as these show that the early Greeks had some notion of their dependence upon the Eastern nations.
Legends of Early National Exploits.—The legends are not only grouped about particular places and individual heroes, but have for their subjects national deeds, marked by courage and fortitude.
One of these stories describes the so-called “Argonautic expedition”—an adventurous voyage of fifty heroes, who set sail from Bœotia under the leadership of Jason, in the ship Argo, for the purpose of recovering a “golden fleece” which had been carried away to Colchis, a far distant land on the shores of the Euxine.
Another legend—the “Seven against Thebes”—narrates the tragic story of Œdipus, who unwittingly slew his own father and married his own mother and was banished from Thebes for his crimes, after having been made king; and whose sons quarreled for the vacant throne, one of them with the aid of other chieftains making war upon his native city.
But the most famous of the legendary stories of Greece was that which described the Trojan war—the military expedition of the Greeks to Troy, in order to rescue Helen, who was the beautiful wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta, and who had been stolen away by Paris, son of the Trojan king. The details of this story—the wrath of Achilles, the battles of the Greeks and the Trojans, the destruction of Troy, and the return of the Grecian heroes—are the subject of the great epic poems ascribed to Homer. All these legends, whether derived from a foreign source, or produced upon native soil, received the impress of the Greek mind. They form one of the legacies from the prehistoric age, and reveal some of the features of the early Greek character.
THE MINOAN AGE
Excavations at Knossus in Crete have revealed to us the civilization of the Minoan age of Greek history. This civilization is the oldest of which we have knowledge. It flourished about 2000 B. C. Prehistoric Knossus was a city of massive structure in which the fine arts flourished and had reached a remarkably high stage of development (specimens of Minoan pottery are of exceptional beauty and grace) and in which the art of writing was known. This last fact is of great importance, as until recently the art of writing in Greece was supposed to be post-Homeric.
THE MYCENEAN AGE
The next age of Greek civilization on which archæology has concentrated its searchlight is the Mycenean (fl. c. 1600-1100 B. C.). The Mycenean civilization is revealed to us by excavations in the sites of Mycenæ, Tiryns, etc. The characteristic features of these splendid cities is their massiveness and solidity. Pausanias relates that tradition attributed the building of Tiryns and Mycenæ to the Cyclopes (hence the expression “Cyclopean walls” used to denote structures of this massive type), thus testifying to the gigantic edifices of prehistoric times as contrasted with the masonry of a later date. The jewelry, pottery and weapons excavated from these ancient cities are of rare beauty. Iron was practically unknown in the Mycenean age. Its use is more extensive in the Homeric age, and therefore Homeric civilization is probably post-Mycenean.
THE SO-CALLED DORIAN
INVASION
But vast invasions swept over Greece, and a ruder civilization displaced this early culture. In the latter half of the eleventh century B. C., the Dorians ravaged Greece. They were a coarser, hardier stock than the peoples they conquered, but they brought to Greece a new vigor and a new robustness, which when toned and harmonized by the finer influences of the land, produced that civilization which is the world’s marvel for all time.
II. Period of Migrations and Formation of States
II. PERIOD OF MIGRATIONS AND FORMATION OF STATES.—The first governments of Greece were small monarchies, and they continued such until after the Trojan war. Soon after this we find the country involved in fatal civil wars, in which the people, under a number of petty chieftains hostile to each other, suffered extremely from calamity and oppression. These evils led to change in the form of government, and the substitution of the popular instead of the regal system. The same evils also probably contributed to the spirit of emigration, which so strikingly marks the period. During this period of colonization we notice the origin of the four principal dialects in the Greek language. In this period two of the Grecian states are chiefly conspicuous—Athens and Sparta, whose special effort was to provide themselves with a suitable political constitution, civil code and government.
These great migrations which swept over Greece created a congestion of the population which was eventually relieved by widespread colonization on the west coast of Asia Minor and in the neighboring islands of the Ægean Sea. These colonies were settled by the three races, the Æolians, Ionians and Dorians. The Æolians colonized the northwestern part, the coast of Mysia, and the island of Lesbos. The Ionians settled in the central part, on the coast of Lydia, and in the islands of Chios and Samos. The Dorians occupied the southwest corner of Asia Minor (the coast of Caria) and the adjacent islands. Of all these by far the most important, wealthy and powerful were the Ionians.
OTHER GREEK
COLONIES
The Greeks gradually spread themselves in settlements along the northern coast of the Ægean Sea and the Propontis, in Macedonia and Thrace, so that the whole Ægean became encircled with Greek colonies, and its islands were covered with them. The tide of emigration flowed westward also in great strength.
The coasts of Southern Italy were occupied by Dorians, Achæans, and Ionians in settlements which grew to such importance that the region took the name of Magna Græcia, or Greater Greece. The cities of Tarentum, Croton and Sybaris became famous for their wealth, the latter giving rise to the proverbial name for a luxurious liver.
On the southwestern coast of Italy was Rhegium, and farther north came Pæstum, Cumæ, and Neapolis (Naples). In Sicily flourishing Greek settlements abounded, the chief being Messana, Syracuse, Leontini, Catana, Gela, Selinus, and Agrigentum. Farther west still a colony from Phocæa, in Asia Minor, founded the city of Massilia, now Marseilles. On the southern coast of the Mediterranean, westwards from Egypt, the Greek colony of Cyrene became the chief town of a flourishing district called Cyrenaica.
The establishment of the later of these colonies brings us down well within authentic historical times, and the whole period of Greek colonization extends from about 1100 to 600 B. C., the colonies being, in many cases, offshoots of colonies previously established and risen to wealth and over-population. In all these movements and settlements, the enterprise and ability of the Greeks made them great commercial rivals to, and successors of, the Phœnicians.
CONTRAST BETWEEN IONIANS
AND DORIANS
The two leading races of Greece were the Ionians and the Dorians, and they stand to each other in a strong contrast of character which largely affected Greek political history. These prominent points of difference run through the whole historical career of the two chief states, Ionian Athens and Dorian Sparta, and were the cause of the strong antagonism that we find so often in action between them. The Dorian was distinguished by severity, bluntness, simplicity of life, conservative ways, and oligarchic tendency in politics; the Ionian was equally marked by vivacity, excitability, refinement, love of change, taste in the arts, commercial enterprise, and attachment to democracy. The Dorian, in the best times of his history, reverenced age, ancient usage, and religion; the Ionian, at all periods of his career, loved enjoyment, novelty and enterprise.
THE EARLY CAREER
OF SPARTA
The Spartans, or the people of Lacedæmon, properly the southern half of Laconia, first became the dominant nation in that part of Greece. Of Spartan doings and fortunes we know almost nothing until the time of the great Legislator Lycurgus, who is said to have organized, about 850 B. C. the famous Spartan constitution. The probable account is that he altered and reformed existing usages, and that the reverence of after ages ascribed to him the promulgation and establishment of a full grown, brand new set of institutions, which must have been, in many points, of gradual growth.
THE FAMOUS LAWS OF
LYCURGUS
The government was that of an aristocratic republic under the form of a monarchy. There were two kings, whose powers were nominally those of high priests, judges, and leaders in war, but in the two latter capacities their functions were in time greatly restricted and almost superseded. The chief legislative and judicial and much of the executive, power lay with the Senate, or council of twenty-eight elders. No citizen could be a member of this body until he had become sixty years of age, and the office was held for life. The popular assembly, open to every Spartan citizen over thirty years old, really handed over its powers to a board of five commissioners, officers called Ephors (“overseers”), whom it annually elected. These high officials had a secret and irresponsible control over the executive power, both at home and abroad; and in military enterprises, where the kings were the nominal leaders, the two Ephors who accompanied the army exercised much influence. The whole body of Spartan citizens was an aristocracy, and among themselves entire political equality existed.
TRAINING OF THE SPARTAN
CITIZEN
The object of the peculiar training of Spartan citizens, ascribed to Lycurgus, was the maintenance of Spartan supremacy over the subject population. It was necessary for safety that the small body of men, surrounded by enemies in their own land, should be ready at all points, [375] against every attempt at opposition or rebellion, and against the outside world as well.
As every man had to be a soldier, and the citizen existed only for the state, the state took the Spartan citizen in hand at his birth, and regulated him almost from the cradle to the grave. From the age of seven the body was cultivated, and every means was used to give the instrument the finest temper, in a physical sense, and to bring it to the sharpest edge. Such training lasted till the sixtieth year of life, when the Spartan became qualified by age, if not by wisdom, for election to the Senate, or “assembly of old men,” above described.
The girls were trained in athletic exercises like those of the youths, and everything was done to produce vigorous and stern women, prepared to gladly see their sons die on the battle-field for Sparta.
The result of all was that the Spartans became a race of well-drilled and intrepid warriors, but a state distinguished in the history of Greece for the display of a domineering arrogance, a rapacity, and a corruption, which contributed not a little to its downfall. However, the Spartan institutions were very successful in giving the state security at home and success in war abroad. Sparta was free from domestic revolutions, and the spectacle it presented of constancy to fixed maxims of policy gave it a great ascendancy over the Hellenic mind.
EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS.
THESEUS
The Athenians became by far the most famous, in political ascendancy and in artistic and intellectual eminence, of all the Ionian race, to which they belonged.
At first they were under kings like the other Hellenes; but about 1050 B. C. the title of king became changed to that of archon (“ruler”), though the office was still held for life, and continued in the same family. The archon was responsible for his acts to a general assembly of the people, in which, however, the nobles had the chief influence; and down to long after the time of the first Olympiad, Athens may be regarded as an oligarchic republic, in which the supreme office, the archonship, was confined to one family; and members of the chief court of justice, called Areopagus (lit. “hill of Ares,” the place of its assembly at Athens), were elected only from the noble houses.
IMPORTANCE OF THE OLYMPIADS
IN GREEK CHRONOLOGY
We come, in the year 776 B. C., to the era when the chronology of Grecian history becomes consecutive, and dates are reckoned by Olympiads. These were the periods of four years each which elapsed between the successive celebrations of the Olympic games in honor of the Olympian Zeus (the chief Greek deity) in the plain of Olympia in Elis (in Peloponnesus). The First Olympiad began at midsummer, 776 B. C., the Second Olympiad at midsummer, 772 B. C., and so on—any event being dated by a particular year of a specified Olympiad.
THE UNPOPULAR LAWS
OF DRACO
Down to the year 621 B. C. the people were still without a substantial share in the government, and popular discontent demanded a written code. Consequently Draco, one of the archons, drew up laws, the severity of which has become proverbial, and which were intended, by their rigor, to check the growth of the democracy that was clamoring for a change. The penalty of death was assigned to all offenses, great or small, to enable the nobles to get rid of dangerous leaders of the people; but such a system did not long continue.
Anarchy prevailed in Attica, owing to the various factions of the oligarchs, the democrats, and a middle party (the moderates).
SOLON REFORMS
THE LAWS
A wise reformer was found in Solon, chosen as an archon in 594 B. C., and invested by his fellow citizens, for the special purpose of restoring tranquility, with unlimited power to change the laws. He was already distinguished as a poet and as a general in the war of Athens against her neighbor, Megara. His great object was to remove the oppressive and excessive power of the aristocracy without introducing pure democracy.
Solon began with the abolition of Draco’s code, but retained the penalty of death for murder. His celebrated disburdening ordinance for the relief of debtors won the complete confidence of the people. This had the immediate effect of mitigating the oppressions caused by the old laws of debt: in future neither the person, family, nor estate of the debtor might be pledged in security for the loan. A further democratic character was given at the outset to the constitution of Solon by the division of the people into four classes, according to property, which was now substituted for birth as a qualification for the higher offices of state.
A council of state, or senate, called the Boule (council) was chosen annually by lot, to prepare measures for submission to the popular assembly, or Ecclesia, in which the citizens of the fourth or lowest class (who could hold no state office) had the right of voting. The Ecclesia included all classes of the citizens, who there legislated, elected the magistrates, decided on peace or war, and other matters sent down to it from the Boule.
For the courts of justice below the Areopagus, a body of six thousand jurors was to be annually selected by lot from the popular assembly, and the causes were tried by divisions of the whole body.
Solon was also the author of many laws which regulated private life and rights, public amusements, slavery, marriage, and other matters. Among his miscellaneous enactments may be noted that which legalized the export of olive oil only, that which obliged the father to teach his son a trade, that which penalized a citizen for remaining neutral on the outbreak of civil strife, and that which empowered a man who died childless to dispose of his property by will.
SOLON’S CONSTITUTION OVERTHROWN
BY PISISTRATUS
During Solon’s absence on a tour of travel a renewal of factions followed and their struggles ended in the seizure of power by Pisistratus, in the year 560 B. C. He was one of the class [376] of rulers called “Tyrants” by the Greeks, who held power in Greek states during this and the preceding century.
The Greek Tyrants were aristocratic adventurers who took advantage of their position and of special circumstances to make themselves masters of the government in their respective states.
It is to Pisistratus, however, that the world owes the preservation in their present form of the poems of Homer, which he caused to be collected and edited in a complete written text. He was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, as joint rulers; but the severity of Hippias (after the murder of Hipparchus) caused his expulsion by the people, and the end of the despotism at Athens, 510 B. C.
ATHENS A PURE DEMOCRACY
UNDER CLEISTHENES
The government at Athens now (507 B. C.) became a pure democracy, under the auspices of Cleisthenes. At the head of the popular party he effected important changes in the constitution. The public offices of power were thrown open to all the citizens, the whole people was divided into ten tribes or wards, and the senate (Boule) now consisted of five hundred members, fifty from each ward or tribe.
Political Ostracism.—Cleisthenes introduced the ostracism (from ostrakon, the oyster-shell, on which the vote was written), by which the citizens could banish for ten years, by a majority of votes, any citizen whose removal from the state might seem desirable. This device was intended to secure a fair trial for the new constitution by checking the power of individuals who might be dangerous to popular liberties, and by putting a stop to quarrels between rival politicians.
Athens had at last secured a government of the thoroughly democratic type, and from this time began to assume a new and ever-growing importance in Greece, and was soon regarded as the chief of the Ionian States. The people, through the Ecclesia, became thoroughly versed in public affairs, and practically, as well as legally, supreme in the state.
GROWTH AND IMPORTANCE
OF SPARTA
As Athens had Draco and Solon as its great lawgivers, so Sparta found in Lycurgus her lawgiver. His institutions gave a permanent cast to the Spartan character, and were not abolished until the last ages of Greece. The system of Lycurgus, meanwhile, had made Sparta a thoroughly military state, and in two great wars (743-723 and 685-668 B. C.) it conquered its neighbors on the west, the Messenians, reducing them to the condition of the Helots, and appropriating their land. By this and by successful war against its northern neighbors, the people of Argos, Sparta acquired the supremacy and became the leading Dorian state of Peloponnesus and of the Grecian world. These two great states of Greece, Athens and Sparta, now were (about 500 B. C.) with the rest of Greece to encounter Persia; and Europe, with united Greece for her champion and representative, was to triumph over the older civilization and prowess of Asia.
III. Period of Persian Wars and Military Glory
III. PERIOD OF PERSIAN WARS AND MILITARY GLORY.—To this age the Greeks ever after looked back with pride, and from its history orators of every nation have drawn their favorite examples of valor and patriotism. The Persian invasion called forth the highest energies of the people, and gave an astonishing impulse to Grecian mind. The design of subjugating Greece originated in the ambition of Darius the Persian king, the second in succession from Cyrus the Great. He found a pretext and occasion for the attempt in a revolt of his Greek subjects in Asia Minor, in which Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was pillaged and burned. The war was carried on by three successive kings, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes, but on neither of them did it confer any glory; while the battles of Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, Mycale, and Platæa, secured immortal honor to the Greeks. A succession of splendid names adorns the history of Athens during this period. Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles, acted distinguished parts in the brilliant scene. Sparta also justly gloried in the self-sacrifice of Leonidas and his three hundred brave companions. The period of the Persian war was the age of the highest elevation of the national character of the Greeks. Before it, there existed little union comparatively between the different states, and it was not till Athens had alone and successfully resisted the strength of Persia at the battle of Marathon, that other states were aroused to effort against the common enemy. In the confederation which followed, Sparta was the nominal head, but the talents, which actually controlled the public affairs, were found in the statesmen of Athens. To Athens, therefore, the supremacy was necessarily transferred, and before the close of the war this state stood, as it were, the mistress of Greece.
Persia at this time was the chief power of the world, and, by the conquest of the Lydian kingdom, had become master of the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. In 500 B. C. a general revolt of these Ionian cities took place, and the Athenians sent a force of ships and soldiers to help their kinsmen. The united Ionians and Athenians took and burned Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in 499, but, after a six years’ struggle, the power of Darius conquered the whole seaboard of Ionia, and left Persia free to punish the Athenians for interfering between the great Eastern empire and her revolted subjects. In 490 B. C. a great Persian force, under Datis and Artaphernes, was sent across the Ægean, and the fleet landed the Persian army near Marathon, on the east coast of Attica, with a view to an advance upon Athens.
THE FAMOUS BATTLE
OF MARATHON
The first and most important battle of the Persian War, and one of the most momentous in history, was that of Marathon. At the plain of Marathon, near Athens, a small Athenian force of about ten thousand men (with the help of six hundred men from Platæa), under the famous general Miltiades, routed a Persian army of perhaps one hundred and ten thousand, in 490 B. C. This memorable battle, resulting as it did in the defeat of the power which had conquered the greater part of the known world, first taught the Greeks their own strength and gave Athens a position in Greece which it had never yet held. The leading men in Athens at this time were Themistocles and Aristides.
The death of Darius, in 485 B. C., prevented him from renewing the Persian attack on Greek [377] liberties, and the task was bequeathed to his son Xerxes. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes took place ten years after the battle of Marathon with an immense force by sea and land (two million five hundred thousand men according to Herodotus).
STAND OF THE THREE HUNDRED
AT THERMOPYLAE
Then was fought the memorable battle of Thermopylæ (gates of the hot springs, from hot springs situated there), in which the Spartan Leonidas with a mere handful of men held the whole Persian army at bay in the narrow pass of Thermopylæ; but, a way around the pass being shown the Persians by a treacherous Greek, they were able to attack Leonidas in the rear. Part of the Greek forces retreated on learning of this movement of the Persians, but Leonidas with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians refused to retreat, and, advancing against the overwhelming numbers of the enemy, sold their lives as dearly as possible.
This little remnant of the Greeks, armed only with a few swords, stood a butt for the arrows, the javelins, and the stones of the enemy, which at length overwhelmed them. Where they fell they were afterwards buried.
GREEK VICTORY AT
SALAMIS
Xerxes, having taken the pass of Thermopylæ, moved towards Athens, when the inhabitants had fled, taking refuge in their ships, according to their interpretation of a decree of the oracle that they must seek safety in their “wooden walls.” The Persians burned Athens, and the fate of Greece was then decided by the naval battle of Salamis (480 B. C.), which resulted in a complete victory for the Greeks.
The battle of Salamis, with the battles of Platæa and Mycale, in the next year, decided the war, and the Persians were driven out of Greece forever, and finally, after several years, were driven wholly out of Europe. The arbitrary rule of an irresponsible despot was overcome by the spirit of voluntary obedience to law, the freedom of Greece was maintained, and the future civilization of Europe was secured.
IV. Age of Pericles and Greek Luxury
IV. AGE OF PERICLES AND GREEK LUXURY.—This period includes the portion from the close of the Persian war to the Supremacy of Philip, B. C. 337. At the beginning of this period the general affairs of Greece were in a highly prosperous condition, and Athens was unrivaled in wealth and magnificence under the influence of Pericles. But a spirit of luxurious refinement soon took the place of the disinterested patriotism of the preceding age, and the manners of all classes became signally marked by corruption and licentiousness. The events of most prominent interest were: (1) the Peloponnesian war between Athens and Sparta; (2) the accusation of Socrates, disgraceful to the city and all concerned; (3) the expedition of Cyrus the Younger which involved the Greeks in another war with Persia; (4) the successive downfall of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and the rise of Macedon.
The half-century following the battle of Salamis (480-430 B. C.) forms the most brilliant period of Athenian history, and one of the greatest eras in the history of the world.
ATHENS UNDER
CIMON
After the fall of the great Athenian Themistocles,—who was banished by ostracism in 469 B. C., at the instance of the aristocratic party,—the rich, able, and popular Cimon, son of Miltiades, the victor at Marathon, was at the head of affairs. In 466 B. C. he gained a great victory, by land and sea, over the Persians, at the mouth of the river Eurymedon, in Pamphylia, on the south coast of Asia Minor. A part of the value of the plunder taken was devoted to the adornment of the city of Athens, which Themistocles had rebuilt and fortified. Cimon spent large sums of his own on the city, and under his direction the defenses of the famous Acropolis (the citadel of Athens) were completed. In 461 B. C. the democratic party at Athens banished Cimon by the ostracism, and the illustrious Pericles, for some years his rival, came to the front.
PERICLES AND HIS GREAT
ACHIEVEMENTS
Pericles began to be distinguished in Athenian politics about 470 B. C. as leader of the democratic party.
In the constitution of Athens a wide scope was given for the development of great political characters, because the system not only allowed the display of a man’s powers, but summoned every man to use those powers for the general welfare. At the same time, no member of the community could obtain influence unless he had the means of satisfying the intellect, taste, and judgment, as well as the excitable and volatile feelings, of a highly cultivated people.
Such a man was Pericles. From the force of his personality, and his majestic oratory, he was called “the Zeus of the human Pantheon of Athens.” For over thirty years (461 to 429 B. C.) this great man swayed the policy of Athens. Pericles was at once a statesman, a general, a man of learning, and a patron of the fine arts. He recovered for Athens (445 B. C.) the revolted island of Eubœa; he was the friend of the famous sculptor Phidias, and in his age the great dramatic compositions of Sophocles were presented on the Athenian stage. To him Athens owed the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, left unfinished at his death, the Propylæa, the Odeum, and numberless other public and sacred edifices; he also liberally encouraged music and the drama; and during his rule industry and commerce were in so flourishing a condition that prosperity was universal in Attica.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
The supremacy over the other states of Greece which Athens attained after the Persian War, and maintained during the Age of Pericles, with her constant prosperity and unparalleled growth, raised up jealousy and hatred against her, and during that brilliant period were sown the seeds of a civil warfare which was destined to destroy the power and splendor of Greece. After the death of Pericles, Athens had trusted to unworthy demagogues, of whom the most notorious was Cleon.
The other leading state of Greece was Sparta, and there was a general gravitation in the different cities to these two centers of Grecian life, those in which democratic sentiments prevailed looking to Athens for leadership, the rest (those in which the aristocratic or oligarchical element prevailed) regarding themselves as the natural allies of Sparta. The conflict between these two opposing principles, democracy and oligarchy, broke out in 431 B. C., and is known as the Peloponnesian War. Athens was the stronger by sea, Sparta by land.
Pinakotheka, or Museum of Pictures. Propylæa, or Porch. Nike Apteros. Parthenon, or Temple of Athena Parthenos.
THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS AS IT APPEARED DURING THE AGE OF PERICLES
Pericles, with the sculptor Phidias, covered the Acropolis with a mass of beautiful buildings, making it the glory of Athens, if not of the whole ancient world. No finer structure has ever been known than the Parthenon. It is to be seen on the highest point of the Acropolis, on the right hand of the picture.
CHIEF LEADERS IN
THE WAR
The chief generals on the Athenian side were Demosthenes (not the great orator of a later time) and Nicias; the Spartan chief was the famous Brasidas, who had much success against the Athenian colonies on the coast of Thrace. The brilliant Alcibiades began to display his powers as a statesman at Athens. In 422 B. C. a battle near Amphipolis, on the coast of Thrace, ended in the defeat of the Athenians, and the deaths of Cleon and of Brasidas, the latter an irreparable loss to Sparta. In the place of Cleon, the mild Nicias became one of the leading statesmen at Athens, and his efforts resulted in a truce between Athens and Sparta, in 421 B. C.
SECOND PERIOD
OF WAR
Questions as to keeping the truce, and the mutual distrust and jealousy between these states increased their antagonism. Athens, now mistress of the sea, had the ambition, under the incitement of the great Alcibiades, to acquire complete sway in the Mediterranean.
Perhaps the most important and decisive event of the war was an attack made (415 B. C.) by Athens upon Syracuse in Sicily, when the Spartans helped the Syracusans, and which resulted in the total failure of the expedition (413 B. C.), and great damage to the power of Athens. The Athenians had sent a more powerful armament against Sicily than had ever before been turned out in the history of Greece. The consequences of the defeat of this force were felt all over Greece, the enemies of Athens were stimulated to much greater activity, and thought that the fate of that city was sealed.
THIRD AND LAST
PERIOD
Henceforward Athens could only fight for her life as an independent state. In 412 B. C. many of her subject states revolted, including the wealthy Miletus, on the coast of Asia Minor, and the islands of Chios and Rhodes. Sparta formed an alliance with Persia, and used Eastern gold to furnish ships and mercenaries against Athens. Alcibiades, having quarreled with the Spartans, rejoined his country, and conducted her war, in some of its closing years, with brilliant success. In 411 B. C. a revolution took place in Athens which really swept away the democratic constitution of Solon, and substituted an oligarchical faction in power.
DOWNFALL OF
ATHENS
The war was chiefly carried on in Asia Minor, where Alcibiades and others defeated the Spartans and their allies by land and sea; but in 405 B. C. the tide of success for Athens turned again, and the Athenian fleet was captured by the Spartan admiral Lysander, at Ægospotami, in the Hellespont, the Athenian galleys being seized, by surprise, on the beach. In 404 B. C. Athens, blockaded by the Spartans both by land and sea, surrendered to Lysander after a four months’ siege, and the war ended in the downfall of Athens, and the formal abolition of the great Athenian democracy.
RESULT OF PELOPONNESIAN
WAR
Henceforward Athens was a subordinate power. Sparta was, for a time, supreme; a Spartan garrison held the Acropolis; Alcibiades, who might have restored Athens, was assassinated in Persia through the influence of Lysander; and though, after a brief period of rule by the Thirty Tyrants, set up by Lysander, a counter-revolution restored, in part, the constitution of Solon, the political greatness of Athens had departed.
Even the disastrous Peloponnesian War, which lasted twenty-seven years, did not destroy the impulse given to the Greek intellect during the preceding age, and literature, oratory, and philosophy flourished.
SOCRATES AND THE SHAME
OF ATHENS
Socrates, the great and good Athenian philosopher, lived (469-399 B. C.) during a period covering much of the age of Pericles, and the whole time of the Peloponnesian war. Though opposed to the oligarchical tyranny of the Four Hundred and the Thirty, Socrates was even more adverse to the unmixed democracy, with its election by lot and its payment for political services. Accordingly, on the triumph of the demagogues, he was in 399 B. C. accused of denying the gods and corrupting the young, and being convicted by an overwhelming majority of the jury, was sentenced to death. He passed thirty days before execution in the noble discourses on the immortality of the soul, which are recorded in Plato’s Phædo, drank the cup of hemlock, and died.
SUPREMACY OF SPARTA AND THEBES
Sparta was now at the head of Greece, and for thirty-four years (405-371 B. C.) wielded power over the Greek states. Her sway was harsh and despotic.
RETREAT OF THE TEN
THOUSAND
After the Peloponnesian War, some of the Greeks were hired by Cyrus, the Persian prince, to help him in an attempt to wrest the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes. The attempt failed, and the memorable retreat (400 B. C.) homeward of the Greeks is famous as the “Retreat of the Ten Thousand.”
THE RISE OF MACEDONIA
Macedonia, north of Thessaly, was not considered by the Hellenes as a part of Hellas, and had no political importance till now. Yet the peoples had elements in common, being Thracians and Illyrians, with a large mixture of Dorian settlers among them.
KING PHILIP OF
MACEDON
The line of Macedonian kings being of Hellenic descent, Greek civilization had been cultivated by some of them.
Philip of Macedon was a prince of great ability, educated at Thebes during the Theban [380] supremacy, and trained in war by Epaminondas, on whose tactics he founded his famous invention, the “Macedonian phalanx.” His fame has been overshadowed by that of his illustrious son, but he made Macedonia the leading power in Greece, and gave Alexander the basis for his great achievements. He was a man of unscrupulous character, determined will, prompt action, and patient purpose; and when he became King of Macedon, in 359 B. C., he designed making his country supreme in the Hellenic world, as Athens, Sparta and Thebes had successively been.
THE FIRST SACRED
WAR
From 356 B. C. to 346 B. C. the Phocian or First Sacred War was waged between the Thebans and the Phocians, with allies on each side, the origin of the war being a dispute about a bit of ground devoted for religious reasons to lying perpetually fallow. Philip of Macedon was called in to settle matters, and thereby his ambition secured a firm foothold in Greece. He possessed himself by force of the Athenian cities Amphipolis, Pydna, Potidæa, and Olynthus, being vigorously opposed throughout by the great Athenian orator and patriot Demosthenes, who strove to rouse his countrymen against Philip’s dangerous encroachments, in the famous speeches known as the Olynthiac and Philippic orations.
THE GREATEST PERIOD
OF GREEK ORATORY
This was the most brilliant time of Greek oratory, which reached its perfection in the contest between Æschines, who advocated the cause of Macedonia, and Demosthenes, who opposed the designs of Philip. It was also a period of great mental activity in the region of scientific inquiry and speculative thought. Plato, whose birth fell in the preceding century, founded the Academic school, which took its name from the groves of Academus in the vicinity of Athens, where the philosopher was accustomed to lecture. Aristotle (called the Stagyrite, from his birthplace, Stagyra, in Macedonia) was the instructor of Alexander the Great, and founded, at the Lyceum in Athens, what is known as the Peripatetic school, from his habit of walking about while conversing with his disciples.
After the battle of Chæronea, Philip, having made Greece subject to his power, planned to unite all the forces of that country in an aggressive war against the great power of Persia, but was murdered in 336 B. C.
V. Macedonian Period and Empire of Alexander the Great
V. MACEDONIAN PERIOD AND EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT.—This period extends from the supremacy of Philip, gained by the battle of Chæronea, to the capture of Corinth, 146 B. C. By the disastrous defeat at Chæronea the genuine fire of the Grecian spirit was extinguished, and the subsequent history exhibits little else than the steps by which the country was reduced to a dependent province. Alexander, who succeeded his father Philip, as king of Macedon, and autocrat of Greece, cast an imperishable glory on the first years of this period by his extensive conquests reaching from the Hellespont to the Granicus, to Issus, to Tyre, to the Nile, to the desert of Libya, to the Euphrates, and the Indus. For twenty years after Alexander’s death the vast empire he had formed was agitated by the quarrels among his generals. By the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia, B. C. 301, these contests were terminated, and the empire was then divided into practically four kingdoms. To the first of these the Grecian states belonged. Patriotic individuals sought to arouse their countrymen to cast off the Macedonian yoke; but jealousy between the states and the universal corruption of morals rendered their exertions fruitless. All that is really memorable in the affairs of Greeks at this later time, is found in the history of the Achæan league.
After the assassination of Philip, the task of subjugating the Persian Empire was left for his son Alexander, who subsequently proved himself one of the greatest commanders of any age. Alexander’s exploits were all performed in the short rule of thirteen years (336-323 B. C.). Coming to the throne of Macedon at the age of twenty, he put down rebellion in his own kingdom, marched into Greece and overawed Thebes, which had been intriguing against him, and in a congress of Greek states at Corinth he was appointed to command the great expedition against Persia.
THE DESTRUCTION OF
THEBES
In 335 B. C. he made a successful expedition against the Thracians, Getæ, and Illyrians, and on his return found Thebes in revolt. He took Thebes by storm; the inhabitants were all slain or sold as slaves; and all the buildings, except the temples and the house which had been that of Pindar the poet, were razed. This capital had defied Alexander, and ceased to exist.
ALEXANDER’S INVASION
OF PERSIA
In 334 B. C. Alexander crossed the Hellespont with an army of thirty thousand foot-soldiers and five thousand cavalry, and first met the foe at the river Granicus, in Mysia. The result was a Persian defeat, which cleared the way through Asia Minor, and brought the Macedonians to the borders of Syria. The second, a great battle (333 B. C.), was fought at Issus, in the southeast of Cilicia. There Alexander met the King of Persia himself, Darius III., and gained a complete victory over a vastly superior force. Darius fled, leaving his wife and mother prisoners in the conqueror’s hands, by whom they were treated with the greatest courtesy and kindness.
SYRIAN AND EGYPTIAN
CAMPAIGNS
The Persian resistance thus disposed of for a time, Alexander turned southward, left behind him nothing unsubdued before his advance into the interior of Asia, and made an easy conquest of the cities of Phœnicia, except Tyre, which resisted obstinately for seven months, and was taken in the summer of 332 B. C. After taking Gaza, Alexander marched into Egypt, which received him gladly, from hatred of her Persian rulers. Early in 331 B. C. the Macedonian king handed down his name to future ages by founding, at the mouth of the western branch of the Nile, the city of Alexandria, [381] which was destined to become so famous for commerce, wealth, literature, and learning.
ALEXANDER’S SECOND INVASION
OF PERSIA
In the spring of 331 B. C. Alexander set out again for Persia, where Darius had been gathering an immense force with which to make a last struggle for the empire of the world. After traversing Phœnicia and Northern Syria, Alexander crossed the Euphrates and Tigris, and came out on the plain near the little village of Gaugamela, to the southeast of the ruins of Nineveh. Then took place the great and decisive battle of Arbela, with the Persians, October, 331 B. C.
After receiving the surrender of the other two capitals, Susa and Persepolis, Alexander spent the year 330 B. C. in conquering the northern provinces of the Persian Empire, between the Caspian Sea and the Indus. In 329 B. C. he marched into Bactria, over the mountains now called the Hindu Kush, caught and slew the traitor Bessus, who murdered Darius, and advanced even beyond the river Jaxartes. In 328 he was engaged in the conquest of Sogdiana, between the Oxus and Jaxartes, the country of which the capital was Maracanda, the modern Samarcand.
HIS INVASION OF
NORTHERN INDIA
In the spring of 327 B. C., Alexander marched through what is now Afghanistan, crossed the Indus, and defeated an Indian king, Porus, on the banks of the Hydaspes (the Jhelum). On his way to the Indus he stormed the capital of an Indian tribe, now Mooltan, and was himself severely wounded. In 326 he sailed in a fleet, built on the spot, down the Indus, into the ocean; despatched a part of the army on board the ships, under his admiral Nearchus, by sea coastwise into the Persian Gulf, and marched himself with the rest through what is now Beluchistan, reaching Susa early in 325 B. C.
ALEXANDER SETTLES IN
BABYLON
During the rest which the troops took here, Alexander, many of his generals, and many thousands of his soldiers, married Asiatic women, and, with the same view of bringing Europe and Asia into one form of civilization, great numbers of Asiatics were enrolled in the victorious army, and trained in the European fashion. For the improvement of commerce, the Tigris and Euphrates were cleared of obstructions. From Susa, in the autumn of 325 B. C., Alexander visited Ecbatana (in Media) and thence proceeded to Babylon, which he entered again in the spring of 324 B. C.
It was the intention of Alexander to make Babylon the capital of the empire, as the best medium of communication between east and west; and he is said to have meditated the conquests of Arabia, Carthage, Italy, and of Western Europe. For commercial and agricultural purposes he intended to explore the Caspian Sea, and to improve the irrigation of the Babylonian plain. All his plans were made vain by his sudden death by fever at Babylon, in the summer of 323 B. C.
ESTABLISHMENT OF VARIOUS
GREEK KINGDOMS
Alexander the Great left no heir to his immense empire. In Bactria (the modern Bokhara), Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, Babylonia, and above all in Egypt, Greek kingdoms were established as centers of science, art, and learning, from which Greek light radiated into the world around them. In Europe, besides that of Macedon, a kingdom of Thrace, stretching beyond the Danube, another in Illyria, and another in Epirus, were under the rule of Greek princes. To Alexander the world owed, among other great cities built by him or his successors, Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria.
LASTING INFLUENCE OF GREEK
THOUGHT IN ASIA
The Greek language became the tongue of all government and literature throughout many countries where the people were not Greek by birth. Throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt the Hellenic character that was thus imparted remained in full vigor down to the time of the Mohammedan conquests; and the early growth and progress of Christianity were aided by that diffusion of the Greek language and civilization.
Beyond the Euphrates, Grecian influences largely modified Hindu science and philosophy and the later Persian literature. The intellectual influence of ancient Greece, poured on the Eastern world by Alexander’s victories, was brought back to bear on Mediæval Europe through the Saracenic conquests. The learning and science of the Arabians, communicated at that epoch to the western parts of Europe, were merely the reproduction, in an altered form, of the Greek philosophy and the Greek learning acquired by the Saracenic conquerors along with the territory of the provinces which Alexander had subjugated, nearly a thousand years before the armed disciples of Mohammed began their career in the East.
ALEXANDER’S SUCCESSORS
On the death of Alexander, in 323 B. C., a struggle of more than twenty years’ duration ensued among his principal generals and their heirs—Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Antigonus, his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, Cassander, Seleucus, and others. At last, in 301 B. C., a decisive battle was fought at Ipsus, in Phrygia, between Antigonus (with his son Demetrius) and a confederacy of his rivals. The result was to distribute the provinces of Alexander’s empire in the following way: To Lysimachus, nearly the whole of Asia Minor; Cassander, Greece and Macedon; Seleucus, Syria and the East; Ptolemy had Egypt and Palestine. The two most important kingdoms were that of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and that of the Seleucids[4] in the East. (See further under Comparative Outlines, and Egypt.)
[4] The Syrian monarchy of the Seleucidæ began in 312 B. C. with Seleucus I. (surnamed Nicator), one of Alexander’s generals, and under him was extended over much of Asia Minor, including the whole of Syria from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, and the territory eastwards from the Euphrates to the banks of the Oxus and the Indus. Seleucus I. was an able and energetic monarch, and sedulously carried out the plans of Alexander the Great. He died in 280 B. C., having founded the city of Antioch in Syria as the capital of the kingdom. His successors, the dynasty known as the Seleucidæ (or “descendants of Seleucus”), ruled for about two centuries. The most notable of these monarchs were named Antiochus.
The third of the name, Antiochus the Great (223 to 187 B. C.), was the monarch at whose court Hannibal, the great Carthaginian, took refuge. Antiochus invaded Greece in 192 B. C., and there the Romans defeated him both by land and sea, and compelled him to yield a large part of his dominions in Asia Minor. Much of the eastern territory had been lost before this time, as well as Phœnicia, Palestine, and Western Syria, conquered by Ptolemy Philopator, king of Egypt.
Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B. C.) oppressed the Jews to introduce the worship of the Greek divinities. Against him the brave Maccabees rose in rebellion. The Syrian kingdom ended in 65 B. C., conquered by the Romans under Pompey.
LATER HISTORY OF MACEDONIA
AND GREECE
The last period in the history of Greece presents us with long wars among different successors of Alexander for the sovereignty of the Greek states, and factions and intrigue rife in and between the different communities. From time to time great and patriotic men arise, making a struggle glorious but vain for the restoration of political freedom and the spirit of the olden time. We find “leagues” and confederations formed in order to resist the coming doom of political extinction.
THE FATAL LAMIAN
WAR
A great effort to free Greece from the Macedonian supremacy was headed by Athens in 323 B. C. The renowned Athenian orators Demosthenes and Hyperides were its political heroes, opposed by Phocion, a man of pure character, but who despaired of a successful rising against Antipater, ruler of Macedonia before and after Alexander the Great’s death. Athens was joined by most of the states in Central and Northern Greece; and the war derives its name from Lamia in Thessaly, where Antipater, after being defeated by the confederates, was besieged for some months. The war ended in 322 B. C., by Antipater’s complete victory at the battle of Crannon in Thessaly. Demosthenes ended his life by poison in the same year; Hyperides was killed by Antipater’s orders; Phocion died by the hemlock at Athens, in 317 B. C., on a charge of treason.
HEROIC EFFORTS OF
DEMETRIUS
The distinguished Demetrius Poliorcetes (besieger of cities) was king of Macedonia from 294 to 287 B. C. His life was passed in fighting with varied success and he was driven from the throne at last by a combination of enemies, including the famous Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. Demetrius was a man of wonderful abilities and resources, deriving his surname from the enormous machines which he constructed for the siege of Rhodes, one of his warlike enterprises. He freed Athens for a time from Macedonian domination before he became ruler of Macedon.
A famous personage was Pyrrhus, the warlike king of Epirus, the territory in the northwest of Greece, inhabited by descendants of the old Pelasgians and Illyrians. The first king of the whole country was Alexander, the brother of Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great. He ruled from 336 to 326 B. C.
THE WARRIOR PYRRHUS,
KING OF EPIRUS
Pyrrhus (295 to 272 B. C.) is renowned as the greatest warrior of his age. He had been driven by his subjects from Epirus, but, assisted with a fleet and army by Ptolemy I. of Egypt, returned thither and began his actual reign in 295 B. C. His first efforts were turned against Macedonia; but, after much fighting, he lost his hold there, in 286 B. C. It was in 280 B. C. that he began his great enterprise by crossing over into Italy, to aid the Tarentines against the Romans. In his first campaign he defeated the Romans in the battle of Heraclea in Lucania. His skill was aided by a force of armored elephants, and by the Macedonian formation of the phalanx, both novelties to the Romans. In the second campaign (279 B. C.) Pyrrhus gained a second dearly bought victory over the Romans at Asculum, in Apulia, yet with no decisive result; in 278 B. C. he crossed into Sicily, to help the Greeks there against the Carthaginians.
REPULSES AND DEATH
OF PYRRHUS
At first he was very successful and defeated the Carthaginians, taking the town of Eryx; but he failed in other operations, and returned to Italy in 276 B. C., again to assist the Tarentines against the Romans. In 275 B. C. his career in Italy was closed by a great defeat, inflicted by the Romans at the battle of Beneventum, and Pyrrhus returned to Epirus with the remnant of his army. In 273 B. C. he invaded Macedonia with such success as to become king, and his restless spirit then drove him to war in Peloponnesus. He was repulsed in an attack on Sparta, and, after entering the city of Argos to assist one of its factions, was knocked from his horse by a heavy tile hurled from a house-top by a woman’s hand, and killed by the enemy’s soldiers. Thus died Pyrrhus, in the forty-sixth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign,—a man of the highest military skill, capable of great enterprises, but without the steady resolution and the practical wisdom to bring them to a successful issue.
GALLIC INVASION
OF GREECE
The Gauls invaded Greece in 280 B. C. After penetrating through Macedonia and Thessaly they were defeated under their leader Brennus (namesake of the captor of Rome a century earlier), near Delphi in Phocis. Some of the Gauls in this irruption made their way into Asia Minor, and ultimately gave their name to the province Galatia, adopting the Greek customs and religion, but keeping their own language.
THE CELEBRATED ACHAEAN
LEAGUE
The Achæan League was founded, in its new form, in 280 B. C., consisting of the towns in [383] Achæa, and afterwards including Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and many other Greek cities, so that it became the chief political power in Greece. In 245 B. C. Aratus (sometimes called the “last of the Greeks”) became head of the league, and much extended its influence by skillful diplomacy. Philopœmen, another distinguished man of this period, general of the league in 208 B. C., and again in 201 and 192 B. C., was successful in battle against the Spartans when they assailed the League, and in 188 B. C. took Sparta, leveled the fortifications, and replaced the institutions of Lycurgus by the Achæan laws.
Greece from this time forward was greatly distracted; Greek power, Greek energy, Greek genius, might now be found indeed anywhere rather than in Greece. The Achæan League from time to time made spasmodic efforts, but Rome constantly interfered in Greek affairs. Domestic faction helped Roman intrigues, and the battle of Pydna (in Macedonia), gained by the Romans in 168 B. C. over Perseus, the last king of Macedon, formally ended the dominion established by Phillip II., nearly two centuries before. Macedonia was made a Roman province in 147 B. C.
GREECE BECOMES A
ROMAN PROVINCE
The Achæan League had gradually languished and in 150 B. C. war with Rome began, as a last effort on behalf of Greece. It ended in the defeat of the forces of the League by the Roman general Mummius, and the capture of Corinth (146 B. C.), which was plundered, and burned to the ground; the Achæan League was formally dissolved, and Greece was made into the Roman province Achaia, in 146 B. C. The city of Athens was allowed to retain a kind of freedom, and became, along with Alexandria, a university town of the civilized world, in which students of art, philosophy and literature found the best models, the best instruction, and the highest inspirations.
THE GREEKS UNDER FOREIGN RULE
UNTIL 1832
Under the Romans Greece was at first treated fairly well, and much of the old municipal life was left. Hellenic culture fascinated the conquerors. Greek teachers poured into Rome, and Athens became the university for wealthy Roman youths. Little by little, however, the government became more oppressive. In the Mithradatic War the Greeks rose in a revolt which led to a devastating march of Sulla across the country and to the storming of Athens and the massacre of its inhabitants. Greece was then exposed to the exactions of the Roman officials on the one hand, and to the ravages of pirates on the other. In 267 B. C. the Goths swept across the land, destroyed many towns, and captured Athens, from which they were dislodged by the forces of the historian Dexippus.
In internal affairs the tendency during the following centuries was to more and more centralize rule on the part of the Romans. The Emperor Hadrian attempted to improve the condition of the Greeks by giving them rights equal to those of Roman citizens, by reforming the administration of justice, and by paying attention to roads and buildings. Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, took the important step of changing the capital from Rome to Byzantium, which he solemnly dedicated in 333 A. D. and called, after himself, Constantinople. The Emperor, having been the political head of the pagan religion, naturally assumed the same direction of the Christian faith, and, in the opposition of the orthodox Church to the Arianism of the first Christian Emperors the people found a vent for the national feeling which chafed against the despotism of an alien court. Theodosius the Great (378-395) first established Christianity as the religion of the state. His sons, Arcadius and Honorius divided the Roman dominions between themselves, and Constantinople became the capital only of the Eastern Empire. At this time a great danger threatened Greece from Alaric, king of the West Goths, who invaded Greece in 396 and occupied Athens. Though the city and country were pillaged by the Goths, Alaric strictly protected the honor of Greek women and religious edifices.
GREECE UNDER THE
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
On the division of the Roman Empire, Greece fell of course to the eastern or Byzantine half. In 1204 the Crusaders and Venetians captured Constantinople, and divided the Empire—an act which has been taken as the end of “the Byzantine Empire.” Baldwin, Count of Flanders, was elected Emperor of Roumania, and reigned at Constantinople. Many new states sprang out of the partition, and new empires were founded at Nicæa, Trebizond, and Thessalonica. The feudal system was established in Greece. Athens became a fief of Roumania, governed by dukes; a great part of the Peloponnesus was kept first by Franks and then by Neapolitans, as the Principality of Achæa. The Venetians obtained possession of most of the islands.
Of all the confused and crowded events of these times probably the most important, was the capture of Constantinople in 1261 by Michael Palæologus, Emperor of Nicæa, but no attempt to hold Greece could long endure in the face of the Ottoman Turks who soon began to threaten from the East. In 1453 the Sultan Mohammed II. took Constantinople. The Venetians finally surrendered all claim to most of their Greek possessions by the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718.
UNDER TURKISH RULE DOWN TO THE
WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
During the rule of the Turks the Greeks endured many hardships, including a curious tribute of children, who were educated by Mohammedans and trained for service in the corps of Janissaries. It was, however, to the interest of the Sultans for the sake of their revenues to encourage Greek commerce, and so there were wealthy classes with culture enough to make a fruitful soil for the teaching of the French Revolution. The spirit thus implanted led to the War of Greek Independence in 1821—memorable for the generous sympathy of Byron, for the long siege of Missolonghi, and for the accident which led to the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Navarino in 1827 by English, French, and Russian vessels.
From this period down to the present the history of Greece belongs to the modern kingdom.
From the Painting by LUDWIG THIERSCH
ALARIC, KING OF THE WEST GOTHS, IN ATHENS
Though Alaric was a fierce warrior and ruthless in his attacks in both Greece and Rome, he held the women and the religious temples of the places overrun with the strictest sanctity. This was in strong contrast with the social and political corruption of the time in both Greece and Rome and did much justify this powerful conqueror of a decadent state.